Getting Crafty Sadhana – Days 34 – 40 – The Strength and Power of What You Do

Well we have come to the end of another sadhana. I have spent the last few days making soaps galore having been approved to sell for three separate dates at Bazaar-On-Hudson and waiting to hear back if I will be selling at a few local stores as well.

Here is a look at some of what has been keeping me so busy, it is a small collection of my soaps:

Some Many Moons Mercantile Soaps

My good friend Bettina Utz has been crafting away as well. She is a potter and makes some amazing and outstandingly beautiful pottery pieces from cups to bowls and mugs and more. You see her other work as a fantastic graphic designer every time you visit this site as she helped create the Many Moons Yoga and Many Moons Mercantile logo:

She will be selling her pottery under East Mountain Girl at Bazaar-On-Hudson each Sunday. Be sure to visit her booth and take something special home! She has graciously agreed to guest blog today and we finish these 40 days with her words.

The English word “craft” comes from the German, “kraft”, meaning literally, strength or power. But this little German word has other synonyms that describe even better what the craft of making pottery means to me: physical AND creative ability, spiritual energy, vitality.

My journey to pottery was a very long one, or better: a short one with a long idle period. I had a brief and somewhat unspectacular encounter with pottery in art class in high school. After graduating, I tried several different creative outlets, eventually earned a degree in architecture, and later moved on to graphic design. All in all it took 25 years to re-ignite my inner kiln. And it happened without warning one morning between waking up and getting out of bed: “I need to make my own bowl!” This was my spark. The rest, as we like to say, is (recent) history.

What makes me grateful: 

My teachers who inspire and encourage me everyday.

A vessel’s usefulness and beauty.

Learning to start over – and to stop at the right time.

Trusting intuition.

Practicing patience.

And the elated feeling when I meet a fired pot for the first time.

“The potter can only surrender his wares to the fire, listen to it, talk to it, so that he and the fire respond to each other’s power, and the fired pot is the child.” – M.C. Richards

East Mountain Girl Pottery by Bettina Utz

I hope that these 40 days have helped you to find your spark or re-ignite it. Keep crafting, keep creating, keep sharing and I’ll see you the next time we live life 40 days at a time!

Getting Crafty Sadhana – Day 33 – Tracing The Roots Of Your Creativity

I am blessed to have so many creative and crafty friends, this is something that I have mentioned in the past. Today I have another guest blogger for you and his name is Dave Meyers. Dave is a childhood friend of my husbands and once I met him he quickly became my friend too. He is a vastly talented individual who, like me, has had his hand in many a hat. He was once a performer for the New York State Renaissance Festival, is a fabulous BBQ Master and all around cook and a Master Metal Smith who teaches the craft to others. His post shows how our experiences can help shape the creative path we take.

For me, I grew up watching my mother cook everything from scratch and I would sit and watch her cook like I was in the audience of a cooking show on television. We watched old Julia Child episodes and other cooking shows on PBS just as we do now. Her influence has made me the excellent cook and former vegetarian chef that I am. She was a catalyst for me to follow that particular creative path of cooking. I had a teacher in elementary school, Mrs. Cook, and one day we had to read from a play and I was given a part. After we were done and just before we were to go home for the day she called me into the hallway. I was frantic wondering what I could have done wrong to be called out of class. She pulled me aside and praised my acting skills and how well I read the part and encouraged me to act. She was the catalyst for my acting career which took off after that day. While I am still a shy person in front of people I don’t know, I volunteered and auditioned for any role that came my way from that time through the rest of elementary school, middle school, high school, college and at the acting conservatory I attended. Even after that I auditioned for any play that I could do and often acted as stage manager if there was no part for me. I have only taken time off of my love of acting since I had my children. Mrs. Cook was the catalyst for that particular creative path of acting. I grew up watching my Aunt Joan (God and Goddess rest her) crochet. I have hardly any memories of her without a crochet hook in her hand while she worked on an afghan. When she experienced that change called death I knew I wanted to crochet so I taught myself. Once when I just couldn’t get the gist of it I called out to her in spirit for help and a minute later I was crocheting away. I know she helped me.

