Going Home

This blog serves little purpose. In the beginning it was a lot of fun. I dumped all sorts of random stuff here and my life is better for it. I might be all dumped out. Time to go home.

Cross Post: Summing Up My NaNoWriMo Experience ... again

You can read all about it on my other blog, the one where I write mostly about the creative process and the stuff I make.

This year, the process was more time and resource consuming because my goal was to reach 50,000 before Thanksgiving. I was hoping for an earlier "win." Say, around the 15th of the month, because that would give me a better chance of finishing the story by the end of the month. I have trouble with motivation in months that don't involve NaNoWriMo.

Maybe in December I'll go back to my usually bi-weekly updates. It's not like I don't have anything to write about or show you. My impulses have been satisfied with a daily word count goal of 2000. (Previously 2800.) Not sure what that means, if anything. Wonder what life would be like if I wrote 2000 words every day?

Documentaries for Breakfast

A 13th Century map of England from
Ian Mortimer's book, "The Time
Traveler's Guide to Medieval England."
There are no dragons or troglodytes here.
They're on another map.

What's really happening is not so much laying fallow as collecting material or storing up images and sensations. Documentaries about ancient Africa, Alexandria, and eastern religions (particularly Yoga, Hinduism, and Buddhism) are what interest me. And a book: "The Time Travelers Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century" by Ian Mortimer.

This interest emerged years ago when I read most of the books in the Sister Fidelma series; as accurate a depiction of the Celtic world as Perry Ellis (aka Peter Tremayne) can make. He's a serious scholar and authority on the period of the Celts. I still think of how his heroine traveled and lived in those fictions. Because, although the stories are fiction, the way she and her contemporaries lived is based on as much fact as can be garnered from history.

So, I can't say it's all about history because I'm not obsessed with dates and politics. I'm obsessed with how people lived and what they thought and believed. And how those thoughts and beliefs evolved.

One of the most telling chapters of "The Time Travelers Guide to Medieval England" is the one on Health and Hygiene. Medical practices were an amalgamation of astrology, superstition, and badly transmitted ancient knowledge. There's a lot of blood letting. A fun segment of a Saturday Night Live episode (Season 3, Episode 18 - April 22, 1978) shows what a pastiche of concoctions such treatments were. Steve Martin, as doctor, suggests treatments which patients are lucky to survive. Ian Mortimer presents the same case in his book; that you are healthier without a doctor in the middle ages.

A time of collection is a known part of the creative process as explained by Julia Cameron in her book "The Artist's Way." Although I had lived through this phase previously, I hadn't isolated it as part of a process before doing the 12 week self-directed workshop using her book. If I had, momentarily, acknowledged my laying fallow it was with a lot of guilt about "doing nothing." Which might be why I'm doing so much knitting and crocheting. Keeping my hands busy and feeling productive while letting my mind wander. Collecting.

My collecting process is more like stocking
an antique/junk shop than filing things
away neatly.

Following a Pattern

Back on the left. Sleeve on the right.

I can't believe I have knitted the back and one sleeve of a sweater. I usually struggle to finish caps and scarves. I've fallen into crochet and knitting the way I fell into spending days with my grandchildren and making day trips to Yogaville. It's the only path open to me.

Sure, there are other things I can do and have done. I still have novels, poetry, blogs, landscapes, and other art. Somehow, none of those activities are as compelling. Handcrafts seems more important to do right now. Like spending time with my grandchildren was important. The way falling into a variety of spiritual experiences was important.

Like knitting and crocheting, tending children and practicing spirituality are crafts that accrue through small accomplishments over time. The relationships builds as does the practice. Slowly accruing anything has been near impossible for me.

Jumping to conclusions, seeing the big picture, dreaming, visioning—all of these are easy for me. I can see things coming a mile away. Or even further.

I'm enjoying looking closely and seeing what is right in front of me; taking it one step at a time.

So, anyway, I have two parts of a sweater now. I've been helped along the path to steady accruing by the Lion Brand Knit Along which I followed on Ravelry. Thanks to the Lion Brand instructor (who offered a lot of excellent tips) and all of the other participants (who offered a lot of great photos of their progress and more great tips), I actually finished a vest that fits. I got the correct gauge and only made one serious mistake: a dropped stitch on the back and I was able to fix that.

I don't know where crocheting and knitting will take me. It simply seems important to do right now.

Adventure in Text Effects

I started off thinking I would make my name into a Hobbit style effect. I did find a nice related font and then segued into steampunk followed by this.

I'll try again another time.

As an aside, this journey also led into wondering how I could make my website more individual. I ended up with three books from the library but not really any closer to making a new design.

About Those Flowers ...

I might be done. And done with the whole Make Something 365 thing. I did make a lot of things for a lot of days, including the years I did the daily Morning Pages which were quite liberating and which I recommend for everyone, whether you believe you're an artist/creative/writer or not. In fact, creating something unique and expressive that responds only to your rules is the best thing a person can do every day.

