4 posts tagged “inspiration”

HyDrive at the Tin Shed

can you blame me?

I spent last night in a garden on a warm, sunny Portland late afternoon (yeah, those are rare around here right now) hanging out with my favorite new local band, HyDrive. Apparently they were planning to record yesterday until everyone woke up to the sun shining - instead, they decided to find somewhere great to do a last minute show and it just so happens, Tin Shed has happy hour ALL DAY on Sunday. Lord help us.

I've got such a creative group of friends I'm running into the same problem I had when I was here before - everyone's got something going on that I'd like to support and in the meantime, I forget that I'm here to do that, too.

I've been working a lot, too, and gettin' in some good loving but I let my own self go for a bit - yesterday I ran home and blitzkreiged my room, which had turned into an unbelievable disaster - I had an epic goodwill score earlier that week, which turned into basically a giant pile I didn't address due to busyness (my life last week involved a lot of running home, grabbing a shower, and running back out - everything, sadly, got neglected - not least my yoga practice).

Italian leather boots

On a bright note - among a million other things I scored these amazing Italian leather boots in just my size - it amazes me that someone would want to hand these off - the leather on the boot leg is the softest, butteriest stuff ever - feels like kid skin! I probably paid about a dollar for these.

Because of all the chaos, I guess, I've been completely uninspired to make much - I've been sneaking some knitting in here and there but the jewelry hasn't been coming to me at all. When I finally get a chance to sit down alone really all I want to do is pick up the needles and get these socks done for mom on mother's day. Sit, be alone, watch a movie and knit. And to think I complained about a lonely winter...

The fortunate thing is that I realize this sort of thing happens to me periodically, and when it ends a whole new round of inspiration will kick in. Still, it's kind of a bummer - i was going pretty strong this winter but with no new product, well, that means several things, including one very important one: without new product, there probably won't be any new sales.

I guess I can look at this positively and accept it as a break. Because I need one.

HerbanDevi yoga pants

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In the meantime I discovered yet a new Etsy shop that I absolutely love this morning - meet HerbanDevi, who makes amazing clothing for girls like me - you can yoga in 'em, dance in 'em, or go out in 'em. And they're ecologically sound, too.

I'd be right into these pants were I not a financial disaster right now - perhaps the biggest reason I can't seem to create anything is that I'm out of most of my silver sheet and wire - and I can't afford to buy anymore at the moment, since I had to spend my most recent Etsy income on a new digital camera.

Love how that works, huh?

I've been temping. It's only been 4 days, but the step on my soul is hard - my biorhythm doesn't involve a 6am wake-up time, usually. my soul hates offices and "business casual" and suddenly I am surrounded by commuters from the suburbs, people who live DRASTICALLY different lives than I. I don't so much mind the bus though, generally, as it's giving me time to sit, knit and meditate.

Scrapz mini pendant

I am, however, searching for my creativity in all of this - it comes in spurts, this I know, just like my shop sales, but I seem to have lost both for a second. I've finished up the last few custom jobs and gotten all my current orders out into the world and now... there's this lull, and once again, it's time to pay rent. seems like it was just yesterday. Too, I suffer a new detriment - i've dropped my digital camera into the ocean. I use my camera regularly to photograph product and thus, generate income so there's a bit of a catch-22 scenario now taking place. Might be time for you to get that SCRAPZ pendant you've been wanting!

Yemaya expects her thanks and I suppose mine wasn't good enough, long enough, or strong enough yesterday. I drove out to the Oregon coast and let the shock of a blizzard in spring, the sound of the waves, the infinity of the horizon, lull me back into the bigger picture.  On the way home I hit a patch of black ice. My life did flash before my eyes but soon enough I was sitting in a snow drift off the side of the road and shortly thereafter that, someone else towed me back out onto the road. There was no damage to me, my car or my friend, but i drove 30mph in 4WD for a while until we hit the suburbs. I was never so happy to see urban sprawl.

Today is my day of rest, my day of refusal to everyone but myself. There was a time when I believed moving to Portland, Oregon from New York City would clear my life of the 'distractions' that kept me from achieving my own personal goals. That never worked out - this is a vibrant city despite its much smaller size and alarmingly random weather and there is always something to do - I spread myself a bit too thin this past week and started suffering the consequences.

I do believe it's time to clean and clear my space and hope for the best. time to pray.  Tonight it's going to be an early one so I can start the 6am routine all over again tomorrow - pathetically enough, I am a single woman who's looking forward to solo time and an early bedtime tonight. Yes, tonight, I am having a date with myself. Tonight it's me, my pillows, and a movie, and those damned yoga socks I've been working on for a month.

Zitron Trekking Pro Natura 1601

As for those things, after frogging and reknitting the instep at least six times I think i've finally jumped the hurdle pattern-wise (though I'll have to frog and reknit the instep yet again to find out). I'm both loving and hating the challenge - Mac'N'Me makes beautiful patterns though I've scribbled all over mine in hopes that I'll remember all the stuff I had to figure out on my own when I eventually get around to the second sock.