The list goes on for me where my love for creativity and crafting comes from. It is like tracing a family tree of sorts to see what led to my love of a particular craft. Thinking about the catalyst for such positive in my life makes the experience of what I am doing richer. When I cook I think of my mother, when I act I think of Mrs. Cook and when I crochet I think of Aunt Joan.

Here is what Dave had to say about his journey in the land of creativity:

I think creativity takes on two possible forms:

1) The spontaneous, we experience this as children (not only), we say and do things in the moment without concern for the next moment or outcome or future ramifications.

2) Immersion, we invest ourselves over time with an interest we have in a craft, a skill, a career, play a sport, weave cloth, work in industry, what have you. The more we do this thing the more insight we have, we decide from our point of view (your point of view is important, it makes your part of the creative conversation unique!) We tend to like the things we have aptitude for and tend to be good at (have aptitude for) the things we like.

People refer to me as creative. I come from a family of craftsmen (mainly carpenters). My father imprinted a work ethic in each of my siblings and I (not easy at the time being a kid). We lived somewhat isolated, no neighborhood, just family and woods, neighbors came later. What I am getting at here is the need to create or build was all around me in my youth. Me and my friends were hands on engineers, building tree forts, and helmets from Freon cans; raw materials to finished usable goods. I also might add that as the son of a carpenter we had to have a garden (make no mistake this was no casual effort, my father didn’t work in the winter unless he got lucky) the garden was a requirement for family survival. Pickling, blanching, freezing, and canning was all part of that plan. We grew up with fresh vegetables. I make sausage, cured meats and real BBQ as an extension of these experiences. I expect to use these early life experiences again in the future.

I have discovered over the years I am a pretty good reverse engineer and researcher. If I find something I like I can break it down into steps and figure out a way to make it myself. This is something I teach to my welding students called critical thinking. If I have a problem with the creative process it is limiting my self. I have been an actor, a jeweler, a sausage maker, a craft brewer, a fabricator, a teacher and the list goes on. Each of these professions stemmed from my excitement in doing each of these and I have been accomplished at all of them. It’s hard to put the blinders on and just focus on one thing.

I would like to add one more thing. I was at a hammer’in with some of the most accomplished blade smiths in the country. They all agreed that the hardest part of the creative process was getting started. Even the great people in our fields have the same problems we do! This was a huge revelation for me standing in the same shop with people I admired having to put their pants on one leg at a time.

In conclusion, creativity comes from: interest in a topic, ability to execute a skill, and the capacity to learn from our successes and mistakes, and the successes and mistakes of others.

I hope this stimulates the creative conversation.

Humbly yours,

Dave Meyers

Metal Smith

Amateur Cook

Certified Welding Instructor

Enjoyer Of Life

A sketch in copper of a musculata breast-plate by Dave Meyers.

 

Silver rings Dave Meyers reproduced for his nephew and his wife.

Getting Crafty Sadhana – Days 22 – 32 – Two’s a Crafty Couple

I love lots of creative and crafty things. I love art, both making it and viewing it at galleries, a great film, documentaries, getting lost in a television series (especially if it is a period piece), listening to music, playing musical instruments, live musical performances, writing, poetry, crafting anything, live theater (I used to act and I feel like theaters are another home of mine), photography, and of course, getting cozy with a good book.

I was lucky enough to meet our guest blogger today through a mutual friend of ours, an artist whose talents warm my heart for their beauty and theme, fantasy artist, Jane Starr Weils. Jane is so talented and I am honored to have a portrait of me done by her. She truly paints magic! Here is a link to her work, it is amazing, all of it!

