Too Much Of A Good Thing?

Last week I taught at an ginormous beading conference, Bead & Button, and my head is still swirling with great ideas. I have a whole pile of index cards with notes and sketches and ideas I can't wait to explore. So the timing was perfect for me to read Susan Murphy's post on How To Turn Idea Overload Into Idea Fuel over at Thought Wrestling. My thanks to Liz Massey at Creative Liberty for the post that led me there.

Like Susan, I need to lay things out in front of me to get a more realistic picture of what's going on in my head, when there's so much going on in my head. I know I can't do it all, so I have to figure out where to start, and then do it. When there's too much of a good thing, as Susan suggests, you have to let the cream rise to the top.
 In certain situations, though, I firmly reject this sensible course of action and channel my inner Mae West: Too much of a good thing can be wonderful. That's what I was thinking yesterday when I finally had a chance to sort through goodies my sister-in-law brought me two weeks ago. These came from her bff Annette -- one of the few people who has known my husband long enough to have seen his face without a beard (I never have, and we've been married 20 years).

While cleaning out the belongings of an elderly relative of Annette's, she and Jean started a bag for me. They  ended up with four overstuffed trash can liners full of yarn and crochet cotton, small pieces of fabric cut for forgotten quilt projects, balls of fabric strips sewn together. And wonderful UFOs -- pieced quilt squares and crochet projects, mostly

As a person who generates plenty of her own UFOs, why would I take on someone else's? Well, I won't feel guilty about not finishing them the way they were intended. For example, one bit of piecing I plan to send through the washer to fray the raw edges to make a scarf. Since I do not piece, this is an opportunity I would never have otherwise. I think another couple of quilt blocks will become pockets on a pair of cargo pants. I'll take a few pieces with me for the teens to play with at a fiber camp I'm teaching at this summer. But I'm keeping all the pink crochet roses for myself.

The bonus in the bag was an envelope that holds a few grains of rice thrown at newlyweds half a century ago. Throwing rice (or birdseed) at a wedding symbolizes the guests' wishes for prosperity for the couple. When it comes to good wishes, there can never be too much of a good thing, or too long to treasure the memory of it.

Farmville Collage Exercise

This creativity exercise has nothing to do with the social gaming phenomenon your friends are all playing on Facebook. It's based on a watercolor landscape lesson plan posted by Kathy Barbro at Art Projects for Kids. To make a collage landscape that suggests a country road lined by farm fields, you'll need:

• A magazine from the recycle bin
• Scissors
• Glue Stick
• White paper
• 15 minutes

Buy Seeds. Set the timer for 3 minutes. In that time, find and tear out 10 pages with large blocks of color from an old magazine -- the "seeds" from which your collage will grow. You're not looking for images -- just areas of color. (Have I mentioned that I get lots of great magazines for free from the Share Table at our public library?) Reset the timer for 12 minutes as a reminder that you want to complete the exercise quickly and not overthink anything.

Buy Fertilizer. Constraint is a natural fertilizer for creativity. Start by setting aside two pages with full-size pictures to use for the sky and the road. Stack the rest of the pages. Holding the stack so you can only see the top sheet, cut off the top third of all the pages. You'll only use the tops in the collage.

Plow. Use the two pages you set aside earlier to "plow" the white paper, dividing to represent your farm. Cut one page to represent the sky (it doesn't have to be blue) and position it near the top of the page to establish a horizon line. From the other page, cut a long, skinny triangle to represent a road that disappears into the distance. Glue these two elements to the white paper.

Plant. Using the tops of the pages you cut off earlier, plant "fields" to line the road on both sides. Glue these elements to the white paper. A dab will do.

Mortgage. Build a house at the end of the road, using scraps of paper left over from planting your fields. Glue this in place.

Established 2010. Give this composition a name. You don't have to put up a mailbox or sign with the name of this homestead, but complete the exercise by giving the piece a title.

Glean. There's nothing more uncertain than farming, unless maybe it's collage. Because this is a creativity warm-up exercise, you work quickly and with no expectation that the end result will become anything more than a good feeling. But then again, you may be able to harvest something from this exercise to use in a project. I scanned my collage, cropped it, used imaging software to drop color into the white areas, made a few more adjustments, and printed the image to inkjet silk. I'm calling this piece "Not In Kansas," because of a dark column that appeared in the sky. It will look more like a twister after I embroider, bead and quilt the piece.

Is there a creativity exercise that blows you away? 

Spring Cleaning In The Studio

Yesterday I did a bit of spring cleaning in the studio. Today I've been reflecting on advice I've given to many students over the years.

"You have to make a lot of stuff."

This is part of the sermon on building fluency with the materials, finding your voice, yadda yadda yadda.

Well, I practice what I preach, and I've got a whole lot of stuff. Yesterday I started looking through several boxes of samples for classes I don't expect to teach again. I need to clear some things out to make room for more samples for classes I am teaching now and ones I'm developing for the future.

What to do with all this stuff? I have plenty of other samples that more than adequately illustrate possibilities and the evolution of ideas. I don't need to keep all of this. So I started sorting it into piles.

Gifts. There are a few things I know I can give as gifts soon enough that I'll actually remember I have them stashed away to give as gifts. This wasn't a huge pile, though, because I enjoy making gifts that are really personalized.

