Passion has value.

The last few weeks have been kinda exciting for me,  as the depression has fully lifted my passion for fibre arts has reignited with a vengeance and its made me soooo happy.  Of course, me being me, I have had my share of wobbles, moments when I've let the little voice inside me telling me I'm not good enough come to the forefront of my mind and make me wonder if it is right.   I am honestly sick of fighting with that voice, but one good thing of kicking it into touch is that its made me realise a few things.  The most important of these being that I have always put quite a low cap on the budget to feed my fibre arts passion.  The occasional book or dvd was ok, but workshops felt like a completely frivolous expense that I didn't deserve. Buying 500gms or so of merino for batt making was ok, but actually ordering more than that so I had less limited choices of colours was completely unacceptable to me.

I've realised thinking like this I've been sabotaging myself and have decided to make some changes.  Now I know we're on a relatively limited budget, so I'm not talking about going to World of wool with a van and filling it to the top lol, but actually working out a monthly fibre arts budget and either spending it or sticking it in a savings account.   Also investing some time in myself, stopping seeing my craft activities as frivolous wastes of time- following your heart and doing what you love is never frivolous (well at least not in a bad way).

I've been making some tentative steps already towards implementing these changes.  I have enrolled on an online course about colour blending (at fibreygoodness) - it looks like so much fun, I can't wait to have a free morning to get started. I've also got my eye out for sign-ups opening in the autumn for the longer Journey to the Golden fleece course, which looks amazing!

And just so this post isn't completely without pictures I'm going to share my favourite weaving I've made so far, this is hanging near the bed so I see it every morning.

It has lyrics from Ghost Song by Jim Morrison scattered on it with children's letter beads:

       Awake.....
       Shake dreams from your hair,
      my pretty child,
      my sweet one.

Been playing with my fibre stash again

I had almost a whole day available to craft today and I had a great day, but it could have been better if I had managed to shut up the voice inside me telling me it was all a waste of time. It has been a few weeks since I've let that little voice critique my work and honestly I am a little ashamed that I let that negativity taint what was an otherwise great day.   As I'm sat here writing this I realise I'm giving it power all over again- instead of happily sharing some of the results of today's work I'm thinking about that negative voice.  Nice try Ms Negative, but I'm not listening to you tonight- so there :P

When I was looking through my stash boxes this morning I had an image in my head of a rich forest but my hands weren't drawn to greens, no, because inside that forest I could see a beautiful fae dancing- her colourful hair flying out behind her as she swirled. (I think I was inspired by some amazing pictures I saw on facebook by a new friend with soooo much talent).

Wool fibre of purples, pinks and wine reds, were carded with hand-dyed locks (stray curls escaping her joyful dreads) and lots of sparkly angelina to make the above batts.

I spun this fast and relaxed, purposefully allowing thick and thin spots, letting the fibre just tell my fingers how it wanted to be spun, adding a sprinkling of tiny roses along the way.

I then plyed this with a sparkly red thread, because you can never have enough sparkles and I am in love with the finished yarn, I'm calling 'A little bit Fae'

I also did some dyeing with kool-aid- I sooooo need more colours of this than I could get at tesco and made some little candle holders for those small spell candles you can get.  I have some beeswax ones I want to use for Litha and no holders for them. My first time working with air-drying clay and to be honest I was pretty rough and ready with it but pictures may be forthcoming when they're dried and painted up.