Secret #1 of 12: Acknowledging Your Creative Self

Artist SoulCollage® card - see card blog posting for attributions and description

I felt a sudden urge to join in with the 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women group... organised by Jamie Ridler, Sacred Suzie's sister... so I haven't got the book yet. Lets hope it really is "in the post".

This first posting is about where I am in my creative journey.

I wish I knew!

I can tell some of where I've been, but where I'm going, I've yet to work out...

My mother was a trained artist though by the time she met my father she'd stopped earning her money that way... and by the time I knew her not making art often at all... so make that a blocked artist...

My sister is an architect - which means she did at least get to do an arts degree...

My sister-in-law is an art teacher and my mother-in law, Mary, a retired art teacher and active painter. Incidentally, when I showed some of my SoulCollage® cards to Mary, she noticed that in the Artist card (at the top of this posting) the woman shown just happened to be wearing the same blouse that Mary herself was wearing whilst looking at the card! I love synchronicities!

But me? Despite having always wanted to be an artist (or an astrophysicist) I did a Maths degree and worked for years in computing. Perhaps inevitably this led to illness, diagnosed as M.E. / Chronic Fatigue and leading eventually to an early retirement.

During the time I was working I exhibited art work a few times and got one piece into a juried show.

I also had a reputation for being creative. I was in research so you might think that was good... it wasn't... the people who got on were those who did "solid work" rather than people like me... which is odd because we were encouraged to play... I suspect it was partly the problem of working in an American company in the U.K. British values pervaded whilst the rhetoric was American.

In the early days of my access to the internet I played around writing stories and poetry and posting them on news groups... indeed searching to see if there was any trace left of my activity from that time I find this from 13 Dec 1989:

Poems pour out of people
Like water flows
From eyes
Some cry easily
Others wait for the damn to break

I doubt that I really meant damn rather than dam... more of a poetic slip...

And from Jan 1990:

Haiku! Haiku!
Is that a breeze through the trees
Or an unfortunate's sneeze?
Haiku! Haiku!

Since stopping work (and stopping playing on the news groups) I've taken quite a few courses in life drawing and painting, stained glass, enamelling and water colours. Maybe some others...

Actually I did recover from the first bout of M.E. and returned to work however I then did the Artist's Way for the first time (1996) just before going down with M.E. again, and from which I never returned to computing.

I'd felt that the AW had really opened up everything, and this new sense of spirit and art combined with having got together with Jim would somehow protect me from getting ill again. As it didn't, I not only got M.E. again, I also got depressed. That was a real problem as so many doctors find it difficult to distinguish M.E. from depression in the first place... however having had them both, separately and together I know the difference within me.

Besides, for me, M.E. has always started with a flu-like illness whilst depression tends to start with a big disappointment. The second time the M.E. kicked in and the depression came because I'd truly believed I was all set to be healthy!

This second bout of M.E. led me to explore more alternative health stuff and to qualifying as a Health Kinesiologist (see my Beyond Health Kinesiology blog). HK certainly has been a huge help (especially in curing so many of my allergies) but the problem I've found, from the artistic point of view, is that the sort of energy work I've needed to do has taken up lots of my time and all my intuitive channels.

However I think my last long bout of energy work really is over (at least for now) and I've started painting again. At the moment I'm keeping the paintings private as I'm preferring to let myself explore without being influenced by what others might (or might not) say about them.

However I take lots of photos - some of which might be considered creative at least...

So I'm ready to play - though I may prefer to keep some of the products of my play hidden!

Woo Hoo - Shopping in the Sales!

What yummy footwear - they arrived today - but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you the story of how I happened to buy all of these...

In December my knee was playing up - and I mean that literally - it hurt when I went up hill. Not every day, but often enough to be a problem - especially with a dog to walk.

