Knitting on Impulse

January Wrap-Up

The first month of 2011 is marching industriously out the door, and it was a good month. There were all the usual ups and downs of school and viruses, time-sucking events, and dark dour weather that precluded photography. The plans and intentions for the year are still holding together however, largely because they were built with all these factors in mind.  Not only did I factor in time buffers, but also (and perhaps more importantly) some guilt buffers. Personal permissions: to fall down and get up again, to interrupt and resume, to regularly assess and adjust without the self-imposed label of failure.

 
Celebration is slowly working its way into our family mindset. We started with family dinners - each of us relating one thing to celebrate from our day. We've always discussed our various experiences over dinner, but in this case I asked that we each come up with at least one good thing. It had a powerful effect, more so even than I had anticipated, and although the practice got derailed for a little when illness and extracurricular events combined to disrupt the dinner routine, it will resume soon. 

I was completely enamoured with all the candle stories in the comments of the Solstice post, and came up with the fanciful notion of a wine bottle holding a succession of colourful  drippy candles, just like in my childhood. Our version would be lit every mealtime throughout the year, and the layers of wax would become a tangible reminder of our accumulated moments of celebration. Except we couldn't find the traditional wicker-enclosed Chianti anywhere in town, and mislaid the drippy candles while waiting for the right wine bottle to come along.

It will still happen, and it will not have a Whole Year's Worth of commemorative wax when it finally does, and that will be just fine. (In any case, a certain someone will not be able to resist picking off bits, and the dog will retrieve the larger chunks of family joy from the carpet and crunch them into tiny fragments in a less than ideal location... and that too will be fine. Better than Silly Putty, at any rate.)

 

I'd still like to add more seasonal milestone celebrations to our family's life rhythm, and as February starts off auspiciously, I'm working on ideas for the occasion.  (The children have, predictably, suggested cake.) 

How was your January? 

Star Trekkin'

Thanks to the discriminating taste of our local library, we've been working our way through the original Star Trek series, which I adored as a kid (OK, as an adult, too), and which seems to be equally enthralling for my own children, despite the lack of modern CG effects. 

I did not however, remember this... but thanks to Rob, the kids are hooked and it won't get out of my brain. What else could I do but share?

 

 

Wild Skies Mittens

These were such fun to create.

 
I had a couple of goals in mind with these mittens:

Firstly, of course, was the challenge of creating a balanced design with equal quantities of the five Wild Skies colourways (a single Quintet in Summit Sock, in this case). To be honest, pink with blue is a little out of my comfort zone, but I persisted in the belief that nature does not err and the sky would surely have its own intrinsic harmony. The hot hues of Alpenglow are nicely tempered by Grey Day, while the somber blues of Twilight have a steadying influence on the bright energies of Dawn and Ultraviolet. The most brilliant colourways were allowed to play together only in small doses within the trim and mitten tips.

Secondly, in keeping with January's theme of Possibility, I wanted a sense of lavish exuberance, and I was inspired to that end by Lizbeth Upitis' wonderful book documenting the mittens of Latvia. I utilised a traditional sun motif as the centrepiece (as befits the sky), modifying the surrounding flourishes to fit.

The palms, however, were designed in a fit of pure whimsy:

 

The perfectionist in me can't help but conceed that it would be nice if all the letters fell in areas of identical contrast, but the design was intended to honor the spirit of impulsive ecstasy - that happy creative place where every possibility is on the table, and the work of pruning and perfecting still a long ways off. For me, it does exactly that.

Bird in Motion

Here's some shots from yesterday's bird break at ski school. I hope you're not getting tired of them - I find them endlessly entertaining, especially the second one that captures the graceful outline of wing motion.

 

 

Wild Skies

With apologies to all those grey lovers who fell in love with the desaturated teaser photo, here's the real deal:

 

My colour project for the coming year is to create a new, five colour palette each month that ties in with the theme of the month.  For January, I thought there could be no better embodiment of Possibility than the capricious moods of the wild, wide open sky.

Dawn is a clear pale pink with subtle splashes of sunny yellow:

 

Ultraviolet was inspired by the intense sky blue that darkens nearly to navy at the horizon, seen mostly from the rarified air of a mountain top on a sunny winter day. (So named because one inevitably regrets forgetting the sunscreen while viewing it.)

 

Grey Day is not an uncommon occurence in the coastal mountains, a soft, dark grey blanket with purple shadows all that remain of the forested slopes.

 

 I've done versions of Alpenglow before,  but it really is a signature feature of our winter sky and I couldn't resist having another go. This version is a fierce rosy pink with splashes of red and gold and hints of purple.

 

And last of all, Twilight - that magical space of blue fading rapidly to shades of grey and black on the receding slopes.

