The Bewildering Pine - Fourth Friday October 27th

Welcome to my first Fourth Friday Post. Every month, on the fourth Friday I will be writing about, and sharing insights into, the Bewildering Pine; a world I've been creating, in one form or another, for as long as I can recall.

I should start by explaining and separating the two main parts of this series and that world.

One, the "Bewildering Pine" is the fictional world where my first (in process) novel length book, "The Ledgerkeepers", is set.  It's a fantasy world that pulls from the many influences and inspirations I've had over the years for just such a world. The world is populated by "old world elves",  simply referred to as folk, and not the High elves of modern fantasy.

And the second aspect, the Bewilder and Pine, which is the creative outlet for my miniature making. It's my Etsy shoppe and where many of the larger ideas I have been formulating began.

Here, I really want to focus mainly on the book, that world and it's ties to my childhood and adult life but some parts of that world are derived from the experiences and products in the shoppe, and the shoppe in great part inspired the book and everything else that will come beyond it. . .  so I will want to dive into both over the coming months.

Today, for the first installment, I do want to focus on what the undertaking of the writing of this book has meant to, and done FOR, my own heart.

It would be easy, I think, for an outsider to look at my miniature work, my writing here and my views on life in general and assume I am stuck in a loop of nostalgia and whimsy, not that there would be anything wrong with that. . . and to a degree it's true. :) I've come to a place in my life where I tend to keep most anyone who I feel is too caught up in the outside or "real" world at arms length. Not because I want to pretend that world doesn't exist but because I believe how much that world affects us is almost entirely up to us most days.

Simply put, if  I allowed that world to inundate my daily thoughts and emotions, I could not do what I do for a living. It's not an escape, it's the way I go about and make sense of that very same world while at the same time, giving life to, and protecting, another world I've held within for so many years.

Somewhere along the way I decided that we each have our roles to play, I won't say it's our destiny or our calling. . .  or even our path. . . just that we may choose what we do with each moment we are given and for me, that choice slowly over the years became one of deciding that I wanted to put as much beauty and joy into the world as I can every day.

I discovered early on in the Etsy/maker-of-things world that the more I attached stories to my little creations, the more people responded to them. The more stories I created, the more the world that is now the Bewildering Pine of the book, started to creep in and influence my making and the stories I wrote to go with.  Tart Carts, crooked towers, shop and village names, houses with different architectural styles, little enigmatic elves who live in the woods or in hermit like solitude. Monks with face like mimes. Old tongues and sacred traditions lost. With each addition another little piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Now, this is going back some eight years to the beginning. In the last few years, the separation had begun to widen in my heart and in my creative desires. I started spending more time on the "side project" which, at the time, I could not have told you what exactly it would become. The world of the book is now vastly different from the world of the Etsy shoppe.

There are still bits and pieces that remain constant but as characters, locations and I suppose, most of all, the plot for the Ledgerkeeper's story started to reveal itself to me, I saw the chance to speak about more than just a fantasy world. It's aim is to be a novel that speaks to cultural identities and traditions, how things change, why things change, and, of course, how everything is not what it seems when story is a foggy subject at best.

As for the writing, this has been a crash course. I've never even attempted to write something like this before. Not seriously. Poetry yes, short stories, yes, letters of all kinds to friends and family, yes.

But to sit down and say, "Right, I want to write a novel!" No, that never crossed my mind once really.

What I've learned more than anything in the last year since I took up the task is WHY so many people start writing a novel, a short story, a memoir and then quit. Because it's reallllllly HARD and it requires something I feel blessed to have been able to find in an already busy life. The space and a routine to do so!!

I believe it's the hardest creative thing I've ever set out to do.  It requires persistence, time commitment, belief in it and in yourself. More than all of those, I think, it requires a desire to say something through your fiction. To tell your story or offer a viewpoint.

Nothing has ever brought me face to face with my own resolve and motivations like writing.

I chose the genre of fantasy for obvious reasons. Mostly because at the start of a fantasy story or novel is the world building part of it. That world that only exists in your head has to be fleshed out. Mapped out too. Not all at once but, at some point, you have to think about it all. The cultures, the limitations, the food, the climate, the magic etc.

