Creativity in Theatre...

Tonight, our family went to see the production of CATS at Erin’s high school, Harrison Trimble .  For the past few weeks, Erin and I have helped paint two young men in their leotards and part of the set.  We’ve had glimpses of the many hands that go into such a big production behind the scenes, but tonight, we got to see everything come together for the Friday night show.

I was blown away!

From the amazing set to the fabulous choreography put together by one of the Grade 12 students for the entire show, I felt a warm glow of pride swell to a tidal wave of astonishment as the night unfolded.

Kids that I have seen in a classroom setting as a substitute teacher astounded me with their acting, singing and dancing prowess on the stage.  If I found it incredible to see them shine, how much more pride and wonder did their regular teachers feel, especially those who have known these students since they were the age Erin is now in Grade 9?

One of the most amazing thing about turning Creativity loose among young people is that they haven’t lost their ability to dream big, to shoot for the stars and to take on something that a group of adults might think was impossible.

Thank you, all of you CATS, for reminding me how much fun it is to watch a dream take flight!

INHALE:  What have you wanted to be a part of but held yourself back?  What dream have you tucked away on a shelf as impossible or unattainable?  In a world that places so much emphasis on “all or nothing”, perhaps we need to learn how to take those forgotten dreams down, dust them off a bit and see if there isn’t a way to turn them loose on a world that could use more wonder in it...

EXHALE:  Make plans to put one of those dreams into action by taking baby steps.  If you love to sing, is there a choir or group that you could get involved with?  If you dreamed of being an artist, is there an evening course that you could dabble in rather than jumping right to a gallery show?  This is the time of year when brochures come out for summer camps and programs, so start taking a look at the possibilities and remember that when you shoot for the stars, you might just land on the moon.

Tonight it was a Jellicle moon. Bravo cast and crew at HTHS!!

Passing Creativity On...

Yes... I did break down and buy some new wool in Geneva!

I took today “off” from teaching since Erin’s exam had been rescheduled to this morning after Friday’s snowstorm.  It was great to be in my own home, download photos and finally get to show off the results of knitting in airports.

Here are the socks I’d been meaning to finish for ages.  Getting stuck for ages in airports is a wonderful incentive, great conversation starter and even had one “lapsed knitter” thinking about checking out some of the new yarns...

I also found the circular needles for this project easy to pack.  Here is a peek at the last of several baby blankets I’ve been working  on for staff members at schools I work in who are expecting babies soon.  It is basically just a larger version of my favourite dishcloth patterns but using baby yarn instead.  It was great to work on when the kids were watching a video or while I was talking to people.

When we see someone being Creative, it can inspire us to try something ourselves.  This is how so many people learned crafts and other creative trades over the years, by watching someone else practice in front of them.

I bought a craft book about sewing for Bethany as a Christmas present that has fascinated her for weeks.  While I was away, she started one of the projects with her grandmother, but yesterday showed me a picture of some felt hearts and asked if I could help her make one.

Ah the memories!  My mom had a huge stash of felt and used to let us play with the scraps to sew into all kinds of shapes.  I took Bethany down to my felt stash and we pulled out a few colours that she liked and cut out the shapes together.  Step by step, I walked her through things as I knit beside her on the couch.  As I showed her how to do the blanket stitch about the outside edge, I had a sudden flashback to my own childhood and all of the times my mother or grandmother had shown me how to do something.

Here’s to those who help to pass Creativity on!

INHALE: The wonderful thing about the Internet is that you can find all kinds of helpful clips out there on YouTube or other websites to help you learn how to do something, but there is still something unique about sitting down with another person, especially someone more skilled in an area that you want to improve in, and learning from them.  Being shown how to do something is a very powerful way of learning that stays with us in a different way from book knowledge.  To “learn by doing” makes a skill or Creative act your own.

EXHALE: There are many skills that are becoming “lost arts” these days.  So many children don’t know how to sew a button on when it falls off clothing, sand or carve a piece of wood into a shape, cook a meal from scratch, knit, nail, crochet, saw, fix or sew.  What used to be learned from family or through earning badges is being replaced by gaming and computer skills.  There needs to be room for both in our lives.  What skills do you have, what Creative passions can you share with someone from a younger generation?  If you don’t have anyone to share with right now, think back to some of the earliest crafts you enjoyed and revisit them.  Get out some felt or popsicle sticks and just see what you can put together as you rediscover that sense of Creative Play from your childhood.

