W.I.P. Work in progress

Life in the slow lane.

2011-07-26T20:21:00.001+02:00

I do not regularly post about my everyday life... But this time I have to share. In the early morning of july 8th, we (as in my husband, our 2 children, our dog and I) were traveling to France. We left the night before, meaning to arrive at my In-Law's house around 7ish the next morning. All went well, and we did listen to all the good advice on traveling looooong distances. We had a good 900 km (560 miles) to go and did stop frequently. Because we both have a driverslicence, we alternated who would drive and avoid getting sleepy behind the wheel.

At about 60 km (38 miles) from our destination we were harshly woken up... al 4 of us! For just a second my husband must have dozed off and missed a curve in the road. Our sturdy VW came to a full stop with a loud, creaking sound... and then came silence. I remember just a moment of nothing before I started what I am good at: taking care of everything with no question as to how I was handling the whole ordeal. There were children to be comforted, phonecalls to be made, nurses from the ambulance and the policemen to speak to... all in my best French! And I can tell you that my French is fine, but not in a state of emergency. Luckily, everyone we met was helpfull and very kind.

My parents-in-law drove over to meet us. My husband had been taken to hospital by then and they helped me get our belongings into their car. Then they drove me to the hospital to find out how my husband was doing: he suffered a headwound, 2 wounds on his left arm, he broke the metacarpal bone of his left little finger and ulna of his left arm... Last winter he shatterd both bones in his right lower leg (shin-and calfbone) and he was just up an running again! He had to stay in hospital for 5 days and was fixed up nicely.

The children, dog nor I didn't suffer any harm! I only had very sore muscles in my neck and right shoulder from the tug of the safetybelt and that was it. We are so very lucky to be able to tell this story! OK, our car is wrecked beyond repair... but other then that...

Now that the worst is over I can start re-orienting life. If anything, I have learned that I don't want to live in the fast lane anylonger. I want to be mindfull of what I do, asking myself what is needed Here&Now. Asking myself what is needed, what I need... It's not easy, because I am not used to an approach like this but it is good therapy. I hope to keep it up, it's easy to sit down and keep on asking myself: "Why does all this happen to us? Didn't we have enough misfortune?" I still want to believe this wake-up call will bring some good in the end.

Breakdowns can create breakthroughs. Things fall apart so things can fall together.
Unknown Source

Moving on

2011-06-16T21:54:00.000+02:00

I haven't beaded for over a year now. But the good news is that I am starting to miss it! Somewhere, sometime there has been a shift over the last few weeks and I suddenly found myself wondering, what to do. What do you mean, what to do? How about beading? Not that I have already actually picked up a bead, oh no. I have rearanged my cupboard, so now I can easily acces my beads&needs. That's a start. More importantly, I have found a way to finish my BJP-maypiece of 2010.

How silly of me to think I could finish a piece that is about my therapeutic process. I wrote I would tell you about why it is all in black and white after it would be finished. Now I know it will never be finished.

I already wrote that I have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and severe depression. I feel ashamed of these things, mostly the former . I have always felt that a so called Borderliner would be a terrible person to be with: manipulative, controlling, destructive, only capable of black&white reasoning... Since I have learned that there is a huge grey area for me to discover. Firstly because not all people with my diagnosis are suffering from all the symptoms in the worst way possible, so I could view myself as a mild case. Second of all, I am capable of learning and girl! am I learning!

This piece was meant to and is depicting my search for those grey areas. The idea was to bead a black and a white section and then to see if I could bring the two together. I have succeeded partly but it was harder then I thought. Those of you who have gotten to know me a little, will also know I am quite stuck to rules I set myself. It is hard for me to let them go and be easy about things. Not finishing this piece meant not starting a new one, but now I have found my way around.

I will not finish this piece as I intended, but... I will bead a border, that I have already started partially. I will bead a lifeline, as I intended... and then put this piece aside. It will be as fninished as can be by then, and I will have my desired opening for progress, new beadings, new searches. There, I met myself in the middle. Now for one more step: really picking up my beads.

While writing I listened to this beautifull piece of music, and thought you might like to enjoy it too.

I did it!

2011-05-19T22:44:00.001+02:00

Last saturday I did it. I ran 10 km's (= 6.21 miles), and my lucky number was: 1216.We ran through the beautifull countryside I live in, the sun was shining and there was a cool breeze. In short, it was perfect. For over 9 month I have been training for this event. And then to realize that about 2 years ago it seemed as if I would never run again. This is my little miracle story:

7 Years ago, when pregnant with our youngest, I was diagnosed with Pelvic Girdle Pain . After our son was born I got intensive physical therapy, lots of exercises to strengthen my pelvic muscles and all seemed to heal very nicely until one night I simply turned around in my bed and screamed with pain. No physical therapist, nor neurologist could find out what had gone wrong... but the fact was that from that day on my PGP didn't heal. One day my therapist told me: "If it's not over by the time your boy turns 6, you will suffer pain for the rest of your life." That's not what you want to hear when you have just turned 35!

Over time my stubborn me tried to run (for that is the only sport I really enjoy), but every time I tried for just a very short time I had to pay for my endeavor with pain during a sleepless night. I gave up the idea of ever being able to run again. Untill the summer of 2009. Having gained over 10 kg's (= 22 pounds) due to medication, I wanted to start sporting hoping that I would lose some weight. I didn't really lose the weight, but my muscles and overall wellbeing benefited hugely. Last summer I was on the treadmill running for about 2x 5 minutes... Wait a sec.. did I say running?

That was the summer our boy turned 6! In the nick of time I was able to run and not suffer pain, even though it was only for a very short time in a row. I talked to the trainer at the gym and together we decided it was worth the try to extend my running time very slowly and increase speed. Guess what? It worked! My leg does protest now and then, and 10 km. seems to be my limit for this moment but I am more then happy with those limitations, because I ran 10 km's and won 2 prizes. I was 3rd of all women running the 10, and the fastest woman of my village!

Me in the aqua-shirt after the first lap.

.... halfway through....

.. at the finish with on the far left my sweet husband (in the read shirt and black jacket) and our 6-year old son, cheering for me!

I was supposed to stand on the right side... but was just a little late...

But then again, I got my private minute of fame!

I am proud and happy... and next year? I will run again!!

I know this music was written to accompany a wedding... but it was the first music that came to my mind to illustrate how I felt at that moment: triumphant.

On muses and rules

2011-02-24T21:27:00.000+01:00

I have been pondering on much lately... On how I got at the point that I don't blog, don't bead, don't create at all for that matter. Why has my muse left me? Or should I say: why have I abandoned my muse? Did I leave her somewhere and forgot all about her? Then, what is inspiration? Who is my muse? How can I meet her, and tap into her energy? Now that I re-read my last post, I realize that I have tried to examine my sudden lack of creativity and found some answers already. But still, all these big questions won't leave me.

Last year I embarked on this journey called The Bead Journal Project, or shortly the BJP. I was filled with enthusiasm, new ideas and had even managed to get a compassionate look at me, for I was a beginner. But somewhere over time my inner critic must have gotten a strong hold of me again and pushed the other voices into the background, leaving them too little space to breathe, be and create. Consuming a lot of the space they left open with new rules, set to keep in control of everything. Wait a minute... that's exactly what I wrote last time, and then I felt I could ignore her because she was shouting so blatantly in my face. That was October of last year, and I have still to pick up my beads again. Alas, I did pick them up once about 5 weeks ago or so, to start back at my May project... to no avail it seems.

Last time I wrote:
"Loyal as I usually am to the rules I set myself - and believe me, they are quite strict - I wouldn't allow me to start another project before the last one was finished and since I got stuck on that one... there is a huge roadblock to overcome."
Apparently, there are more rules than only this one or I would probably be back on track. What are those new rules then?

For starters, I was adamant about keeping up with each month (as I found out already), about making my own life the subject of all pieces, and about blogging on my doings regularly... Hmm, the first I failed at the start: it was well into February that I finished my January project. But at that point I did blog about my doings and thoughts, even about my life, so I wasn't too upset with myself. I still could be compassionate with me, so far so good. I kept up my work, but slowly got behind more and more. Next I realized that making my own, inner life the subject of all my pieces was a hard-core rule that kept me from simply having fun beading. I cut myself some slack and told myself that is was O.K. if I took a break and beaded about something else. But still this wasn't enough to silence my critic. She kept on shouting and I faltered on my blogging too, feeling that I wasn't worth being read if I didn't have anything good to tell.

Now I am at this point of return... I do want to get back to beading again, but am not sure whether or not to pick up last years BJP. Naturally, my inner critic wants me too, she won't be content with unfinished business. It was better to never have started if you aren't going to stick to it. Yet another rule unveiled!

From February untill early July 2010 I have spent more time in the hospital then at home, going through an emotional journey that felt like a roller-coaster from hell. During those months I switched medication 3 times, weaned off medicine at all, lost 11 kg (approximately 24 pounds), was nauseous every single day, didn't sleep well, had anxiety attacks... That was my status quo on homecoming. Getting back into a normal life was hard on these conditions, getting back to beading even more.

Still I have to see how I can make a grand come-back! Backstage I am well on my way. Starting November 29th. I got into a new therapy, based on the Schema Focused Therapy that was invented by Dr. Jeffrey Young. So far it has brought me back in touch with my inner voices, trying to lure the more silent ones out of their little corners. Giving them speech lessons on how to be heard more clearly. As far as I can tell now, it works for me and I grow stronger little by little. I knew that was the case when I realized today (3 weeks after starting writing this post!) that I could finish it... even if it wasn't perfect. AND I came up with a brand new idea!

A short while ago I visited Robin Atkinson's Flickr-page on which she exhibits a wonderfull project of hers: beaded Decade Dolls. Then today I saw a post by Susan Elliot over on Plays with Needles on her concept of an inner Queen... Combined with an idea that was already simmering in my mind to make spirit dolls, I came up with the inspiration to make dolls that represent all of my inner voices.

Now first to set some new rules:

make no rules!
enjoy the beading
share the fun

How's that for a re-entry? I embark again today, and hope to keep you posted. Will you still be with me?

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) Austro-German poet.

What happened?

2010-10-12T21:29:00.000+02:00

Oh my, what happened? I know I have been a little off lately, but when I took a peak at my last post I was startled to read it dated from July! Well, my 41st birthday has silently gone by but otherwise some changes have taken place. Last time I wrote: "After 9 years of pills, I am now on my own". I am sorry to say this pill-free episode didn't last very long. Around the time I wrote that, my anxiety/panic-attacks came back so badly that I had no choice but to start back on anti-depressants once again. Because in those past 9 years I have greatly suffered from side-effects of these meds, I was put on yet another one: I can now say I have tried 8 different ones so far. My current medication is tailored to depression and anxiety, so it helps me in both areas now. But before I could enjoy the benefits of this decision, I had to deal with the worst anxiety-attack in my life because of the medication. Luckily my psychiatrist warned me: it felt like a downright psychosis. Bless you if you cannot imagine what that is like!

In the meantime, school ha started again and life needed to go on... Needless to say I haven't been beading. The sad thing is though: I haven't been beading ever since summer. To be honest, I really don't know what has been keeping me. It can't be a lack of time because with losing my job I now have more time on my hands then before. Maybe my inner-voices can shed a little light on that?

There is one voice that keeps on telling me to start again, or I won't be back on track. Then continueing that my work can hardly be taken seriously, because I haven't kept up... But wait a minute: didn't the BJP-rules state that there was only one commmitment, being the one to myself? To go on that there were no such thing as a BJP-police to arrest me if I could not keep up? So frankly, the only one who has to take this seriously is me again! Hmm... my inner-critic is still here and trying to shout in my face so blatantly that I won't buy it this time.

