On yet another night of sleeplessness I decided it was high time I found out where the whole – count sheep and fall asleep – idea originated. Which, oddly, led me to the discovery of Goats Parkour and the fact that sea otters love to eat sea urchin, which, as facts go, is kind of interesting, particularly at 3am and, anyway, who doesn’t love sea otters?
While googling – “the origins of counting sheep” I learned that this was something shepherds did before going to sleep in Medieval times, but a 12th century fable refers to counting sheep in the Middle East, suggesting this has been going on for awhile now. The article then ends with this sobering thought,
“Origins aside, the practice is an awful sleeping aid.”
Which, I have to admit, kind of took the wind out of my sails. The final sobering sentence of the piece speculated, “Maybe that’s why Don Quixote preferred goats.” Which took me to this… I know, I know…
Watching this last YouTube video made me reconsider my whole, I’ll-start-exercising-again-once-this-whole-pandemic-is-behind-us thinking and so I got up and did some exercises. All of this was done before 4am and I’d just like to interject that New York City, despite the pandemic, is busy at 4am. I know this because I see all the lights on in buildings viewed from our living room windows, but I digress and anyway, my point being that you can cram a LOT of things into the early morning hours if you’re strategic about it.
While exercising, my mind immediately leapt to otters, because that’s where the mind goes at 3:30am while exercising in a semi-dark living room in Manhattan. That’s when I discovered the first video I posted, thus ending my short-lived-newly-discovered-exercise-routine, which, okay, you really can’t call it a “routine” when you do it only once, even though your intention is to do it daily, but never mind.
So then I began designing a new project, which turned into TWO new projects, because that’s the way I think – if one is good, two will be even better and anyway it’s not even 5am – the first features an otter and some sea urchins, and the second features mandalas, because otters can only be upstaged by mandalas in my opinion, though otters AND sea urchins are a hard act to follow. Still, undaunted, I plunged onward.
I also decided that I would video tape the makings of both projects, so that I will have, not just written instructions, but videos as well. By the way if you have any interest in either project please take the poll I embedded in yesterday’s tutorial, I would love your opinion.
All of this brings me back, full circle, to sleeplessness… I have no answers, though I read that counting your breath, as opposed to sheep, can be helpful, but then, when would I find the time to get all the things I want to do, done?! That was rhetorical.
My YouTube Channel, Ariane Zurcher ~ On the Other Hand, has become monetized! Woot! Woot! This means that my channel has over 4,000 watched hours and more than 1,000 subscribers.
This may seem like one of those, ho hum, who cares announcements, particularly as it began with such a build up… however, before you leave in disappointment, here’s the good news – I no longer have a time limit to my videos, I can go on and on and on endlessly for HOURS, literally hours. Just imagine!
“If you are verified, your YouTube videos can be up to 12 hours long, or as much as 128 GB.”
Okay, okay, so maybe that’s not the good news, and anyway I promise I won’t post any 12-hour long videos or even multiple hours, seriously, I swear, though I did have this one idea… Oh come ON, I’m just kidding!
Please enjoy this photo of a beautiful rose that I took while out on my once a week walk where I actually leave our home here in New York City
Also, I can now link to external websites, like this blog, if I could only figure out how to do that, AND, once I’ve converted my website over to the new website I’m planning, which will house this blog, my Youtube channel, a shop filled with fabulous new designs and all the other things on my to-do list, I can add links to that too, at least theoretically.
And then there’s the – is this good news or is this bad news part of the whole my-youtube-channel-is-monetized-exclamation-mark-aren’t-you-happy-for-me pronouncement and that is, there are now ads on every single video I have posted. I’m expecting a huge uptick in the thumbs down button being pushed by disgruntled viewers, however, just so you don’t become one of them, please, please try to remember that those annoying ads give me a tiny, tiny, infinitesimal, seriously small, amount of money, which means I can keep posting more videos, that hopefully you love and will find helpful! A win-win, right?!
More calming photographs of beautiful flowers while all of us take a breath.
