two walnuts and a cherry waiting to be attached to a shaft and tested for balance. I am betting the one on the right will be an unbalanced reject, as it is quite thin and has a grain change on the edge... we'll see, when I get off this silly computer.
Someone pointed out to me that I hadn't posted to my blog since July of last year, and it looked like I was dead or something. This led me to discover that several bloggish sorts of links pointed to my old blog at dangling threads, rather than this one, which frankly hasn't been that updated too recently, either.
I actually haven't posted since January, and in general have been pretty quiet since my Dad passed away in early March.
So while hoping that I had corrected all those bad links, I heard from someone who said that a lady in her guild had paid quiet a bit for a used spindolyn because she had heard that I wasn't making them any more.
Oh contrare! I merrily work away each and every day standing at the lathe, filling orders from my website, watching the wood peel away and the sawdust be sucked up the dust collector, and every day I work hard at trying to improve my lathe tool sharpening skills. (this is harder than improving your spinning skills, really.)
No, my absence has been glaringly obvious in my Etsy store, not at spindolyn.com. and in these days of instant everything, if you are gone from your store for a few months (or a wee bit more) then it is assumed you are dead or out of business, not just on a creative sabbatical.
Then about a month ago, I finally got some fancy spindles back up in my Etsy store, and it was so wonderful, making something special again....so, I have been thinking about what I was thinking about, during that gap in creativity, when I was sort of lost in procrastination and grief.
The etsy spindles require me to be not only creative, but to really concentrate hard to get what is in my mind translated to the wood. I don't think I am one of those artists who has to suffer to create, rather, I prefer to have a quiet mind to create, and my mind is not quiet when tangled in grief and introspection.
It wrangles with accepting life stages, including death. It wrestles with my place in the world with out that most important person in the world with me. It spends time in memories of all that was gained by knowing that person, and all that is lost in their passing. It scolds my emotions for being so attached to the way things used to be. And lingeringly, it questions all my motives and directions and actions.
I have hit the life stage where I think it might be wise to scale down.
De-posses, de-clutter, lighten up. Focus on my favorite things, my woodworking and spinning and knitting and hiking. And give everything else away. Maybe the sheep, too. Just thinking, of course.
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