How do you share your art around you?

Blog 30.10.2018

Dear Creative Adventurers,

Do you enjoy experiencing art with others? I do.

I went to a concert at my daughter’s new lovely school. She performed on the xylophone. This school puts special value on performing so they made sure all the children who were in her class performed. Early intervention on stage fright, I think. I was part of a small parental audience. Behind me sat another American family. Their four year old was having trouble sitting as four year olds do. I handed her my purse sketchbook and one of my fairly child proof fountain pens. Her mother admonished her to ONLY use one page. I turned around and said please as many as you can fill. She spent the next fifteen minutes very busy. Fortunately she kept her marks to the paper, always a bit of a worry with our smaller population.

 

Yesterday, while sitting in a café waiting for my winter tires to be put on at the dealership I pulled out my sketchbook. From the child’s shapes I made my own lines and characters. This was a very enjoyable hour. Now maybe at the next concert I can pass back the sketch book and she can add to my marks… This is a game I started to play when I was in the University and required to carry around a sketch book. Sometimes it’s so much more fun to be inspired by others…

Weekend creative pursuits…

Dear Creative Adventurers,

On the weekend I try to put the paint brush down and explore other creative avenues. As the months get cold I have turned my creative downtime efforts to knitting.

I read a book recently where one of the characters knit kitchen towels. At first I was like hmmm… Then one day while mopping up a spill. I was quite undone by how ineffective my kitchen towel was working. Here in Germany a proper kitchen towel is cotton and thin. While pretty not very effective in mopping spills. Then there is the fact that I cannot find cream and dark gray to match my kitchen to save my life. I got to thinking…then researching…

I have knit my first cotton kitchen cream and dark gray towel. The pattern looks like the screen of a white and black TV fuzz. While not exactly beautiful, quite functional. I have tried to knit these before but ran out of interest before I had it started. I definitely needed a pattern with a little challenge to keep me going. So this is the pattern I found https://www.pinterest.de/pin/291537775874519172/. I began and then discovered my thread was too thin. I still have not figured out where on the package the thickness is. As it was half the thickness I required I put both colors together. Making a colored patterned dishcloth at that point seemed beyond my abilities. Here are the results of my labors:

I am currently on towel number two. Since I have managed to make one kitchen towel that can mop spills up why not another? Only something with a two color pattern. I have never knitted a two color pattern before. https://www.purlsoho.com/create/2013/06/16/whits-knits-slip-stitch-dishtowels/. As I only had two colors I went with the navy and white, only cream and dark gray. While trying the pattern out it was clear I was not understanding some of the pattern. I turned to Fiber Spider on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W0j8kjJjtk He did a brilliant job at showing how to pull one color up into the next row. I could have read that pattern forever and just never got it. Seeing Fiber Spider pull the underneath stitch to the next row made complete sense.  I nearly completed the second one here it is pictured:

I have found knitting particularly helpful to keeping my nerves in tact. If I spend too much time listening to German I get lost in the tangle of German grammar. When I knit my fingers are busy, my mind is free to explore the conundrum to what I am hearing. Ask my husband, last night we watched a German Krimi. I kept checking if I was understanding everything properly. If you want to know about how to build a rocket engine he can explain it to the very last spark plug in either language. Keeping track if the trainer slept with the daughter and the mother he is board. So the joke is I ask then explain and he says yes you are right… Or straightens out where my translation became my fantasy. LOL

What do you do that fills your creativity and calms your soul?

Sincerely,

Emily Frömel

Creative Adventurers...

Dear Creative Adventurers,

I have been pondering how to write real on this blog since I began publishing five years ago. There were to many I’s and me’s. I would like to document my art for your interest. I have been exploring how to feed the creative well for a very long time. So I think while I am documenting my art I will also explore our creative processes. So come along with me while we find the edge of this mirage…called creativity.

I have been scared, terrified really, of writing this blog. Seems odd, yes? These are what the devils on my shoulder say… “Who you are today is not who you will be tomorrow.” “All those writing lessons and you can still write an incredible run on sentence.” As you might imagine this is just the start.

I have had some health scares this last year forcing me to slow down and consider the devils on my shoulder. To make a long story short I am shelving them. Tomorrow we may both be new people. Here the evolution will be documented. Yes on occasion I get excited and forget a good English sentence has only approximately 12 words. Please feel free to drop me a line when you find an extended word train. I will do my best to edit and catch most of them.

I started taking a course online for keeping me real about meditating. This is an exercise to help me de-stress, stay on track with eating well and sleep. One of the things required to document our process is write daily. Just something short observing how meditation has helped that day. I have found I can do this. So why not something quick for a blog as well?

So here I am. Writing on the process my art is taking and creative adventures. Please feel free to explore the edge of the creative mirage with me...

Sincerely,

Emily Frömel