Eventually I went to see Ian Willmot, the McTimoney Chiropractor who had helped me so much earlier last year (incidentally if you've only ever tried a standard Chiropractor do try a McTimoney one - I'd never go back to the brute force stuff - it hurt and didn't work - what's more they attempted to keep me seeing them week after week despite my lack of improvement, in contrast to Ian who sorted out the problem in a few sessions and leaves it up to me when I turn up for a check-up).

One of the things Ian does is recommend other people and treatments if he thinks they might help. It was through him that I went to see Sarah of Balance Holistics who gives wonderful hot stone massages and extremely perceptive and beneficial reflexology. (If you go to see either Ian or Sarah please tell them I sent you.)

Ian said he thought my knees might benefit from some sort of foot support and suggested I see a podiatrist. He didn't recommend anyone in particular but I rang one up and went to see her.

I've thought about blogging it before but haven't because it was an essentially very negative experience. She charged me £36 for what amounted to a sales pitch during which I mentioned that I mostly wore clogs and that this sort of insert wouldn't work in them.

She really got my goat with some of her comments too:

• Part-way through she handed out a sheet with the costs involved though without an explicit indication of the full-cost which I later calculated is a minimum of £425, plus maybe a few additional £36 sessions.
• When I came to paying I asked whether she took credit cards, she said she did, but then asked me to pay with a debit card... not the same thing at all... especially since I get half a percentage back on the credit card...
  
• She was rude enough to assume I wouldn't be able to afford the inserts without "putting a little aside each week". It is a lot of money but I felt she was challenging me to prove I could afford it... not a sensible tactic with me!
  
• She was surprised when I told her I was retired and it would have to come out of my savings - she hadn't taken a complete case history so she had no idea of my employment status or possible occupation.
  
• She assumed none of my shoes fit me - despite my straight, uncrunched up toes - she seemed to think it would be news to me that there ought to be wiggle space at the toe end... I'd gone in wearing the most recent shoes I'd bought which were trainers from one of Bristol's excellent running shops - where they had specifically tested for sufficient toe space themselves and videoed me running on the treadmill in them to check for correct posture.
  
• And worst of all, on explaining that my retired status was a result of Chronic Fatigue - she then told me that she got a bit tired herself and implied that the foot supports would cure me... (though her own supports obviously weren't stopping her getting tired... ) I wished I'd called it M.E. which would have been less likely to provoke such comments. She didn't even ask me what my energy levels were currently like - they happen to be the best they've been in years - and that was despite a knee that had been hurting before I saw Ian...

Well that's enough of all that complaining! I came home, got myself balanced and did some testing on the foot supports. The questions I asked myself were:

Was it appropriate to buy some of this sort of support? NO!

What about from a different podiatrist? No!

Some new shoes? Maybe....

And so the hunt was on for what might suit me... I started off simply looking for some new clogs like the ones I already had... however the shop I'd bought them from no longer stocked them.

So I started to research supportive footwear on the web. I was amazed at all the different possibilities now available. But the ones I was most drawn to were the Earth ones.

They are only available, in the UK, from a few shops none of which were near me or from Love Those Shoes on-line. I was very wary of buying shoes without trying them on first but I looked at their return policy and decided it was worth it - they only make one delivery charge no matter how many pairs you buy and provide return labels in case you need to send them back. I was looking at their website whilst they were closed over Christmas but the benefit of that was that by the time they were back from their holidays their January sale had started!

I ordered a pair of clogs, a pair of sandals and a pair of boots - the boots were in clearance because they had, apparently, some sort of marks on them - I thought they'd probably do for dog walking - as it is now they've come they look perfect to me and I'm loath to get them all muddy in the park (again - I have already been out in the park in them once ;-).

I love all of these shoes! And each comes with its own cotton bags for storage - that's one per shoe. I need some hooks to hang them from.

I'm already thinking about my next order, whilst the sale is still on!

If you are interested in ordering from this site, and are not yet a customer, I can get you a £10 off voucher, which if you use it will entitle me to a £10 off voucher too - winners all round!

