Pain In The Neck And Rent Me An ARK!!

This has been a horrid, horrid day. I went up to Halifax for our annual Weight Watchers meeting yesterday leaving Moncton at 7:30 am and getting home about 12 hours later. It was a fun, inspiring but very tiring day. I went to bed around 11 pm and must have slept far too soundly at one point because I woke up suddenly at 6 am barely able to move my neck and almost unable to swallow on that side!! I had this happen one many years ago at my mother’s place, but then it was strep throat and a gland was pressing on things. This time I had no sore throat (other than swallowing), no fever, no explanation!

I tried a hot bath, a warm cloth, a Magic Bag, Ibuprofen, a muscle relaxant... and was only mildly better by the time I had to leave for church. Nick and I were supposed to serve communion today and I had two complicated anthems that we’d been practicing for choir. We got to church and discovered that the couple in charge of getting the altar, the bread and grape juice ready had been sick all week and nothing was done... there weren’t even the supplies at the church!! Our minister decided to reschedule that part of the service for another time. I practiced the anthems with the rest of the choir and had a bit more mobility (plus lots of sympathy) by this time, so I decided to stay and sing. On the way home, I did visit the medical clinic in our area and he was just as baffled as I was. The only thing that he could recommend was treating the pain and using some of the deep cold rub which I asked Nick to apply as soon as we got home. Other than making me feel and smell like a menthol cough drop for a few hours, it did seem to help.

Somewhere this afternoon as I hunched over my colour pencil drawing to show the author tomorrow, it suddenly went from being a dull ache to being gone. We had a wonderful turkey soup/stew for supper which had been simmering all afternoon as the rain continued to pour outside. Our backyard had quite a few deep puddles, but the terra forming we’d done over the last 2 years to keep stuff away from the house seemed to be working... at least it was until 9 pm tonight!!

For the past 3 hours, Nick has been bailing out the window well that leads into my office, while I was outside trying to create an alternate path through one garden to lead out to the front yard and digging a little trench to lead the water elsewhere. We’d tried to hook up our little outdoor pump but nothing would come out of the hose!! I finally took a sharp, serrated knife and lopped the metal pressure end off the hose... and VOILA!! Water was able to come pouring out and down our driveway. With the pump working outside, the window well isn’t filling as fast. It just that with somewhere between 50 and 80 millimeters (2 to 3 inches) of rain today alone and us being one of the low spots on Highmeadow, there just isn’t anywhere for all the water to go and it is falling too fast to soak into the ground that has been saturated by 2 days of heavy rain!

Nick has finally gone to bed. I’m blogging and keeping and eye on the window well, bailing twice during the writing of this blog, but it seems to be filling more slowly each time. The heavy rain is supposed to tapper off around 2 am, but I don’t think I will stay up THAT long! I will bail once more before bed and just hope for the best. We have already moved stuff off the floor or out of the office...

So how on earth would you not go crazy with 40 days and nights of this??? After Hippos on Friday and Arks today, I sure seem to have animals on the brain!

Eating The Hippo...One Bite At A Time!!

OK... so putting a digital camera in the hands of a visual, creative person can sometimes be a goofy and strange thing... but I hope it makes you smile. The expression usually involves an elephant rather than a hippo, but I don’t have lots of stuffed elephants kicking around the house!

My Nanny loved hippos. She had a whole collection of them kicking around the house because family and friends would find hippo figurines, toys, puzzles, magnets etc. in their travels and bring them home to her as gifts. The few times that she actually saw real hippos during her lifetime (once even in the wild), she was rather disappointed that they weren’t as charming as the ones in the Disney movie FANTASIA!!


I found this little hippo two years ago and she usually sits in her little hippo hutch area just above my mouse. I haven’t stopped missing my grandmother since she passed away almost 6 years ago, but having a hippo handy makes me remember her with a smile instead of tears.

So why do I love that expression? Basically, it reminds me that any task, no matter how huge, can be accomplished one step at a time. That expression often calms me down during a bad panic attack of “I’ll never get it all done! There just aren’t enough hours in each day!! How will I handle this???”

Flipping the calendar over to June and getting the website updated reminded me that in just over 10 weeks, I will be heading to Charlotte with my family for a trade show.... so of course, I also looked at time frames for getting each illustration done for the book project and had just a teeny, tiny, itsy, bitsy panic attack. It’s really annoying when they hit between 4 and 5 am!!

This morning, even though every single interruption possible has made steady drawing time almost impossible, (attempted delivery of a parcel that wasn’t mine and I was not about to sign for... Erin calling from school to say that she’d split the seam of the capri pants she was wearing but Nick has the van in Petitcodiac, an automated phone call to inform me that I’d won an award of travel points if I would just call this certain number to redeem them..yeah.. right... a washer going off balance as I try to get laundry out of the way before it pours rain all weekend...) I’m still really satisfied with what I got sketched yesterday and looking forward to what will still get finished this afternoon. We are looking after a neighbour’s daughter after school for a few hours until her Dad gets off work, so Erin with have someone to play with once she recovers from the trauma of having people see her underwear. I have already loaded a few new CD-ROM adventures on the purple iMac we inherited from my sister, after my step father upgraded to a Mac mini, so Bethany will be able to have an hour of playing Jump Start or ISpy and learning while she plays.

“Date night” has been put off until Saturday night because Nick has yet another retirement even to attend for staff who are leaving Petitcodiac, so I will happily stay up and draw!! You just have to tackle problems on bite at a time and then move on to the next one. CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!

The Business of Creativity...

That sounds like one of those oxymorons... like Jumbo Shrimp. Creative types would usually just love more time to spend lost in the actual creating that in all the other mess that goes with trying to do this for a living.

Since I actually had the van today, my day was all about the other stuff.

I got a sample of the author’s first book to the printing company I deal with for my leaflets so that they could identify what weight cover stock and inner paper had been used the last time. I also left them with all the information that they need to quote on printing this book once the files are done to compare that to the company in Ontario.

I unpacked a box that arrived home safely after a trunk show. I dropped off some of the models from Nashville that were in that box at our local shop along with an order, then promptly turned around and spent that on stuff I need for new designs being released in Charlotte in August.

I sorted through e-mail and tried to save at least 150+ messages to the proper categories on Zip disk, paid some bills and filed away the last few pieces of business mail to come in.

I picked up two pads of drawing paper that I will need for this book project on sale at a local craft store.

I phoned Debbie at the CSNF because an e-mail that got buried last Friday asked about some class proposals that had been misplaced, but they found them.

I called another client who is late paying an invoice to see if anything had been mailed yet and got an answering machine to leave yet another message on.

I called Canada Post to check on a box that is still missing in transit.

I finally heard back from the local paper about billing for a set of stories I wrote on a RUSH basis right before the April show in Toronto. Since the stories ran in the main body of the paper instead of a separate section with advertising, the rate is half what it normally is for the same amount of words and caliber of writing. Since the work is already done, I suppose any money is better than no money, but I had the pleasure of letting them know that I would be quite busy with this children’s book over the summer.

All of this when I would rather just be at a table drawing while good tunes played in the background.

The reality of choosing to earn your income from a creative source means that you have to learn to do both. Very few of us ever grow to the point where we can have the manager, the accountant, the personal assistant and all of those other resources at our beck and call. I’m not even sure if I’d want to. I just want my desk to stop disappearing under new paperwork every time I get it cleared off. I want to keep striving for that balance between doing the creative work and finding the time to look after all the other stuff that so needs to be done.

Tomorrow is all about updating the website and then drawing because I got this other stuff out of the way today... and I can’t wait!!!

I Get To Draw A Children’s Book!!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Thank you SO much for all the warm wishes, karma, prayers and positive energy. I met with the author this morning and not only did she like the drawings, she would like me to do the layout and prepress work for the book too! This means that I don’t have to worry that someone else will radically alter what I draw to match her vision! Yay!

Sleep was SO hard last night. Nick had to keep talking me down and then I woke up at 4 am wide awake after dreams of taking kids with him on a field trip and having to count them over and over again to cross check things on a clipboard. I don’t even want to know any deep hidden meaning in that one! I know that it was just nervous energy. My walking buddy and I did our fastest loop of the 6 km ever this morning and she said keeping up with me was a workout and a half since her inseam is considerably shorter than mine!! I cleaned up, worked on one more drawing and then got everything ready to show the author when she arrived before lunch.

There was one hilarious moment at the beginning of the meeting when I began to walk her through the full size pencil dummy of the book. This is actual size of the final book, but just rough sketches so that you can get an idea of placement, layout and even composition before you measure and create the artwork at anywhere from 150 to 200 percent of the final size. When artwork gets scanned in and reduced, it helps everything tighten up nicely. When you draw actual size, mistakes can really show up... but it’s even worse if you draw things tiny and then enlarge them! The author got this half puzzled, half worried look and asked me if these were the final drawings before I did the colour work! I guess my burst of incredulous laughter was reassuring... but what really made her happy was when I explained the process and then pulled out 4 of the large pencil drawings for the size that I will actually create them!! She loved the detail and the expression on the main child’s face. We still need to define the little brother character to match her vision.