Often you'll hear writers offer the advice "Write what you know". For some, like David Sedaris, that can mean your close family. For others like George RR Martin, that means the world you've been toying with in your head for your whole life.

To me, the love required is the same and evident in both I think. So yes, write what you love as well as what you know. The great thing is, you can learn so much that you don't know when you start! I may have a fantasy world in my head but it's littered with real world objects and situations that need to be right for the story. How does a water clock work? How were certain vegetables farmed 500 years ago? What happens when you have two moons, not one. The list is endless.

I love fantasy. Myth, legend, magic, the realm of Faerie, elves, surreal nature.

The funny thing is, I've decided to go a whole lot less in the original direction I assumed I would.

I've left magic off the board in this world for the most part. What magic does exist is born more of our own old world beliefs and traditions and the faith of folk in that.  I've seen first hand in my life how powerful that can be. So, if it's tinged with magic in the Bewildering Pine, it has roots in something you may recognize. There are no great powers, no mages and wizards. No dark forces. . .  at least, not magic ones.

The main characters as well as most of the supporting ones are all based on people I have known as well. From childhood friends to folk I know in the small town I live in currently. All wonderfully unique in their own ways and human to a fault.

I personally fall in love with books for the characters, not just the worlds the author created for them to dwell in.

My favorite books of late all share the core foundation of having very strong characters as well as the world around them being interesting too. But that doesn't mean they have to be a total creation of the imagination.

A Darker Shade of Magic
A Green and Ancient Light
The Queen of the Tearling
The Foretold
The Night Circus

All of these portray vastly different worlds: Four parallel Londons,  a non-descript,"post war" European setting,  a realm from our very own possible future, an Amazonian tribe/landscape and the underbelly of 19th century London.

What they all have in common are main characters that are stronger than the need to suspend your disbelief because they are relatable. Now, I won't ask you to read any of those if fantasy is not your thing. . .but if you want a short story that sums that same idea up, of the character being more important than the system of magic and the world, I'd suggest seeking out "The Night Market" by Holly Black. It's simply one of the best short stories I've ever read. It's got a bit of fantasy, a bit of magic too, but it's all revolving around the main character, her love of her family and the ending is the true magic of the story, of the world. . . of each of us in our world. It's well worth the read.

So here I am. over a YEAR into this project and just moving forward every day. I spend two hours each morning from 5:30am to 7:30am sitting in the silence of the early hours at the laptop writing, researching, plot sketching, exploring.

Each day starts with feeding and loving on our cat, Bhu, then venturing out to walk to the old-school bakery which is just a block away from our place and opens at 5:30am ( I know, lucky right?) and the day starts with something like this

French Press and a fresh apricot danish. Sorry about the lighting. . . but it WAS taken before 6 in the morning!

Finding that space, that time and making it a routine was key to getting along with the writing. It has also been the best adventure ever! Bringing this world to life and creating the characters and all the little details is like nothing else I've done. I 'm hooked. It's no longer hard. No longer a chore. It's just one more thing in my daily routine and I try not to let anything keep me from it.

In the future I want to talk about the beauty of routine and how it is such an important part of my days. I learned it at retreats visiting a Zen monastery years ago. Their set hours for meditation, meals, down time, work etc were a novel idea to me who, as a creative soul, could not stand the notion of incorporating that into my own daily creative world. Yet. . .

Immediately I saw why it worked but I still fell off the "routine wagon" very quickly afterwards. In the last 8 years or so, learning to keep to a schedule has become essential with all that I want to accomplish and make.

The routine I have now is set in stone and it has to be a pretty extraordinary thing for me to break it..

I'll also want to discuss finding your "voice" thru writing.  For me, that has been the hardest part of taking up a novel. Different writers create in different ways. It was yet one more reinvention and I seem to have found my own methods to get me there along the way.

At this point in the Ledgerkeepers, I have a prologue and four very strong character chapters. One for each of the main characters. Each also explores a little of the world around them and each, before I found my voice, were wayyyyyy too long expositions of pure world building and description ( a common flaw in fantasy writing) and less of the characters.  One of these chapters, for example, was near to 70 pages of discovery writing which I condensed and stripped away to what is now an 11 page first chapter. I found the characters and found THEIR voices, their motivations and their desires.

