fun sucker strikes again

Being in the middle of a major depressive episode is hell. You lose your sense of self, you feel like an outsider in your own body, your own life, you don’t enjoy any of the things you love, and you are too tired to care. You feel so guilty for being depressed and being a burden and then you feel guilty about feeling guilty. It’s very hard to look forward to anything when all you’ve felt for months is a whole lot of nothing.

The word depression is misleading in it’s percieved definition, at least for me. Depression does not make me sad all the time, it makes me numb all the time. Disconnected. Disoriented. I guess in the physical defintion there is some truth to the word “depression”, that is, feeling like you are being pressed down upon by everything in your head, in your life, in your irrational depressed brain thoughts.

What the hell does this have to do with crafting, you say?

A lot. In the past six months, I’ve lost my imagination, my freedom of expression, my ability to even put words together coherently sometimes. I don’t have sudden fits of creativity, I don’t have the drive to create stuff or do something new or try a new thing. I don’t doodle anymore, I read a lot less (and a lot slower), and when I do do something creative or artsy, it’s robotic, the passion just isn’t there. And yet it is, buried under my stupid brain’s chemical imbalances and broken down connections. The reason it hurts so much to lose the things you love and the energy to do them is because the real you, the authentic you, still wants and loves them. When I say I mourn the loss of them, I’m not exagerating.

I worked on the quilt today even though I had no passion for it. There is a phrase they use in therapy a lot which is “fake it ’till you make it”. It works sometimes, doing things you normally do or like just to do it, to get it done. You don’t usually get satisfaction from it because your depressed mind says irrational things about the way you did it orr that it doesn’t matter because you are still a loser but sometimes it works, if only to get you into a rountine.

So yes, crafting + depression = struggle but in some ways, a good struggle.

back from nature

Ah, camping. Is there anything better than roughing it? YES. Roughing it in a lovely, practically mosquito free, cleanest park facilities, nephew included park that’s relatively close to home? Nothing better.

We had great weather other than the first night when it poured on us. We had great fun hiking, throwing the frisbee around, doing a little birding, and scarfing down Boy Scout donuts. The boys, my two nephews, had tons of fun and it’s always fun to see how much they’ve grown in a short time. Aidan is talking now! He still does his little “uh uh” grunt when he doesn’t know something. He’s like a parrot now, repeating back anything you say. Rand is his crazy little self as usual and a very sweet older brother when his cars or crayons aren’t being stolen by small Aidan monkey-man fingers.

Rand being a five year old and refusing to have his picture taken.

Aidan looking mischievous as usual.

Boys building walls.

It was such a great weekend and I felt good for one of the first times in a long while. It was so much fun just to watch the boys discover things and jump in puddles and run screaming with joy away from you. I’m going to store this weekend in a little glass ball inside my head and replay whenever I need it.

And in lieu of any of my art to show you, have some other people’s:

– Camilla d’Errico paints wonderful strange manga inspired paintings of girls

– Jen Corace does illustrations in a misleading simple stripped down style

– Verabee does adorable and sometimes strange illustrations and paintings

– Meg Hunt does whimsical illustrations that are modern with a throw-back feel

– Matthew Woodson does hyper-realistic pen and ink illustrations that are hauntingly striking with their sharp graphic lines

into the woods

Camping is the name of the game for this weekend. More exciting than the camping is that my two adorable nephews are coming to camp with us! I haven’t seen them since Mother’s day and from pictures my sister showed me from when they visited her a few weeks ago, my littlest nephew, Aidan, is sooo much bigger and his hair has really darkened. He’s my little buddy and I’m sure this weekend will be filled with delightful happy child screaming and lots of tickle fights and general riling of the natives (as my mother says).

Plus, I have a belated birthday present for Rand, the five year old, because I missed his birthday when I was in the hospital. I got him a fabulous book called Monkey With a Toolbelt by a author from Duluth and it is totally adorable, as proved below:

Children’s books are always a tricky one to pick out. You want a good story without too many words that will appeal for years, good illustrations, and a good sense of humor. I’m a very picky children’s book selector, probably from years of working the children’s books at the library (and because I still love to read them).

There is packing to be finished and a car to be loaded, so I shall leave you with the promise of nephew kidlings pictures when I return.

the lily quilt and cups of delicious cake

Lily is my…niece-in-law? Whatever she is, she is adorable and all the pictures of her just make me squeal. Although I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting the little strawberry blond pudgy cheeked baby yet, I thought I might make her a quilt, partly because her mom is cool and hey, I wanna learn how to quilt!

Which of course means, I must plan first. I’m a big planner, mostly because I tend not to think things through when I just jump in. Slowing down and making a plan means I won’t get half way through a project and decide that I hate it. So I made a Lily quilt plan:

(please ignore my lazy not changing the colors of the circles into something non-black)

It was inspired by this amazingly pretty quilt made by Erin of house on hill road (one of my favorite blogs, BTW). I loved how she quilted the circles instead of using a traditional quilting technique and how the stiching showed through the other side as an outline. Plus, it meant I got to go dig around in the fat quarter bin in la basement and browse at the fabric store for cute semi-girly but fairly neutral springy fabrics. I think I did a pretty good job. See below:

I don’t want to do be overly girly, mostly because I’m not for imposing pink upon anyone before they are ready for it. Pink is one of those colors that it takes some time to love if you don’t automatically.  I even refused to wear it when I was little. I used to hate pink but that was before I realized the lovely muted shades of peach and the strong magentas were like magic with my skin tone. I truly have excepted pink into my wardrobe (although blue and green are still my favorites) but it’s one of those typically “girly” colors that I know some people cringe about.

Enough about gender color wars, let’s talk about cupcakes! Does anyone not like them? I mean really. Mom was making cupcakes for the bridal shower of a younger woman who works with her. They were out of the box but for some reason, perhaps it’s her motherly magic, they were terribly delicious.

brown paper packages tied up with string

Lets get this blog going by posting some of my favorite things from around my house:

From the top, my older sister’s unfinished knitting, my glass bird earrings from Anthropologie, the set of fruit prints I framed that hang in the dining room, and a strawberry popsicle all prepared to cool down this muggy summer day.

Now I want another popsicle! Mmmmm, popsicles. Tomorrow, I will have some sketches or crafty things to show. Maybe even some kind of tutorial.

it’s mighty spacious in here

Er, hello blog which has no audience. I feel slightly silly talking to what is basically the wall but hello anyways.

I’ve recently had some down time due to illness and have found myself making things just to keep myself occupied. I’m one of those artistic people who has their hands in lots of different pots and so ends up making weird combinations of different crafts. I love to bead, paint, write, design, paper craft, and sew so you can expect lots of different projects to arise from the murky depths of my imagination.