Scene from the weekend

Another week has gone by, and there has been more knitting and painting. We did one craft fair on Sunday, and there will be another one this weekend. The day itself did not really feel like work, and the hours flew by, but I was exhausted afterwards - as an introvert and Highly Sensitive Person any day surrounded by lots of people seems to have that effect. Too many stimuli. I took most of yesterday off - Monday often happens to be a day off for me* - and am looking forward to an Epsom salt bath tonight and the sauna tomorrow.

* Incidentally, I found out yesterday that Marc Allen doesn't do Mondays and finds that by Tuesday afternoon he is absolutely eager to work. I watched some Marc Allen youtube videos because I am re-reading Shakti Gawain (they co-founded New World Library). I like his work-with-ease approach. Apparently, he never works more than 20 hours a week. For many people that is not an option, but as someone who works part-time in her day job and in productive bursts at home, I can relate. You can get more done by doing less. And quiet time is so important to refill your "creative well", to use Julia Cameron's words, and let ideas emerge or develop.

Daily drawings | Not drawing, but painting (and knitting)

I've been having fun with these: tiny canvases to do quick paintings on (I chose a Galway theme). If I make the Daily drawings a regular feature, I had better change the title to include painting.

I find myself using the colours of recent evening skies:

And another colour pairing: I only noticed when I started knitting with this yarn that it matched my nail polish.

My sister and I are preparing for a crafts fair this weekend, and in my usual fashion I am doing lots of last-minute projects - painting by daylight, knitting and crocheting at night.

The Jumbo book is here!

 

Jumbo Wants to be a Hippo arrived last week, and I am very happy with how it turned out (thanks to Conor, who designed and put it all together and added the subtle colour to my drawings, 'colour-coding' the different animals). Thank you to everyone who has bought the book so far. We really appreciate your support.

If you know me in real life and would like to purchase a book, I am selling them here in Galway, directly and via bookshops and crafts fairs. An online shop is on its way (slowly).

There is more information on my website.

This collaboration with Lionel and Conor has been so much fun (and there are two more stories to be published; it is a trilogy), and I am lucky to have more illustration projects waiting for me. This week's chapter in The Vein of Gold is guiding me to find out what I want to be doing more of and which directions to take, but I already know that illustration is high up on that list.

Daily drawings | Wool

Another work-in-progress. Just playing around with Graphitint pencils, following the pattern of knit and purl on a moss stitch wrist warmer - the kind of drawing that is trance-inducing.

And noticing all the green around me moving towards a more muted palette among November's greys. 

I am wearing my green coat, knitting green socks and eating my greens. 

 

Water, stars and scents

Birds bathing on the roof outside Matt's apartment

"When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?" 

Virginia Woolf 

"If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently." 

Bill Watterson

Looking at the stars (on evening walks, or when I get home and it is dark, I make a point of stopping and directing my gaze upwards at the night sky), water in various forms (swimming, baths, steam room) and breathing into my back (here is a post on the topic on Rejuvenation Lounge) are keeping me afloat at the moment. My problems are indeed small and insignificant, but I do have to remind myself to stop catastrophising.

I have been worrying and fearing and getting upset over unfairnesses (and as a result been hypersensitive around certain issues), and my body has responded the way it always does - aches at first, and then being properly ill.

So this weekend is for resting. And, having a reason, I do not have to feel bad about taking it easy.

Other things that have helped are rubbing geranium oil into my hands and then pressing my palms onto my face for a minute. You cannot not relax when being enveloped by this scent. Along the same lines, my favourite two Yogi teas at the moment are Rose (same effect as geranium) and Green Balance, a blend of green tea, kombucha, peppermint, lemon grass, elderflower and lemon verbena that is silky and delicious.
  
In her new book Ann Patchett describes going to the swimming pool at lot when she was upset over her disastrous first marriage. She says something to the extent of how being in the water let her dissolve in a cathartic way, and I feel the same when I am a ball of anxiety over something. Salt water is even better, and really I should try being in the ocean under a starry sky more often.

Daily drawings | Work-in-progress

I like the idea of regular posts with a specific theme, but so far have never managed to incorporate any in this space. Featuring my daily drawings here (but only once a week) might provide me with the self-imposed accountability that I often need in order to stick to a new habit.

A while ago I committed to drawing something just for fun every day, but when there are other projects to work on it is too easy to let it slip. After a busy couple of weeks I sat down again today, with fresh inspiration from a visit to my sister's house. 

Matt and Branwell were reading the paper together, and Branwell was all eagerly outstretched front legs and eyes. I am working on several drawings of this scene. Fathers with their babies are always a heart-warming sight, but for an animal lover who doesn't want children herself nothing beats a man holding a tiny four-legged.

Feeding the muse

my sister's windowsill

My sister is serious about crafts. Whenever I met up with her recently, she would have a new elaborate project going on, while I would still be knitting the same never-ending wrist warmer. We want to participate in various crafts fairs, so there is a deadline of sorts approaching, and I am hoping it will motivate me. My sister knits and crochets every day of the year, whereas I seem to take a break during the summer (an exception is cotton and silky yarn - wool just feels wrong in the warmer months), but now I am slowly getting into it again. One reason for the slow pace is having to prioritise other work. Once again I have spread myself too thin with commissions and my own projects and can feel panic tingling at the edge of my awareness.  

What I tend to do in such times is shut myself away from the world, thinking I need time at home both to work solidly and also to recharge for the next burst of productivity. In a talk she gave with her writer mother-collaborator here in Galway last year, the illustrator Polly Dunbar said her friends were used to not seeing her for weeks on end when she is in the depths of working on a project. 

I recognised my own work tendencies in that. But ideally I will find time for everything that is important in any given week - people, work, leisure, exercise, rest. I realise I am actually more productive when I make time for friends and for attending things. This week was packed full with activities and events I thought I wouldn't have the energy for but that ended up energising me. These two musicians (and wonderful people) were a heart-warming part of a fireside soirée that included a panel discussion based on Jean Cocteau's contention "The arts are essential - if only one knew what for". They talked about being subversive and how everything we make is art ("cleaning one's kitchen really well") and children being the most incredible artists of all - topics I feel passionate about. A friend invited me to see the beautifully shot Renoir and I have resolved to go and see more films from now on. With the internet and a DVD player you have endless inspiration available all the time, but there is something about going out and seeing something live or on a big screen surrounded by other people that makes me feel more inspired and more alive than anything I absorb via my laptop.

I still haven't found the magic solution. While I saw friends and went out and did things, I somehow forgot to make space for the essential task of buying groceries, so I lived on peanut butter sandwiches and meals out (and of course those lovingly cooked for me). I've been feeding the well of inspiration but neglected feeding myself properly. There was also very little meditation and yoga; they were replaced by almost daily glasses of wine, which is a rather inadequate substitute.