on series as scaffolding :: blogtober day 13

Sometimes, the hardest part of carving out a slice of creative time in a busy day, isn’t actually stealing the time. It’s the idea of finding something to work on, or making a decision and fighting the terror of the blank page.

The problem can be a lack of ideas, but also be an issue of loo many ideas, the overwhelm of time + choice making it feel impossible to get started. If I only have 5 minutes do I really want to get absorbed in a messy project working with my gel press, or getting comfy with my crochet in a good rhythm, only to have to get up and move on with my responsibilities – or that’s the message I tell myself. The times I get out of my own way and do those bigger things in those stolen moments? I’m always glad I did.

Maybe I feel like making art but in a short time frame I find myself scrambling ideas and my time disappears in brain storming. It’s not wasted time, per se, but it’s not as satisfying as getting stuck in and actually MAKING. Sometimes I feel like have a million ideas when I’m busy, but the second I have time to actually do something, it’s like I’ve never had an idea in my life. In October especially, when my blog – and by extension my craft – output ramps up, it can get a bit overwhelming trying to work out what project to start, or to make progress on. The key to making the most of the moments that I can steal from my real life is having something where the decision is already made for me.

Enter-the series.

Having a series of projects in progress gives me a super easy starting point. Once, I was dong stitch a-mystery along, but with one block a month, it wasn’t enough to fill my or craft time or my blog calendar. From there was born my needlework essentials series. For four weeks, I worked on projects to go with my cross-stitch and posted about them. It gave me blog content, sure, but it was also good to give me something besides the stitching to do. If you’ve been around here more than three minutes, you’ll know I thrive on variety and novelty. I’ve also repeated this series twice more since, again, both alongside mystery stitchalongs.

Series are also handy for keeping me on track with goals today more off a certain hobby – like Twenty Treats which helped me out of a batting rut. Sometimes it’s more a theme – Me made may – or a challenge – Messy May, 20 before 2020 – or a long project – 100 Days, card a day, even Project Life. They are all helpful at giving me a sold place to start, to get over the hump of “what to do?”. In 2023 l worked on my biggest series yet – 15@40 – fifteen projects covering all manner of to creative outlets celebrate a decade and a half of blogging and making and sharing online.

Right now, I have two series on the go – Feels Like Home, which I’ve been sharing snippets of with my paid Substack subscribers, and Murmurations, which I’ve only just started bring into the real world and out of my sketchbook. I’ve got a photo series that I’m working on for October. There’s Blogtober, obviously, and my crochet blanket which isn’t quite a series but it’s something I don’t need to think about too much to pick up and steal some creative time.

I love the way working on a series helps me feel grounded in my making – it’s not just yet another random project, rather it’s something that is connected to the thing that came before it or the thing that came after it or both. It is a mind shift, also, that helps me take myself seriously as a maker. I’m generating a body of work, not just chasing the latest sparkly rabbit down to wonderland. I’m not averse to those rabbit holes, clearly, I chase them often enough, but these days they are a fun side quest, not the bulk of my making. It’s a shift I think, that helps me feel more settled and content – my creative process has structure, goals, outlines, plans – I’m not just bouncing off the walls with the latest in thing, or scrambling for something to make for the sake of making. I also find having bounds around my making actually increases my inspiration; I’m not casting around looking for something to do, I have a theme as a launch point, and instead of looking at something interesting and thinking “oh that’s cool” and moving on, I’ll find myself ruminating on that inspiration and using it to improve the projects I’m already pondering.

It’s been a shift in my process, but like the 2020 shift that saw me start to actually FINISH things rather than just collect WIPS, it’s definitely a shift for the better.