New Year - New Me! De-cluttering My Art Studio And My Mind

Trying to see into the future is hard. Living in the past is even harder. I've been cleaning and sorting the art studio and working on de-cluttering my life in other ways lately. Cleaning my working space has lead to reflection and looking back over my past artwork and deciding how I want to move into the future - What skills to keep perfecting, what skills to add, and what to set aside for now, and what to just let go of altogether. This is not an easy task!

2020 is going to be a great year to de-clutter and de-stress

After 4+ decades of being 'an artist', I can see now that most of the best work I did in the past, even commissioned work, was not forced or done on a schedule. The older I get the less I want to even try to make art on a schedule, and the more I feel I should spend time with it, sometimes just sitting with it and even sometimes to just walk away from it for a day, or a week, and check back on it occasionally while I wait for it to 'feel right' and 'just happen'.

4x4" acrylic dog portrait

As an artist, inspiration often just pops into my head (literally, I can see things I want to make in 3-D in my head) but manifesting the actual art it in a physical form is not always easy or straightforward, and I often get frustrated and blame myself when things don't turn out as planned. My head and my art studio are full of abandoned or just unmade art projects. If I had only realized, many years ago, that I needed to do more meditation and less flailing about, and that I should spend more time looking and feeling, and waste less energy pushing and 'making it work no matter what', how much better would my art be now? Ah well, live and learn I suppose.

One of my latest needlefelted dog portraits

So, moving into the future, I want to learn some new skills to add to and improve my artwork. I need to make my art more of an 'expression of myself' and less of what others expect me to 'produce'. There are more layers of me than what most people ever see.

Looking forward to putting more of the 'real' me into my work!

2020 is time to finally get REAL!

Now I'm going to get back to work de-cluttering my studio and my head.

Weaving A New Future One Shuttle At A Time

I am just not sure what happened to September. It was here and then gone in a flash and now somehow it is the first week in October. Time flies and even faster when you have one crisis after another to deal with on the homefront and your creative juices are flowing again. So let's see what's in the works for this month.

First, I have been making more hand carved and hand-painted "Wild Weavers" band-weaving shuttles and having some fun with that.
 

Grab one while you still can! They are selling quickly, but I will make more as time allows and you can see what shuttles are still available here in this album on facebook. They make great gifts for the weaver in your life and are just  as useful as they are fun. Because not everyone weaves, but everyone loves art, and animals, I will also be making some little carved and painted ornaments and will post a link to an album when I get enough made up. Stay tuned.


There are other things in the works here, as well, and I will also be writing a post later this weekend about my renewed interest in making pen and ink drawings, and painting, and the fun I am having with Higgins Inks and Inktober 2019 #Inktober19 because the amazing folks at higgins sent me some Black Magic ink, some white and super white ink and I am all into re-learning the art of drawing with real pens and not just markers!

If you like what I do and want to help me keep doing it but don't want to buy any artwork right now, please consider buying me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/ghosthorsestudios

Carving & Weaving with Whales & Dragons

Well the Summer hasn't been without excitement, so far the dishwasher has broken, the dryer has broken, and I have fought off not one but two seperate attempts of yellow jackets making a nest in the wall by my back door rendering that exit useless. But it hasn't been all bad. Thanks to Keto Ben seems to be so much better and I am feeling amazing. But I digress, that is not the point of this post, so let's get on with the show!

I stopped making my "Wild Weaver" band shuttles a couple of years ago when my life fell apart and no one wanted to buy them anymore, so I shut down my etsy shop and put away my carving tools and boxed up my remaining shuttles. There were a few random requests but overall people seemed to have lost interest and they are not all that easy to make, so I just didn't make any more.

Flash forward to last month, and I can't pay my bills, so I dug out the remaining shuttles and decided to take what I could get for them IF I could sell any at all and voila! I sold all but one! Now I find myself making more of them. I have 11 in the works but working time is pretty slow and I have had all these distractions plus the weather does not always cooperate with working outside but I am started on them now and will get back into the groove and start producing them a bit faster, hopefully.

All I have been able to make so far is a golden dragon and I am working on a blue sperm whale. I'd like to keep the whale but if someone wants it I can always make another one because I'd also like to keep the lights on, so if you ever wanted a whale or dragon or bunny or sheep shuttle you can find these listed for sale on my facebook page.  As I finish them I will put them into a sale album there and they will all be sold first come, first served. I need a better system to sell them but I don't have anything set up for that now so will we just have to manage as best as possible in the short term. 


If you like what I do and want to help me keep doing it buit don't need any artwork right now, please consider buying me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/ghosthorsestudios

A Doe, A Deer

I'm really trying to get myself together here and produce enough to pay my bills before they are late, but my art studio is still a disaster, so I have cleared out a small space and have set up a dedicated place to paint these shuttles. So far so good but it's already 4:30pm 😐

Anyway, I had just been taking a picture to share on my Instagram feed of my new little workspace when I looked outside the window and saw this little doe browsing past...

