Saturday, January 19, 2013

Then practice some more

There's the desire to change, and there's the ability to change, and sometimes one has little to do with the other.  (Insert big sigh here.)  I do believe it is possible for people to change, to improve on our bad habits.  But if it were easy, we'd all be perfect already, wouldn't we?

The post-holiday crunch always takes me by surprise -- although no one other than me signed me up for mid-winter shows and exhibits --  and I never seem to make enough time to try out all my new ideas.  It's so much more expedient to make the same thing again.  But after a while that isn't art, it's manufacturing, which is not my goal.  Nevertheless, I've been having fun cranking out miniature vessels this week, shaped like hearts in honor of Valentine's Day coming up.  Maybe shamrocks come next?

My previously announced daily practice of reading "Art and Fear" was a bit ambitious as it turns out.  But I am managing at least weekly reading of it and still finding it thought-provoking.  Maybe some day I'll even reach the end of the book!

The other thing distracting me from felting is that I am suddenly feeling drawn back to weaving.  In December I dressed my floor loom for the first time in a year and a half and wove off a length of narrow yardage, which some day will become a vest for a dear friend.  At the moment cones and skeins and balls of yarn are scattered all over the studio, grouped in combinations that intrigue me.  I'm trying to decide which one to start with, but I'm such a color junkie that I flit from one to the next like a hummingbird drunk on nectar.  My felting table is a little island of order in the midst of all this happy chaos.  What fun!