In Awe...

Every now and then, a movie comes along that makes you believe in something beyond your own reality.  The first experience I had with that was, as a child, seeing the original Star Wars movie in 1977.  I left the theater in awe and desperately wanting a lightsabre of my own!

There have been other movies where I walked out feeling that same incredible disorientation of not returning to my own reality right away... Lord of the Rings , Narnia , Terminator , the Passion of Christ  , some of the Star Trek movies and, of course, Titanic .

Seeing Avatar  today was even more profound.  I truly felt as if I had set foot on Pandora and experienced another culture, another way of looking at the world... one that was far more in harmony with their planet than ours.

This was not just a movie... it was an EPIC... and I believed!

To James Cameron , I tip my hat for the 3rd time in my life.  This movie not only pushed the boundaries of what has been possible up until now, it reminded me and scores of movie goers that the STORY matters.  Just as he used a make-believe love story to bring home the tragedy of the Titanic’s sinking in a way that moved people to the core, this time he has crafted a story of how love can trancend even species and how the greedy, human “consumer” way of putting profit above all else is NOT the best for any species or any planet.  If there is a world like Pandora out there, I hope that humans never discover it!

Like J.K Rowling , Stephenie Meyer , George Lucas , C.S. Lewis , Tolkein or any great storyteller, James Cameron has overseen something truly unique and original.  It is SO powerful when someone puts their creativity out there for the world to enjoy... it changes us on a level that lingers with us for the rest of our lives.

To the many, many talented people who worked on creating this movie to bring it to life, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.  You have reminded me of why I always wanted to draw pictures or tell stories.  It is like holding a rainbow or lightning in your hand when you see the finished project... it takes your breath away and just leaves you saying...

“WOW!”

INHALE:  I still feel out of breath from today’s experience.  When I close my eyes, I can see some of the best scenes play out against my eyelids.  I have already downloaded James Horner’s incredible soundtrack to my iPod and I can’t wait to see the film again with Nick. He had to go back to work today, but he will be my excuse to see it again at least one more time on the big screen.

EXHALE: The next time you have an idea that you are afraid to bring to life, remember that the first step in any magic, in any change, in anything becoming possible, is that you must say YES to the idea.  Then you must do all of the hard workto bring that idea to life!  Don’t be afraid of the work involved... of the sweat... of the way it will make you feel vulnerable.  You may be the only one that can bring a certain vision to life for the world to enjoy.  What dreams, stories, images have been hiding inside you, longing to be born but held prisoner by your own fears?  Writing a few of them down may be the first step in saying YES to something incredible.

Savouring Creativity and Snowstorms...

It was a WILD weekend of snow and rain and wind and flickering power and then more snow.  It is only just ending, but instead of worrying, we took it all in stride and stayed indoors.

We played games as a family, took the tree down, tidied rooms in preparation for getting back to a routine this week, made our turkey carcass into soup and I wrote up some thank you cards to the many people who helped my family while I was away at my father’s funeral.

A New Year stretches before us full of creative possibilities, but we have to look for them, embrace them and take advantage of even the smallest moments.

I also have to learn not to be such a perfectionist!  Bethany’s scarf is done and I’ll take a picture of it tomorrow as soon as my camera recharges fully.  I took it along to New Year’s Eve celebrations at a friend’s house and left it in sleep mode rather than off, so it ran down.

Erin’s scarf is on it’s 3rd try because I was trying to find a pattern for her red wool that was different from her sister’s, but Yarn Harlot’s single row scarf  has probably ruined me for most other scarf patterns. Sigh!  Finally, Erin gave me this look tonight that said “Will you just make up your mind and knit something!  School goes back on Wednesday and there is WAY too much snow out there now not to have a funky scarf!” (or at least that’s what I interpreted the look to say... it was during one of the intense battle scenes of the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie, so I can’t be sure I interpreted teenager glare right!

