Why are you a maker? What compels you to continue creating even when your days are busy, your schedule is crunched, you are in a funk, or maybe your “clever idea tank” is drier than the Sahara? Why do you still gather items found on your walks; organize and reorganize them; collect them in your windowsills; try to braid, knit, paint, sew, stencil, or otherwise process and combine them together to make something new? 

Me, I create because simply observing something feels incomplete, and nature is my pathway to taking my experiences to the next level—to discovering more. When, in the course of a typical day, I come across something delightful, simple, or imperfect, just seeing it is not enough. I need more, and I suspect that you do, too.  For example, every morning my coffee mug and I step outside to wander around the yard, looking for the remarkable in nature. One of those days, I happened across one of those little wild violets, snuggled down in the grass, almost invisible. They are unintentional visitors to the landscape and typically are ignored, then mowed over. I instantly wanted to sketch it or dye a swatch of fabric that exact color, or maybe I could knit a scarf to remind me of it, or  . . . do whatever else I could think of to further explore the magic of discovering it in the first place. Nature invites us to slow down and live in the present moment and those tiny slices of magic don’t go unnoticed to a maker. They feed our creativity.