Tag: inner conviction

Wishcasting not-wednesday

PiaChit Chat

Since my last wish is actually beginning to manifest (thank you very much), and I was in fact thinking only 2 days ago that I had not seen any prompts for this in a while, but if I did join another, I’d wish for some healing. And, well, it’s exactly what this edition is about, so…

Jamie asks: Where Do You Wish for Healing?

I have in fact two wishes when I come to think of it.

I wish to heal my “body batteries” which run flat oh so quickly and are so very hard to recharge. And I’d like to extend this wish to those of my friends who I know are battling the same.

I also wish to heal a rift in the relationship with a family member, who I’m not going to mention by name since I have not asked permission.

What do you wish to heal?

bumble

Fiber Friday Epiphany

PiaChit Chat

Only managed to spin half of the 2nd Rambouillet braid, I think (didn’t check) it matches the first in type pretty well although consistency went out the window along the way. I have another Ravelry challenge this month, so I better get the last half done. Or maybe I won’t actually (keep reading)! Fiber for the challenge is Targhee.

rambouillet4 rambouillet6

As you know I’ve been thinking about how to simplify my hobby life without actually cutting some of them off completely. The other day (while hanging wet laundry of all things!) I also got to thinking about “The Purpose” vs. creativity, my knitting and all things yarny and if they fitted into all this in any way. Why I keep planning to plant dye now that I A. have learned how to do it and B. don’t really have an actual purpose/project for it. I’ve been feeling quite ambivalent about that.

And then it dawned on me, that I don’t really have to focus my yarn habits on knitting. At all. I’d already been contemplating not doing so many garments, but trying to work on smaller objects instead. I only knit sweaters when I learned, then I didn’t knit at all for about 20 years, so when I picked it up again, it was sweaters. And specifically, I like to design them myself, more fun that way than just producing a copy of somebody elses work. Then I learned how to spin, so the next logical step was: I won’t buy more yarn, I’ll spin and dye all that I knit with.

The thing is, I’m not terribly good at sweaters.

  1. I can think up cool stuff, but it’s no way as cool as what many, many other designers can think up. Ergo, I don’t see a “carreer” as a knitwear designer in my cards, really.
  2. I always get something about the fit not exactly right and completely pleasing. I know this can be learned, but is seems I’d have to work very hard and dedicated on it in that case. And it appears more logical to focus on the areas that you already seem to be at ease with than try to develop the ones where you struggle, right?
  3. I often take very, very long to finish sweaters, starting multiple and then leave them all with one sleeve missing. I get bored. It’s not the clickety part of knitting that fascinates me the most, in fact if I could just have the ideas and then get someone else to do the actual work, I’d be totally cool with that…. Or get a machine.
  4. There’s a limit to how many accessories and bags that I use (virtually none), and it’s a lot of effort for just potholders and washcloths. (admittedly, it would reduce both spinning and knitting time considerably if I only did it when I needed new potholders)

What I really want to do is design the yarn. Play with colours and textures in all sorts of ways. And the yarns I think up are just NOT suited for my wardrobe, no little inner gypsy waiting to come out, I really like it plain, classical and casual. And inconspicuous on the street. 😉 Crazy clothes on other people I dig, but it’s not me.

So I ran into this book at the library, and I know I’ve mentioned it previously as a frivolous idea of adding yet another activity. But now I’m thinking – I think in pictures, I want to paint, I’ve been taking photographs for decades – tapestries are really much closer related than clothes. It doesn’t look harder to learn than new knit and crochet stitches.

tapestry

The advantages are plenty:

  1. I can keep using the cheap yarn for plant dyeing instead of worrying about the cost of getting a good, soft type to work with that I can tolerate next to my skin.
  2. Amounts per colour also isn’t that much of an issue, nor with spinning. No need to chug through 800 g of brown Shetland fiber.
  3. I wouldn’t feel too guilty about having a large stash of different yarns just sitting there waiting for the right project, because weaving takes A LOT of yarn. Also removes the time pressure of having xx sweater amounts waiting. As long as I make sure I don’t feel obligated to weave a certain amount per month or year…
  4. A small tapestry loom for starters really is dead easy to construct, so no huge investments.
  5. Thinking in image creation only, I can hopefully arrange them as serial projects more often rather than parallel, better focus through singletasking. Get more done in fewer hours per day leaves more time and energy for chores, horses etc. and no scatterbrain.
  6. And if I do feel like knitting sweaters I can relax and do some of other people’s really cool designs that would make me feel better about wearing them and even pretend to be more fashion conscious. And even buy those yarns perhaps, at least in part.

Less stress on a lot of levels I think (hope). It feels good. Maybe the weaving turns into felting images instead, which removes the time it takes to spin…. It would make my hobbies more unified somehow, the fiber being just another painting medium. What do y’all think?

The effect won’t kick in immediately – I do want to finish my current knitting WIPs (6). But spinning will be different, my approach will be different and I won’t be actually getting ready to weave or even think about tapestry projects. Unless they happen on their own. It’s just there as an option for when I want to work with yarn, not paint or Photoshop.

Synchronicity of the day: 2 hours after I pressed Schedule on this post I see a news flash from World of Wool announcing a workshop with a tapestry weaver. I can’t go since it’s in the UK, but they usually write about felting….

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Rambouillet igen og en åbenbaring

Det lykkedes mig kun at få spundet halvdelen af ugens fletning, men jeg synes den matcher de foregående rimeligt i type og tykkelse som planlagt. Dvs. det tror jeg den gør, for jeg har faktisk ikke hevet dem frem og sammenlignet!

Og så har jeg ellers haft mit strikke- og fiberliv oppe til revision, for jeg har alt for mange aktiviteter jeg gerne vil, ikke når og så får dårlig samvittighed eller stress over. For ikke at snakke om de huslige ting, som jeg så ikke gider fordi jeg mangler energi. På den anden side synes jeg det er svært at vælge noget fra, når det nu interesserer mig! Jeg har ikke lyst til at gå rundt med skyklapper.

Jeg har også spekuleret over, hvorfor jeg bliver ved med at samle farveplanter, jeg har jo sådan set lært hvordan man plantefarver nu, men jeg har ikke nogen egentlige projekter planlagt med det.

Og nu har jeg så besluttet, at det er strikningen som kommer på vågeblus. Jeg havde allerede besluttet at jeg ville begynde at tænke i små strikkeprojekter fremfor trøjer, som er min standard, for det er det jeg bruger mest i den genre. Jeg er nemlig laaaang tid om at strikke en trøje, jeg begynder at kede mig halvvejs og finder på en ny osv.

Det er faktisk ikke selve strikningen der interesserer mig men det at finde pÃ¥. Jeg er bare ikke verdens bedste strikdesigner mÃ¥ jeg nok erkende, og ja, hvis man øver sig bliver man bedre, men nÃ¥r man nu vil 1000 ting er det mÃ¥ske mere logisk at satse pÃ¥ dem man har lettest ved, fremfor dem der skal knokles med og sÃ¥ alligevel kun bliver middelmÃ¥dige? Huer, sjaler, sokker og tilbehør er ikke rigtig noget jeg bruger…

Det jeg egentlig har mest lyst til er at bare designe garnet. Lege med farver og skøre ting som ikke kan bruges i min garderobe alligevel, jeg er mest til det enkle og neutrale på det område.

SÃ¥ faldt jeg over en bog om billedvævning og tænkte, at mÃ¥ske jeg bare skulle satse pÃ¥ det istedet. SÃ¥ er mine hobbies mere ensartede, male, foto – det hele er bare billeder med forskellige medier. SÃ¥ fÃ¥r jeg samlet mit fokus en lille smule?