Mother Nature throws us all some challenges now and then.  I must admit that even though Winter can last a bit too long sometimes in my part of the world, I love the fact that snowstorms can force us to just take a break from the business of life and stay in one place.  Unlike tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes or mudslides, they aren’t that life threatening... just cold.  Maybe we need to impose that kind of escapes for ourselves even when it isn’t due to a storm.

INHALE:  I am sure that most of us now have a few new calendars hanging up in the house.  I sat down to fill our Master calendar in the kitchen with all the appointments that have been piling up on bits of paper until I hung the new one and found myself getting very tense.  So I got up and went looking for the beautiful gift my sister sent me, the Pathways to Peace calendar from Ministry of the Arts .  Instead of places to write things, there are suggestions for each day filling up the squares.  It is going to hang in my bedroom so that each day, I can look at the beautiful artwork and take those inspirational challenges or quotes with me into the day.

EXHALE:  Find a colour of pen that you like and take a look at the month that stretches now before you.  Where can you carve out some time for yourself? Time to spend with someone special? Time to indulge in a creative pastime that always seems to fall to the wayside because of chores and commitments.  THIS is the year when you need to plan moments for yourself, even 15 minutes at a time.  THIS is the year to embrace those opportunities, no matter how fleeting, whenever they present themselves. Go ahead and mark out your time now before the month fills up too quickly.  You will feel SO much better for it.  I know that I do!

A Shout Out to Incredible Creativity..

There are times when you discover something so beautiful and powerful that you just have to share it with others.  My mom was at a workshop this weekend led by Jan Richardson.  Her website and her blog offer a look into how she writes about her faith or creates powerful, beautiful images.  She has the most incredible way of putting complex issues and ideas into words, living out her beliefs  as well as inspiring others to explore and giving them ideas to try.  As a preparation for Advent, she encouraged groups of people to explore while making images that fit each of the topics out of torn paper.

Can you tell that my Mom had fun playing?

I love looking at the textures and colours that she mixed as well as the unexpected shapes and images that form when you just give yourself over to something creative.

Being given the chance to play and explore is such a gift in itself.

How can you carve out a bit of time amid the chaos of this season to be Creative?  The time will be well spent.

INHALE:  When life gets busy or emotional, we have a tendency to hide, to make excuses, to avoid putting our own needs on the “to do” list, I think that we actually make things worse.  Just as our bodies cannot go forever without rest, our spirits need Creative moments to restore them and keep them in balance.  We need to Inhale our Creativity on a daily basis during busy seasons as well as quiet ones.

EXHALE:  Almost everyone has a calendar or planning book where they keep track of their major appointments and events.  Open yours and block off 2 half hour sessions sometime in the next week where you can be creative.  Now find 3 fifteen minute blocks to look through magazines, fondle supplies, shop for ingredients or sort creative spaces.  Shorter times can be just as valuable when we work them in.  Aren’t you worth it?

Creativity in Teaching...

When I first started this journey over 2 months ago, I never dreamed the many ways in which Creativity would show itself in my life.  This Monday, I began a substitute teaching assignment to replace a teacher 3 days a week (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) from now until the Christmas break.  This offers me some predictability in my schedule and also give me some consistency in terms of the young people I am dealing with.  I will be helping a student teacher cope with the teaching load for these classes and also working with struggling learners.

Creativity has its place in Education because we don’t all learn things in the same way.  I went to a French high school in Montreal as a french immersion student and learned most of my courses in a language that wasn’t my mother tongue, so I learned a variety of ways to help myself understand.  I drew pictures, made cartoons and graphed out charts or diagrams to help things make sense.

Tomorrow, I am bringing in our play dough so that the struggling students can BUILD a cell with all of the parts in different colours and shapes of play dough.  I have also come up with a truly dorky rap song about how to learn the chain of plants from algae to bryophytes and tracheophytes (which include spore plants, gymnosperm and angiosperm). It should be interesting at least...if they don’t fall off their chairs laughing themselves silly!

Being Creative in how we teach ourselves to absorb information or learn new things can only enrich the experience...

