Creativity In How We Share Our Faith...

I wish I’d brought my camera to church today!! 

It was a snowy Sunday and our Annual Meeting right after church, so some members of our congregation stayed home today, but we began a new unit in our BLAST rotation (Bible Learning Adventure STations) downstairs for the kids during church.

After they chose whether to put their offering in the “Helping Here At Home” or “Helping Around the World” boxes, we sat in a circle and introduced the passages from Matthew and Mark where Jesus said “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” 

We talked about what it would be like to leave everything you know behind and start over.

We talked about what it must have been like for the people of Haiti who had to race from their homes into the streets.  My best friend and her son described what it was like to run from their house while it was burning to the ground and starting over from scratch.

Then, we went into the kitchen and made huge fish shaped pizzas.  We spread sauce on flat bread that had been cut in the shapes of fish, sprinkles the cheese on our fish, used pepperoni to make scales on 3 out of the 4 fish and used sliced black olives for the eyes.

Not only was it a creative way to share the stories of our faith... it was DELICIOUS!

INHALE:  How do you pass on your faith to those around you, especially the next generation.  However you celebrate what you believe and where you draw strength from, fewer people are attending services in many different faiths around the world.  Worship is becoming an increasingly personal and private thing for many people, yet we cannot ignore the importance of gathering together to celebrate that there IS more to life than just the number of our days.

EXHALE: This week, as the world focusses on Valentine’s Day and LOVE, remember to find time for yourself as well.  How can you be Creative in celebrating what you believe?  Can you set up a space for yourself in which to meditate or pray? Can you hunt for books, prayers or music that inspires you?  Can you share your faith journey’s story with someone who has never heard the adventure before? Can you write a prayer of love for a planet that needs it?  Can you celebrate the blessings that you have by sharing your time and talents with others?  Be Creative as you follow in the footsteps of the One who sculpted the Universe.

Overboard Cookie Decorating...

We just can’t help it.  Our family loves decorating cookies together.  It’s just another way of drawing using different colours of edible products  and blank cookies instead of crayons and paper. 

Since cookies keep for a while when stored in airtight containers, I usually bake ahead and then we get out everything for a massive icing session while the Christmas playlist blares away on my iPod.

This year, we iced in two batches, one for the teachers a few days before I left for Dad’s funeral and then the last of the cookies on the same day we made our Gingerbread house as a family.

Royal icing powder from places like the Bulk Barn is great to use because it hardens so quickly. It also holds up well if you are packing a variety of  cookies into a single tin or container.  We usually make up two batches of white icing and then put food colouring into a variety of plastic bags to tint the white from there.  Never use cheaper sandwich bags for this because the zip seal tops have a tendency to explode when you least expect them to.  Snipping off a tiny corner of each bag allows for a fairly even flow of icing.

We also try to stick to similar shapes of cookies every year; gingerbread, sugar cookies and shortbread.

I tend to keep mine looking fairly consistent since I ice big batches on cookie sheets all at once...

The girls are fond of picking out a selection of cookies to ice individually for their teachers...

and Nick likes to make the really odd ones that we give to our closest friends.

Once everything is done, the pictures are taken, the cookies batched up and the best ones chosen for Santa’s plate, there’s really nothing left to do except the dishes... and plan for next year’s cookie extravaganza.

INHALE:  It’s funny how many of our celebrations revolve around food.  I used to feel guilty as a Weight Watchers leader about giving food as gifts.  Now I understand that sometimes it’s not about quantity, but rather about quality and presentation.  A small selection of hand decorated cookies makes a wonderful, caring gift even if it does contain calories.  The girls get such a kick out of making them as well as presenting them to their teachers on the last day of school before the holidays. Handmade isn’t always cheaper or easier, but it can be a lot of fun!

EXHALE:  Holiday baking is all done now.  This post was originally going to appear before Christmas, but there are still ways to dream for next year.  Where do you keep your favourite holiday recipes?  If you have children, there are recipes that they will want to have later when they set out on their own to duplicate childhood memories in their own homes someday.  Take a page in your book and write, sketch or doodle some of your earliest childhood memories about holiday baking.  Try to capture the smells, the sights and above all.... try not to drool too much on the page!

Creativity amid more Chaos...