THIS - watching deer walk past my window unafraid - is the only thing I really love about this house... and why I am hesitant to move to the city in spite of how much easier it might be to find a job, have access to things and just generally get around in life.

This makes me want to sell my house here to some fat rich retiree and buy a nice old farm house in New England that's big enough to house some large looms, a real woodworking shop, an art studio and with enough land to have my own woods for wildlife watching and photography and pasture and a barn to raise a few animals and put in a geothermally heated solar lighted greenhouse to extend the growing season and I could have horses again, maybe even a sleigh... and take up snowshoeing and hiking again like I did in Montana...

But for today, I'll just enjoy the deer...

Trying To Find My Way Back From The Darkness

This may seem off the subject but it does have to do with my 2 year absence from blogging, my decline into darkness, and losing my ability and desire to create art. I want to share my experiences with you, because some of you have been extremely kind to me and helped me emotionally and financially when I was at the very bottom of a deep black hole and could not see a way out. I can probably never repay you for your kindness, but maybe I can pay a little bit forward to other people who have lost hope. Perhaps in telling about my experiences it will help someone else to find a way out of their own darkness and get back on their feet.

First things first - Why has it been 2 years since I have blogged? My partner Ben has heart failure. Three years ago he ended up in the hospital literally about to die, because, with no money, and no insurance he had put off going to a doctor until I was afraid he was going to die sitting in his chair and I made a friend of his come over and help me force him into the car to go to the ER. The next few days were touch and go for him and he was in ICU and then they had to transport him to Atlanta. I could not even visit him there because I was afraid my car would not make the trip to Atlanta safely from here. When they released him from the hospital after a week, they gave him 3 months to live, maybe 6, and at the very best estimate perhaps a year or two but he would probably not be functional. They wanted him to have heart surgery, implants, therapy... all things there was no way to pay for, but as he was 'stable' and uninsured, they released him to me for palliative care at home and wished us luck. I was already overwhelmed dealing with my beloved old dog who had gone deaf and blind and was then developing dementia, so basically my whole world dissolved completely into despair. We live in a remote place and I have no friends or family to help me here, so I became a full-time, hospice nurse, vet tech, dietitian, cook, maid and caretaker 24/7/365 for both of my constant companions for the last 20 years who were both literally dying in front of me. All I could do was make the transition easier and more comfortable for them. I had no job, no income, no money for doctors and vets and medicines or even food and all I could do was try to keep them alive and as comfortable as possible. There was no time or money left for anything else.

The utter hopelessness of caring for the two of them for the next 2 years took it's toll and my previously diagnosed but untreated Depression and PTSD grew much worse, but of course there was no one to care for me and I could not afford to see a doctor. I did nothing all day every day from 7AM until well after midnight every night but clean up after my dog who had become incontinent by then, and cook and care for her and Ben all day, every day.

I tried to make art to sell, but my people skills are not good when I am happy and are much worse when I am anxious, depressed or under pressure (see previous post about Aspergers/Autism) and people pretty much stopped buying my art. Then Etsy changed their policies and no one could find my work there, so I closed down my Etsy shop.

I fell into such a deep pit of depression that I would lay in bed and cry myself to sleep every night, and I literally woke up crying in the mornings. I would try to pull myself together enough to go downstairs and wash the poop off the dog and wash out her crate and cook her food and when Ben woke up I would care for them both. When I did get a chance to be alone I would usually just end up sobbing uncontrollably. Since I am not good at asking for help but am good at 'masking', most people assumed I was handling it all OK and my family was not in a position to help me anyway, and my 'friends' deserted me because I was not being 'nice' or always 'present' for them.

My dog finally died a year ago, at almost 18, blind, deaf, and in the end, she probably didn't even know who I was. I would have had her put out of her misery long before she got that bad, but I literally did not have the money to do so, as the vets here will all charge you hundreds of dollars just to put a dog, who is clearly old and in misery, to sleep.
Now it's just Ben and I, and for the past several years he has had bad days and weeks and his medicines made him sicker and gave him type 2 diabetes which landed him back in the ER again. With no primary care doctor who will see him without insurance the diabetes goes untreated. His cardiologist will see him for a cash payment but we have not been able to afford that in almost a year. He keeps refilling the prescriptions, and I guess they help keep Ben alive. I really wish I could get him in to see another doctor, but then there would be expensive tests we can't afford.
A few weeks ago I was getting desperate because Ben has been experiencing painful peripheral neuropathy in his feet from the diabetes2. I happened on some youtube videos from D.Ken Berry MD and he said that changing Ben's diet to a KETO diet (high fat, low carbs) could possibly help or even reverse his T2D and maybe even help his heart. Ben was really sick, so what did we have to lose? I literally gave all of our food that had starch or sugar in it away to our neighbor - everything - bread, potatoes, ice cream. I spent what I could on bacon and eggs and pork roast and chicken thighs and salmon and almond flour and stevia and my daughter (who had done KETO to lose weight for her wedding last year) sent me some KETO food and a cookbook to get me started. It was worth a try, and easier than summoning a demon to sell my soul, which seemed my only other option.

