Year of the Horse 2014

blavatarWell, technically not until January 31st. and not someting I normally pay attention to. Yet this is a circle closing for me, as I was born in the year of the horse and the animal itself is a lifelong love for me. The spirit of the horse is recognized to be “the Chinese people’s ethos – making unremitting efforts to improve themselves. It is energetic, bright, warm-hearted, intelligent and able.”

As I was contemplating the notion of making a journal based on “Word of the year” – or in my case as a multipod, word of the month, it struck me that perhaps I could use horses as the underlying image theme. The hero’s journey on horseback. Could this be a “the year when I finally return to myself – theme”?

I’m not really a journaling person, (but then I said I never do poetry and began to write haiku!) this blog is the closest I’ve ever come to a diary, and printed calendars I usually fill in for about 3 weeks. So when Quinn asked for our choice of words for the year I really just played along for fun. But then we got a bit of a conversation going and I thought about doing something with words and paints and mulled it over and then – guess what? I won the book!! (what a nice feeling to actually delete something from my Amazon list)

“Inner Hero Creative Art Journal” by Quinn McDonald is a book about silencing your inner critic as well as a collection of actual mixed media techniques that I’m really looking forward to trying out. And the topic, well, we all know how that’s just what I need! It just arrived in the mail today, but I’ll let you know at a later date how I’m getting along with it.

I’ve also mentioned before that for years I’ve had the title and loose idea for a book about Charlie, but been stuck ever since. Is this an opening? Time will tell! Any trick that generates good things is fine with me. Horses are as good a topic to bind together different crafts as any. Can I point my imagery in that direction for such a long time I wonder? I could do with a few limitations…

Charlie & Rollo

Apart from working with key words and the Hero Journal prompts, I’m also going to try out the Bullet Journal, as well as a sidekick to that describing various project ideas in more detail. Out with the post-it/back of envelopes/10 pads system and in with structure! I found a notebook with 4 colour sections to keep similar project ideas in the same general area. In fact my bullet journal does too, in case I want to expand the concept.

I don’t know if I’m a person who likes or benefits from working with key words like this. Not even sure “how it’s done” but I’m not going to spend a lot of time investigating how others do it, I’ll just be aware and see what happens. I know I can’t pick one single one for a whole year – so sue me. But I don’t mind giving it a whirl to see what it does. Unless I get sidetracked of course.

And – I have to make sure this is not just some thing to get me sidetracked from something else. It’s generating a lot of thoughts already. This is meant to be a tool for the work I want to do, not a new, big project in itself. If it’s not a helper, out it goes. You see, my word for January is

Intention/Focus (ok, so it’s two words, I noticed already)

But I fear if I go on, this will be a really long post, so I’ll save the rest for another day. My intention is to make a couple of posts about each month’s keyword, the questions I ask myself, progress, exercises until I run out of interested readers. If I really start blabbing I’ll just keep it to myself and post excerpts. We’ll see. Right now, I’m going to press Publish and shut my brain down for the day.

Caliber

Knitting this winter

reversible2Once again I’m going to contradict my own decisions, I guess it’s even becoming something of a rule. I said I’d knit small items rather than sweaters or begin to weave tapestries. Right. As it happens, all of a sudden I’ve become fat, no change in my diet and I’m moving more than last year, but still, here is the cold season and my closet is filled with sausage skins. So I have to do something about that, and I have yarn long ago dedicated to this anyway. It’s going to be much faster than losing the lard, even at my knitting rate, I’m not exactly from a family of fast metabolism.

Last year I began my reversible sweater, and made it all the way to starting the sleeves. But it was juuust an inch too tight all of a sudden, the neckline too, whereas the sleeves were too wide. The raglan method I’d invented worked in theory, it just didn’t look very good, and – the whole thing was a bit short too. So I decided to start over, change the design a bit accordingly and then it never happened. Well, now it has. I’m actually DONE! Sewing in the ends invisibly doesn’t count. I’m on it already. Needs a little wash to even out stitches too. And I suppose I need to get Mimi padded up to match my current proportions!

