I just have to do something with my hands.

My daughter has what she calls her "bad brain". Sometimes her brain just gets carried away on a train of thought and she can't help it. I know exactly what this is like cause it happens to me too, and probably everyone, I'm guessing. I have a couple of good fixes. Meditation (finding stillness). Yoga. Breathing (this works well for my daughter). And doing something with my hands. It’s the latter that really works the best for me. I always forget how therapeutic it can be to work on a project. To just sit and sew or draw or paint, how it calms the mind. I was thinking about this today when I came upon these 2 blog posts by very different people who also create and have run-away brains.

I started something new yesterday as I was home sick with a cold and going a little stir crazy. Something biggish and fun. I really ought to post some work in progress pictures but that would mean stopping the sewing to take pictures. And that would defeat the purpose.

If you have the time, Stefan Bucher also talks about this a wee little bit in his video talk on design in the Architecture/Design series on iTunesU that I mentioned in an earlier post. I really loved this talk (it was, by far, the best of the bunch I have listened to so far) and will certainly be revisiting it from time to time when I need some inspiration.