My Year of Making and Healing: POST 5: “PLAYING WITH STRING” SAMPLER BOARD

(In case you missed it, I introduce this series here.)

It is very common to experience depression when you are ill. Many cancer patients experience profound depression—and it is understandable. One way to counteract this is to keep your mind occupied with things that make you happy. Dance, fishing, painting, gardening, hiking, teaching, singing, socializing, acting…anything that makes you happy. For some people, it is their work.  It is important to make time for these things in everyday life, but it is essential when experiencing challenging times.

Because I have always found time to do the things that I enjoy, the transition was easy for me. And as a result, I experienced only a handful of times when I felt a little down during my year of therapy and healing from breast cancer.

I am always playing with ways to transform various forms of fiber into something else. Last fall I put together this Sample Board to pin up some of my experiments. By the way, it is made from a couple layers from cardboard—another fiber I enjoy transforming! Then I just covered it with some spare black cloth with a glue gun (a favorite tool!) No need for a corkboard at all.

My most enjoyable activities with fiber are spinning, knitting, and dyeing. The items on the board are mostly tiny experiments. But sometimes they are tests for planning a specific project. You will see the results of some of these tests in future posts.

For example, these two experiments will show up in future posts. In one I was trying out colors for a small  wall hanging. In the TWEED tests, I was figuring out how to create a tweed yarn for a sweater.

Check out the close-up photo of this 10 Lari note I acquired while in the country of Georgia. Look what that woman is doing!!