I'm excited to start sharing some of that world with you all here. And while I am not quite there yet, I want to put out there that I am going to be asking for Alpha and Beta readers in the coming months. (beginning in January most likely) If you have any interest in being among the first to read what I am creating, you can let me know and I will put you on the list of people to open the early chapters of the story up to as it falls into place.

As an alpha reader, I'll ask you to only focus on,  and give feedback for four distinct things:

1. What bores you
2. What confuses you
3. What don’t you believe
4. What’s cool? (So I don’t accidentally “fix” it.)

That's it! No long explanations are necessary. Just simple observations as you go. No other input is required at that first stage. I'll likely post the chapters here with password protection on them and send you the password when I am ready. I tend to like rather short chapters, 8-12 pages on average so it's not a lot of time commitment with each. 

Here and there I'll be posting little excerpts on the open blog too. In addition to "The Ledgerkeepers", I am also creating a book born from the world building itself. An "atlas",  I suppose, with many of the descriptive details of the villages, architecture, maps, belief systems, flora and fauna, folktales and the ancient origin stories for all of the type of folk who dwell in the world of the Bewildering Pine. As if someone were archiving the world from within the world itself. 

Alright, I think that's going to be good for this month's opening installment. I know it was a bit scattered but we'll find a direction with it in the next month or two. 

Welcome along for the ride! I look so forward to sharing more of the world with you in the coming months on fourth Fridays. I hope you will enjoy it too. 

Thank you for coming by and reading! XX
Nicolas

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Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:

1st Friday of Each Month - New work ( New to the shops and a look at the making of one item each month)

2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me) 

3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where being a "maker-of-things" is my full time job.)

4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)

New Work - April 1st

March was simply a lion. Hear it roar!!!

Back from my trip March 6th and I never let myself recover fully. About 10 days ago I caught the first flu that I have had in 7 or 8 years. In fact, in that span of time, I had not even been sick, not a day.

I suppose I was feeling invincible. Not so much anymore.

It's humbling. I used to power thru illnesses and just work my tail off anyway. This one though, Ugh.

In my youth I delved into a lot of alternative beliefs and one of them was the application of seeing an illness as a cleansing of body, mind and spirit. While I may have simply exhausted myself, in the physical and mental areas recently, I have no doubt that cleansing was needed all the way down to that spirit level.

I hope to recover completely and re-immerse myself fully in the imagination and paracosm of this world Sofie and I have built. One thing traveling does is make it perfectly clear how successful we have been at doing so. Our world simply does not "fit" in with many others. As soon as we get outside of it we realize how much of the world seems to be in a constant state of being on edge. Rushing around. Frantic and distracted. We've simplified our lives so much that it seems rather abrasive to go outside of it at all. And, of course, we rarely need to. That's part of the magic of it all for me.

So I will be indulging fully in the world I adore so much every possible moment this month. Hopefully that means lots of new work, lots of writing and perhaps the first few steps forward for those projects surfacing soon for everyone to see.

In the meantime, here are some of the new pieces from the last few weeks that I managed to get done before and after the flu ran me down! :)

Wishing you a Lamb like April in so many ways. . . Enjoy the images that follow and blessings to you all!

xo
nicolas

Altar Mini's are popular too it seems! :) Who doesn't covet miniatures? 

Happy to have figured out the Hexagon roof for this round house!

Multiples always make things even more adorable I think. :) 

I get away from the potted houses now and then until I make one, then I think, Why do I do anything else? :) 

Shadow of the Sphinx has been steadily getting busier for a year now. More custom pieces such as this Thoth.

Or the Tefnut (no it's not Sekhmet!) on the left which I made to match/accompany the Shu on the right as a request. 

Scale is always a little confusing to some. So I decided to separate out the N scale (smaller) houses and give them their own "world" known as "The Smidgekins", an island group in a far off sea. More on that in the coming weeks.

The Tower is a Smidgekins building too. That little villager is just UNDER 1/2" (1.25cm) tall!

And a Catgoyle, always a fun creation to bring forth! Love the fishing line whiskers and the regal pose! :0 

New Work - June 1st

Hello dear ones!

