bee creative

assignments

A couple years ago we did a personality inventory at work. It’s official, I am highly motivated by play.

One of my employers likes to tease me about this when it comes up. But she also has observed that at some point I must have been taught techniques to balance my need for play with the need to meet goals.

There is some truth to all this.

I’ve recently realized that one thing I do as an adult is to give myself assignments:

• Weed for two hours each day.
• The liminal scarf: spin and knit each week.
• Photo challenges: Choose1word

 

 

For July I'm taking on another assignment. 

I think I discovered Rowdy Kittens/Tammy Strobel through my interest in tiny houses.  This month she has a photo prompt for each day, "A Month of Everyday Adventures." 

One of the things that I feel strongly about is that looking for adventures close to home is just as, if not more, important than looking farther away. 

It comes back to choosing joy daily...or maybe a desire to play. 

Prompt one: gather your tools.  Think I'd better add a sun hat. 

..........

Liminal scarf

I'm behind a few rows but will catch up tomorrow.  The parameters that I set last August didn't work (it would have made an immense scarf) so I'm just matching color to weather each Sunday.  Gray for overcast or rain, a bright color for sunshine. 

.........

Today's project

I've had this fabric for over a year.  It was time to commit to something (another assignment, to clean up the stash)...so a summer skirt.  Self-drafted pattern.

A form of play.

It makes me smile. 

stories continue

Age nine. We were moving and my best friend invited me to pick from her collection of glass figurines, to choose one to remember her by. Because I was all about horses at that age, I chose a foal laying down. Unfortunately, this upset my friend as it was one that her grandmother had given her. I remember offering to choose another one (I am pretty sure anyway) and her mother saying, no, that the foal was the one I had chosen and that I was to take it.

I’ve lost touch with this particular friend. Although we wrote letters to each other for several years, those dwindled away. But this little figure has come with me wherever I have gone and I do remember my friend whenever I see it. They are good memories.  But it also holds a place of change, a pivotal point. 

 

It's been a week of choosing one word each day and then a response. 

I usually draw my word the night before, just after an image is posted.  I think about the word, consider how I would define it.  Rock might be noun or verb.  I might be prompted to create in response, layers of creation.  For "stripe" I stitched a patch. 

Already I am considering the limitations of one word and an image for when there is more to the story.  The need for sentences.  The consideration of how much to share.  "Childhood" was that way.  I chose the little figurine as something from my childhood and so many thoughts and stories came to me. 

Yesterday's word, worn.  Worn: showing it's age, used, loved.  And too, a sense of being tired, one might say "worn out." Or maybe an article of clothing worn that day...

Today's word: window. 

 

To let the light in...