The Creative Maze

Val      

Hello there.  Today Dori and I are launching the ‘Creative Maze’ – you know, that monster I hinted at yesterday that has gobbled up our alternate Friday challenge posts?  This ‘monster’ evolved through one of our many Skype meets, where we were discussing our challenges and the way we deal with and present them to you.  We felt you might get bored if our individual challenges didn’t show any major progress, and that updating every two weeks didn’t allow enough time for either of us to make any great leaps forward.  Now, this isn’t a cop-out and we’re not shutting down our challenges.  We’re just going to extend the time between our challenge posts, and we think it will be better to update you with our piano/knitting progress in a joint post once a month on the last Friday of the month from now on.  You can see we’ve kicked this off today with an update from both of us. 

I’ve uploaded two new videos to our Labyrinthus XXI YouTube channel – one of me playing a simple tune (but one I couldn’t have played before this challenge), and one of my daughter playing ‘Arriety’s song’, a really pretty piece of music.  She’s only been playing for three years, and I hope I can learn to play as well as she does.  You can watch the embedded videos at the end of this post, or view through YouTube, if you like.

Dori and I wanted to fill the space in our posting schedule with a creative area that would be a great way to connect and share with our readers.  We know from our regular chats that life is speeding up, and we think it’s because of the 24-hour lifestyle we all seem to lead now.  There’s so much going on, ALL the time, with information coming at us from every angle.  We never seem to get the chance to do all the things we’ve chosen to, even when they’re written on a list and we’re trying to take those little bites out of the one big elephant, like the life coaches say!  Sound familiar?  We think it’s because we’re all so wired to computers, in one form or another.  Take some time to watch the people around you.  Are they on a mobile device?  Probably.  How much time do you spend staring at a screen, whether at work or at home?  I know for a fact that my kids watch YouTube, play computer games, and use social media A LOT, far more than they watch television (which was basically what we had when I was growing up and I didn’t watch it that much – there were only four channels!).  I spend a lot of time on my laptop.  I’ve even found myself going to bed and catching up on the news on my tablet, when I always used to read a book!  Yes, times have changed, and time itself seems to have accelerated, so we thought it would be great to try to take hold of it and slow it down a little.  Hence, the Creative Maze, a space within the Labyrinth that represents an escape from the craziness of life where we can all enjoy and share creativity, in all its forms.  There is a certain sense of self and satisfaction that comes from creating something...  There’s that wonderful feeling you get when you sit back, look and think, ‘Wow.  I didn’t know I could do that’.  The truth is, we’ll never know what’s inside or what we can achieve, unless we try new things, and, of course, our challenges are a part of this.  The Creative Maze will be a hub for arts and crafts, such as painting, drawing, knitting, sewing, embroidery, paper-craft, as well as for writing, photography, jewellery-making etc.  We’re planning to build a creative archive which will be full of ideas and tutorials, as well as artist and maker features.  We’d also like to start a writing club, as we’re both passionate about writing and are working on taking it further.  So, the Creative Maze will be an escape from the madness of twenty-first century life, as a hub for connecting and sharing all types of creativity.  We hope you’ll join and share with us too.

Dori

As Val has said, we are refocusing here at Labyrinthus XXI in order to better share the fullness of the creative experience. We're so excited!

My progress with knitting is still going slow but well. As I said in my last post, I'm learning more patience through knitting so I'm learning to just go with the flow. This process of learning to knit makes me think of a favorite quote:

"It doesn't matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."

 - Confucius

So I keep that in mind as I'm learning to knit, but also as I go through life :-)

I'm using the Youtube channels "Knitting Tips By Judy" and "New Stitch a Day". They are both proving very helpful and I'm sure that soon I will have something tangible to show you here.

As promised in Val's post, here are the videos of Val and her daughter playing the piano. I love the sound of a piano playing! Enjoy!



Above: Val's daughter playing


Above: Val playing