Sparks and Muses

EPISODE 6: New Gig, New Perspectives

And we're back… after life threw some curveballs. Susan started a new job and needed some time to get her brain refocused on creativity. Dan took spring break off to hang out with the kiddo and go flying with his dad. Lots of running around doing parent stuff.

Dan is working on his boat photo project and battling the unpredictable Maryland spring weather. And the father of our daughter's classmate has suggested that Dan give him private lessons in how to use his photo equipment. So, Dan will see if that goes anywhere.

Susan is still making space for creativity, despite the new job. The key is waking up at the crack of dawn to find the time. She finished her brother's Big Bad Socks of Doom that had been lingering since Christmas. The brother liked them, which is good, because he has huge feet. Susan also finished a sweater that had been sitting unfinished for a year. She's also cast on a new pair of socks and a new weaving. She is really excited about weaving with handspun, especially at 5 am before work. 

Susan started seeds for the garden this year. She is remembering her favorite quote from a Martha Stewart magazine a zillion years ago: "Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts." Susan really likes Margaret Roach - the former editor of Martha Stewart Living - who now has a great gardening podcast and written a few memoirs. Susan feels that gardening is creative, but it's very slow. But the excitement of spring is still very cool. 

Susan also took a soap making class at Make Studio in Manhattan. It was fun, kinda hipster - boutique, free range artisanal soap. It needs to cure before it can be used. But it smells good.

Time is still the biggest challenge to incorporating creativity into everyday life. Brain Clutter. Dan is still writing and planning his boat project, but mostly he's unfocused between projects and not sure what his next step will be. Dan has started a second writing project, but doesn't want to share it (another "ugly baby"). 

Discussion about JK Rowling and the Harry Potter stories popping into her head one day on the train. 

Dan is inspired by flying with his dad, reminded about how different the perspective is from up above. It's really different than being in a commercial aircraft. Susan wants to plan a trip to London so that Dan can experience sitting in the front seat of the top deck of a double-decker bus. Just for comparison. 

Susan is excited about connecting with a community of creative people. She has found another local mom who knits. She has also changed how she engages with people online, on Instagram and developing a rapport through online interactions. Susan is just putting her work out there online and experiencing how that shifts her own perspective on her work and creative expression. Sharing publicly is new and shifts the experience of the creating. 

Susan read Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. A great read about being open to growth. Susan has found that sharing her process and opening herself up for criticism is transformational in some way that doesn't have a full description. 

Susan also read Knitlandia by Clara Parkes. A travel memoir about knitting. A great read by an award-winning travel writer that shed light on the knitting world. A very entertaining read. Susan is planning vacations for someday when she has time off again.

Dan is going to keep working on his boat project, especially now that the weather is getting nicer. He may take a woodworking class or an online figure drawing class. Needs to find a place to just do these things. Susan is drawn to the ancient quality of weaving and the timelessness of the craft. She's enjoying playing with color and materials. Now that her injury seems to be getting better, she's hoping to start spinning again. And impatiently waiting for her plants to grow. 

Week three of a winter plague has hit the house right along with the blizzard of the century (so far). We've been scrambling to keep life moving forward despite being snowed in, and have spent lots of time creating. We've had four days of snowbound solitude, sledding and working on projects. It's apartment camping at its finest.

Dan has been writing - a complete surprise to  Susan - and is developing the start of a story. It's a refreshing and exciting creative process. The liberating part is that it doesn't have to become anything, and so Dan can just develop it without any pressure. Dan sees the story in mental pictures, like a movie, and is translating the images into words. He won't let Susan read it, because it's an "ugly baby" and it's too early to share the idea publicly. Dan explains the ugly baby theory and why it's a fitting description of where he is in the creative process. He is particularly excited because writing has always been a block for him, so this is an intriguing new outlet.

Susan has been weaving on the tapestry loom she received at Christmas. She's working on a weaving for the kiddo's room. Before the blizzard, she bought a bunch of Vanna White (of Wheel of Fortune fame) yarn that was on sale at the local craft store.  She's also mixing in some crazy handspun yarns that weren't great for knitting, but are perfect "ugly baby" yarns for weaving. They add instant visual interest and texture to the piece. She's also using wool roving to add even more texture. 

Susan talks about how much she's loving the part in which starting a new craft has opened a whole new rabbit hole of creative thinking and inspiration - spinning, dyeing, texture, color. 

Dan's biggest challenge has been work craziness, but he's excited to start a new photographic exploration of boats and boating, and the maritime culture in Annapolis, Maryland.

Susan's biggest challenge is the plague that hit the house. And limited time, late meetings, and the ongoing effort to achieve work-life-creativity balance. She started a journal to capture ideas before the leave her brain since she doesn't have the time to start them.

There's a lively discussion of creativity and control in the design process.

Dan's inspirations for this week are boats and creating the perfect villain.  Susan is inspired to finish her weaving and has ideas for the next one too. She's inspired to pick up her spinning again, making all the components of the weaving - slowing down the creative process. 