INHALE:  The more our society advances, the more we learn how different and individual each one of us is.  We are all UNIQUE creations and yet society continues to expect us to behave “en masse” (rough translation- as a group).  Maybe being 6’5” in my bare feet allows me to balk at being fit into a cookie-cutter, one size fits all mold, but I think we do ourselves an INJUSTICE when we expect everything to only go one way.  It might be easier not to have to push the envelope, think outside the box or try new ways of doing something, but that does not mean we shouldn’t keep looking for NEW solutions to OLD problems.

EXHALE: Do you know what your own learning style is (or styles are)?  Do you learn best when you hear something explained? See it done? Try it yourself? Take something apart and put it back together?  Spend a few minutes thinking about this and doodle, write or jot down ideas about what WORKS for YOU in your notebook.  The more you know what works best for you, the easier it is to be Creative within your own style of learning and share that with others to help them learn as well.  Just because something works for someone else, does not mean it has to work for you, so keep searching until you find the key to your own puzzles. That way someday, you can help someone else unlock theirs!

Improvisational Creativity...

I'm home from a wonderful weekend of fellowship and cross stitch, but I did learn that sometimes, you have to improvise your creativity when you don't have all the pieces you need.

I’d fully intended to give away the Perforated Paper Castle ornament that I taught in Toronto, but the more people asked to see it and exclaimed over it, the more I decided it needed to stay on MY tree.  Stitchers will be able to get that pattern after December 1st on PatternsOnline.com , so hang in there!  Luckily, Jeannie had brought along some colours of perforated paper for me to play with.  Unfortunately, after a full day of teaching, picking up Bethany from volleyball practice, Nick from school and then rushing to get to retreat in bad weather, I forgot the sheets of blank graph paper that I usually bring along with me...

So I made my own.

Next year, I will remember to put that on my packing list, slow down and check what I have before I race out the door or end up bringing an entire ream of graph paper along just so I don't have to make grids like this again. At least I know I can make one without a computer!

FIrst, I sketched out the letters for JOY and stitched them in overdyed threads on the white paper.  Then, I flipped the paper over, borrowed a pencil from Mom and began to figure out how to create a geometric snowflake shape around the word.

I am not the most math gifted person.  There was much erasing and slightly colourful language used when I realized that I couldn't get things to work out PERFECTLY... but I took my own posts about perfection to heart.  So what if I had to fudge things a tiny bit near the end... I know where the glitch is, but I'm not going to point it out!   Eventually,  the snowflake shape was ready for me to cut out.  I LOVE perforated paper!!!

When I flipped the design to the right side, I discovered that one section had a bit too much white space for my liking, so I added a holly button from the shop.  I also thought it might be nice to add some braid and beads to catch the lights from the tree.

Then I made my own cording for the top then hung it on the tree for the ornament exchange!!

INHALE:  If we wait for the perfect moment when we have all our supplies around us and everything is just right, then we will have far less moments in which to be creative.  This is what I was trying to find more of during my year long adventure... ways of just jumping into the deep end and mucking about to see what I could come up with.  No, I didn't have everything I needed or hoped to have with me, but the Creativity didn't need them.  It just needed me to be willing to try and work with what I had on hand.  How many missed moments go by because we tell ourselves "Wait, I'm not ready!!" ??

EXHALE: Find another crafter that you trust.  Decide to try this challenge together and see what happens.  Set a date when the two of you can get together for some uninterrupted creativity time.  Mark it on the calendar and then get ready with this homework before hand.  Each of you should choose a variety of interesting craft items or items related to the hobby you both enjoy.  Limit it to less than 10.  Put the items in a bag that you cannot see through.  When you get together, exchange bags, settle down and see what each of you can create with these mystery items within an agreed upon time limit.  It doesn't have to be perfect or beautiful or even something you keep.  You just have to be wiling to try... and laugh... and enjoy each other's company while you see where your Creativity takes you.  I can't wait to see what some of you come up with!

Creative Retreating...

I am getting excited!  Despite the forecast calling for a bit of snow overnight, I am mostly packed for the cross stitch retreat up at Camp Wildwood this weekend.  I can’t wait to sneak off with my Mom for a weekend of roughing it and also getting away from it all.

Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me. My laptop is staying behind but the camera is coming.

You see, for most of my cross stitch designing career, this is the weekend that I get to go away and NOT be a designer.  Ok... you can’t really shut that off, but I get to go stitch OTHER people’s designs, hang with stitchers who really know me or just PLAY to invent a one of a kind ornament for the exchange.  I can nap if I want to, go for a walk if I want to, journal and sketch or just sit and stitch for ages with some of the nicest people on this planet in a beautiful main lodge while someone else cooks all my meals.

Can you see why I am getting excited?

No phone

No kids

No husband

No laundry

No computer

Ahhhhhhh!

I’ve packed WAY more projects than I will have time to get to and I always get a bit cold because I pull my mattress down onto the floor. At 6’5” in my bare feet, WAY too much of me hangs over the edge on their bunk beds!

Wheee! 24 hours from now, I will be away from it all for the weekend.  I can’t wait!

INHALE:  Retreats are great if you can find one to attend.  It can be hard to put yourself first and leave other responsibilities behind, but we usually come back from such a retreat feeling SO recharged and reinspired. Don’t be afraid to be a little selfish now and then.  If you always put yourself last and do for others, you forget to take care of the person in whose skin you actually live!  Love yourself enough to make time for yourself!

EXHALE:  Maybe you can’t take part in a retreat, but you can still block time off for yourself. Open a blank page in your book and write down something you’d love to do if you had each of the following time segments available.  Now pick ONE of them that you would MOST like to do and schedule it into your calendar sometime in the next 2 weeks. Go ahead... you deserve it!

If I had an extra 30 minutes to myself, I would:

If I had an extra hour to myself, I would:

If I had an extra 3 hours to myself, I would:

If I had an extra morning to myself, I would:

If I had an extra day to myself, I would:

If I had an extra weekend to myself, I would:

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.

Freaking Non-Knitters Out...

Yesterday’s Inhale and Exhale wouldn’t post properly, so I will try to add them in a post edit. There are days when it won’t let me make the icons as small as usual as well, so I am learning to go with the flow and tame my inner perfectionist.

I also posted about the two scarves that I’ve been working on since acquiring new wool in Toronto.  If I hadn’t been teaching classes there and staying up so late at night, but the weather is getting cold since my return home as well, so the urge to knit new things for my neck is just too strong to ignore.

When I worked on this one in the staff room at lunch yesterday, I had several people come over to feel the combination of the two yarns put together.  I also had a few teachers ask me how many things I knit in a year.  This might be because I’ve already knit 3 baby blankets for half of the staff that is pregnant and they’ve also seen me working on my socks. I don’t think I’ve ever kept track of the number of projects I knit in a year.

I also took out the scarf during Guided Study period.  This is a half an hour period for enrichment, extra help or catching up on homework that changes every 5 or 6 weeks as the marks are handed in by teachers and students who are struggling or excelling are identified.  I’d planned to read a bit since every student who doesn’t have work to do is encouraged to bring a book, but I realized that I couldn’t keep an eye on the entire class that way. Hence the knitting.  I knit by feel.  I’ve always been able to handle basic knitting stitches (anything short of cables and patterns with lots of counting) without looking since University when I would knit and study or knit and watch TV.  This has come in handy when I’ve had to divide movies into which ones I need to watch (knit) and which ones I can listen to while glancing up now and then (stitch).  It also keeps me from being a nagging passenger on long car trips and I can knit in the dark if I have to talk to Nick to keep him awake at the end of a long journey.  It is also really good for freaking high school kids out.

I began to knit while the kids were working on their projects.  Every now, one of the teenagers would glance up and find me watching them while my hands knit.  Whispers began, nudges as I continued to glance around the room surveying them.  Finally, one brave girl put up her hand and spoke. “Excuse me, miss, are you doing that without looking down at it?”  I just grinned and nodded.

Who says knitting is boring!

Even when you are fairly well practiced at a skill, you can also continue to learn and be inspired.  While I was up in Toronto, I found this wool for Bethany that brings a  hint of orange into the blue, white and pink mix.  The soft colours will be perfect for her and they also tied in nicely with my “use more of the colour you like the least” challenge.  By now, I am actually growing a little fond of orange.