The thing about knowing I am living this journey is that it sustains me even when life gets so chaotic that I cannot post.  I meant to post about our Hallowe’en creativity on Friday night or Saturday, but the weekend ended up being far different that we expected when Bethany began to run a high fever on Saturday afternoon along with her cough.  We’ve kept her in isolation at home and treated her with medicine to reduce the fever which seems to be working for now as we keep a close eye on her.  GIven all the fear about the H1N1 pandemic, we are being cautious and vigilant, hoping that it is some other germ in our house.

Thursday night, Bethany had  a Hallowe’en dance at her school.  She dressed up as a rock star and spent two hours dancing or talking with her friends.

Friday was a fun but tiring day.  I was teaching at Harrison Trimble for the 4th day that week and everyone was encouraged to dress in costume.  Erin went as a fairy GOTHmother and I dressed up as  a zombie, thinning out the make-up I used for She-Hulk and using the same wig, I ripped up one of Nick’s oldest shirts and made a very scary impression on a lot of the high school kids.  Imagine coming around a corner in a hurry and running into 6’5” of zombie teacher!  For an extrovert who loves playing up on my inches, I was having a blast!

After school, we went to pick up Bethany at her school and watch the last minutes of her volleyball tryouts.  She’d had a sock hop in the afternoon and then the tryouts, so she was feeling a bit tired as we headed home to change both girls into their costumes for working up at Magnetic Hill’s fundraiser that evening.  Boo at the School meant that the entire gym of Nick’s school had been transformed into a spook walk as a fundraiser for the Grade 8 class trip at the end of the year.  There was a bake sale, a BBQ, some other sales and the spook walk.  Erin was dressed up as an old fashioned school teacher in pioneer dress teaching a class of zombie children to repeat words like disembowel.  Bethany dressed up in her Dorothy costume and played hopscotch in the “graveyard”. Nick was the Frankenstein principal asking people for their hall passes and I helped a witch greet people at the door and break them into groups. For the first 2 hours, everyone was fairly enthusiastic, but in the 3rd hour, it got a little harder to stay “fresh” at their roles.  Bethany seemed especially tired, but I chalked it up to her busy day.  I drove the girls home as soon as things were over then came back up to help Nick and the parents take everything down in the gym.  She seemed fine when she posed for this picture after stealing Dad’s headgear...

By 10:30 the next morning, we were back at the school for a volleyball match between Erin’s 15U team and the 16U team in the Roofers club she belongs to.  It was great volleyball and each team won 2 matches, but Bethany seemed really tired and whiny.  We got her some soup for lunch and pot stickers at our favourite restaurant Happy Wok and then headed home.  She fell asleep for 2 hours and when she woke up, she was flushed and burning up with a fever of almost 102! Needless to say, my thoughts of writing everything up as the blog post went out the window...

The fever comes and goes, so she will be home with me tomorrow.  No doubt my creativity will be put towards keeping a sick daughter entertained in her room.

INHALE:  In our busy, modern day world, we sometimes feel as if we are expected to keep going no matter what.  If we are sick, we take a pill or something.  If this flu season is teaching us ANYTHING, it is reminding us of the need to listen to our bodies when they get sick or tired and grant them time to heal, time to get better and time to keep our germs to ourselves.

EXHALE:  One of the ways you can enjoy a bit of tasty Creativity even when you aren’t sick is to find a warm drink that you enjoy.  There are many wonderful herbal tea blends out there to sample, cider to warm with cranberries and cinnamon or a splash of orange juice.  My stepfather, John, has been playing with ways to make his own really chocolaty cocoa drink that has less artificial ingredients than some of the powders out there.  Sniff a few herbal tea boxes in the grocery aisles or delight in the artwork and creativity of the many Celestial Seasonings blends.  Their box artwork and creative copy are almost as lovely as the teas themselves.  Tazo ’s chai flavour has been another favourite of mine for a few years, especially with a splash of skim milk.  Miso soup is another wonderful warm drink.  Some cultures swear by a crushed garlic clove in hot water to fend of germs and there is always the traditional chicken noodle soup.  Whatever you choose as your warm drink, wrap your hands around a great mug and sit quietly for a few minutes to sip some stillness along with your beverage.  The world will still be waiting when your mug is done.

Playing and Enjoying Mindless Creativity...