Last time I also wrote: "(...) I think I will not bead the inside of me for a change... I need some vacation from me. Well, I need a little time off of all the therapeutic issues I have been dealing (and beading) with." The biggest thing holding me back I think is the fact that my May-piece didn't come on quite easily (and is still an unfinished one at that too). Loyal as I usually am to the rules I set myself - and believe me, they are quite strict - I wouldn't allow me to start another project before the last one was finished and since I got stuck on that one... there is a huge roadblock to overcome. So, let me start the climb back to the BJP by showing how far I did get om May:

Why my piece is all black&white I will tell you on a later date, i.e. when it has been finished. For now I hope to be back soon both in blogging and in beading. The first step has been set, and that is always the start of progress.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) British journalist, novelist and poet.

thoughts on june and july

2010-07-25T20:11:00.000+02:00

For whatever reason, I don't seem to get around blogging these days. Neither am I getting a lot of beading done... still working on my may-piece. The theme of which will be black&white. More on that on a later date, because if I don't put some thoughts on june or july in black and white, I won't know what to bead for these months once I get the time.

For starters I definitely need to make my june piece less elaborate: fully covering a 14x14 cm square of felt with beads and trinkets is a tedious job. Not that I don't love it, but some flow does make it easier on me I discovered. And flow is what is lacking at the moment. In addition I think I will not bead the inside of me for a change... I need some vacation from me. Well, I need a little time off of all the therapeutic issues I have been dealing (and beading) with. The past few months have flown by and at the same time feel like I have lived them a dozen times. So with these things in mind, what does june mean to me?

June means bright red poppies in a field of green grass bathing in sunshine on a bright summersday, something like this:

Every year I can stand in awe looking at the meadows filled with flowers of the field and feel like a little girl again, wanting to braid a wreath of flowers to put in my hair. (If not the stems of poppies were to thin to do so.) I don't know wheather it is the fact that I am a child of summer, or that the sunshine softens my often painfully present symptoms of depression during winter and early spring... Fact is, I long for these days every year and love the colours, the happiness, the light-footed quality of things that I am searching for in my own being.

And then july... It is the month in which I celebrate the birthday of my youngest (he is 6 already!) and my own too (for the 41st time this upcoming week). The month in which we went on a short vacation to France to spend a little time with my parents in law who own a house in the Poitou-Charentes. I guess I will just need some memorabilia from my vacation and try to use them in my beading. It will be a warm reminder of a nice time spend with loved ones.

So far, so good I guess. Now I will have to return to ordinary life in which I am still struggling with my depression. But there is some good news about that too: I am fighting it without any type of medication now! After 9 years of pills, I am now on my own. It is scary, it does come with anxiety and fear, but I am still standing and feeling more then before everything that is within and around me and girl... I can tell you it is as overwhelming as the first landing on the moon must have been the year I was born.

BJP for april 2010

2010-06-20T13:54:00.000+02:00

It's been a long time since I've posted, a hazardous journey has begun but I am still here to tell about it.

OK, now is time for a confession: aside from being genetically endowed with genes that make depression run in our family, I also suffer from what is called a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). It is hard for me to say this, as for a long time I felt that being diagnosed with BPD meant that one was the kind of person no one would want to be around. Deciding to accept my diagnosis and open myself up to deal with it and start healing was a giant leap. That's why I choose the rabbithole from Alice in Wonderland as my theme for april. Seeing Alice in 3D on the brink of my great adventure seemed like more than a coincidence.

As it is in myth and fairy-tales, the heroine often sets out on a bad start. And so did I on my april piece. I wrote all about that in my previous post. Work on this piece was quite labourious. I got stuck numerous times, started over, got set back, picked it up again... I surrounded the hole by fresh green grass, beaded some pahtways alongside of it, added a few of the beaded flowers that I had made in advance... and now I have something to show for all my effort.

For the first 3 months I divided my pieces in seperate sections and wrote about them, naming them. Not so this time. That's a first for me: I usually need to stick to something once I have started a routine. For me to break that rule feels quite scary. But this is an adventure that is (among others) about breaking the rules of my inner critic! What is most visible in this piece is that the surroundings of my rabbithole are you could say chaotic, but more lovingly I would say variegated. It is, what it is and it is one piece.

I love that the tiny green and red flowerbeads date back from my early teens, when I first picked up making jewelry. The medal dates back even further and is mine from an event called de avondvierdaagse. This is a very Dutch event, where schoolchildren walk a distance varying from 5 to 15 km on 4 consecutive nights. When you have finished your first time around you get a medal, and in later years a small pin to go on the ribbon. I have walked it a couple of times, but only have this medal and no pins. I used it for 2 reasons: I needed me to be in this piece and I deserved some encouragement for having the guts to start this endeavor.

I have chosen Chopin's Etude opus10 nr. 1 to go with my piece. It reflects the ultimate chaos I experienced just before I started my treatment, yet it is one of the most brilliant pieces of pianomusic I know. I hope that's how this all will work out in the end: that I have learned to hear and appreciate all the different tunes in me, that in the end make... ME. So you could say I have landed on the bottom of the hole, and now am out to find my jabberwocky. I have met the red queen, seen glimpses of the white queen... This tale is not over yet.

April-Fool in May

2010-05-10T17:37:00.000+02:00

Got all of us (including myself) fooled last month in thinking I had my plan for my april BJP-piece all conjured up. I had cut up my pieces of white and blue felt, sorted out all my shades of white and blue beads.... and then suddenly realized I was not going to make a Delfts Blauw piece all together. I have made myself one promiss when starting out on this journey, and that was making each piece a journal of that particular month. The thoughts I had on the Delftware piece are still very nice, and I did celebrate Koninginnedag but still that doesn't resemble in any way what I have been through in april. So here I am again for something completely different.

As some of you may know, I started an intensive therapy programm april 19th in hope of finding a way to deal with my recurrent and very severe depression(s). A couple of days before I started, I saw the movie Alice with a dear friend, and realized that the beginning of the film - where Alice looks into the rabbithole before falling in - was exactly depicting how I felt. I was sitting an the rim of the hole and knew I had to jump in on monday. It was terrifying! Mostly because I had hardly any idea of what was going to happen after I had taken that giant leap into the unknown. Now I have shrunk and grown and shrunk again a couple of times, I ran through the forest of Underland and am still waiting for the day I will have to slay my own jabberwocky. That is when I decided to bead my own Rabbithole.

So I went to my attic and was very pleased to find some green felt and then it began: the making of the rabbithole was an adventure in itself. I first set out to make a sleeve of plain, black cotton cloth to fit the hole I had cut into the felt. It took a while untill I thought I had succeeded, but the sleeve was to long so I tore off a just a small part. Ha! It didn't tear straight, because I had sewn the sleeve on leaving the direction of the weave in my cotton slightly slanting (if that is the correct phrase to use). Then I thought that if I would tear in the other direction I would make it straight again... All I did was shorten the sleeve on both occasions, leaving me with just a trim of black cloth around my rabbithole. Feeling very frustrated I took the whole thing off and decided to bead the thing!

You know what was so marvelous in what happenend next? As soon as I started beading around the hole, I knew I was on the right track just because I couldn't stop beading! It started to emerge under my hands as I was picking up the beads. After I had beaded a nice, wobbly edge to my rabbithole I realized I needed it filled up with "dirt". My attic was good to me in providing a good piece of brown felt and I soon was beading away again. Now the rabbitle is done for the time being at least. I had already beaded some flowers to fill up the green. Now on to the next stage... beading a lawn and finding a way to fit me in it.

BJP for march 2010

2010-04-30T20:48:00.000+02:00

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about my march-piece in my post Growing Strong. Little did I know it would grow out to the extend that it has! It all started with doodling while at work in late january, early february. (For those who have not followed me here or on Facebook: I have been on sickleave since february 9th.) I doodled a simple tree with just a few leaves, which is exactly what I started out with on this piece.

Soon I added the heart at the centre of my tree and the fringes that most, who saw this beginning, named roots. They were not intended to represent roots, but maybe they have become roots in the process. I wanted to make the trees connection to the soil visible and the nutrients it gets from it. I thought of those tree-foods as the fuel for the tree to be able to live, the "fire within" or Chi, hence the red/orange/yellow beads.

And then all of a sudden, I released myself from hospital and tumbled into turmoil. Because I have the intention to make my pieces real journals, in the sense that I want them to tell my story of that month, the turmoil has become very visible in the end. This is the landscape the tree grew into:

As I did with my other pieces, I want to tell you in more detail what all the parts mean. So I have once againg devided it into sections:

1. I stand strong
I could also call this piece: I will survive. That is exactly what this sturdy tree is meant to be: the confirmation that through all turmoil I will straighten my back and will stand. My feet connected to Mother Earth, growing and nourishing the fire that is crackling in my veins.

2. I'm working in my garden
The garden has, now that I write this down, become my metaphor for the rough times I am working through. In my february-piece I took a piece of my heart and replaced it in a little garden to heal and grow again. In this piece, the righthand corner is the most peacefull and restfull. I loved to play with colors in the beads as well as the thread, and that did make me feel comfortable. Although being in admitted wasn't easy, I found rest and a little distraction in beading which is visible in this part.

3. where I can bloom and lay back
The grass on the bottom is the last part of the piece that I embroidered while still in the hospital, before the turmoil began. Not that my moods weren't swinging from the highest highs to the lowest lows at that time, but I found some ways to still be able to tune in to my inner needs and wishes: to lay back, rest and bloom again. The first few days at home I could tap into that stream although it became harder by the hour. So when I beaded the bright (white) air and the flowers, I stopped working on this corner and moved up.

4. dark clouds are gathering
After a few days it was obvious that my stay in hospital didn't bring me any good. On the contrary, the events of the last days of my stay made it clear that my depression had gotten worse and I was far from laying back and blooming. In fact, I could feel the tension aching in all the fibres of my body. I felt as though a giant thunderstorm was going to overcome me and would wash me away. There was no movement, no going with the flow, just straight lines of fear, anger and sadness, the absence of colour.

5. growing leafs
Then I returned to the heart of my tree, to the fire within, and realized that I had to grow a lot more leafs to reach out to the world, to get in touch with the Earth and myself. So for a couple of nights I franticly beaded leafs.... first in the color of fire, but as they grew more and more to the outer limits of the tree in pale but promissing green. I call them my "ghost-leaves" meaning that they will grow eventually, although now there may still only be a promiss. Then I refound some peace and the skies turned blue again. With white clouds, but blue, meaning the heaviest part of the storm was over... the sun was going to shine again.

March was quite a month, quite a story... but in the end I have learned that somehow, somewhere there must be a way that I can stand up and say: Hey, I am growing strong!

I won't leave you without a proper piece of music to accompany this piece. To be honest it took me quite a while before I found a piece that illustrated my feelings. I think I have found it in this "Little Fugue" in G-minor, BWV 578 by Johann Sebastian Bach (one of my favorite composers). Originally the piece was composed for the organ, but here it is performed on the piano.The sound in this video is not perfect, but the visualization shows how the simple line (doodle) at the start is accompanied by other melodies into quite a sound and then to return to a more peacefull ending.

Here I am

2010-04-20T20:45:00.001+02:00

So here I am, working steadily on my march-piece that is branching out to a level I hadn't expected and hesitantly starting thinking on my april piece, while april is already halfway gone! While pondering about what april means to me immediately our national holiday Koninginnedag came to mind. A tradition that started when our late Queen Juliana was crowned, for her birthday was april 30th. After she resigned and our current Queen Beatrix took over her reign she pronounced that april 30th would stay a national holiday in honor of her mother. So for as long as I have lived, april 30th was a very festive day.

