Creativity Comes in Many Forms

My experiments with creativity involve fabric and thread or yarn or glass or clay or crystal beads. But for many people creativity involves vegetables and fruit and flour and meat. Art comes out in a lovely presentation.

That’s not me. I don’t like to cook. I cook out of love—to have something interesting and delicious ready for the Jazzman to eat when he gets home after a long day on the railroad. Not out of love for the process. For me, the hours spent preparing food could better be spent—definitely more enjoyably spent—cutting out a pattern or adding more rows to a knitting pattern.

I was in my friend’s home last night, looking at her exquisitely decorated Fraser Fir and eating her hand-crafted kolache. We were talking about all the work that goes into making kolache, and the satisfaction of making it instead of buying it.

Suddenly it dawned on me. My friend could buy a kolache, and it would be delicious. But when she makes her own kolache, she drifts away into the joyful satisfaction of measuring and mixing, forming and watching the rising process, baking and smelling the wonderful aroma.

I realized her joy in that process is the same as my joy in determining where on the printed fabric to place the pattern pieces, in using my wealth of sewing knowledge to fuse a light interfacing into the shoulder seam allowances, in slipping into the basted garment and realizing I’m going to love it.

Creativity is creativity, no matter what form. And creativity feeds us in many ways.

May you have a creative couple of days as we head toward 2014.