those weird feelings you can't put your finger on...

i have the weirdest feeling when i go to our creative group's atelier up on the top floor of our local library. something about being there just makes me feel prickly, negative and a little defensive. i think it's been going on for awhile, but i only just was able to put my finger on the feeling last evening. i don't know why, but knowing that is a step towards figuring that out. 

i can feel that i put up a wall around myself. and that the wall actually prevents me from being present and open. it's like it appears without my knowledge and i find myself behind it, feeling a bit negative and out of sorts. 

or maybe it's just that i'm sensitive to negative energy. and there's loads of negativity there. i'm not sure that i've always felt it. at the beginning of the pandemic, i spent a lot of time there, as the library has a good internet connection and ours at home was iffy at best. so i worked there many days during the time we had to work from home. maybe that's it. some kind of corona-induced anxiety kicks in when i'm there. but why would that make me defensive and negative? 

it's also the scene where someone questioned how i was raised because i had wanted to send flowers from our group to the funeral of our group's founder's father. the other members of the board were against that idea, by the way. i'm still wondering how on earth that makes me the one who is badly raised. but i live outside my own culture, so perhaps it's just one of those things that's impossible for me to understand. but perhaps i associate it with the place. 

but how do i shake it off? i can feel that it prevents me from enjoying getting together with women i genuinely like in a place that's made for creativity. do i need to burn some sage up there? exorcise the demons? how do i get rid of this feeling so that i can enjoy being there again and be present for the people who i like being with? 

i don't mean to imply that i don't take responsibility for this feeling in myself. i just don't know the source of it, nor how to get rid of it. 

feeling blue about old my blue room

i've been in an intense adobe premiere pro course for the past two days. my head is full and i'm quite frankly exhausted. i was searching my flickr for a photo of pretty paper to use to encourage folks to participate in an art journaling workshop this weekend and i stumbled onto photos of my old blue room. and i got a bit, well...blue about it. i miss that beautiful space. somewhere i could leave projects out and where i could have multiple projects going on at once. somewhere to light a merry fire in the wood-burning stove, listen to music and hang out with friends and drink wine. and then cyndy sent me a blog post she did about my blue room long ago, which included a SONG that she wrote about it. i swear i don't think i knew about this song before now. i think that may have been during that period when i was feeling invisible. maybe it's just that the universe knew that today i would need to both laugh and cry at the same time. thank you so much, cyndy. it was precisely what i needed.

what does a creative workspace look like?

i've been pondering what makes the physical surroundings of a workspace creative. because it strikes me that just filling it with creative people doesn't necessarily do the trick. i've been pondering this for awhile and have collected quite a lot of inspiration on a couple of pinterest boards - kulturhus and stationen (co-working). interestingly, some of the first photos i pinned were of a workspace in LEGO's project house, several years before i ever started working there. the space looks amazing - with light, open spaces, bright colors and even includes a slide.

it's a light, bright open space and you can look down upon it from above. but even in most of the photos, there aren't any people working in the space (that could, i grant, be because the photos were purposely taken when hardly anyone was around). the photos represent a common area, and what they don't show is that they are surrounded by a traditional open workspace filled with normal office desks (which can raise and lower, of course). they also don't show the noise factor and the fact that if anyone actually uses the slide, it's quite disturbing to those working around it.

there are small meeting rooms overlooking the space. this meeting room, while colorful and (of course) filled with danish designer furniture (arne jacobsen 7 chairs and a peit hein super ellipse table), looks pretty small and cramped to me. and what about the distraction of looking down on the bustling workspace below or having those below be able to look up? does that promote or hinder creativity?

the cabinets there are filled with LEGO in all sorts of shapes, colors and sizes where the designers go to get the materials of their creativity. these cabinets are found in many areas around the company and there is something delightful about having all of those creative materials at hand.

this couch looks inviting and like a great place for an informal sparring session or impromptu chat. however, it's right above the big space below and it feels like everyone would be able to hear your conversation. this could be bad if you're discussing something confidential, but it could just also be quite disturbing to those trying to work below. especially as conversations in LEGO can take place in many different languages.

and stepping back a little bit, you can see that there's another informal workspace, just beside this couch, where it's even more obvious that the spaces are potentially more disruptive to work than facilitating it.

