Chicken Footstools And Being Open To Possibilities

My sister is an amazing fibre artist. She spins, weaves, knits, crochets, and recently, has immersed herself into wool felting. Wool fibres can be manipulated into various shapes and forms as well as felted onto other fibre substrates. Here are a few of her felted creations.

Since she has found her latest creative fix, I receive several times a week, late night photos of a finished project or experiment. I refer to these online posts as, “The Felting With Darlene Show.”

Yesterday, we got up extra early to travel to a local community, 30 minutes away, to participate in a De-stash event. For those of you who are not crafters, or have never heard of such an event, a stash is a crafters inventory of supplies. To De-stash is to get rid of some of that inventory. For you non crafters out there, a de-stash event is the equivalent of a garage sale for crafters.

As my sister climbed into my car, eager to get the day started once she consumed the coffee and breakfast sandwiches I bought for us, she handed me the latest What Women Create magazine. On the cover is a photo of a couple of handcrafted chicken footstools. I’ll come back to those chickens in a minute.

Needless to say, we came, we saw, and we bought more treasures that would be snuck into our houses and slipped seamlessly into our own crafting stashes. No need to alert the husbands after all, and still with enough time in the afternoon to get back to our own current crafting projects before dinner.

Once again, my sister provided a new addition of the “Felting with Darlene Show” later that evening and showed off her latest project – a felted pillow cover for her hubby. I told her, perhaps as a joke because that’s what sisters do, that she should create felted seat covers for his Jeep that he uses for off-road exploring. She replied with a firm, hell no.

This is where the chicken footstools come in.

Because, I am the annoying little sister in the story, I was not content to leave the banter alone. “If a woman can make chicken footstools” I said, “whose to say felted car seat covers would not be the next big thing.”

Not one to let me have the last word, being the big sister and all, Darlene replied, “Would you want your claim to fame to be chicken footstools?”

To which I countered, “She is in an international magazine with her chicken footstools. Are You?”

Now in defense of Sally Jane Linville, the woman who creates these chicken footstools, they are actually pretty cool. So if you are a chicken lover, check out Sally Jane www.TheCityGirlFarm.com and see all her chicken creations.

This is where being open to possibilities comes in.

Felted car seat covers notwithstanding, we may never know when a creative idea will fly or not, but we must always be open to the possibilities.

Did Sally Jane Linville stopped to analyze whether people would want a chicken footstool. Did she worry about what people would think about her chicken footstools or whether anyone would buy them? Obviously, she did not. She just came up with the idea and stayed open to the many possibilities, and chicken styles, that her creative mind could dream up.

This is where the wisdom comes in, because that’s what I do here.

How many times have you discounted an idea that popped into your head because it was out of the norm of what you considered mainstream? We would not have a fraction of the wondrous inventions in the world today if everyone did this. And thank heavens for that.

Keeping an open mind is as simple as asking, “Why not?” instead of “Why?” Keeping the option open that an idea, even the quirky, chicken footstool ones, has the possibility of leading to, not only amazing creations, but also better clarity in life. Because how can you ever change your circumstances in life if you are never open to new possibilities?

Just look at the chaos in the world right now, there are a lot of folks out there with very closed minds and rigid belief systems. Imagine if they open their minds to a little possibility? What kind of open dialogue could be created? What kind of, out of the mainstream, world solutions would be conceived?

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result, could it be that all this insanity in the the world right now needs is more folks being open to other possibilities? Could it be that simple?

Chicken Footstools reminded me that with almost 8 billion people in this world, no matter what you are able to conjure up in your creative head, there is bound to be someone out there who will embrace and enjoy your ideas. You need only stay open to the possibility of that fact.

One last note: I did a Google search for hand made felted car seated covers and it appears no one out there is creating them yet. So if my sister isn’t interested in making them, and you are open to the possibility that they could be a huge hit, I’d encourage you to run with it. Besides, I told my sister that if I found out someone else created them when she passed the idea over, I’d never let her live it down. Because after all, that’s just what sisters do. 😉