Facing Up To Things.

Today is likely to be a day of bits and bobs.  Not every day can witness significant process in whatever projects you're engaged in, and I suspect the closest I'll get to progress is finishing the binding on the ME quilt, and even that may not happen, given what else is going on.

As you can see, it's nearly done, and would have been finished yesterday had I not run out of steam. I'm pleased with the fabric I chose for the binding (we discussed it elsewhere); it works well.  The main task for today, though, is this.

Yup, more boxes (there's another two in addition to these).  My original intention was to have a summerhouse, rather like I had the Little Green Shed in Norfolk, albeit on a far smaller scale.  That would let me paint without making a mess in the house.  And here's where the facing up to things bit comes in.  You'll know from posts elsewhere that I tend to paint on a large scale.  Standing up.  Occasionally throwing paint.  And that's not going to happen: I don't have the energy for that kind of thing any more.  And that was a difficult thing to admit...yet another activity cut from my repertoire, and there's a very long list of those already.  This one, though, is particularly difficult; it's very close to my heart.  I used to say that I made textiles because I couldn't paint, and art textiles were the closest I could get to it.  And then, twenty years ago, I discovered I could indeed paint, so continued with both activities, in parallel.

The reality of ME, though, is that you can only do so much.  Cutting lino blocks, and having to admit to myself how little I can actually do, forced me to look at painting.  It's physically demanding, much more so than the kind of textile work I do.  I have the nasty feeling that wet felt making will have to go, too, unless I can find a willing slave to do the hard work.  Yes, I can use the embellisher (peeking out from behind those boxes).  I can even do wet felt in the washing machine, I suspect.  But it's not the same, and some half measures just aren't worth doing.  And I do have a good deal of fleece...sigh.

I do have a compromise for painting, though.  I'm going to do more mono printing, that most painterly of printing disciplines. I can do it sitting down, and I'm happy to print on a small scale, where painting on a small scale just doesn't feel doable or right; it doesn't fit the things I want to express.  Of course,  I may try developing the mono printing, and find it doesn't work for me either, in which case, I have a lot of paint to get rid of.

Dyeing, on anything other than a small scale, is also likely to go.  I'm not sure about that one, to be honest.  It makes sense to stop dyeing cloth altogether; just setting up to dye is tiring, much less moving things around.  I could dye thread (yes, I know, I've said I would never dye thread, too fiddly etc...), and that's something I really need to think about.  I seem to spend quite a bit of time searching for thread in particular colours, and not finding it, so it would be a useful thing to do. 

Will anything else have to go?  I'm not sure.  If I can sit to do it, and do it in short bursts, it seems to be okay.  Cutting fabric is difficult, because you really do need to stand to do it (trust me, I've tried).  Hopefully, though,  I'm now at the limit.  And there are quite a few things that I believe I can do, without aggravating the ME too much.  Which is just as well, really; every time I abandon another discipline, it feels like I'm cutting out a piece of myself.  ME might easily be described as death by a thousand cuts... but I'm trying not to come over as feeling sorry for myself.  Okay, maybe just a bit.  I grieve my life, and that's unavoidable, it would seem.  Eventually, there will be art about it; right now, it's too much to think about, too painful, too raw. 

I'm a naturally positive person, but I'm clearly not managing it today.  Normal service will be resumed, etc.