So much of my inspiration of late stems directly from the chaotic surface of my workbench in the studio where half finished thoughts are splayed out in every direction like sun-wounded jellyfish on a beach.  Unrelated components lay there as testimonials of interruptions that have stopped me and the metal mid-sentence…a phone call from my mum, a text from a friend, a gaggle of house shopping folks to view the strawbale house and stare at my weird collection of skulls, turtle shells and houseplants…a dog barking at the UPS man, the insane daily scramble to get to the post office before it closes (it’s only open from 9-12:30 — excluding Saturdays) (mail delivery on Saturdays is one of the most beautiful things about America to me, since I am a true epistle-ophile) (not a real thing but you know what I mean).

There’s the litter of half formed thoughts on my bench top, the detritus of everything that almost made it into something bigger than itself.  This is the time of year I feel a self-induced pressure to button up the studio, gather all these broken thoughts and inturrupted ideas and complete them so I can end the year with a clean slate…time stamp the designs of this past year and move beyond them into newness.

I don’t think I ever have a sense of ‘Christmas Rush’ — I think I suffer dearly a strong sense of the tail end of a creative year and the need to clearly catalogue what happened and when in my creative life.  I want it all finished.  This year, there is the added complication of needing to pack up the studio and move it into the new house which is a notoriously discombobulating deed.  Things go missing even if I’m only moving my workspace a square mile to the left…things go awry.  It’s like socks and washing machines.  There are some mysteries we humans will never solve.

I am going to keep working up until the moment I have to put my tools in boxes and move them to my new light-riddled workspace at the farm but these are my final offerings for 2016.  They’ll be in the shop tonight, at some point…or if I suffer sudden fatigue (which happens every day now), tomorrow morning.  Oh dear.  Sudden fatigue just happened.  Tomorrow morning then…

Thank you all for your support in 2016.  I have a holiday giveaway for you that I will post in a couple of days.  I look forward to popping the cork on 2017, settling into work and life and a new home, feeling some of this unsettledness fizz away, delving deeper…going beyond-er…tending to my wee family which is still suffering from post fire season frazzle…

Eggnog.

*clink*