This past weekend was full of fiber, shopping, and pudding wrestling. Seriously. And not all at once.

We were in Topeka, Kansas for a show J was doing at the Static Bar — this little club tucked next to a bowling alley and a strip club. Small, industrial, and full of insanity, just how I like it. Show went well, J managed to not kill himself yet again (despite jumping on broken glass, laying on beds of swords, and letting people staplegun dollar bills to him like a human tip jar), and he was rushed offstage after his last performance so they could fill a baby pool with pudding and let girls dressed in catholic schoolgirl uniforms wrestle in it.

I swear, people, you can’t make this stuff up.

In the off-hours, we got to Lawrence, KS, to get some shopping in. And this little baby (pictured above) came home with me. It’s a Strauch drum carder, for the copious amounts of fiber that lives at my house. I’ve been using a loaner from my spinning guild that’s from right around the turn of the century (okay, not quite THAT old, but definitely OLD), and while it limped along okay, it couldn’t handle the thinner, finer fibers like the angora that I’ve had in boxes awaiting some lovin’. This little guy can handle angora like a pro, and I looove it. Best money I’ve spent in a long time.

In fact, there are about a dozen spinning batts over at the lime & violet etsy store right now, as a result.

Speaking of fiber and the copious amounts of it, my Mission for this week (and possibly next) is to make this go away:

This is one side of the fiberwall. Those boxes are pretty much full of it. And if that was all, I might not feel so overwhelmed, but noooo. We also have this:

Which is just insane.

Wish me luck, I’m goin’ in. Hopefully, my little Strauch won’t revolt and go back to the store without me in protest.

It’s been a busy day today. I finished the cabinets, moved on to carding some of the wool that’s waiting (see below), and did my art for the day…

Sometimes, the process starts with an idea. Other times, it’s an image and it grows from there. Tonight’s was one of the latter, and as I sometimes am at the end of one of those pieces, I’m left wondering but what does it mean?

All art comes from somewhere in your head. Somewhere in there, in the twisty-turney passageways of your mind, there’s something speaking. Unfortunately, your brain seems to use its own code at times, and your conscious mind just sits back and blinks, wondering. (Don’t believe me? Ever had a dream where you’re caring for a baby or something and it suddenly turns into a turnip or a lug nut or some crazy thing? Same situation.)

My brain’s holding onto this one right now. Speaking in twin-speak to its other hemisphere, leaving me out here looking at this piece wondering what it’s saying, not just about itself, but about me.

I’ll know when I’ve lived the answer, defined the words.

In the meantime, I’m carding batts:

And those, thankfully, make sense.

While I’ve been doing this art-a-day thing, I’ve still been doing my big spring clear-out. This past mission was my fabric (etc.) cabinets, and it was a big’un. (There are pictures of how it turned out in my flickr set — just click on the photo above to get there.)

This part, though, is my absolute favorite. I picked up these basket-boxes at Cost Plus, and figured I’d find a way to label them somehow. Those shelves had been overrun with small shipping and sewing items, and it made things really hard to find, so labelling was a must.

I’d picked up these little napkin-holder/place-card things at Crate & Barrel once, and gave a few sets away for wedding and new house presents. I had this set left, though, and happened upon it while cleaning out the clutter in the cabinets. It dawned on me that I could totally use them for labels — just attach them to the baskets and write on there what was inside. That way, if it ever changes, I can just erase ‘em and write on the new contents.

It’s amazing how the smallest details can be your favorite things. I spent about a zillion hours (okay, more like five or six) folding the fabrics and stacking them neatly in the right cabinet (prompting me, by the way, to make the decision only to buy 1+ yard cuts of things from now on — I have fat quarters coming out my EARS.), but it’s these little chalkboard labels that are bringing me the most joy. I can’t help but grin when I see them.

Creativity in everyday life makes everything better.

I always have this feeling that I’m being watched. Not in the weird, creepy, stalker-sense. But in that On Display kind of way, where someone, somewhere, might be seeing everything I do.

I know precisely when this neurosis started, too. Back in the kindergarten bible study indoctrination when they lured you in with Jesus Cake, one of the teachers said we had to be good, because God was watching us all the time.

I. freaked. out. Wouldn’t pee for something like two days, until my parents had the teacher call to tell me that no, God didn’t watch you in the bathroom.

To this day, I go into the bathroom if I want to be alone. And it’s why I get really annoyed when anyone interrupts me while I’m showering or just laying on the floor reading a book — because it’s the ONLY place that nobody can see me.