My knee is much better since seeing Ian and today wearing my new boots in the park I was running around very happily.

Review of 2008 in books

This post has taken me over a week to write! Who knew it would be so hard...

I started out by narrowing down the books I've read in 2008 to the 12 most influential on me over the whole year. They don't fit neatly into months but 12 still seemed like a good number.

1. The Holographic Universeby Michael Talbot
2. Erica White's Beat Candida Cookbook: Over 250 Recipes with a 4-point Plan for Attacking Candidiasis
   
3. Wyrd Allies: Harnessing the Chaos in Your Relationshipsby Tom Graves
4. Salad Plants for Your Garden (Plant Chooser)by Roger Philips & Martyn Rix
5. Becoming Drusilla: One Life, Two Friends, Three Gendersby Richard Beard
6. Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviourby Kate Fox
7. The No Diet Diet: Do Something Differentby Fletcher, Pine & Penman
8. The Dog Listenerby Jan Fennell
9. Choosing the Right Dog for You: Profiles of Over 200 Dog Breeds (Hamlyn Reference S.)by Gwen Bailey
10. Don't Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Trainingby Karen Pryor
11. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenmentby Eckhart Tolle
12. The Illustrated Spirit of the Home: How to Make Your Home a Sanctuaryby Jane Alexander

I blogged reading this book in January.

I like the way The Holographic Universe helps me think about reality in a scientific sort of way that also happens to allow (maybe even explain) some of the weird stuff that I actually experience.

Weird stuff that all too often is rejected out of hand by "scientists". I put that in quotes since in my experience real scientists don't reject evidence, but plenty of people attempting to seem scientific will reject anything that doesn't fit with what they perceive to be the accepted scientific world view.

Luckily there have been people throughout history that, having noticed that whatever the current orthodoxy is doesn't fit with their own observations, have been brave enough to investigate - indeed many well-known scientists were such revolutionary thinkers e.g. Galileo & Darwin.


I didn't have this book, Erica White's beat candida cookbook, at the start of the year but I wish I had!

Talking of scientific orthodoxy - its the orthodox view that only people with severe immune problems (e.g. HIV/AIDS) are at serious risk from Candida overgrowth. Luckily in the alternative health world there are people who have experimented with how to reduce candidiasis in otherwise healthy people. This book is the consequence of such work.

My new year's resolution last year was to give up sugar and I did. One of the consequences of this was getting terrible insomnia and almighty aches and pains. It was only when I got this book that I even realised there might be a connection between having given up sugar and getting these problems and that they could be a consequence of Candida die-off. The insomnia in particular reduced my ability to think, I hope I'd have understood sooner if I'd been a little less tired! Though in that case I might have been tempted to go back to consuming sugar...

I'd had two main reasons for wishing to remove sugar from my diet - the first was that one of my aunts became diabetic and I'd rather not, the second was that I was suspicious that I had candidiasis which mostly manifested as a very white tongue in the mornings.

Luckily I stuck with it and am now both sugar free, pain free and pink-tongued. I now only get a white tongue if I have refined carbohydrates (e.g. white flour) or fruit. I haven't followed Erica White's advice entirely so I may yet have to go through some more Candida die-off... I really hope I don't... but if it happens at least I won't be wondering why.

I blogged enough about Wyrd Allies at the time.

Salad Plants: Jim and I spent a lot of time growing vegetables this year. In previous years we'd simply grown salad leaves and these were the most successful of the things we grew this year too.

If you have a windowsill to spare buy a packet of mixed salad leaves and plant them in a trough - water them enough (but don't waterlog them) and you are almost bound to succeed. (Windowsills are good because they tend not to host slugs or snails.)

We thought we were doing well with our tomato crop - indeed we ate quite a few - but the summer was so wet that we ended up with blight and had to remove the plants without harvesting most of the fruit.