The Dutch national color is orange, because our royal family is of the House of Orange-Nassau. Personally I don't care at all for the color orange, so I decided to find a way around using this color. (Note that my april piece has not one bead on it yet!) Staying in line with my wanting to make a Dutch piece, I thought of another well know Dutch thing: Delfts Blauw. Anyone who has ever visited the Netherlands will have seen the little blue and white souvenirs of windmills, clogs, and a sweet girl&boy kissing. I do like this color-combination because of it's simplicity and it's great variation in hues.

Next I also realized that I did not want to make another solidly bead beaded piece, as my march piece is turning out. Not that I don't like it, but is more work then I ever phantomed. I wanted to do something with two layers of felt and realized that I have a handwork encyclopedia with a vast amount of crafts explained in detail. While just browsing the pages I stumbled upon a Hungarian technique of sewing two layers of felt togehter and then cutting out shapes that were outlined in the sewing. I have tried to find an online example of this technique, but haven't been able to.

So here I am, with my april piece taking shape in my mind, and nothing to show for it. It is growing in the shade of my march tree waiting to get a chance...

Climb a tree - it gets you closer to heaven.
Author Unknown

Me?

2010-04-11T20:58:00.003+02:00

OMG! I have been nominated by Lisa Criswell at Indigo's beads for the Kreativ Blogger Award. Now I feel very honoured and thankfull! Lisa, if you didn't already get this award and I could nominate someone you would sure be nominated by me (but I guess this shouldn't go back and forth.)

I got to know Lisa through the Bead Journal Project and Facebook and found we have a lot in common and share a virtual history. It is amazing how a project can bring you contacts from miles away and make you feel that you should have been nextdoor neighbours.

Now as I understand it, I have to follow 7 basic rules to accept this award, so here we go:

Thank the person who gave this to you.
Copy the logo and place it in your blog.
Link the person who nominated you.
Name 7 things about yourself that no one would really know.
Nominate seven 'Kreativ Bloggers'
Post links to the seven blogs you nominate
Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know you nominated them.

Items 1 through 3 can be checked... so here´s for 4 through 7:

I was an exchange-student at SIUC (Southern Illinois University at Carbondale) from august 1991 untill june 1992
My favorite dish has always been the Dutch version of Rice Pudding. If you realize that my birthday is in the middle of summer, you can easily deduct that my family was not always that amused
We own so many books, that we don't have enough space to store them. Most of them are in cardboard boxes on our attic (what will not do them any good). That is why I dream of owning a Sony E-reader with touch screen...
I was born on a thursday, as were my husband and my daughter... only our son decided saturday would serve him better....
but there must be a higher reason for his choice, as his birthdate and time read backwards are the excact birthdate and time of our daughter (!)
I have 2 cats and a dog and like to give the the cats peculiar names: our red Norwegian Cat is called R2D2 (yes, after Star Wars) and our black and white one Lbs. (cause he weighed exactly 500 grams, a European pound, when we got him)
I did not become a musician as I dreamed of as child, but did marry one!

And the nominees are...... (rolling drums):

Robin Atkins from Beadlust whom I am endlessly thankfull for her inspiration and her brainchild - the BJP - that got me hooked on beading
Susan Elliot from Plays with Needles whom I admire for her versatility and skills and being a wonderfull far friend as well
Pam Truog from Of beads and other things without whom the BJP would have no blogs, and who is brave to be so to the point in her posts and so honest and personal in her beadwork
Soe from Soe beads a lot who is also Dutch and beading for the BJP on her second year!
oh Heck... I would want to nominate all 3 BJP blogs and all the woman that are beading, so lets break a rule or two and just go for it: Here's to beadjournalproject 3
more beadjournal project 3
even more beadjournal project 3 you all deserve it!

You will have to visit all of these blogs if you want to make sure I did follow rule number 7!

All this friendship and connection to new and far away friends, got me thinking of a beautifull piece for piano solo by Robert Schumann: Kinderszenen, opus 15 - "von fremde Länder und Menschen" or in plain English "Scenes from childhood, opus 15, of foreign lands and peoples".

BJP for febuary 2010

2010-03-28T16:31:00.005+02:00

March is well on its way to hand over to april and here I am, posting on my febuary BJP page. Time is flying when your beading! I did the same to this page, as I did to my january page. But before I start my own story, I want to thank all of you who took the effort to really look and listen to my piece and left a comment on what it told them. I was moved by all of your reactions and didn't expect so many of them to be right on the mark!

Most of you saw the breaks in my heart, the mends (there was even a zipper conceived) and the growth. There were thunderclouds, butterfly-souls, scars, light and darkness but all ended well so I lived happily ever after. However silly this last sentence may sound, I must admit that I hadn't expected so many honest, warm comments and so much love expressed through them. It has really lifted me up in the very hard times I am going through right now. So before I start telling you my own story, I want to express a heartfelt:

Thank you !!

1. what is (in) my heart?

It all started with a piece of off-white felt, and a whole, red felt heart. I don't know exactly what brought me to cut it into pieces, but somehow after I had cut out the heart I felt the need to divide it. Thing is that probably as a side-effect of my depression I often feel like I am shattered to pieces: dark&light, sad&bright, black&white. I often struggle to unite these pieces and have a feeling of "me". More often then not I don't have this feeling of being whole, I usually feel torn and tossed between all the extremes that my emotions and thoughts show me.

The top right-parts that were "zipped" together have a little secret behind them. On my first day in hospital I found a € 0.05 coin on the floor of my room. It struck me like a lucky-penny and that's why I wanted it in my piece. Somewhere in my heart, there is some luck hidden. Locked up for now, but there for when time is right.

2. hold on tight
The sun always shines behind the clouds is the English phrase, in Dutch we say: "after rain the sun comes out" (my translation). It is the darknes that dissolves to light, but with a heart at the center of the darkness. There always is something good to come out of hard times, though often we can hardly perceive it when we are in the middle of such turmoil. So I will have to hold on tightly and sit the ride out.

3. the garden of life

I first had my heart cut up in pieces, but pinned it to the backing in the right shape and order. While beading I realized that just part of me felt really dislocated right now, in need of mending. That's why I relocated this one piece, just outlining where it had been, and put it in my little garden where it can grow and heal again. Like in a real garden, a lot of work needs to be done and that is what I am looking at now.

4. missing parts&turmoil

So this missing part is just outlined, showing where it should be and was, but now it is threatened by dark clouds and and almost sucked into the dark whirlpool below. There is a steep path shearing right next to my heart and I must cling on to not fall into this darkness. But it is not pitchblack, there still is some light so I can try to stay on top and see a little of the beauty that is hidden in this darkness.

5. one day I'll fly away

The thought of the butterflies representing my soul is not farfetched at all. It was the last piece of the project that I beaded and I did indeed intend to represent my wish to sometime be able to fly away from the sorrow that is inside me. I wanted to ensure myself that one day, I will be able to put all this behind me and fly into the clouds, the sunlight... I used red thread with matte beads to connect the flight and air to the heart. It don't want to fly away from my heart, because no matter what, it still is mine.

So now branching of to march, but that is to come in another post. Those who have known me for some time now, also know I will not leave you emtyhanded. I found this beautifull music-video of Chinese classical Folk Music, interpreted by the Vanessa Mae. Very calming to listen to and a joy to watch.

Growing strong?

2010-03-15T20:09:00.000+01:00

I don't know where it is written, but there must be a law that states that when you encounter something it will be the first of whole series of encounters.... To me it always leaves the impression of close encounters of a third kind: "This means something, this is important!"

It al started with my doodling around while at the office talking to a customer. With just a few simple lines a tree appeared and I thought it would be nice to be able to use it for the Bead Journal Project sometime. Then I visited Susan Elliot at Plays with Needles and read that she was growing a tree! So a few encounters later I was hesitant to start my own home-grown greenery, afraid it would look like plagiarism and I certainly don't intend to be a copycat!

Luckily I realized that my BJP would be about me, not about Susan, nor about any other tree-minded designers. They have inspired me immensely though and I am grateful for their efforts to share. For this moment I will leave you with my humble beginnings on my march journal page and adventure in growing green and strong this spring...

...because:

Do not be afraid to go out on a limb ... That's where the fruit is.

Anonymous

What is in my heart?

2010-03-15T19:38:00.001+01:00

February 14th is Valentine's Day all over the world... Thing is though I don't really care for Valentine's Day. The custom was never big over here in my younger years, and now that it has conquered our Calvinistic little country I don't have a thing for it. My only sweet valentine memory was from when I was about 8 years old. Our dad took me and my sister Noëlle to the toyshop for what he called: my special friends day. We could pick whatever we wanted (well, to a certain price level). I had longed desparately for a Barbie doll to be mine, but my mom was totally against that honouring the 2nd feministic wave that was over us. Barbie equalled: suppression, low self esteem and a stepping stone towards Body Dismorphic Disorder. Thanks to my Dad, that night I got my Barbie look-a-like and was on cloud 9!

So missing the proper Feb#14-gene I didn't want to make a "classical" valentine BJP. Still, beading about what I hold dear wouldn't be so bad an idea now, would it? I set out thinking about how my piece would have to become an illustration of what is in my heart. The most obvious answer being: my 2 lovely kids. I asked my daughter (who has inherited my Barbie DNA) if she had for example a single shoe leftover from what was once a pair and would be able to miss it. I already had some spare parts from what used to be a toy-car from my son. I did want somehow to incorporate a heart(shape), but wasn't sure on how...

... and then my life was turned upside down from one moment to another. I am struggling with a severe, recurrent depression and things got so bad that it was best if I were admitted. All of a sudden what was in my heart was not merely my kids (although they are what keeps me on my feet), but even more: how can I survive? What is in my heart that needs to be seen and told? What can it tell me about the things that need to heal? Here's the outcome of my soulsearching:

It would be tempting to tell you all about this piece, but I first want you to just look at it and see if it releases its story. I curious to what will be your thoughts and feelings, and maybe even musical associations and will be back with mine later.

In the meantime, if you want to have fun with all the things you can do to or with a Barbie be sure to check out the portfolio of Margaux Lange.

BJP for january 2010

2010-03-07T16:29:00.001+01:00

In my post "Do you remember?" I told you my sisters story, the link to why my BJP for january has grown the way it has. Still I owe you the story behind all the different stitches and cabochons I used.

I have borrowed a little trick from Sharon Bogon over at Pintangle, who explains blocks of her Crazy Quilts like I have done in the picture below.

1. a ribbon for life
In the center is a Danish coin with a hole in it: 25 ore. I glued it to the felt after I had already put the ribbon on. Then I fastened it with a round of backstitch and then continued to bead with peyote stitch. Around the ribbon came a round of backstitch again and I worked that out into a snake-stitch, which looks quite intricate, but is in fact very easy. From the start on, this part of the piece resembled a medal of honor of some sort and I guess it is. If anyone has struggled through life and deserves to be honoured for that it is my sis.

2. there were 3 of us

As I wrote before I am the oldest of 3 girls and when I turned my little treasure chest upside down, I was surprised not only to find the Danish coin, but 3 Swedish coins as well. All are remnants of our family vacations to Scandinavia. There is no point in saying that when you are used to have a 3-some, all of a sudden becoming a 2-some will never be "normal". The most astounding thing is that 2 out of the 3 coins had a different design on the coin-side. (If you click-to-enlarge on the picture above you can see what I mean.) I felt like this even more emphasized the fact that our pact was broken. These coins I glued to the felt as well and embellished with backstitch. The darker blue, fake pearls are sewn to form a Triskelion, an ancient Celtic symbol of power.