But before you say – well not really, I hate ads and no amount of helpful or even mildly useful information will make me hate them any less, they’re annoying and a constant reminder that our world has veered precariously close to becoming some creepy melding of The Minority Report (without Tom Cruise at his prime) and Blade Runner (without Harrison Ford who was just heading out of his prime, though that may not even be possible…) which, by the way, were two really good reasons to even watch those two movies in the first place, and anyway even if those two guys were still IN their prime, it wouldn’t lessen the blow… before you say all of that, let me suggest that you think of this as a tiny (think thimble-sized) tip jar, which literally holds pennies, then maybe, just maybe you’ll feel less resentful when those ads appear, ruining your otherwise blissful experience of exploring the creative process or learning a new stitch or seeing a stitch you already know all about done in an interesting new way or maybe just done in a thread you might not have thought about until now or… okay, I’m running out of helpful suggestions here.
All is well with the world…
Just know that I appreciate your watching my videos even if they are now encumbered by annoying advertisements about things you don’t care about, have never heard of or, as is the case with this blog, photographs of old men’s hairy legs with captions that read “12 Ways You Know You’ll Have a Heart Attack in the Next 5 Years” and things like that. And remember, I love you for your patience in putting up with them and will continue to post videos that, I’m hoping, you will enjoy watching.
Bizarre patterns in the sidewalk in the Meat Packing District a few blocks from where I live.
There. Full disclosure. Whew. It was touch and go there for a minute. Thursday’s post will be full of musings from New York City where we are still in the lock-down-that-will-never-end-and-even-if-it-did-who-will-feel-safe-enough-to-go-out-anyway?
By the way, you have no idea how difficult it was to find photographs to enhance this post, thereby lessening the blow of the difficult news I felt compelled to impart. But we made it. And here we are! It’s a beautiful thing.
The news here in New York City, more specifically Manhattan, is that non-essential shops, restaurants, etc will continue to be in lockdown. Tell that to the Irish Pub less than a block away that is a thriving hive of activity, selling burgers and free shots to any who “need” it. As we were hit harder than anywhere else, this means that for some of us, we have been doing the whole #stayhomestaysafe thing since the end of February. Hence the Irish Pub giving out shots and being deemed “essential”. Which, I’d like to just say here, is both funny and kind of tragic at the same time.
The pub, a hub of activity.
The good news is the gym remains shut, and therefore I do not have to wake up at 6:00am and think – should I go workout or remain in bed staring at the ceiling wishing I could go back to sleep, knowing I won’t be able to, and then going, begrudgingly, at 6:30 or even 7:00 to the gym anyway, having spent the last hour facilitating between whether I should or shouldn’t go, thereby losing not just an hour of my time to the gym, but more like two hours, which really starts to piss me off.
The bad news is I’m at an age when going to the gym and getting exercise really shouldn’t be optional, and is therefore “essential,” but since I feel like I’m still in my late 20’s, I forget. Maybe I should get that drug made from jelly fish that’s supposed to help with memory loss… And then there’s the emerging new fad – running. Not running on a treadmill, but actually running outside. For those younger than 40 this will strike you as “new,” for the rest of us this is one of those – oh right, I remember running when I was in my 20’s, when everyone wore those nylon running shorts that looked like two petals overlapping and when you ran they’d kind of flap. For many of us it wasn’t attractive then and still isn’t now, though I hear that running attire has vastly improved, except I wouldn’t know firsthand as I have zero intention of going for a run down the still-sort-of-empty streets of Manhattan.
Anyway running is more a re-emergence much like culottes or what we called in the 60’s petal pushers, but that are now referred to as capris. Amazing how a new name and a little marketing can make any old thing seem new and tantalizing. (This was less a regression and more a tangent, but really what does it matter? It’s not like you have anywhere to go or anything else to do, right?) The point is, running has become a ‘thing’ again. Or so I’m being told. One of my girl friends runs now daily, though she insists she doesn’t run as much as she jogs or, as another friend of mine called it, a slow slog. Later I learned that she had actually said “a slow jog” but I mis-heard it as “slow slog,” which I like better. AND it made me reconsider my whole – You won’t catch me running unless it’s away from something or someone and I’m in grave danger of being physically injured. I even caught myself thinking – I could do a “slow slog”… tomorrow. Clearly I need the magical elixir that only a jelly fish can provide. Which, by the way, whaaaaaaaaaaaat?????? Who knew jelly fish had these super powers, let alone magical ones and how does whatever they have, have anything to do with memory and memory loss? I cannot be the only one asking these questions. Or am I?
