It’s time to touch base and connect! I initially wrote this blog post/newsletter in mid August in a state irritation, but I didn’t want to pass those feelings on to you, so I sat on it.

Classes? Sorry, still on hold for Pandemic.

Unfortunately, I am not presently scheduling classes and don’t plan on it in the near future. I mentioned in July’s Housekeeping that we are not offering any service where people have to spend more that 5 to 10 minutes together, and that still stands, vaccination or no. I wrote a whole big segment explaining why I’m not comfortable doing it, citing lots of references, but you know what …. it’s doesn’t matter. We’ll offer classes again when we feel it’s SAFE. Reading and editing that section was SUCH A BUMMER (probably why I sat on it for a month). I want to embrace and engender joy, and growth, and change. The world is going to spin, it doesn’t need me to keep it going. I’ve got my sights set on greater things, I choose to lean into the positive and see what comes out of that.

What I’m Working On

Last week on CBC radio I heard a journalist say “Let’s face it, at this point (in the pandemic) we’re all just phoning it in”. He was referring to the psychological burnout a lot of people have been experiencing. I haven’t gotten to that place yet (or maybe I have and I’m just in denial). Anyway, since COVID started I’ve been struggling with creative block. Luckily it hasn’t affected ability to come up with projects for you, my research skills are all intact, but I’ve been struggling with a serious case the UFOs (unfinished objects). I have a pile of marginally started projects on my dining room table … they’re sad little things, languishing in project bags. Anyway, if you’ve been wondering where my personal finished projects have gone, they haven’t.

You guys often ask what I’m working on, so the following are the very best of my best laid plans and good intentions …..

STRIPES! By Andrea Mowry

I have started swatching for STRIPES!. I’m using Fibre Co Road to China Light. I’m trying to work with the yarns that make me happiest and bring me the most joy. I’ve combined some neutrals and purples for my palette (see below … they’re in no particular order). The yarn is all wound up and ready to go!

On the C Train

I plan on making an On the C Train (aka. hat) for the guy in my life. I levelled up this summer and I have an awesome new person in my life, one who definitely deserves a hat made with something beautiful. I’m again using Fibre Co Road to China Light, but this time a bold colour that celebrates life – sapphire!

Reykr

My upstairs neighbour David often pops for a chat and to pick up the mail, and one day he laid eyes on this shade of yellow and it was LOVE, nothing else would do (the yarn is Berroco Vintage 51131 Citrus). David is both sight impaired and profoundly colour blind in really interesting ways, so he experiences colour in a very different way than most people. In my experience, for him to get excited about a colour is unusual. So David gets a hat so he can enjoy his yellow all the time.

On a tangent … I wonder how he sees his yellow? I don’t know why I’ve never realized just how much I take my ability to perceive colour for granted? I come from a family rich in colour blind genes and I have a few friends who are colour blind – I feel like I should have noticed this a long time ago. Enjoying colour is one more thing to add to my gratitude list. Maybe enjoying all of my senses can be piled on as well … a gratitude list is a list that never needs to end.

Some Kind Of Hat for the Kid

I decided to be slightly proactive and start scouting holiday gifts for the kids early this year. Over dinner I was talking to my sister-in-law about sizing and in a bit of a panic, my nice asked if I was still going to do my annual crazy coloured hats (they aren’t actually crazy, I just choose bold colour combinations). I told her that if she wanted one I would make it for her, but I think this year it should actually be ‘crazy’. My niece is the girl in the Rolling Stones song “She’s a Rainbow” … she takes after her aunt, but unlike her aunt, she has been known to wear all of the colours at the same time. So this year she gets ALL THE COLOURS. The loose plan is to make a basic beanie with 2 strands of Schoppel Edition 3 (colour 2296 English Garden) held together, and topping it off with a synthetic pompom (colour 1250 Mermaid) that attaches with a snap. The yarn and the pompom match perfectly, so that should be a sight. The yarn is already marled and transitions as you work with it, so overall it should be quite a carnival of millinery.

Read & Knit

My current audiobook recommendation is Joyful by Ingreid Fetell Lee. I assumed (incorrectly) that it was going to be a self-helpy type thing, but I was happy to found some kind of new or unique genre – literary non-fiction about a quasi-spiritual topic from a design (as in the stuff people go to art school to learn) perspective. Joy is one of those emotions that shares a lot of space in the venn diagram of spiritual/mental/physical life. The book addresses joy from a very physical standpoint, which is interesting because the two things I’ve noticed when people talk about joy is 1. you’ve got to cultivate gratitude, and 2. you’ve got to get into your body. I think kids (and puppies) are extremely good at being joyful, and it wasn’t until I got on a trampoline with my nice and nephew that I realized how physical an experience childhood is, and how completely they are in their bodies (and in contrast how disconnected I was from mine by comparison). Fetell Lee isn’t going to lead you down the path to enlightenment, but she’s collected a lot of valuable insight about how to find and create joy though our physical surroundings, so if you want to cultivate more joy in your life, it’s a very worthwhile read.

Growth & Connection

Since January of this year I’ve added online courses as part of my self-care practice. I’ve taken a few on Mindvalley, and currently I’m doing The Formula with Dr Joe Dispenza. I’ll qualify that I prefer the type class where the coursework is a meditation – I’ve been to university several times and I’m a little over jumping through the hoops of acquiring information, I’m more into stretching my soul (which is actually a lot less heavy lifting, since souls are naturally very bendy). One of my favourite things about online courses is it’s all on your timeline and at your pace. You can take as little or as much from it as you like (or need), and like a good book or movie, you’ll be able to go deeper and learn more the second or third time you take it (I know Jeffrey Allen designs his courses this way).

I don’t always understand analytically what Dispenza is going on about, but because this type of course isn’t about consuming information, I just take it as a “listen to me now, believe me later” kind of thing and don’t worry about the rest. I’m taking the course with six other people and we’re all at different places in it, each of us going at our own speed. Anyway, we all feel like it’s helping and we’re making progress …. I feel like deleting the original blog post is a good sign of transformation and growth.