There's a kid in there!

Sometimes, when I'm bored, I turn into a large child.

(Oh yeah, the Eva shawl is coming along! lol)

I was being followed...

by a hawk this morning. It swooped and perched on a light fixture outside my office and sat there for a couple of hours this morning.

It was pretty neat.

Holy mother of Purl!!!

I'm KNITTING!!!

So I stopped doing the Eva Shawl for a while to work on granny squares for a ravelry.com group that gathers and sends them to a kindly lady in the UK who puts them into a healing afghan!!

And I decided since I'm just doing squares, I could give knitting a try and bleieve it or not, I mostly remembered how!

I also saw a cute knit pattern from Knit and Crochet Now (Season 3, Big Bamboo, towards the bottom) and thought I'd give it a try. Having stitch markers help profusely, but all in all, it's not too bad!

Hephaistos: the painting

Okay. so this really is more of a drawing with watercolor pencils then painted with a wet brush and smoothed out with a photo editor.

It's almost 1 am, and while it's not my best work. I really feel like I got a good feel for Hephaistos and who is a member of the Greek Pantheon.

I will write more later about what it meant to me, but the boy is sad in the face.

Esto!

Yay another painting!

I just finished another one!

This is supposed to be a Paragmipedium (Don Wimber) orchid.

It's not great, but I feel happy about it!

Paintings and stuff

So I've been really busy lately, but I just finished another painting.

I have also been working on the Eva shawl and just started making some granny squares for a group on ravelry.com that collects squares and makes them into an afghan.

I've never made granny squares before, but it's pretty simple and I love the idea.

I think I'm gonna quick like try and get another painting going.

On finding my path.

So after a lot of things that have been going on in the last few weeks, I think i have some small epiphany to discuss.

I have been feeling low. Unnaturally so for the summer, when my mood is elevated and I am generally manic. I've been praying, reading, contemplating and ignoring at times. But I was speaking with J and it seems to me, that I am most at peace when I am following what I believe is my life's purpose.

What is that purpose? You might ask. Well, I'm not exactly sure. Hence a lot of feelings of being incomplete, unfulfilled, unhappy. What I do know is I love helping people, I love acting/singing and I love crafting. I have absolutely no idea how those things go together to make my path. But I know that when I think about trying, it makes me feel happier.

In the conversation I had with the boy, I related it to choir. When I was in choir, there were times when my ears and my body would hum. I don't know what it's called, but when you are in almost perfect unison with another voice, there is something about your inner ear and your head that seems to "hum" or "buzz". It was a rare feeling, but it was always somehow magical.

I told J that it was this feeling, or a close approximation, that I was looking for. When I do something that uses my skills and am able to give this energy to someone else, my soul "hums". It's a wonderful experience that I have far too rarely.

But I'm like a junkie for it. And when I don't feel it, I get depressed. I question my purpose in life, I feel that I am not living the life I was meant to live.

I am not sure what all of this means, but I do know that when I sit for hours at home on the computer, I feel lonely, sad, depressed. I feel that I've wasted another day I could be trying to bring a little bit of joy to someone. Time I could have been making a sculpture, or performing a monologue or sewing a garment.

I am going to try and spend at least an hour a day creating. I don't really care what it is, or particularly what it looks like when finished. I just need to sing and write and create.

Maybe I might end up with something that brings joy into someone's life.

(P.S. Thanks to Jim Henson, even though you're gone, to remind me it takes "Just One Person".)