I am excited to show you some of May's production! I'll be sharing more about this later in June but I took the month of may off from almost all custom work to focus on a little experiment.  What happens if I forego the custom order route for just making what I want to make? How will it effect sales? Would I feel more rejuvenated and happy simply making whatever I feel like making every day again?

Well, the answers to those questions I will share soon but a little hint is that I'm spending June making sure I complete all my current custom orders (which has backed up from not taking any in May) and keeping July, August and September as completely free of commitments as possible to do the same for an extended three month period!

This is not to say I am doing away with requests or custom work, just changing the way I approach it, frame it and work on it so that I can continue to explore what I love most, the unending course of un-contained imagination. :)

Ok, more on that, as I said, in the near future. . . for now, here are some of the new items created last month for my shops! I hope you enjoy. . .

This was a request for a birthday gift for a 10 year old that I could not refuse. . . 6 x 6 inch "Fairy Village" frame/shadowbox with tiny N scale houses, winged fairy and enchanted landscape! 

Living on a tidal bay inspired the idea that a fairy tower, perched on the shore of such a place, would need a door high enough to withstand exposure to the high tide while offering access at lower tides too! 

Formerly my "Alpine Fairy" houses, I have reintroduced this series as the Fairy Houses of Chatsworth Village so as to be able to write/sketch them into my world of the Bewildering Pine. I'll be adding two more to the shoppe today. 

New Mini Garden Gargoyles with their own little flowering pots!

The completed trio of Ancient Egyptian deity "busts" I spoke of a few posts ago. . . Sekhmet, Bastet and Khnum

Two Aten symbolic pieces that were a request too. I am fascinated by the reign of Akhenaten and Nefertiri. They moved the entire capitol city of Ancient Egypt to the desert (Armana) and reorganized the pantheon putting worship of the Aten, their solar Deity, at the top. These were Tutankhamen's parents. During Tut's short reign, the entire process was reversed, the new city dismantled, and much of this period was stricken from all text, tablets and monuments.  

Yes, I know, everyone is making tiny elves these days. . . but I wanted to add my own little twist. Hard to see in this image but he is in a flat mini basket with teeny pine cones, moss and green fluff. Clothing is made from handmade papers and twine. Hair is a shock of mohair

This little one is ready to go on an adventure with the handle basket!
Same idea as the one above for the clothing and hair here. 

And that's that. . . a selection of where my imagination went this past month. Much excitement to share in the coming weeks: Book progress(perhaps even a peek into one of the first stories?), Illustrations/sketches, new work, childhood memories, less custom work, more new ideas, a peek at my little town, the joy of our container garden and more. . .

Hoping June, be it the onset of your summer or winter season, is filled with magic and enchantment in your world too!

xoxoxo
nicolas

Kitsurada - Land of Foxgoyles

One of the many new projects I'm determined to set time aside for this year is the developing of a few pieces of the larger fantasy world I have been creating. Fleshing out characters, timelines and histories, locations etc etc so that, in the not-too-distant future, I can create more stories and, hopefully, complete books about them. From children's books to fantasy shorts and perhaps one good full length book/novel or two somewhere down the merry road.

I began diving into this idea at the end of 2015 to allow myself a "running start" at the mountain ahead this year. :)

The first project I chose, though I was already strongly leaning towards it in November an December, was decided by a few lovely reviews and a message I received about my gargoyles in Bewilder and Pine. The review was from a customer who purchased a Fennec Foxgoyle and custom ordered one other Catgoyle to go with it.

The note was actually from a customer who purchased one of my very first Bewilder and Pine Foxgoyles almost a year ago and who kindly wrote to let me know that she not only loved it when it arrived but, that a year on, she still looks at it every day and smiles when ever she sees it in her home.

That note came just as I was beginning the long process of creating the map you see below and, with just a bit of doubt creeping in as it tends to on any new. . . and large. . . project, it was the last little "push" I needed to allow me to dive in fully.

Kitsurada is the mythical home of the Foxgoyles in my fantasy world. I have so much to flesh out so I cannot tell you much more right now but I chose this project to begin with for two reasons. One, I LOVE maps! Old maps especially and most games I played or made up as a child included some sort of treasure map, star map, forgotten world map etc etc.

