“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life and in change there is power.” — Alan Cohen
I stole this quote today off of a friend’s Facebook status. So timely. My husband resigned yesterday!!! He took the plunge. He’s gonna move on…to something. Something he’s passionate about. Working with his hands. Creative. But he doesn’t know yet what it will be. Because there was “no real security in what is no longer meaningful.”
It’s raining here in Colorado, and I’m writing this sitting by our little wood stove while the birds tweet and twitter in the pinyon trees. It’s spring, and we’re in the transition zone. A week or so ago it was in the 80’s. Then the winds blew for days and there were wildfires across the region. Then it snowed. Today the high is supposed to be 50-something, with rain all day. And this after one of the driest winters on record.
The transition zone. Moving from one season to the next. Stormy, unpredictable weather. Is there life in that one bush or did the dry winter kill it? Will everyone’s newly planted flowers make it or will there be a freeze? Should we leave those dang (dirty) pigeons that have nested in our shed until after their eggs have hatched, or get rid of them now and seal off the openings? What lovely surprises are going to come up in the beds around our new house that we moved into in January? Anticipation. Disappointment. Change.
And beauty, growth and GREEN everywhere.
My husband and I are in the transition zone right now. We both want to transition to making our living from our creativity. He’d like to make furniture or build up bikes. I want to become a better silversmith and grow my business, Magic Carpet Dance Arts. I want to publish my novel. I want to get paid for writing on Elance. Maybe someday I’d like to teach belly dance. But we’re not there yet. We’re moving from one season to the next. Stormy, unpredictable emotions. Is there life in that idea or did many years of drought kill it? Will our newly planted businesses make it or will they be frozen by the cold economy? Should we allow certain unpleasant responsibilities (that make us money) to continue to nest in our lives, or should we get rid of them? And what new ventures are sprouting within us? Anticipation. Disappointment. Change.
And beauty, growth and GREEN everywhere.
But with everything inside of me, I just want to be through the transition zone. I want the change to be over. I want things to settle down. I want to make it all happen NOW. It’s too scary. It’s too unpredictable. It’s too stormy. And I push and I rush and I fight to move forward.
Except that you can’t hurry spring. It comes at its own whim. One bud. One new blade of grass. This flower. That leaf.
So I send out a prayer today: Help me to stay in the present, to enjoy the beauty, to revel in the growth and the GREEN. Help me to walk slowly through the transition zone. Help me to enjoy the surprises. Help me to enjoy the change.
I’ve been trying to write a post for several days now, and it’s been slow going. Usually I get my thoughts out there on the page at high speed, do a little proof reading, and hit ‘publish.’ But this time, I keep stalling. But for some reason, it’s important to me to put my half-formed thoughts out there, even if they don’t quite make sense. And I’ll need to return to this topic, I think, when the time is right.
I spent all weekend digging in the dirt. And several more hours during this past week. And most of last weekend. I seem to be obsessed right now with digging in the dirt.
Because it’s my dirt.
My project is pretty straightforward. We bought a house on an acre of land and I want to get it all seeded with native grasses and wildflowers that will come up this spring. So a few square feet at a time and all by hand, I’m aerating it, scattering a mix of native grass and wildflower seeds, and tamping the soil back down. And I’m falling in love with each little section as I work it.
I’m obsessed with digging right now. And it’s because of the beauty to come. In my mind’s eye, I can see the flax flowers, the poppies, the penstimen, the fescues. I can see the bees and butterflies and hummingbirds that will come to visit.
It’s about transformation. It’s about magic. It’s about beauty I’m creating, and beauty that will come about through forces that are beyond me.
It’s about rooting myself to this little piece of earth I call my home.
I wrote a post a few weeks ago that I called Coming Full Circle, about my loves of rocks and gems and jewelry-making as a child, and how learning to silversmith is taking me back to deep places inside of me. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to take a lapidary class.
In the first session, we got shown the equipment and began designing the piece we’d make. After making many pieces where the designing started based on a cabochon someone else had shaped, this process began wholly inside of me. I chose the rough rock I wanted to work with. I drew the shapes I wanted to cut. And it was me who got to decide which areas of the rock to cut from. I used a red jasper with some yellow and gray streaks, and I traced my pattern onto to stone exactly where I wanted. Oooo, this section with the yellow!
When it was finally time to cut, I felt slightly apprehensive. You rough out the shapes with something that’s basically a small table saw with water for cooling running over the blade. Potentially dangerous, right? And I’m still on blood-thinners, so cutting myself wasn’t a great idea. But the moment I started, I had the same feeling I’d had in my first silversmithing class: I’ve been doing this my whole life.
I don’t understand that feeling. I’ve never experienced it in any arena of life except these various aspects of jewelry-making. But it’s strong. I can’t deny it. Was I made by a Creator to silversmith? Was I a jeweler in a former life? Did my life-long love of gems cause me to feel a sense of completeness as I finally got to cut rocks myself?
I don’t know.
And honestly, it doesn’t really matter. I just know that when I acknowledged and gave space to my desire to take my first silversmithing class, something that had been waiting inside of me for forty-some years finally burst into bloom.
My piece isn’t finished, but when it is, I’ll post photos here. And just so you know, I won’t be selling it on my Etsy site, Magic Carpet Dance Arts. I will keep it as a reminder of how I returned to my heart.
I’ve started work on a new custom pendant that I designed a few weeks ago, and I thought I’d show you some step-by-step photos. First comes the designing. In this case, my customer chose some stones she wanted me to use. I left them out on our table for days, moving them around, glancing at them, staring at them, letting them settle in my soul. Then, I traced around them and started sketching. Eventually, I came up with several possible designs. My customer chose this one:
The pale bluish stone is a variety of jasper, the dark one is Teton jade, and the reddish one is called wonderstone or rhyolite. The darkest penciled-in areas in my design will be stamped with a pattern.
