Time for a creative change?
I seem to have been writing and diving into nothing but wordage for months now. But lately I’ve started to notice that a stitch is creeping into my mind. Not the sort of stitch that causes pain, but the threading of a needle with soft, lustred thread and then pulling it through crisp silk fabric.
Over the last two nights I’ve finished beading two tiny little bags and today pulled out the ‘Projects to be Finished’ box. There are two stumpwork pieces awaiting completion. Both are botanical panels created by Jane Nicholas; one is the beautiful snowdrop piece and the other is the Bittersweet piece. To finish the snowdrop piece, I need to go back to Stitch in Time on a Saturday to find out how to complete the detached stems and pedicels. I appear to have forgotten! And with the Bittersweet, it’s merely a question of dedication and discipline.
The trouble is that for months now, after seeing the Mirror project from Jane’s Master Class in Hobart last year, I’ve a desperate need to embroider that piece myself.
But I’ve got a guilt complex too… about moving on to new works before others are finished. It’s why I get so crabby with my writing life sometimes. At any one time, I have Paperweights/Glass Flowers in submission in the UK, The Last Stitch being edited/re-written as a second edition for Kindle and Gisborne being blog-published. And in the shadowed and dark recesses of my writing file on the computer, gathering cyber-dust and despairing that it shall ever move it’s narrative further than the 70,000 mark… sits The Shifu Cloth.
Being an anal sort of person, I need to complete tasks, to drop them in the Done basket. My mind’s essentially a simple and undeveloped sort of thing. I can only concentrate on one thing at a time if the end result is going to be anything approaching the standard I crave. So tonight is thinking about the Austen Twitter Project, tomorrow night is doing the Twitter Project. Wednesday daytime is Gisborne, Wednesday and Thursday nights are embroidery times. The way I look at it, it’s a kind of meditation… it can only help.
Well, there is the option to concentrate one’s life efforts on one single task/project. That in itself is an accomplishment.
But I’d much rather be, and pass my time with, someone who has a myriad projects, ideas, concepts and adventures going, some finished, some close to, some far from, some perhaps never … a much more colorful existence in my opinion.
And, well, in (hopefully) many decades from now, when all are gathered together talking about me in the past tense (and I do hope someone might), I’ll be very happy if they say, “Wow, she led a colorful life.” I hope the best they have to say is NOT, “Gosh she was disciplined.” 🙂
thanks Scribbler, for allowing me to BE incomplete and unfinished. To be frank, its a relief. But just to prove a point, the next post might be pics of the UNFINISHED BOX, just so you can see what I mean!
I get different kinds of satisfaction from developing an idea, (tossing it around to find unexpected angles, dressing it up in different clothes to see what looks best, holding it up beside other ideas, running around playing with it in the back yard) and realizing that idea (being in the state of flow that lets me escape time and discomfort, the peace of doing something absolutely linear). In the first part, anything is possible, and in the second, only one thing is.
Oh what lovely analogies and what a perfect conclusion. It’s all part of the creative process, isn’t it? I found Gisborne flowed after a bit of embroidery. As you say, in the ‘mind’ phase anything is possible, in the ‘doing’ phase only one thing is. Which makes me wonder if that’s why I keep the mind chapters in my head for so long. In the writing phase, they don’t have that elusive and special freedom.
. . .and that’s not to say I don’t have a bulging folder full of ideas that never made it out of the “If it bores ME, I can’t expect other people to take an interest in it.” stage.
I agree about the meditation of embroidery. I find it serves to regenerate and heal.
I need to finish things in order to feel satisfied and in harmony – but it is only part of the process. Other ideas and preparations are always cycling away as well, so they can progress and materialise. A lot of change occurs to those ideas while they are circling around the back of my mind as I bring some other project to completion. Gestation, I guess.
Hallo Jillian. You’re right, it does serve to help and heal. when I was visiting my father in hospital not long before he died, I would sit in his room and embroider. The end result was a stumpwork bumblebee sitting on a piece of cream silk. Underneath the bee is a gold thread depiction of a honeycomb. It’s now framed and sits on the wall at the bend of the stairs and every time I go past, I have a reminder of Dad.
i would PREFER to finish things before I move on but sometimes with embroidery, the last bit is the tedious bit and it’s hard to maintain that initial excitement.
With writing, the unfinished piece seems to be par for the course, because one submits a manuscript and whilst one is waiting to hear, one begins another story. Then the former comes back with editorial comment and so one goes into edit mode, shelving the WIP. And so on. it seems most writers have at least two, if not more pieces on the go!
Pat,
your folder of ideas whould be a sight to behold and may deserve a blogpost on Bo Press, I think. I mean look what came out of your personal interpretation of The Stumpwork Robe.
Sadly, I don’t have the patience to get through anything like that, as I proved two years ago when I tried to complete an airfix model and glued myself to a cupboard. Between work, writing and childcare, the 3 minutes of free time I have each week I devote to blowing away the alien menace with a laser cannon. I am a simple creature…
Si, its my sole purpose in life to invest you into the ‘Secret Guild of Writers who Embroider.’ The therapeutic benefits of stitching would have helped on your recent trip to London!!!
LOL, SJAT!! That’s one thing I haven’t done (glued myself to cupboard) but I’d venture to say that I’ve done equally “interesting” oopsies in my time!
Now having spent the last 2 days cleaning a very neglected scrapbooking room, I’ll wager my To Finish box/basket is fuller than yours. And then there’s the To Start folder…sigh. And that’s just the scrapping not to menion embroidery….
I’d give a jar of jam to see Pat’s folder of ideas too, Mes!
I like the way y’all think. My kind of people! I completed 2 counted cross stitch birth samplers for twin grandsons while my mom was in the hospital. 8 others await me. Mother told me to be careful what I do for the first grands cause you gotta keep pace when others come. Why oh why did I not listen to the Most Wise One?!
When they stand around my grave, the comment from daughter-in-laws will most likely be, “Oh my gosh. Have you seen her closets/baskets/boxes? We’ve got to clean all that junk out now!!!” And I’ll laugh heartily!
BTW, Mes, I think I found your mirror project in the book. WOW!!!