Perspective

Perspective was our topic for drawing class yesterday afternoon. With the help of our rulers, pencils and detailed instructions we managed to extract something that looked a bit like a real building out of a mass of construction lines. It turns out that a lot has to do with your point of view. I'm hoping today's experience will be similar. Here's a view of my kitchen table this morning.My cup of coffee is in the foreground. Everything else falls into place around and behind it. Having drained it, I hope everything else will fall into place and something resembling a reasonable day will emerge.

My first task is to list and price a box of handspun skeins for my friend E who is coming to pick them up for her shop. Next week they will be nicely established at House of Cloth in Bendigo. Then I have my stuff from last week's activities to put away. There's also some more spinning and knitting hovering on the horizon. Hopefully I can catch up with that before it reaches the vanishing point. . . .

Reality

My friend V dropped in for a coffee yesterday. I looked at my big table. It was totally covered in stuff. I will justify myself by saying that maybe a third of that is current projects. The remainder is accumulated paperwork and various fibre things that have been displaced while looking for other stuff. I did manage to find room for a coffee cup--in the middle of a frame I'm painting up for a Christmas gift. I didn't intend to juxtapose the local paper's article on homelessness with my household organisation issues. But it's a sobering thought: while I'm celebrating a special room for my creative endeavors, others are struggling to find a place to live at all.

I spent most of the day painting my new studio. My friend C emailed me recently and referred to it as "the craft villa". I laughed. In the afternoon I went out to choose flooring. It seems that timber laminate will be cheaper and hardier than the vinyl I'd planned to use. Now I'm thinking of it as my "Studio Sofitel". The reality is that this is turning into a really lovely space for me to work and it's making me very happy.

The Kindness of Friends

I've called on my friends a lot in the past couple of weeks. And they've been there: giving me a place to stay, a listening ear and muscle power--physical and emotional--to deal with the chaos at my house. I guess the biggest thing is having people who get where I am and what's important to me.

L from the Neighbourhood House is one of those friends. And as a token of getting it, she gave me this cup this week--just to warm my day:)

Coffee cup in the background, knitting in the foreground. The coffee is yesterday's mid-morning sweet decaff with milk. The knitting is the bamboo-wool neckroll with a twist which I've mentioned a few times lately. And the table has just a big enough clear patch on it that I could take the photo. In fact I pushed various piles of stuff out of the way.

Today I need to find homes for a bit more of my stuff. Also do some weaving and spinning so I don't get totally left behind in my courses. I've cancelled my weekend commitments, so I'll have a few days to get settled and re-oriented. I really need that.