interestingly, every aspect of this area was thoroughly thought-through and deemed to be very creative and to promote creativity. all of the intentions were in place. but, in my opinion, it just doesn't work. it's too open, too many desk-laden areas are adjacent and it's too disruptive to getting work done. but i don't necessarily have any answers as to what would be better. i have an intuition that it involves getting rid of outlook and powerpoint as the main tools of people's work. and i also have an idea that it doesn't involve big, open spaces, but little, enclosed cavelike ones, to which people can retreat and do solitary, intensive work and then re-emerge and engage with others. i'm not sure precisely what that looks like. but i'm pretty sure it doesn't involve noise-canceling headphones for the entire department.

i suspect similar amazing-looking, well-intentioned spaces at google and various co-working places are equally not conducive to creativity.

i've got this book, on the evolution of workspaces, on my order list.  and after i published this, i came across this article on how etsy tackles the problem. and then i came across this one, which i think has some great ideas.

what do you think an ideal creative workspace would look like?

tho' it's totally unlike me to use someone else's photos, i did in this post. all photos came from here. 

universe, are you listening?

what if it was possible to have a place where you could combine all of the things you want to do in your life? a place full of good energy, inspiring surroundings, nurturing, caring people. a creative place, where you could do business, come up with great ideas, learn new things and spend time with people who make you better at what you do and challenge you in a good way. and what if you could get a cup of really good coffee there? what if that place didn't exist, so you had to create it yourself? and what if there just happened to be a charming old train station building, standing empty, just waiting for you to make it awesome?

and what if it needed a whole lot of paint and elbow grease? would you do it? would you, on the theory that writing is the new praying, write it down here for all the world to see and hope that the universe is listening so that all of the pieces would fall into place to make it happen? would you dare to believe and do all that you could yourself to make it happen? even if people thought you were crazy?

can you feel sad and happy at the same time?

how on earth am i going to leave this?

this weekend i spent some time sitting by the fire out in the blue room, as it's come to be known - not to be confused with a bar by the same name in a little middle-of-nowhere town in the upper midwest. i tried to soak it all in. of course, the house has been for sale for awhile and i've known that i will have to part with this room, and in many ways, that's ok. there are things we learned from it and will do differently the next time (more square meters and better lighting). but oh, how i have loved this space - i have literally whispered "i love you room," upon entering on more than one occasion. there's just something so right about it. something that it's hard for me to define. it is at once light and roomy and yet cavelike. that must be the combination of lots of windows on both sides and the dark, rich, turquoise paint i chose. but it also has to do with the creative corner, where i sit, completely surrounded by art supplies - stamps, tape, paint, paper, fabrics, you name it, it's there.

these essential ingredients all come with us. when we go, all that will stay behind are the little wood burning stove and the blue walls. i haven't even decided if i'll leave the linen shades. i was always going to make them longer by adding some fabric to them, but i never got around to it. i've got to check to see if i need them on the windows in the new place (we still haven't heard whether our offer is accepted - there are some challenges (which may or may not involve morse code, telexes and possibly a dog sled team) reaching both parties to the sale).

although i'm sorrowful to leave this space, i am already scheming and planning the new space. i want that end wall that needs to be torn off anyway to incorporate various reclaimed windows, i want a balcony with a little office/computer space that overlooks the big room below, i want more space for books and better shelves for the fabric stash. i want a bigger table that's better for cutting out fabric and patterns and a big wall for laying out quilts. and the colors, just imagining the colors is exciting.  it might not be turquoise this time around. maybe it will be white with purple accents. or green. or a completely different blue. or a hot-blooded magenta. i don't really know. yet. but i think having all of these exciting possibilities is what will get me through the sorrow of leaving this beautiful space behind.