3. out of her hair
I got my treasure chest out to find the blue hairpin in the first place. My sister had worn it and it was so delicate that it broke. I loved the two tiny doves, so I asked her if I could have it.... that was 25-some years ago. Seems like eons since we were kids. The piece of fur is from a bunny. I put in in there because at her second B-day my sister got a guinea-pig that unfortunately had to leave our home in shorter than a year because both she and our mom were very allergic to it. Aside from some birds and goldfish, it was the only pet we were ever allowed to my great distress. It took some time to decide that I had to not only sow the back of the pin to the felt, but had to somehow sow the doves stuck too...

4. peacefull, loving memories
It is often said of some items that you should get them and not buy them for yourself because that would mean bad luck. This is true for rosaries and Buddha's to my knowledge. So when my sister wanted a Buddha for Sinterklaas (at least I think it was for that occasion) I went out and bought her one. It was in a time that her peace of mind was far away and she deserved some quiet, happy time. I put the Buddha-bead in the middle of the hole in hope that where-ever she is right now, she will have peace of mind.

5. in the bloom of her life

My sister took her life in the bloom of it, she was too young to die but didn't see a way to continue living with so much pain in her heart and mind. Now that I am going through one of the worst depressions in my own life (I am struggling with severe, recurring depressions from when I was 15 up to now), I know how hard it must have been for her. I know her struggle, for I am battling that same urge to put an end to things every day. I feel her sorrow, for it is my sorrow too partially. I love her even more for it, that is maybe the most strange outcome of this. The past years I have wished every day I could put my arms around her and tell her we would be all right, and today I know more then ever we could have been here together. Still, she left in the midst of her season... she loved the flowering bulbs in spring and when we drove to the funeral home it was an overpowering, sunny day with crocusses, daffodils and snowdrops everywhere. Because of her love for the color blue, I bought blue anemones to lay on the lid of the coffin. That's where the blue flower derives from. If you would like to give the flower a try yourself, visit Beading Arts. She has an excellent tutorial on how to make them.

So all this is behind just one piece of bead-embroidery and I haven't even started on what I learned about me from this... For now, I just want to leave you with the wise words of a Little Prince:

"You're lovely, but you're empty," he went on. "One couldn't die for you. Of course an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than you altogether, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass. Since she's the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except for two or three for butterflies). Since's she the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose."

the Little Prince by Anoine de Saint Exupery

Truth of dare?

2010-02-16T19:40:00.006+01:00

As I wrote earlier I recently subscribed to a Dutch lifestyle magazine Happinez. I normally don't even bother to take a look at the inevitable ads and just turn the page. In the last issue of last year however my eye was caught by the cover of a book. Just a tiny drawing of a tree, some birds and a banner that said: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life. Just above that was written in curvy, elegant characters: 29 Gifts. I glanced over the accompanying text and forgot about it... At least I though I forgot about it, because the title kept popping up in my mind and I just couldn't stop thinking about it.

Being in the hospital I have had plenty of time to worry, get panicked but also to contemplate. For one thing my beading has helped me in the last aspect greatly! And then there it was again: 29 gifts that could change my life. The Dutch translation was just in my reach when I went to buy a paper in the little shop in the lobby. This could not be a coincidence, this was a message so I picked it up and ... had it giftwrapped!

Right now I am intrigued by the story, to its simple message that sounds way to good to be true and yet I makes me feel compelled to give it a try. Then I read Susan's Plays with needles post, saw her beautiful pictures and was sure that there is a message in today. I still will need at least 29 days to decipher it!

Do you remember?

2010-02-13T21:55:00.002+01:00

Do you remember this one?

Well, I worked on it for about a whole month, and slowly it progressed into something quite different. When I had found the right color felt, and pulled out my little treasure box from under a pile of junk in my attic, gathered all my blue beads and then some more ... I started assembling my piece.

But what you see here is only the beginning. Before I can show you its ending I have to tell you a story, its story, my story, the story of my little sister Karen.

Her story started on september 30th, 1976 and abruptly ended on january 9th, 1997 when she took her own life. She was a very boyish girl and always full of life. We both had such good times together. As I was 7 years older than she, I used to play games with her like: I would tell her I was going on a journey and wanted her to come along. I would ask her to lay on her back so I could fold her up and pack her in my suitcase. I would fold her legs up to her tummy, wrap her arms around her knees and try to pick her up, which would of course never succeed.... but we laughed our heads of!

Besides being a lot of fun, she had it in her to become very angry when things wouldn't go as she would want them to. Often when our parents would tell her No, she would stand straight, put both her feet firmly on the ground, clench her fists ... and then swear and shout BUT without making any noise whatsoever (she was clever too: she knew she wasn't allowd to swear and shout!). This would make us all burst out in laughter with tears running down our cheeks. No way mom and dad would be able to stay mad!

When se was a teenager all of that changed. I have never known what really happened to her, I had left home by that time to go to college and didn't see her very often. What I do know is that the fun seeped out of her life very, very slowly and the anger turned towards herself. Although we had always been able to talk about almost anything very openly, all of a sudden she had shut up like a clam. If I was calling her to ask how she was doing, it was like a tape-recorder answering, instead of my lovely, lively sister. A long, heavy time started with her being hospitalized every so often before or after a suicide attempt.

When she was a toddler she used to be mesmerized by wedding gowns. Whenever and wherever we would pass a store with those sparkling, festive gowns we would have to stand still so she could stand in awe. Once we strolled by a store that also had evening gowns on stock and on a mannequin in the window was a bright, green, silk gown. Of course we stopped and she asked our mom: Mommy, is that a divorce dress?
She was always afraid that if I would ever marry, I would forget to invite her. I had to assure her over and over again that she was obliged to come because she was my sister! Not even being interested in boys at the time, I promissed myself that if my wedding day would come, I woud ask her to be my maid of honor. On august 28th, 1996 René and I got married and she was my maid of honor. She had survived and I couldn't be more happy then to have her there that day, knowing how hard life was on her and hoping it would give her maybe a sense of belonging and love. Two weeks later she attempted once again to kill herself. It felt like a personal failure. If only I could let her know how much I loved her and wanted her to be well and part of my life...

During the holidays that same year we went for a walk through the woods and our dog Boxer (a boxer) that she was very fond of was with us. All of us that is: our parents, my other sister and her boy-friend. She seemed to do a little better, had taken up some volunteer work, maybe there was some light at the end of the tunnel? Unfortunately just 2 weeks later, after getting some bad news, she succeeded and her short life ended. She was only 20 years, 3 months and 10 days old and will never ever be a day older.

I am now twice as old as she, she hasn't seen my children been born and grow up, nor our other sister's children. She wasn't at our graduation. She hasn't celebrated our parents 40th wedding anniversay. We have missed her on all the important occasions of our lives. She has left an emptiness that will not and cannot be filled, left us speechless, left us a song without words.

So here is to the life of my sweet baby sister. As I was beading I realized I was beading her life and not her death and that left me feeling very happy about the result. Because it is her short life that she will be remembered by, not her demise. I do remember.

To bead or blog?

2010-02-10T11:04:00.000+01:00

To bead or blog, that's the question. I used to spend my tuesday evenings blogging, but as that is quite time-consuming (at least the way I blog is) I cannot spend that time beading. Both I like, but finishing a beaded piece for one month in just about 2 nights a week is not an accomplishable goal... so it has been very quit at my end of the universe...

15th centure beaded piece (image from : Medieval Beads.com)

This I wrote in a few quiet minutes at work yesterday not knowing my day would turn my side of the universe upside down. Maybe now it is time to tell why I wrote earlier that I just want to try and make something nice and in the meantime enjoy life because it is mine. And I don't say this lightly.. Some of you may already know that I have been struggling with a recurrent, severe depression over the past 2 years. During the hollidays (not my favorite time of year) it got worse. Yesterday I, my counselor and my shrink decided it would be best if I got admitted for a time to get some rest and recover. So right now I am not in my home, nor at work but at the "Internet Cafe" in the hospital. I have limited internet acces but was delighted to discover that I can blog at least, just to let you know that I am doing fine considering the circumstances.

The most positive side of it all is that I seem to get time to bead and blog! My january piece is almost finished and I am thinking about february already. I am sorry I cannot post any pictures right now, because I would love to hear your comments. More on that later.

Whatever happens, even during the most dark of times, know that there is always something to smile about. At least I know I laughed my pants off when I recently saw this video:

For starters

2010-01-24T20:23:00.002+01:00

I started my january piece for the BJP. It took me some time to get everything together, but I even managed to find a long lost small treasure chest I got when I was a kid. I knew I had saved up some small trinkets from when I was a little girl, and because I want this piece to be about my little sister I hoped to find it so I could incorporate some.

For starters, I knew there had to be a broken hairpin in there, with two tiny little doves holding a heart between their beaks. I had found it too lovely to throw away at the time, after it lost its use, and because it belonged to my sister I wanted it to be part of the piece. So far I haven't been able to decide how to fasten it to the felt though. The doves are so tiny and delicate that I cannot think of a way that does them justice and won't harm the pin even more. I'm still out on that one.

Among the many other things I found were a Danish øre (the coin with a hole in it) and 3 Swedish öre: I just superglued them to the felt. The ribbon came from a Swedish julbocken (a christmas decoration) that came out of the box broken last year, and has the right colour blue. These Scandinavian things remind me of the many summervacations we spent together in Sweden and Denmark when all three of us were little. At that time my sister was still the boyish, joyfull girl I want to remember most.

I wrote earlier that I wanted to cut a hole in my piece because of the loss I feel after her death. I guess cutting the hole was the hardest part of the piece so far. But I did it. Right after I started with the Danish coin, ribbon and a peyote beaded bezel, I took up my pair of siccors and cut the hole. I trimmed it with a picot stitch and mounted a black buddha bead right in the middle. I felt very relieved after I had finished this part. As I said I not only found one Danish coin, but 3 Swedish ones as well and so far I have been beading around them for the next phase. As I mainly used different shades of blue, I added some green and was amazed at how well it worked. It made the blue stand out better and added life to the piece.

Next thing I realized that I had 3 separate divisions in my work that were not connected. The simplest answer I could come up with was: then just bead a path to connect them and so I did... Today I have come to this point and with one week to go on januari I hope to finish in time, so when I write again I will be able to tell you more about what this first journey was all about and what it brought me.

I would like more sisters, that the taking out of one, might not leave such stillness.
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886).

On ordinary life

2010-01-11T21:34:00.006+01:00

When reading my posts, you could easily get the impression that my life consists of thinking through deep thoughts about music, beading and beading materials, browsing the www to find nice videos to illustrate my points or just for sharing beautifull things, educating about Dutch custom and history... It raises the question: do I have an ordinary life? The answer is as obvious as easy: Yes, of course I do. So today I am going to give you a sneak view into my ordinary life, which is as much a work-in-progress as my beading.

Take the previous weekend for example:

my youngest (a 5 year old boy) had the pleasure to be invited to a friends birthdayparty friday-afternoon. When he came back around 4 PM we were told that the birthday-boy himself had been sick all through the party. This could mean two things: either he had been so anxious about his first birthdayparty that he purged all the tension out of his system when it finally arrived... OR, there was a nasty virus going around and we would be hearing more from it this weekend. Need I say more? On saturday my boy got sick, and sunday-night his sister joined him. Today is monday and both stayed home from school, my sweet husband being the designated WAHD for the day.

As the wheather forecasts were not inviting us to spent a day outdoor, we had planned to play games and bake cookies. Instead I spent my saturday emptying a bowl every so often, trying not to breathe through the nose. Comforting a very upset preschooler and trying to get his sister to find something to do for herself. On sunday I decided to do the ironing I had been needing to get done for over a week now and then mend some stuff as that had been needing to be done for over months! So, I sewed loops back on bathrobes, buttons back on trousers, mended holes in jeans with nice aplications, and became the Doc at service for many stuffed animal and doll... I am not the perfect housewife. I do like a clean and tidy house, but hate the work it takes.