The layout may also change if we do a full 24 pages (6 inner pages of 4 panels each) instead of the 20 pages (5 inner sheets) that she did last time to keep costs reasonable, but that is half of the fun. I am going to concentrate on the cover artwork and the 4 panels that I know will stay the same regardless of which page number they end up on and have those drawings ready for Friday. I also plan to show her the two different mediums we could go with because her desire to use bright colours in this might be easier to achieve with a coloured pencil, marker and ink combo that watercolour and coloured pencil. Far less stretching watercolour paper onto board too!

Wheee! Yippeee! Yahoo!!! Between these illustrations, layout and getting designs ready for Charlotte in August, I am sure that my summer will be very full and satisfying. What feels the most wonderful is knowing that I finally have the chance to chase a dream and that I will hold a book that I illustrated in my hands this fall. How cool is that?

I’m glad I switched the title of the blog a while ago. This will now be an exploration of illustration, needlework and photography as all my projects progress. Welcome to the next adventure in a creative life.

Laughter, Anticipation, Perspiration and A Little Bit of Terror!

After almost 2 weeks of rain, today dawned sunny and glorious. Our minister at church has no children of her own and will be moving on to a new church out on the West Coast this summer, so our family and another offered to be her excuse to come see the movie OVER THE HEDGE with us after church this morning and refused to let her pay for her own ticket. What a FABULOUS movie!! I laughed for most of the movie except during the really poignant scenes and cannot wait to see it again or own it once it comes to DVD. I caught only a glimpse of half of the things that the animators tucked in there as inside jokes. The artist in me always likes to see a movie like that a second time so that I can look at details like how they did the texture of the fur or what quirky things they hid in the background that I missed the first time. It felt good to laugh that hard and the squirrel character had almost all the best lines. How do I know?? Both kids have been doing running squirrel monologues almost all afternoon!

Tomorrow morning, just before lunch, I have another meeting with the author whose children’s book I hope to illustrate this summer. She seemed thrilled with my style and samples when we met just over 2 weeks ago, but I want to be SURE that she will like how my style brings her story to life. I had one really hard disappointment last summer when I did a whole bunch of work for someone in exchange for royalties on a project that never materialized... so perhaps I am just being overly cautious. Perhaps it’s also because I have come so close three other times and then had things fall through or had art directors choose one of the other illustrators in the final pencils stage.

One cure for nerves in my case is always to get out and much about in the garden. There is nothing so horrid, mundane and yet so satisfying as yanking weeds from your flower beds. I even discovered that something which came up in the place of one of the perennials I had planted last year was actually just a common meadow weed. Yank! I turned all the rich soil in the raised bed where I plant vegetables every year and then Erin helped me put in our peas, beans, radishes, lettuce, carrots, pumpkins and yellow squash. In two weeks the risk of frost will be pretty much over, so I think I am safe. I’d love to have a much larger garden, but I haven’t figured out where I’d put it when the girls still enjoy racing around and playing tag on the grass. Two hours of yanking weeds out and planting things in was very satisfying!

So, now that the girls are in bed, the Memorial Cup is over here in Moncton (the Wildcats lost 6 to 2) and their lunches will be packed right after this blog, it is time to settle down with my pencils and go over what I’d like to show the author tomorrow morning. The little bit of terror and self-doubt that always seem to lurk at the edges is being kept at bay by a new visualization technique I shared with Teresa the other day. After talking with a friend about how critical she feels when she hears the CD her group recorded and listening to my sister share how writers in one class she’d signed up for kept telling everyone how they hated their own stuff, I have decided that this type of self-doubt must be almost universal to the creative mind. So I will not let this get in the way of chasing a long-cherished dream. Every time I feel an inkling of self-doubt begin to rear its ugly head, I am going to visualize a huge cartoon hammer like one uses in that “Whack-A-Mole” game and I am going to mentally WHACK the self-doubt back underground. I really am such a visual person! I may even add in a squeaky sound effect for added measure. WHACK! WHACK!

Drawing Up A Storm!

No picture today. I’m busy doing more pencil work on the sketches before I meet with the author on Monday. There is supposed to be a dog character in the book, but have yet to get any reference photos, so for now I am just doodling in a big, dopey kind of spaniel/setter/lab thing. I sure hope her dog isn’t a tiny Yorkie!

The more time I spend drawing, the better “in synch” my hands feel with what my head and heart are seeing. This can get a bit rusty when you’ve been turning most things into squares for so long. What helps this time, like with the Dragon*Con portfolio pieces, is that I am working on stitching designs and drawings back and forth, so neither skill will get rusty. I’m still incredibly hard on myself and yet proud of what my hands are producing at the same time. Isn’t that the weirdest thing about being creative?

This quote I stumbled on today by accident while putting a book away sums it up very nicely:

‘Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With what form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image.

-Byron

That really is the high of a creative lifestyle... that from your imagination can come ideas, designs, stories, kingdoms, adventures... the possibilities are endless!

Persistence...
Possibilities...
and Pepperoni!

I got for a walk in the woods this morning on the trails near the house with a friend. The weather has been terrible all week and we were just so glad to get out and walk instead of using a treadmill or doing workout DVDs!

There is this one stump that we pass on our walk where there are always squirrels or chickadees like this little one. They are wonderful reminders not to take problems to seriously and to just get on with the actual living of life.

Today was a great day... though my head feels a bit like it will explode. I worked on the book dummy a bit more making some changes to layouts and then started on one of the more complex full size sketches. When you draw for a project like this, you actually create the pictures twice as large as they will appear in the final book. This way, you not only have the room to put in more detail, when the image is reduced, everything looks crisper and cleaner. If you have to enlarge something, ever mistake is magnified, but if you reduce it, things that seem to jump out at you in the full size version are often harder to see and details are much tighter.

It is so satisfying to plunge back into the hours of drawing, even if I still guard against being too critical with myself. Fun to have the iPod playing my favourite tunes, though I hate the ear buds. I’m trying to save up for a dock so that we can just pop the iPod into something that acts as a stereo for it, but mundane things like computer cartridges and groceries keep getting in the way!

Today was also about possibilities... and that was what made my head feel like it would burst. I spent almost an hour on the phone with my ISP guy this morning learning about PHP, CMS and all the possibilities for websites that are out there now or coming down the line that will evolve how we set things up on the web. I’ve been toying around with making further changes to my site, removing some of the heavy content that I wrote in SimpleText and eventually evolving it to keep pace with how my freelance illustration and other projects are merging with my identity as a cross stitch designer. The possibilities out there are rather mind boggling! Aren’t vertical learning curves FUN?

One thing that I keep noticing though, is how definite I am in my visual tastes. iWeb has been driving me NUTS with the lack of ability to change the templates around or even just alter colours. I like the look of one version, but orange has to be one of the colours that I dislike the most of the whole colour spectrum. It’s probably because I look so horrid when I wear that colour and only learned to like pumpkin pie as an adult!

Finally, today was also about Pepperoni. I just love alliterations and couldn’t resist throwing that one in since it was a late night stumbling block. No, I did not get into an eating frenzy... rather the opposite. After finally getting the girls to bed, the laundry away, the dishes done from when we threw everything in the sink to race out to Bethany’s Sparks meeting and her “fly-up” to Brownies, I had to make lunches as well. If this week has taught me nothing else, it has made me realize just how lucky I am to have married a partner!

I went to make Bethany a pepperoni roll up and all we had is whole wheat tortillas. If she can get used to spaghetti being brown, maybe she won’t notice that her tortilla has changed colour? My youngest is very definite in her tastes. There must be NO mustard, margarine or mayonnaise in her wrap, just pepperoni, all beef salami and a bit of grated cheese. Not sliced... but grated. I stood there laying out the little circles on a larger circle and had a crazy moment of wanting to make a face with cheese hair or neat pattern. Does the creative image loving part of my brain ever truly go to sleep? I also marveled at the fact that I used to adore that meat and now find it difficult to even handle. Perhaps it is because I am getting picky about what is in my food. Meats like this are just too suspect. What gets chopped up and stuffed back into that shape?

At least, tired as I am tonight, I could still think about making pictures with whatever was at hand... even if it was pepperoni!

Creativity Over Pain...
This morning was horrid. I hate going to the dentist at the best of times. I’ve never frozen well and luckily my dentist here has a new technique that drills a tiny hole into the jaw and then puts the freezing in there where all the nerves are... but working on replacing a back temporary filling to put in something permanent did not go as well as the last time. Unlike the pain of labour, I had nothing productive to show for the suffering.

What I did discover, to my surprise, is that it is possible to think and be creative even in he midst of pain and tears. Thinking about a layout that I was wrestling with for this children’s book actually helped get me through the worst of the drilling. The author had a certain idea for the layout over a center page spread, but as I sketched it out, the perspective for the scene ends up being a bit too long and boring. I came back home after the dentist with my mouth still very frozen and throbbing to dive into thumbnails of other possibilities that took me almost through lunchtime. That was actually a good thing. Anyone who has ever tried to eat while the last traces of freezing is still wearing off knows just how messy things can get. Luckily there were no hidden cameras to catch this dragon drooling!

No wonder athletes are told to visualize a course or game in their minds. No wonder cancer patients try to work on positive images or imagine the battle going on in their cells being victorious. Our ability to imagine is one of the things that truly sets us apart from the other inhabitants of this planet. Our urge to make marks, tell stories, sing, dance and celebrate all that is creative makes us unique. It can lift us out of horrid times, give us hope that things can change and can soothe us in the midst of turmoil.