Jane called me one day and told me that she had been hired to illustrate an upcoming series of Scottish historical romance novels. She needed someone to pose for the leading man and when she was told by the author what that man looked like to her, it fit my husband to a tee! So I got out an old plaid skirt of mine that served as a kilt, he got out some garb to serve as his shirt and accessories, his drinking horn and a sword, and I took some pictures. Luckily we have been part of the fabulous Society For Creative Anachronism for years (my husband personifies a Viking, me a Celt) so coming by a drinking horn and garb only required us to look in our closet!

The book my husband was to be the leading man model for, was part of a the Dark Birthright Trilogy. The author Jeanne Treat was kind enough to gift us with an autographed copy which I inhaled because it was such a compelling read! I loved every single page and couldn’t put it down. Then later on she gave us a ring asking if Frankie (my husband) and I wouldn’t mind joining her at a Celtic festival for a book signing. It was such fun! Frankie was gifted an authentic Scottish kilt by Jeanne and was asked by fans to autograph their books as Lord Dughall. Woman got in line to have their pictures taken with him, it was a hoot! After, we went out to dinner with Jeanne and her husband and got to really know each other. Now we count her as a good friend. None of this would have happened if Jane and Jeanne had not come together to collaborate. When you creatively collaborate with another crafty soul, your creations spread in so many ways, ways you might not have ever imagined.

Jeanne’s books, all of them, Dark Birthright, Dark Lord and Dark Destiny, are wonderful reads, they truly are those type of books that you just have to have with you no matter where you go because you can’t put them down, and with Jane’s illustrations added to them it helps to bring everyone to life. They lend a depth to the words and bring the reader even deeper within the pages. Together these two women make one creative and crafty couple!

I asked Jeanne if she would like to contribute to this blog by answering these simple questions, “How does writing make your feel? Why do you do it?” Here is her response. Enjoy and go get a copy of her books! You will love every moment she spent being creative and writing down these fantastic stories!

“I’m a computer consultant by trade.  So, why do I write?  After spending work days in logical pursuits, I enter the creative realm, crafting worlds, characters, and stories.  I get to experience places, times, and historical events through the eyes of my characters and their thoughts, feelings, and emotions.  The stories I write will endure, long beyond the time when I am gone.  Perhaps, my great-grandchildren will read them. This is why I write. It makes me feel good!

I’m Jeanne Treat, the author of the Dark Birthright Trilogy, a saga set in 17^th century Scotland, England, and the Colonies.  The series has sold more than 9,000 books and eBooks through promotion at Scottish and Celtic festivals, book events, and the internet.

I like to support artists!  The series was illustrated by Jane Starr Weils and Charles Randolph Bruce.  We based the sketches on photos of real people – relatives, friends, and acquaintances we met at Celtic festivals.  Perhaps you will recognize some of them.

Sketches from Dark Destiny by artist Jane Starr Weils (Dughall, Maggie, Lord Skene, and Keira – Dughall was based on Frankie).

Read about the series online:

http://www.DarkBirthrightSaga.com

View Video Book Trailers:

Book One (Dark Birthright):  http://youtu.be/DeqlCvLhryA

Book Two (Dark Lord):  http://youtu.be/CgWad8o0F9U

Book Three (Dark Destiny):  http://youtu.be/RN9mcgqL5OU

Jeanne’s Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/JeanneTreat

Jeanne’s blog: http://jeannetreat.wordpress.com/

Getting Crafty Sadhana – Days 12 – 22 – Children As Teachers

It’s been a while as you see since my last post. My mother was recently diagnosed with colon cancer, the same type of cancer my husband dealt with a few years back. She was in the hospital for some time and there was much to be done. With all of that going on, it left little time to dedicate to being creative and crafty. Thanks to my six-year-old daughter though, I was able to keep right on track with this sadhana.

She just recently began asking me to surprise her with little notes and drawings in her lunch box. Every morning that she has brought lunch from home to school I’ve kept creative by writing something down for her and following it up with a cute drawing to go along with it. She asks as least four times before we leave the house making sure that I haven’t forgotten to put it in.

