As I finish this cup and let Blossom Dearie sing out in the background of thought I wonder when I'm going to be comfortable with the unknown and stop allowing it to keep me back. There is so much I ache to do that I've got to just get out there and do it, letting the burn of failure come to pass and the high of success ripple through.
The sun is shining today, the last day of November. I'd rather mark the days by the presence of the sun than the presence of fake snow and holiday money saving deals on the television. The passing of Autumn is so sweet and sad. Winter around here is, yes, cold, and just a strange time for me all around. It leaves me feeling lots of memories that I'm not ready to let go of or even revisit (yet I let myself do this) and I have a hard time letting myself forget. I am excited to watch the snow fall and drink some tea, very simply watching time pass. The first snow always reminds me of my first apartment on the third and top floor of a house on a hill, with lots of windows to watch the wind take the snow across the city. We haven't had any snow yet this year and only recently have I been able to kick my July mentality and accept the fact that December's moving in, and bringing with it lots of ice and snow. It just may be time for a trip to the beach while it's waiting out the last days without snow before it halts and simmers into ice.
I've been working on learning new techniques with which I can create. Ideally, I practice daily. More realistically, however, well, it's much more intermittent than daily. I really love to doodle on whatever paper I can find (if I went back to all my school notebooks, the margins are always covered in little drawings) and I've started to bring my own art into the things I create. A few months ago I had the brilliant idea of making little pendants out of Scrabble tiles only to find that this is a hugely popular trade! I went ahead with my idea anyway, scanning images of my own making into my computer so I could print them on a high gloss photo paper. I cut into the drawings using a tile-sized template and then glued them onto the tiles, using a glossy glue to finish the look. When the glue dries it looks like glass on top of the image, like a super clear, unbreakable bubble of glass. I had some earring posts lying around that were intended for an undetermined future project and decided to make my little tiles into earrings. I really enjoyed the process of making each tile and I'm glad I made them into earrings (though none of them match since this wasn't the original intention) because of all the silly things I covet in life earrings are high on the list of them.
