My beautiful Needlework community,

I wanted to sew a lot more this week, and was frustratingly pulled into dramas with a neighbour's cats and her offending Workawayers, which led to me worrying too much about someone else's animals, and less about my projects in hand...

It is amazing how much frictions from outside can get in the way of creativity: there is such a subtle symbiosis of quiet mind and heart, wide open space and time, emptiness from distractions - and various other essential pillars, that make it a space to make in.

By Sunday things had calmed down for the major part (the cats have a continuum of caretakers, and I have drawn my boundaries with the Drama Friend), and after constructing a simple-but-large bamboo porch frame from my Arthouse front door, made a magnificent Sunday lunch with fresh fava beans, washed my new vintage linen from the market... I settled into sewing for the evening!

It is also amazing to me, how much resistance can endure throughout a project that I am essentially very excited about and proud of... BUT the perfect, quaint, artistic shoes are NOT going to come into manifestation this time!

There is quite a sticky energy that I have to wade through, to get to the 'I did it!! I made my perfect shoes!!' part. Knowing that this perfection is not going to happen THIS week, is a dampening influence on my enthusiastic powering forward.

It is not the only place where I'm dampened; I have fabric overwhelm and some remorse about leaving my Art. behind (whilst attempting to keep climbing this immense learning curve where I most certainly do NOT have the mastery that I aspire to). I kind of hate having to be a child again, to be un-master at something, whilst holding this strong vision of all that wants to come into being through me!

It is wholly disrupting to to be able to simply switch needle for paintbrush, and sewing machine for easel. Immersing in that career which I MIGHT have had also is bringing up so many emotions of all the ways that my natural passions have been quelled by others, and by the world.

So my gratitude is really huge, to all of you who encourage and support my learning! Being on Hive is like having community sponsorship, giving me not just the great words of inspiration and the examples of others who have made it past this hard part - but the financial reward (and to some degree the stability) to help me see that this will all come together in the end.

Thank you BEAUTY-FULL community, especially of you here in NeedleWorkMonday!! I love you all, and I love seeing your work unfold alongside my own: it feels at times as if we are all sharing a big old building as a workshop, with a cosy tea corner and a stove warming us all... This is essential to have, when one is trying to shoot for the stars - without a spaceship ;-)

Big love and thanks, and I hope you are all thriving this week!

www.claregaiasophia.com