This is today’s lesson, learned unexpectedly. That amid the shifting pieces of pain in my kaleidoscope today, I could still find patterns of beauty, imagine other images and endure that moment until I could come home and feel healed just by picking up my pencil to draw a scene.

Windows Opening...
Doors Closing...
Doors Revolving and Learning
At Last to Embrace Change!

I think there must be a deep pit somewhere that eats time! The month of May has just flown by with computer glitches and lots of change in my life. I was trying to set up a separate blogging component to my website... but that just proved to be too problematic with the program I was trying to use. I have a handle on a new possibility, but for now, after many abortive attempts and weird glitches, it is time to just do another entry on Blogger.

You will notice a big change soon... after many years of wanting this to be a forum where I could just "vent" without worrying about the feedback, the comments feature on Dragon Musings has now been turned on. Many of you have asked me to consider this feature for a while now and with all the change that is going to happen in my life in the next 6 months, I think that it is about time. I tried to get it to work on this post, but I don't think it is working, so it's time to ask Blogger for help.

So what has happened since the last entry?

First of all, Toronto was an absolute BLAST!! It reminded me of just how important it is to be creative and to keep learning new things. One of the reasons that I was trying to get the blog moved to my site was so that I could add more pictures. I really want to show off the little basket that I made because I had SUCH fun learning a new skill like that!

I can't wait for the fall show either because I am teaming up with two people I love to work with, Teresa Wentzler and Doug Kreinik, to offer stitchers a special project that will hopefully have their fingers itching to stitch!! You'll get more details later, but for now, know that we are having a blast planning this. Teresa and I always have fun rooming together as well... though it has sometimes digressed into a giggle fit.

So what doors are closing? I haven't given up on cross stitch. In fact, I am still working on the releases for the show in Charlotte this August which we plan to do as a family. I am also branching out into something needlework related, but that lets me explore colour and texture in a whole new way as well as play with sparkly things. Dragons really love things that sparkle!!

What has kept me busy, excited and enraptured for the past 2 weeks is the chance to illustrate a children's book over the summer!! I am just over the moon as I prepare sketches for a local author's second book which she would like to publish before Thanksgiving!! After almost 30 years of wanting to "grow up and draw the pictures for books", I am finally getting the chance to show off what I am capable of. Thrilled just doesn't begin to describe the feeling! Of course I will still wrestle with my demons every time I get a sketch finished and wonder if it couldn't be a little better or a little bit more "perfect", but I have finally learned to just embrace the possibilities of each day and each moment that is offered.

The fact that I found out about the illustration job 3 days before I received the letter about not passing this year's jury for the Dragon*Con art show made that news a little more bearable. I do have an incredibly "cutsey" style. Works from that portfolio will be appearing on my site in the next few days as I wrestle to get the updates done for June. Nick is away at a conference in Halifax until Friday, so I am now getting a taste of what he goes through as a single parent when I jaunt off to trade shows!

After the first initial feeling of "so what didn't you like about my stuff?", all I really felt about not getting into Dragon*Con was a sense of relief at not being pulled in 3 directions at once this summer. Trying to get over 22 illustrations done for the children's book will be challenging enough while still getting Santa's Dragon and any other new releases ready for the show. As wonderful a city as Atlanta was, there are other cons and other ways to get my artwork out there that don't involve spending over a thousand dollars in travel, hotel and bay rental.

Doors closing,... windows opening... doors revolving. When it comes right down to it, it is all about learning to embrace CHANGE.

The journey of these past 2 years has taught me that change does not have to be something that is feared or dreaded.

Think of a kaleidoscope. Thousands of shifting pieces of glass or plastic that tumble around in a tube to form something beautiful thanks to the mirrors that help create the patterns. Nothing stays the same forever, no pattern gets carved in stone. Everything shifts and changes and turns into something beautiful again. Not the same as it was, but beautiful none the less.

I am trying to now live each day looking for the new and beautiful pattern emerging from the chaos. I am trying to embrace change as something inspiring and creative, instead of scary. I'll keep you posted on how I make out! Maybe you'll join me on the journey.

Inspired...but Tired!

What a WONDERFUL weekend!! I went up to Toronto not knowing what to expect, not knowing if I could stay positive... and came away having inspired others, being inspired, learning new crafts, trying new techniques, fondly fabric, hoarding beads, taking notes, laughing at how common the urge to touch things is among crafters... and getting totally reinspired that CREATIVITY helps make the world a better place!

But... having not slept well in a firm hotel bed with lumpy pillows away from my family... and getting in VERY late last night (or is that early this morning?) I am off to bed shortly behind my oldest daughter. I will log about the show tomorrow afternoon once I get through my meeting.

It is good to be home!!!

All Packed and Ready To Fly...

For the first time in a long time, I am going to head to bed at a reasonable time before leaving for a show! I’m all packed, I’ve checked over my notes, props, slides, stitching etc. and don’t think I’ve forgotten anything... so I wanted to celebrate with a quick blog entry before I leave.

I was surprised that Erin was more clingy tonight than Bethany. They find it hard to go to bed knowing that I will be gone by the time they wake up. Bethany tried to insist that she would wake up at 5 am with me to say goodbye. Erin just clung to me and insisted that she didn’t want me to leave. Teaching her to let go is also helping me because I know that I am the one who will have to learn to let go on so many levels during her teen years as she begins to assert her own identity and independence. I can see it starting already... and I just shake my head wondering where the time went.

A savvy stitcher passed a link on to me today knowing that I’d be interested in getting in touch with these ladies and taking the message to a broader level. This is an example of a terrific site that is both educational and informative without pulling any punches. Bravo to a well designed, well written and well thought out site Stop Piracy . Cross Stitch is certainly not the only craft to face this type of piracy in a digital age!

I’m off to Toronto for a wild and wooly weekend of crafts, lectures, information, inspiration and cross stitch! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The Healing Power of Being Creative...

While getting ready for a show always sends me into a bit of worry that I will leave something behind, forget to pack something important etc., it is also a fun time of anticipation. I really like meeting stitchers first hand, seeing all of the creative potential that a festival like CSNF in Toronto offers and trying to remind people about WHY it is so important to stay in touch with our creativity. Sometimes, the act of being creative teaches me SO much.

One of the lectures that I am giving this time is about “Legacy Crafting”. It is a look at ways to use crafts to work through grief, honour someone’s memory, create a tribute to someone who touched your life and may have moved away... because to create is to make broken things into something new.

So, as I sat down last night to create a sample for class, I was taken by surprise when the project demanded to go in a different direction that I had planned. I’d wanted this to be a way to work through my anger and despair about the industry... about the fact that what I created was so easy to steal... about how it would be ok to leave this behind and move on to something else...

Imagine my surprise when the project became an explosion of word, image, and my favourite colour. It became an affirmation of all that I believe about being creative... about expecting miracles... about following your heart... about adventures into the unknown. I completely lost track of time while I was creating this sample in that magical sense that caused the Greeks to create the second word for time - KAIROS. Unlike CHRONOS, time which can be measured, KAIROS is that time which transcends measurement... where it ceases to have meaning. Like when you spend time in the company of someone you love, when you disappear into a good book, when you get so lost in creativity that suddenly time has flown by. Anyone who has ever glanced up from a stitching project to see how late it truly is when they just intended to “stitch one more little section” can understand that vortex.

That kind of creativity is NOT draining. It restores, it recharges and it exhilarates. There is that moment when you step back and look at what you have worked on, imperfections and all, and marvel at the fact that your hands brought it to life.

When we create, we touch that deeper sense of wonder, that deeper sense of creativity... and it should not take us by surprise. Though this has been given many names by many cultures, one of the most universal and abiding among all of them is Creator.

Grandparent Spoilage!

My Mum and John arrived yesterday after a slippery drive from Bangor, Maine where they’d spent the night after leaving Sherbrooke on Tuesday morning. I thought that my girls might squeeze them in two with their hugs as Maggie, their cairn terrier scampered merrily amid all the feel wagging her little tail off!

Since Mum and John were over visiting my sister and brother in Europe for the girls’ birthdays, they brought presents along to have “belated birthday celebrations”, but its working out to a present a day! Thank goodness that doesn’t also mean cake and ice cream every day too!!!

I wrapped up a huge graphics project tonight and sent the bill off in the mail too. I got most of my stuff ready for the Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival next weekend in Toronto and Dani’s incredible stitching arrived by Xpress Post this afternoon. Her needle really is quick and precise!! Now I will get to show off the Overdyed Dragon for one of the classes that I’m teaching this fall.

I also revamped my resume and created a new .pdf file that acts as a brag sheet and reminder of all the services I can offer; illustration, graphic design, copywriting, editing, voice over work, translation, photography, logo design, etc. It doesn’t help to scrounge more work in other areas as my bottom line in cross stitch changes.

What really has to change are people’s attitudes... and one of the only ways that can happen is with education and enforcement. I’ve spent the past week looking into a few things that should prove to be very interesting and hopefully very proactive when it comes to dealing with pattern scanners. As an industry, we have to face the fact that technology will alter the way we do business forever, even in this most tactile of crafts. How we adapt to that and the ways in which we work to alter what is and is not acceptable, either by law or by society, will be the legacy that this generation of designers leaves for those who come after us.

