Happy Three-Day Weekend

Today tastes like dandilion greens, juniper berries, and endive.

I made the fatal mistake of cleaning up my paper arts workshop a week ago; and now I've dumped most of a day into the fiber arts workshop. I used to think I thrived on chaos and clutter, that creative minds like mine needed the extra stimulus and juxtaposition.

Boy, was I wrong. I just don't like to clean. To paraphrase Dot Parker, "I don't like to clean; I like to HAVE cleaned." I like being able to put out my hand and grasp the tool I need, the pattern I want, the book with the notation that I want to see once more before I start the project. I just don't want to have to put it back away afterwards.

But the thing is, if my space is a disaster, then I don't want to spend time there. And if I don't want to spend time with my tools and my projects--then nothing gets made.

There's a corner at my kitchen table that always has a pad and pen stashed for inpromptu jottings while cooking or eating, and I've been known to make a mad dash to spill an idea out before it wilts. This afternoon, when it became clear that I was going to have to rewrite a chunk of the pattern I'm working with, I got to my feet and headed--directly into my clean, fresh, neatened fiber studio to lie on the floor and nibble the cap end of my pen as I thrashed out what was going to happen over the next few rows.

I haven't turned to that space to solve problems in MONTHS. It's always been the kitchen corner. Clearly, I need to keep than in mind as a danger sign--when the studio is so messy and chaotic that it's easier to think at the kitchen table (with the comings and goings to be found in the heart of the house) then it is time and past time to clean the studio--whichever one I'm being driven from.