I booked off today.  After teaching for 2 days and getting a call to substitute teach for tomorrow and Friday, I decided last night that I needed a day to catch up on laundry, cooking, sketching and the piles on my desk.  A few weeks ago, we bought 10 lbs. of beets and tucked them in our cold storage area down in the basement.  Nick and I love beets, but 10 lbs. is a LOT of beets, especially since both of my girls are rather iffy about them.  There were also bits and pieces of other veggies in the fridge to use up, so once the girls got home and started in on homework, I decided to make a huge pot of veggie soup and process the beets.

My cookbooks all explained how much easier beets were to peel once they’d been cooked or steamed.  “The peels will just slide off!” they promised. Remembering earlier attempts to make borscht a few years ago where my hands were stained pink for weeks from peeling piles of beets, I was ready to try another technique.

Along the way, as I stood at my sink rubbing the peel off cooked beets and staring into a huge pot of blood red water, I started getting crazy, creative ideas, especially when Erin wandered by and said “Cool! Didn’t they used to dye things red with beets?”

Reaching up into the cupboard, I found a rather old dishcloth I’d knitted about 6 months ago.  (I knit a LOT of these on car trips!)

I decided to throw it into the pot to soak as I scrubbed the peels off the beets.

When I was almost done with the beets, I decided to peek at the cloth.  What a colour change!

Dumping all that colour down the sink was “Creepy Cool” according to the girls because it looked like blood!  Can you tell they are SO ready for Hallowe’en?

Of course, without a setting agent, the dye didn’t really stay long in the dishcloth.  I decided to toss it out with the scraps rather than put it in the wash and risk turning socks or underwear pink.

With all the beets processed into freezer bags or made into beet salad, it was time to relax for a while and enjoy someone else’s Creativity.

I used to fill in doodle posters like these all the time as a kid.  I bought one a few years ago and rediscovered it today while tidying my office.  There is something incredibly soothing about colouring in a few shapes at a time and watching the colours play with each other as the design begins to come to life.  I still have a LOT of white space to fill, but it was FUN... and that’s what this adventure has been all about... finding more ways to add fun and creativity to each day.

INHALE:  The Amish take delight in treating every task as important and worthy of doing to the best of your ability.  By playing and being a bit off the wall, the job of peeling and chopping up 10 lbs of beets became less tedious and more of an adventure.  I don’t think I will ever find a way to make chores like dusting feel Creative (though I’ve been known to doodle things in the dust when it gets really thick!) but for today, the challenge of looking for Creativity worked, then I got to take great delight in enjoying someone ELSE’s creation. All I had to do was colour in the shapes!

EXHALE:  When was the last time you bought a colouring book, doodle poster or printed out a mandala to colour?  Try to find one that makes your fingers itch to play with a new box of crayons or package of markers and keep it handy so that the next time you are talking on the phone, helping a child with homework, relaxing before bed or even watching television, you can colour in the next page or section of your project and have something Creative to show for your time instead of wondering where the hours went.

Creative Thankfulness...

I love to bake.  Every year for Thanksgiving, I make both apple and pumpkin pies from scratch.  This year, Erin asked if she could help.  There’s something special about hands-on creativity.  I remember learning from my grandmother and this time I became the teacher. She helped take pictures as I got the dough ready.

As pretty as pumpkin pie is in colour, poured into a pie shell it looks rather plain.

A few years ago, I saw a photo spread of a Thanksgiving meal where the baker had cut maple leaves out of pie crust to place in the centre of the pie.  Of course, since Aikman means “Men of Oak”, I’ve done oak leaves and acorns on our family pie ever since.  Cutting out the shapes from pie crust is rather fun...

and the results are so magical once the pie is cooked.

Bethany helped peel all of the apples for her favourite pie.

With our pies cooling on the counter, we switched to fixing the supper meal for last night in celebration of my Dad and Barb arriving for Canadian Thanksgiving.  We made a party sushi mound known as chirashizushi.  Using shrimp, avocado, tamago,  cucumber, lobster and salmon that Nick’s mother brought back from visiting his brother in Prince Rupert, it was a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds!

Erin even got creative with the napkins...  (Hmmm! Maybe Creativity is contagious after all!)

Tonight, after a wonderful day of memories and great food, I am THANKFUL for Creativity!

