Enchanted.

Days 2,3,4 and 5 of the 5 days of enchantment have come and gone. Once again I went off on a tangent. And my only feeling of guilt is that I committed to blog-along-a-Jani for the duration and failed.
But in my defence this is how it goes for me. This is the value of her courses....for me; that they shift my perspective, just a little bit, and set me off renewed and refreshed. I learn what I need to learn.
So's O.K.
All good

baby blanket

It was the barefoot practice that did it.
The moment with my feet on a patio slab where my perspective shifted a la earthquake effect.
I realised that there are practices that I do not practice- ever or very rarely even though I know they bring  huge benefits. It seems I cannot listen and act on that beneficent voice inside by head but need someone else to voice it for me. How incredibly daft.

sardine tins painted using the 30 minute timer practice

One valuable practice: reading. Takes time.
And this week I made time.
Books and bloggy stuff and somewhere in amongst this weeks reading material I came across the idea, not for the first time, of extreme self care.
It is an idea that hangs in the interwebyworld like pollen in the air, as pervasive, equally irritating but more visible.
As a person who is not good at moderate self care this idea does not sit well with me.
I get holes in my socks because I  forget to cut my toe nails.
Squirm. Too much information?? I know.


But I wondered what it would be like to  take care of self as one would take care of a beloved.



As part of my 'information in' practice I listened to a podcast by someone new to me Kristoffer Hughes who follows a druids path. He spoke of living life with an understanding of the death to come. He spoke about a new health mandate in the U.S. to medicate for grief that persists beyond 14 days!! And he urges, far more rationally,to scream, to howl at the loss of a loved one.
There is beauty, there is magic in life and in death... he says.
I believe it.
But the pain of loss is real.
As the sentient beings that we are it is a pain to be experienced not medicated away.
 This I also believe.
In fact I know.



So howl at the  moon, the stars, at anything for as long as you must but, hold someones hand. Yes: let's hold hands.



Sorry, sorry. I wandered off. Kristoffer's message moved beyond the painful bit, and this is the bit I walked away with; he urged us to live life bright. To shine like a diamond because this life matters. What we do matters.The  colour, the joy, the music, the touch that we each uniquely bring, matters.



So coming back around to the beginning, tying it all up with a bow:-
The practice of extreme self care that I practiced today was to joyfully play in my studio with colours that make my heart sing, to connect with the couple who want a funky baby blanket for their 10th grandchild and to arrange another craft date with my monster-making friend and to give a chandelier crystal to a lady who was searching, and not finding, a small light refracting crystal to hang in her window.
Today was, I  feel, a bright shiny day.
Oh yes, and my socks are safe
I wish bright, shiny days to you all and when you need a hand to hold I hope you find one warm and strong. xxx

Days of enchantment

Ideas to share in blogland are backing up like buses at the moment. But in order to be contemporaneous I need to share this with you first as I have chosen to blog along with Jani Frank as I do her free, mini, 5 days of enchantment course. I have signed up to quite a few e-courses and forums in recent months with varying levels of satisfaction and Jani's style resonates with me the most. I highly recommend that you check her out for yourself.

Today is day 2 of the 5 and I am still working with the exercises from  day 1's video . That is one of the beauties of these courses; the material is available for you to tackle as your own time restraints allow.  And sometimes you just need to spend longer on a certain aspect. To dig a little deeper or allow things to percolate. I like that.

These 5 days of enchantment are about accessing your creativity and making time for it in a busy world where it is, so often, all too easy to feel fractured and drained and anything but creative. 

Day one starts with suggested practices to help you find that still point within where you feel grounded and calm. And one of those suggestions is to find a pebble or stone from a place that has some significance to you and to carry it with you as a reminder and a link to the peace of that place.

This pebble was picked up many years ago at Auchmithie, a beach on the East coast of Scotland.








It is rare for me to go walking with the dogs and not return with a stone, bone feather or leaf. This is not something that I have done as a conscious practice but I will now do with an altered awareness.




These are from my ever expanding collection that mostly sit on the wall outside my back door.
















My outdoor space is really just a yard. Any green thing puts down roots in a pot. So practice number 2, going barefoot to connect with the earth, was a bit limited.
There are many other more lush and green places that I could have gone and will do one day soon but the old time constraints came into play and I had to make do. I visualised the spot where I placed my feet connecting stone by stone, soil particle by particle, molecule by molecule to every lush and green place on the earth. I felt myself tiny in the cosmos. Most of my worries became like dust on the wind and the things that truly matter stood like a mountain range, undisturbed by time or tempest. I liked that a lot.

