Miniatures

Have you ever noticed how time seems to whizz by as you get older? I wonder what Einstein would have to say about that. I am sure his theories will probably shed some light. Maybe I should do some research on it one day. It seems though that the older you get the more time speeds up. If you live a fairly modern capitalist lifestyle in the 21st century you pretty much know the routine. You spend way too many hours at work (notice how mostly overtime payments don’t exist in companies these days?), or you spend hours looking for a job. You take care of the family and do the run around: shopping, cleaning, cooking, organising and try to find some time for socialising. Mostly you get left with very little time for yourself. What do I mean about time for oneself? Well time when you get to relax, pursue hobbies and interests that appeal to you. Time to be alone, contemplate, think, pause and wonder at life and the world. The “de-stressors” of modern life. You have to work at making this time.

Now if you are like me then you probably would love to be paid for your hobby. Very few of us are that lucky. You have to be really good at your hobby to get paid well enough from it to make a decent living and then you have to be prepared to compromise so that it is marketable. I would like to be paid to read! Here is the catch though. I don’t want to read what is prescribed to me, I want to choose. I don’t want to edit it or critique it. I don’t want deadlines or pressures around reading. So there is the rub. No-one is going to pay you to read and then do nothing with it. It is solely and totally for your own enjoyment. It is completely selfish. It is pure pleasure. There are few pure pleasures in life that you can pursue without some strings attached. There is always a cost. So I will rather continue paying the cost of books than loose my freedom of choice. Yes I still love the printed media versions rather than the new digital versions. There is a romance about paper that is not replicated in the digital world. There is also a permanence that comes with printed books and to have a copy of beautiful artworks and images to look at and inspect on paper is a real pleasure that cannot be replicated on digital media (yet!).

In those moments when you want to contemplate and wonder at the world you also sometimes want to feel that you are in control. There is no real control. You merely find spaces and times where you feel more at peace with the out of control nature of life. It is in that space and time that I escape when I want to de-stress. For me that includes arts and crafts. One of my interests involves miniatures. I have a Dolls House, but as my home is a continuous state of being renovated there is no space for it. It currently lives safely boxed up in the loft. There are moments when I have sheer panic about what state it will be in when I am finally able to bring it out and play with it. Build it, decorate it, furnish it & alter it. It will be an on-going “Altered Art” project.
I do however have other projects to keep me busy. One of them that took my fancy was to create some miniature dance skirts.

Now the thing to know is that I cannot sew. In fact I am not really great at most domestic skills. I am probably pretty good at cleaning as it is pretty basic and doesn’t involve much skill. I still hate it though. I do it when I have to. I don’t know if that means I am lazy, but actually I am easily distracted from the household tasks. One minute I can be doing the dishes or washing and then I suddenly have a thought about something I want to try, like painting, card making or a planting scheme for my garden I want to research or try out. Even without the aforementioned sewing skills I still had this urge to create these skirts and they were burning in my mind. I had to get them created. In fact I am pretty pleased with how they turned out, so here they are.