Summer Solstice

A good day to reflect.  Half way through the year; I'm planning out the rest of this year.  I've been ill.  Looking after a chap with chicken pox, getting ready for Holmfirth and then the big push of going and returning;  I ran into a bug, and now I feel drained and diminished.  Strangely though, enforced rest meant that I found some space to think and reflect and teasle out my life.

I focused on what's working and what isn't.  I realised that my work is at it's best when it's truly mine.  When I create without thinking about how much I'll charge, or where I'll sell, or whether I can convert it to a product.  Trying to be commercial doesn't really suit me.  The hand made, the personal, the beauty of life expressed.  I love meeting with people and sharing ideas and discussing creative process.  So that is where I'm putting my proverbial eggs.

So, the rest of this year I'll be working towards the big exhibition at Sock gallery, Loughborough with some great selling opportunities along the way.  And I'll be promoting my workshops.  I'm not sure what'll happen next but if I don't love what and how I create, I can't believe in it and I can't then sell it.

The handmade life I believe in has been squeezed by all the things I shouldn't be doing.  So I have given myself time to get back in the garden and now we are eating the first of our crops.  Tonights Solstice supper was pasta with home grown broad beans and courgettes and basil.  Pancakes and allotment raspberries followed.  So yummy.

I've been railing against technology.  It was lovely to unhook myself from television and the computer and my phone.  I lay in bed and listened to radio four.  It lulled and reassured me through two nights of my body complaining about being alive.

And so I have tapped into the idea behind Unplugged Sunday.  I ran it past everyone and Big Chap managed to think of lots of things he'd prefer to do instead of watching television and playing on the computer; play games, build dens.  David wants to start to learn to play the piano.  I'd like to have a go at making pasta, and start to sew together the quilt that I had hoped to finish for Tiddler's second birthday.

So simpler, slower seems to be the way forward.  It's all my body and soul feel able to deal with right now.