I've always made them, even in my 20's and 30's I'd doodle them here and there on napkins or scraps of paper. And I cannot fathom a fantasy novel that does not include a good, informative map! And as I may have mentioned before, the series that brought me back to rediscovering my love of comics and really, my desire to delve deeper into the makings of childhood too, "Mouse Guard" by David Peterson, first captured my heart with the lovely map of that small mouse-centered world.

The second reason is my love of the many varieties of Foxes. And the idea of making the mythical creatures of this part of the world something based on "stone magic" appealed to me greatly. 

Of course, the mythical creatures have their very own mythical creature too. . . ahh so much for reality. :) 

But this is Kitsurada. . . still very much in progress itself.

Part 16th Century Map and Part Digital art and a Lot of Imagination

This project began with an old 16th century map. Though I altered the main island, the form of it just seemed perfect and, being in the public domain, I borrowed that main landmass.  wiping it clean of it's interior, I set about adding the forests, the lakes and towns, the ring of volcanic formations, the portolan lines, compass rose and scrolls. . .  and the Japanese inspired wave pattern that runs through the oceans was what really brought it to life for me. The whale and ship are from another 15th century map and I created the Kitsu Isles to the right arranging them in a somewhat fox-like formation. :)

The volcanic spires in the sea that surround the land protect it from raiding parties of ogres and trolls making it an almost insurmountable defense. . . almost.

Each of the seven forests are named for one of the Foxgoyle Breeds that inhabit/protect the populated central part of the island. Fennec, Kit, Swift, Red, Corsac, Azaras and Sechura. There is also the mythic tale of a nine-tailed creature living on the Kitsu Isles. . . very much like the modern Kitsune Foxes.

There is a developing backstory to the foxgoyles origins and their purpose.  But what is most fun for me is that the story grows with each iteration. I just finished the first of the Fennec and Kit foxgoyles for the shop this year (see a few posts ago) and just making those has given me a whole added dimension to the story as I went along working on them.

In the end, later this year, I hope to have the Foxgoyle story as a stand alone mini-book, hand-bound and printed with map included, to offer thru the shop or as a special addition to a Foxgoyle figure.  Perhaps the book will have a mini-mini Foxgoyle to go along with it? Who knows!

Anyway, welcome to another part of my world. . . I hope it inspires and delights!

Thank you for looking!

nicolas

New Year, New Directions

So, as some of you know, I have had difficulty maintaining a blog with any regularity! That's not really an issue for me for the most part since I do not really keep up or participate on any social media. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram etc etc. I've always thought that, as a creative maker of things, the best course of action/promotion is to just make more things. Explore new ideas. Better my skills. Try new techniques.

But, I DO love to write and to share what I am creating. . . so I am going to make a more concerted effort to tie my blog into my shops for the first time so that customers/visitors in all of my Etsy and online shops, as well as the wonderful blog friends I have already, can keep up with what is new and what I am creating going forward. I felt this was especially important since I am taking some definite turns of direction for the year ahead in 2016.

Up until now, for the 6 years I have been creating and making my living thru Bewilder and Pine, Shadow of the Sphinx and My Antarctica, I have just allowed myself to drift from idea to idea all the while building a world within those shoppes that, at this point, I feel is now ready to move in very definite directions. But, when creating 7 days a week to meet demand for fairy houses, Kemetic statues and amulets and custom pieces of all sorts, I have often let the larger picture go due to those demands or just going wherever my heart takes me without much direction. (And I have a lot to say about that in the coming year!) This, inevitably, leads to the larger, more involved projects being started and then left to sit while the day to day creative work goes on.

What I feel I need to do now is to begin to build the world of "The Bewildering Pine" in more complete stories and finally accessing areas I have yet to explore too. I've been wanting, for a few years now, to move towards complete storytelling and world building in "the Pine" and away from just creating individual pieces solely for the shoppes. After another wonderful holiday season that saw my shops pretty much depleted, I decided the New Year would be the best time to start anew.

