bee creative

to be so many things (going big)

I used to worry (and every once and awhile still do) that I loved to do too many things.

The worry is/was driven, I think, by being part of a culture that values specialization. Success is often defined as becoming very good at one thing. 

That's just not who some of us are.

It's not who I am.

A few months ago (I know I should have paid more attention to where but I can't remember or find where) I discovered an artist that I wanted to know more about, Meryl McMaster.

So, I ordered her book. It arrived at the end of last week and it is full of wonder.

Buffy Sainte-Marie, in the foreword, writes about how it wasn't always that people were specialists.

We knew how to do many things. 

After some of the other reading/listening I've been doing recently (Nick Offerman/Wendell Berry in particular), it really clicked into place that we lose something really important when we specialize too much.  It's not just about not knowing where food comes from or how something is made, but how we might be and interact with the world around us.

There is a loss of faith in our ability to be something more than a consumer. It shows up every day in the news.

And as I go out into the garden every day right now and collect or harvest for projects or food, I am watch all the changes that are happening so quickly in this season. I am thinking about how much I learn from being curious about growth, about nurturing a garden. Thinking about how a garden is always a process. 

About how it influences me as someone who makes things; how I make them and why I make them.  A garden is abundant with possibilities. 

This is partly a response to Grace's and Jude's posts regarding making, but also something that I am almost always thinking about...

"Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"  Mary Oliver

 

on the table

I've spent a lot of the weekend rearranging things...

When I paused to look at what was stacked on my table I had to shake my head...pigment making supplies and pigments, dye supplies, the baby indigo vat, sewing projects, paper projects, books, drawing supplies, a water color set, yarn, gifts from friends, the occasional cat and an iron that I rarely use.

So many things that I am interested in. 

So many things that I am or want to be.

And a kind of chaos.

Looking closer,

There was also lunch:

Toppings: pears, smoked cheese, walnuts and radicchio.

And dye experiments.

The fabric on the left and middle were dyed in the baby vat, two dips for the cotton and one dip for the wool.  The wool on the right was dyed in the ice water dye bath. 

And that brings me to my reading...

One of the concepts that I find so validating in  Ways of Being is the idea that it isn't about either/or.  On a personal, small level for me, there is comfort in all the examples that Bridle gives. When I look at my table there is very little either/or. There are possibilities.  Why identify as one kind of maker?

And then there is a discussion on the importance of randomness. I am thinking about how that relates to creativity, how we define creativity. 

More thinking...in this week's newsletter Krista Tippet links to a podcast by Kevin Kelly.  The discussion is about technology, what it is and how it is shaping our world.  It's a great conversation, I especially like this:

So we have this world where, basically, answers have become cheap and ubiquitous and pervasive, and they’re everywhere, and so what’s much scarcer are good questions. And good questions are kind of like a discovery. They’re kind of like a way of exploring “what if?”

What if... :)

vacation, staycation!

So much I want to do...

On the way home I stopped to sit on the beach and pick up a few rocks to try making pigment with. 

To take some deep breathes.

I may stitch "breathe" on the hem of all my shirts. 

I also picked up a few pieces of seaweed that caught my eye and a few shells.  There were some high winds this week, things seemed a little more diverse on the beach. 

It's been really cold, hard frosts most mornings.

Next week it is supposed to warm up and rain so tomorrow will be a good day for the outside projects...maybe some cyanotypes?

Also gathering wreath materials.

Definitely going to see if I can find some rocks that I can make pigment with from the garden, maybe gather some more soil. 

I am planning on posting every day...just a little accountability.

on the line

As a phrase it means, risk and danger.

When the phrase came to me I was really thinking about what was on the laundry line.  That was before I had to get Gibson down; he was dangling by his paws after climbing up the fabric.

I think it's the clothes pins he's after. 

Then I thought of the line I stitched today.

And of writing a line of...poetry? 

I made notes right on the fabric during a class today.

Mantua-makers seam.

All of this is not to be confused with a train of thought.

Which might be derailed.

 

permission slips

This morning I was ready to go to the Farmer's market and decided I just didn't want to go...so I didn't.

So there was a nap.

Some digital collage.

Sewing.

