This is going to be a long winded navel gazing commentary, feel free to just admire the pictures scatted within, or just close and walk away. I’ll never know. 😉

I considered just not mentioning the fact that it’s been a little while since I posted.  It’s not actually been that long, but I am struggling to find things to post about right now. Largely I post on what SCA related things I’ve been working on and while I’ve been working on a lot of creative work over the last little while.. but very little of it is A&S, per se.

I went to an art workshop. Apparently I like playing with colour.

A lot of mundane work, knitting mostly. Dabbling in period-esque things, but without bothering to research much. Just playing, and I was trying to work out why I was settled back into old familiar paths. I’ve made plans, but little else. The why of my own head chewed around for a while, and there’s some big thinky thoughts, and some purely pragmatic reality of Holiday crafting having a timeline and canning various fruits and vegetables doesn’t wait for anyone. I also had a bit of an ah-ha moment just recently. I’d danced at the edge of my skill level (and truthfully.. my energy level) and like Wiley E. Coyote when he’s run off a cliff, and dangles in the air for a moment, I paused there for a little while before crashing. Alright, so the metaphor works better for the reality of running on fumes for too long, than specifically creative work, but it’s not terrible there either. I had a few projects that were big (in my mind, or in my heart) and I didn’t do them as well as I thought I could and after that crash, I fled back to the familiar. Are they necessarily projects that others looked at and thought ‘damn, Lucia.. that’s a disappointment’.. possibly not. No one’s said such to me, and I fully expect that no one will, because it’s less about other’s interpretation of my work, and wholly about my own reactions. Like entirely too many of us, I’m a perfectionist, and I struggle to be a beginner. To live in that gap between taste and skill, and the reality of being a jack of many trades (not all.. there’s a long list of things I’ve no desire to do.. but the list of things I do love is crazy), means I don’t practice any one thing to the depths of a true expert.

My coworker’s current door quote. I think we can all relate.

I am unlikely to ever be a one craft kinda gal. I’ve settled in the richness of time into alchemy and string, but both of those are HUGE categories. There are a few places that are like crawling into a favourite safe space, where challenges are interesting diversions, and the confidence is there. The 10, 000 hours have been invested, and things just work. I don’t need to have quiet, brain engaged, uninterrupted time to knit a hat, or a sock. I can just do it and have the fingers busy without much investment. I can weave without much thought, but getting a loom warped is a much higher commitment of brain power, and so it sits, waiting for heddles.

Waiting for heddles.

That was a lot of rambling to say ‘hey, not working on much A&S right now, lots of mundane stuff’. Holiday gifts are in full swing, I made a terrible batch of hand cream. (It’s fine, it’s just not what I wanted, and I made a huge mess while making it.). I have beer waiting to be bottled, and grain waiting for me to be home for a few hours, all in a /row/ to become more beer. I’ve a loom waiting to be heddled, and cloth asking nicely to be both mundane clothes and garb, and there’s a lot of life going on.  It’s okay to have a pause, a lull even. I’m reminding myself more than anyone else. Deep breath, we got this.