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…a great deal of real art is made under the radar. We barely know we are working. We just suit up and show up and grab what moments we can, and it is only in cozy retrospect that we can see the level of skill we were able to muster. It is humbling, the degree to which we are like automatons. Our art moves through us despite us.
–Julia Cameron, Finding Water
The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don’t do is quit.
–Kevin Ashton, How to Fly a Horse
Today’s retrospective analysis of the last 10 years of My Little Spacebook revealed an overarching theme running through many posts. Since the beginning, that theme is showing creative work – my own work and other people’s work that I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with or to witness.
In the last decade there has been a lot of work shared and a lot of shared work!
There’s been knitted work, decoupage work…,
…messy work in progress,
…incredibly weird work,

Herman the Hypertufa Planter
outside work…
messy inside work…,
mosaic work….,
…and exhaustion from the work.
“When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better group harmony if you keep going back to it.”
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
…or in other words….
“I feel better when I’m dancin’! Yeah, Yeah!”
-Meghan Trainor
~*~
My little world has changed a lot since my last post. And the big world has too. One thing that hasn’t changed is my obsession with plants and flowers. I’m still doing weird stuff like this…
That’s my garden journal and bed mapping system.
There is a newly-tilled bed out front that I’ve mounded for a “Three Sisters” garden. I seeded it over the weekend with corn. This is my first serious experiment with a sisters garden. I will keep you posted on further developments.
In other news: nearly eight years ago, a friend gave me a small prickly, pokey yucca plant. A few weeks ago, quite unexpectedly – KAPOW! – this happened…
For the first time ever she bloomed a stalk of soft white blossoms nestled in her fortress of spikes. It seems my yucca is not a little girl anymore. I kind of/sort of knew yuccas could bloom because my grandmother, Kiki, had a couple yuccas in her back yard and one year they bloomed unexpectedly. Kiki was all beside herself about it in a way that I didn’t understand then, but that I totally get now. It strikes me as odd that some part of me held this memory seed below the murky waters of consciousness. When I received this plant as a gift, I knew it was special. I also knew without looking it up that the plant was a yucca – just as well as I knew my own name, because that’s what Kiki taught me. But somehow this plant needed to show its petals for the details of the memory to fully bloom in my own awareness and understanding.
The lamb’s ear in the sensory garden is also doing a new stalk-bloomy thing that it has never done before…
How can you not love this plant’s architecture? Just look at the symmetry, the geometry, and the texture! Every time I pass this bed, I want to jump in and roll around in it…which reminds me: I have sweet nothings to whisper into the little lamb’s ear. Until next time!
I crossed paths with a black cat last week at the corner of healthy and happy. We talked at length about life. I made him promises. When he was satisfied with negotiations, he jumped in the car and we drove home together. I call him Mystère. He calls me Meowrow. He and Nickel have made it clear that they are not friends and never will be.

Yip, blissfully unaware of the turf war occurring outside
But that story is not why I’m here; it’s just an aside.
I’m here because I’ve been inspired by this quote from Amy Poehler:
“It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers, and the creators. They are the magic people of the world.”
–Amy Poehler, Smart Girls: Ask Amy
I’m here because it’s October — what better time is there for magic?
I’m here because I have an official declaration to make:
I hereby declare October as “Make it” month. The idea is to create something (anything!) new everyday for the next 31 days. My intention is to post daily. I hope you’ll join me in dreaming, creating, inspiring, and sharing.
Today, my creation is the goal itself. You gotta start somewhere!
I look forward to what dreams may come.
Travel Pillows. Please discuss.
(If you need more prompting, I’m wanting to know about your experiences with the horseshoe squishy type of travel pillow that you see in airports. You stick them around your neck for something…presumably to sleep. Have you used one? Is that what they’re for? Are they at all helpful or a waste of money? Is there a particular you swear by? Discuss.)
People toss out interesting things.
And I have acquired the quirky behavior of rummaging around in the things other people pitch out, then stacking one person’s tossed out treasure on top of another’s discarded thing-a-ma-bob. Fanciful sculptures emerge, which I then throw in the yard.
I blame Skattur.
This coming Saturday I will drag them to the St. Jude Craft fair under the pretense of wanting to sell them….
…but it feels a little like selling one’s children.
Obviously, I still have a lot to learn about letting go.
Today SoKaN joined a gang of 80 knittas and hookers to carry out a bombing assignment for the mafia.
Ka-BOOM!
That’s yarn bombing, of course, otherwise known as knit graffiti, a form of community street art. And the mafia is the Memphis Knit Mafia.
This means that as of today my work is officially on display at a museum. I’m pretty sure this makes me edgy and urban, yet sophisticated and classy, all at the same time (if only in my imagination).
I lead such an adventurous (fantasy) life, especially for someone who spends such a vast amount of leisure time reading, knitting, and putting on shadow puppet shows for her puppy.
People are so durn creative, so now I will present the work of the real artists…
Ladybugs and flowers and stripes and pink and pompoms! It’s so fluffy I could die.
Knitted hearts on a string! Be still my heart. I must learn to make these.
More hearts.
A super big THANK YOU to Christiana Leibovich for being the capo di tutti capi.
Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.
-Albert Einstein
Title: The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
Author: Twyla Tharp
Synopsis: Master choreographer, Twyla Tharp, interweaves stories about what makes her creative life tick with advice and exercises to help others develop their own creative habit.
Why I read it: Because Caitlin Kelley wrote that it was one of her favorite books ever, which instantly made it a must-read. She described it as, “Kick-ass and inspiring in equal measure.”
You might like this if you liked: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
(Steven Pressfield)
Highlights: You don’t have to be a dancer to appreciate this book – she gives lots of examples from other creative walks of life, including the business world. That said, her descriptions of how she choreographs and teaches dance were fascinating. My favorite chapter was the one on failure. She used one of her own productions as a case study on failure and what to do about it. The rigor and brutal self-assessment/honesty with which she handled the topic were impressive.
Fun coincidence: One of Tharp’s methods to harness and organize creativity is by starting with a physical box because as she puts it, “before you can think out of the box you have to start with a box.” She devotes an entire chapter to the box and what she puts in it and why. In an entirely unrelated conversation, a friend recently invited me to craft an intention box with her – same idea as what I was learning from Tharp, but different verbiage. Crafty boxing fun will be had this week.