Becoming Drusilla: Dru has a blog and is an active member of flickr.

This book was written about her and their changing relationship by her friend Richard Beard.

I thought it very interesting, thought-provoking and beautifully written.

It is also a travel book as it describes a hike through Wales.





Watching the English: Kate Fox is an anthropologist who has stayed home to observe the people and culture that surrounds her.

Its full of remarks about this or that in one's vocabulary marks one out as upper/ middle / working class... or even more precisely in some cases. Making fine distinctions between middle middle and middle lower or middle upper for instance.

For instance what do you call the large upholstered object upon which two or more people might sit and in which room is it?

My mother was far more class conscious than I am, I think. For instance we were only allowed to call her Mummy, not Mum. The word toilet was strongly discouraged in favour of lavatory and I moved to calling it a loo as I grew up.

Reading this book helped me get a bit more of a grip on the cultural programming that my childhood had subjected me to. And helped free me from some of the prejudices that came with it.

Poor Kate Fox admits she will not have drink mats or coasters in her house as these are such a non-U thing to have - she even had to claim her table surfaces weren't worth protecting... I happily admit to having lots - indeed it helped me realise I seem to collect them! Maybe I'll photograph some soon...

The No Diet Diet has easily been the most influential book of 2008 for me. And I've posted a lot about it. The copy on the right is a more recent edition I found recently - it is very interesting as they include more case studies in it. However the original is more widely available and the version that I followed.

I'm now over 20 pounds lighter than when I started and still doing things differently.

You might think some of the weight loss would be due to having given up sugar.

I'd certainly hoped, when I gave sugar up in January 2008, that one of the consequences would be weight loss. However in August when I started the no diet diet I'd already been avoiding sugar for over 7 months and was exactly the same weight that I'd been when I'd started the year.

The Dog Listener: Whilst actively following the initial four weeks of the No Diet Diet I started to walk around the neighbourhood more.

I confronted my long held desire to own a dog with my also long held thought that this would only be possible if I lived in the country.

I realised there were certain aspects of dog ownership that I needed to rethink. In particular, living in the city I wanted a smaller dog than if I'd been in the country. I must confess this is, in part, due to the need to pick up the dog's poo - something I'd never had to do when living in the country as a child.

Reading The Dog Listener also introduced me to current ideas of positive training and staying calm and assertive around dogs. It was the first of a whole stack of dog books that I read before and since getting Teasel.

This blog and especially my flickr stream is still reeling from the impact!


Choosing the Right Dog For You: Having made the decision to get a dog there was the question of what sort.

My initial thought was to get an adult mixed breed dog, until I met a Miniature Schnauzer.

The day I saw my first one I actually met three. The first was 9 months old, the second an adult and the last a puppy. Teasel came from the same breeder as that puppy so is probably a cousin.

I'd add to the description in the book: non-shedding, low drool, gets noticed.

Don't Shoot the Dog: I'm rereading this at the moment. Having had a puppy for several months I've already fallen into some bad habits with respect to training her. This and other books mention the problems that can come when one says no without teaching the dog what it ought to do instead... The most obvious example I have is that Teasel has learnt that she is not to chew books if I am there... however when I'm not there she clearly considers them fair game.

There is considerable pressure from other people to tell one's dog off. I'm observing this more and more, from other dog owners and people in general. It seems we live in a society that thrives on seeing inappropriate behaviour punished rather than an appropriate behaviour being encouraged.

The Power of Now: Something that I've read/heard over and over is that dogs live in the now. This obviously doesn't mean that they can't learn or remember but that they don't dwell on the past or worry about the future the way we do.

Eckhart Tolle brings Now even closer. I find his writing very inspiring and encouraging.

I've yet to give up worrying or dwelling in the past but I'd like to!

This is a book that I started several months ago and am still reading.

The Illustrated Spirit of the Home - How to make your home a sanctuary: And this too is a book I've been reading slowly and working through over the last several months. So far I've found it very encouraging.

