I first encountered the concept of monkey mind in Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing down the bones. There I instantly recognized my habit of constantly jumping from one thing to another.
Which brings me to how the last patch in January came about.
I ended the month in the closing pages of Ingrid Fetel Lee’s Joyful, which I first read about over at Hazel’s Handstories.
The last chapter mentioned artist Eva Zeisel and something about the Chrysler Building in New York, which reminded me of Fiona’s recent post at Paper Ponderings.
So I did a Google image searches on the Chrysler …
and Eva Zeisel …
which reminded me I was going to do a patch of Jackson’s watercolor fish …
So I zoomed in and fished around for inspiration …
Which reminded me that I had some painted cloth gifted by Joanne, which went really well with another bit of gifted cloth dyed by Tina.
So I stitched together three pieces of watercolory yellow, orange and pink with two strands of black DMC floss as a nod to J’s crayon lines.
And finally, left the right side of the patch open-ended …
because I remembered that I need to finish the black and white check border to determine what length the January strip of patches needs to be.
Like I said … monkey mind.
I'm Going to Texas (version 2.0) 
Love it Liz! I oftentimes wonder what an illustrated representation of my monkey mind would look like and you have done a fine job of showing parts of yours! Tracing back the links, leaps and associations can be an interesting exercise – and here, you can see/understand what they were. Sometimes I am left wondering – what made me go from that to this? I love this little one and the darker crayon line threads are just spot on! One month down…
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your blog is often one of those links, leaps and associations … always appreciated
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Liz~ Such a productive Monkey Mind! Love how one thing leads to another here. It was like that old ‘train of thought’ game where you back-track how you got from your last thought from your first thought. Sometimes fascinating 🙂
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I just wish the train didn’t run in the middle of the night 😉
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Haha True
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LA – I think a monkey mind is a prerequisite of the creative process. B
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I like how you think!
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Joyful colors. I have to confess to having a “monkey mind” most of the time. Similar but not quite the same (at least to me) is the label of sidetracks as “squirrel,” it is less knowing and more impulse. 🙂
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somehow that rings a very familiar bell
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Ha! My monkey is off and running! Great work, Liz. I’m trying to get back onto to the box and to get on with things….but my ‘octopus’ mind is going crazy right now…feelers going in all directions…and I’m feeling totally overwhelmed!
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always so nice to read where your inspiration came from !
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process is at the top of my blog reading interests … so I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
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