Keeping busy...
During this time of enforced isolation there is an advantage to being “creative” whatever that means, a state of play that in good times very often requires only a few materials and a quiet space. However, you may have found that there are things that you now have time to do, but somehow aren't getting around to them. Perhaps you don't know where to start, children or partners seem always at your elbow, or you simply have feelings of listlessness, anxiety that is getting in the way and you simply want to do nothing. Of course, if someone we care about is unwell that, too, can throw our equilibrium into the air like a pack of cards. These are feelings that we will all be having from time to time but hope that some of the items below and this precious window of time will give you pause to rest, reflect and recharge your creative batteries.
Crafty Projects
In the face of social distancing and self-isolation, it’s a sad fact that spending time in-person with others who share your passion for textiles has become an impossibility. Maybe you’ve been looking forward to a stitch workshop that’s been cancelled? Or perhaps your local embroidery group is no longer able to meet? Every Monday for the next five weeks The Textile Artist website have arranged for various textile artist to deliver a burst of inspiration in the form of a short video workshop and a hand stitch challenge. So far they have invited Cas Holmes, Emily Tull and Richard McVetis with others following in the next couple of weeks. Catchup is possible on their informative website alongside past interviews with well-known stitchers and crafters.
An Apple a Day
AppleMac certainly don’t need any promotion from us, but their offer of a free podcast called “Here For You”, sounds intriguing; a daily show to offer comfort and support during this scary and uncertain time. Each weekday morning, the idea is to fill you in on what’s been going on in our socially distant lives, hear what other listeners have been up to, offer advice, suggestions for things to do, listen to, or watch that will help take your mind off things — if even for just a few minutes.
Dream Journeys
The coronavirus has made armchair travellers of us all so it’s fun to read the adventures of those people who managed to enjoy the travel bug whilst they could. In celebration of all things European, Alistair Sawday has written a love letter to his favourite continent, Europe, where he discusses the magic that drew him into France’s hidden villages, Italy’s hilltop farmhouses, the Mediterranean coastline and Ireland’s rugged countryside all those years ago.
After the ferry released me into Cherbourg I collected the beaten-up old Renault from a friend’s farm. It had long lain beneath cobwebs but still had dignity and the expected old packet of fags. A glass of wine and I was off, humming with a sense of release as the open countryside rolled by. Hardly a car in sight, just an occasional farm-house and villages drifting past as I aimed for the Loire. There wasn’t the vitality I had known in the ‘60s, fewer cafés and bars, but the sense of being in rural France lifted my spirits. Too many journeys in Britain lead from one clump of roadside warehouses to another.
France was my first European love, introduced to me as a small boy and never releasing me. There was always magic: in the long aprons of bistro waiters, the giant rows of handsome apartment buildings in Haussman’s Paris and the first cup of café au lait, which always filled the heart. The magic grew with me, to include the enclosed courtyards of Norman farms, the rivers where we picnicked, the fields of wild flowers, the great cathedrals and the elegant simplicity of so many houses. It all felt special and I enjoyed the way charm, sophisticated sparkle and icy reserve threaded through conversation.
The very word Europe hints to me of something more colourful, yet more furrowed with experience. Those of us who love Europe can somehow feel her communal wisdom in our bones. The sheer scale of difference, the survival of folk-singing in the Romanian mountains and sheep-droving in Spain, satisfy some of our natural longing to be enriched and surprised by the culture we are in.
Get Stitching
I know I have mentioned her before, but I am a great fan of American artist and crafter, Ann Wood, and her delightful, informative and just plain pretty websit which is just choc-a-block full of great little free projects to do on your own or with children of all ages. I, personally have spent an absorbing day making the papier-maché boats with my 7-year-old grandson, as well as the charming needle case made from fabric offcuts. She has more complicated patterns to download for sale if you are feeling confident!
Free Weekly Pattern
Sign up with the yarn and pattern company Quince’s newsletter and every Friday for the foreseeable future you will be able to download one of their delicious patterns for free. Of course, there is a myriad of other covetable patterns and yarns to buy on-line but why not start with a freebie and some existing stashed wool?