Its is all about exploring what home means and making the place one lives into one's home.

I'll probably blog more about this one in 2009.

Something you may have noticed is that none of the books were fiction books. I simply didn't read any in 2008. So to set the balance right I'm starting off 2009 by reading a P. G. Wodehouse.

So now having finally finished this posting - I'd like to wish you a Happy Nearly New Year!

Christmas Decorating

Teasel has been getting over excited by Christmas so we've put her stocking up early. The snow-being in it was one of the first decorations that she stole from the boxes of decorations that were "secure" in the spare room...

Later she helped me make a wreath for our door - she found the holly on the pavement and added bite marks for decoration:

However, later still, she was caught red-mouthed with this present, the only one so far to have arrived by post... which had been put, we thought, out of reach:

It is now even higher up in the boughs of the fibre-optic Christmas tree:

Jim decorated it yesterday and found three cute reindeer decorations to put on it. I don't remember these at all... perhaps that's part of the fun of Christmas - the surprises in the decorations box!

This tree is currently in the hall.

In the past we've had it in the sitting room but those lights flashing all the time drove me so mad that I put a set of ordinary Christmas tree lights on it and kept the fibre-optics off most of the time! In the hall its constant twinkle is much better and more welcoming!

I may not have time to post again before Christmas - so Merry Christmas to you all!

Goats Butt...

"Core - I see a face!" - I'm always seeing things...

Tinker and Leah suggested, in reply to my posting about the inscription in the book by Aviva Gold, that it was made out to Goat Lady - which certainly made more sense than Goat Judy! I was thinking about this today and wondered if there was more of a message for me in this... it had been "For April" and then I remembered the goats at Paradise Bottom earlier this year:

"Tinkling Goat" - photo by Jim

Jim took this photo on March 21st and it was on this walk, after seeing the goats, that for the first time in ages, I really felt that being near an animal gave me something of its power. I was inspired to go up and down hills with far more energy and sure-footedness that day than usual. That was just a little bit before April... I looked through my archive of photos from April itself and on the 21st of April found this:



A water butt kit! And we all know that goats butt don't we... ;-)

Another goatish synch is that a friend of mine share's her house with an astrologer - I'd teased him for ages by not letting him know when my birthday was - I was most intrigued to find out what he thought my sign was, and besides not being into astrology myself I felt much happier with his not knowing - his first guess about four years ago was Leo - I think my hair might have been having a good day that day - this November he tried Capricorn - still wrong but maybe he was picking up on something else! Though I'd consider the message, if there is one, to be that I'm a water goat which isn't in the Western Astrologer's menagerie.

Okay I've stretched this one as far it'll go... unless someone else has some suggestions?

Power Dip

This arrived today - from the US - Leah recommended it last Monday and I'd only ordered it on Tuesday from a reseller on Amazon.com. Amazon had told me to allow until February 9th 2009!

As I was reading the first chapter we had a most unexpected power dip. I was just in the section where where she is describing her own journey to the type of painting she calls "Painting from the Source":

And I even had to say good-bye (power dip) to the fear of being connected and whole.

Which I must admit seemed significant to me at the time. There was a second power dip a little later when I wasn't reading - I was cutting up red peppers... I can't see any significance to that one ;-)

This copy is even signed, though its really hard to read, I think its signed by the author.

My best guess is:

For April,
Keep Painting, Goat Judy
Love Aviva Gold

Can you make it make more sense?

As I tried to post this I got a message saying

Conflicting edits

There was more than one attempt to edit this resource at the same time. This may have been because you double-clicked a link or a button or because someone else is also editing this blog or post.

Please hit the back button on your browser and try again. If the problem persists, please contact the Blogger Help Group. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Weird! I wasn't doing more than one thing at once...

Any suggestions for what that means also welcome!

