Knitting on Impulse

2010: Year in Review

It was a challenge to pick just a few, but I think these summarize the year nicely:

Over the last few weeks, I've been evaluating the year past and planning for the year to come. My intention for 2011 is to recover a sense of joyful, positive creative flow, and to that end, I've chosen to focus on Celebration....of each season, each month, each day - to imbue each creative act with that awareness. I am acutely conscious that it's not an intention that will happen by wishing alone, so I've enlisted the aid of a wall-sized full-year calendar, as much data as I can collect, and a plethora of spreadsheets. (Assertive boundary defenses are also in development, but you start with what you're good at, y'know?)

I've dreamed big, calculated the resources required against those likely available, pruned, and planned some more. I've listened to very clever people and chosen to believe that focus can be a positive act, not merely a loss of possibility.

In the end, I've got some wonderful things planned for the coming year... and I'll tell you all about them as they unfold.

For now - wishing you and yours a joyous and abundant New Year!

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The Solstice contest technically ends at midnight tonight PST... in reality, I'll draw a number tomorrow morning when I wake up (I've reached the age and childbearing status where I'm no longer particularly coherent or clever after midnight.) For those lurking around the inventory clean-up sale - I've gotten through about 2/3 of my goal.... but whatever isn't up by tomorrow morning won't be going up in this batch. I plan to continue putting up seconds and sale items in the last update of each month, in any case.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

And all through the house, all the creatures were highly excitable,

 
(in their new Christmas PJ's)

including the racoon crashing about on the patio... (and the dog, who lost her mind when she unexpectedly came nose to nose with it through the glass patio door.) 

 

And since it is technically Christmas already, I'm done done done and off to bed.

To those who celebrate it: a Very Merry Christmas!

The Hustle and Bustle of Whistler

I love all the stories that are coming in - some funny, some profound, all wonderfully personal. If you haven't yet contributed (and hence entered the contest), please do!

The boy and I walked down to the Village for a little gift shopping yesterday. This is as close as we get to malls and holiday crowds up here:

 

 

 

Of course, a snowy excursion like that just had to end at our favorite little coffee shop for hot chocolate:

 

I'll be sending out the newsletter later today, but I might as well mention that I've begun the year-end clean up of my yarn inventory. Seconds, single knot skeins, and leftovers (discontinued colourways, single skeins left in a dyelot, etc.) will all be on sale in the Sales and Seconds category. The clean-up will continue off and on between holiday /family stuff and wind up New Year's Eve. As I've done before, if you want to grab stuff but wait to see what else comes along and combine shipping, just leave me a note to that effect in the order comments - I'll refund duplicate shipping charges once you're done.

Solstice

The boy and the husband and I stayed up 'til the wee hours to watch the lunar eclipse, which in our location was a cloud-filtered patch of light that disappeared on cue.... and never came back. The snow rolled in and the clouds thickened and though we waited until the appointed hour of re-emergence and beyond, it was not to be.  It was still exciting to see such a rare event, though without visual confirmation of the moon's return, I was seized with a sudden nostalgia for Space 1999.

 

Getting back to the topic of this post: Today is Winter Solstice. I've had an urge for several years now to mark or celebrate it in some fashion, but it always seems to sneak by me in the hustle of Christmas preparation. Since moving to Whistler, we have become intimately connected to the natural rhythm of the seasons like never before, and it seems right and proper to incorporate these seasonal milestones into our family awareness - to mark their significance, take notice.

I'm fascinated by the range of traditions occurring around this time of year on the theme of light prevailing in the midst of deepest darkness.  Our own family practices in that regard are pretty much limited to lights on a tree... and I'm really interested in exploring and expanding that. So here's my question: What sort of traditions, celebrations, or practices do you observe around this time of year that pertain to light? Any and all: religious, non-religious, ethnic/cultural/historical traditions, strictly personal celebrations or practices... not necessarily limited to this particular day, but happening in the general vicinity.

Leave your answer in the comments (or link to your blog if you've already posted on the topic or want to say something more expansive).  I'll keep the contest open until the end of this year, and January 1st I'll draw one name at random to receive three skeins of any in-stock yarn of the winner's choice (cashmere, silk, sock... anything they like.)

Quiet Days... and Chocolate

Now that the boy and I are mostly better... the girl and the husband have come down with the same miserable thing.  It's inevitable at this time of year - everyone's tired, and school was rampant with germ factories.  (We're not the only ones - playdates and birthday parties are falling off the social calendar daily.) I think it's better now than later - everyone should be sufficiently recovered to enjoy the actual day by the time it comes around.  All things considered, we had a nice quiet day: playing Monopoly, baking cookies, knitting, Christmas music, tea.

