Beating the Block

As with a lot of things in life, sometimes you hit a bit of a block. Everything you make, or do, or write, just seems blah and desperate and not what you imagined when you set out, so full of hope and inspiration. This happens a lot. 

In the "world of craft" there is a term; UFO or Un-Finished Object. This could be anything, from a few scraps you sewed together on a whim to a whole king sized quilt top that's tacked to the wadding but you just can't face it anymore, and so they sit in the draw (you know the draw) until maybe one day inspiration hits again, and you finish it, or you give it to your crafty friend as a round-robin or you just plain give it to a charity shop.

This happened, anyway. I had made a doll in the expectation she would become a beautiful geisha figure, with black linen hair I had stitched into the head piece and a face I had embroidered on after many hours of trying to thread a whole skein of embroidery threads into a beading needle. (I was much younger and fairly stupid.)

Anyway, she was finished. I didn't turn her inside out and by this point she was looking raggedy and farther and farther away from the flawless, perfect geisha doll I had imagined. So rather than throw her in the UFO draw, I took out my Pitt pens and started taking out my Block resentment on the doll in form of ugly little doodles that made no sense.

And you know what?  I think this is how she was always meant to be.

Of course, it would have been nice to end up with a beautiful geisha style doll, but this obviously wasn't the time. Instead, I like to think she is from the mean streets of Edo where mob bosses got tattoo'd once they became Yakuza. Maybe some day I'll make her a little geisha sister, but at the moment she is a good reminder that sometimes the block is there for a reason; you might be on the wrong path, and you can either get off the path altogether or turn off into a weird looking side-street that turns out to be an exciting and adventurous new destination.

Or something less pretentious.