Don’t answer that.
So another few weeks or maybe months of #stayhome, making the whole #staysafe part of the hashtag questionable, because really, who is “safe” when you’ve been cooped up inside for going on three months or more? Or do we need to redefine the word “safe”?
Regardless, I have some stitching to do and another couple YouTube videos to record, edit and post.
Don’t forget to #stayhome and do your best to #Staysafe and if you’re feeling really adventurous go for a slow slog.
Every morning my husband and I read something we find interesting and thought provoking, and then we discuss. It’s become a ritual of sorts and has been incredibly helpful, even transformative in many ways. Not least of which is that I so often am reminded of creativity and stitching, and how both are a process and ideally, embraced.
Every day I sit in my little creative room and I stitch. Each day that act of stitching is a new experience, an exploration of the physical, but also of the emotional and even the spiritual. I gather together my materials, usually beginning with colors, and then I either sketch out an idea or just begin stitching something. What’s interesting is that sometimes things just unfold beautifully and without interruption and 45 minutes to an hour later I have something I like or, if I’m really lucky, something I love. But there are other days when that just doesn’t happen. I struggle, I tear out, I undo, redo, undo again. I walk away, I come back, I sketch an idea, I start again. Hours can go by and eventually I end up with something that I’m okay with, although perhaps not thrilled with. Still, I’ve learned to leave it alone and days later I may come back and think – I love this! Or not. The point is, it’s all a process and it’s the process I’ve become increasingly fascinated by and have learned to love.
Circle #42 took 45 minutes start to finish. Circle #44 took several hours… (And I made up a variation on the whipped woven circle that I’ve not seen before, though I do not claim to have invented this, I’ve just never seen it before, so if it exists, it does so without my knowledge of it.)
Each circle has its own personality and each one was a different experience to stitch. What I’ve learned from years of designing is that I must trust the process. I must trust myself. I must trust that if I stick with it, something magical will reveal itself, even if it’s not always in a way that I instantly recognize. It can be said that this is true for life as well.
My Tendril Circle. I can’t remember how long this took, but I had an idea and went with it. There wasn’t any ripping out and beginning again, but rather the steady process of continuing to let it unfold.
Every Wednesday I am devoting a video to creating, designing and the creative process. Those videos can be found ‘here‘. Stay tuned for a new one coming tomorrow!
This is the title of my latest YouTube video where I talk about how easy it is to talk oneself out of creating something new. Ever had the experience of thinking – “I’m going to design something new, I don’t know what yet, but something!” and then you sit down and suddenly you’re thinking about all the laundry that needs to be washed, the floors that need mopping, the faucet that should be looked at, the emails that need answering, suddenly, even your taxes seem like a good idea? Yeah… I know. Crazy. I’ve been designing or creating something, in some medium, my entire adult life and yet, this still happens to me (ok, I totally exaggerated about the bit about how I consider doing my taxes instead of creating. That hasn’t happened yet, but all the other things I’ve contemplated, I swear.) I’ve learned a few things over the years, and I discuss a couple of them in my video.
When I wasn’t taping and editing that video, I was trying to figure out how to make an Instagram Story. For anyone younger than 50 reading this – I know, I know, but I didn’t grow up with this stuff and it can seem pretty daunting. However there’s hope, even for me. Below is my very, first Instagram Story that I posted yesterday afternoon with a lot of guidance and help from my friend and chef extraordinaire Vikki, @Chefvikkik. Thank you Vikki! ❤️
My mother is a wonderful source of humor and joy, particularly during this pandemic when she’s taken to sending us (her children) videos, photographs and sometimes text of things other people have created. Here’s one of them – this one is from Daniel Emmet singing his version of Nessun Dorma. Wonderful!
And then there’s this from Taavi Metsma coming up with a great new exercise routine, which I won’t be able to do because we don’t have that many spare rolls of T.P. in our house. He’s clearly flaunting his stash, making the saying “compare and despair” all the more real and distressing!
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