So I have a very "big picture" idea for Bewilder and Pine. And for Shadow of the Sphinx,  I think it means just less undirected exploration and more focus on really refining the style I've created without allowing that shoppe to take away too much time doing projects that require a lot of planning or learning new techniques right now. And for My Antarctica? Well, I have not created any new digital art for four years but I DO have an idea for a series of very abstract future-scapes, rather sci-fi-ish, involving some of my miniature work and the watery-coloured backgrounds I love to combine digitally so much.

I'm planning to write at least two blog posts a month, one on the first of every month with new ideas, progress on the larger project of world building and sneak peeks at what's new and what's to come. One perhaps on the mid-month as well to just talk about what I am doing and where things are in a larger sense as well as telling more internal stories about how I got here..

I am changing the whole way I go about creating and listing for the shops, doing it in batches instead of a piece a day or so and this will also give people a chance to see ahead of release what is coming.

And I do, truly, want to talk a lot about the lifelong paracosm of my world. Why I created it, where it comes from, and why I strive so hard to keep as much of the "adult world" around us at bay and keep my inner world so simple and undisturbed by that outer and, in my opinion, equally illusionary world.

Here's one little story to leave you with:

My mother who is in her 80's just recently had her bathroom floor redone. With the exception of replacing the base carpet, this had not been done in over 50 years. When the workers were done installing the tile, she asked the one worker if the floor extended all the way under the heater (she is a real worrier about anything causing a fire!) and when he ran his hand under the baseboard heater to show her it had plenty of clearance, he knocked something over. . . and he pulled it out. . . and it was a tiny little model train figure. It must have been mine when I was a child and, likely, during one of my many world building endeavors around the house, I put it there at some point and never took it out again.

It has, essentially, been "standing guard" there for probably 35 years or so.

She had to call me right away to tell me and I was glad she did. That little piece of myself is something I strive to find in everything I make. And those earliest days of world-building are what I constantly wish to reclaim in my world, and in my daily life, with each new opportunity.

Now as I look around the studio, I see that it is filled with new pieces that stand guard just as that little figure has for all these years back home.

And, inside, all the memories and nostalgia of that time remain undisturbed.
Always on watch.
Always near.

So this year, in short, I plan to do more world building and less order fulfilling. :)

Tomorrow I will post the first monthly update and start redirecting people here from the shops. That post will be focused on the first of my ideas I am trying to finish and formulate for the year ahead. A little remote set of islands in the world I create called Kitsurada and the Legend of the Foxgoyles who protect and defend it's citizens.

I hope that it will provide a glimpse into the larger world I create and an inspiring poke into the possibility of the worlds, perhaps yet unbuilt, around and inside of YOU!

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year and a creative year ahead!
xo
nicolas

PS: As for custom work. . . in case one might get the impression that I do not enjoy it, here is something I made for a client this holiday season that I absolutely loved every moment of!

Enjoy and . . . BELIEVE!

Idea in Process - Amulet Magic!

I adore amulets.  .  . In my Shadow of the Sphinx shop , half of my sales are of my little mini altar and wearable amulets.

In my paracosm of childhood, amulets had such power. Luckily, my mother was a lover of costume jewelry so I had oodles of fun things to create stories around and that she did not mind me "borrowing" for my imagination's sake.

So lately I have been realllllllly wanting to create amulets that will hail from the "Bewildering Pine" world to offer in Bewilder and Pine as well. Of course, the fun is in the making and creating of the "ancient" stories to go along with them.

Now, for the finished product, I envision setting up a very dark, apothecary shoppe look and feel for the photography where I would display the amulets in their magic boxes and with their scrolls of authenticity etc etc.

But the amulets are where I am beginning and below is the first iteration of one of them. A simple polymer piece with an iron rust patina. aged and mysterious. This one, I believe, would ward off
nightmares and keep the wearer safe from dark ogres and malevolent shapeshifters.

I love the aged patina look and the mysterious golden symbols inscribed. It feels magical to me even at this early stage.

Sort of a nightmare capture device. The box shape and the hole in the middle to lure the nightmares within. Woven with repellent spells to ward of all of those other nighttime creatures too.  Could have used this as a child! :)

Anyway, that is the beginning of it and I wanted to post it because, in my world, too many ideas get lost in the shuffle of maintaining the shops and all the custom work.

