Hi, my dearies! I hope Springtime, now that it’s finally here, is treating you kindly. Here it’s been the delight of having greenery all around again, and fighting off the outdoor critters who want to snack on my baby plants. Ah well, it’s still so worth it. I’ve been craving some spinning with my wheel on the front porch, enjoying the breezes and hoping the neighbor’s cat comes over for a head-scritch. As Spring goes, this is a good one so far…
But I have a fun ramble to ramble about, really. Recently my husband had given me a few inks to play with, and I discovered just how very, very good Ferriswheel Press Inks are. They’re based in Canada, and they have astoundingly beautiful inks and pens to play with, whether you’re a writer, a painter, or like to do a little bit of both at the same time. The colors I got were just so luminescent, so flexible and easy to use. And they come out with new colors every season, each one more beautiful than the last. Having a few bottles of different inks to play with, in their lovely bottles, feels like the pinnacle of decadence.
The mermaid I’m showing off here was done with only one ink color; “Glistening Glass”. It was amazing to watch the shifts in color and tint, while using a pen, or a brush, or adding a bit of water, or adding a drop of ink to a wet sheet of paper to watch the colors bloom.
For even more fun, I played with “Cloak and Forest”, which is a deep green ink with a red shiny bloom, and it was so very, very satisfying for forest leaves. And it showed up so beautifully with the red cloak on my Red Riding Hood…
If you have the opportunity and don’t mind spending a little extra money, definitely get a hold of a bottle of these fine inks. They really made all the difference in my more recent drawings, and I think you’ll find them so satisfying to write or draw with!
(I’m not being compensated, by the way. They’re just that glorious. And if you’re not into painting, no worries! I’ll just keep on playing with them myself and showing you all the results.)
When I was young, I was often scolded by adults for my scattershot approach to things I wanted or needed to do, (Mostly for things like drawing during my math classes, which is probably why I’m still math-weak to this very day.) I would explain that I was indeed paying attention, (and I was) but that I was also doing this other thing, which needed doing, thank you. It never really went over, but as I got older I found that my strange puttering had a name. Multitasking! And it was not only a useful skill, but sometimes the only way I could get done all the things that sat there, demanding attention. For example, while I’m writing this post, I’m also making tea and lunch, working on an embroidery, waiting for some photos to finish loading, checking on a cat or two, and listening for a delivery. Obviously I’m not the only one doing this sort of thing, not on Planet Pandemic. Everybody is still cobbling their lives together any way they can make it all work, and our concentration is still not great, and we all still have a big raft of worries we’re all floating on, trying to make it to friendly shores. It honestly makes me wonder how many people actually tackle things that need doing in a linear fashion. I mean, who has that luxury? Almost nobody I know, really.
For years and years, I’ve done what every other artistic person I know does–they hang on to a day job to pay the bills and keep a roof over their head while scrabbling together projects in between everything else. Which often meant I had a few projects going at a time. It was handy, especially if I was tired or low energy, because there was always at least one easy project within reach I could make a little progress with at least.
Jellyfish heaven is a lot like L.A…
It’s been a useful habit, especially when I had a few projects that were almost done at the same time. There is such a rush when I can present a handful of pretty things that actually took a lot of time, thought and energy to get together. It makes me feel like I’m so much more productive than I actually am. People don’t know that the pretty yarn I just finished making had singles stored on bobbins for a week while I was busy knocking out something else. Or that the painting I just finished sat for a month on a table, while I figured out what it needed to be.
This yarn had to sit a while before I realized what it needed to be complete was delicious jade colored beads…
You would think, now that I’m home all the time and trying to make a go of this Arting From Home Business that these habits would change. And they have, a little. My concentration has improved tremendously, but I do have other things to distract me now, like the unmistakable sounds of a cat barfing somewhere, or a delivery, or a needful errand. I still find myself with a handful of little, half finished embroideries and a bobbin of yarn that still needs a friend, or a painting that needs its first washes put down. And I’ve’ come to accept that this seems to be my process, and this process isn’t actually a bad thing that needs to change drastically.
This last week I felt like I was less productive than the usual. I had other things that needed taking care of, and this last Friday I got my second Covid shot. I was and am beyond grateful for it, but it did knock me down for a little longer than I thought it would. But even then, I still did some spinning. It helped with my poor sore body and it distracted me from some of the symptoms. So I was a bit surprised when I actually had a few things to list in the shop, a painting to put into Redbubble, some really nice Icelandic wool that was clean and de-burred and ready to spin up and a fun jellyfish for a friend. Where did all this stuff come from while I was on the couch, binging Youtube videos and drinking gallons of herbal tea? Oh yeah. My weird multitasking ADHD self, doing a little bit here, a little bit there…
So don’t be hard on yourself if your way of doing things isn’t the way people told you it should be. Especially now, when all bets are still off and we’ve got a long way to go before Normal is a thing. It all adds up in the end. And sometimes it’s such a good, good feeling when it does…
It’s March. Again. Just like last year, except as different as it’s possible for anything to be…
Last March was a completely different world from the one I live in now. It was when all those whispered concerns about a new virus flowing through our communities became a fact; a fact you couldn’t ignore or get away from, no matter how hard some people tried. We were all sizing up how disruptive this new situation was going to be, how dangerous Covid would be for us, and what we could do to protect ourselves. How bad could it be? It’ll just be a couple of weeks of weirdness, and then everything will be okay again, right? *Insert horrified laughter from the future right here.*
There were a lot of things I thought were possible, and I tried to plan for whatever came our way here at home. I stocked up on food, learned to stitch masks, washed everything I could think of washing. I stayed away from people as best I could. I figured if I was careful, I could keep plugging away at my job and stay as safe as I could until everything blew over and some kind of normality could come back. But there were a few things that happened that weren’t on my 2020 Bingo card. Civil unrest and a bad family emergency changed my strategy drastically, and for about 6 months so far I’m…here, at home. It was just the safest thing I could do to help my small family unit get to better days. I’m grateful I get the opportunity to do this, to be home and make whatever art I can and to help my husband regain his health. He’s recovering well, which makes me happy beyond belief, but there’s still a bit of a road to walk through still. As things get safer, then I can think about what comes next for us. It was and remains a strange feeling, not to haul myself up out of bed and hustle off to work, full of people and tasks and noise.