Still, I will try to use this "ordinary" life of mine as inspiration for the journal pages I am going to create the next 12 months for the Bead Journal Project. A journal is like a diary, except it is less frequent. The Wikepedia even states that they are the same, but a diary is a personal journal. I don't mind so much, I just want to try and make something nice and in the meantime enjoy life because it is mine. And I don't say this lightly. Why not? Told you I was only going to give you a sneak view into my life. Maybe next time, but in the meanwhile: just remember that getting too comfortable is never a wise thing to do.

Ready? Set... Go!

2010-01-02T21:04:00.009+01:00

So this is it, today is january 2nd and we're off for the Bead Jounal Project 2010! I had planned to get my backing before New Year, but unfortunately the store was closed for the holidays and didn't open again until today. I have still not decided on the size of my pieces, but knowing I didn't like the Lacy's Stiff Stuff, I have decided to go back to woolen felt again. It is sturdy and still has a nice and warm feel to it.

My january piece will all be about my baby-sister Karen who died january 9th 1997. It has been an awfull long time these 13 years and I am still not used to missing her. Not that we spoke very often, but from the day she was born she was my soulmate. I was 7 at the time and knew that my mom was expecting. Already having one sister I longed for a brother, a Big Brother that would protect me... but I was realistic enough knowing that as I was the eldest in our family the chances of ever having a Big Brother were nil. So I decided I would settle for a little brother instead.
What a disappointment when I woke up that september 30th of 1976: my dad was still home and my mom was missing. Where was she? At the hospital my dad reassured us, and she had given us a little baby sister that night. Getting to treat classmates on beschuit met muisjes (a typical Dutch treat at baby showers) was little comfort. But then later that afternoon my mom returned from the hospital, and while my dad and the neighbour helped her into the house my little sister was still lying in her carry cot in our red Renault 4. All the neighbour kids came out to take a look and with their repeated asking if that was "my baby?" my pride grew. Yes, that was my baby and no one would ever touch her or else...

And now I am lost without her. She was the funniest little sister one could have, always a prank up her sleeve, always in a good mood, creative, a true friend with a genuine interest for people. She was all that at least for the major part of her short life.

As I set out to buy some felt I thought I would go with a nice off white shade to make it easy. Then I found just the perfect shade of blue for my first piece. As a family we spent our summer vacation in Denmark a couple of times and my sister fell in love with a particular hue of blue that we only saw there. We called it Danish Blue (not the cheese). My heart jumped as I knew this piece of felt was just perfect for a start. So now there are two things settled at least: my first piece will have a blue backing in a shade Karen loved so much and it will have hole in it, maybe heartshaped, but a hole it will be to illustrate the emptiness she left behind.

XCVI

MY life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886). Complete Poems. 1924.

On inspiration and feeling inspired

2009-12-26T21:21:00.003+01:00

When writing on the challenges I see ahead as a Bead Journal participant, I began wondering about the concept of inspiration. It all started with a Dutch magazine I subscribed to recently, called Happinez. All issues adress a theme, and the issue before last one was centered on... Inspiration. In one of the interviews The artist way by Julia Cameron was mentioned and I remembered Robin Atkins posting about it once. In the interview it is mentioned that inspiration is not a thing you either get or don't. It is a flow that you can step into, if you open yourself up to it. A very compelling thought, so please tell me where to find my stream? OK, it isn't that simple...

Next thing I knew while strolling the www, I ended up at Angela Players blog. She turned out to be a BJP participant last year and facing the upcoming 2010 edition of the Bead Journal Project she decided on blogging about... Inspiration. Guess I am not the only one with the same idea, would that be part of the flow? Could inspiration be some morphogenetic field like the ones suggested by Rupert Sheldrake? Interesting! This would mean that the more inspired we get, the easier it is to get or stay inspired! Tune in to INSPIRE101.FM now.

Then I picked up the newspaper and found an article on Herta Müller who apparently won the Nobelprize for literature this year. I have never heard of her, nor of her writings but was so touched by the abbreviated version of her acceptance speech that I truely felt... Inspired. I immediately thought that I would at one end maybe... No, I am not getting ahead of myself. Some inspiration I want to keep to myself for the time being.

That made me wonder what inspires me... Well for the obvious part: classical music and eyecandy. I truly love the word eyecandy, there is no Dutch equivalent for it. I do know though that I can get lost in beaded cyberspace just by looking at all the beautifull things that are made, like this collar by Linda Vann Rettich.

On a more subconcious level, I am inspired by life itself. I treasure memories, I ponder about happenings, I linger on experiences just all to find what they make of me. Sometimes it feels like my head is spinning with ideas, not a flow but a mere waterfall! It can get quite intimidating and scary to "just" hop into. Still, that is what I have set myself as a goal for next years Bead Journal Project. No cold feet, just jump right into the water and maybe it may not be as scary as I thought it would be. The first steps have been taken, I have posted for the first time on the BJP blog so my big toe is in. I now just will have to keep on walking.

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish painter.

I dare

2009-12-15T22:31:00.002+01:00

A few months ago I posted on visualization based upon music. I promissed to share my images later, so here I am to try an give you a peak into my visual mind.

Those who have been with me so far know that I have a great love for music, especially classical music. One of my favorites being Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an exhibition". I embedded video's of several variotions of one movement out of this bigger piece. On the right you see the facsimile of the drawing "The Hut of Baba Yaga on Hen’s Legs" by Viktor Hartmann depicting a clock in the Russian style. This is the sketch that inspired Modest Mussorgsky to compose the movement.
To be honest, this clock does not by far do justice to what I saw when I first heard the movement and understood de background of the Baba Yaga figure! To me, this is just an old fashioned cuckoo clock. Not scary at all, while Baba Yaga is a very, terrifying figure indeed. To me from the very start she was the kind of witch you were afraid of as a kid. The witch in European folklore that is featured in the Grimm-brother's story Hans & Grietje (Hansel und Gretl) with her house build out of cake and candy, who wants to eat little childeren ...

In fact, the Baba Yaga stories are very similar to the folklore thats was gathered by the Grimm brothers. The main Baba Yaga story is Vasilisa the beautifull and tells of a beautifull young maiden that gets sent into the woods by her evil stepmother to find the hut on chickens legs. The scene is very eary, cold and fearsome. When she finds the hut and Baba Yage, she has to fullfill some assignments before she can go home with the light she was sent for. So Baba Yaga is the personification of all fears that we have to conquer before we can become enlightened of be set free.

I feel these enourmous, yet utterly human fear when the movement that Mussorgsky composed starts. It's low, dark tones that approach rappidly out of nowhere, dissonant chords and a harmony that makes you feel out of balance. But then suddenly, the dark subsides a little, seems to become ligher... Then, the dark returns and masters the light that was shimmering through. After the victory of the dark, the movement seamlessly goes into the next one: the great gates of Kiev. Free, free at last! While listening I can let go with a great sigh, the dark has been overcome as I faced my fears and step through the gate into the light.

It is easy to see how the story fits into the music. It is also easy to see how many folklore and modern lore work around this same theme. Even in my last post Challenges Ahead I referred to my inner critic as a trickster. But if I can face her and maybe even befriend her, I can take advantage of her wisdom. In most fairytales witches are not pure evil. Often they present the hero or heroine with some unrealistic accomplishments they have to establish before they will have what they need to fullfill their quest. This mostly means they somehow have to conquer their utmost fear(s). Even the frightening Baba Yaga is sometimes said to offer guidance to lost soles.

Below I have embedded a video of yet another composition that was inspired upon the figure of Baba Yaga by Anatoly Liadov. As is the case with Mussorgsky's movement, I find this one equally disturbing and yet beautifull. I hope you will enjoy it and have some (new) visions of your own.

Because I don't want to leave you with disturbance, and have said that facing your fears can also bring good to ones life, I also want to share another video. It is sweet and lacks all the disquieting qualities that usually accompany Baba Yaga. Above all, it shows that your Baba Yaga can be found anywhere and sometimes had to overcome a little fear herself.

Challenges ahead

2009-12-08T21:56:00.003+01:00

As the end of the year comes closer, the start of the Bead Journal Project 2010 comes nearer. I am getting a little anxious truly. Can I really do this? Wasn't I too bold to subscribe? She's back again: my inner critic. Some of my doubts and fears come from very unrealistic thoughts. The thing is, I got this wonderfull book on Pakjesavond: "The art of bead embroidery" by Heidi Kummli and Sherry Serafini. When I see a beautifull piece like this one (by Heidi Kummli), I can't help myself but wonder if I would ever be able to make such an outstanding work of art?

But I do have to correct myself, for both artists have been beading for decades and I just started last year. It is like comparing a toddler that just has started to walk and is making its first, wobbly steps into the big world to a trained walker who is used to walking several miles at an end. Hmm, so who is speaking here? It's not the practical mom, nor the artist I met in my earlier post. It is my inner critic again that is trying once more to scare me off. Let's call her the trickster who tries to make me believe that I would never be capable of such art and that being capable of creating outstanding work from the start is one of the demands of... Wait a minute, of what? Don't the rules on the Bead Journal clearly state that:

there is no BJP enforcement squad ?

So who am I kidding? What is the trickster trying to get me running from? It seems that in the upcoming months I will do some serious soul-searching to find my own voice, or should I say "voices"? Over the past months I have encountered many inner voices, not just while beading. They all are truthfully mine, even though some are louder than others, more eloquent or persuasive, all deserve to be heard. That will be the true challenge: to give way to all that is in me without judging. In other words: to witness myself and put that to my embroidery canvas so I will learn to walk steadily.

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

Simone Weil (1910-1943) French Philosopher

Old traditions die hard (part II)

2009-12-01T21:45:00.002+01:00

Saturday-afternoon I went shopping with my oldest (a 10 year old girl) for gifts. As I wanted her to really think about the people she was picking out presents for (her grandparents, dad and brother), I didn't tell her what to choose. I just took her to the Wereldwinkel (a fair trade shop, the link is to a Dutch site) and told her to think about these people. It was amazing at how easy she came up with nice, loving gifts for all of them and while she normally is very indecisive she was now done in a sec. This shows my point in part I of this story of how important it is to look for something that is needed and not merely wanted. What my daughter did was pick out things that reminded her of what she knew others loved doing or that she wanted to share her feelings about. (At one point I had to leave the store, because she also wanted to find a gift for me, I cannot wait until I can unwrap this little piece of her love and attention.)

Later the same afternoon we spent some time working on what we call a "surprise". This is not merely a surprise in the litteral sense, you could compare it to a piñata. She has to make one for the celebration at school but it is a tradition mostly among grown-ups as they don´t believe in Sinterklaas anymore. It all starts with drawing a name out of a bowl and buying a present for that person. Then you make a gift-wrap that symbolizes something that has been important for that person over the past year. This can be something funny, something wonderful... Anything will work that can be cast in some form or other. Usually this asks some craftiness of the person, so the making is as much fun as the unwrapping on Sinterklaasavond. To finish up the whole is wrapped in giftpaper and a special poem is made and stuck to the gift. Now what relates this tradition to the Saint we met earlier?

In early human history Europe was home to amongst others the Germanic peoples. There was no monotheistic God in their presence and their beliefs were highly dependent on natural phenomena as lighting and thunder, and on perceptions of for example the sun- and mooncycles. They left behind an oral tradition that shows a very high level of culturalization and has profoundly influenced our lives till today. In a lot of ways the traditions and rituals around Sinterklaas are not only linked back to the Saint, but also to one of the main God's in the Germanic pantheon: Wodan.