I have to remember, sometimes, that what inspires me most is making what I truly want and love, and that only those things really inspire me and refresh my soul. : )

Thanks, as always, for believing!

nicolas

PS, I've been inspired this week by a book about Stonehenge that I have been wanting to read for awhile. It goes into detail about the larger community of sacred circles around the Stonehenge site and how the key to unlocking so much of the mystery seems to have come thru the ancient belief that stone circles and monuments were for the dead while wooden/timber circles and monuments were for the living. 


For years it was believed that Stonehenge was an anomaly, an enormous monument sitting all alone on the Salisbury plain but, in the last 15 years,  research and new digs have shown that to be anything but true. This is very inspiring to me. . . time keeps revealing the secrets of the dead and the idea of certain materials being linked to the living or to ancestral dead is so remarkably simple to me. 


I was fortunate enough to visit Stonehenge in the late 80's and remember it as if it were yesterday. A cold, rainy Spring day with only two other people around the entire time I was there. Those stones in that setting, even with the modern highway that runs beside it. . . only the Badlands of South Dakota have ever given me the same feel. Ancient, magical. . . eternally alive with unending stories to tell.

A Dose of Fairy Magic

Beyond the crafting and selling of items there are many aspects to being a maker-of-things that I absolutely did not expect but so enjoy.

 At the top of that list is the connection and interaction that develops with many of our customers. The exchanges that go on beyond the transaction are often born out of the desire to share stories or experiences or just random thoughts on the world of faeries and possibilities. And these can create longstanding bonds that may extend for months or years.

I have grown to love and cherish these interactions so much.

Once in awhile we also are given the chance to share thoughts and messages that seem "fairy-sent" 
 and such was the case today when one of our customers, who recently purchased a fairy house from us, was remarking that she did not feel fairy spirits were likely present in her own home due to something she does that she believed would be a detraction to fairy spirits.

Because this "something" falls into the category that I would consider to be purely modern "human ideals" and more specifically a cultural idealism of the last 20 years or so, I felt inspired to send the following along to her. . .  by the way, her message ended with the question "Are you truly believers?"


The reply:


Oh we are true believers!

And let us say that we do not think fairies discriminate against certain "earthly",human ideals There is, in the heart, something greater than human idealism that fairies are drawn to and, we believe, that intangible energy and heartfelt awareness is what creates that fairy presence around us.

Openness and a compassionate, welcoming heart. The desire to revisit or resurrect that magic of childhood or of any period of one's life where possibility and imagination ruled or were in our awareness. Even just the desire or the need to know that we are not alone here. . . . all of these things are, in our experience, the true portals to visitations and fairy magic.

There is an old ctale, Gaelic or Celtic I believe, that speaks of the "little man". A sprite who tends to move objects and personal items to places the owner realizes are out of place and often just moments after they have been set down! Even this type of sprite, which is among the most common of the "visitations" humans receive is usually presented to someone for reasons we cannot always fathom. But "they" know we are in need of some magic in this world and so it may appear in many different ways. Gentle nudges to our consciousness. . .

In YOUR world and your home, just be open to whatever comes and presents itself as a sign. The simplest things really. . . occurrences that you may have not even given a thought to before can be recognized as these visitations and signs. . . just stay open to the possibility as all of them are the doorways to deeper wonder and possibility. All of them come with no strings attached.  . no more of a "price" than our belief and the space made in an open heart.

Perhaps even a message like this, though flown through the cyber-spaces from our fingertips, may in fact originate somewhere else and is "given" to us to pass along? Who can say really. . .

We hope THAT magic and possibility is what you find in everything that you see. ;)



nicolas



Now, I LOVE writing such messages. I love pulling people back to this side of the landscape and horizon. Sometimes I think it really is about just giving people permission to open up and believe.


That's what it took to get me to a place, after so many years, of believing I deserved to do what I do and be a maker-of-things and that I could be a vessel for that magic to enter this world. Now it seems like I cannot imagine a time when I did not know this or believe it as such. . . but it took countless gentle and not so gentle budges and impressions. Moments of being "steered" one direction or another to keep me on the path.


I have known since I was a child that I was indeed "watched over".
 
