looking for the elusive red thread

we got together in our local creative group on sunday and made small "flexigon" books together, inspired by places that mean something to us. because i love the little museum down in randbøldal, where i go to weaving every other wednesday, i wanted to make that the focus of my little foldable book. i selected some photos that i'd taken there, as well as a photo of the runner for my kitchen that i wove there at the museum. many of the photos i chose were of that work in progress and the one in the middle is of the new runner that i just started last saturday. what i wanted to ponder in my little book was the magic of the place. because it really is a magical place. 

and what came out was something else entirely. i began to think about the way that we trace red threads of meaning through our lives. or the way that we probably should do that and don't always do so. and my little book became a kind of meditation on that. perhaps because i have used red strips cloth in my rug, or because i often struggle to figure out whether there is a cohesive meaning to my life. it can feel like i'm really just bumbling along. 

but it's strange that wasn't what i sat down to create. i wanted to create a little book that expressed the magic i feel in the air when i'm at the museum. it's a really special place. it makes me feel calm and centered and present. i feel it immediately when i step out of my car, my shoulders relax and i breathe deeply. it's in a little valley, on the curve of a creek, nestled down in the trees. part of the magic is the group of women which gathers there, especially the leader of that group, who is a lovely, spry, can-do woman who makes things happen. she's a big part of the magic. but the place itself has something special as well. maybe it's on just the right vortex, or just the way it's placed, there on the creek, nestled at the base of a tree-covered hill, is perfect. and i wanted to try to capture that in my little book, but instead, it ended as a search for a red thread. 

i guess i unconsciously chose that myself when i chose the pictures that i did. i have many other pictures that capture the magic, but the ones i chose were nearly all of my own weaving and in that way, i guess i did control the direction it took, even if it maybe felt like i didn't. i guess i'm just looking for that elusive red thread.

in which the post ends up quite different than what she envisioned when she sat down to write it

i didn't begin blogging to find a community. i began blogging to find my way back to myself after leaving a job which was very hectic and busy and hardly left me time to pee, let alone be creative. i began blogging to get back in touch with writing, which i had always loved and tap back into my creative side. and frankly, to keep find regain my sanity. as i always say, blogging is cheaper than therapy.

little by little, i did find a community of like-minded (or perhaps like-humored) souls and after blogger named my little musings a blog of note in april 2009, a community found me. many of those who found me are still among my friends today, even tho' most have stopped blogging and we have our virtual social life over on facebook (that bothers me a bit, to turn so many of my social interactions over to them, but that's the stuff of another post). in a few weeks, i'm going to be getting together with some of them, several for the first time, tho' we feel like old friends.

blogging has given me so much...a place to work out what i think about both the deep and the trivial, an interest (and a practice) in photography, loads of laughter, regular catharsis and probably most of all, a place to store my memories. i wouldn't want to be without it, even tho' i feel like the secrets i'm surrounded by at work these days get in my way and hold me back from writing. i think it's because they cramp my sense of immediacy and that has been rather a hallmark of this blog, whether it was impassioned rants about encounters in the grocery store with solipsistic danes or the latest apple product to cross our doorstep or the progress on the quilt i'm making. the great majority of the photos i've used here were taken minutes before i posted them. i guess i'm just an immediate sort of person, which i think is different than living in the moment (but that's, again, the stuff of a different blog post).

because this blog post is about finding that virtual community (or at least it was when i started out).  i have the privilege of investigating various online communities these days. ones centered around a certain little plastic brick. and they are as fascinating and varied as the sets themselves. some are focused on the bitty small details of the bricks (when a certain grey color was discontinued is still lamented by a certain segment of fans even years later). some are focused on a particular theme - trains, space, star wars, pirates and yes, minifigs.

i've found several communities of people who pretty much appear to photograph nothing but minifigs, at least if you believe their instagram feeds (maybe they have entirely separate instagram accounts for food pictures and cat pictures, i don't know). my own instagram account is a mish-mash of, again, whatever is immediate to me. i take the "insta" part of instagram very seriously. i don't take photos with my big girl camera and spend hours editing them before posting them to instagram. i pretty much post whatever tickles my fancy at a given moment, in that moment, joking that we don't really know it happened unless we've instagrammed it. i'm not saying i don't appreciate the beautiful, atmospheric, well-curated feeds, i'm just saying it's not how i operate.

and this has made me think about my own minifig photos. for the most part, i take them in a single setting...in the nice light in the windowsill of our living room, on an old-fashioned scale. for me, my photos of them are less a small story staged in a small scene (unless i use them to tell a story here), than they are a catalog of which minifigs i have. after i photograph them there, i'm actually even able to give them away if they happen to suit someone who comes by (because everyone needs a yeti with a popsicle at some point). but aside from enabling causing some of my existing bloggy friends to also begin madly collecting the little guys, i haven't sought community through my minifigs. but via my research and flickr and instagram and even google+ (these minifig peeps are using g+, which makes them awesome in my book), i am slowly finding a community there as well. people say the internet is isolating, but i've not seen much evidence for that.

she was born in a small town

since i feel a little bit like their fairyblogmother, i am going to take the liberty of doing a 5 things i love about growing up in a small town list ala VEG & extranjera over on Ocean (and to think i was calling it siamese. my bad.). plus, you know how i love lists. and need an assignment. i've written about growing up in a small town kind of a lot of times before, but i'm not sure i've ever really thought specifically about what was good about it.

1.  getting to try everything

in a small town school, you don't have to choose whether you're a band person or a cheerleader or a theatre person or smart girl or a sporty girl. you can be all of them. and in fact, the only way the school thrives is if everybody does everything. so you try it all and find out what you like and what you're good at. and you learn not to be afraid of trying new things. and that will get you a long way in life.

2.  getting a driver's license (learner's permit anyway-able to drive without an adult between sunup and sundown) at 14

there was nothing to run into. it was flat and the ditches were wide.

3.  having horses

i grew up with horses. we always had them. we showed them, and i've written about my horse trainer before. she was awesome. and having horses is just a wholesome thing to do. you learn responsibility. hard work. caring. getting up early to feed. mucking out stalls. and that standing in the barn at dusk on a summer night, listening to the snuffling and munching of a horse is just plain good for your soul. and your sanity.

4.  big old house with a front porch

the house "in town" that we lived in 'til i was 10 or so had a front porch with a porch swing, big columns and it was all covered in vines. i loved sitting in there in the cool shade, protected from prying eyes by the vines, watching people go by. that was great. there was a silver milk box there and i remember milk being delivered into that box (yup, i'm old). ice cream jim came up on that porch dressed as santa one christmas. lots of good memories and some not so good. it was on that front porch that our dog stella bit my friend tracey on the nose. tracey kinda deserved it, she had totally gotten in stella's face and stella was an old crotchety shetland sheep dog. and there that time i got a huge sliver in my foot and my dad had to sit on me to hold me down while mom got it out with a needle and a tweezers. ouch. but for the most part, it was awesome for dressing up and playing laura from little house and just swinging on the swing.

5. always feeling safe 

it was a totally safe place to grow up. i don't even think our house had locks on the doors and if it did, no one had seen the key in years. you knew everyone and they knew you. and you trusted each other. and looked out for each other. i think it has made me a person who, for the most part, feels at ease in the world and isn't afraid. it's grounding to grow up feeling safe like that. i'm glad i had that ground to grow up on.

so those are my five things. what are yours?