We have a wonderful friend and neighbor named Jonathan Kruk who is a master storyteller. (Visit his website by clicking here and his Facebook page by clicking here – you’ll be happy you did!) He travels all over giving fantastic performances and workshops using storytelling as his creative tool. My children have got to be his biggest fans. My three-year old son knows his stories practically by heart singing along while we listen to his CD’s in the car (The Rainbow Dragon is his absolute favorite!). My daughter’s eyes go as big as plates whenever his name is mentioned. When we revealed to her that he and his lovely wife would be our neighbors she practically jumped to the stars with excitement.

One night Mr. Kruk was out walking his dog and my daughter and I joined him to walk our dog. Of course my daughter asked him to tell her a story and we were given two enchanting tales to listen to as we meandered through the neighborhood. This sparked something in my daughter and from then on every single time she joins me to walk our dog she asks me to tell her a story. I have her make up the first line and I go from there. It has been such fun to be challenged by time constraints while making the story for her engaging and entertaining (and usually magical). By the time we get back to the house which is usually under ten minutes I must have completed my tale. I feel like it has really kept me on my creative toes and it has been a wonderful bonding experience.

Children can be a lot of work, they can be a lot of fun, and while they are learning from us, we really can learn from them. My daughter taught me that I can be creative even during the most mundane task of picking up dog poopy in a biodegradable poopy bag. She taught me that even when I am tired and stressed there can still be creativity to be found. She is helping to keep my crafting and creativity spontaneous, light, and fun.

“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.” – Angela Schwindt

You got that right Angela!

Thanks for all of the great stories Jonathan Kruk!

 

Getting Crafty Sadhana – Days 7 – 11 – Breaking News In A Creative Way

I’ve spent pretty much everyday since I last posted writing as my daily form of crafty creativity. I started by writing little haiku’s like you saw in my last post, I wrote a series of short stories in a fabulous writing class and I wrote a limerick. I posted a quick haiku on my personal Facebook page:

Freezing cold again
My hat glued onto my head
Ice cold footie pies

As you can guess it was a homage to the never ending winter. I love a change of seasons, I love snow in the winter, but when you consider 19 degrees as balmy weather you know it’s been cold for too long. Well as a result of sharing my haiku’s a friend of mine began posting limerick’s on her Facebook page about her daily life. They were both creative and hysterical. My family had some really good news that was about to break so I gave a little teaser about how our lives were about to change. It was fun to see what guesses people were coming up with as to what on earth our news could be. Many, many, many people picked pregnant but our real news was that we bought a house. Now I could have just written, “We bought a house!” or “We finally have a home!” But that just seemed so boring and ordinary and not at all crafty or creative. So I followed in my friends footsteps and presented our good news in limerick form:

The Kolarek family’s lives did change we can say,
In a big and generous most marvelous way,
With a team that worked so hard you see,
To help us to own this here key,
You guessed it – we bought our house today! 

That sounds so much more exciting and fun doesn’t it? And it was more fun for me to think up what I would write before presenting our news to our friends. Just think of all the creative ways you could announce what is going on in your life!

The rules for a haiku are:

• Only three lines, totaling 17 syllables throughout
• The first line must be only 5 syllables
• The second line must be comprised of 7 syllables
• The third line must be 5 syllables like the first
• Punctuation and capitalization rules are up to the poet, and need not follow rigid rules used in structuring sentences
• Haiku does not have to rhyme, in fact many times it does not rhyme at all
• Some haiku can include the repetition of words or sounds

And the rules for writing a limerick are:

• 5 lines.
• Rhyme structure is AABBA (lines 1,2 and 5 rhyme, and 3 & 4 rhyme with each other. Their “beat” is di di dum di di dum di di dum
• Lines 1, 2, and 5 generally have seven to ten syllables, while lines 3 and 4 have only five to seven syllables. Their beat is di di dum di di di dum…
• Ideally, it should be about a humorous or clever story/observation/statement, with the last line carrying the real “zinger” that makes it truly funny.

Most everyone is on Facebook and wouldn’t reading your news feed be more entertaining if people put some creativity into their posts? It has to start with someone, make it you!