For now, it is just fun to have Mum and John here in the house, even though they have to head

The Pain Of Growing-Up...

Thursday was a rough day for Erin. After the high of receiving her Grade 5 essay award for the entire province of New Brunswick on Monday night, the week went downhill from there. She’s getting into those mood swings as she heads towards puberty and the thought of eventually having 3 females in the house to tiptoe around during certain times of the month already has Nick thinking of switching to plastic cutlery or putting up a bed in the baby barn!

She came home in tears after school and wouldn’t really share much of what had happened until late at night after I got her tucked into bed. It turned out that she’d been teased for several things; playing football with the boys, starting this campaign to clean up the school property, singing so well in class during the National anthem and finally for still believing in the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and Santa.

Sigh! Any parent who has already had this conversation with a believing heart, knows how difficult the next little while was. Many of my friends found the discovery that such things didn’t exist a minor event in their lives. I can remember feeling sad for each holiday that first year... as if some of the magic had gone out of my world.

Then, as I grew older, I realized the importance of keeping that sense of wonder alive in my heart. Who is to say that there might not still be some corner of the world, undiscovered by our rampaging civilization yet, where unicorns can still graze? Who is to say Nessie or Sasquatch might not be out there? The quote on the bio page of my website contains one of my favourite quotes of all times from author Madeleine L’Engle:

‘The artist, if he is not to forget how to listen, must retain the vision which includes angels and dragons and unicorns, and all the lovely creatures which our world would put in a box marked Children Only !’

So there were tears and sobs, questions and sighs, cuddles and insights into some of the realities of growing up. There were also reassurances about what it is to be a believing soul, of how we become part of that Spirit of Giving that the first Saint Nicholas embodied, and how I don’t ever plan to stop believing in some things completely.

There were also promises and admonitions not to thrown these facts out in her younger sister’s face during some fight, so that Bethany may have the time to believe until she is ready to ask me the same questions.

Will the magic of Easter be any less tomorrow morning? Not at all! I will finally have one child free from this ridiculous new notion that the Easter Bunny brings toys just like Santa. I will know that for me, this is the most important day of joy and wonder in the whole year that has nothing to do with chocolate (though that is tasty!), and I will also find a way to look across the room as my oldest daughter and catch her eye. The smile I send her will be one that welcomes her on yet another of the milestones in the adventure of growing up.

Learning To Appreciate What You Have...

After all the challenges of these past few weeks, I can honestly say that it has taught me to be grateful for what I do have. Every day there are tangible examples of why I should practice gratitude as an attribute.

Learning that friends of ours are going their separate ways after trying for almost a year to hold things together for the sake of their children. It has made me tell Nick how much I appreciate him and all the ways in which we manage to make our marriage work.

Knowing that as all these wonderful new opportunities and challenges come Nick’s way, as he prepares to assume the Principalship of Magnetic Hill this summer, it is ok to feel a teeny bit jealous of your own husband when everything in his career seems to be gaining the recognition he deserves and new opportunities for growth when I still feel like I am fumbling for what to do next.

Understanding how many lives a single person can touch as I get set to bid farewell to a colleague from my radio days. Local newsman Dave Lockhart passed away suddenly this week at just 60 years old. Remembering him and how he touched my life as well as listening to the many tributes that poured in was a reminder of what legacy we will leave once we are gone.

Believing that there must be dark times in order to understand the times of joy and be grateful for them.

In the past few weeks I have received e-mail telling me that I am a spy, harassing innocent people who are just trying to share with others, that I am greedy, selfish, foolish for wanting to try to make a living from designing, that I am actually as wealthy as Martha Stewart, that I should get “a real job” that is hard like they have, that I am charging way to much for something that is just made of paper, that they are not hurting anyone by sharing patterns, that I probably break all kinds of laws myself by speeding or cheating on my taxes..... I almost dread seeing those e-mails more than the ones that promise to enlarge things or hot stock tips!

When it comes right down to it, I know that Integrity cannot be bought. If I spend my life trying to create images that make people smile or look for wonder in life, whether it is in watercolour or with thread... If I try my best to stay true to all that I believe and all that I am... then that is the ultimate work of art that I share with the world.

I stumbled on a quote tonight that I’d written down in a journal over 22 years ago.

“What you ARE is God’s gift to you. What you BECOME is your gift to God.”

It Was A Daniel Powter Kind of Day...

Surely by now, especially if you watch American Idol, you know the song BAD DAY by Daniel Powter? If you haven’t heard it, spend the 99 cents and download it on iTunes because it is the perfect song to play if you have a day like I had today. It’s playing in the background over and over as I type this. Actually, any of these little oddities would have been annoying on their own. All together, they were a bit overwhelming!!

I had a Weight Watcher’s meeting to lead this morning and arrived to discover that our centre had no flip chart paper to write on. Engaging people in discussion is so much easier when you can write down their responses!! I checked with my Regional Manager and she asked me to pick up any paper I could get at Walmart. Luckily, I knew my topic well and I had the van today, so off I went. Neither Zellers nor Walmart sell flip chart paper, but I did manage to buy a big “Dino Doodle Pad” of newsprint paper and get back in time for my meeting.

After this I went over to Shopper’s Drug Mart and bought 2 dozen eggs which were on sale 2/$3.00. A great deal when you consider it isn’t Easter for our girls unless they get to dye some hard boiled eggs. I went to the bank to deposit the Hoffman cheque from February’s sales to discover the dollar was at an all-time high, so the exchange rate was 1.12!!! Not much profit on exchange there anymore.... and that’s what used to let me absorb the higher shipping costs from Canada. I came home around noon and set a dozen to hard boil on the stove when the phone rang and a panicked graphics client proceeded to tell me about an ad they’d been unable to put together by themselves and e-mailed the pieces to me for a rush job! I went down to fire up the computers and make sense of what they were saying, downloaded the e-mails, opened the file that they insisted would “be really easy” and stared in horror at what they had thrown together! This is the problem. I just can’t copy and paste their monstrosity into an ad without needing to fix it (especially the bad english grammar) if it’s going to be a file I send on to a printer somewhere. Of course in all of this chaos, the eggs got totally forgotten until they boiled dry and started to burst, making fairly loud popping sounds that had me racing up from the basement office just before the air could get thick with smoke!

Looking at my watch, I discovered that I had about 10 minutes to scarf something down for lunch before I needed to pick Bethany up at the bus stop. Thank goodness for cereal and milk! Once I picked Bethany up, I went back to Shoppers to buy another 2 dozen eggs to re-boil while I was up in the dining room/ kitchen area helping Bethany with homework. The cashier was the same one who’d served me just hours before and wondered why on Earth I needed more eggs... so of course I had to explain that my house now smelt like burnt eggshell... which set them off so much that they forgot to give me the $17.00 change from the $20.00 I’d given them. Of course, I didn’t discover this until I got home and put the eggs away then went looking for my change! I had to pull out the phone book, call the store and ask them to check if their cash was over by $17.00. They called back about 1/2 hour later to say that yes, indeed it was and that the money would be waiting for me in an envelope near cash #2.

I helped Bethany get her work done then the phone rang and Wichelt wanted to know what new fabrics I might need for any summer releases. I told them about “Santa’s Dragon” that I was working on and we discussed some possible colours, but then I also had to let them know what was going on with the recent round of copyright infringement. They were horrified when I told them that I was thinking of taking a break from designing after my 100th design... but I had to be honest with them about how I feel trying to be creative knowing that I make something that is easy to steal!

After Erin and Bethany’s homework was done, I went down to check e-mail to see if the contact names I needed for an advertorial article that I am writing for the local paper had arrived yet, I found a second and third e-mail from the same client promising the printer that I would adjust a file of cover artwork for them as well... but it is a file that I didn’t create for them!!! Nearing my breaking point, I e-mailed my client back to point out that I would have to recreate the whole file from scratch since that wasn’t a job they’d assigned to me... therefore it wasn’t possible in the 12 hour overnight turnaround they were giving me. It’s hard to tell a well paying client that you can’t do something, but I’m also not responsible for someone else being behind schedule!

Since Nick was down at his school for the Internal Review Process that each school in the District is facing, I drove Erin to Guides with Bethany in tow. We went by the self-store to drop off some leaflets and pick up others. I stood there in the setting sun and stared at a 10 x 10 self-store full of printed leaflets and cardboard shipping containers that I had to have made for dealing with TLC that I now pay almost $150.00 a month to maintain and started to cry. If I had had a match at that point, I would have been roasting marshmallows over a lovely fire!

But now, as I sum up some of this days lunatic events, when the moon isn’t even full for another 2 days, I have to laugh at it all. I still have my health, my family and my sense of humour, even if my passion and my future seem questionable sometimes. What artist ever truly feels secure?? How many dreamers and doodlers even try to make a living from what they do??

Yes, I had a Bad Day. Yes, it felt as if “ the magic is lost, as if my blue skies have turned to grey and my passion has gone away” but this is only 24 hours. My life may feel off-line today, but a day only lasts 24 hours and this particular one shall never come again in my lifetime. The house now smells of scented candles, everyone is asleep except the hamsters and I... and after 20 times through, I can finally put Daniel Powter to rest along with this blog entry.