 

 

 

The cookies are Chocolate-Black pepper with a dash of coffee - you can find the recipe here.

I was generous with both the pepper and the finely ground coffee beans (which I substituted for espresso powder) and the final result was wonderfully spicy (though consequently less of a hit with the kids.) Which reminds me, I've got a hankering to watch Chocolat again.....

PS: there was an update Friday... details here. If you are thinking about gift certificates, you might want to check out the limited time offer.

One More Day

The update is photographed and goes up tomorrow morning.  (Unless the dog is an idiot about getting in the car, in which case I'll be accompanying DH to the vet. Then putting up the update, dyeing the last pre-holiday batch of yarn and finishing shopping for the kids.)

I'm still sleeping sitting up, but improving day by day. The children are insufferably strung out on a combination of school party sugar and too-long-without-a-break, there's two pages of math and two test preps to drag the girl through tonight, I need to finish up two teacher gifts by morning, there's a baby elephant sized box of yarn teetering dangerously by the front door that I really ought to haul downstairs and the boy just broke the bathroom light switch while chasing a fly with an improvised sword. I'm pretty sure I've alienated half the people I ever knew by being a tardy emailer and absent commenter, and I've just tallied up the actual useable work time in 2011, found it to be considerably smaller than I'd hoped, and failed to win reprieve from the party with the most influence over that.

Nevertheless, I am possessed of  a musically inspired optimism that if I just put one foot in front of the other, it will all come out right in the end. (Seriously, click the link. It will make you smile.)

I anticipate a considerable improvement in the tone and frequency of posting after tomorrow!

Resolution Day... I Forget. Three more to go.

I'm still alive, but this interminable bronchial/sinus bug, whatever it is, has really knocked the stuffing out of me. I'm slowly but steadily improving; however, for the last many evenings my big indulgence has been to fall asleep in lieu of staying up to blog.  There has been knitting, and the Botanical Mitts are published and deserve a proper post.... soon. Really! I just have to hold it together to the end of Friday, and I'll have earned the chance to just hang out with my kids for a couple of weeks. There will still be weekly store updates, including an end of year inventory clean-up sale... but if I can get this week's tasks completed, the updates themselves are all I'll have to do. (Well, besides the last minute Christmas prep, but that's mostly fun stuff.)

Resolution Day 16/26: Couched

Sorry.  I'm running out of upbeat ways to avoid admitting that I'm feeling considerably worse, and alternating between panic about the goals and tasks slipping through my fingers and crabbiness at the timing.

Nevertheless, I made pretty decent use of a day spent on the couch by designing a very chic (if I do say so myself) two colour hat that makes excellent use of two half skeins of BFL worsted AND knitting up two samples of said hat.  It now has a proper chart and a tidy spreadsheet in multiple sizes and I have great hopes of typing up the verbal version for tech editing in the next few days.  I've already got Rob working on worsted weight Duets.

There are no FO photos at this point, since my present appearance is on par with yesterday's zombie.

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Speaking of zombies, and for the curious who asked... the eyeball was attached to her eyelid with regular scotch tape. Not a method I would personally recommend, and she didn't leave it there for long (though I agree that the hand-dyed optic nerve added a touch of class.)  If one were to deliberately tape anything to the skin, I'd think surgical tape might be the better option. Unless, of course, you're allergic, in which case you'd wind up looking truly scary. (Do I need a "Don't Try This At Home" disclaimer on the blog now?)

Resolution Day 15/26: Odd

The children were taking considerably longer than required to wash up for dinner, so I checked. 

 
Guess I didn't hear wrong after all when they mentioned earlier that they needed my interlocking blocking mats to build a coffin. They were playing so happily and co-operatively at that point, I decided to leave well enough alone (a personal indulgence if ever there was one.)

I'm never entirely certain whether our family is charmingly creative or disturbingly odd.

Resolution Day 14/26: Fuzzy

Drinking sequential mugs of hot liquid, puttering away in small doses at housework and order processing, pondering just how many PSI the average human sinus can withstand before the brain implodes, and feeling a little... unfocused.

 
Fortunately, many things this time of year look just fine that way.

 

Mandarins are one of my favorite indulgences - we go through many many boxes before the season ends.  And a little extra Vitamin C can't hurt.