* * *

i've just drastically marked down everything in my etsy shop. i really don't want to have to pack these things up and move them, so do check it out. i'd much rather package them up all pretty and send them to you! there are a few helleristning stones, a couple of pillows, a baby quilt and a scarf. i know winter's almost over, but then you're ready for next fall!  there are a few of the spice line of clarity birds left as well in the big cartel shop, so if you'd like one to fly your way, go there. there will be a new line of clarity birds for summer (after the move). i'm also putting off the art journal course that i mentioned that i was planning until after we're settled into the new place - i had never announced dates anyway so we should be cool there. i just know my time will definitely be limited in the coming couple of months. we've got a LOT of stuff to pack!

a very creative weekend

oh how i am going to miss this room when we sell the house and move (that offer we got a month or so ago, we rejected in the end, so it's not yet sold). but, knowing our time is limited, we are spending as much time as possible in the famed blue room. on saturday, there were two sewing machines whirring away and canvases being painted. there were top models' outfits being designed and several sketches for a new ladybug plushie to be made as a gift for a friend. there was art journaling and sketching of garden designs. it was a veritable beehive of creative activity.

husband's oldest daughter's version of a plain spoken quilt top - all done.

the canvases were done by sabin and middle sister.

a baby duvet cover that i'm working on.

i was totally inspired by the quilt K is making.

my tanya whelan dolce quilt - fending off the winter blues.

i even got to the quilting stage of it and it's now all quilted (tho' not in this photo) and just awaiting binding.

a peek at the back of the dolce quilt.

it was dark when i finished the quilting this evening, so no pix of that.

a springy dress that i made for myself from the adult couture sewing book that i bought from pomadour24 on etsy. i can highly recommend the japanese sewing pattern books. the styles are simple and beautiful and even without japanese, you can follow the directions because the pictures are brilliant. it took a bit longer than it would have had i been able to read the directions, but in the end, it really wasn't bad at all. the patterns come on big sheets in the back of the book and you trace them off onto pattern paper and then follow the well-done layouts and directions. in just one afternoon, i had a new dress!

some fabulous leather pieces i acquired recently.

i've got plans for this, so stay tuned!

i spent some time just admiring my fabric stash.

and after looking at various stash groups on flickr, i realize it's quite manageable.

and in fact, i probably should really get some more if i want it to be a stash to be proud of. :-)

luckily, a bunch of goodness is on its way from here and here.

and i'm sure some of it will arrive this week.

another shot of the paintings.

sabin's on the left, m's on the right.

i think sabin's sense of color is absolutely brilliant.

she even had to mix to get those colors! i'm so proud of her.

and i ADORE these tiny canvases, especially the one with the face.

and how she used bits and pieces from the little plate of fabric and thread clippings.

i knew those would come in handy for something.

it's just too bad those canvases are so tiny (like 3" x 2")!

i haven't actually been counting towards my 100 creative things in 2010, but i think we're on track. i'm going to try to upload everything to flickr and do a mosaic to count in the near future. with various computers having been in the shop, my pictures are in three different locations. sigh.

all of this made it almost ok that it snowed all weekend!! 

what did you make this weekend?

rearranging in the blue room

blue card translation: "one has an opinion until one blogs a new one"

the pink one, i think everyone can read

green card translation: "'god is dead' - nietzche 'nietzsche has just been erased from facebook' - god"

as soon as i felt better yesterday, precisely 36 hours after beginning to feel sick, i went on a cleaning and tidying frenzy in my studio, aka "the blue room." blog camp approaches and it needed a good tidy. i changed out the things that were hanging on my inspiration wall and so now these postcards, which i picked up in a café not long ago are there. i thought they were all pretty clever. also changed out the MOO cards, putting up some different ones.

but the biggest project was sorting and folding my fabric stash and making some "shelves" for it out of the wooden crates that our weekly organic veg comes in. since we are, after all, making an effort to consume less this year, it seemed like it would be good to put those boxes to use. you can see them beneath the iPod HiFi. makes it MUCH easier to assess the color ranges when it's all visible like this.

i think you can actually learn quite a lot about your taste when you organize your fabric and see it all in one spot. i tend to like bright, fresh colors (lots of teals and greens, surprise, surprise) and rather scandinavian prints on white. and i've bought a lot of fabric in ikea.

and i finally hung up the little copper whirling dervishes i bought in istanbul last october. aren't they sweet? and they have a little evil eye bead to ward off any bad vibes that might try to get into the studio.

i'm working on my blog camp prezzies today in between getting some letters ready to go about my freelance writing business (yup, i'm available for writing assignments if you know anyone who has a need, especially someone who wants to tell stories about ships).

#1 in the 2010 year of creativity

a little viking ship stamp carved from an eraser.

i forgot how much fun it is to carve stamps!

