it's pretty much all about the stash

i've been reading stephanie pearl-mcphee's knitting books casts off and knitting rules and now i understand why i keep ordering the beautiful yarn from posh yarn. if i'm going to be a proper knitter, i have to have a stash. who cares if i can actually knit? that worries me very little, actually. what matters is that it's lovely and soft and it makes me feel good, just caressing it or even just walking past and seeing it there in the basket (tho' i will soon need a larger basket). additionally, it may eventually help to insulate the house and save on heating bills. so it's an environmentally sound thing to do. (do you hear that, husband?)

the stash concept may also explain the obsessive acquisition and stockpiling of scrapbooking supplies. i've carried the notion of establishing a stash over into that zone. i have managed NOT to photograph the pretty papers (because i think that frankly, we're all pretty tired of hearing about those). but the stamps and ribbons and little bits and bobs all look very pretty, don't they? and for some strange reason, having them and looking at them (even without really using them) makes me inexplicably happy.

incremental steps

at my painting class today i made great progress and here it is!! it's not finished by any means, as i haven't actually PAINTED on it yet. but, with shaking hands and a pounding heart, i ripped my beloved pretty papers. i think it was good for me, even tho' it felt strange at first. after my heart stopped pounding, it was quite fun to lay them all out and move them around on the large canvas until they seemed right. then i glued them down.

i began thinking that i wanted there to be a bunch of writing in between the pieces of paper. private journal-style writing. but when i started to think about what to write, quotes came out. some favorites that are simply in my head, but then a bunch of those i've been collecting in my little black books for ages. at first, i had intended to paint completely over the writing so that it can't be read, but as i began to scatter the quotes, it seems like now i want them to show, at least to an extent. i'm not finished yet, writing on it. and i've only thought about the painting. what i want to do is extend the pattern again with paint--sort of make the ripped paper whole again using paint. i think that i can learn something about mixing colors and also get to the bottom of what pleases me so much in these papers--what it is that gives me that feeling of molecular alignment .

maybe painting will be the thing that helps me through after all...

making it mine

my head was feeling heavy, but then strangely, everything began to seem clear. all of the struggle i've been having with the "creativity issue." i speed-wrote 4 pages in my journal about it. about my frustrations. about my love of pretty paper. and yarn. but of my inability to actually really DO anything with either one. there is something appealing simply about the acquisition, but that's not really what's been blocking the creativity. i think i've been blocking it myself...(imagine that).

what i failed to recognize (or admit) is that there is some part of me that craves order. although i am currently living in a torn-apart house (building project) and many of my belongings are in boxes, i don't really like chaos. i make lists, for god's sake, of course i like order, why didn't i see this before? (husband said i wasn't ready.) i actually really like having a frame within which i work..and create, as it turns out. which i suppose is why knitting is appealing--that's VERY organized--i just need some help from an experienced knitter (or two) to get rolling on that and it will come.

but, my painting class has been a bit of a source of frustration to me, since i feel i can't adequately let go when i'm there. it was worst the first week. i've done a bit better since then. but last week, one of the other people in the course told me that i just needed to "slip hestene løs." basically, i just need to let go of whatever it is i'm clinging to...and that seems to be the frames. those blank canvases stretch before me in a WAY too wide-open, intimidating manner. the possibilities are limitless and some core part of me wants limits. i would like someone to say, today, we paint fish. and then i could contentedly paint fish like crazy. fantasy fish. colorful fish. fish that don't exist in nature. fish like you've never seen. but to stand there and say, "hey, self, what do you fancy painting today?" that's totally paralyzing.

same with the scrapping. i adore the supplies. the pretty paper makes my heart sing and my molecules align. but to imagine cutting it, or worse yet...ripping it! no, don't make me do that. it's because it's not mine--metaphorically speaking, it's mine, i've paid for it (tho' most of it was on massive sale or bought with the very low dollar--and i can show you the money i saved, husband, don't worry).

what i've been good at, creatively-speaking, is taking someone else's idea and making it mine. like when i painted the wooden stools for our little bitty apartment on elmelundevej. i took the shapes from the matisse paper cut-out poster hanging in the living room. i chose my own colors, i made custom stencils and i painted colorful, wonderful stools. it was a creative act, but not a wholly original act. and that was OK!!!

or when i painted 63 little viking ships around our dining room on baldersgade. they were lovely. and they were an adaptation of a little ship from my big world of art coffee table book. again, an original twist on something that i didn't originate. but totally creative. and wholly mine in the end.

so, what i need to do is find MY interpretation of scrapbooking. what attracts me are the supplies (have i mentioned that i love those pretty papers?), the notion of preserving memories (that whole nature of memory thing has been a preoccupation of mine for years...it's there in the choices of what i read and i would have written my dissertation on it had i gotten around to writing one), and actually, the camaraderie that seems to surround it (even if it's only in cyberspace). but why it's been so hard is that it hasn't felt like MINE. i'm trying to do someone else's thing. i need to stop that and do MY thing.