And, of course, to my adult mind, that’s all just a little bit silly. But when you’re five, and hopped up on cake and kool-aid, and you’re completely freaked out by the fact that someone is always watching you…well, it carries for a while.

I’d like to think, these days, that God politely averts his eyes. But that might be the cake talking.

And that’s not where I was really going with all of this explanation, since I’m not really that worried about the guy in the sky being concerned with how long my showers are, but it’s funny where free-association will take you.

I’ll just let you pick your own meaning for this one.

Maybe I should fly away home…

I can’t tell you how many times a day I feel like this little metal bird.

I drove to the store today to get a new scanner (the old one keeled over and had had enough, choking its last breath in pink lines and fuzz instead of actual scans of things), and just looking around, knowing that nowhere in a zillion miles or so were there actual mountains…it was about enough to make me crawl out of my skin. Shed it and find some wings, so to speak.

Just wings enough to fly away home.

Soon, I keep telling myself. Soon.

After the other day’s re-finding of the art-a-day pages from the old book I gessoed over, I had the thought that maybe I should do something like that again, just to get myself back in the swing of creating something visual and non-yarn-related every day. I’ve been so disconnected from that part of myself for so long that it almost feels, just thinking about it, like I’m stretching muscles that are atrophied and stiff. Like my brain SHOULD be able to “go there”, but isn’t able to, for one reason or another.

I got out an old Reader’s Digest Condensed volume that I bought because I liked its cover. Ripped out thirty pages. Gessoed over the text and left the edges where they were.

Like riding a bike, they say. Even if you haven’t done it in a long time, you’ll remember, in your muscles, when the time comes to pedal. I put brush to paper, and it was like that whole two years of occasional journal entries and the odd drawing here and there just disappeared, and there it was: the Flow came back, naturally.

This was the result tonight. I’m planning on doing seven a week, like before, and popping them on the etsy shop at the end of the week. It might work, it might not. We’ll see.

In other, related news, one of the other things I found when I was poking around the remnants of Old Life on the hard drive was a 3/4 completed book I was doing. SPARKS! was a book of creative prompts (not your typical prompts. seriously.) for artists, creative writers, and journal-keepers. I had it set up to be a year’s worth of weekly themed creativity sparkers, and with everything that’s gone on in the past year, I hadn’t finished it.

And I may never finish it. :) I had the idea to put the weeks up here, available for individual download, and make a flickr group for people to share the results. Like an online class, but self-guided. Really fun stuff. The flickr group is up, and the first few weeks are almost ready to go. I’ll post about it when it’s available here on-site. (Downloads are going to be cheap — like, around a buck or so. I need to check and see how much it charges me for hosting downloads and paypal fees, but I want to keep it all as cheap as possible. I figure more downloads = more impetus for me to finish the thing rather than just letting it sit.)

I feel like I’m finally moving in the right direction again.

I used to make a lot of art.

It was back in the days before I up and Found Fiber, which makes it sound a whole lot like finding a new religion, but really, that’s what it was for me. It was this weird evolution that I had to make, I think, in order to find my way back home.

I just looked back at some of my old artjournals, pre-Finding Fiber, and I did things then. Like filling up this book (above), that I made myself, which was decidedly imperfect in every sense of the word. The binding was crap, the paper was cheap watercolor paper that wasn’t torn very well or very evenly, and the cover? Scary. I should fix that one of these days (along with the binding, with which I got help from an 8-year-old, which gives that part a little bit of an excuse…). But I FILLED IT UP with entries. Drew everywhere I went, to keep my hands and brain busy.

After that, I had another art journal that I used, but I also had an old book of which I’d gessoed all the pages. I kept water-soluble crayons with me, and a glue-stick, and when I had a minute or two, I’d make collages, rip them out, and ebay them for extra art-supply-money. Like this one:

What really surprises me is how cyclical life is, how perfect and imperfect are really what we make of them. I always hesitated to show people my books, because I thought they weren’t good enough; they weren’t like the other ones I’d seen people show. And I remember making that first entry (above), when I was sitting cross-legged on a bed I no longer own, before I’d decided to stay out here in the middles for a little while longer, thinking that I needed to get rid of as much as possible so that I could have a simpler, zen-like life when I went home.

Oddly enough, it’s three years later, I’m still out here in coastless country, still wrestling with the idea of having too much stuff (which is considerably MORE stuff than I had back then), and I’m still drawn to the idea of an organic, simple life. Probably because it’s precisely what I DON’T have — my life is far from perfect OR simple. Or organic, for that matter.

And while I look back at these entries with the perspective of time and distance, I don’t think they were all that imperfect to begin with. But the stuff I do now? Same fear and hesitation.