While I was in Toronto, Jocelyne was knitting a cool scarf pattern before one of the classes.  When I commented on the pattern, she showed me how it was a  short pattern that you repeated on EVERY row until you either ran out of wool or got sick of knitting the scarf.   You can find it on Yarn Harlot’s website here .  This is what mine is starting to look like:

Go ahead... practice being Creative in public and see what happens!

INHALE:  Being Creative in new ways or learning a new variation of a skill we already posses can bring a deep enjoyment into our lives along with an excitement that keeps us hooked.  When things become routine and predictable, they can also become boring.  I don’t ever want what I create to bore me. If it does, then it’s time to find something new to try.

EXHALE:  Which hobby, craft or skill do you feel most confident in?  It may be one that you have practiced for a long time or one in which you developed a sense of mastery quickly.  In order to keep this well-practiced skill from growing stale, try one of the following.  Try starting something that you have never attempted before (a new style of pattern, a new stitch, a different technique).  Visit a craft store, website or guild meeting where you could learn from someone else who practices this skill and get inspired.  Look through books and dare to try something you think might be too hard for you.  When we push ourselves, we can grow.  Or, find something new that absolutely delights you, as I did with this scarf pattern and savour the new experience.

Surrounded by Creativity...

It’s been hard to blog, even though I had to add Internet access to the room in order to get Teresa’s files up here safely and ask her the occasional question as she gets over the nasty flu that kept her from coming to the show in Toronto.  While everyone REALLY misses her, they are a wee bit glad that she kept her germs at her house!

I’d forgotten what a huge city Toronto is compared to Moncton.  I’d also forgotten just how small the CN tower makes me feel!

This festival is the most INCREDIBLE experience because you are literally surrounded by Creativity for the whole day!  I’ve seen the most amazing beaded, knitted and quilted outfits that I’ve been longing to go up and touch, half drying or half completed class projects being carried carefully by their creators as they head to their next adventure and enough craft supplies to send me into fits of “I need to have that!”  I’ve been good actually... I’ve also been teaching most of the time!  The only purchase that I did justify yesterday between classes and my lecture was this yarn.  It’s been REALLY cold here in Toronto and the taxi showed up just early enough in Moncton that I forgot to grab one of my scarves to bring with me. Yeah... that sounds like a convincing excuse...

Despite having to juggle things, change things and adapt, all of my presentations have gone well so far.  I’ve spent time with amazing, creative people and also had fun just playing.  Yesterday was the joint “Tiny Dragon” class where Teresa and I both designed little dragons over one to “torture” them with. 

One creative stitcher even brought along some of my Gemstone Dragons  that she’d stitched OVER ONE  backstitched with BLENDING FILAMENT!

They looked amazing and I felt so honoured that someone loved those dragons enough to work on them that small.

I did a lecture called The Perfection Trap that reminded stitchers not to point out all their mistakes to others or strive for impossible standards and then went on to teach my Hoarding Your Creativity class.  What fun we had!! I’d made a bunch of Inspiration tags before leaving home with the ShrinkyDinks film. If you haven’t played with it recently, go find some at a craft store and tuck it away for a day when you want to play.

That was really what made the last class go by so quickly.  I was inspiring them and sharing why it was important for Creative people to have a book or box in which to hoard things they find that spark their creativity from quotes to scraps, images to ideas and photos to textures.  Everyone got so caught up in playing on that deep level that children know instinctively that the time just flew by. Before we knew it, we were cleaning up and I was heading back to the hotel to snip more floss and chase beads around on the carpet. That’s another entry.

INHALE:  We sometimes forget how important it is to surround ourselves with other creative people.  They may not all create the same things that you do, the same types of objects or crafts that you like, but when you are with other creative people, it recharges you in a special way because you don’t feel as alone.  We cannot create in a vacuum.

EXHALE: Whatever craft you love most or whatever creativity you have just discovered, find out if there is a gathering, a special day, a class or a retreat that you could attend in the next few months so that you could take a large block of time to spend not only doing something creative but also surround yourself with other creative people.  I know that even though this festival can be tiring, it is also way more INSPIRING!!