One Publisher’s Facts Say It All...

One of the publishers in the cross stitch industry who knows that I started a blog on Multiply.com to try to educate pattern sharers as to how much their actions were hurting the industry they claim to love and promote sent me these scary facts and powerfully written message. They did ask that they not be named, but I thought this information too important not to appear on my Dragon Musings Blog too.



In 2000, we published 52 cross stitch books. These ranged in size from leaflets to 48 pages. By 2002, we were down to 31 cross stitch books. In 2003 as scanning and posting charts began to get really bad, we started devoting our publishing dollars to knit, crochet and quilt because the copyright violations seem to be less prevalent among those consumers. We published 26 cross stitch books that year. In 2004, we published 25 cross stitch books. Last year we published only 11 cross stitch books. Through the first 5 months of 2006, we will publish only 3. I don’t know how much more proof you need to show what copying has done to the cross stitch business.

There are other implications beyond the atrophying of our cross stitch book output. Very few of our profits are reinvested in cross stitch, as they have been for 30+ years. What little dollars we do spend on cross stitch are spent on kits which, of course, are far more expensive for the consumer to purchase. We have a higher profit margin on kits than we do on books, a lower initial investment, and when the kit chart is scanned and posted online, it’s only one design, not 103 that we’re losing the sales on.

The few cross stitch books we have published in the last couple of years have been published at a higher retail. We expect to lose a certain percentage of our sales to copying. Therefore, we have to raise our retails to make up for the lost margins. This is identical to what retailers have to do to make up for shoplifting.

And sadly, we haven’t been able to publish any of our big 48 page books, which are such a tremendous value to the consumer, in nearly three years. We simply can’t afford such a huge investment that we know we’ll never be able to recoup because of copying.

The irony here is that these women, who so clearly love cross stitch, are single handedly destroying the pastime they love and, in the process, ensuring that designs cost more and more to buy. Their mentality reminds me of litterbugs who so blithely toss a coke can out the window and say to themselves “It’s just me and it’s just one coke can. It won’t make any difference.” Oh how wrong they are!

What can I add? Those kind of numbers speak for themselves!

Celebrating Joys and Achievements...

This is the season of birthdays in our household. By the end of the weekend, I will have celebrated the birthdays of the 3 most important people in my life... my husband’s, Erin’s and Bethany’s all in a matter of 20 days!!! The older that my daughters get, the more I am in awe of their potential and absolutely baffled at where the time has gone. I can dig out my journals from 11 and 7 years ago when I thought that I would never sleep the night through again in my life and have to chuckle at some of the things I scribbled in the dark during a 2 am feeding.

Last Friday was also report card day and both girls had absolutely spectacular report cards. As I wrestle with the recent wave of copyright infringements and ask myself why I ever wanted to try such a risky and vulnerable way of earning a living, I know that one of the reasons that I chose Art over Emergency Medicine (both were very strong callings and both tempted me as careers) was because I saw art as being an easier way to balance earning a living with raising a family.

Real parenting, the type where you actually spend time with your children and help them acquire the skills they will need to succeed in life is incredibly demanding. No wonder so many adults who have children spend most of their waking moments scheduled to death or wondering how to squeeze more hours into a day. While designing cross stitch, doing freelance graphics, illustration, copy writing, translation, voice over work and prepress work for the past dozen years hasn’t been exceedingly lucrative, it has let me be home when the girls get home from school and spending time with them to get homework done, provide enrichment opportunities and tutor them in reading or French. If that means that several hours of my own work gets done after they go to bed, so be it. They will only be with me for another decade or so.

It is simply amazing to watch how they are growing. Erin was so disgusted with the state of the playground now that the snow has melted, that she organized a group of kids to spend one outdoor recess picking up trash instead of playing. They filled a whole garbage bag from one small area and then the school rewarded all the students who took part with a “RRR ticket” (the school focus is reason, responsibility and respect) Bethany stayed calm when one of her friends got hurt on the playground this week, went for a teacher and then stayed with her friend at the office until their parent could arrive. When her friend got worried about an X-ray, Bethany calmly explained the procedure that she’d been through for her arm when it was broken and made a Get Well card as soon as she got home.

Could the past 12 years have been more lucrative for our family if I had stayed in advertising? Probably. Would it have been as rich in other ways? Probably not.

Vertical Learning Curves vs. Roller Coasters

The funny thing about vertical learning curves and roller coasters is that they both leave you feeling kind of queasy! With roller coasters, you pay to go on some large metal ride where you are constantly wondering if the safety features will work properly as you scream your head off on a thrilling, stomach churning and thankfully brief ride.

Vertical learning curves produce much of the same sensations at times but with your feet safely planted on the ground. The same sense of dizziness, stomach churning and doubts... but sometimes this ride lasts longer.... or at least the headache from cramming too much information into your brain at one time lasts longer than a roller coaster ride!

Ever since the information about Multiply.com broke just over a week ago, I have found my days filled not only with my usual work, but hours of learning legal terms, finding out about where and how sites are set up without the proper safety checks in place, checking with some of my friends who know computers far better than I do about how information can be tracked back to the right people, bringing the INRG Legal Defense Fund Committee up to speed on what has been happening in our industry. The first time this pattern sharing started, a whole bunch of designers used their talents to create a book called Celebrations of Stitching. It was not only meant to use our donated talents in a creative way to educate stitchers, but it was also a fundraiser so that we would have money as an industry to take legal action at some point. Perhaps the time has finally come.

It has been hard using energy and time on stuff that I’d rather not learn or have to deal with. My e-mail addy also got added to a list-serve that backfired and got stuck in an endless loop, but for a day or so, we thought that someone had hacked into my computer and used it to send out e-mails because I kept getting replies to replies to... you get the picture. It was odd that many of the companies e-mailing me were from the same country as one of the people I complained about to Multiply.com, but maybe that is just coincidence. I’d rather think the best of people if given a chance. Perhaps this is why the willful abuse of my copyrights by a small but determined group of people is still so baffling and hurtful to me.

Ultimately, we each live by our own moral codes and with our lives as a legacy to what we each believe. That is one of the reasons that Soli Deo Gloria appears on each chart I design and self-publish. That is why I cannot pretend to be someone that I am not. When I investigate a group, I go in as myself.

David Phelps song “Something’s Gotta Change” from his Life is a Church album has kept me sane this past week and is often blaring out of my Mac. It has become the theme song for this season of my life. Hate has to be met with kindness and love, but that does not mean you have to be a victim. I have already looked in the past year at reducing the amount of designing that I do to concentrate on other things that are either more profitable or less difficult to steal from me. Even if I decide to stop designing when I reach my hundredth design soon, I will have left behind a legacy of images that I am so proud of. I have heard from stitchers all over the world in the past 12 years who have enjoyed stitching my designs and that is more than most artists get in their lifetimes.

I also know that I just cannot walk away from an industry I love and still believe in. Something has to change in our society... in how we deal with what is right and wrong... in how things are evolving as we move to a more globally wired community. If I end up feeling called to speak out socially, legally and legislatively or founding a group to lobby for changes to copyright issues and privacy laws that let thieves hide behind false identities. Perhaps then a day will come when someone who creates any image, song, story or item that brings beauty to our world doesn’t have to worry about how quickly people will steal that for their own savings or profit.
It may be a roller coaster ride... and some vertical learning headaches...but that’s what makes life interesting!!

Ding..Dong..The BOX Is Dead!

Yay! At last! The BOX is dead! Never will I let a large box like that be a place to just toss stuff until I can deal with it. I will deal with it all and get it in its place because the few moments it takes to do that are so much better than dealing with tons of tiny things from receipts to skeins of half used floss to old cards, letters, invoices, receipts, beads and other weird stuff. Now the cardboard box is holding all my sorted brown envelopes ready to go to the accountant as soon as I do the totals for each category. Then, I think this new person is going to help me get set up on a better system to look at categories on a quarterly basis and see how things are going.

It nice to be able to focus on the little successes and the little steps forward when it feels like so much of this past week has been backsliding. Its looking as if some of the infringers on multiply.com are indeed Canadians and that makes me both sad and angry. The size of our population spread over the vastness of our country does mean that sometimes stitchers have to travel great distances to reach a store or mail order/on-line order, but the very idea of using our geography as an excuse for their actions is a bit repugnant to me. I can still remember the excitement of reading the r.c.t.n when I first discovered that there were on-line communities where you could talk about your love of stitching, learn new tips or tricks, find out about new releases or designs that were in the works. Sadly, somewhere along the line with the changes in technology, scanned patterns began to be shared as well.

One stitcher sent me a brilliant poster from the French designers association. It showed a blank graph on the poster with the caption “without designers, this is what your pattern would look like!” It was brilliant, simply brilliant.

We say as an industry that we need to encourage the next generation of young stitchers... but who will they learn from? Will their first introduction to stitching be sharing information or patterns? Unless we speak out, unless we make changes to what is acceptable legally, morally and ethically, this type of behaviour may become the norm instead of the exception. At least I know that my children are learning differently, because they are seeing first hand what effect copyright infringements can have.

Productive Anger Is Better Than A Pity Party!