INHALE:  There is something powerful about creating BEAUTY with your food before we consume it.  That’s one area where the North American culture falls sadly short of many others in the world who understand that they eyes can be nourished along with the stomach!     We need to celebrate the art and creativity that can flourish on our plates if we take just a few moments to add that extra touch.

EXHALE:  Experiment with how you lay your food on the plate.  Let your kids make their own pizza faces on english muffins, try putting as many colours of the rainbow as possible in your salad bowl, fold your napkins and add a sticker to them.  Creativity can be experienced in large and small ways.  I no longer begrudge the extra time, I savour the way it seems to recharge something deep inside me when people let out an appreciative sigh as they stare at the plate.  No one can do this every night, but the next time you have company or share a special family meal, add a little creativity in your presentation and see what happens...

Creativity amid Chaos...

No pictures or fancy message tonight, just a gentle reminder that when you go looking for something, you usually find it.

Last night, heavy rain and high winds tore a lot of the lovely orange leaves from the trees.  I am hoping there are still plenty to see when Dad and Barb arrive this weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving since she has never really seen the maple leaves turn colours.  I was feeling cold all morning until a great friend showed up to take me to our lunch date while the kids goofed off a bit from their morning of child labour assembling kits for the show in Toronto.

We went to lunch at a marvelous restaurant here in Moncton called the Blue Olive .  My plate was such a work of art that it had me wishing my cellphone had a camera!  A wonderful sampling of Mediterranean food was arranged on the plate in artful groupings and every little bite offered different flavours.  Creativity in food presentation.

When I went to the washroom, there were patterns in the floor tile and also in the wood grain of the dark brown wooden stalls that had brightly painted ORANGE door handles and hinges!  It was a gentle reminder than when you seek, you shall find.

INHALE:  Even in a crazy, hectic day of trying to get ready for an important event, I could still notice and appreciate the Creativity all around me.  I find the older I get, the less I believe in coincidence. I rather think the Universe was smiling along with me today and putting gentle reminders in my path that in the midst of my own chaos  (as I get ready to go share my Creativity at a show), I can still enjoy, experience and savour other Creativity around me.  Such offerings are everywhere once we begin to look for them, just as the negative will be if that is all we go looking for.  When we look for the positive and the Creative, we are really just affirming Life and Hope in all their glory.

EXHALE:  When things get hectic, it is OK to bask in the Creativity of others.  Today’s project is to make two lists in your sketchbook, taking time to think before you write things down.  Make one list of the people in your life who exemplify Creativity to you; your favourite authors, musicians, cooks and even friends who have talents you admire.  Next, make a list of the people in your life who most ENCOURAGE the Creative spark that lives inside of YOU.  Neither list has to be long.  The first list is to remind you of where you can draw inspiration and the second is to remind you of who you can call on for support and encouragement when you need it.  Think of these as emergency contact numbers... you never know when you might need them!

Not What I'd Planned To Learn...

Today, Creativity taught me a lesson without me looking for a theme.

Creativity = Adaptability = Creativity

My day was full of times when I had to suddenly spin on a dime and change plans:

• Sunday School began again today at church and our kick off had kids in rather high spirits, so Nick came up with the idea to do a few parachute games with them to wear off some steam and gradually calm them down to focus.  It meant we had to adapt the rest of the lesson on the spot, but the kids were in a much better space to listen and then move to the craft than they would have been otherwise.

• Back at home, we cut up the bag of older potatoes to make 2 recipes, one for supper today and another one for later in the week.  We had enough sliced that I needed to make a 3rd dish or let the potatoes go bad, so I threw together my very first potato scallop (as they say here instead of scalloped potatoes) to reheat for yet another meal this week if I am teaching.

• I had a meeting to attend tonight that hadn’t made it on to the Master Calendar and I’d planned to work on something else tonight, so I took one of my extra props for the Hoarding Your Creativity class I am teaching at the CreativFestival in Toronto next month and added to that while I was listening and taking part in the discussions.

All of these prompted today’s Inhale and Exhale...

INHALE: Take a very deep breath.  It is Sunday night and you are about to head into another week.  No matter how well you think you have things planned out, you will NEVER be able to control or predict everything that can happen to you.  Instead of panicking when things have to turn on a dime, try to remember that by nurturing your inner creativity, you will be better equipped to handle that chaos and turn it into something creative, to come up with solutions to problems, to find the humour in the moment or joy that will keep you going.  If nothing else, you know you can stop and find a can of play-doh to squish out your frustrations on later!  Move gently into the week ahead and just keep taking it one breath at a time.

