Everyday Companion

This guy is always a big part of my day. His name is Patches and he follows me through the house and lays down whenever I stop to do something. Even as I am writing this he is in the doorway of the room ready to go for whatever we do next. Maybe you can tell he is a great listener. With his one up one down ears and a tilt of his head I get positive reinforcement from him every time.

More seriously I think, like a lot of crafters and artists, that the inspirations come from all of our environment. Color and texture impressions come from all directions. I think we take a lot of this in without actually realizing it. It can be as simple for me as seeing the clothes for a new season on display in a store or the piles of fabrics or yarns in your favorite store.

One of my favorite things to do is spend an afternoon or evening going through my collection of knitting, crocheting and quilting books and magazines. I really don't do it very often because I would go into idea overload. They are great however for planting the seeds for new projects with colors, shapes or stitch patterns. I keep notebooks around for jotting down ideas as they come to me. Flipping through these notebooks can help me make new lists of ideas.

On a final somewhat silly note, one of my biggest pushes to create comes from housework avoidance. After all if I am spending an afternoon on an idea or project that may eventually be for sale online or at a craft show that is work right? To me it is and that certainly beats dusting or folding laundry in my book.