I would like to return to you,

to your smelly bulbs,

to your sticky, relentlessly finger-dyeing paints,

to your wonderful easy-but-difficult feeling,

and make some ampersands.

love,
samantha.

(click each image to see its creator!)

gocco goodness is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

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My brain doesn’t know what to do with itself today. I’ve had not enough sleep and too much coffee, so all I want to do is talk but none of it makes much sense. The world feels distant, something to be examined from afar; then, upon examination, it all becomes too close and too enormous to even begin to comprehend.

Life is never structured; you plan out your day, assuming your actions and the actions of others will follow your scripted format. But no one, nothing, can ever be properly predicted. Everyone wakes up with an agenda to follow, a mood set, aspirations for the day. They all conflict and bounce off each other and by the end of the day some people accomplish more than they’d hope, others less… but a perfectly uninterrupted, unsurprised day has never existed. This is not a bad thing, but can be very difficult to grasp for such a ubiquitous quality of life.

Big words, little meaning, all swimming feebly on the screen but seeming so sharply focused in my head.

unpredictable is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

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With any creative project, especially one that relies on repetition to reach some unknown goal, the most important step is to look back afterward and see what has come of all those little pieces of effort. This has been a more valuable project than I ever would have guessed when I came up with it… lots of aspects turned out differently than I had projected. Overall, the year’s worth of mini-poems shocks me with its depth and significance.

What the Haiku Have Taught Me.

• Brevity.
  The compactness of a haiku is what lends it all of its depth. Condensing words, feelings, images into such a small space often grants it greater meaning than the same image would have had in another type of poem or expression. The skills developed here can be applied in all forms of writing.
• Universality.
  With seventeen syllables, it’s impossible to get too personal. Small references to memories I hold will spark entirely different thoughts in anyone else, leaving everyone with a unique and meaningful experience. The haiku lack the specifics that would make them resonate less with their readers; they serve as a jumping off point where everyone can leave with his or her own interpretation and thoughts.
• Post Value.
  Blogs are instantly more valued when there are posts occurring on a daily or at least regular basis. I had become infamous (at least with myself) for my brief, infrequent postings, and posting every day kept me on track. They were little: seventeen syllables + picture, but they had meaning and were usually something that most people could connect with on some level. My blog traffic increased 58% between December 2008 and December 2009!
• Journaling.
  Although many of the haiku were much more poetic than a simple summary of my day, they almost always had a direct connection to something that had happened to me. Looking back, I can remember very small experiences that I certainly would have forgotten without these reminders. From the beginning to the end of 2009, I can witness in myself a measurable growth: a year’s worth of maturity. And it’s really nice to be able to reflect on all the little things that would have been lost otherwise.
• Perception.
  The daily poems forced me to have a greater perception of the world. There were many days when I would be sitting at my computer at near midnight, struggling to remember anything significant from my day. Some of these sleepy haiku were of poor quality, but they have all taught me something: there is value and importance in every single day, and if we don’t look for it we’ve wasted that day.

As a final wrap-up, I want to say that I found this to be a very worthwhile project. It was challenging, because some days just don’t feel like creative days. This was a good daily practice because of its simplicity… even on lazy days I could get myself to spit out my three lines of poem. That’s the key: if you want to challenge yourself by doing something creative daily, by all means, go for it, but don’t make it something too complex or too limited. It has to be something that can grow on itself, not something that will shrink in possibility as time passes. But at the end, it’s amazing to see what can come out of those small time investments once they’ve been added up.

seventeen syllables: a reflection is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

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lily watches me work, izze bottle sits prettily, and sewing machine tempts me from its perch.

coffee custard pie with hazelnut crust. rich, thick, cold, eggy, vanilla-y, coffee-y deliciousness.

cute printable calendar from something’s hiding in here (via amy), colored in a way that makes sense to my perception of days.

mini cupcake maker, a gift to my friend carrie for christmas: an omen that signals a rapid waist size increase for all members of the suite.
(seriously: PERFECT cupcakes every five minutes. you need one…)

food seems to be the theme. food is the anti-homework.

pretty things around here is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

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Here’s an artsy grapefruit shot to start your day (because grapefruit is the best at starting days):

Now it’s time to try and teach myself about circuits.

lagging is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

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i found this shelf at the library and have named it Sam’s Shelf because it contains good colors: lots of orange books.

today is one of those days where i just wake up with an unwavering sense of boredom. i have plenty of work to do but i feel that starting that work will further antagonize the boredom and make it even more suffocating…

gray & gross is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

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new routines, new schedules, new faces, new books… trying to wrap my head around 2010 and the start of spring semester. in the meantime, order a whale!

settling in is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

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perpetually fleeting is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

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