Christmas Cards

This is what I made this weekend - in fact mostly on Saturday - it felt very productive to get them made (even if not written and posted) before the last posting day - something that doesn't always happen - indeed last year I didn't get around to making any new ones at all - so lots of people ended up without one from me - sorry!

I made these in a similar way to the ones I made in 2006 (first stage, final ones) and indeed looked at and was again inspired by this tutorial. I got carried away adding bits and bobs before they were all cut up which meant I ended up having to cut some of the shiny confetti pieces and of course add more later. I also found it much easier to tape them into the cards than glue them. Quite a lot of my potential cards didn't have windows so I used a square hole card punch to make them.

Last time I used stamps on tissue to put greetings inside and I did something similar this time - I like the effect of a couple of layers of tissue although it does mean more glue and mess! At least Pritt stick was all that was necessary for the tissue.

Anyone else making cards?

What's on the Outside of Your Fridge?

Andrea has asked what is on the outside of people's fridges - this is ours.

The monster on the left is something Jim and I made in our first year together using a similar method to the fish next to it. Jim's mother had made that for him some years before. She was inspired by Make Something Ugly...for a Change: The Definitive Guide to Papier/Cloth Mache by Dan Reeder. (Unfortunately it seems that this is out of print and people are asking ridiculous prices for the copies available.)

The green tortoise magnet was made for Jim last year by his nephew, Alex.

What's on your fridge? (Do post a link here if you decide to blog it!)

'Tis the season to be colourful

I've been having lots of fun with paint.

Life, Paint and Passion

Yes! I've finally got my studio back so I can paint again.

Last August Jim removed the old carpet (which had moths and had to go) and painted the floor - unfortunately the cement paint was VERY smelly so I couldn't go back in straight away.

Then we got Teasel and it was the best place to put her as it had a floor that wasn't precious... now she is (more or less) house trained she is inhabiting the upstairs more and I get the basement back!

I'm restricting myself to poster paints for the moment until I'm sure Teasel isn't going to take up paint eating. But that's no problem as I rather like them - they are cheap and colourful and I love their consistency and opaqueness. They are, incidentally, the type of paint recommended by one of my favourite art books:

Which I've recently re-read.

Its amazing how one can completely misremember a book.

The last time I read it and was inspired to paint by it I produced a whole series of paintings that were colourful weird and very detailed (though I used acrylic paints then as its what I had and knew). They formed the last exhibition of paintings that I did. That was in 1996. I blogged one 10 years after that in June 2006.

Now I realise that one of the things the book does is caution against showing this sort of art work to anyone!

Because its so personal.

I somehow missed that entirely before. Though I didn't try to sell them as I felt they were too personal to sell... but at the time I hadn't really worried about whether I might feel over-exposed by showing them... Looking back now I think that showing them did block me from letting myself paint more this way. As though I'd broken a trust with myself. So this time around I will not be showing them, not even here on my blog. (I have been painting on and off this year and not shown it here for the same reason.)

Also I'm sure when I first worked with the process in the book I felt that just splashing paint on "wasn't allowed"... hence the relatively tight and detailed work and yet the book is extremely clear about there being no rules... it makes suggestions that are not all mutually compatible because different things are going to be appropriate at different times. I think I must have got quite a lot of rules into my head when really the idea of the book is to free oneself from ALL the rules!

The idea is more about painting whatever it is appropriate to paint now; not to analyse it at any point, just to let it come.

So given that when I happen to tell Jim "this is such fun" and he responds "is it very messy?" this time around I will let the inner messy painter out!

This process is not about painting for those who intend to make a living from painting. It is about self-expression and painting for the sheer fun of it.

Michele Cassou has her own website - and the first thing that struck me about it is that her name was mispelt (Michell) on the cover of the Life, Paint and Passion book!

She has several other books, plus DVDs and CDs for sale there.

I would love to go on one of her workshops...

Anyone else used her methods or even been to one of her workshops?