 

The colourways are available individually, and I've also made up a few quintets - single skeins split evenly between the five.

 

The mitten at the top of the post demonstrates one of the many possible ways to play with the Wild Skies palette. I haven't decided yet whether the mittens will be a published pattern or simply an indulgent swatch... though I'm open to expressions of interest in that regard! There's a wee surprise on the palm that I'll show you once they're complete.

As always, full details of everything included in this week's store update may be found in the newsletter (there was some restocking of Dark Water as well.)

Pruning and Possibility

Possibility is my chosen focus for this month, and I've been thinking it through a little differently than I have in the past.

The upside to possibility is the dizzying sense of abundance, a heady combination of imagination, ability, and desire - the belief that virtually anything could be done if I put my mind to it. (Sadly, I've had to let go of my childhood dream of being the first person to walk on Mars, but pretty much everything else is still on the table.)

The flipside to that (and I'm trying very hard not to say downside, but it feels that way) is that I can't do it all. More specifically (since my feminist sensibilities are bristling): while it is entirely possible to acquire many and diverse abilities, and even to practice them simultaneously, there are real limits to the number of projects that one can accomplish in a given span of time, and those limits are even more restrictive if one hopes to do them well.

As someone whose entire persona is constructed around the notion of the overachieving underdog,  who survived the first several decades of my life on the blunt strength of Never Never Never Give Up, this pruning of possibilities doesn't sit at all well. It feels an awful lot like loss.... like giving up.  As though every sweater not knit, every design not realised, every creative thought not acted upon, is a kind of death to be regretted and grieved over. Add kids into the mix (a project unto themselves), and after a while there seem to be far more creations thwarted than completed and anticipatory loss begins to dwarf the joy.  Toss in an overabundance of "sky's the limit" inspirational articles and a jealous look at the magnificent accomplishments of all those childless fellow artists with limitless round the clock hours at their disposal, and the whole notion of possibility begins to seem like a cruel joke.

It was getting to be a death spiral, and thus my new outlook for the year began with redefining my relationship to possibility.

I took an unflinching look at the real available work time in 2011 (rather startlingly smaller than the numbers free-associating in my head), set out my project dream list and began tallying up the required hours. The initial imbalance was on the order of 5:1, and for the first time in my life, rather than resolve to drive myself harder, I began to prune. I found it helped a great deal to reframe the process as decluttering, rather than loss.  I discarded anything with a whiff of guilt about it (ie. Use Up All the Seconds), set aside projects that were sensible but failed to really excite me, and gave myself room to explore and permission to stumble and regroup along the way. (It sounds obvious, but this is really breaking new ground for me.)

One of the projects that made the cut launches with tomorrow's update, and I've been caught up in a white heat of inspiration playing with it this week... so much so that I have to give you a wee teaser:

 

Bird in Hand

It's ski school time again, and thank heaven for Whistler-Blackcomb's heavily subsidized local kids' program, and a school system that considers six Mondays of ski school to be a perfectly acceptable form of physical education.  Our kids' personalities tend to wind up on the miserable end of the win/lose, jock/reject dualities that pervade team sports, and skiing gives them a chance to develop physical skills in a group setting that is mutually supportive. Plus it's an activity we can regularly enjoy as a family.

Due to the girl's issues, Rob has always accompanied her class as a support person - thankfully, with less and less to do, as her maturity and self-control grow. Consequently, when the class stopped in at the Castle on Blackcomb this afternoon, he was ready with a bag of bird treats and the phone camera:

 

Thanks to the steady stream of kids that drop by in winter, the Castle is home to a phenomenally tame flock of Whiskey Jacks.
 

They cruise up and down the line of outstretched palms, hunting for the raisins and peanuts.

 

 

Not the resolution of a DSLR, of course, but not half bad for a phone, eh? (Perhaps Apple will pay me to do a commercial.... )

Remembering Guinevere

We packed up the tree this weekend, and as I do when I set it up, I always ponder the memories associated with each ornament as they pass through my fingers.

We were gifted this Irish wolfhound ornament while our beloved Guinevere was still young and healthy, and at the time, we laughed about how the halo and angel wings seemed a little macabre.

 

Since her premature demise, I'm glad to have the reminder, but it is bittersweet, nonetheless.

Skiing, Star Trek, and Apple Pie

makes for a satisfying Saturday.  Not that I have any photos of those things to show you, as daylight still wanes far too quickly, catching the procrastinatory photographer unawares. 

Nevertheless, the mid-afternoon twilight has a certain lustrous magic:  

 

On a Damp and Dreary Day

 

The dog's sole reason for living consists of watching for the squirrel.

 

He's a cheeky little devil too - touches noses with her through the patio glass while she huffles and fusses. Good thing he's so cute.