Jeg vil også kunne have en samling blandet garn i mindre mængder, behøver ikke bruge krudt på at spinde 800 g hver gang. Jeg behøver heller ikke købe dyrt, blødt strikkegarn til plantefarvningen, jeg kan bare blive ved med at lege og eksperimentere med det billige.

Det er ikke svært eller dyrt at bygge en lille væv selv til en start, og det ser ikke sværere ud at lære end nye strikketeknikker.

Hvis jeg så vil strikke, kan jeg slappe af og prøve nogen af de virkelig lækre designs som andre har udtænkt i stedet for at ville lave alting selv fra bunden. Men jeg har endelig erkendt, at det er garnet som sådan der tænder mig, mit hjerte er ikke rigtig i strikningen som process selvom jeg er glad for de færdige resultater.

Bare en ide – som jeg har tænkt mig at afprøve. MÃ¥ske fÃ¥r jeg ligefrem overskud til ridningen igen!?

On laziness and procrastination

PiaChit Chat

gibbon

As some of us discussed in a previous post, I have a tendency to act against my better knowledge because I’m impatient or too lazy to take that extra step of preparation before I can move forward. And I’ve often wondered how I can train myself to not only pay attention to my inner voice but also stop in my tracks and do what it says, because it really is quite clever sometimes and doesn’t deserve to be told off.

Is it about slowing down in general, in thought and actual physical movement? A question of planning and making a structure before you push ahead? (I know people who keep doing that to perfection and thus never getting started – argh! But alas – I guess this is why I don’t play chess) Being more mindful in general, less goal oriented? Just a matter of habit?

Then Birdie suggested there could also be an element of self-sabotage in there. But who would want to do such a thing?! Which in turn made me think of having subconscious fears of succes. After all, once you really make it, there is even more pressure, because now you have to top everything you’ve done previously. And keep doing it! I still don’t quite get how this applies to ordinary daily activities, unless you take your life way too seriously for anybody’s good. But it’s a theory.

I would for instance LOVE to just sit at home in my snuggly little corner and get paid to write books. Never risk having to do another slave job in my life. They’d be great books of course and I’d like to make a truckload of money. Well, a fair amount anyway, enough to make a good life for myself and some extra to share the love around. What I don’t want is to appear in magazines and tv-interviews, even a book signing tour sounds pretty horrible. * Now, that’s really sending a mixed signal to the universe, right? I want the succes, but only the nice bits! Disregarding my chances of producing a best seller or not, could this and other similar disharmonies of intention be causing some of those weird reactions? “I want to paint but I have a million excuses before I can get started.” Later is not as real as now, so it’s also safer in terms of showing what you’ve got.

This is definitely something I need to be working on and thinking about.

-~*~-

* I don’t mind putting in the long hours of research, writing, editing etc. But is seems that today, if you want to sell, you don’t have to just output great stuff, you also have to be a travelling circus. In fact I have a feeling that publishers only bother marketing the authors that look good in pictures. (ok, I’m a lost case already….)

-~*~-

I’m also trying to teach myself, not to stop procrastinating, because I don’t think I can at this point in time, but to do it differently. Trick myself into not wasting time; and by that I don’t mean well deserved naps, but the times when you hang out in front of the computer, checking the weather page (again), looking up new tags on WordPress, read Facebook (I’m a stalker – never post, only comment my friends’ posts). All because you want to avoid spending 3 minutes walking to the (chilly) back room to start a load of laundry. Or stack firewood, trim horse hooves etc.

