the making of me

it feels finally, as if the pieces have really started falling in to place...

the things i have wanted to learn have slowly but surely been worked at

bookbinding

calligraphy

making my own inks and paints

painting

and now printing

these have been my big five, long since desired, and though i'm by no stretch a proficient in any, i can usually muddle through to get the results i'm after and sitting here, feeling rather content about it all, i know the next part to master is the part pertaining to me

what i like

what i'm drawn to

the story i want to tell

for many years i've taken a few minutes here and there to think about what all of that might be and made lists in various notebooks

this morning, in looking at one of those lists, it seemed it would be a nice thing to have one place to write all that down in; a record of my preferences,  snippets of favourite fabrics and threads,  and notes about what draws me to them

i see small colour palettes,  in thread, fabric and/or paint... so often as i'm searching through a box of thread i notice one that somehow seemed to escape my notice up until that moment... in minutes i have added darks and lights, colours to enhance, greens for foliage, browns for wood - it's always the same, i play and then it all gets put away... how nice it would be to record it somehow

 a place to keep all the bits and pieces that, when cobbled together, are the making of me

of course it must be a book... it's always about books

a small book to take with whilst travelling... one that is not precious but still something special 

for years a little book sat on my writing table, a bought book with a tooled leather cover and the most beautiful paper inside

in february of 2016, a few scraps of japanese yarn-dyed woven fabrics were being shuffled around my worktable for the umpteenth dozen time when it occurred to me they could be stitched together in boro fashion and make an interesting piece of cloth 

i stitched the fabrics onto a page, made a note but then thought if it was such a good idea why not start right away?

and so i did

nothing else has been added to this book since that day which makes it the perfect choice 

next was to gather up some of the lists scattered here and there from the times i was thinking my way through what i like and what i don't

as these lists already have good homes they'll stay where they are but the enduring bits will be recorded in the new book and then continued in there

the lists above and below were written years apart and yet the essence is the same

this next page was an interesting one to do

can't remember exactly when it was done but i had decided i wanted a list of what mattered to me in my making from a thinking perspective rather than from a descriptive one

 this book is not meant to be a sketchbook in any way, not a how-to or a reference of ideas - rather, it will be a book of ideals

"a principle to be aimed at"

a place to jot things down as they are observed, to add a snippet of fabric to that has become a constant in my work, to capture that colour combination that is intriguing me though there is no plan as to what to do with it

this isn't a project, not a thing to spend days or weeks working on, just one place to keep the bits and pieces that reflect the "me" part of my work

hence the title

"the "making" of me"