The next step is to trace the pattern onto tracing paper, glue it onto a sheet of 20 gauge sterling silver, and start sawing. I find the sawing really relaxing and meditative for the most part. Okay, so sometimes I still break a lot of saw blades, which makes me cuss, but mostly it’s just peaceful and satisfying. I love watching the sheet of metal BECOME the piece.
So here it is at this very moment, still with the tracing paper glued to the silver. As you can see, it’s gonna be a strong, powerful piece, but the woman who ordered it is worthy of it. 🙂
I’ll take more photos along the way, and post the next steps. I love joolin’!
Why am I going to have another drawing soon, and give away another pendant I’ve made? What’s in it for me, you’re asking, right?
For some reason, I really LIKE gift-giving. Have you ever heard that thing that we all have ‘love languages’ that we prefer? Some of them that I can think of off the top of my head are touch, words of affirmation, and gift-giving. And the reason I can probably think of those three right away is that those are my preferred ones, both for receiving love and for expressing love.
So my underlying motivation is simply because it makes me happy to think of making someone I’ve never met happy when they win one of my jewelry pieces. Yes, I want the exposure. Yes, I hope the winner tells everyone about my Etsy shop, Magic Carpet Dance Arts, and does some word-of-mouth advertising for me. Yes, I want more Facebook fans who might eventually become customers. But ultimately, if I didn’t actually LIKE gift-giving, those other reasons wouldn’t be enough.
Make sense? Sign up to be entered in my next drawing simply by Liking my Facebook fan page. When I reach 200 fans, it’ll be time for the drawing. Hey, the odds of winning are great, right? 1 in 200 — that’s quite a bit better than the Mega Millions jackpot, and I bet some of you bought a lottery ticket for New Year’s Eve, didn’t you? 🙂
Magic Carpet Dance Arts is gonna do another drawing SOON for one of my handmade pendants, but how soon I do it depends on YOU! 🙂 When I reach 200 fans on my Facebook fan page, it’ll be time! To be entered in the drawing, all you have to do is Like my fan page. And if you suggest to all your friends that they like my fan page too, I’ll reach 200 fans sooner!
I haven’t chosen the pendant style yet, but it might be this:
My musings on my creative journey have been at a bit of a standstill for the past few months. Creative journeys are quirky, unpredictable things. They certainly don’t follow a straight, obvious path.
For example, I was in a really good writing rhythm for most of the year, doing some writing almost every weekday. But then we decided on November 11 (Veteran’s Day — that’s how I remember) that we wanted to move out of our one-bedroom condo into somewhere that actually had space for all our pursuits. We’re closing on January 14th on a cute little house with a barn that will be perfect for my studio and my husband’s woodworking shop and bike-building space, but in the whirlwind of home-buying, I only worked on my novel twice or three times in the rest of November and all of December. And I’m SO close to being finished — maybe 30 more pages to revise.
The new home of the Magic Carpet Dance Arts silversmithing studio and my hubby's Table Mountain Bike Works!
And at the end of October, just as Anam Cara Dance Company was getting ready for several big performances, I developed a blood clot in my leg and couldn’t dance for several weeks. I missed all the important rehearsals and couldn’t perform. Then the whirlwind of home-buying kept me from even going to class for all of December. When I had to miss the Anam Cara Christmas party at the last minute, my frustration came out in a LOT of tears.
But in these same few months, I made this:
And this:
Well, and this too:
And um, well, actually, several other pieces, including this, the most elaborate pendant I’ve made yet:
So why did I feel such despair about ‘my creative journey’? Could it be because it didn’t go MY way? I wanted to move forward on a logical, step-by-step path, working for designated amounts of time each week on each of my pursuits: my novel, belly dancing, the henna motif costume items I sell on Magic Carpet Dance Arts, silversmithing, etc. When it didn’t work out that way, I got MAD. MY journey was getting messed up. MY plan wasn’t coming together.
But it’s not mine.
I’ve heard so many artists say they had to learn to serve their art. They had to let it have its freedom to be a living thing. They had to let go of control. They had to listen to their art. They had to stop forcing it, trying to squeeze it into being THEIR vision. And that’s when they did their best work.
So instead of a whole batch of New Year’s resolutions about how much time I want to spend each week on each of my pursuits, I want to choose something else:
I make big funky, chunky pendants for belly dancers. I recently designed one that was even bigger and chunkier and funkier than usual. One of my belly dancer troupe sisters suggested that it would make a great belly dangle ornament. She got me thinking, and I went away and figure out a simple way to hook the pendant to a bra. Then I realized you could do this with any of my big pendants. So I’ve created this little step-by-step post to show my customers on Magic Carpet Dance Arts what I mean.
First, here’s the pendant.
And here it is worn as a belly dangle ornament with a wrap top.
And here’s the simple how-to. All you need is a bra with a small-ish connection between the cups and a black elastic ponytail holder.
Slip the elastic band through the jump ring on the pendant. (I make all my jump rings big enough so that you can easily remove the leather cord that comes with it.)
Slip the loops over the end of the bra strap, and work it past the cup.
And there you go — an instant belly dangle ornament. Of course, there are hundreds of other ways to fasten it to your costume, but I particularly liked this idea because it’s simple, quick, and secure.
So I’m back to looking at that website of how-to videos for rent, SmartFlix. I can’t help myself. There’s just so much to learn out there. My most recent find in a video on making kilims in Anatolia, Turkey! I don’t know that I necessarily want to learn how to make them myself, but I want to see how it’s done. The video is in my queue.
Magic Carpet Jewelry 