The Secret Garden

My favourite obsession

I have an addictive personality. I've instinctively known this all my life and thus shied away from the usual recreationally addictive substances. And that's far from being the only area in my life where obsession exists. What made me a great reporter/scientist/feature writer was that I can get very very interested in a subject very quickly, research tirelessly for days on end soaking up information like a sponge, and then like a sponge, when I become saturated, if the right situation or person squeezes, all the information gushes forth. What I am extremely bad at however, is maintaining that focus in the long term. My passions tend to last for a few years at a time, sometimes only a few months. In my working life my projects were measured in weeks or sometimes days. I had to pick up an idea, run with it, and become a very competent sounding (that word is important) word spout on the subject, and then be ready to drop the idea and move on as soon as the piece was written.

It suited me very well.

Sometimes, if the timing is right I can get back into something again - I pick up knitting and spinning seasonally and the fimo is something I played with as a child. Although I've yet to experience that same all-devouring passion for anything the second time around (except bushcraft). From what I'm reading about polymer clay (fimo to us Brits) is that it is an endlessly creative medium. It seems tailor made for butterfly minds like mine, as it can be used to mimic almost any traditional craft technique you care to think of from antique glass to zinc. That dichotomy is its blessing and its curse to me. I'm drawn to tradition and authenticity; integrity is written through me like a stick of rock, and so faux anything rings hollow. I don't want to imitate - I want to create. I want to find a way to express this craft that is unique to it. Do things that can only be done with polymer clay. I want to twist it, shape it, and take a traditional technique and run with it. I think the reason I hated miscellaneous pagan resin tat was because it was so fake. It was too much. Too twee. Too much a parody of what being pagan is. So what I want to do is to let the clay take me where it wants to go. I want to see if something spiritual can be born from it naturally, and not forced. Can a manmade material ever be truly pagan? Can it be authentic? I know that doesn't bother some people, and it bothers me immensely. I want it to be real. Real what exactly I don't mind, just real. True to itself.

I'm teaching feltmaking and natural dyeing in September - come along!

Time: September 4, 2010 to September 5, 2010

Location: Old Chapel Farm
Organized By: Low Impact Living Initiative


Event Description:
Get away from it all for a weekend and learn a new skill at the same time in a stunning rural setting in gorgeous West Wales.

In September I'm teaching a weekend workshop in feltmaking, an ancient skill and one of the first forms of fabric. Over the course of two days you will learn how to dye wool fleece using herbs gathered locally and then make a pair of felt slippers with wool from sheep grazing only a few hundred yards away.

Old Chapel Farm is a stunning organic farm stretching across several acres in a beautiful unspoiled part of the world. The farm regularly hosts WOOFers and is running this course in association with LILI.

See more details and RSVP on Project Dirt: http://www.projectdirt.com/events/event/show?id=2004501%3AEvent%3A49468&xgi=3KXs0WOIwrMFt2&xg_source=msg_invite_event

Or alternatively email me.

When did we forget our dreams?

Cake love

http://confectionsofamasterbaker.blogspot.com/2010/02/ps-i-cake-you.html

This is amazing! She bakes the words into the cake. Ignore the mushy sentiment if you like, and admire the stunning genius of the technique.

To a passing stranger

When I sent those words they were not to you. They were to the Universe; to my love. “I must not lose you”. I must not lose the feeling of being in love. Of loving someone so completely that our bodies become one. That it is so reciprocal there is no doubt. I must not close my heart to the pain of love. I must remember to take the daggers to my chest because they remind me that I feel. That I live. To fully feel the heights of joy I must also embrace the terror and pain of grief.

I must remember how it feels to be held by you, because closing myself to the pain of that means closing myself to being human. To meeting another and making myself vulnerable to them. To being held by them, and loved by them, and loving them in return.

I understand that now, Love. I miss you so much.