Nourishment

"What do tadpoles eat, Mama?" I have NO idea. I assume that they need to eat to continue to grow.

As does my creative muse. I compare feeding my muse to making soup. I gather up lots of ingredients, fill a pot, and let it simmer. I look through stitch bibles, crochet books and magazines, essentially anything that has visual images. These images are the ingredients that I put into my pot (my mind). As I go about my everyday tasks, the soup simmers, as do the images in my mind. Sometimes, I taste the soup (swatch a little) and decide it's not quite ready; it might need more ingredients, so I add more.

Sometimes it needs more time to simmer. My mother used to say that something tasted better after it sat for awhile, giving the flavors time to marry. Some designs have to sit longer than others to find the elements that fit together.

Eventually the soup is ready, and so is the design--ready to be eaten, ready to be stitched.