Renewal & Retreat

To retreat is to draw back. I've decided to treat myself with a short retreat, a withdrawal, if you will, from the webbed world into a more secluded, more tangible setting: home. I'm retreating to a place of meditation, study, and creation. I retreat not into a shell or a cave but into the wild wide open of the world, out of doors, away from screens, gathering bits of renewed spirit and new perspectives along the way.

Starting April 1, I am going take a short break from the internet and in doing so my Etsy Shop will be on a little vacation (probably a month). So if there has been something you've had your eye on in my Etsy shop I would snatch it up soon before my windows are drawn shut. It will be quieter here in my little virtual alcove, too, for a while but rest assured that fresh projects will follow.

In the time that this offers me, I plan to immerse myself in Spring and with it some new artistic endeavors, some great books, and glean new inspiration from the trees, the green, the April showers.

I am excited to delve into the world of botanical dyes and eco printing, a fusion of art and nature that will encourage me to be creative in my favorite environments. I'm also looking forward to foraging wild foods of spring, especially those elusive morel mushrooms.

Already I have started reading Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks which is fantastic. I've also read his Wild Places and The Old Ways. All are just amazingly inspirational and profound. He is a wise man with  hunger for the wild. I've dipped back into Emerson's Walden for a little nature walk around the pond. I've a million ideas that I'd like to make time for and new mediums I'd love to try. In Winter ideas stew and steep and in Spring I begin to do things, make things, write things. Spring is a fertile field.