If it weren’t for the still-terrifying crisis we’re still in…this life is wonderful. I wake up early, have breakfast with Matt and start setting up in the corner of the dining room I’ve occupied most of the winter. It’s sunny there, with lots of plants, and it’s a soothing place to be when it’s cold and blustery outside. There’s embroideries to work on; commissions or just odd things out of my head, strange little cloth and thread experiments. There’s painting up in my “office”, and up in the guest room/studio I keep my acrylic painting projects. I take breaks when I need to, I make tea, I eat lunch, I go back to stabbing for spinning or knitting or saying, “Hey, those beads would look really cool if I added them to the mushroom embroidery!” People have been so great about their love for the embroideries, and for yarns, paintings, and and for whatever my strange little head comes up with. I want to keep doing this for a while more. I want to keep giving people something to make them smile. I want to keep imagining things and stitching them down on cloth so they can’t get away. I want to keep doing that strange alchemy from fluffy fleece to warm, knitted object. I want to hold up a watercolor and yell, “Ya wanna stick this on your fridge, don’tcha?” And I plan to keep exploring new ways to keep the goodness coming. I’ve always produced artwork and projects while I was working full time, but I am just honestly astounded at the difference being at home makes for my output. Not just having more time to work on things, but because I’m not as physically and mentally tired, my brain can tackle things that before would have made me groan and go, “Nope, not doing that, at all,” It’s more of a surprise than it should be, I think.
There’s an old saying, “Even the worst storm washes up some wood on the beach.” Before the Pandemic started, there were so many things I hadn’t tried artistically, or had neglected for years. Now I feel like I have so much more to share with you all, weird and funny visions and stories and how-to’s. I’ll tackle as many of them as I can this year, as we inch closer to a safer life for everybody. I don’t know what the future will look like, but for now it’ll be nice to keep making interesting things until then…
And thank you, kind friends, for being such supportive people. You’ve made a strange, lonely time much more bearable, and I hope I’ve done that for you too…
Hello, my dears! I know, it’s been a little while since I posted anything here. Mostly I was enjoying a quiet break here at Chez Cohen with my sweet fellow, my sweet cats, and my growing pile of things to make. I’ve been kept very busy with little projects (and big projects) of all kinds, and I’m absurdly gratified by all the kind friendship and out-and-enthusiam when I present something new. Because of all of these people, I’ve been able to not just bring in a little money but also to keep my spirits up. December was rough for everybody this year. It was cold and dark, lonely and seemingly never-ending. We were away from our friends and family and loved ones, and trying like hell not to get sick. More and more of us have lost friends or family or colleagues to Covid, and we’re all still attempting to navigate this world now so full of obstacles. So the things that have been getting us all through are sometimes small, quiet moments of fun…
What counts as those moments for me? Well, there are the usual bits. I have new paints to try out and appreciate and make a mess with. The cupboard is well stocked with tea from Society du The’ and Mrs Kelly’s Tea. I’ve been trying to read to Matt before bed, since it helps us both wind down and sleep. (The book at the moment? “Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters”. ) Besides scouring Netflix for distractions, I’ve also been avidly hunting down Youtube channels and stumbling onto wonderful, rare gems worth sharing. Pinsent Tailoring, Dominic Noble, Rachel Maksy, Cathy Hay and the Banner siblings (Bernadette and Dani banner) have really made my days brighter, and taught me so much. Cinema Therapy is a great Youtube series, walking us through all kinds of relationship woes using movies. When I need a lift, I go play something from Gunship’s youtube channel, and their videos are an 80’s nostalgia joy. On Spotify I search for all the 80’s Goth channels when I need to get out of my head and into a mopier time where I wore a *lot* more eyeliner than I do now…
Recently I’ve been trying out online crafting days with friends, which has gone enormously well. There’s a whole lot of lockdown still going on out there, and a lot of crafting supplies to use up. It’s just really nice to have that company, catching up with everyone and seeing what they’re working on in real time.
And now that it’s January? I feel like we have things we can hope for. There’s more vaccines out there. Spring is coming. (Not soon, not exactly. But stil! Spring!) I’ve been wallowing in seed catalogs, trying to imagine what the back yard could look like this year. I just had a birthday, and turned 50. Fifty!! It blows my mind that I’ve made it this far, especially after this last year. And today I watched the swearing in of Joe Biden and Kamela Harris, which made me so very, very happy. Better days are coming for us all. We just have to keep going on, finding our joys and cradling the things we love to us…
A drawing I did recently was of Arachne, one of the patron spirits of spinners, weavers and anyone who loves the fiber arts. She became a spider, after contesting with Athena at weaving, but has learned to appreciate small beautiful webs in quiet corners, away from chaos and unfairness and grief. Not a bad lesson for the rest of us, as least for a little while…
