12. December Rabbit Trails
The notebook situation snowballs
Dear fellow adventurers,
Before the year comes to a close, before Autumn officially turns into Winter, before we hurtle through Christmas and new years, I want to thank you for following my rabbit trails with me! This whole newsletter is one big rabbit trail I am exploring, and I’m not quite sure where it will take me yet, but I’m sure glad I don’t have to do it by myself.
In other news, I regret to inform you that my November foray into book-binding has gathered steam and is now snowballing out of control. Urban sketching is taking an inward turn towards visual journaling… and I have an Advent / Winter Solstice treat for you towards the end of these rabbit trails!
Let me show you what has been sparking my curiosity…
The Notebook Situation Snowballs…
Here’s how the book-binding rabbit trail from last month is going… it has turned into a rabbit hole and I’ll probably be here through Christmas. Combining my penchant for upcycling, I’ve been using cereal boxes and whatever packaging we get from Costco for the covers. I’ve turned large sketchbooks and leftover notebooks into these mostly pocket size sketchbooks and notebooks. So the notebook situation is snowballing.. send help!
Urban Sketching: Visual Journaling
As the temperatures plummet and the outdoor sketching season comes to a close, I decided to turn to visual journaling in my sketching practice. Here is one of my daily spreads capturing snippets from the day. Sketching from observation at home can feel boring sometimes, so I am going to stare that challenge straight in the face and see what I come up with. Will I make it through this Ontario winter? Time will tell…
Creativity benefits from constraints (some arbitrary, some by design)! Sometimes I limit the number of tools or colours I use. On this day, the pre-painted page in my sketchbook serendipitously worked with my parsnips, colour-wise.
Lino Printing: the Advent Special
Looking out the window of a church ruin, a lone tree stands in the moonlight in a snowy field. It’s hard to explain in words what inspired this lino print design. It brings together the subjects I have been drawn to this year - windows, trees, mixed media, lino printing, the contrast of light and dark. I wrote in a couple of newsletters ago wondering if soaking in poetry will impact my creative practice - I certainly see a connection here with the series of Window poems I had been reading from Wendell Berry!
As we journey through Advent and towards the Winter Solstice this weekend, and in this season of darkness and waiting, when the world is on fire, I hope this piece speaks peace and brings a moment of stillness.
To Know the Dark (Wendell Berry)
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
This felt like such a quiet, generous invitation — a reminder that creativity doesn’t have to know where it’s going to be meaningful. I love how you name the rabbit trails honestly, without needing to resolve them, and how curiosity itself becomes the through-line.
The inward turn toward visual journaling, the snowballing notebooks, the lino print emerging from poetry and season — it all carries a sense of listening rather than striving. There’s something very grounding in the way you hold constraint, waiting, and not-knowing as fertile rather than limiting.
Thank you for sharing this moment of stillness and process. It was a lovely place to pause and breathe.