Once or twice in enormously life altering ways and then again, in dozens of those slight, imperceptible changes of direction along the way too.

And the purpose is, in my way of seeing it, always small. I was, for years, too caught in the grandiose ideals of my own life and purpose and not ready to see that the simplest and most natural of our abilities are often the roots of the greatest purpose we may have.

Thank you faeries for all the love and guidance in all the forms presented thru these years.

I never forget. . . 


nicolas

The Chronicle of Secret Riven

"On the nights when she wasn't too tired, she studied folklore and tales written in languages she could now read fluently. She welcomed the return of old, almost forgotten enchantment. She discovered again the promise of wonder . . . no matter what good and evil was involved."

from "The Chronicle of Secret Riven" by Ronlyn Domingue

I have been engrossed in this book the last few weeks. This is the second volume in the "Mapmaker's War" trilogy by this author. If you have not heard of or read these books, i highly recommend them. While considered a trilogy, it is not necessary to read the Mapmaker's War first. They are so different that one might read both and not realize they are connected in any way. The Mapmaker's War  takes place in a distant past from The Chronicle of Secret Riven and there are only slight allusions to the first book's story in Secret Riven.

What the Chronicle of Secret Riven IS, however, is a slow and gentle unfolding of a young girl's life story. . . truly a chronicle in form and verse. . . beautifully told and meandering through mysticism and fantasy. . . heartbreaking and reassuring all at once.

The paragraph above is one of the touchstones of the book for me. A girl who is born to enchantment and magic but tries to ignore it and move to the "grown up" world of expectation and "normalcy" is reminded, again and again, that her path is not the same as others. That she is fated to something few will understand and fewer will share.

What I often  take from books like this is a reassurance that the stories we tell about ourselves are, ultimately, what decide the degree of happiness we will experience in our lives.

What we carry forward, repeat and reshape. . . even re-create is OUR reality. I have reinvented my life many times. Changed locations, name, career and, ultimately this all led me back to the origins of my own mystic beginnings and experiences.

No matter the shadows or the light, it is a choice. . .. every day a new chapter and what carries forward with us is, ultimately, a result of our own authorship.

I read books like this to remember.  . and to return. . . to my own origins.

To do otherwise would be to turn my back on what simply is, and always has been, my reality. 

nicolas

Ten for Thirty

I am, by all accounts, at my best in a strong routine. I don't fit creativity in here and there. . . it is the main focus of my days. I found, thru the years, that when I maintain a fairly monastic-like schedule that is centered around one or two main things, I am able to be at my most productive.

And as it turns out, my happiest.

But this means that many things and activities are sacrificed and get left out. It is  harder for me to make time for something once a week rather than every day.

It is one of the main reasons I seem to be unable to keep up a blog with any regularity here too.  I'll think of so many things I want to say or show but, often, the thought of trying to squeeze in half an hour here and there without it being scheduled is just hard to make a reality.

And there IS so much more I want to share here.  Ongoing work, thoughts, plans and experiments.  .

So I decided to try an experiment this month. I want to blog every morning, scheduling it into my morning check in's and day planning. But to do so I have to be realistic and say that I am only going to allow myself 10 minutes each day to do this.

Ten minutes for thirty days.

I hope you'll come along for the ride and enjoy the things I share here this month. If it works and I find that it has become a beneficial part of my days, I will continue it beyond the end of the month. 

So, without any delay ( as I am already 8 minutes in for today!) here is something new that I just finished for a client. It's a custom set of five miniature terracotta warriors.

This was right up my alley as I have long held these figures in my imagination and am overwhelmed by the thought of them being created in such scale and arranged as an army of the afterlife for Qin Shi Huang the first Emperor of China.

I'll just add that it is probably a good thing I did not know about these figures in my childhood for, as the boy who created an Egyptian tomb in his bedroom closet by drawing hieroglyphs on the walls and making royal statuary and jewelry out of tinfoil, fake jewels and paper I shudder to think what I might have tried to create to represent this in my paracosm. I can just see my grandmother going into the canning room in the basement of our house to be confronted with an army of papier mâché and cardboard warriors watching over the peaches and preserves!!! : )

So I will see you here daily this month then. . . short and sweet.
Thanks for coming along!