Wednesday, May 24, 2017

trying to boost creativity

This week should have been the week of official decision with regard to the Senegalese members of the class I am teaching in, but we haven't heard anything yet. Tomorrow is a bank holiday, no classes nor mail, so the waiting continues until at least Friday. I am not an optimist by birth, and it is getting harder and harder to bear the tension!
In this situation I have actually mailed my SAQA Benefit Auction donation, although the first attempt at registering my contribution floundered. Filling in an 'x' in the 'State'-slot of the entry form did the trick, which I found out through the helpful comment of Jen Solon at SAQA. Thank you, Jen.  I entered my quilt in "Made in Europe II" and really liked the size requirement. I was a part in setting the size, as it was decided on when I was still a co-rep, but I had never made a quilt in exactly that size before, it was mostly chosen for transportability. So after entering the professional photo I am actually putting on the sleeve today as I understand notification of acceptance might mean having to send it the next day.



As I am waiting for the verdict it feels a bit like my creativity has dried up. Gone are the times when I was bursting with ideas that were asking to be turned into a quilt. Perhaps it is also a matter of having enough time and leisure to sit down and let thoughts flow and threads and fabrics get together... but it is getting a bit tedious right now.
I am keeping my hand occupied by knitting a scarf (that was originally begun as a jacket, as I wrote about on my German blog here). Another little burst of creativity happened when I managed to (almost) ruin a newly bought T-Shirt: I have a strong adversion against any kind of tags inside the shirts, but when I removed them from this one, I wasn't careful enough and slightly nipped into the jersey. As I said, the T-Shirt is new, and I did not want to throw it out right away. So I sewed one of the many many sew-on-sew-off squares over the little hole on the side to cover it up. One of my students saw that and suggested that I add some more in other places, and I did (so to be honest: this burst of creativity wasn't even my own idea...).


I have worn it like this today and nobody said anything. So it doesn't seem to be so outrageous as I first thought it might be. But I quite like the look. Might be an idea how to pep up pieces of clothing that have grown boring. Or attracted some spots, as in bing worn when dyeing...
Yes, dyeing - I am in the midst of dyeing May's collection, much more on time than I had been for several months.
The next days will hopefully bring the end of waiting...

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