Drop's delight

Next up are two hopefully quickies in the same yarn from Drops, two colourways. One I’m knitting with a strand of slate coloured alpaca, it was destined to become a Forest Nymph dress, but I can’t wrap my head around cables and shortrows at the same time just now, so it’ll be another raglan and then I’ll just keep going until I run out of yarn. The other one will be a sideways garter thing real simple on large needles because I only have 6 skeins. Just for an over the top of everything else in the cold, could become a vest actually, I’ll have to swatch. Possibly I could knit with a natural Mulberry 6/1 single that I have stashed somewhere? Any other ideas how to stretch the yarn?

aurora8

The remainder of the blue yarn I thought of using for a two sided hat, with some of my handspun on the outside, the blue is absolutely non-itchy but of course not as warm as wool and I have very delicate ears, so it needs to be fairly windproof.

Further projects I probably shouldn’t even begin to think about, knowing my track record of sticking to plans. Feel free to hold me accountable for these however! 😉

And to make it a WIP Wednesday too, here’s some of my current reading material.

decbooks

Vinterstrik

På trods af min erklæring om ikke at strikke trøjer mere, er der alligevel hele 3 på pindene til denne vinter. Jeg er simpelthen blevet så fed i løbet af året, at det meste af mit tøj sidder som pølseskind, selvom jeg bevæger mig mere end året forinden og spiser det samme!

Den blå omvendesweater jeg begyndte sidste år er sådan set nærmest færdig, den måtte strikkes om, da den også var blevet stram. Og så improviserer jeg lige et par hurtige med noget Drops jeg har liggende, den ene farve skulle egentlig have været denne model, men jeg kan ikke koncentrere mig om at lave vendestrik og kabler på samme tid, så nu bliver det bare en top-down raglan indtil der ikke er mere garn.

Og så må jeg hellere lade være med at lave flere planer, for jeg overholder dem jo alligevel ikke.

Og så vil jeg strikke en dobbelthat af noget hjemmespundet udenpå og rester af det blå trøjegarn indeni, så mine sarte inderører er beskyttet og min sarte hud ikke bliver kradset af ulden.

Hodgepodge

october view
How the view from my office window distracts me from matters at hand.

What, no plant dyeing post this Monday? Well, yes, I do have a couple in my drafts, but they are rather dull and not very urgent, so I thought I’d find a time where I push the lot out at once “final natural dyeing week at the colour cottage 2013”, like. I do have a few more dye jobs waiting too, but as I’d mentioned, I needed a break, because I feel no urgency whatsoever.

No worries, in fact my entire first page of wordpress posts list are drafts! Surely I can find something else to talk about, right? Except they all pretty much require me to do things that I can show and tell. The knitting, the coughcough tapestries, the WIP paintings, the daily(?) postcards etc. etc. Lots of sketching/designing going on behind the curtains though.

yarn sample spinning
Yarn sketch showing how I do not intend to spin this fiber. 2×2 cable.
dried leaf
What happens to leaves encased in acrylic painting medium?

There is in fact some knitting. I’m almost, well sort of, back to the same place where I frogged my blue reversible sweater, now in a longer, slightly wider version with I hope a better looking raglan. And I’ve decided to first knit a hat in some old leftover yarns from my stash (needs busting anyway) before I commit some of my handspun, as I’ve never knit a hat before, so sizewise it’s a bit of a mystery. There’s something to be said for small items like this, though. You get it over and done with pretty quick compared to sweaters. Unfortunately I go through a lot of the latter and don’t really use accessories much. I may reconsider of course: The hat looks tiny on the needles. If I end up having to knit it three times, not much time is saved. Or I suppose it could become a Thing-finder pouch, to have something to show for it.

knitted hat wip sweater

I “accidentally” ordered some more random library books instead of reading the ones on my shelf/ordering from my study list. I did have an ambition to order only one or two at a time, to take my time reading them and perhaps remember more of what they say. Problem is, sometimes they take almost a year, at other times I get 10 in a week. So I need to finish these and then try to be more systematic with my reading, so it doesn’t take away my crafting time because I have a deadline. Twice I can renew – sometimes. And only if nobody else is in line, so I sometimes have just 30 days for a whole pile. Fine for novels, I can do one per day, but the others I need to put down regularly.

books

Then I thought I did have some really exciting news to share with you, but right now I’m almost afraid to jinx and postpone it even more if I say it out loud. An exercise in patience for sure. Going on three weeks now… And I’m not even superstitious! I need to learn to not agonize over other people’s tardiness and supposed intentions. Do you master calm in the face of “bad” excuses? I seem to be getting better at seeing the logical side of it and not just fret, you could say I stand aside and watch myself do it for a bit. 😉 So while it still distracts me I seem to be getting over it faster, even when things happen in droves, as they are prone to do.

october garden belle de boskoop
I really should be making apple sauce before we have another frost.