House cleaning.

Lunch.

Maybe a little too much olive oil from frying the panner and almonds in this but it was good. 

Squash + water + panner + almonds + onions + paprika type spice mix + olive oil.

A little puttering in the garden once the air quality improved.  It's been in the moderate to unhealthy categories today.

And a lot of distraction provided by the cats...

garden connections

Yesterday I picked my first fig.

This is the third or fourth fig tree I've planted, the first to make it through a cold winter and then fruit... Just two figs this year but now I have hope. The right tree, in the right space.

And then there is this:

The shoulder seams and about 12 inches are stitched.  Just enough to know I will be happy with the fit.  I am not sure if I am going to leave it at this length (about knee level) or add fabric along the bottom to make it longer. I am going to start adding some applique over the top of the worst of the holes.  There will be time to decide and time to play with over dyeing some of the yellow. 

I do want some of this yellow to remain, it is such a sweet color.  Color from the garden.

While reading Grace's blog post this morning, where she shares her local  Master Gardener's demonstration Garden, I started thinking about my garden and what it provides.  Here... two examples, food and color.  Today I am hoping to make salve with rose petals from the garden; and so another use. 

And this...listening this morning to Ross Gay, On Being:

"For one, it’s just fun to be in a garden, for me, dreaming about what could happen: that kind of mystical space, actually, of trying to figure out what this thing that I do here could be in five years, that kind of strange dreaming space that it is.

There’s also something really moving about putting a seed in the ground and it turning into something really different, and a lot of something really different and, potentially, on and on and on, a lot of something very different."

I went to check out the garden he talks about in the interview, the Bloomington Community Orchard.

Community gardens, people coming together to create shared spaces...there is hope. 

Thinking about this today.

 

 

 

 

playing with color

One of the experiments...butterfly bush/buddleia. 

It was interesting how much warmer the water was in the black pot compared to clear glass.

In another container I am soaking cotton in diluted soy milk.  Not something I have tried before.  One piece of fabric will go in another batch of buddleia, the other I am still thinking about...

Another container has fresh indigo leaves steeping.

There were more experiments I wanted to try this weekend but mostly I want to nap...trying to set smaller goals.

 

managing expectations?

Started life as a cup. just couldn't get a handle on it.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen, what could have happened, if I stayed focused on something. 

If I really practiced one thing.

I would probably get bored...something I never am.

hope

I've finished reading A Sideways Look at Clouds and have started reading Horizon by Barry Lopez.

As it seems to happen...I find connections. 

This week's On Being Newsletter features an interview with Craig Minowa and Cloud Cult which led me down a rabbit hole of listening.

In the interview there is a discussion about hope, and then later as I read Horizon I find:

"We, all of us, look back over our lives, trying to make sense of what happened, to see what enduring threads might be there.  My further desire in planning this book was to create a narrative that would engage a reader intent on discovering a trajectory in her or his own life, a coherent and meaningful story, at a time in our cultural and biological history when it has become an attractive option to lose faith in the meaning of our lives.  At a time when many see little more on the horizon but the suggestion of a dark future." 

Thinking about time this morning.

And hope.

Also... a link for the cloud watchers, this is a nice one for identifying the scientific names of clouds. This morning I would say I have Stratus clouds...a gray blanket of low clouds (pure coincidence I am sure).

The forecast is for sunny skies although I wish it would rain just a bit more and water the garden.

 

funny little (well relatively) cloud

On yesterday's walk I noticed the funniest cloud.  I am stitching one sort of like it on my Peace and Plenty quilt. 

I think it's a cumulus.

This week's On Being podcast of choice, Ann Hamilton, titled "Making and the Spaces that we Share."

"And that we grow up or we’re educated in a world that ascribes a lot of value to those things that we can say or name. But they’re all these hundreds of ways that we know things, through our skin, which is the largest organ of our body. And, so, you know, my first hand is that textile hand, and text and textiles are woven always, experientially for me. And then, I think that when I first started making things out of cloth, it was like it was another skin. So I was thinking about it as an animate surface, and thinking about it as something that both covers and reveals."

I am finding a lot of value in daily posts right now.  Following a thought, research, noticing, making, gratitude...