I’m in need of Cool Blues .
Triple digit temperatures in Northern California !
There’s just something about Emma sprawled out on the floor , sleeping out the heat, just makes me want to decorate her.
I personally think that yarn towers have magical cooling powers.
Light in the stairway, from above, morning light piercing through from the roof window, and stretching shadows to incredible lengths.
I think that being an artist of any kind is nothing more than capturing an inspiring moment and freezing it. Objects & angles. This stairway is one of my favorite places in our house. It is very bright and ascends into rooms, one of which is the creative space I call my loft.
Yesterday I was manic and coming up with big plans to design a shaped ‘plus’ size range of the original Pin-Striped Sweater Tee, and after charting, drawing, messaging with kind knitters wanting to partake in my design experiment, setting up a virtual knitting room for it, and then at the end of the day, after nearly collapsing into a state of ‘what have I done?’…. I was very unhappy. So strange, that in order to please others, I was making myself unhappy.
Just last week I was pacing myself, immensely looking forward to two big accomplishments to get behind me ~ and that was to submit the Pin-Striped Sweater Tee pattern, which was the culmination of which I had spent all of spring knitting four of, and also the Dicey Bonnet pattern, which is my dear pet project. But last night I realized I was not relishing my accomplishment , but getting myself into a pile of more work, and so I cancelled the plus-sizes tee project.
I need to spend some time celebrating, as I finished all I set out to do! Unwinding now, I am going back to knitting hats & socks for a while. Perhaps I will sit on the steps of this blithe stairway and just capture some happiness today.
Every once in a while , I see my knitting against ‘just the right’ light , and I leap for the camera. Sun rays streaming through the sky window and catching the dangling yarns , reminding me of a glistening web in the morning dewy sun beams. This was one of those moments. I am simply knitting Fair Isle work on still another, and third, pattern prototype mitt, trying to keep the yarns from tangling, while I knit standing up.
I never really thought of myself as a holiday kind of person, in fact, I’m pretty grouchy around holidays. But this year I am welcoming the cheer from our Christmasy bits & bobs . . .
Everything out of boxes, queuing up for a little decorative cheer in our house in the coming week. Our tree ornaments are integrated, his & mine together, in a sentimental sort of chaos. Such a perplexing emotion these objects evoke, these bright colorful new & old baubles shuffled together, our childhoods super-imposed upon each other’s, representing Christmases Past, separately & shared. Two snowy white sheep from the late 80’s given to me when I first learned to spin wool . . . an airplane wth lost propeller and a merry skier on its ski lift of Jeff’s from the 70’s . . . a bicycle from my bike shop days in the mid 90’s . . .
Our dog Emma is familiar with these strange and intriguing Christmas things too, she makes our little family a trinity, she even has a stocking put out for Santa which gets filled with doggy goodies, and she loves unwrapping presents, is quite the ace at it ! Emma recognises all these seasonal sparkling & feathery oddities spread about our the table, and perhaps she anticipates a succesful heist from all the tempting things to steal from on and under the tree . . .
Strands upon strands of shiny golden stars get ready to be flounced about the evergreen branches . . . shiny red painted paper mache’ apples , a dozen of them, will hang on the tree as if ready to pick and bite into. A few antique toys will sit beneath the tree, inviting anybody’s child-like bewilderment to bubble up , bidding good-bye the imposed sense of stodgy ‘grown-up-ness’ ~ at least for a while.
A doll’s doll which was my mothers as a child, and which I decided to put a hook on and hang on a branch, an old painted cast metal toys hang on the tree . . . and many feathery birds ready to perch on the branches. . . many miniature mandolins & guitars too, given in encouragement of my learning to play … and little painted nutcrackers. Most of all I think I love the jewelled tones of the really old glass balls in varying sizes of crimson, ultramarine blue, spruce & moss greens, burnt orange, indigo & violet purple. The colors just tickle a place inside of me which only gets tickled for a couple of weeks a year, when I bring them all out, it almost seems as if I’m bringing my past to life.
I am glad to say hello to the holiday boxes for another Christmas, and glad to very soon bring in a fragrant tree who’s fresh needles perfume the house so sweetly. The magic begins when the forgotten boxes emerge from behind musky suitcases in the furthest recesses of the closet, and these little things find their place among the house, as every year they do. Let the lights sparkle on the holiday ornaments , it is soon to be a brand new winter season ! And you can bet I’m knitting in a frenzy for holiday gifts !
Did you know that today is the Blue Moon ? Progress on the mossy sweater pauses as I am in for a bit of a little break from knitting, a little something non-knitting I’d like to bring to show you. Occasionally I get all worked up in folksy crafty sorts of projects, my latest making blackboards out of odd frames I find at thrift shops. Here’s one of two identical ones, which I stained with espresso and sprayed with shellac , then mounted the matte-black-painted fiber-board. My new ‘weekly menu’ board !
And the other twin, has become my grocery shopping list . . .
A third, which I painted red,
and which I am going to give to my girlfriend who has a birthday this month . . .
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And another which is made from an old frame (50cents )
is now in my work space of my knitting loft, reminding me of upcoming
Knitterly Things To Do. . .
I should mention I also had found a motherlode of antique wooden hangers which I snatched up…
You may have to click the photo and enlarge to notice the names, and old-as-the-hills three-digit phone numbers. Also, most of them are from my home state of California, but not all.
The fog is now breaking,
the sun shining through the trees here in the woods…
