Sublime Blue

Bluebells at Dusk

Last wednesday evening I went walking with friends in some woodland down in East Sussex. The bluebells have been better than usual this year, prolific and lasting for weeks and we walked among them as the sun was gradually sinking. The sublime blue hovers like a misty haze just above the ground and as the dusk deepens it turns slowly from blue to purple. We hoped to see badgers or foxes but despite staying quiet until it was dark all we saw was a tawny owl.

Afterwards we walked back through the woods to our hosts who own and manage the woodland and who keep 25 peacocks around their house including one pure white one. Their cries had been piercing the night since we arrived. Several of the peacocks were displaying their tail feathers fully and engaging in some courtship behaviour, but I did not see any glimmer of interest from the peahens, they were playing hard to get. We were served Victoria sponge made with peacock eggs.

It is not only the bluebells that have been wonderful this year but also the hollows carpeted with the white starry flowers of wild garlic and the boggy woodland studded with magenta orchids, the creamy blackthorn blossom in the hedgerows and the pale yellow primroses on the stream banks. I look forward to the wild anemones that come next.

Procrastination

Procrastination - the bane of the self-employed artist's life. I actually think I'm fairly diligent at my work but the dreaded procrastination can strike at any time. In fact it usually strikes when I have a deadline approaching, strange that. Some of my favourite ways to procrastinate are: reading murder mysteries, doodling, making another cup of tea, having a 'quick' look in my garden to see if anything bloomed, imagining what I would do if I won a million dollars...

I've been thinking of how I could harness the procrastinating tendency and turn it into something at least a little bit useful. I think it is impossible to eradicate it altogether (and would we want to?) but what if it was re-directed slightly.

For instance, if I'm working on a difficult piece and I don't want to get started in the morning, I'll tell myself that I don't have to work on it but that I do have to go into the studio, put on my apron and do something. Nine times out of ten if I do that I will actually start working on it. It seems that if I take that first step of putting on the apron everything else falls into place. If I'm stopping for a cup of tea that seems to go on and on, I find that if I take my tea back to the studio I will return to work. It is considered a safety hazard to drink tea in the jewellery studio but I find that once I get back there the half drunk tea just sits forgotten. If I have been out of the studio most of the day I often think it isn't worth starting anything when I return. But then again if I tell myself to just go in the studio and sweep the floor or something that takes a few minutes, chances are some other job will catch my eye and I will have spent the 'wasted' hour doing some much needed studio chores.

I'm sure you have your own ways to procrastinate, I'd love to hear them, and yours ways of fighting it!

Not Working

I think of myself as fairly disciplined when it comes to my jewellery business. I have been doing it long enough that I have a routine that works. I can always find something that I feel like doing even when I hardly feel like doing anything at all. However this past week has been somewhat difficult and the result is that I've done very little at my workbench, desk or computer. A combination of having a family member staying (learning to snowboard), a friend from Montreal coming into town for just a day (I must go skiing with her), lots of domestic stuff that had piled up to Everest proportions, getting the car fixed and I could go on and on.

However the good thing is that although I have little to show for this week in my hands I can always be thinking about new ideas, new designs, interesting shapes, forms and textures while I am doing other things. I haven't been able to jot anything down in the big black book but I do have all sorts of things circling around in my brain that are sure to emerge as jewellery at some time.