Pamela Hastings workshop

Getting very excited here... as I'll be heading down to Corvallis, Oregon next week for a weekend workshop with Pamela Hastings, a master doll maker I've admired for years. This photo is of her famous "Hot Flash" doll. Oh, how she speaks to me!

I was so lucky Pamela was teaching somewhere so close to where I live... just a two hour drive away. This will be a first for me... hanging out for a whole weekend with a group of doll makers! This workshop is sponsored by the Reel Dolls club in Corvallis. I can't wait to meet everyone. I don't quite know what to expect, but I'm up for anything. Just getting away for a weekend will be heaven... and I know I'll learn a lot.

Getting Un-Stuck

I've been digging around in old photographs, looking for the very beginnings of my artist soul. This seems to have been an old toy of mine... although, frankly, I have no memory of it. I do have vivid memories of several other dolls I had, though there is unfortunately no photographic record of them. Since it's the Easter season, I thought this bunny ought to make the scene here, as one of my earliest playthings, regardless of my faded recollections.

I spent the day re-organizing my kitchen and moving large cabinets and shelving. Just had an unquenchable desire to get some energy un-stuck around here. Also got a fair amount of "spring cleaning" done in the kitchen, while re-listening to the audio book version of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth on my kitchen CD player. It felt great! I will take more photos tomorrow. Am just too bone tired tonight. A really GOOD kind of tired.
Here's the ledge above my kitchen sink... crowded with pottery and "stuff". It's so much fun to move things around and lovingly wipe the dust from some of the things I love to look at!

I have been working on tapping into more intuitive creativity lately. Reading some great things about art journaling, which is giving me jumping off points, as well as techniques to just get past what seems to be a period of "creative block" I am going through at the moment. It doesn't help that my daughter has not been able to attend school for the past three weeks (school snafu, not due to illness), but I've also just been stalling, avoiding, stumbling, losing momentum, getting discouraged, getting tangled up in problems that I can't fix... then just chucking my work and starting over.

I figured it would be much better to stop and work in some other mediums for a while, do some introspection and play a lot. So, I've been drawing, making jewelry, painting, etc. Am trying to do open-ended practice, rather than be so project-oriented and worried about the results. Finding a great deal of anxiety lurking under the surface. Funny what you find when you start peeling back the layers, isn't it?