same with the painting. tho', i've made a modicum of progress there. i've at least been experimenting with color and brush strokes and not trying paint a picture per se. what i need to do there is take the prettiest of my pretty papers, glue them to the damn canvas (preferably after having the heart to rip them a bit) and then paint off of them. try to dig into what it is that makes my molecules align and hum in perfect pitch (which i swear happens with the best of those pretty papers--basic grey biology, i mean you) and try to create it MYSELF on the canvas. combine the things that have been preoccupying me and make them mine.

i can do this. all it took was recognizing what it was i needed to do and letting go of all the angst. excuse me while i go make a list now of the things i need to bring to painting class tomorrow...

not again...

sabin's been home sick this week. and now i'm feeling a bit strange. i already had this cold, why do i have to have another one?? why me? my head is heavy, i'm slow to react (much slower than normal), it feels as if people are talking to me from very far away. i don't wanna be sick....

things to remember

i made a page today with my red velvet kit stuff (at long last, after staring at it and lovingly fingering the papers and embellishments on a daily basis for over a week). i also used some awesome journaling tags i got from elle's studio on etsy and a few scraps of fabric i bought 5 years ago to make a pullover for sabin. it's to remind me of all the things i want to remember as i start my new job next week. lessons learned after losing myself a bit too much in my last job. since i can't scan in 30x30, i took some (not too great) pix of it...

my favorite bit of journaling says, "listen to your inner voices and to husband's out-loud voice."

i mixed handwriting and small sticker letters for variety and to keep it from being too squarey and perfect. tho' i admit to feeling strangely nervous about writing on the beautiful little journaling tags--they're so pristine and wonderful, i hate to mess them up! i'll have to get over that feeling.

the small owls are to remind me to be wiser in this job.

the picture was taken at ephesus in turkey. i'm sitting right below the statue of sophia, the divine wisdom, although you can't see her in this picture. that serves as another reminder for me to be wiser. if we don't learn from our experiences, then they are for nothing. i will be wiser and better to myself this time around.

unraveling the mysteries of the blogosphere

spending far too much time looking at and reading blogs in the past month. i say looking at, because many of them have beautiful photography, which i enjoy very much. but there's also a lot of interesting reading out there. i've learned a few things. for one, i'm what they call a lurker. i read a lot of blogs, i "favorite" them (i don't subscribe, that would start a landslide that i don't want, having just gotten out from under a mountain of email), but generally speaking, i don't comment.

i guess for me it's a bit like walking through the neighborhoods between the train station and our house on the way home from work. i'm there, bundled in my coat, walking along in the darkness in my solitude. in the houses that i pass, lights are glowing and families are gathering around the dinner table. i see plants and flickering candles on the window ledges. i might catch a glimpse of a painting on a far wall. i see a father and daughter with heads bent over the table and imagine that they're working on homework. there's a glow of a t.v. or computer screen on a boy's face. i get a warm flash of insight into that family's life. but, i stand outside of it, an observer. that's what i'm doing in the blogosphere as well. catching glimpses of people's lives and especially of their creativity (since those are the blogs i most frequent), but enjoying and in some cases being positively effected by their thoughts and observations on life.

i guess for now i will lurk on and perhaps eventually begin to participate with a comment here and there...

coffee after 4 p.m.

maybe it was too much coffee, but i am feeling that feeling that comes over me every so often. the feeling that i can't sleep because it would be a waste of time. there's so much to do and create. so many thoughts to get down on paper. so much knitting to be learned. so much beauty to be created. so many memories to be preserved. so much life to be embraced. there's no time for sleeping.

the world is full of inspiration. the crocus are already in bloom. the air is filled with the very texture of spring. it awakens feelings of invincibility--i can clean, i can organize, i can make things, i can cook, i can paint, i can write, i can knit (ok, that was going a little too far). i don't need sleep. to sleep would be to waste this feeling, to lose my grasp on it. the feeling has a strong green color--a spring green--i note this because i'm working on strengthening and broadening the band of my synesthesia.

a note about synesthesia (tho' you can go read the wiki link yourself)...dictionary.com defines it as: a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color. my experience of it most often comes with smells--i get a strong visual of a color with certain smells. but it can also be more abstract--a feeling can give a strong sensation of color for me. i'm working on tuning into those moments, as i think it happens more often than i realize, but because it's second nature to me, i'm not always conscious of it.

they say it runs in families. i think my sister has the number version of it--where she sees something in certain number combinations (2s and 7s anyone?).

anyway. it's an interesting notion. and it seems to be keeping me up this evening....