Susan and Dan are catching up at the end of 2015 after a crazy December full of holidays, family stuff and life. Dan has been helping the kiddo learn about color and engage with it in different ways. The kiddo is 6-years old and obsessed with arts and crafts. She has a new paint station and likes to mix paint to make new colors. So, it's a starting point with the color wheel. Dan finds it personally fulfilling to foster her interest in creativity. We discuss taking on art as her "sport" in terms of early training and finding creative outlets.  

Dan's personal project of the moment is inspired by the California Job Case, which he takes a few minutes to explain for those uninitiated in printing geekery. Dan is contemplating a type-related project and incorporating 3-D printing and graphics.

Artomatic 2015 closed, and Dan is really excited to have sold a piece to a local collector. Dan reflects on his experience showing work at Artomatic and having his first show in 20 years. He is excited to see that prepping for a show is like riding a bike and he still remembers how to do it. It feels great to get his work out there and have it be well-received by visitors.  He is submitting work to other juried shows and feels motivated to shop his work around at local galleries, as well as extending efforts to engage in the Baltimore art scene.

Susan reflects on the Crafty birthday party - weaving, shrinky dink jewelry, snowman cupcakes. The party was a success, even though it looked like an art store blew up in the apartment. Susan received a weaving loom for Christmas (thanks Dan!)! And finally jumped into a tapestry weaving project. The loom and accessories were created by Lost Pond Looms, who have a shop on Etsy. Susan has been watching weaving tutorials on CreativeBug to get started with various weaving techniques. She's excited to practice and take time to learn how to use different techniques to engage with color and texture in new ways. Susan's also excited to have new ways to use her handspun yarns and art yarns that she hasn't always wanted to wear as a garment. She's excited to see how weaving will provide new opportunities to push her spinning skills in new directions. 

Taking the holiday week off has been great for creativity - more time than usual to create. Time is still the biggest creative challenge. Dan is giving himself time to rest and not feel the pressure to be creative in his non-working life. Susan has felt it really hard to squeeze it all in this month. 

Dan is reading How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery - a history of creativity by Kevin Ashton, the author of the book The Creativity of Things. It's a book about the myth of the "lone creative" and an exploration of human experience of creativity. 

Susan is inspired by weaving and diving into the whole world of weaving. She's in a really open space and working hard to not listen to her own demons that stop her from taking new steps.

We're at the end of 2015. We discuss our thoughts about creativity looking ahead to 2016. Dan is excited to continue showing his work and expanding the body of black and white work, as well as an accompanying book. Our daughter is excited to work with polymer clay and sculpture, and Dan inspired to explore that as part of his California Job Case project.

Susan is diving into weaving and developing the skills to execute her vision for weaving pieces. She is also committed to creating a community around crafting and personal connections with others. As a first step, she is being more open and extraverted in terms of social media interactions, and sharing her own creative practice as part of developing a broader online community. The podcast and blog are also creative and community-building endeavors - important avenues to reach out of her shell and generate inspiration from new places.

Susan is determined to find the secret sauce of work-life-creativity balance. Resolution for 2016: 15 minutes of creativity a day as a baseline. 

Card weaving for CRAFTY birthday party

Episode 3: Surviving December - Production vs. Inspiration

December is here and we're dragging a bit under the weight of the impending holidays and related fun. Dan has been learning how to edit the podcast and conquering the learning curve. Despite frustrations, it's interesting because it involved new technology. Dan is busy at his day job tapping into production skills for a big, huge, mega project that is rushed and just needs to get done. 

Susan has been prepping for the holidays, a 6th birthday party and tons of craziness at work. The kiddo's birthday party will be a Crafty theme, and Susan has been working on an assortment of crafts for the birthday. The dreaded Christmas knitting is dragging and Susan is no enjoying having to do obligation knitting.

Dan thinks that the dragging part is just an expected part of the creative process, and that cranking through production does with any project after the initial spark has passed. But this isn't the exciting and fun part of creativity, so it isn't often talked about - the ups and downs of the creative process.

Susan is feeling stuck creatively. and kind of whiny about it. However, the birthday party planning is very creative and Susan is prepping a variety of crafts for the crowd: weaving on cards (Kids Weaving tutorial on CreativeBug), Shrinky Dink jewelry making (also a tutorial on CreativeBug), cupcake snowmen with marshmallows (inspiration found on Pinterest). Mostly, she just wants to keep the kids busy so that they don't destroy the apartment.

Susan is inspired by going in new directions, so she went to the library to check out a couple of books to fuel her inspiration: Tapestry Weaving by Kirsten Glassbrook (Search Press, 2002) and Handsewn: The Essential Techniques for Tailoring and Embellishment by Margaret Rowan (2014, Interweave Press).

Dan is inspired by technology and learning how to work with audio, despite frustration with the software. He's enjoying that editing changes the tone or feel of the podcast and is creative storytelling in its own way. 

Artomatic is still happening for another week. Dan is still thinking about it, but not as much as he was when it first opened.

Goals for this week? Dan's is to get the first episode of the podcast edited and presentable to the public. Susan's goal is to survive the many events of the week and to muscle through the dreaded knitting project.

The Marshmallow Snowmen Cupcakes were a hit with the 6-year olds. Highly recommended.