Wodan was represented riding an eight-legged horse, wearing a hat and robe, carrying a lance and mostly accompanied by two raven, called Huginn and Muninn (Old Norse for thought and memory). These raven travelled between the worlds of gods and men, conveying stories of how mankind was behaving upon which the gods could choose to interfere. In the days of winter, when thunderstorms and lightning, rain and snow made work outside impossible I imagine men, women and children all gathered to tell stories of how their god Wodan was riding the clouds judging men who would be worthy and brave enough to sit beside him in his great hall Walhalla. Furthermore they would probably recite epic poems, one of which tells of how Wodan received the Runes during a rite that lasted nine nights, in which he hung upside down from a tree. During these winternights they would also feast, eat and drink together. They would make a lot of noise to scare the ghosts that roam the dark nights, they would celebrate the turn of the year and the return of light at their Yule festival.

The common components in these historic roots of Western European cultural heritage and that of the Eastern European cult of Saint Nicholas are quite obvious. It is easy to see that after christianity had concurred Western Europe, the bearded God was readily transformed into a Saint with a miter, staff and robe, riding on a horse. The knowledge of all men was transformed in the celebration of Sinterklaas to a book of knowledge in which all doings - right and wrong - over the past year were accounted for. This knowledge being gathered by Sinterklaas and his aid Zwarte Piet (black peter). Because even then the rule "old habits die hard" applied, a lot of age-old customs where woven into the christian version of the festivities. Often, simply to make the people more susceptible to conversion. Even in the late 1800's Dutch city councils tried to ban Sinterklaasfestivities because they were too papistic. They didn't succeed, the traditions are too ingrained in our Calvinistic society to ever loose ground.

So back to making a surprise, because here again it is imperative that you somehow know the person whose ballot you drew. Like I mentioned earlier, an important event in this persons life over the past year is most likely to be adressed. Like the ravens told Wodan and Zwarte Piet tells Sinterklaas of your whereabouts. This does not mean that it has to be all very serious or reproachful. Even though there are still parents who frighten children with a Sinterklaas that will punish them if they don't behave, it is an occassion par excellence to bring some humour into play! With a rhyming verse to accompany the gift we usually laugh a great deal. It softens harsh reality and deepens a sense of belonging and sharing. That is why our indigenous Sinterklaas is so dear to me and I wouldn't trade it for a 1000 Santa's in the world!

I have only 3 nights left till Sinterklaasavond, so off I am to write my poems and wrap some gifts!

Proud to present

2009-11-24T23:11:00.002+01:00

Last week I finally got around to finishing the 3D-beaded necklace I wrote about earlier. I am very contented with the end result and got nice comments from my husband, my children and a co-worker! In the previous post I stated a lot of thou-shalt 's and I-should 's ... I can't say I have completely let go of these notions, because they are so deeply ingrained into my being, but I have to say that posting about this necklace and thinking about the witnessing comments brought me closer to being able to go with the flow. So now it is with great proud I present to you (note that in the pictures the colours seem much redder that they actually are):

It was made in tubular peyote stitch using 11/0 Miyuki delicas only, one bead at a time. It was a growing proces, and as with the jewelry I have done before, I am sure I will not repeat it. That poses the question: why? What does this tell about me?

I am a person that in normal day life thrives best on regular routines that have proven to work. I am not the kind of person that likes to change her schedule just on a whim and without preparation, although I do like evolving the skills I need to do the things I want. A steady, sturdy flow is what I need to feel at peace and comfortable. In my work I sometimes have to repeat the same answer over and over again, still being patient with every customer that calls in. And I can say (without becoming too arrogant) that I manage to do these things quite well.

Apparently there is another side to me that is not that steady, that does like change at least to a certain amount. A side that likes surprises and new things, that is eager to learn, experience and has the ability to stand in awe. And somewhere the two fall together, as I think is the case in this project. Let's call them the woman and the artist for practical purposes.

Before I started this project I was totally overwhelmed by the possibilities of 3D-beadwork as I encountered them on the website of Jean Power. I fell in love head over heels with her Collar For A Rangoli Girl (a rangoli is a colourful design made on the floor near the entrance to a house to welcome guests in the Hindu tradition). The artist screamed out at the top of her voice: "I want that!" She sometimes can be a little child wanting to touch everything her eyes see. It took some time for the woman to find courage and order the whole set of geometric patterns. Being more practical she thought: "Oh, why not all. You might never know when it comes in handy." Thus satisfying her own needs, and the needs of her friend the artist. The woman built a bridge knowing that learning new skills would make them both happy, no matter what the outcome would be, as would holding a beautiful piece of jewelry. All in all, it was the artist that initiated this project, but is was the woman who finished it.

So it is safe to say that I need both. One for inspiration and initiation, the other for patience and perseverance. As I come to think of it this way, it sounds quite beautiful. Still I haven't answered the question of why I don't think I will redo this project. In fact the answer is quite simple: I started beading to give the artist a chance to find her voice and be able to express herself. When following a pattern, even if it is my own interpretation, the woman takes over the minute the artist gets bored. And she does get bored as she is constantly looking for new insights, new possibilities, new anything... Maybe one day she won't be as dependent on the woman to bring her ideas into reality, but as of now: if it hadn't been for the woman I would have had just unfinished jewelry projects lingering around. On the other hand, so far I have experienced that when I do have a bead embroidery piece at hand, working on that prevails above any other beading project that I have left unfinished. It somehow calls to me and feels free. That is what I intended to find when I opened that chest of possibilities called beads&beading. That is what my artist is looking for: freedom of expression, letting her own voice be heard and giving way to all that she is. Today I can safely say that I have come one step further on my beading path and it sure feels good!

Old traditions die hard (part I)

2009-11-14T21:01:00.004+01:00

It is that time of year again, the greatest friend of all children is coming to town... Sinterklaas. Why are we all so excited and who is this bloke with his long beard, all dressed to impress and why are we full of anticipation about it? Today I want to share an age-old tradition with you, that bares a lot of resemblance to Santa Claus. In fact, our Sinterklaas is his predecessor.

It all started about 1800 years ago when a little boy was born into a wealthy family, was orphaned at a young age, became a priest and later in life a bishop in Myra. Many legends are told of him, starting from his birth. They all have a great compassion and generosity towards others in common and a great will to live a spiritual life. Although no one knows exactly when he was born or died, it is an accepted fact that he died on december 6th sometime during the 4th century in Myra where he was burried. Later on his bones were stolen from the original tomb and relocated to Bari in Italy where a huge crypt and ditto cathedral were built.

As with any Saint, there are lots and lots of stories told about Nicholas, but two of them lead up to why he is seen as a protector of children and giftgiver. The first of the most widely known legends is that of the 3 children or students murdered by an innkeeper and put in a pickling tub. When somehow Nicholas gets hold of the meat, he brings the boys back to life. Another story tells of a widower with 3 daughters for whom he can't afford a dowry. In those days, this meant that it was impossible for the women to marry and they would probably end up slaves or prostitutes. When Nicholas hears of this, he secretly throws 3 pieces of gold through the open window on seperate occasions, thus providing the dowry and saving the life and honour of the young women.

These are the most important ingredients for the main festivities: Sinterklaasavond or Pakjesavond. On the eve of december 6th Sinterklaas visits our homes with his helpers and brings us presents. Some of which have not changed over de years and still remind us of the ancient stories, for example: chocolate coins, wrapped in gold or silver foil as a reminder of the dowries or a large, gingerbread man reminding us of the students he brought back to life or the possibility of a good marriage candidate. As was the case with the coins he provided for the girls' dowries, he is usually not seen, but simply leaves a huge sack of gifts on the doorstep.

But the tradition doesn't apply only to the evening of december 5th. There is a building up to that moment, full of anticipation. To understand this, you must know one more important story of how Nicholas once rescued his ship from a heavy storm when traveling from the holy land back to his home after making a pilgrimage. By praying he was able - or so it is told - to calm the waves and let the winds subside thus saving not only his own life, but that of the crew as well. This made him the patron of sailors and voyagers.

Every year in late november, as the Pakjesboot - the steamboat - arrives in a harbour somewhere in the Netherlands it marks the start of a festive season. Sinterklaas is everywhere: in every store, home or school. Everywhere you can hear the childrens' songs that are only sung during this season. Also, another tradition starts on this day: children putting a shoe in front of the fireplace or the doorstep (most houses lacking a fireplace nowadays, this is a practical solution). It is believed that at night, Sinterklaas roams the roofs of our homes mounted on his horse, assisted by one of his helpers. The children usually put an apple, carrot or some hay in their shoes for the horse to eat, which is then exchanged by a small gift. This custom might have something to do with the legend of the dowries, as some versions state that the coins landed in the shoes of the girls that were set in front of the fireplace to dry.

Today our season has started, he has arrived and all are filled with joy and anticipation. So far I have just talked about the history of the feast. But there is so much more to say about the inner meaning of this time of year and its relation to the upcoming christmas season. This post would become way to long if I wrote about these aspects too. Let me close by saying that to me, the most beautifull aspect, and the purpose of the giftgiving, is the fact that it is a challenge to find gifts that meet the needs - not merely the wants - of others. I believe, that when you are forced to really connect to one another, to find out each others needs, you are doing justice to yourself, the other and a higher cause. This connecting is what makes this season so festive, warm and loving.

A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC-65) Roman philosopher and playwright.

Done and new lessons learned

2009-11-05T22:17:00.013+01:00

I am done with my Staphorster Stipwerk trial-piece. It doesn't resemble the real work, but I had fun working on it and have yet again learned some valuable lessons.

It all started out with this:
You might remember I wrote about not liking the Lacy's Stiff Stuff. Well, I have not altered my opinion. Working with a backing that won't give way when held, doesn't appeal to me. It has happend that I had to pull the needle out of my work and try to pierce it again and again through the LSS just to come up at the spot I wanted it to come up.

lesson 1: The backing
For the BJP I need fabric that feels comfortable and is pliable. My first work I did on felt, which I liked very much for its warm touch and easy to handle qualities.

This is what has become of my endeavors

Even though it has not turned out a Stipwerk, I do like it. It has the contrast between the black background and bright colours that the original work has. For the jewelry I make, I work more in shades of one colour. I guess it has to do with not wanting to stand out to much. While working on this piece I realized that it can be a good quality to let some parts stand out, backed by a solid background.

lesson 2: Speak out

I can play with brighter colours without my piece becoming blatant.

The real Staphorster Stipwerk, being a very mathematical and precise design, is not easy to duplicate by freehand embroidery. I didn't draw any markings on my LSS before starting to work and didn't keep any physical example at hand, just the image in my mind that I posted above and in previously. The reason behind this being I wanted not to pin myself to an exact design but let some flow into the work. Ha! I was mistaken: freehand and preconceived design don't mix to well. At least not for me at this point.

lesson 3: Make a choice

I will have to make a choice between pre-designing a piece or really embark in freehand embroidery. For the first I will have to mark my backing so I will be able to make it more exact. For the latter I will have to really let go of any prejudice and let the muse(s) speak to me. For the BJP I have already made my choice: I want the pieces to be real journals. I don't predesign my life, so I cannot predesign my pieces either.

If I don't want do think about the outcome of my pieces beforehand, I will have to find a means of letting the inspiration come to me. A little help was in this project, as I also experienced that working on a plain background doens't offer much inspiration.

A few ideas that popped up:

I have previously printed images on special transfer paper, that allow you to iron an image to for example a T-shirt. I could easily use that and try it on felt. The only thing is that I don't want to make large pieces, and you can only print the paper once. Some thinking needs to be done on waste-management.

I could use printed fabrics and attach either a total surface or just parts of them to felt in some manner

Lots of roads yet to be travelled, new horizons to be discovered and beads, trinkets and fabrics to be packed to continue...

You cannot travel on the path until you become the path itself.

Buddha (563 BC-483 BC) Founder of Buddhism.

Where am I from?

