Is spring in the air?

Well, no. It’s blimmin’ January. We still have at least another couple of months of winter to go. As I am typing this the rain is lashing against the windows and at gone 8 o’clock in the morning it is still absolutely pitch dark.

But yesterday, as I headed down the garden mid-morning to scatter a treat for the squirrels and magpies (stale nuts found during my kitchen cupboard spring clean) I spotted something that made my heart lift a little: the small green shoots of what I think are my daffodil bulbs, or possibly my snowdrops, some in the border and some in pots. Their little pointy green sprouts were so conspicuously alive against the slimy dead leaves and wet brown earth.They made me smile.

As I have written before, I don’t much like this time of year: winter, post-Christmas.

Here in Nottingham it mostly seems to rain, or else it’s just grey for months, “like living inside a Tupperware box – no shadows”, as I once heard it described. I thank my lucky stars that I don’t have still have a job to which I have to travel every day, in the cold and wet and dark. I certainly don’t envy my son his early morning bicycle commute across town.

I’m not that keen on the cold, but give me a freezing cold, crisp, clear day over this current winter dreariness any time.

I feel confined to the house and cabin fever has started to set in. If I defy the weather I risk being punished – as at the weekend, when I had been looking forward to getting out for a walk with my partner. Halfway through our stomp along the riverbank we got absolutely soaked to the skin as horizontal rain and hail engulfed us, leaving us trudging miserably through the mud with sodden trousers, squelching socks and stinging skin.

No, I’d trade one cold but bright spring morning, with it’s sunshine and promise of better things to come, for a whole week of this miserable, wet, limbo-land of winter.

The other reason I don’t like this time of year is because usually the dark and cold and wet seems to seep into my creativity, dampening it down as surely as a heavy shower. I struggle to find inspiration or new ideas and everything I start appears substandard to my winter eyes – and risks remaining unfinished as a result. Is your creativity seasonal? Mine normally seems to be.

However, this year, things are a bit different. For one thing, I have some new resources to draw upon…Back in the height of summer I joined a correspondence course from fellow doll maker Johanna Flanagan, more commonly know as The Pale Rook. You may or may not be familiar with her work, but if you are not I advise you to take a look. It is stunning (see above).

Although the course was ostensibly about doll making, its real focus is helping people to open the doors to their own creativity and to recognise and draw out what matters in their own work. Which is exactly the reason why I decided to do it.

At the time I didn’t complete all of the lessons, or fully engage with all of the course content. My excuse was that I went on holiday – and then when I was at home it was hot and sunny and I wanted to be outdoors, not sewing or sat in front of a computer.

But I did read through it all and complete some of the exercises. And it now seems that those seeds, planted back in the heat of summer, buried themselves somewhere deep inside my cloudy brain and, like my garden bulbs, they are at last starting to sprout.

The other big difference is that I am currently without a sewing machine, probably for the first time in – gosh! – ten years!

I’d been meaning to take it in for a service for ages and then forgetting, or putting it off, or finding I needed it too much. But finally, after being reduced to having to use a screwdriver handle to press an essential button because said button had permanently depressed itself so much that my finger couldn’t make it work any more, I decided its time had come. Christmas, I reasoned, was when I was least likely to mind being without it, given that I wouldn’t be working over the festivities anyway and could pick it up and start afresh, with everything working as it should, in the New Year.

Except things haven’t quite turned out that way. The panel in which the broken button resides has to be replaced. And the part needs to be ordered – from Poland. Which in these post-Brexit times might as well be the moon.

So I’m still machine-less.

But far from hindering my creativity as I thought it would, this restriction seems to have spurred me to think differently, which is always a Good Thing when it comes to prodding an idle creative muse into action. Limited to hand sewing (and being far too lazy / impatient to hand sew every seam required for cloth dolls or bears, plus their clothing – pah!) I decided to spend my enforced machine hiatus sculpting some clay faces instead.

I am a relative newcomer to the joys of sculpting with clay and am therefore still learning. I had forgotten how good it is to learn new things! Far from finding it a struggle, working with clay as opposed to fabric – and by clay I mean paperclay in particular – is a dream.For a start, you can’t easily ruin things, because with paperclay you just put what you have made aside overnight and leave it to dry. Then next morning you can reassess it and sand it, or carve it, or wet it down and add to it, to make it better. You can salvage the bits you like (a nose? A chin?) and re-do the bits you don’t (wonky eyes? Fine, dig out the old ones and add new). Expression not quite right? Sand down the offending bits and rework them. Or just cover it all up with more clay and make it into something else.

I’ve found that even if a face looks distinctly unpromising in its “raw” state, it often looks a squillion times better after it’s painted, bewigged, clothed, embellished and otherwise faffed about with.At this time of year, what I do seem to have plenty of is time. No deadlines to meet, so no pressure to come up with the goods to order. Being a deadline-driven type, this is usually a problem, but with paperclay time is my friend. The whole rhythm of working with it is different from fabric because of its greedy demands for drying time. You have to work in stages, layers, rather than pushing through from start to finish, with considerable waiting times in between adding to, or subtracting from, what you are working on.

And the results?

Well, just one so far. A small figure designed to hang on the wall, inspired by those green shoots I mentioned at the start of this very long and waffle-y post.His name is Corm, and he is just awakening from his long winter slumber beneath the earth. His eyes are still closed, but he is just starting to sprout – and is about to give an almighty s t-r-e-t-c-h and reach up towards the light.Because even though we, huddled indoors, can’t really see or feel it quite yet, he has sensed that the time is nigh and if not now, then very soon, the season will change.

The wheel of the year is turning and Corm – and I – will be more than ready for when there really is spring in the air. ♥