Post Thanksgiving long-weekend relaxation and Happy Birthday to Dan!

This week Dan jumps into exploring color in his birthday present, which is a brand new adult coloring book. He was really excited to set aside time to explore creativity for creativity's sake - not for work or related deadlines. He has been experimenting with different media, seeing how color effects narrative, visual quality and graphics. The upside of the coloring book is not having to do the initial drawing, but instead just focusing on color in different ways. He has been using water colors, water color pencils, acrylic inks, graphite pencils and india ink. Pretty much anything but markers.

Family Craft Night - Impromptu creativity with our 6-year old daughter in a Saturday night. Introducing her to color mixing and basic color theory. She was super excited and it was a ton of fun. Highly recommended. 

Susan is decompressing from working too many months without a break. She's busy at work on mystery knitting for Christmas, but it's really boring and it's kind of a drag. So instead she's focusing on the apartment and making it look comfortable for the holidays. As a family, we decided to dial back the over-the-top aspects of Christmas this year, while adding some new family rituals. Susan sewed a simple Advent Calendar and is excited to bring it out in future years. She used found objects around the apartment and bought some new fabric to add to it. She added paper and used her daughter's alphabet stamps to add select lyrics from "It Came upon a Midnight Clear" (a personal favorite). She also made an advent candle centerpiece and is looking to add some ritual and structure to the holiday season.

Susan is still obsessing about tapestry weaving, but still doesn't have a loom to work on. So instead, she's doing research. She signed up for Creativebug.com and watched a few weaving tutorials. She also watched lots of videos for inspiration on kid-friendly projects and to keep the creative fires burning more generally. Creativebug is a cool platform for crafting, with a wide variety of different content areas - like Craftsy, but shorter-form and smaller, easily digestible chapters. There is a lot of sewing content, both hand sewing and machine sewing, as well as fabric design and textile arts. At $5 per month, a membership seems worth it so far.

Susan's creative challenges this week are based in being tired from work, life and the rat race. Also, not having the right tools is frustrating. She a little worried that the spark will go away before she can jump into tapestry weaving.

Dan's challenges are getting over the hump of being exhausted from work, life and Artomatic. So he is making an effort to find creative time rejuvenating instead of feeling like a chore or "work". He's working on giving up the need to be end-result focused. Finding time to expire creativity for creativity's sake is important and new. He's working to give up the need to finish and produce. Rather, he's embracing learning, instead of dropping something when it isn't working right the first time - cultivating "happy accidents". 

Discussion of "process" vs. "product" creating, a concept that is regularly discussed in knitting circles.  Is motivation driven by the action or the final product? Discussion of how to find motivation when feeling uninspired or stuck. And how this changes over time as we progress in our practice. Susan and Dan are both embracing process. Dan discusses photography and the relationship between technical skill and play. Preparing for Artomatic vs. his time as a studio photographer with heightened focus on production deadlines. This week Dan entered into a juried show and is waiting to hear about the selection results - his first entry in 20 years.

Dan is inspired by technology and learning new media as a source of inspiration. Finding inspiration in technology and tools. Dan loves manuals. 

Susan is reading Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's Gilbert's take on being inspired and creative. Gilbert shares her philosophy that ideas exist outside of people and are searching for a host, a person to manifest the idea in real form. An interesting read and highly entertaining, very funny. Susan is enjoying that it highlights creativity for mere mortals. 

Susan's goals for the week are driven by getting ready for the kiddo's birthday party, which will suck up time, but should be fun in the end. She needs to move through Christmas knitting boredom. She's also going to keep looking at weaving videos and learning without actually making anything. She's also  working on the creating a comfy Christmas holiday environment in the apartment.

Dan is going to keep working with color and get the ball rolling on a new nonprofit project that focuses on community outreach. He's excited to lead a group creative process. 

EPISODE 1: Introductions & Welcome to the Sparks & Muses Podcast

Susan and Dan introduce themselves, their creative inspirations and how they got started in their creative endeavors. They also discuss why they have decided to document their creative processes publicly through the podcast. 

They discuss Artomatic 2016.  It's a phenomenal pop-up art event that occupies giant vacant office buildings in Washington, DC. This was the first time that Artomatic took place in Maryland and it's pretty amazing. Dan discussed his experience as an artist participating in Artomatic. He also talked about exploring storytelling and the ways that stories are represented and presented.

Susan works for the City of New Carrollton, Maryland and created a new website to promote the city's businesses: www.VisitNewCarrollton.com. Susan discussed her garden and how it's gearing down for the winter. She also finished knitting a sweater for her new nephew. 

Dan is exploring color through watercolors. Susan is drawn to tapestry weaving, because she bought her daughter the Melissa & Doug loom for kids and can't stop thinking about it.

Dan describes being inspired by technology and learning the tech behind podcasting. Also, he's inspired by writers and storytelling process, specifically JK Rowling (as Robert Galbraith) and Jim Butcher.

Susan is inspired by new podcasts, particularly Curious Handmade,  Shinybees - they are both knitting-related podcasts out of the UK. She's also doing research into tapestry weaving, looms and weaving gear.