Who influences you?

 A little while ago I was lying in bed the night before a magazine interview trying to guess the questions and plan my answers.

It was a magazine I have a lot of respect for so I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about and sounded a bit interesting, a lot thought out.

But, as almost always happens, the later it got, the harder the imagined questions got, the more rambly my answers got, the more worried I got, the less I made sense, the less chance I had of getting to sleep, the more pointless this middle of the night exercise became.

But I kept asking, and answering, and stressing. For hours.

And for some reason one of the questions that kept popping up in my imaginary interview was: Who and what are your main influences?

Sounds simple right? But over the course of that over-night interview I discovered that I don't have main influences. I don't have one place, or person, or style to turn to to turn me on. Did that make me shallow?

And the more I thought about that fact, the more worried I became. 

My influences come from everywhere: a quote in a book I'm reading, a song we listened to on the radio on the way to school, the way Pepper's teacher tied her scarf, something that we did when we were kids, a link on Pip's blog, the colour pallet in a shop window, the recipe I hear someone describing to someone else at the fruit shop, a picture of a garden layout on pinterest, the angle or exposure of a photograph, what needs to be picked or planted or preserved in the garden, the colourful balls of cottons in the corner, the pattern in the bits of honeycomb scraped off the roof of a bee hive yesterday, a skirt with cute pockets I saw and a pile of pretty vintage fabric I thrifted, a washy painting Indi did and the water colour pencils she left lying around, this season's stunning shiburi dyeing and all my stained whites, an instagram picture of a mini quilt and mine half made, the new and varied patterns I am learning while knitting my way through Nicki Trench's 201 Knitting Blocks, Projects Ideas, a salad recipe I saw somewhere and my rumbling tummy….

My influences seem to know no bounds and are ever changing. Often changing.

And as the sun came up I finally became comfortable with my answer.

But of course the question was never asked.

So now I'm asking you.
Can you name your influences?
Do you have people, places, times or  quotes that guide you? That you turn to? That fill you up and help make you you?
Or are yours ever changing like mine? Like the weather? Like the days of the year? Like the patterns the wind makes as it blows its way over the long grass in my parents' paddock?

I wonder.

xx