One of the things that I noticed at the workshop is how hard it can be for me to do things in a different way. Sometimes it's because I can't think of a new way. I want to practice playing.
Nancy's fortune teller is helping. Repeating the back-and-forth movements takes me back to fourth grade recesses, seeing how fast we could whip through the ritual, how tiny we could make them, trying to force friends to choose certain colors, numbers, fortunes... (I keep picking #4 because I love seeing her searching bird.)
Other toys on the table- Jude's beast who wanders through rearranging hills, the Venetian paperweight for peering out of the window, and the smokey quartz that likes to catch the light, or just be held.
Recently, there was a spontaneous trip to the water. I wanted to tell the driver, "But wait! I need to stop at the house for stitching, book, knitting, pencil... anything to keep my hands and head busy, to not "waste" time just sitting!"
There was no detour to the house. I told myself it would be ok, and that I wouldn't crawl out of my skin. And it was. And I didn't. A few lovely hours were spent watching the waves, my mind drifting and floating along with them.
Yesterday I loved putting these cloths from Deb L. and Maiwa's together. Soft, thin, blue and brown. This morning, wishing for the arcs to show up better in the lower half, I started adding echoes in white stitches. The dark day was making it hard to follow the lines.
Seeing that the lines were clear as day (not this day) on the backside, I flipped it over and stitched from the back, noticing that I had to give myself a short pep talk, "It's just thread. If it doesn't work you can pull it out." It was weird, such a simple thing, and I pull out plenty of stitches all of the time. There wasn't even anything complicated about it, just a plain running stitch. Once I let go of whatever my crazy is, it was fun to let go of knowing what was happening on the other side.
Loosening. I'm going to ponder and practice the idea of it.
"Thoughts of Light"
