Boosting our Creativity - Reorganizing the Craft Room

This past month, we took all of our craft supplies outside and reorganized our craft/music room! A daunting task, but one that has freed up space and created an energy flow, giving us a "boost".

On a daily basis, we are in this wonderful room, filled with art supplies, fiber arts tools, musical instruments, and a work table that Rick built years ago.

There is even space for a silk fort!

Now, our craft magazines, music, patterns are in files. We can quickly locate yarn by color. Art supplies are organized and easy to reach. 

We can find what we need for fiber arts workshops, lessons and sales. The room has a sink and a door to the backyard...both practical elements for painting and dyeing.

To keep from spending a fortune on this endeavor, we spent $30 at the local thrift store, getting baskets and magazine holders. We pulled out old food jars and wood bowls. We did splurge on chalkboard labels from Bradens Grace on Etsy to label the nooks, baskets and jars, and love that we can reuse them over the years.

We love this hanging fruit basket that we found at the thrift store.  Perfect for little balls of yarn!

Bits of leftover roving get their own space and baskets and can be used for felting or carding batts for spinning up Junkyard Fairy yarn.

And, we finally have a place to put our works "in progress".  It is much easier and neater to grab a basket full of supplies for the doll that we are sewing or the gnome that we are knitting when the supplies are all together.  

Space for the drum set and keyboard, various guitars, as well as our work desk and computer was carved out. There was space for one spinning wheel, but not our floor loom or second wheel.  So...perhaps the ultimate room would need to be an entire house for just crafts, music and art?  

Drum Circle of Friends

This year the Griffin Dyeworks Fiber Retreat experienced an explosion of the drum circle! Word spread quickly from the previous year that dyeing and doumbeks do mix. It just seemed natural that in the setting of Camp Verdugo, among the native oaks, and in the presence of the immortal, creative spirit, ancient textile arts and primitive drumming come together. We tapped into the essence of our human instincts to bring forth and express our rhythmic souls.

With percussion, a fine line separates noise from music, and that is synchronicity, the beat with which the group becomes one. Without a steady beat, two sticks banging together are just two sticks banging together. In a group, the sticks become claves, creating a distinctive, staccato, wooden tone. We had an assortment of percussive instruments: djembes, doumbeks, bohdrans, a cymbal, shakers, a kalimba, tambourine, claves, and jaw harp! We even created some homemade percussion found on site: an empty dye bucket turned upside down, gourds with dried seeds inside, two sticks, and a thick metal bracket that sounded like a cow's bell when srtuck.

Drummers and non-drummers, belly-dancers, friends from all walks of life, our camp ranger playing his jaw harp, and a retreat attendee honoring her deceased drummer friend by bringing his cymbal, we came together, united in the spirit of friendship, the primal urge for rhythm, and the simple joy of banging a drum!