So what I’m practising is: Say that I plan to spend the day painting because it’s sunny but cold, so I have enough light but want to be inside, I’ve been having some ideas, perfect, yes? And yet I find myself pottering about not really doing much of anything, getting more coffee (which I honestly don’t even like much), clipping my nails, or getting overwhelmed with exhaustion, feeling the flutter of moths (not pretty butterflies) beating hard inside me; instead of flopping down for something completely brainless, I now do useful displacement activities. So I may not have beaten my performance anxiety, but at least the floor is clean, the laundry all done, my desk is shiny (very useful) and I feel a small victory in not having spent 4 hours reloading silly webpages. (not counting those of you wonderful, inspiring people whose pages I read regularly of course 😉 )

This has also (I hope, since this is a fairly new practice) solved another old problem of mine: having too many hobbies. This used to stress me out completely, because I felt I had/wanted to do all of them all the time, with equal skill, attention and results. Painting and knitting ended up on a shelf for many, many years, the horses were gone for over a decade too, but then all of them insisted on coming back as well as the photography, the computer graphics, new ones entered such as gardening, spinning and dyeing. And, well, you still have to cook and clean and mow the grass, fix the fences, and if you had the money it would be nice to fix up the house too. I’d love to start writing again. I want to learn to felt, and how about using all that plant dyed yarn to make tapetries? Calligraphy is cool. Collages. I love to read – for days. Etc. etc. So no matter which activity I chose for the day, I felt guilty about the others. And sometimes (often) not doing any of them just from the stress of juggling them in my head (clicking webpages again while I worked on my decision). And some of you may have noticed, I didn’t even talk about jobs…

Now I’ve decided that

  1. I don’t need to be doing any of it all the time. I can totally justify having a spinning wheel and only using it once a month, even if I’ve got 40 pounds of wool sitting around the house and also rearranged half the living room into a painting studio.
  2. I can use those many hobbies, which are in some ways related since they’re mostly about visual creativity, to outsmart my anxiety. So you’re too scared to paint today? Ok, well, while you’re picking up your guts I’ll go write a blog post. Don’t have anything to say? Right, let’s dye some yarn. And while I wait for the water to boil I’ll just prime a few pieces of paper or frame some canvas, just so it’s ready to go in case you do feel like picking up a brush. That way, I’m still being creative, or getting everything organized and easy for being creative instead of just running away for a nap and then feeling like a complete failure for doing so. The focus is on keeping a certain flow, not which actual activity is helping me do so. If all else fails, I’ll sit down with my coffee and read a book about being creative….

One benefit is, that some tasks are so boring (such as housework) that I have to procastinate my way through those by doodling a bit, slather some random paint on a canvas for a background etc. in between tasks – or actually during if I break up laundry into sorting, washing, hanging, folding. So the method works both ways. I get more things done without rushing or stressing about a todo list, I pretty much choose my current activity in the moment. Being a world champion of list making, this is incredibly liberating! I mean, I have the making of to-do lists as a whole hobby/activity in itself. I still need them to declutter my head, but I don’t actually look at them very much – and I still get as much done if not more. Cool huh?

But all this sounds really complicated. Am I in reality just fighting windmills a lazy nature? I know my body doesn’t seem to want to move about much of its own accord, as in sports, dancing etc. Maybe I should just lay down arms and embrace who I am; but I’m worried that is someone who sits on the sofa with a book, eating cake all day, house falling apart around me…. I have this inner drive – but I’m nearly always tired.

-~*~-

Synchronicity again: I finish the post, then read this:

We are generally torn between two opposite sets of instructions programmed into the brain: the least-effort imperative [entropy] on one side, and the claims of creativity [discovery] on the other.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

If you made it this far, you deserve a reward. 😉 I’m sorry I didn’t find more pictures to distract you.

Changes

PiaChit Chat

sloth dreaming his life away

The wishcasting Wednesday project had me thinking about how we shape our lives, because I can’t really decide whether I think all this dreamboard “Secret Law of Attraction” stuff is just another New Age brainfart or whether I sortof believe in it. I mean, it would be nice if you could just think and dream anything into your life, yes? Part of me just says “naaah – airy fairy bs”. I guess as on many other issues, I remain the agnostic, never a convert.