For now, however, I'll have to put this project aside to get started on a Mother's Day gift. Since it apparently takes me over a month to knit a pair of socks, I should get started on hers, using some incredible yarn I got off another knitter on Ravelry for half the price. I'd first discovered Zitron Trekking Pro Natura at Twisted, a yarn shop here in Portland that has quite the focus on socks and sock yarn. I'm not sure why anyone would want to give this yarn up, especially since I discovered moments ago that the colorway I've chosen for Mom's socks is named "New Mexico". Jeez, I hope I don't have a hard time giving them to her.

I've been spending a lot of time recently evaluating where my time is best spent on the internet - which methods are effective for me as far as introducing myself to the people who will appreciate what I do (thank you!), and which methods are more of a waste of my time. With every single thing turning itself into some sort of social network these days, it's easy to lose hours on the internet, and that's no bueno unless it's doing you some real, actual good. Otherwise, you're losing time, and time is such a valuable thing. Rather than waste it or lose it, in my opinion it's time best spent elsewhere - like outside.

I love Vox for the community aspects, but the design restrictions and lack of stats are actually detrimental, making it difficult to evaluate which areas of the internet best serve me by bringing the most attention to my efforts in the shortest period of time.  Etsy also suffers this detriment - sellers cannot view stats or easily and privately figure out where our customers are coming from, generally.

And as much as i love the internet, i want it to absorb the least of my creative time as pertains to faerwear, or to yarn, or even to my writing (because the internet itself is such a distraction to my writing process - as ADHD as I am, i get sidetracked easily - one step off to fact check on wikipedia, and it's all over with. Very soon after that I will be cleaning my closet).

Two things that I have noticed have brought me an increased amount of internet presence recently are BlogCatalog and The Talent Database. BlogCatalog, however, is almost overwhelming to me (I'm actually having the same dilemma in my personal life as well, as I don't know if I can handle any more social networking, as it's frankly become a distraction from the real purpose of my presence here - to make a living creatively, by doing things I'm good at. Knowing where my time best spent is part of that).

So far, I've rather liked the new and varied network I'm becoming a part of at The Talent Database, and it is fairly simple. Much more simple than BlogCatalog. I've been adding one or two new items daily to my portfolio there, though not spending an inordinate amount of time there otherwise  (as well, I might eventually have to divide this into two profiles and showcase my writing and jewelry design separately).

In the meantime I am starting a one month long temp assignment tomorrow - a couple of regular paychecks to take the sting out for a second. It's necessary, though I'm not looking forward to an 8am-5pm schedule as my own personal biorhythms don't quite match up to that sort of early morning regularity but it's not forever, and I've scored a new and far more interesting gig after that.

After this temp job ends, I'll be helping the author of this book to the left with distribution, getting it into libraries and onto bookshelves of appropriate stores. It will be a lot of fun, I think, and I will be learning how to do this. I'd say that at this current point in my life these is a very, very important thing to be learning. 

I'm pretty psyched, and in the meantime I'm just going to suck it up and be thankful. By the way, do you think a temp in a business casual environment can get away with wearing a nice, new, denim skirt with black tights and a black sweater? I have a feeling I'm going to have to stretch the limits here.

Yoga Socks

I have stacked my iPod up with a bunch of new music and meditation mp3s, i have a portable knitting project (yes, I'm still working on the same Yoga Sock (yes, SOCK, as in NUMBER ONE and due to actually needing a pair of these i cut up some old sweat socks to stand in, and I'm at a complicated hump I really should pass through before I try and knit on a bus).  Now, too, I have this book to read, which is presented from a down-to-earth, Jungian, Taoist perspective I wholeheartedly relate to (much as I enjoy blaming almost anything otherworldly on faeries). The author, Paul O'Brien, is an i Ching expert and is creator of the website Tarot.com (it has since been sold). The book discusses both tarot and the i Ching as well as numerology, astrology, and runes and presents divination not as a method for predicting the future but for tapping into our deeper selves and our intuition to define the now and future for ourselves by using these ancient and thought-provoking tools.

faerwear Quartz Pendulum

Speaking of tools, here's my personal favorite method of "divination", though I mostly use it to determine chakra  and other body-energetic activity and not so much decision-making or consideration-weighing. I just made this pendulum from a rutilated quartz bead I have been carrying around for a couple of years. It's the only bead I have like it and once the pendulum was completed I resonated with it pretty strongly, so once again I've put off offering them in my Etsy store  (in the meantime, as I haven't been able to get an order together for a local shop and now don't have the time, I put all my woven and stone clusters back up for the time, too).

Anyway, I'm thrilled that I'll soon be doing some work for a foundation whose mission it is to, in part, "research ancient spiritual traditions worldwide; teach people and institutions how to make better decisions by developing intuition; promote practical spiritual systems that help people attract and manifest their heart's desires that are in alignment with the collective Good; and to support the cultivation of wisdom toward making better personal and institutional choices."

I can so absolutely champion that!