Nothing makes you more productive that a good mad. I had my Pity Party last night when I wrote my blog and cried all over the keyboard. The girls and Nick all gave me big hugs when I calmed down enough to just look blotchy. Talk about a great teaching example for the girls. They see first hand how supposedly innocent sharing or downloading really hurts the person who created the magic in the first place and will therefore speak up among their friends. They know to spend an iTunes card and buy the downloads rather than steal them.
Ironically, discovering these sites came just after booking our flights for the trade show in Charlotte this summer and writing up the entry for the show guide which announced the release of my most complex design ever this summer. It is called “Santa’s Dragon” and the thought that there will be people just waiting to share that illegally as soon as they get their hands on a copy was almost more than I could bear. One poster on the Multiply site last night was raving about getting a copy of Stargazer a full 20 days before her shop in Europe would have it and now she could stitch it for free!! I was ready to just turn my site black and walk away. Why bother designing a product that is so easy to steal? Why invest the time, effort and money to create a quality product when there are people out there who have so little respect for what you do that they have to yell at you when you defend the rights of your own work and continue to steal?

This morning, however, I had a chance to move from sorrow to anger. I also felt the support from stitchers as they e-mailed their support having read my blog last night. So, instead, I set up my own page on at http://dragondreamsjen.multiply.com with a blog and a copy of the Copyrights & Copywrongs poster that I designed for the INRG (since I am the copyright holder) so that hopefully some of the stitchers who don’t realize that what they are doing is wrong can learn what they may or may not legally do. I also wrote a blog entry there and will keep that up as a portal/presence on Multiply.

I was able to write Cease & Desist letters to all of the sites that had my images on them, except for a Japanese one, as well as report those users for Terms Of Service violations. I wrote my local Member of Parliament to see how I can get involved furthering copyright issues in Canada, contacted the people who put together the Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival in Toronto to see if we can’t bring this before the media a bit during one of the shows this year, came up with some game plans that fellow designers and I could use to make the companies such as Yahoo and Multiply more aware of the abuse going on, complained to a few of the advertisers that had ads which Google placed on those sites to let them know how their ad dollars were being associated with, talked to our local ISP about ways to dig for identity information and find out about joining one of the groups that works with Interpol and the RCMP here in Canada.

All in all, it was a productive day in terms of trying to defend my artwork and copyrights. It didn’t let me get to the end of THE BOX, nor do any designing, but at least it has made me shelve the idea of becoming a goat herder on a tropical island. Last night that held a lot of appeal. At least if times are tough you can eat a goat. Leaflets aren’t tasty, even with ketchup!

I WIsh I Had The Energy To Get Angry...

I know that will come in the morning. By then the urge to just curl up in a ball in my office and have a good cry will have passed, and I will be ready to deal with the reality that I create things that are easy to steal.

Right now, all I can do is blog. After a day spent doing what I hate the most, trying to sort out invoices and run my business properly, I get e-mails from fellow designers who have found 3 huge sites trading thousands of cross stitch patterns, including many of mine. I am starting to realize that while most stitchers are indeed honest people,a few bad apples have the potential and technology to totally decimate this industry. Sadly as well, when Linn Skinner and her friends first raised this issue in 2001, the industry turned a blind eye and key players in the industry have continued to do so. Now, just a scant 5 years later, I am slowly coming to the realization that it may be just too late to close that barn door. Companies like Leisure Arts, Disney and other giants in the industry failed to pay attention to warnings and prosecute copyright infringers because they didn’t want to look like the “bad guys”. But tonight, I can stare at page after page after page of copyrighted material, with my carefully crafted copyright statements that were just ignored as they were scanned in.

I know the hoops that I am going to have to go through to get these removed. I know the faxes that I will have to send long distance to some copyright agent to prove that this is indeed my own stuff. I know that the true identities of those who are doing this will never be revealed, even though I never bother to hide who I am... and I know that copies of those files have already been “shared” so many times that I cannot possibly blot them all out.
Yet all someone who wants to steal from me needs to do is go surfing, or scan an image and set up a site in a few minutes to share something with the world that they had no hand, so sweat, no effort in creating.

I wish I could get angry. Maybe by tomorrow I will be able to. Right now, all I can do is weep.

Creative Types and Order... or Bag, Spawn of Box

I refuse to let chaos win!! It turns out that THE BOX has spawned a Bag!! I have no idea where the bag came from, but as I was getting down to the bottom of THE BOX, there was a bag, stuffed full of its own mess of receipts, papers, paid bills, notes, sketches, bits of fabric and fibers... some dating back to 2003?? Perhaps BAG is the Mother of the Box?
I shudder at this proof that if chaos is left long enough in a forgotten corner of my office, it will reproduce. This is worse that dust bunnies!!

Actually, this is one of my worst nightmares. For as long as I can remember, I have hated tidying. Oh, I love the order it produces, and I love the sense of knowing where everything is for the day or so it seems to last. I guess that means that I’ve always been a messy, cluttered child. I can remember being sent to my room in order to deal with a desk or surface that finally had to be dealt with, usually right before a favourite TV program was due to come on as an added incentive for speed. Once or twice a year, the second closet in my bedroom, where I tossed everything I didn’t immediately need during these desk and bureau tidies, would have to be dealt with and it felt much the same as it does to me now. It makes me want to SCREAM!

Of course, having iTunes on Party Shuffle has made things more bearable today. I never realized what an eclectic mix of music that Nick and I own until Josh Groban and Great Big Sea followed Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash with a little Kate Bush, Queen and Earth, Wind and Fire sandwiched in there!

The sense of satisfaction is also growing as yet another blue garbage bag (dry paper recyclables) of shredded paper I no longer need fills in the middle of my floor and each receipt gets safely into its proper brown paper envelope, but it has started me thinking about being creative and seeking order.

Are most creative types messier by nature? There will certainly be exceptions to that generalization, just as there are exceptions to every stereotype, but is there something in our brains that make those intuitive leaps or juggle lots of textures, ideas and thoughts around at once that make us more prone to clutter or the act of leaving things unfinished? If I try to train myself, can I make myself take the time to get each receipt which comes into my office filed away in its proper place instead of just setting it down on the desk to deal with later? What invariably happens is that I need to clear the desk, so I set the still undealt with pile somewhere else.... and eventually, you have THE BOX!

There.... the BAG has officially been put to rest. Now there is just the rest of THE BOX to deal with. I must go up and get some lunch first, however, or I will never have the strength to push on an vanquish this foe! (Imagine heroic James Horner music in the background as I lift myself off the carpeted cement floor and discover just what it feels like to have a 36 inch inseam worth of leg go pins and needles!)

Community...Where Is Yours?

I’d planned to write about something else today. Yesterday a touch of some bug had me feeling shivery, achy and total unproductive, so I went to bed at the same time as Erin and slept the night through.

This afternoon, one of Bethany’s friends got off the bus and came home with her in tears because her baby-sitter hadn’t been out at the bus stop to pick her up. Lindsay and Bethany are in the same class and our families share the bus stop every day, so her mom and I have swapped off before, especially if I’ve been at trade shows. This was indeed a daycare day, but no one was there to pick her up... no wonder she was in a panic about what to do!

So I’ve called everyone I need to in order to sort this out and the girls are playing happily upstairs. We’ll get to homework in a few minutes, but it made me realize two things....

One, as hard or frustrating as it is to work from home some days, this is a time when it is really worth it.

Second, when something happens that is unexpected, having a sense of community with my neighbours is really what the word community is all about.

Where is your community? How have you reached out to be a part of your surroundings? It takes a bit of effort and trust to make friends or even casual acquaintances with the people in your neighbourhood, but then in times of trial, you have others to lean on. I can remember a scary night a few years ago when one of our neighbour’s houses caught fire just after Christmas. Luckily the home was saved and the top floor could be rebuilt/repaired, but the kids lost quite a few of their presents, clothes got damaged etc. The outpouring from the community in terms of help, food, clothing etc. was immediate and appreciated.

This morning I learned of the Cyclone that hit Queensland, Australia on Monday morning. While it is half a world away from me here, I am still keenly aware that this too is my community in a way. I have lots of fans in Australia that e-mail me about my designs and so I am thinking of them as their lives are suddenly turned upside down. I am also reminded that we are all one community on this precious planet. It does seem that with all these incredible changes in our weather patterns and disasters, we are pushing our poor home to the brink of what it can bear. What is MY responsibility in all this to keep my community safe? The challenge is to never lose sight of what each of us can do so that the homes around us and the homes on the far side of the planet grow to be nurturing communities where we can thrive!

CREATIVE DAYS VS. PRODUCTIVE DAYS...

This week has been extremely productive... and that got me to thinking about the difference between creativity and productivity, especially in our insanely achievement driven society. This week was all about facing tasks which needed to be done, even though part of me wanted to stay in “vacation mode”. The more I tackled, the better I started to feel as a bag of clutter went out the door on garbage night, laundry from the trip got done and everything got put away. Yesterday and today are devoted to spreading out every receipt I’ve filed away by category all year long , totaling them and putting them into large, brown manilla envelopes to hand over to my accountant for corporate taxes. Hey... at least I’m not a shoe box full of paper kind of girl. My mom always filed things away and could find things when she needed them. I have a very deeply buried inner Virgo (supposedly the tidiest of the zodiac) and clutter still tried to win the battle, but I like knowing where things are. I have come to one important conclusion in the past year... it would be much easier to find things and keep track of them if I had less STUFF!