I think maybe there’s a lesson in here somewhere that I still need to learn.

A week ago, we were digging out from a huge blizzard.

Yesterday, it was 80 degrees.

Evidently, Mother Nature has gone to Tahiti and has left her schizophrenic sister, Marge, in charge of the midwest’s weather. Unfortunately, Marge appears to be off her meds.

It’s been a couple days of beautiful skies, termperate conditions, and slow days. And can I just say that I love daylight savings time? I know it screws up some people’s schedules and that you technically lose an hour of sleep, but having daylight into the evening makes me so happy.

The past two days, I’ve been curling up with a crochet hook and some Simply Soft that had been languishing in the stash. I’d bought it to make a baby blanket for a friend (since acrylic? The only way to go for baby stuff that will get tossed in the washer. And the Caron Simply Soft has such a good hand to it for babies, too…), and when I started seeing all the granny squares across the internet, I got insipred to make one of those binkies for my house, instead.

I’m using the simply soft, but also tossing in some squares of Plain & Fancy to add some visual interest. I still need to weave in all the ends (which is going to take me a good long time, I’m afraid), and there’s a long way to go, but I really kind of like how it’s looking. Very girly and sweet, and I need a little touch of sweetness now and again to counteract the industrial-ness of this house. And since I’m cleaning out and clearing out all the clutter, it’s a nice reward to sit down and do two or three squares when I’m done for the day.

I love these spring days. I wish they’d last longer.

I’m still on a mission.

My second one, to clear off and get rid of an extraneous and unhelpful table in the studio, was set to wrap up tonight. And though I’m off my goal by about two hours, it’s done.

All in all, I’ve now cleared out almost four full garbage bags (three and a half, actually) of stuff that’s been in my studio — and in some cases, has been lugged around by me through four (!!!) states — for nearly a  decade.

It was a sobering thing for me to realize.  That I’d been holding onto some kind of object (or objectS, as the case may be) for that long, probably just to remind myself of what’s gone by, or where I was at the time, or who I used to be.

To be completely honest, I wasn’t overly fond of myself then.  Why I felt the need to hold onto things to remind me of that, I’m not sure.  I know that everything serves its purpose, and I’m sure at one time, that stuff had a purpose, but it’s been long gone for some time now.  The dust that settled over that part of my life should have been an indication, but I’m obviously pretty stubborn when it comes to hoarding experiences in the form of physical objects.

I really can’t even start to explain how much lighter I feel.

And it only gets better from here.

Mission 3, coming soon.  And hopefully, some art in the interim.

I finished the hat I was making for the friend of mine that just had a little boy. A miracle baby, that one. She wasn’t supposed to have been able to conceive, and yet…here’s the little one, right on nature’s own cue.

(The hat, by the way, is from the “Knitting To Go” card set that my sister in law gave me for Christmas. This is the first thing I’ve knit from the set, and Id’ do a few things a little differently if I did it again, but it’s totally inspired me to want to make little pink piggy hats for some of my girlfriends who have had or are having girl babies.)

When I finished sewing on the eyes (it’s for a newborn, not a toddler, so I went with button eyes rather than embroidery, but for a toddling one, I’d go with stitches instead), I was putting away the unused yarn back with the other Brown Sheep stash yarns, and I got a little distracted by the shoe rack holding my sock yarns. (Not all the sock yarn, but the ones I plan to use sometime soon.)

I found myself pulling them out, one by one, and squishing them in my fingers. Noticing the way the colors follow a theme with very little exception — lots of cool colors and deep, rich, jewel-tones. A little warmness here and there for spice. Pinks and greys and browns mixed in to girly the place up a bit.

Sometimes, I get to feeling the weight of my stash on my shoulders. The thought crosses my mind that if I live to be about a zillion years old, I might still never have the time to make socks out of it all. (Or scarves, or anything else, for that matter.) And that feels a little bit like a waste to me sometimes. Like I’m taking it away from other people who might need warm feet.

But I realize, as I’m standing in my slowly-getting-cleaner studio, that I’ve got a goofy grin on my face while I’m smooshing a skein of Fleece Artist. Or that my mood’s better while I’m fondling a duo of Socks that Rock that might work for a chevron scarf. And, I think, that IS its purpose — to make someone happy.

And if my collection of yarns make me happy whenever I really look at them, then I’m okay with that.

(Okay enough, in fact, that I visited the loopy ewe’s big update tonight and bought another Fleece Artist colorway. And a Sweet Georgia one, since she’s not dyeing any more. Ahem.)

It’s all about what makes you happy in this world.