EXHALE:  Creativity does not have to happen at a specific time. This first week and a bit, I was trying to carve out certain times  of the day when I would be creative.  Today taught me that when I try to live in a state of Creative awareness, I am much more flexible and less panicky when things don’t go according to some inner plan.  So.... set the timer for 10 minutes.  In your book, write down 3 things about the week ahead that are worrying you and space them far apart on the paper.  Beside each one, write down as many ways to confront those worries and find solutions for them, ideas on how to change them, people you could lean on for support, delegate tasks to etc.  When the timer beeps... STOP.  Slam the book closed with a resounding thud and leave your worries where they are.  Then go do something fun like have a hot bath or read a good book!

NOTE FOR THE WEEK AHEAD - See if you can find a digital camera to keep near you (if you are lucky enough to have a cell phone that takes pictures, then this will be easy) I’ve been noticing things around me the more I go looking, so some of the things I am going to try this week to Inhale Creativity may involve snapping pictures.  If you are following along on this adventure, you may want to try your own explorations of the themes.

Taking The Time...

Another Saturday morning of sneaking out with my husband to do groceries while the kids relax at home.  Up until 2 years ago, groceries meant bribing the kids with dinner out after a busy day to shop as a family or one of us sneaking off by themselves to do groceries while the other did childcare.  A dozen years of buying food that way and suddenly, we are back to being able to have conversations as we find items on our list and come home to happy children... well... almost.  Erin is sick today with a horrid head cold, so Bethany left her alone and went bug-hunting in Animal Crossing City Folk while we were out.

Since the sky was grey and the wind was blustery, Nick decided to go up to work for the afternoon and I took over the kitchen.  I had muffins to bake for Sunday School tomorrow and a new recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution to try. Local new potatoes had been on sale at the supermarket today and Nick found some leeks as well, so I decided to try the Potato and Leek soup from the book.

The leeks were lovely!  Thank goodness Jamie explained about washing them under running water lengthwise though... there does tend to be a lot of silt and dirt that gets into those tight layers.  Getting it out before chopping was essential.

Carrots and celery also got chopped on my boards and added to the saucepan while the broth came to a boil in the bigger pot.

By this point, I had taken over most of the counter and had Josh Groban playing in the background interspersed with the odd John Tesh instrumental from my drawing playlist.  The afternoon sun was streaming in through my kitchen windows and I totally gave myself over to the act of being Creative with food.

New recipes are scary.  There is the urge to stick with the tried and true that we know to be safe.  I felt WAY more pressure after last Saturday’s disaster, the last half of which went in the garbage bag tonight.  After 2 days of leftovers, even I gave up on it!

Yet as I held the potatoes in my hand to peel them, I became aware of how the gritty brown peel gave way to the slippery white flesh as I peeled them.  How the smell of the garlic, leeks and other veggies simmering in the olive oil in the pan was beginning to waft its way through the house.  How, instead of feeling rushed the way I do on weeknights when there are meetings or activities to race off to, I was able to enjoy the act of preparing a meal.

So here’s the thing.  I think I am a closet “foodie”.  With this huge bag of carrots on the counter, I had a sudden urge to replicate the delicious carrotes rapées that we’d enjoyed this summer in France.  What did people ever do before they could look things up on the Internet?  Not only did I find a fabulous guide to follow, I fell in love with a whole new blog to follow!  David Lebovitz writes about France and food in a way that not only makes me smile, it takes me back to the very streets  I wandered this summer and the foods that my taste buds still dream of.  The beautiful pictures on the web site and in his blog were inspirational! (Look up some of the posts that deal with Chocolate!)

So, the soup simmered, I shredded carrots without losing any bits of finger or nail like I usually do, the rolls got warmed in the oven (no, I cheated and bought those at the bakery 3 blocks away) and by supper time, I had mastered not one but TWO delicious recipes.  A meal that was not only vegetarian, it qualified for the 100 mile diet if you discounted the olive oil that came back from France with me (at least it shared my plane).

Erin crawled out of her room to join us at the table and make appreciative croaking noises before being re-banished to her room.  Bethany declared the soup to now be on her top 10 favourite foods list as she went back for a 3rd bowl.  I was feeling Creative and pretty proud of myself right up until Nick looked at the girls with a grin and said  “Well, this certainly proves that our kitchen is a great place to take a leek!”