Productivity is all about accomplishing tasks... and when the tasks seem too overwhelming, it is often tempting to avoid them, but that really doesn’t help in the long run. So I have had my itunes blasting on my eMac while I try to carpet the floor with odd bits of paper and sort them out again. My files were easy enough to sort through, keeping the current year bits in there and putting the others into the assigned envelopes, but dealing with THE BOX was harder.

Do you have one of those “throw it there now and deal with it later” holders? Mine is a photocopy paper box on the floor of my office that has been there since we redid the place last year. Instead of reams of paper, it holds all the fiddly little bits of paper, receipts, notes, statements and stuff that I “meant to get to”. Often stuff piles up on the kitchen table or counter upstairs. When it gets to be too unbearable, I sort it out, toss out the junk, sort it further into Dragon Dreams stuff and family stuff, then the business stuff comes down to the office. In theory, it should get sorted right there into what it needs... but this past year as I wrestled with fear and procrastination, it often just got chucked into THE BOX. The warped logic behind having it all in one place was that if I lost something, I had one place to rummage through instead of several.

So now I am tackling THE BOX, just in case there are receipts that could be important to this year’s corporate tax return. I am absolutely hating every minute of it, except for the sense of accomplishment and freedom it is giving me as stuff goes where it belongs... or into the trash.

Creativity isn’t about how much you get done and sometimes recharging your creative batteries is all about taking time to be... but creative types also need to remember that accomplishing important tasks is part of treating this as a career, a calling and a business... instead of just a hobby.

Pictures in My Jam Blobs and Drawing With Ketchup...

It’s funny how getting something off your chest can make you feel so lighthearted! Today was a busy day of running around to the bank and post office, getting copies for a Hoffman order picked up at Staples to batch tonight during the American Idol results show after choir practice, but it all felt very productive as well.

This morning, once I got the girls on the bus for school, I made some toast to munch on while I checked e-mail. I know, I can hear the groans about crumbs in the keyboard! In my rush to get the jam spread quickly, I dropped a blob on the counter and then stood transfixed at the cool little whale shape it made. I was about to run and get my digital camera, when I suddenly realized how odd that might be to try to capture a jam blob in pixels. Was I going to show it around like some crazy ink-blob test to see what others saw? Maybe one of the things about being an artist is to see things in almost any shape or groupings of patterns. I can remember being transfixed as a child by marbled floors, foam ceiling tiles and linoleum because I would see all kinds of things in the random patterns of the tiles.

For me, that sudden, swift desire to capture what I’d seen and show it to others is one of the cornerstones of being an artist. It is the seeing of things that others might otherwise pass by... the way the light hits the surface of a texture, the colours, the shapes or the patterns of something in the world around us. I have a whole sketchbook that is pasted full of things like that so I can sit and look through it from time to time.

This is also one of the reasons that I always try to have a tiny sketchbook in my purse and a pen to doodle with. Once, when Erin was younger than Bethany is now, we were at McDonald’s eating supper and I looked up to see a spectacular sunset with a cloud shaped like a dragon’s head backlight by the setting orange sun. I searched through my purse and pockets in vain for something to draw on and came up completely blank. Undaunted, I grabbed a white napkin, stole one of Erin’s french fries and proceeded to sketch the cloud shape onto my napkin with ketchup. I left the restaurant with the napkin held carefully on the palms of my hands so as not to blot it before I could get home and copy the shape into a sketchbook. As I walked through the restaurant and out the door, to the puzzled stares of fellow restaurant-goers, Erin just sighed behind me and said in her loudest voice possible. “Mom, you are SO embarrassing!”

Artists really can draw with almost anything and see images almost anywhere... even in jammy blobs!

FINALLY EMERGING FROM MY CAVE...

There’s something about getting away from home, especially on a vacation, that gives you the time to really think, dream, reflect and deal with things that otherwise might remain shoved to one side during the business of life’s daily task.

Getting away to Austin with my family was very soul-restoring. Teaching wonderful stitchers at Ginger’s and spending time with one of my favourite shop owners also gave me a renewed enthusiasm for cross stitch that has been feeling a bit stale lately. Both of those things gave me the courage to finally write this blog.

I probably should have shared my doubts here months ago, but in a way, I was afraid of letting too much spill out onto these pages. Some of it has made it into my private journals, but much of it just stayed bottled up inside. Now that I am finally learning to work through these challenges, it is time to be more honest here in case it helps someone else down the road face the same paralyzing fears and insecurity.

I’ve always been an optimist and a dreamer. Maybe that’s why the doubts and terrors took me so completely by surprise. It went completely against the grain of who I am and how I have always pictured myself. I just thought I was at lose ends or that cross stitch was in transition and therefore so was I. But every now and then would come a day when I knew I should be designing or working on other artwork to send off to publishers. and the fear or self-doubt would be so great that I would let myself get caught up in busy work, laundry or even invent tasks to keep myself from picking up a pencil.

I think that is why I tried to start my other blog Candles In The Darkness... I wanted to surround myself with positive images and words in the hopes that they would lift up my soul and I would feel that soaring wonder again. Instead, too often, I felt like I was having to sift through so many stones to find one gem of wisdom to encourage myself and others with. Meanwhile, since I thought of Dragon Musings as only a glimpse into a CROSS-STITCH DESIGNER’S world, instead of the world of me, I avoided writing anything at all. Who would want to read about doubt and fear?

In the end, it was preparing for the Dragon*Con jury deadline on March 1st that brought me out of this long tunnel. It was facing the cold hard fact that I had to draw and try or just admit how crippling this self-doubt had become and let it win. It was tempting... very tempting. Far easier not to apply at all and cheer Teresa on this year, as she supported me in my She-Hulk adventures last year, than to face the fact that I might get another letter thanking me for my time but telling me that I wasn’t chosen for the Art Show (ie. not good enough). I was just about convinced that since I’d been drawing with needle and thread in squares and Xs for so long that I could no longer draw the way I had a dozen years ago when I was sending stuff off to publishers on a monthly basis, trying to break into children’s books while working at an ad agency during the day.

What if, when push came to shove, I really wasn’t “good enough”?

The first few days of drawing were torture. Half of my pages ended up scrumpled in the wastebasket because I just couldn’t get past the fact that they all looked like “my stuff”. I began to get a little deadline crazy and decided to just go ahead and finish some of the drawings. I even spent a day close to tears on the final weekend because of a painting that had been sitting half completed in my office for over 6 months. I’d reached the point where I no longer had time to build the painting up in misty layers to make it look realistic. Instead, I opted to finish it in my bold, outlined style and reached a point where I was convinced it was ruined beyond saving... but the next day I came back and finished it off, bringing it back from the point of disaster to something I could live with and even be a bit proud of.

I also learned a valuable lesson about being a role-model to my kids. They would stand there looking at the finished pieces and tell me how cute or beautiful they were with wonder in their eyes. When I looked at the pieces, all I could see were the places where I’d made tiny mistakes or drawn the line just a bit too thick or thin... It just looked like MY stuff, not the many styles I’ve seen out there that I admire so much. I watched my girls draw beside me and noticed how they still drew for the sheer joy of it, not caring if one leg on the princess was longer than the other, not worrying if the composition wasn’t just right... just drawing and giving their hands and eyes the practice they need to improve their skills.

I learned to let them know what a struggle I was having. That I still had doubts and got frustrated when my hands wouldn’t create the exact image that I’d seen in my head. The hugs and support that I got from them and Nick as I finally admitted my fears and worked through them helped more than they will ever know. It also helped to know that a friend I very much respected had her own share of doubts from time to time.

It has also helped to know that almost every artist or creative person goes through the same kind of doubts. I am sure that writers, actors, singers, composers, dancers, news anchors, designers, DJs all face the same emotions at one point or another. Wondering if you’ll be “good enough” to get noticed or famous or respected...

What finally brought me to write this entry... and to transform the subtitle of the blog... was the realization that someone else may find it comforting or even helpful to know that they are not alone. I am learning that the best cure for those fears is just to pick up a pencil and get right to work being creative. To listen to music instead of those little whispers of self-doubt in my head. To stop measuring myself to some impossible standard and just work at producing the best drawing, painting, design or image that I can at the time then dream about the next one. To explore the thoughts about what it is to be a creative soul... which is what Dragon Musings will now evolve into. I started the blog to show those who thought little of stealing or sharing my designs that a designer’s life was not all glamour and glory. Cross stitch will always be an important way in which I make images to share with others... but it will not be the only one I need to muse about. What this blog can really only be is about my journey... with all its hills and valleys.. and my life as an artist... because grown ups really can draw pictures as their job!

Nashville Bound...

I leave for Nashville tomorrow and am actually all packed! I will see the girls off on the bus to school and come home to get everything straightened out before heading to the airport. What a whirlwind 5 days this will be... I am not sure whether to be excited, nervous, anxious or just plain giddy. Shows never lose their excitement/terror for me, even after doing them for so long. There is something about putting your work out there for all to see that makes you feel vulnerable, even when you are an “established” designer. Yet, I cannot imagine myself doing anything else.

Hmmm. Time to double check my packing list and treat myself to a glass of merlot while I watch American Idol!

I’m Now Married To A Principal!!!