Kitchen timer as creative tool.

On the advice of my friend Daisy via an article shared on facebook I have been using the timer on my phone to tackle tasks in 30 minute slots. Oh my word! What a revelation.
I have achieved.......stuff.
More importantly I have lost the sense of overwhelm that was threatening me daily and producing a very unhealthy, unproductive inertia.



This is Hairy Herbert the younger sitting in the sun in front of a pile of the aforementioned clutter.
The foreign clutter.
Not our own clutter



And another pile of it.



This is H.H. The Y. trying to wait patiently while I type this blog. Doing well actually because it is approaching walk time. No timer set for that. For that we just stroll and breathe and chill and some of us chase rabbits down holes.



This is my coffee table the surface of which has gone unseen and by association undusted for weeks.
Hmmm....could be months.
For purists this may not qualify as de- cluttered. But for me it now sports only the essentials. And please ignore the sofa behind which has yet to feel the benefits of 30 minutes attention and carries work in progress. Evening work, T.V. watching work of knitting and crochet.



This is a similarly, newly released work top in the kitchen supporting said phone.



Oh yes and my newly washed bones. Don't ask.



Spray painted sardine tins ready for the off.



Sorted watercolours similarly ready for the off.



And a house I am building from paper and card.



All of these things achieved in 30 minute slots. Even the laughing gnome brooch. Ok. So that was more than one slot.



And these too. Crocheted and sewn one half hour at a time.



I am blissed to the max with the results of a very productive few days.
Not now drowning in clutter but calmly swimming with land in sight.
With love and wishes for bliss to you all xxx

Clutter

Another suitcase in another hall. Well no not quite.
A suitcase of carefully saved and ironed wrapping paper. Not the work of my own hand though it could well have been. I am not a natural thrower outer. In fact this new year I made a commitment to de-clutter.



Every nook, surface cupboard and drawer in this house and in my studio is full to capacity and then some.
And clutter drains energy. We know that.
People write books about it.
I have read some.
Clutter derails any attempts at organisation and absorbs much time that could be spent doing good things domestically and creatively. So IT HAS TO GO!


How achingly typical that in the wake of this commitment and the few stumbling steps I have taken on the path to minimalism ( joke) and serenity I am now drowning in someone else's clutter. Namely said suitcase and the further contents of an elderly relative's house. Not that I mind in theory. It is a job that needs to be done for someone we care about and for whom we are the frontline advance party in her transition from independent, feisty, old-bird to care home dwelling, feisty, old-bird. But it is testing my fledgling status as a woman of tidiness and order.


Quite why then, in the midst of chaos, I decided to lay out my stash of beads and in the manner of a recovering addict face and share the full glorious riot of it is beyond reason.


Except I suppose using said stash is a decluttering of a scrumptious and enjoyable kind. The kind of decluttering that I can get lost in for hours. Even
more gratifying is that these have been well received by friends on Facebook. So, these may well become part of my new stock on Etsy and will definitely be available to buy in my studio/ shop.


Win win I'd say.




And some of that carefully sorted wrapping paper is waiting in the wings to reappear in collage.

Choices, priorities and casualties of time.

This week I dusted off and revived a technique that my father taught me,when I was probably about 9, for making choices. Obviously indecision has been a lifelong affliction.
Over the millennia since then I have used this method whenever my head starts spinning with too many things to choose from. It is so simple.




You list all the 'things' numbered from 1 to however many. Out of the overwhelm I began my list like this:
1 make brooches
2 paint furniture
3 knit
4 collage........
This time my list was over 20 items long!
Next you write down the numbers like this 1/2 1/3 1/4 (1/ however many you've got).
Then 2/3 2/4 (again 2/ however many you've got)
Then 3/4 and so on till the end.
In my case the last row was 20/21.
If you haven't lost the will to live at this point you go on to choose between thing1&2,
thing 1&3,
thing 1&4
and so on till the end. Circling each number chosen and totting up your total 1's 2's etc.
It can be quite revealing. I was surprised to find that I really wanted to be exploring the ideas in this book.




I am sure there are flaws in this method. And simpler ways of making up your mind. But, I always find it helps me to settle to one idea while happily letting go of all the rest for a time.
I think they call that focus!




Anyhoo. This method works for me and today I have happily played with something new.