#2 - cloth goody bags for blog camp 3.0
i won't spoil the surprise by telling what's going in them.

ok, i'd better get back to work. i'm not quite done out there. hope you're enjoying your thursday. the giant ball of fire (what's it called again? the word has fallen from use around here) actually put in an appearance in the sky today, so my spirits are lifted considerably.

picture inspired by spudballoo's far superior pylon picture.

these aren't really pylons so much as the light poles on the street in front of our house.
taken at 9:20 a.m. this morning. (thanks char, for asking whether it was sunrise or sunset.)

shifting forces of gravity

i did something this week that feels like a major step for me.  husband is always teasing me that my friends are all virtual and the things i find of interest happen in places far removed from where i live. so when i read in the local newspaper that a new association of local artists was forming, i decided to get involved where i am. and i joined.

in order to do so, i had to say that i was an artist.  that felt really strange and like a major shifting of gravity beneath my feet. related to this step, i also worked on setting up my long-procrastinated etsy shop this week. i still haven't listed any items, but i'm getting closer and i will let you all know here when it's up and running. and i even called it shifting forces of gravity, because that's what taking this step feels like.

i'm not sure what kind of artist i am and that's a little bit the issue. i've tried so many things over the past year, in my process of getting back in touch with my creativity, that i've been kind of all over the place (see yesterday's post for evidence of this). a bit of painting, some sewing, some quilting, a few little clay robots, gocco prints and of course, my photography. i'm leaving the door open and we'll see where the muses take me.

i think one of the places i want to go is back towards these driftwood people that husband and i made together a couple (or is it 5 or more) years ago:

"great love"

j & j-p, 2002

easter island meets denmark

j & j-p 2002

at the time we made these, we also made a few others for friends and family as gifts. it was a really interesting process. we'd lay out all of the driftwood on the table and see which pieces spoke to us. then, husband would fashion the metal wire into arms and legs if that was what was needed or attach them and do all of the hammering and drilling and screwing bits. i did the painting and the actual composition. it was a great partnership and i'm not sure how we drifted away from it. now that he's got his workshop and i my studio, we should be able to go back to these collaborative pieces.

i'm brewing a post on my sources of inspiration these days and will share that will you soon. happy weekend one and all...

p.s. shifting forces of gravity is totally a murakami thing. :-)

all is quiet

we woke up this morning to a winter wonderland of snow. it's still gently coming down, but it feels awfully warm out there, so i don't know how long it will last. it was enough that i had to shovel in front of our house and the neighbors' (they're in turkey). normally, husband would do that, but he's away all week, attending a course. it was so magical being out in the gently falling snow that i didn't mind shoveling. in fact, it was a rather invigorating way to start the day. and i felt justified in having bought purple furry bumper boots, since you totally need such boots in the snow. and they leave a pretty footprint:

it's funny that it's actually no quieter than usual, but because the world is white and the contours softened  by the snow, it feels even quieter. the only sound i can hear is the crackling of the fireplace downstairs and the cat snoring (she's really got a problem, i wonder if we should have that checked). it feels like it will be a productive day.

yesterday was productive too. i had a knitting lesson from a very nice lady who works at sabin's after-school program. she has wednesdays off and we agreed to meet down at a cafe and have a coffee and she'd teach me to knit. she did help me quite it a bit on how to hold the needles, but it still feels like a stressful activity to me. i tried to knit last night while watching t.v., but found it very difficult. but perhaps it will come. i love the materials of knitting--soft yarn of natural fibers in beautiful colors, wooden knitting needles. they feel so good in your hands that i am drawn to it, despite the tension and what i call the retarded monkey stance i end up in when i'm knitting. i'm sure once i get the hang of it, i'll relax. because knitting is supposed to be relaxing, right?

i also finished my mad quilt-in-a-day project . i guess i didn't actually succeed in making a quilt in a day, since all i finished was the top that day, but i do blame my old sewing machine, which simply couldn't handle quilting together a layer of fabric and a layer of fleece. fleece is actually rather temperamental in its behavior towards a sewing machine.  but yesterday, i made the binding (after a couple of false starts involving my (in)ability to see angles and envision how they will turn out) and sewed it to the quilt. because i was "cheating" and not really quilting, but sewing a quilt top to a fleece, i was able to sew the binding on with the machine too, rather than by hand as the last step. that made it much faster and it turned out really well. for a first attempt. and i really do love these fabrics from ikea.