Hmmmm... I guess I have to let him live.  After 20 years, it would be just too hard to break in a new husband.

INHALE:  Trying new recipes can be terrifying.  We tend to be SO hard on ourselves about wanting everything to be perfect that we forget... new recipes have to be tried and tested before they ever make it into cookbooks.  Someone, somewhere had to be brave enough to try a food combination for the first time.  Everyone is going to have different tastes and sensibilities anyway... how else could you explain haggis?  Stop worrying about perfection in your Creativity.  Try instead to find the TIME to be Creative when cooking so that you don’t have to rush things.

EXHALE:  Think back to a food that you remember from a favourite trip, a childhood meal or some other special time in your life.  Memories can be linked to sound, smell, taste and texture, so being more Creative involves nurturing all your senses.  Give yourself half an hour to wander the Internet, browse through your existing cookbooks or even check out the cooking section at your local bookstore.  Pick out a recipe that excites you, that makes you feel like exploring your Creativity more... then plan where and when you can give yourself the time to try it. It just may become a new family favourite!

Doodling Rocks!

When you fall off a horse or a bicycle, you are supposed to get right back on again.  Small children certainly pick themselves right back up when they fall down while learning to walk.  They don’t become afraid of looking foolish the way adults do.  That tends to hold us back more often than we realize.

I did manage to make our favourite recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution cookbook, the Ground Beef Wellington for supper on Sunday night which restored my family’s faith in my ability to be creative in the kitchen... but the fear I felt about blogging on the Saturday night of the Creativity disaster did make me aware of the time lag between when I explore a topic BEFORE I share it with you or do if AFTER I propose the idea.  I’m sure it will all work out in the end.  While I am planning to explore something every day in my sketchbook, they may not all be worthy of sharing.  Life may also interfere as I have seen it happen to so many people from Yarn Harlot to Burghild Nina Holzer the author of A Walk Between Heaven and Earth.

But to bolster my sense of self-esteem, I went back to one of the very first activities I remember doing. It was also one of the things I used to get in trouble for at school!  Doodling is probably the most Universal form of drawing or making marks that exists.  I have lost track of how many people tell me they cannot draw at all only to turn into the most amazing doodlers during boring meetings or phone calls!  Doodling has no rules, it can happen on almost any surface from beach sand and snow to odd bits of paper found lying within reach.  So today’s topic celebrates the doodler in all of us...

INHALE: The best thing about doodling is that your hands are kept busy making patterns while your brain gets to move into a more detached form of awareness.  Doodling can nurture many different personalities from precise to playful.  There is a childlike sense of play when we make random marks on a surface that evolve into patterns, textures or even pictures.  We should also treasure the fact that it is while we are doodling that many people experience those “Aha!” moments of creative intuition, solving problems or getting great ideas.  Those who think they can’t draw often produce the best doodles because they aren’t trying to turn every mark into something recognizable or worry if each shape is perfect.  Only machines can repeat shapes or letters exactly all the time... and where would be the fun in that?

EXHALE:  Take a blank page in your book and a big marker (preferably one that won’t bleed through onto the next page).  Write your name, a word or a statement in bigger, bolder letters that you will then doodle around.  Think about what colours to use, what thickness of pens or markers you could explore with and then just begin.  It wasn’t until I went to scan or photograph this page in my book that I discovered metallic gel pens for some of the patterns, especially the pale silver, might not have been the best choices, but I found them in a drawer and wanted to use them before they dried up completely.  Don’t obsess about pattern placement or exactness of shape.  In fact, if you find yourself getting too caught up in making things “perfect”, turn on some music or the television so that your brain has some interference.  Have fun playing with different patterns, letters or shapes until the page is full. Then stand way back and marvel how something cool came out of chaos!

If you can’t think of any patterns to start with, here are a few ideas.

This is the first pattern a teacher showed me how to do on a drawing of a basket in art class to make it look woven.  To this day, it tends to be the first doodle pattern that springs forth from my hands.

Spirals can be a magical shape.  They seem to be popping up a lot in my life right now, so I am trying to remain open to what that could mean.  Think of them as overachieving 6s or 9s...

A last little mishmash of ideas to try... now DOODLE!