There have been little bits of making happening in-between wiping bums, answering emails, sending orders and chasing after runaway children. Spiralling clockwise from the top; I made a small quilt with fair trade cotton from Fair Trade Fabric, from a small charm pack that unfortunately they have stopped stocking. I really just wanted to try out their fabrics - trying to get fair trade fabric in Ireland is really difficult and what I have bought via the Internets before has been of varying quality. Their fabric is nice, some much softer than others, proving to me again how difficult it is to buy fabric online, and why a charm pack is such a great idea - it gives you samples for future plans, while providing enough for a small project in the meantime. As usual when quilt making I preferred the back, which is much plainer! I just need to start with simpler ideas evidently.
There have been many requests for a TINY TINY jackhammer. Who am I to not produce one? I used some hardwood dowel I had lying about.
We have been making nature gardens - random collection of the treasure found on our walks. I especially love finding broken pieces of bird's eggs.
I have been knitting some mitts with our yarn. Very exciting. And warm.
I also figured our grey yarn would make a lovely asphalty background for some construction themed knitting. The swatch is very popular and there is talk of a jumper being made for a small boy.
The shed obviously needed some clouds painted on it. I think the random unexpected decorating is my favourite. Since moving here we have put such a colossal amount of energy into the basics that we have really neglected decorating, both in the house and outside. So it was nice to spend twenty minutes randomly painting clouds on the shed. It keeps putting a smile on my face.
Lastly, axes. I have ignored many requests for axe ownership from a little boy but finally succumbed to it yesterday. They both have wooden handles, with a wooden head screwed into the larger one and a felt head (fortified with stiff cardboard inside) on the smaller one. I heard lots of banging sounds as they wandered off on their axing adventures yesterday.
I have been thinking a lot about making recently and how much it is a practice that I cannot live without. It creeps in even when there is very little space for it. I have been listening to A Playful Day podcast and really enjoying it, in particular this conversation with Kim Werker really made me think a lot about how we make changes in our lives and why projects like: "I'm going to draw/paint/make something every day" just don't work. Well, they don't work for me anyway.
Kim makes a point about counting cooking mac and cheese out of a box as being creative on days where there was not a chance to do more. It made me think about how we frame our lives and what we choose to see. When we start to notice the moments where we create, it's like they multiply, and we can see more and more of them, just by the power of noticing them. Perhaps it is part of why I blog about it too, to help me notice these little moments. That in-between all the other stuff that happens every day - trying to work and run a creative business that feels more about business than creativity at the moment, trying to keep a house clean enough so that I don't lose my mind, trying to keep two people alive and well and not screaming at each other too much...it is nice in all that noise to notice the little moments of quiet making.