2009-11-03T21:35:00.004+01:00

I have told you a bit about my home in my post Where am I? This post was mostly about the country I live in, but didn't adress anything personal. Today I want to tell you a little bit about where and when the seeds of my creativity were planted and how they were thriving at times and wilting at others.

Before I could even hold a spoon, my education and upbringing as a music-lover started. My mum claims she sang nursery rhymes for me even before I was born. I cannot recollect, so I have to take her word for it. If you see my efforts in the picture here, she must be right. I was about 4 years old and seem to be reading the words of the back of the album cover, but that's only to impress. In fact I could not read a word yet. I knew the songs by heart though, this (christmas)album being one of my favorites, or so I was told.

If you have read my previous posts, you might have guessed already I am a great lover of classical music, and that love has never ceased. At about the age of 6 my parents took me to a classical concert. Of course I don't know what was played but it is our family history that from that day on I wanted to be a musician. Not just any instrument was good enough, no I was very persistent about wanting to play the harp.

Not so lucky me found Rules & Regulations on her way that stated that any child wanting to learn to play an instrument had to have had 2 years of prior, general music lessons in order to learn how to read notes, sing, play the recorder and develop a feeling for rythm. So by the time I was 8 I enrolled and learned all that. Then I first learned how to play the piano to start my harp lessons at the age of 11. See? I told you I was persistent!

In total I played the piano and harp for about 7 years and then went off to college, but not to become a musician. I just wanted to enjoy making music and didn't feel the drive and ambition I would have needed to become one. Why would I want to be better? Still, creativity and art to me are not about competition, but about sharing what is dear to me and close to my heart. After a couple of years I missed my music an was lucky enough to be able to pick up piano lessons once again for another 7 years.

As any other kid I loved to draw and paint, though music has always been my number No 1. There is hardly any handcraft in the world that I haven't been able to try out. My mum being a very curious person in nature wanted to try out different techniques for herself and shared them with me and my 2 younger sisters. The amazing thing is that in my family we al have a "creative coming out" of sorts, after the age of 40. My mum started a career as a painter after that age, my dad's mom started making bobbin lace after my granddad retired, who himself picked up painting at that time, and I only remember my mom's mum busy with crocheting or knitting. The only one that started earlier in life I assume is my grandfather that I never knew. He is said to have been a gifted amateur piano player. It is sad that I have never had a chance to listen to him play, but he somehow must have passed on his love ...

So in addition to making music, I learned how to knit, crochet, weave on a loom, spin, make bobbin lace, do thread embroidery, sew... Not that I know how to do all those things these days, nor that I am an expert at any of them. The richness is in the fact that I have at one time or another been able to try so vastly different skills and find out what I liked most: working with thread and fabrics. Not on a machine, but with my bare hands, feeling the touch of the cloth, seeing the work grow before my eyes, living the thoughts and emotions it brings up.

When my life was on the drawingboard, a great love for arts must have been etched into my soul. I really cannot imagine a life without music or some kind of craft. Due to hearing problems I am now no longer able to enjoy making music, but still have not lost the joy of listening. On my search for new experiences I stumbled upon beading and bead embroidery last year. My heart leaped for joy and I have felt drawn to it ever since I saw Robin Atkin's beadwork and the Bead Journal Project she started in 2007. Now I feel doubly blessed to have tried out so many different crafts, as it will enable me to really find my own voice over the coming year. For I know one thing for sure: I have never felt more alive then at the moments I was creating.

I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: ''This is the real me!''.

William James (1842-1910) American philosopher and psychologist.

On dots again

2009-10-20T20:30:00.004+02:00

One could state that I have become obsessed by dots, but while writing on my post Dots rule I remembered art-class in High School (lucky me, because this way I wouldn't have to take a course in biology). When the modern artists were discussed also Pointillism was reviewed: a technique that uses dots instead of brushstrokes to create an image . One known contributor is Georges Seurat (1859 - 1891), of whom the painting "Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte" (Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte) is shown below.

In fact, Pointillism was derived from Impressionism. Impressionists wanted to catch the light of the moment in the painting as accurate as they perceived it at the exact moment. To achieve this goal, often colours were blended on the canvas itself instead of on the palette, the brushstrokes were harsh and black was hardly ever used. The reasoning behind this was that even a shadow holds all colours, only it is lacking enough light for our eyes to be able to perceive it. To use black would deny this fact and would deprive the image and experience its quality.

The Pointillist way of achieving the same goal was a bit more artificial: they tried to replicate the perception itself, by not painting in colours that match as closely as possible the colour(s) perceived. By not physically blending different pigments, but merely placing them next to each other on the canvas, the viewer would in his or her mind automatically recreate the colour intended. The eyes would do the trick, so to speak. You could view this as a kind of optical illusion. To illustrate this, view the next image for a while and try to distinguish the individual colours you perceive (detail from "La Parade" (The Parade)):

If you look very close (click to enlarge) you will find that in the face there are touches of blue, dark red and perhaps even a hint of green. Colours you wouldn't normally expect in the pink and fleshtones that would be used to paint a face "the old-fashioned" way. The darkness of the hair in the back of the neck is not achieved by black paint, but by dots of dark blues and greens lying very close to each other. Still, when you look, you don't see an alien but a human , in normal human hues.

I was thinking about this again when I was reading my copy of "Beaded Embellishment" by Robin Atkins and Amy C. Clarke. In the book is a high quality picture of a beaded piece by Amy, that when I viewed it with the book at a reading distance in my hands, didn't make much sense. It was named: Apple.

Then it came to me to hold the book at a greater distance and Lo and Behold ... two hands carefully holding an apple came forward, presenting me with its beauty. So vividly that I wanted to take a bite out of it and savour it all to the last piece.

This is exactly what the Impressionists in general and maybe the Pointillists more particularly aimed at: you, the viewer, wanting to be a part of the experience. Looking at a painting had to feel like you were there, at the waterside on a sunday afternoon: feeling the breeze, the warmth of the sun on your cheeks, hearing children shout and laugh, dogs bark, and maybe holding an apple and admiring it before eating.

I feel so delighted by the idea that painting and beading to me once again fall into place, though I have never held a brush in my hands for art-purposes since kindergarten. Painting is not my cup of tea, as much as I admire those who do have the gift. It does pose me however with the challenge to blend my beads for the BJP-pieces to come, in a way I feel like I honestly am journalling, beading the experience instead of the mere thought.

I also gained a new appreciation of how intricate our eyes work and work together with our minds in combining (the frequency and intensity of) light and prior expierence, to make sense of a whole that is truely composed of parts. This even to the extend that qualities that are in fact not there are added, like motion:

So I want to leave you with this thought:

"A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind."

Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994) Romanian-born French playwright.

Visualization reversed or do you dare?

2009-10-13T21:45:00.002+02:00

I won't have to make it any clearer that there are hundreds of ways to visualize a thought, feeling, mood or anything else. There are at least as much roads to visualization as there are people setting their minds and hands to it. In my post Visualization fantastique I gave a couple of examples all based on one piece of music. Now I want to try to trigger your minds in doing exactly the opposite.

A very well known piece of music is "Pictures at an exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky (1839 - 1881). It was orignally composed for piano around 1874 in honour of the artist and architect Victor Hartman (1834 - 1873), a close friend of Mussorgsky, who had died at the age of only 39. In commemoration of Hartman about 400 pictures were exhibited in the Academy of fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Mussorgsky, still shaken by the sudden death of his good friend and an admirer of his art, then needed only about 6 weeks to compose his virtual tour through the museum.

The original piece consists of 15 movements:

Promenade
Gnomus The gnome
Interlude (Promenade theme)
Il vecchio castello The old castle
Tuileries (Dispute d'enfants après jeux) Dispute between children at play
Bydło Cattle
Interlude (Promenade theme)
Ballet Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle also known as 2 Jews, one rich the other poor
Promenade
Limoges, le marché (La grande nouvelle) The market at Limoges (The great News)
Catacombæ (Sepulcrum romanum) and "Cum mortuis in lingua mortua" The Catacombs and With the Dead in a Dead Language
Baba-Yaga The Hut on Fowl's Legs
The great gates of Kiev The Bogatyr Gates

It is easy to see that Mussorgsky wanted to take his listener by the hand and walk with him through the halls of the Academy. He wanted to recreate in the minds of those who heard his music the pictures he had seen and loved so much. Maybe (but this is a wild guess on my side and not even an educated one at that) he even wanted to make us part of his loss and grief. Unfortunately, most of Hartmans paintings didn't survive today so we do not know what Mussorgsky saw and have little more than his music to testify for their existence.

Apart from the music being very inspirational in itself it has inspired others as well. For example, Maurice Ravel made an orchestration that has now become more known that the original version. But also Emerson, Lake and Palmer have made their own version, as did Isao Tomita. They all added a personal note to their own stroll through the museum and all evoke a different sensation. ELP even went so far as to add a few pieces of their own, thereby making their tour a very personal one.

Now my question to you is: when you listen to the music, what images come to your mind? Are they vivid? Colourful? Real or abstract? Does your imigination cling onto the title of the movement or are you able to let go and just drift away? Does it make a difference whether you listen to the original or to the orchestration?

In order not to give away to much, the pictures in this post are not of the music you can listen to below, nor will I tell you what movement is played except that all videos are of the same movement. Of course it is easy to cheat, as most video's will tel you what movement is played... But face the real challenge and just listen, eyes closed. Do you dare?

The original:

The orchestrated version:

The Emerson, Lake and Palmer version:

The version by Isao Tomita:

An unknown (to me at least) surprising version:

I would love to hear what you come up with and will later share my own visions. If you have any versions I didn't mention, please let me know!

Where am I?

2009-10-11T21:07:00.011+02:00

A short time ago I received the question to blog about where I live.... Well, to me it's quite simple: I live in a very small village in The Netherlands. A small country on the north coast of the Norhtsea. No, it's not Danmark. No, our capital is not Brussels. No, we don't speak German (as a matter of fact most of us do, a little, but not as our native language.)

So now that a few misunderstandings are out of the way, where do I live?

Ok, this might be too general an indication. But at least you have in incling as to where you would fly into if you came over for a cuppa. Just to give you some statistics, The Netherlands are:

41,526 km² in total
of which 18% consists of water
and most of which is under sealevel.
there are 16,528,699 of us
our capital is Amsterdam
our government is seated in The Hague
and we speak Dutch (which to most foreigners sounds the same as German, but defenitely is not)

If we didn't protect ourselves from al that water, about 40% of our country would disappear, as would the village I live in. The Netherlands would look like the picture on the left.

But now you still don't know where I live! As I said it is a little village called Kanis, if you want to "fly in" search Kanis, Utrecht with Google Earth and you will almost end up in my backyard. As you will notice it's a very small village, surrounded by lots and lots of farmland. If you have taken a close look at my profile, you will have noticed it says "Kamerik" and not "Kanis". I can tell you why: to the postal service the small place I live in doesn't exist. As far as they are concerned I live in the nearest village, which is called Kamerik, and lies about 1,5 km's south to our village. To make it even more confusing: the community we live in is called Woerden. There is also a little town called Woerden, about 7 km's south. So how small is a small village and how little is a little town?

In my village Kanis live about 600 people, that is including the farms surrounding us
In the community of Woerden there are 48,395 people in total, of which 33,927 actually live in the city

To give you a comparison:

Amsterdam is our largest city that harbours 1,36 million people including those living in the suburbs
New York is the largest city in the United States and has over 8,36 million inhabitants

So now you know where I am. I hope you enjoyed your short visit in my small country. It's nice out here, so you're welcome to visit an find out more about those clogwearing, tulipminded people under the winds of the Nothsea. As long as you never forget:

"Home is where the heart is."

