Breathing Room

First, a brief aside. I was flipping through a back issue of Somerset Studio as I enjoyed my coffee this morning, when my eyes lit upon this phrase: "the gift of curiousity and desire." I sat and contemplated this for a moment, and realized how profound it is. Curiousity and desire sometimes feel like the bane of my existence, because they're always driving me forward--sometimes in a thousand different directions. And yet, what would my life be like without them? Curiousity and desire allow me to see wonder in what might otherwise pass unnoticed; to seek new experiences and knowledge; and most importantly, to feel joy in both learning and creating. I feel truly blessed to have been given this gift.

This past weekend was crazy busy, and this week has been even worse. I was in an intensive training class for three days, and then came home in the evenings to continue working on the tasks I couldn't complete at work because . . . I was in training. I've been working 12 hours a day or so, but I still needed some "me" time--time for what I think of as my "real" work--not the job that pays the bills, but the work that feeds my soul. Anyway, I was only able to snatch 5 minutes here, 20 minutes there. One night I stayed up until midnight sewing, and paid for it the next day, but it had to be done.

So imagine my surprise when I finally had time to take a deep breath and look at what I had done in the past week:

1) Added borders to a convergence piece that I put together a while back.
2) Carved a pear stamp, stamped pears onto fabric, and overdyed.


3) Played with melting crayons onto paper and then adding acrylic; I have no idea why or what to do this, but I love the look

4) Drew a rather awful but somewhat entertaining sketch of one of my dogs (I think he looks like a middle-aged man wearing a sweater).







5) Rolled some fabric beads and melted some angelina fibers.

6) Pieced together a mini art-quilt from fabric I had painted, then machine-quilted it.