Donations. Maybe I'm naive on this point, but I want donations to represent current work or new ideas I'm exploring. Still, I found something to donate to an event next year. It will be part of the award given for an exhibit piece made with recycled materials. Must remember what I'm donating and where I'm stashing it.

Recycle. I found a few pieces I could recycle into something for a gift or harvest for materials.

Archive. There are pieces I want to hold onto just the way they are. Some may inspire future efforts. Some will remind me not to waste more time on that idea.

That left me with a large pile of stuff I don't want to keep, give, recycle or archive. And a dilemma. This stuff doesn't represent the work I do now. But it represents hundreds of hours of time. I have no desire to go to the work of photographing it, writing descriptions, pricing it, and trying to sell it online. But it represents hundreds of hours of time. I don't want to sell it at a garage sale or donate it to a thrift shop. Did I mention it represents hundreds of hours of time?

So I slept on it last night and here's what I decided. I'm packing  it up and taking it with me to a gathering at the Amana Colonies in Iowa later this month. The friend who organizes the Festival of American Basketry at Amana is hosting an event that will include demonstrations and sales to the public as well as time to share and connect among participants. I always love going to Amana, and I love this group of people. They'll understand what I'm about to do.

I'm not going to package or tag stuff (there's at least 5 hours saved). I'm going to put it on a table with a sign that says, "Pay what it's worth to you."

I don't think this will have a negative impact other people's sales at the event. In the unlikely event that there's someone selling things very similar to mine, I'll remove mine until theirs are sold. And if there's anyone at all who's uncomfortable with this scheme, I'll remove it all and just demonstrate and sell books like I planned.

But if it works, some of this stuff will have new homes by the end of the month, I'll have freed up some real estate in the studio, and maybe, just maybe, I'll have some income in a month with no teaching gigs scheduled.

What do you think. Am I nuts?

She Shoots, She Scores

A week ago, my garden was covered with snow. Today it was 60 degrees. Bill saw a robin and a red-winged blackbird. Yesterday I heard a killdeer. We almost always get snow again in late March (and sometimes April, and occasionally in May). And I can't put tender things out without frost protection until at least after Memorial Day (last year it frosted on June 3). But in my head, I've moved into spring mode. I'm not wearing long underwear today. Not all March Madness is about basketball.

But before I move on to the willow harvest and other rites of spring, I wanted to share one last blast from winter. If you read my other blog, Two Red Threads, you're probably familiar with my affection for Silly String. This winter, I used it as a resist element in snow dyeing and on a spray-painted T-shirt. My final cabin-fever-induced application of Silly String went like this:

• Collage. Working quickly, I made a big collage with paper torn from recycled magazine pages and a glue stick. It's one of my standard creativity exercises.
• Shoot String. Then I shot the collage with Silly String. Silly String Max, to be precise. That's the gray line element. If you need a soundtrack for this, go for Bob Marley.
• Shoot Photo. I took several photographs of the collage (overall and detail shots) with my digital camera and uploaded them to my computer. Then I pasted images into a document.
• Print. I printed the image to translucent inkjet heat transfer paper.
• Transfer. Using a hot, dry iron (no steam), I transferred the image to fabric recycled from a no-longer-white T-shirt that Bill will never again be seen wearing in public.
• Layer. I layered the transfer with fabric reclaimed from other T-shirts that have seen better days.
• Stitch. During American Idol one night, I stitched the layers together and sewed on a couple of snaps to make an abstract cuff-style bracelet.

I shoot, I stitch, I score a fun piece of wearable art: That's my way of dealing with March Madness: What's yours?

Dumpster Diving -- Global Edition

For the record, it's not true that for fun, rural folks all go to the dump to watch the bears. Trash is now handled in ways less attractive to the local Yogis at what is now technically known as the "transfer station" but popularly called "the exchange." You never know what you'll find there. Or in other dumpsters, for that matter.

One of my superpowers is D-ray vision, which lets me scan the contents of trash containers at conferences and rescue perfectly good materials. I also try to pass materials along to people who can use what I can't, or what I can't reasonably transport home.

In that spirit, I'm passing along three links today: One for inspiration, one for opportunity, and one to maybe spark an idea.

Inspiration
Mr. X Stitch just posted a great story about the work of Frederique Morrell, a French couple who give vintage materials new life in their artwork and home decor products. I can only hope that the cross-stitch project I began in 1975 and sold unfinished at a garage sale 25 years later should be put to such use.

Opportunity
Our neighbors up the road own The Hammock Shop, where they make and sell fabric hammocks in a beautiful array of amazing fabrics. Most of those fabrics were originally designed to be used in high-end commercial upholstery.

Recently, Shawn and Stephanie donated a whole trailer full of remnants to the local thrift shop. When a roll gets under 2 yards, it isn't enough to make a hammock or a blanket. They just don't have the space to store what they can't expect to use soon. So Shawn contacted me earlier this week with the kind of offer you can't refuse.

But I did. I (gulp) don't have room for it. Or an immediate use, either.

Maybe you do? If so, let me introduce you to my neighbors...

A Spark
One last introduction. Recently I read about a program in California called Trash 4 Teaching. Their mission is minimizing waste, maximizing education, and bridging the gap between manufacturing and the public schools. Here's the best part:

Use of our unique materials encourages critical thinking and fuels the imagination by challenging children and teachers to find creative applications for non-traditional objects.

So there you have it -- a quick dip in dumpster pools from France to Langlade to LA. Refreshing.