Creeping frustration

I have been really busy most of the summer... most of the year... most of the last several years, if I'm to be honest. I seem to have very little time for artistic things. Now, knitting *does* get out some of my creative energies, but it's not quite the same.

I've been looking back at my old sketchbooks. I don't use my sketchbooks the same way that a lot of other people I know use theirs. I use mine to sketch out ideas for bigger projects, to record them until I have enough time to focus on them and actually do them. I'm no good at drawing... at least, it doesn't come easily to me. It's really hard to paint or draw realistically. It used to be easier, my freshman year of high school, but the drawing teachers at Blake kinda squashed all the desire to even attempt it right out of me with their restrictions and harsh, unyielding criticism. So I generally don't draw. I'm too methodical for it. So yeah... looking at my sketchbooks. I found several projects that I sketched out years ago. One is for a a water vessel called a "Miriam's Cup." The concept is a fairly new one in Judaism, to honor the part Miriam played in the Exodus. I want to throw it, or at least part of it with the rest being done with coils, in porcelain because porcelain has the proper plasticity. It won't fall apart the way stoneware, raku or terracotta would. Believe me, I've tried already with all these other types cause that's what Blake stocked. Unfortunately, it took until the last day of my Junior year to figure out what it was I needed to try it with and during my one semester Senior year, I had no time for the ceramics room. At home, I have no wheel, no money for a wheel and no way of getting my hands on porcelain. I have yet to find a supplier that will ship it in small enough quantities and none of the art supply stores carry it anymore. I checked during the later half of my senior year, having planned to buy a block of it and go over to Blake during after-school hours and work in the art rooms then... but couldn't do that... So I still want to make Miriam's Cup... But now, in addition to Miriam's Cup, I want to do some other biblical art.

I'm fascinated by the concept of the well and its connection to modest, yet surprisingly independent women. Rebecca, Rachel, Tzipporah, Miriam... all are mentioned in connection with drawing water from their wells. It wouldn't be a far leap to say that Sarah, Leah and Yocheved had connections to the same common domestic task, so necessary in the arid lands of their birth, but I can't recall the text being explicate in their cases. I want to explore that further, but as I write this, I really don't have time 'cause I really need to get back to my spinning. But I want to explore it artistically and soon.

There is a cross-stitch at Scarlet Quince of "Jacob and Rachel" at the Well by William Dyce. I think I have to buy it and stitch it. I think I really *have* to... I'm frustrated by lack of time which seems to creep up on me. I need to get a proper tapestry loom to stitch it on, and I really should finish the three cross-stitch projects I have going before I start on this one.

Eventually, I want to do art projects centering on each of the Matriarchs, as well as all the other major female figures from Deborah to Huldah (I know, she's obscure... somewhere in Second Chronicles, 22-23.27), fictional and historically accepted alike. It's gonna take awhile...