Visualization Fantastique

2009-10-01T21:32:00.002+02:00

In my previous post, I wrote about how powerfull visualization is and presented you with a couple of examples for visualizing data. Lately I have found some wonderful videos on YouTube. Among them were a couple of a lovely (piano) piece by the French composer Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918), called Claire de lune or Moonshine. Debussy was one of the Impressionists and alongside with Maurice Ravel one of the most know composers of his time. The original sheet music looks like this: (Follow the link if you want to download the entire piece. It is free for non-commercial use.)

You have to be able to read the notes to let it speak to you. So it won't be appealing to a lot of people, unless they have had some education in reading musical notation. Of course anyone can listen to the music and let it come to them that way, but today I want to talk visual. That's what this blog is all about now I am officially on the road to the Bead Journal Project 2010.

When I saw the first video I found it astoundingly simple, and at the same time it shows the intricacy of the musical lines so beautifully. It all comes together, even if musical notation isn't your thing: you can litterally see what is going to happen next. The experience of listening and being able to see what you hear is an intriguing one. So please take the time, watch this video, listen to the music and let your imagination do the rest.

This visualization was made by MAM, the Music Animation Machine. Someone has spend years and years of time and effort to be able to convert music to animation. The same way we bead single beads onto cloth, he entered pieces of code after code to start encoding music.

Much earlier Walt Disney had similar ideas when he started his Silly Symphonies in the late 1920's. In 1940 the first full feature film was made with this idea and I think everyone will now know Fantasia and Fantasia 2000. The video below is of the same piece by Debussy, now orchestrated which makes the listening all together different, and with a less abstract visualization. Sadly enough it didn't make it into the full-lenght film, so I am very pleased for technical improvement and the blessings of YouTube.

So when Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-189, American author and poet) says:

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body.

I would like to add:

Open your eyes for anything that you may find of beauty every day, and you will find that it is balm for your mind.

Dots rule

2009-09-29T21:05:00.005+02:00

Have you ever noticed that once you get started on a subject or your attention is caught by something, it seems to be everywhere afterwards? It must be some law, because it happens to me all the time. Lately I have been dotted, so it seems.

Recentely I picked up the newspaper and read about News Dots. Its a fun way to link all the news in a visual way with... Yes indeed: DOTS. I coulnd't help but google for news dots. It's fun and interactive and got me wondering if there is anything in it, useable for my BJP next year. Somehow of course, not only the news but everything and everyone is connected. So will be my monthly journals as well. I haven't decided on anything yet , but I am sure the thought will come back. Next I followed the link on the Slatest website, and realized how wonderful and powerful a tool visualisation is. It is a universal language and I guess that it was the same power that grabbed me when I first encoutered the BJP and visual journaling as such.

I copied some images from the Flare website. And even though I don't know what these graphs are about, aren't they beautiful? In reality they are interactive. When you visit the flare website and go over the demo-graphs with your mousicon, you will notice that around the circle words will light up in different colours, connecting with lines that also are highlighted. It awoke a sense of awe in me. How about this one?

It reminds me of a tree, it reminds me of the 4 seasons, it reminds me of the elements, it reminds me of reaching out to someone or something, it represents growht, it ...

Apart from its practical meaning (which it was obviously designed for) it has an inner beauty all because of its simplicity. It doesn't matter it wasn't designed to be pretty, it just is. Robin Atkins blogged about visual journaling some time ago and mentioned the diversity in languages used by different artists in journaling, some more obvious conveying a message, some more hidden. Neither one being better than the other, all beautifull of their own accord.

So I would like to close with these quotations:

"Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us."

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French mathematician, physicist and philosopher

"Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself."

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, novelist and dramatist.

lessons learned

2009-09-27T21:14:00.005+02:00

I made a start with my beaded version of Staphorster Stipwerk. In anticipation of the Bead Jounal Project 2010 I ordered some Lacy Stiff Stuff. I have read many beaders work with it, mostly to make jewelry so I wanted to give it a try for my bead embroidery.

When the shipment arrived I was surprised at how litterally Stiff the Stuff is. I didn't expect it to be for some reason. But hey, maybe there was an advantage that I didn't know of. My first piece I made with a square of 100% woollen felt that was very flexible to work with, had a nice, comfortable feel and was easy to handle.

Because I wanted my backing to be black as most of the background is for the Stipwerk, I simply dyed the Stiff Stuff with aquarelle paint that I bought once for the children. The Stiff Stuff absorbed the paint quite well, but took very long to dry. The result was not an evenly coloured piece of material, but I didn't mind too much since it is meant to become filled with beads and I have decided earlier that I just have to have the courage to try and fail.

So I went on and started beading with beads that I found last year and date back from when I was a kid - which means they are at least 30 years old! I liked the idea of working with those old beads in trying to replicate an ancient Dutch technique. While beading I realized that the production of seedbeads must have improved since then, because I simply wasn't able to pull the thread through all of the beads as the holes weren't equally big. Neither were the beads for that matter, which makes it harder to lie them down nicely on a flat surface. How fun the idea of working with my age-old beads might be...It wasn't an easy start.

As I mentioned earlier, the Stiff Stuff lacked flexibility. It didn't feel comfortable to hold and wouldn't bend in my hand to make holding beads to the backing any easier. I am not giving up though. I have beaded some and like the fact that with each series of beads attached, the work seems to come alive more and tickles me for more! Opposed to my demons that want to keep me from my trying and the possibility of not achieving a perfect result, a little angel is awakening that wants me to keep trying. My journey has begun!

Even though my piece is not finished by far, there are lessons learned:

It is important to me to have a backing that is flexible, feels good and comfortable
It helps if the beads are of good quality
you never learn as much as from plain trying!

I did sign up for the Bead Journal Project this weekend. Although officially, registration is open from october 1st till december 15th, you can send in your application already. The reactions I have had so far are heartwarming, so I can encourage anyone to please sign up. It will be fun to travel parts of that road to discovery together.

thread or threat?

2009-09-22T22:11:00.001+02:00

Saturdaynight, as I was picking up my current beading project again - after putting it down when "normal" life started as summerbreak was over - I felt frustrated. I am beading a 3D necklace from a design by Jean Power, but the use of very small 11/0 cilinderbeads sometimes asks too much of the tread. Especially when I have made some mistakes and re-do part of it. Working on my own version of this necklace is a study in patience and concentration in itself, a training in mindfullness.

So I found myself with a fraying thread and the urge not to replace it. Two very incompatible options. Then I asked myself why I would be so stubborn not to finish it and start with a new one? The answers that came to mind were simple:

thou shalt not waste a perfectly good piece of material
thou shalt finish what thou has started (with)
thou shalt not give up

But these thoughts...are they true? Or are they the voice of a thou-shalt demon, that wouldn't let me think for myself, but rather have it that I - without any questions asked - just follow lessons learned early in life? And if so, the lessons being inherently good: are they applicable now?

Then I remembered Robin Atkins' post on witnessing. Robin always succeeds in posing challenging thoughts that keep my mind busy for quite a while. Often I don't realize the personal meaning I find in her posts until I had time to digest them, so to speak. True food for thought! It was the same with this one, but it suddenly became clear to me that witnessing is not only important when communicating with others, but also in a more inner sense. Sounds vague? Let me try to explain:

As of late I have been investigating my inner critic and I found out that she loves to consume a lot of positive energy to spill it out in harsh comments. I let a little of that seep through already in my post walk the talk. So that's who was speaking here when I heard that voice saying I should not... Now, from a witnessing point of view: if I would be witnessing myself, what would I say? How would I build myself up and give me support? I realized that:

I should finish the fraying tread and start a new one, because it would stop the frustration and bring joy back into my project
I should give up on my tread, because it had become a threat. In no way would starting a new thread stop me from finishing my project.
Oh, yes... the thou-shalt-not-waste-stuff... But isn't it just what it is: a piece of yarn? What harm could there be in getting rid of that?

I made it so and I felt the frustration ooze away. On the go I had witnessed myself and then I found this quote:

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein

I rest my case.

I love dots

2009-09-15T20:44:00.001+02:00

I do, I love dots. Never realized it so much as of today. They always make a happy impression and combine so easily into flowers or other motives. (Photo with courtesy to Stegemans textiel)

Why today? Well, the 3rd tuesday in september traditionally is Prinsjesdag in The Netherlands. The Hague welcomes our queen for the festive beginning of the new parliamentary year. Although this might be boring to think about, it is always a festive event. To get an impression: think of it as the marriage between the State of the Union (USA) and the hats of Royal Ascot (UK). But is this now turning into a political blog? By no means! And what does relate Prinsjesdag to dots? I will come to that in a sec.

As I said Prinsjesdag is a very festive event, so it attracts lots and lots of people from all over the country who want to get a glimpse of our Queen, the prince royal and his spouse. As I was watching the news I saw a few children in traditional clothing from Staphorst, a small town on the north-east side of the Netherlands. As part of their clothing these girls were wearing small bonnets. Lots of these traditional garments are from a (dark) blue or black fabric and adorned either with shawls or aprons in vibrant colours and (floral) patterns or as in the Staphorster Stipwerk, the fabric itself is embellished.

Now I come to the dots...The picture above is of so called Staphorster Stipwerk, which can be freely translated as Dotwork from Staphorst. It's nothing more than a technique, in which a small block with some nails attached to it is dipped into paint and pressed on the fabric or any other backing. When this is done a couple of times with different colours, the black is suddenly alive with small floral elements.

In fact it sparked my imagination: if this could be done by such simple means, why not try and do it with beads? I think I found a challenge for the upcoming fall and winter. The base colour does apply to the retreat and death in nature that holds the promiss of a blooming spring and summer...If I'll be patient. (Photo was taken in my backyard last autumn.)

Walk the talk

2009-09-13T21:01:00.000+02:00

The first work I made was just a trial. I had become intrigued by bead embroidery by surfing the WWW. After I first stumbled upon the Bead Journal Project homepage I felt drawn into a whole new world. I had been beading for a short time then - I started in the summer of 2008 - but had focused on beaded jewelry. Fun to do and still one of my a favorite ways to spend spare time, but I cannot possibly wear all that jewelry and have no ambition to start a shop. The BJP showed me a whole new meaning and means to beads.

It was the flow that seemed to embody all these different works and my inner self didn't seem to stop with ooohs and aaaahs.

The next I knew, I felt torn between a strong want to give bead embroidery a try and a little demon voice inside me that kept on telling me I would never be as good as they were. At first I won: I did start a little project of my own that didn't turn out so bad. I called it "teardrop", because the shape reminded me of a tear. Unfortunately my work then stalled: I simply did not know what to do with my piece and still haven't found out either.

It was when I started to really follow blogs like for example Robin Atkins' Beadlust or Susan Elliot's Plays with needles' that I realized that they too struggled with their inner critics. After I read Susans blogpost on Mini Me I realized I did the same. Always telling my children that you never learn untill you try and try again, and that all good work (artistic or not) is not achieved at once. Teaching them that failure is not a bad thing at all, because it is through failure that we learn important and invaluable lessons that help us grow. And here I was, allowing myself to be put aside by my own fear of failure. I love the phrase Susan used as she wrote she needed to "walk the talk...". It might be a common way of saying, but to me (being Dutch and not having English as my mother tongue) it was new and compelled me to push myself to start overcoming that hurdle.

As I am writing this down I am well on my road to victory. I have started this blog as a first step into starting my own BJP next year. I am decided to embark on that voyage that will lead me to discoveries of new worlds where no one has gone before... - as captain Picard would say - not even me. I will no doubt find myself struggling with my inner critic who will sent me countless little demons as I go along... But if they can, why wouldn't I be able to?

All new

2009-09-08T20:41:00.000+02:00

To everyone and all, I am as new to this blog as you are. Hope you will follow me as I travel along the path of beading and exploring new ways to expres myself. It will take some time for me to get really going, but be patient and new things will follow.