We have both been doing the KETO diet for about 6 weeks now. No sugar or breads or starches, no potatoes or pasta, no fruits, no cereals or grains. It's hard to give all that up at first, I loved to bake and cook and EAT, but it is SO worth it. Ben is now feeling so much better. He is even teaching himself how to draw with youtube videos. He is walking around more and his feet are much better. He no longer has a gray pallor or looks like death. He is begining to be more of the man I used to know again. It is an amazing transformation. As for me, well I have already lost a lot of weight and quite a few of my health issues are gone, from itching skin to brittle nails and a tooth infection has cleared up (I have had it for months and could not see a dentist for it). I literally used to eat antacids by the extra large bottle full (the wal-mart version of tumms) because I had such terrible stomach pains and acid reflux, especially at night when I would lie down, and I feared it was ulcers, or stomach cancer, but all of that is gone now too, and I feel so much better. My head is clearer, I am not so depressed, so I sleep better and I am not constantly crying. My anxiety is not as bad and I am beginning to try to find a way out again, a way to start over somewhere that I can get a foothold that I never could here, and I am no longer just trying to survive one day at a time. I am making new art now (more about that in a later post) doing a lot of photography and I am even thinking of taking up some new hobbies once I lose a bit more weight and can make that possible.
If all of these health issues and depression can be fixed with just changing our diets, then we must literally have been killing ourselves by trying to eat the ADA and AHA diets full of 'healthy foods' like whole grains and fresh fruits, vegetables (some are good) and juices (worse than colas!). Those 'healthy' choices, it seems, are really sugar laden minefields of pure poison. No wonder everyone in the USA is obese, sick, and diabetes is literally killing people every day.
I'll update you in another post soon.

Thank you if you read all the way to the end :-) ____________________________________________________________________________

NOTE: I have forgotten how to do the HTML formatting here so it's a bit wonky. It's been 2 years since I blogged (or even looked at my blog!!!) and I seem to have wiped most of my older posts at some time. Maybe I should wipe the others too. Maybe it's finally time for that new beginning. I want to start blogging again, and now that I have an amazing webcam I may even start vlogging and doing some KETO cooking and art diy art videos to my youtube channel.

I would like to start a patreon but not quite sure how to do that yet so in the mean time you can help me get through this transitional stage back to being human by buying me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/ghosthorsestudios

Wild Weaving Shuttles

Besides beading I have recently also become addicted to weaving and since I needed a way to weave - looms... shuttles... and since I also do woodworking of course I can't just leave it at that... so I get a hold of some power tools and get carried away... now I make these handcrafted wooden weaving shuttles for inkle,  card weaving and tablet weaving...
 

So now I am making shuttles in the shapes of fish and foxes and dragons and sheep and cats and hares and dogs and horses.... all sorts of WILD weavers! You can check it out HERE and they can be bought HERE in my Etsy shop...

 

 are you a #fox ? or a #blacksheep ?

 

I can even make a shuttle to look like your dog or cat!

(REQUEST A CUSTOM ORDER HERE)

#Siamesecat

#tabbycat

#poodle

#jackrussellterrier

 #tuxedocat

 And then I HAD to try my hand at making some Popsicle stick heddles - these will also be available to buy soon...

 

(REQUEST A CUSTOM ORDER HERE) 

My Beading Addiction (and more...)

HI, My name is Cindy and I'm an artist. I have been an artist for my entire life. It started back in the 1960's with fat crayons and those really big pencils.... then I moved up to paint, pastels, watercolors, acrylics... then sometime in the early 1980's I found out how to do beading and there was  no turning back... now I do this... Of course this sort of thing eats up all of my time and money, so if you would like to have some I would like to make some for you because I am willing to bead just about anything for a price.

You can find me here on Facebook most days...  Just pop in and say "Hi!" and scroll down to the bottom for a preview of my next post and to see what else I am doing......

 

SPOILER ALERT!

Besides beading I have recently also become addicted to weaving and since I also do woodworking I am currently making handcrafted wooden weaving shuttles and popsicle stick heddles for band weaving... card weaving... tablet weaving... will post more about that soon... but for now you can check it out HERE and they can be bought HERE in my Etsy shop...

 #beadwork #beading #weaving #bandweaving #cardweaving #tabletweaving #beadembroidery #art #artist