Record Setting Paper Plane
Who hasn’t tried their hand at a paper plane at one time or another. Well, get ready to take it to another level. John Collins, aka The Paper Airplane Guy, is a master at shattering world records with a single sheet of paper. In this video, the aircraft designer not only teaches the Susanne, the model that secured his spot in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2012, but also two others that swoop through the air. As its name suggests, the Tube resembles a hollow cylinder designed to be tossed like a football, while the Boomerang is the most complex of the trio, requiring more complicated folds and angles in order to craft a model that returns to whoever throws it. You can find more instructional videos on Collins’s YouTube channel or in his book that comes with 16 tear-out model planes.
No Knead Bread
Let’s face it, bread-making like ironing is something we very seldom find the time for, but why not start now with this delicious No-Knead version courtesy of Love and Lemons? As the recipe says, 5 minutes of work will yield a crusty, golden loaf with a perfect soft interior. What’s not to like?
Blind Contour Drawing
Blind Contour Drawing is a classic art exercise if you are looking for one. First year art students are often forced to draw blindly for hours. It’s the fastest way to break them out of old bad habits, to make them unlearn lifeless conventions. The goal of blind drawing is to really see the thing you’re looking at, to almost spiritually merge with it, rather than retreat into your mental image of it. Our brains are designed to simplify — to reduce the tumult of the world into order. Blind drawing trains us to stare at the chaos, to honor it. It is an act of meditation, as much as it is an artistic practice — a gateway to pure being. It forces us to study the world as it actually is and part of the magic of blind drawing is the impossibility of doing it wrong. This makes it the perfect antidote to perfectionism, because its first and only step is to abandon any hope of perfection. But inevitably, almost by accident, your hand will produce little slivers of excellence — a nose that looks exactly right, an inscrutable expression on someone’s face, the dip and curve of a dog’s back — but then these will be obliterated, immediately, by the subsequent maelstrom of lines. It turns out that the world, on close examination, is gloriously strange. Things are lumpier and hairier than we have been led to believe. Planes are never flat; colours are never solid. It is joyful and meditative, one of the fastest escape routes from the prison of consciousness that I have ever found. You can do it anywhere, anytime, with any subject and it will flip you, like a switch, from absence to presence.
An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans
Stop. Just stop.
It is no longer a request. It is a mandate.
We will help you.
We will bring the supersonic, high speed merry-go-round to a halt
We will stop
the planes
the trains
the schools
the malls
the meetings
the frenetic, hurried rush of illusions and “obligations” that keep you from hearing our
single and shared beating heart,
the way we breathe together, in unison.
Our obligation is to each other,
As it has always been, even if, even though, you have forgotten.
We will interrupt this broadcast, the endless cacophonous broadcast of divisions and distractions,
to bring you this long-breaking news:
We are not well.
None of us; all of us are suffering.
Last year, the firestorms that scorched the lungs of the earth
did not give you pause.
Nor the typhoons in Africa, China, Japan.
Nor the fevered climates in Japan and India.
You have not been listening.
It is hard to listen when you are so busy all the time, hustling to uphold the comforts and conveniences that scaffold your lives.
But the foundation is giving way,
buckling under the weight of your needs and desires.
We will help you.
We will bring the firestorms to your body
We will bring the fever to your body
We will bring the burning, searing, and flooding to your lungs
that you might hear:
We are not well.
Despite what you might think or feel, we are not the enemy.
We are Messenger. We are Ally. We are a balancing force.
We are asking you:
To stop, to be still, to listen;
To move beyond your individual concerns and consider the concerns of all;
To be with your ignorance, to find your humility, to relinquish your thinking minds and travel deep into the mind of the heart;
To look up into the sky, streaked with fewer planes, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, smoky, smoggy, rainy? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy?
To look at a tree, and see it, to notice its condition: how does its health contribute to the health of the sky, to the air you need to be healthy?
To visit a river, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, clean, murky, polluted? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy? How does its health contribute to the health of the tree, who contributes to the health of the sky, so that you may also be healthy?
Many are afraid now.
Do not demonize your fear, and also, do not let it rule you. Instead, let it speak to you—in your stillness,
listen for its wisdom.
What might it be telling you about what is at work, at issue, at risk, beyond the threats of personal inconvenience and illness?
As the health of a tree, a river, the sky tells you about quality of your own health, what might the quality of your health tell you about the health of the rivers, the trees, the sky, and all of us who share this planet with you?
Stop.
Notice if you are resisting.
Notice what you are resisting.
Ask why.
Stop. Just stop.
Be still.
Listen.
Ask us what we might teach you about illness and healing, about what might be required so that all may be well.
We will help you, if you listen.
Stay well, stay at home.
Kx