Artist's Date - 2

The concept of an Artist's Date is quite simple. From Julia Cameron's book, The Artist Way, "An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative conscousness, your inner artist. In it's primary form, the Artist's Date is an excursion, a play date...." One of the rules, is that you do it alone. Simple - right. One a week.

For me - it is not easy. It is not that I don't have the time. It is perhaps that dilemma of "doing it right". Hence - a small current goal - to actually commit to an Artist's Date a week.

And that is how I find myself on a Friday afternoon - without a planned Artist's Date.

So I raid the local paper for Swerve Magazine, and find an event - very close by - "Bounty" - Fourth annual fall show and sale by the New Craft Collective - at Carpenter's Union Hall, Kensington.

I make it to the show - and there are lovely things - it is a small group of artists - about 6 - I study their work - one booth - is some fabulous fabric clutches - where the material on the outside is not the same as the material on the inside - quite lovely. Not me. Some ceramics, some prints, some jewelery - lots of jewelery - lots of clothes - that I wish I was cool enough and young enough to wear - and ummmm - my Artist's Date has now lasted about 15 minutes.

But hey, I still need to take some pictures - to spice up the blog - so I cross the street - feel very strange taking pictures of a building - (must learn to get over that) - than I keep walking - more picture taking - more is better - right - and than I see this cool looking store - and one of the mannequins in the window - is wearing mittens with little cherries on it - unfortunately - cherries will be a re-occuring theme - get used to it.

My observation skills - increase - so that I realize there is a cherry scarf, and a cherry hat - and I think - while I am getting comfortable with taking pictures - I will just go into the store - and take a picture of the hat in the store. And it I go - and the hat leaves the store in my possession - and after dropping a riduculous amount of money on the hat - I warn the sales lady - that I will indeed be outside taking pictures of the mannequin - that started my downfall.

Not so sure how Artist's Dates are going to work out - on my pocketbook!