Getting Crafty Sadhana – Day 6 – Short and Sleepy

I’m exhausted so today’s post will be short, like haiku short and my haiku (creativity for the day because it’s been one of those crazy busy days) will explain a lot. See you crafty peeps tomorrow.

Mama mama please

get me this and this and this

no sleep for Mama

 

Getting Crafty Sadhana – Day 5 – Three C’s, Crafty Creative Connections

My children must be picking up the extra crafty vibes in the house because they have been on the creativity express! My three year old son grabbed some paper and got to drawing faces with more detail than I have ever seen him do before. When my six year old daughter came home from school right after she was done with her homework she got out her stamps, markers, paper and color pencils and made the cutest card for her little brother. I am loving it!

Yesterday I wrote about how our creativity can spread just by the very act of us being creative. This is even more so when we spread around the love and share the creativity of our friends. I reached out to all of my creative and crafty friends and asked them to share with me their thoughts on the type of creativity that makes their heart sing. You will no doubt see some guest posts by them in the future. It feels good to witness what your friends are capable of when it comes to creativity. It feels good to share in the joy of their finished work, or their works in progress. It feels good to tell others about their work and by doing so you help share that good crafty creative cootie that gets into someone else and in turn gets them crafty and creative. Who knows who you can influence by sharing your friends work as well as your own? A simple short conversation about your friends recent theatrical production, a simple quick share of your friends recent painting or a simple quick share of your friends song could very well change someones life. Their art and that of your own may awaken in them something deep or hidden or lost or forgotten. It may be the spark they were looking for to get over that writer’s block, or the encouragement they needed to perform at the next local open mike night.

Today I am sharing my friend Gary Goldenberg’s amazing, fabulous, inspiring, just plain awesome photography. He and my husband are old rock climbing friends and Gary travels the world mountaineering and hiking and taking the most beautiful photographs in the process. When I asked him how he felt when taking photographs he had this to say:

“Photography, in my view, is not so much the art of taking a compelling picture as it is the practice of seeing the world anew. It compels you to focus on a sliver of the world around you, and in so doing, you begin notice the details, the shapes, the forms. And if you’re lucky, you may see the essence of things, captured in an instant.”

Isn’t that just perfect? That is what his creative love, photography, does for him. I highly recommend that you visit his website, Mindless Pleasures. It will be a feast for your eyes to see his awe-inspiring images of his treks through Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, the Canadian Arctic, Iceland, India, Jordan, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru, Tibet and Uganda.

My hope is that by sharing his creativity with you and by you sharing it with someone else we will spread the creativity around and help awaken the creative and crafty in others.

Feel free to share any links to your own websites that deal with your art and creativity in the comment section below.

“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” – Erma Bombeck

Be courageous my crafty friends. Be courageous.

Temples of Bagan, Myanmar (2012), Copyright Gary Goldenberg

 

Getting Crafty Sadhana – Day 4 – Your Craftiness Moving Beyond You

My husband and I didn’t get home from our paranormal investigation until well after 3:30 in the morning. Exhausted, our little ones were still up with the songbirds chip and chitter. Luckily they know that if Mama and Papa are too pooped to play they just keep themselves entertained until we get up. After a time my daughter came into our bedroom excited to show me something she had drawn that morning. What she took the time to create all on her own with no prompting from me reminded me how even a quick ten minute doodle can carry on and encourage someone else to be creative and crafty. If you are sitting on a park bench or commuting on a train, instead of sitting there, break out your knitting needles, or some other craft, someone may need only to take a peek at you crafting away to inspire them to break back into the world of the creative. Our work of crafting not only benefits us but has the power to benefit many.

As Robert Louis Stevenson once said, “Don’t judge each day by the harvest that you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

Get planting crafters!