it will be comfy and cozy to snuggle up under in the writing house/studio/atelier these days. tho' the fireplace was installed last week and it's WONDERFUL. it warms things up quickly and i haven't subjected my hair to flames in over a week!  i hadn't yet shared a picture because i keep hoping for a day when the sun is shining and the light is better, but that hasn't come, so here's the picture i took last friday of the first fire.

although i had intended to tell travel stories today (memories are coming out of the woodwork as i read paul theroux's pillars of hercules), i guess you get domestic homey musings instead. i blame the snow, it has me nesting and hunkering down inside. i think i'll go get materials to make a fairy costume for sabin's upcoming school play. she plays a little fairy in sleeping beauty. my travel adventures will keep 'til tomorrow.

favorite reads of 2008

a new year, a new box of beautiful pencils. since i decided to draw my purchases in 2009, ala kate of obsessive consumption, i felt i needed good tools with which to do it, so i got these lovely pastel pencils. they are beautiful, vibrant colors, but have a tendency to smear, so i may go back to my favorite stædtler triplus fineliners. but in the meantime, i am enjoying just looking at them in their pristine loveliness and they were pretty cool for drawing the embroidery thread skeins, so they do have their purpose.

i got a bit of alone time today. i warmed up the atelier and have had a couple of hours to myself out here (ya gotta love WiFi), listening to alanis, painting a bookshelf, looking through books, checking out my latest dozens kit, taking pictures of my pretty pencils. painting is so therapeutic, somehow in the methodic repetition of the strokes, my mind clears and find that i'm feeling peaceful and content again.

i'd also like to think that it's because we really got the colors right out here...the peaceful, yet creatively stimulating, warm teals, the old sideboard, being surrounded by all of my best creative supplies. but maybe it's also because i did get the tree taken down and that's not weighing on my mind anymore. the kids cleaned the bathroom sinks and swept, so that's not bugging me anymore either. whatever it is, i'm feeling much better.

* * *

now that i'm feeling in less of a deep blue funk, i think my head is clear enough to make the list of the best books i read in 2008. early in the year, i tried to keep a list of all the books i'd read. i did an installment of it in february and one in april and then, sadly, i didn't keep up the list. i did, however, keep reading. and reading. and reading. and i'm not sure i could accurately reconstruct because a lot of books were shelved in this house since april i might not remember all of those i read.

i discovered several new authors in 2008--haruki murakami and paul theroux and norwegian author eric fosnes hansen. i realize murakami and theroux aren't really "new" authors, but they were new to me and i went a bit nuts reading them, especially murakami. i think i only have two of his books left that i haven't read. they're on my shelf, being saved for a special occasion because i'm a little afraid of being in a situation where there's no new murakami left for me to read.

but here we go, my favorites reads of all those books i read in 2008 (not in any particular order other than the order in which they came to mind):