Blandet landhandeldanish

Denne mandag er der ingen plantefarveindlæg, dvs. jeg har et par stykker, men de er kedelige, så jeg regner med at udgive dem i en bunke. “Sidste farverunde i 2013-uge”. Jeg har nogen flere ting jeg vil farve med, men jeg trænger stadig til en pause kan jeg mærke.

Heldigvis har jeg jo masser af blog-kladder, en hel side fuld. Nå, ikke, de handler allesammen om noget der ikke er færdigt til at vise frem. Der sker en masse forsøg og skitser bag kulisserne, men mere om det senere. Lidt spinding, lidt collage og maling og forskelligt andet.

Strikket lidt har jeg også, så jeg kan blive færdig med min ret/vrang omvendetrøje som blev en anelse for smal og kort men for stor i ærmegabene. Nu næsten tilbage hvor jeg var nået til sidste år, og forhåbentlig også en lidt pænere raglankant, jeg fik eksperimenteret lidt for meget sidst. Det virkede i teorien som jeg ønskede, det var bare ikke særlig kønt! Og så forsøger jeg mig med en demo-hue i restegarn – er lidt spændt på den, for den ser godt nok bette ud på rundpinden. Måske det i virkeligheden er en tingfinderpung?

Jeg er “kommet til” at bestille flere tilfældige biblioteksbøger, så nu har jeg igen travlt med at læse faglitteratur på deadline, det holder virkelig ikke. Jeg må prøve at holde fokus og ikke bestille så meget og kun fra min officielle liste, så jeg bedre kan fordybe mig. Romaner sluger jeg hurtigt, men fakta kræver at man lægger det fra sig og fordøjer i ny og næ.

Og ellers har jeg gået et par uger og ventet på at fortælle en spændende nyhed, men den lader vente på sig. Selvom jeg er blevet bedre til at træde et skridt til siden, så lader jeg mig stadig gå lidt på når ting går i hårknude uden min indflydelse og jeg er i tvivl om den anden parts intentioner. Er du god til at sige pyt og fordrive tiden med noget andet imens?

My week in images

Making this post has made me realize two things: A. my life is very dull and onesided B. My mind is even narrower because of all the things I don’t think to take pictures of. I also realized B is perhaps just an excuse to not admit completely to A. I obviously can’t count either.

I don’t mean dull as in being bored or not doing many things, which I obviously do if you’ve been following along, but they do tend to revolve around the same. I seem to mostly be looking a plants and the sky and nothing much besides! Of course, that’s what we’ve got to look at out here. I need to drive to the “city” (18 km) for some bits and bobs but most importantly more hydrosulphite to make blue, but I never thought of taking pix there. We usually just go to the mall, quickly scoop up what we need and head back home. Not really worth looking at.

How often do you do extraordinary things?

1/3 gone

This month seems hellbent on getting done! Ok, a third sounds a bit more than just over a week somehow, but still. Not sure I’ll be able to keep up!

So it’s not Wednesday for wips and reading, but here at the cottage it’s Fiber Friday, so there.

This is what I’ve got home from the library this month and my still not very advanced holey sweater. I think I’m getting to the beginning of the end of the first two skeins, though.

wipread1

I managed to dye a bit with Japanese Indigo today, not a lot as my plants were pretty limp from the drought. I would like to do a couple of really dark blue, as well as remember to bring my silk outside too. If nature doesn’t water the garden soon I guess I’ll have to!

japindigo1

I also washed a tiny bit of fleece, the green stuff from the other day. Seems to have cleaned up well enough!

fleece

The weather forecast says this might be one of the last sunny, warm days. The coreopsis is running amock, there’s no way I can pick all of them!

coreopsis10