In the midst of getting ready for the trade show, we get some fabulous news. After weeks of putting in applications and getting set for 3 interviews for 3 Principalships, Nick went into the first interview yesterday for one of the schools he wanted most and just did a fabulous job. He came home with a grin on his face and a sense of relief that the interview process for the day was over and told me that he couldn’t possibly have done anything better. Usually he comes home and thinks of things he should have said or done... but not this time. Right after supper, the phone rang to give him the news that he’d been given the Principalship of Magnetic Hill School for a 5 year term starting in the fall of 2006!!!

There were happy squeals and hugs from all of us as Nick got caught in the middle of the three females in his life all trying to congratulate him at once! Since this school is just 7.8 km from the school, his commute will now be about 6 minutes by highway instead of 25!! Nick jokes that he might even bike to work a few days this summer when he’s going in to check things out...

I am SO proud of how much he has grown as an administrator these past 2 years. Even though the switch to being a VP at Petitcodiac meant a lot of adjustment for our family, the experience that he got there gave him the skills and confidence he needs for this next step in his career. Way to go, NICK!!!!

PULLED IN ALL DIRECTIONS...

Remember when you were a teenager and you looked at grown-ups? They have it all... you thought to yourself. They earn money, they can stay up as late as they want, they don’t have to go to school and do homework that just doesn’t relate to real life...

I can see that in my children’s eyes already at time - that longing for the perceived freedom of adulthood. If I can share anything with them, I hope it is that EACH age carries its own joys, tribulations and challenges. Since we only dance through time one way, it makes sense to savour as much of each stage as possible instead of waiting for it to be over.

Easier said than done!! As I get ready for the show next week in Nashville, I feel pulled in a million directions at once. I am still wrapping up a design to print and package this weekend so that it can go in my suitcase with me, but most of the designs are already en route to the show to save on weight. Bethany’s cast is off, but they have recommended a wrist guard for gym class and outdoor play, so we borrowed one that a friend’s children wear for rollerblading. That type of equipment isn’t popular in sports stores right now because it is still too wintery to think of bare pavement and roller blades!

Nick is on pins and needles because the next three work days hold 3 separate interviews for 3 different Principalships that come up for the next school year. He is ready for the challenge of his own school and the experience at a larger school these past 2 years has been a great opportunity, even if it hasn’t been without stresses and challenges for both him and our family. It is hard to share a single vehicle when he works over 40 km away!

Time just seems to scurry by like my hamsters on their wheels. I keep wondering each night where the day went, but at least that’s better than getting bored!

So much speculation about how the show is going to go, how the industry is faring, why more people aren’t stitching, how to reach the next generation... I can’t get caught up in that or I might never have the courage to get on the plane. All we can do each day is work at producing the best designs possible, the best quality product and putting some fun into what we do. I am sure that by the time I get on the plane, I will have stopped worrying about what still needs to be done and just look forward to seeing fellow designers and the shop owners who have become friends over the last dozen years.

BEATING DEADLINES!

Sometimes, the best thing about setting a goal or timeframe is actually beating it! I needed to get all of my files to the printer by tomorrow if there was a chance of them squeezing in the two jobs I need professionally printed for Nashville! Nothing worse that taking printed matter whose ink isn’t quite dry with you. First of all, the product is prone to transfer smudges, secondly it still smells quite strongly and third, the panic feelings of wondering if it will be ready are just plain unpleasant.

I actually got the files all done and sent over this morning after a little help with the proofing from a patient friend (thanks again!!). Sometimes you just stare at things too long to be objective. Stitchers are such clever people that they find the mistakes... but that is AFTER you have already printed your press run!!

Now there is just one last model to stitch and frame for the show. Nick and I can do a sampler in tandem. On a solid piece, our tension is a bit to different to look as smooth as I’d like, but on a sampler, he can whiz through the text backstitching, one or the other can handle the cross stitch and then I do the specialty stitches.

I’m also thrilled with how DD-90 MESSY...BUT MINE! looks now that it is back from the framer’s!! This dragon was such fun to design on her pile of treasure. I even hid my ipod in the stash!!! Of course there had to be a teddy bear and some books to read as well as typical dragon loot... Nick jokes that this model needs to hang on my office door as soon as it gets home from all its shows! Hah! Hah!

With the files out of the way early, I should move on to something practical, but my hands feel like drawing today, so I am going to eat lunch and spend the hour before Bethany gets home just working on one of my pieces for the DragonCon jury. A little Josh Groban music in the background and time to draw sounds like heaven right now!!!

THOSE ARE THE BREAKS...

If this is life getting back to “normal”, I think I’ll stay in holiday mode!!! I practically danced my way home from the bus stop on Monday morning as everyone got back off to school and had my most productive day in ages. I am still in a panic that something won’t get done by Nashville a month from now or that I’ll overlook some major error in a chart because I was rushed... but all you can do is try to eat that elephant one bite at a time!

I’m also very hard on myself because I feel like such a slow stitcher compared to Nick or my wonderful model stitchers... but I am accurate, which Nick in a rush sometimes isn’t, and I don’t have to pay myself!

By Monday afternoon the snow was falling heavily, far beyond the 2 cm the weatherman called for. Nick called to say the roads were horrible and the girls’ choir practice was canceled. Once Nick got home, we just stayed put.

By Tuesday morning, everything was sunny and clear again. Nick has a meeting after school at the board office to discuss the positions he intends to apply for in this first round of openings for Principalships for the 2006-2007 school year and it went very well. Now he’s polishing off his resume, updating Power point presentations etc. I stayed up really late stitching, but it was fun to see the design come to live beneath my fingertips.

By Wednesday morning, it was starting to get warm and they were calling for freezing rain or heavy rain by nightfall. My walking buddy and I finally got our schedules to match and we walked in the local mall for an hour. I came home feeling worked out but satisfied and got lots accomplished before I headed up to the bus to meet Bethany. Imagine my horror when she stepped off the bus holding one arm funny!! She’d slipped on the last part of some playground equipment right after lunch, but everyone at school assumed it was just a sprain because she could still move her fingers. No one called me or even sent a note home! I put some ice on the wrist area for a bit and waited for Erin to get home from staying after school for extra help. As soon as Nick came home, I bundled Bethany off to the hospital with me for an X-ray because she couldn’t hyperflex her “drawing hand” at all and my mommy senses were tingling. It was a long wait in the ER, but finally, the images confirmed she did have a “buckle fracture” in the radius of her right arm an inch or so below her wrist. By then, it was too late in the day to get a cast done and the wrist was still a bit too swollen, so we got a plaster splint and a note to get us fast tracked at the ER this morning. I managed to get quite a bit of model stitching done while playing 20 questions for over 4 hours to keep Bethany’s mind off how much her arm hurt.

By this morning, it was pouring rain. I drove the girls to school so that I could express my disappointment at not having received any communication from the school. Her teacher was aghast that it was broken. I certainly didn’t want anyone to get in trouble, but I did want to stress that I prefer to be called and given the option of what to do if my child is hurt during instructional time. Bethany and I went down to the hospital afterwards. She was prepped for the cast, but just before the plaster layer, the cast expert was called to the acute side of the ER for an emergency splint. We played silly puppet games with her jacket sleeve and more 20 questions until he returned. Once we were done, we headed to the bank to deposit my Hoffman cheque in the US dollar account and then to Blockbuster to rent a pile of fun DVDs to watch together (she’ll watch, I’ll stitch and listen) until the cast sets in 48 hours. She can’t really draw until then so she’s very grumpy about that... just like her mom would be.

This morning, we also found out that our new dwarf hamster, who has been with us for just over a month, is as diabetic as Nipper who passed away a year ago. Perhaps females are just more vulnerable to this disease. Erin has been heartbroken all day and cried as she played with her tonight, but I tried to turn that into a life lesson. We really never know how much time we have for anything, so each moment that we do have should be savoured and enjoyed. With special diet, she may live another few months... or even longer. We certainly won’t breed her to our male hamster of 10 months though. I think the girls were hoping for one batch of baby hamsters sometime...

What a week this has been so far!! My framer is on standby for this design as soon as I finish it. One more late night and tomorrow with Bethany should do it. Tomorrow night is date night and I can’t wait to toast the end to this crazy week with my husband and a nice glass of Merlot or a piece of chocolate!!

Looking Back and Looking Forward...

New Year’s Eve always makes me feel reflective. Perhaps it is something about having a new year with all the possibilities stretching out before us that inspires me to dream about what the coming 365 days will hold.

Tonight we are staying in with friends joining us for a night of games, good snacks and great company. Mom and John are also here, so the girls are thrilled to have grandparents around.

It’s funny how hard it has been to blog lately. Things will inspire me to write and then I get interrupted. I am going to try to change that for the New Year and go back to writing smaller entries more often.

One of the most exciting things to happen over the holidays was reading the latest Monica Ferris book that I received as a present. It is set at the show in Nashville, which I am getting ready for, so I could picture everything very clearly. When I got to page 190, you should have heard the SQUEEEEEEEEEEEAL that I let out upon seeing my company name in print. So silly, but incredibly fun as well. When she mentioned the line about a bunch of us being dressed up in garb... I had to laugh. At least she didn’t have me running through the lobby with my sword!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!! May it be a year of dreams and inspiration for everyone!