Getting Crafty Sadhana – Day 3 – Doodles

I am pretty pressed for time today. I had visitors in the morning, picked up groceries, tried to find rock salt for our ever icy driveway, dropped off my soaps for submission to Bazaar-On-Hudson to be a vendor, rested a bit (thankfully I am feeling better today) and have to prepare for a paranormal investigation tonight. Yes, my husband and I are part of a professional team of paranormal investigators called Ghost Magnets with a Twist and tonight we have an investigation at a historic sight (that we have to keep confidential as per the request of the site officials). I love our work because we are a respectful team not out to ghost hunt but to discover the nature of the afterlife. As a Spiritualist and one studying to become a certified medium I love being able to match my impressions and messages with science to see if what I am getting is legit or just my imagination. I was so lucky to find such a good team and with my husband as one of their new camera tech’s it is only getting better. Please feel free to check out our Facebook page for more information. Anyhow, I digress. So, long story short, my time is a tad limited but it didn’t stop me from getting crafty!

I carved out ten minutes to sketch out an idea I’ve had for my soaps. I really like to doodle and so I asked my daughter if I could have a sheet of her sketchbook paper and borrow her color pencils. She happily complied and sat next to me helping me pick out what I would sketch and watching in awe as my little figure came to life. I had a soap laying around that I had made quite a while ago so I opened it and thought, “What little doodle would look good next to this soap of a medieval dog?” I sketched a cartoon king and placed my soap next to him as if the soap were part of a scene the two of them were in. Now if I had more time I would add much, much more, but it is a start. It’s rough but it’s a beginning and all journey’s have to start with that first step, or in this case, that first line from a pencil.

The point of today’s post is that even if you are crunched for time you can still achieve a crafty moment in your day and get something done. I took ten minutes for myself and finally got the beginnings of a thought I’ve had in my mind for ages, onto paper. It felt good, and got me excited about what else I can do with this idea.

So I challenge you to take at least ten minutes out for yourself today. Doodle, crochet or knit a couple of rows for a project, get a crafty thought onto paper so your process can begin, write a short story – anything! You’ll be glad that you gave back to yourself and let your creativity run free, if even for only ten minutes!

“The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.” – Dieter E. Uchtdorf

Getting Crafty Sadhana – Day 2 – Modern Conveniences

I went to bed last night feeling pretty good but woke up this morning sneezing my head off. I clearly have caught a doozy of a cold. But things had to be done anyway, my daughter needed to be brought to school, I had to go to the grocery store, get biodegradable poopy pick up bags for my dog at the pet store and run other errands. By five o’clock I was ready to drop and the thought of getting crafty was far from what I wanted to do. But then I thought of this new sadhana and how lame it would be to poop out at day 2. I got my “Keep Up!” in order and got out my soap making supplies.

Now I am one of those rare folks who has lived without a microwave for the majority of my life but joining much of the rest of America my husband and I went out and purchased one last week. I’m not for cooking in a microwave but for a quick reheat it’s an amazing time saver. My Grandfather, Infinite Intelligence rest him, was born in 1911 and I remember when microwaves were invented. He went out and bought one and thought they were magic. He marveled at what they could do and would sit across from his at his kitchen table and watch as it heated something up. With those memories I kind of have a love for the invention of the microwave. Well as far as soap making goes I was a double boiler kind of gal when I would melt my soap base (I am a glycerin soap maker). When looking through one of my many books for recipe ideas I rediscovered that one can use the microwave to melt soap base! Yippie! Woo hoo! This might help me make soap in a flash I thought, and you know what, it did! Not only could I better control the amount of soap I would melt it was just so darn fast! Thirty seconds and wha-la, soap that is ready to personalize with whatever ingredients you have in store for that bar. I made a Lavender Lemon Bar, a Citrus Bar with multiple citrus notes and vanilla and a Chamomile Oatmeal Bar with floral notes. I did this all in a fraction of the time it would normally take me using a double boiler. I think I’m a microwave convert, as far as soap making anyway. Now my soaps are setting up and in the morning I get to do what I love the most about making soap, I get to un-mold them and give them a good whiff! Then off to the Bazaar-On-Hudson facilitators to see if they gain me entry as a vendor in their marketplace. Wish me luck!