That and meditate. Or at least have some kind of spiritual practice.

Which makes it difficult to admit that I have done neither for two days now. I'm just sort of hanging out, writing a novel, watching shows and movies, and crocheting and knitting. The whole crocheting/knitting thing is sort of like making something everyday. And then when I'm done I'll have a thing: a scarf, a hoodie, a shawl, a pair of leg warmers. Kinda cool.

Dried gourds, photographed and enhanced.

Just thought you ought to know.

Flower 29

Yesterday translates into today.

Flower 15

And here's a page showing basic flower shapes so I don't have to go on making dots surrounded by circles.

Flower 14

Today's flower is more about posting a flower a day instead of creating a flower a day. Once I decided to make flowers, I knew I had to slip this flower in somewhere. It's a photo I turned into stained glass (back in 2010) following this tutorial. It's very time consuming. No shortcuts! I did make the gold lead shown in the tutorial, then decided I really wanted gray lead and so made this one.

You don't need to be an Illustrator expert to do this. You just need a good photo and a lot of time. Oh! And you have to be able to figure out the tutorial. If I remember correctly, there's a tiny step missed. There usually is.

flower 5

Seems to be mostly about color palettes. Used a standard Illustrator symbol and recolored it with a Honeysuckle palette I got somewhere. Continue to enjoy the VecTips water color brushes.

Spirit Boat - 15

This is the last spirit boat. I'm switching to flowers.

Spirit Boat is such an amorphous concept that it can be either everything or only one thing (a physical representation). I mean, just about everything is a carrier or vessel - light, trees, water, envelopes - this could go on forever. What I prefer to do is focus on one thing and see how I can be creative with that one thing every day. It's difficult to see the variations when everything is a variation. Kind of like in a scientific experiment where you vary one thing and see how that changes the results. Two many changes and you have no idea what actually affected the outcome. 

Now that I think of it, I believe Noah Scalin recommends choosing an object. He chose skulls and he's generated an endless supply of them with no end in sight!

Sky Project: Completed

I am done with skies. Oh, I may add a sky or two here and there because I like skies and I still sometimes see skies worthy of recording. No, I did not reach 365. It did not take 365 skies for me to exhaust my interest in the topic. I learned a few things and had a good time and for nearly a year made something creative every day. Well, nearly every day.

I keep making a video of the experience in my head - writing the script, recording, selecting the best skies. Might actually get done. Might not. If it does get done, you'll see it here first.

365: Sky 101 - strange mood

101 skies! OMG!

It takes 21 days to start a new habit. I've been posting skies for 101 days (approximately - with one day off for good behaviour). Since the goal was to make something everyday, I needed a project I could manage to complete daily. Posting skies is not as transformative as the Words & Art Archive project. I could probably manage Words & Art once a week. 

Culling from my archives was like an earthquake in my life. My life does need an earthquake, yet I am notoriously bad at generating my own earthquakes. I prefer to have them made for me. I do respond well.

Anyway, here's to today!

365: Sky 100 - portrait of a cloud

The sky this morning was amazing. I sat and watched it for about five minutes. This was not it. This is the sky a couple of days ago. I just didn't feel like making a photo this morning. Dunno. I have moments like that. One of my cousins says some moments are too sacred for photography. I agree. This morning was not one of those moments. I suspect it has more to do with privacy. Sometimes I just don't feel like sharing. Actually, most of the time I don't feel like sharing. This is what makes being an artist and writer a random problem. Creating is not the problem. Sharing is.

365: Sky 90 + 91: sparkle and misty blue

Sparkle (green changed to pink) (#90)

Misty Blue (#91)

I've missed a day or two, so this makes up for that, whenever it happened. I'm fiddling with this scene trying to get fog to be how I remember it on that day I couldn't stop to take a picture.

I prefer rounded mountains, like the Blue Ridge or the Taunus, which means every Bryce mountain needs to be modified. Bryce prefers sawtooth ridges.

I am noticing that most of my skies involve clouds. I have a good one for tomorrow that reflects that. I'm trying to come up with other things that can be in the sky. Flying cows? Planes? Dogs? Hawks? We'll see.

365: Sky 69 - context

Sky needs a context. This view is different from one with lots of people on a sunny day. And the clouds need a reference so you can tell how big they are. Fortunately the gray values of the ground and the sky were in the same gamut, so this worked. 

Noticing how often I focus on clouds when I look at the sky. So, what is sky? Is the blue/black backdrop? The clouds? Stuff in the sky? Has to be all that. 

Archive: 5-25

(2009) DAZ 3D

(1996) P.O.V. Ray

365: Sky 35 - fish turtle

At first it looked like a turtle but here it looks like a fish although it could also be a pair of bunny ears. I am contemplating taking my camera around with me, so that I don't have to rely on my phone. The photo quality would be much improved. I get, oh, I don't know, self-conscious or intimidated or something carrying around a camera without a specific goal in mind. Whenever I carry the camera I notice how often I don't use it. And I never see anything worth photographing. Something to think about.