1. nigella lawson, nigella christmas. my new speciality--the julelog cake--came from this one, along with much of the other food i made in this house from thanksgiving through new year's eve. it's beautifully photographed, the recipes are easy, there are lots of pomegranates, and nigella writes like a dream. i want to lick her words off the actual page.
2. nigel slater, real food. most of the food i made in the first half of 2008 came from this cookbook. the coq au riesling sustained us through our kitchenless summer, because it worked a treat slow-cooked all day over the old rusty wood-burning stove in the yard.
3. jamie oliver, ministry of food. on those days when you're not inspired to cook anything, you can open this book and find something fast, easy, healthy and wonderful. jamie oliver has done marvelous things to make people all over the world into cooks, even when they thought they weren't. 
4. paul theroux, ghost train to the eastern star. this was his update of the trip he took 30 years before and which launched his career as a travel writer with his great railway bazaar. what won me over is that he may dislike singapore even more than i do, but he wrote so eloquently about it. but most marvelous of all is his mode of traveling for the sake of the journey and the experience. i hope i will be a better traveler on my next trip now that i've read him. and the best moment of the book is when he's in tokyo, hanging out with murakami!
5. paul theroux, dark star safari. i'm reading this right now and although i'm not finished, i'm putting it on the list (i began it in 2008). i am in love with africa thanks to this book. it makes me want to go back to egypt with a new attitude and i simply cannot wait to see what he says about cape town, which is one of my favorite places in the world.  i just ordered a couple more paul theroux travel books on amazon because i can't stand the thought of being without when i'm done with this one.
6. erik fosnes hansen, tales of protection. i discovered this norwegian author in an oslo bookstore on one of my frequent trips to oslo in 2008. especially the first tale in this book of three interwoven stories is haunting and will make you look at bees in an entirely new light. the underlying theme explores coincidences and whether there really are any. 
7. haruki murakami, wind-up bird chronicle. this is the murakami that started it all for me. i hadn't been so drawn in by an author since dostoevsky. and it left me in the same fractured mental state, seeing japanese everywhere and generally having murakami moments. the only thing i didn't do was manage to spend time down a well, but i probably would have had i come across one.
8. haruki murakami, hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world. this was my other favorite of the murakami i read this year, although this isn't to say that i didn't like norwegian wood, kafka on the shore, after dark and all the rest. there's just something about these guys who live in overlapping realities that i find so appealing. reading him puts me a heightened state of mind that is what i imagine cocaine is like. that's it, murakami is like cocaine to me. 
9. elizabeth gilbert, eat, pray, love. i know, it's one of those women's magazine must-read books, but this book was just what i needed at the beginning of 2008. to read of another woman's journey back to happiness after my bad break-up with my job, was just what i needed. and gilbert is funny and smart, if a little navel-gazing, but what do you expect in such a book?
10. robert scoble and shel isreal, naked conversations. the book is a couple of years old and that's a lifetime in the days of web 2.0, but it holds up well and offers tons of great ideas and advice for blogging in a business context. it made me realize that what i'd really love to do is find a way to blog for a living. i'm still pondering how to go about that one.

there are many other books i read and i might do a second installment of this list sometime later this week. i'd love to know the great books you read in 2008.

the stuff i should have written about this morning

i was so busy getting in a last laugh at our nearly past-president and the shoe thing that i didn't really write about or share all of the things i should have, which actually turned out to be good, because i have even more stuff to show you now.

you are all well aware of how much i adore design for mankind, but now i have even more reason to love it! last week, i left a comment on a giveaway posting for this great print from nicole lecht at freshly blended press. and i actually won!! it's so exciting! i said i would give it to my friend who just had twins, since it's a stork picture and now i really get to do that! thank you erin, nicole and design for mankind! there are more giveaways this week, so get on over there!! maybe you can be a winner too!

* * *

the mailman brought me my back-tack today. my lovely partner mo, sent me these beautiful handmade tea towels and oven mitt, plus a bunch of other goodies (including brownie mix from trader joe's (one of the only things i still miss from the US--having a grocery store like trader joe's)). it's just so nice to get a package! (and speaking of packages, those jokers from DHL showed up today as well.)

* * *

i've been talking endlessly about my writing house. that was the original idea with it, but the room, which is really a 24 m2 building in the garden has become much more than just a place for me to write. as the fireplace guy who came to have a look at where he will install a woodburning stove in there said, it's more of an atelier. i like that idea. it's a place where, despite the fact that the electrician came only last week and the lights aren't really hooked to the switch yet, we want to spend all of our time. and i did spend a lot of time there this weekend. hanging our family paintings from last weekend and painting a liquor cabinet (then filling it with liquor--of which we have a rather shocking amount thanks to how often i pass through a duty free (cocktails anyone?)) and arranging the camera collection.  check it out...

love, love, love the hamngren print we inherited from husband's father and now we finally have a great place to hang it.

masses of beautiful fabric waiting for the muse to strike and looking mighty pretty in the meantime.

and strike the muse did. yesterday's late afternoon big-ass mug of coffee didn't only result in balderdash and laughing at bush, but also in some painting and a pillow design...

i'm pretty pleased with the pillow. it's for my sister-in-law for christmas, but it may be difficult to part with it. more pix of it tomorrow in better light (not the bright work light that's shining on it here, looking like the sun, which i only vaguely remember anyway, since i haven't seen it in weeks) and when it's finished. which i'm going to do now.