Out of the rut

 

Get out of the rut.

It's easy to get stuck in an artistic rut, doing the same things over and over and over. There's nothing wrong with that if you're still learning new things, but sometimes you feel stuck rather than in the flow. To get out of that state I decided to do something with no paint. It's a simple page, but made me think differently about how I put the page together. There may be more collage in my future...

New landscape

 

Exploring a new landscape.

It's always a steep learning curve when you first enter a new landscape, a new area of knowledge. There are 'in' words and acronyms to learn. On first reading nothing makes sense and maybe you panic a little. So you sleep on it, and then read it again, and sense starts to creep in. You calm down a bit and things don't seem so insurmountable once you start to gain a little understanding. 

Each time you climb a hill, it gets a bit easier as you get a bit fitter. The trick is not to give up but to celebrate the steady progress and to accept the help that is offered.  

Experts

 

Take advice from the experts.

There is wisdom in taking advice from the experts in their field. They have spent years being educated and working in that field. They know the ins and outs, the pitfalls, the workarounds, the compliancy rules. We can't know everything about everything, so we have to take advantage of their knowledge. 

Each of us has an area of knowledge that others can benefit from, whether it's how to correct a wrong stitch in a knitting pattern, what to plant with what to keep pests away, or how to change a tyre. Let's share our skills and learn from each other.

Five minutes

 

Grab five minutes where you can.

So another week slipped by. I was working extra days in the bookshop, editing my husband's assignment, and generally having more to do than usual, so although I worked in my journal, I didn't finish the page as quickly as I usually would. I was grabbing five minutes here and there. It was only as I uploaded the photos that I realised I was heavily influenced by the fabric I bought for a new dress :)

Funny how things seep into your subconscious, isn't it?

Anyway, have a great week. I have another busy one coming up, but I will still be grabbing as many 'five minutes' as I can.

The messy middle

So I've had a couple of weeks where lots of pieces I'm working on are in the messy middle. That place where it feels like you'll never produce anything that's any good ever again. Every layer you add seems to make it worse. You toss everything aside in disgust and go off and do some knitting instead.

I finished the piece above this morning. Below is how it was looking half an hour earlier.

Sometimes you have to cover up what's there and start anew. It shows through, but is pushed to the background. It's a case of quietening what's being so noisy on the page. It happens in life, too - taking a rest is a way of quietening the noise of 'normal' life. It gives us chance to reset and push those noisy but unimportant things out of the centre and focus on what matters.

 

Rest

We have to practice rest.

It doesn't come naturally.

We have to be deliberate about it and plan it into each day, each week. 

Make that rest time different - go offline, don't do any chores, be in a different room - so that your body knows you're in a different mode.