But as a person in my mid-forties still not quite knowing what I’ll be when I grow up, this has always been an important issue, do I have a calling or not *, why am I here, how do I get over there? We all want to feel useful, to contribute and be of service (well most of us) and have a bit of joy in the meantime. I realise that your calling isn’t necessarily your job (but even so, jobs don’t have to be absolutely dreary, do they?), not all of us need to be heroes either, but it would be nice to feel that you’re not just here passing time and water.

Another reason this subject is interesting to me is that ahead of me is having to completely reinvent my previous “career” (again) and I haven’t got a clue. I know what my dream job would be of course, but I’m not of the school that claims you can be ANYTHING. No, I could never have been a ballet dancer or a nuclear physicist, ok? I just don’t have it in me. (my luck is, I didn’t want to, but that wouldn’t have helped me) Unfortunately one part of my personality that I’ve not been able to retrain is that I become extremely grumpy in the long run if I’m not passionate about what I’m doing. Well, actually I see that as a good quality, but it makes life a bit more complicated in a world of many boring jobs.

ANYWAY, this post then popped up last week and confirmed what it was I was trying to think: How to Change Your Life: A User’s Guide : zenhabits.

I guess I do believe in making wish lists and dream boards and affirmations and all that sh*t. I’ve even seen the stuff happen. But I don’t think they work on their own, or, well, in a way they do, but not the way they’re usually presented.

Affirmations help reprogram your brain, your subconscious, your perception of life and more importantly, yourself. If you keep at it, you can dig new pathways instead of the old limiting beliefs you have. For me this is not happening just because I read something clever and decide, oh yeah, this is truth! Doesn’t make one bit of real change in me. I need it repeated over and over again until suddenly I realise something HAS been replaced, I have changed one of my thinking habits so that it now is the automatic one. Get out of the groove and into a new one.

Affirmations remind you to take action, they don’t work on their own by sending out holy vibrations into the Universe. (well, maybe I’m wrong and they actually do, but it doesn’t seem to be enough) Write it all down, but also take steps to get there, pick them up once in a while, brainstorm a bit. Add to your list not just each goal, but every method you can think of that would get you closer. Use them to stay focused. If you want 10.000 followers on your blog, you do have to spend a fair amount of time at your keyboard outputting stuff, not just writing the goal on a slip of paper and put it in a pink box with a coloured rock on top.

Also, like Leo says, small steps work for me. Teeny tiny steps in fact. Breaking down my goals into really small ones. Because it’s so much easier to get quick(ish) successes that way and boost your confidence and will to keep working. In fact, sometimes my first step is the intention itself, nothing more. Thinking it over, tasting a bit, rephrasing, getting used to it to wear down inner resistance, backing up to get a running start if you will. It won’t work unless I decide I believe in it.

Some habits I find harder to automate than others, such as drinking enough water. I think I have it down pat for a couple of months, then all of a sudden I realise I’ve stopped again. I can go all day on one cup of tea unless I actively keep it at the front of my mind at all times. Glass, tap, water, bring it with you, drink, refill. I have no idea why this is, maybe I have a brain defect. 😉

I also try not to fixate on one particular outcome, I use broad descriptions for some things, such as – is it important to be working with one particular thing, for instance “I want to be a painter” (to keep it inside the subjects of this blog), or could “I want to work with creative crafty things” work? The latter opens up to being a teacher, a writer, a yarn designer, a sculptor, make your own suggestions. Limiting yourself to one outcome closes you to all the future options that you haven’t yet imagined but which would make you just as happy. Maybe you’d be fine not working with artsy stuff, so “I have a wonderful, fulfilling, wellpaid job” might do the trick? Having written that, another blog post from Leo turned up, so maybe those invisible vibrations out there do work somehow. 😉

The Not Knowing Path

Then again I’ve found I need to narrow down the description or be real specific for other wishes. Not that I’m in the market for one, but writing “I want a husband” could attract all sorts of losers, you know? But you did get what you asked! You didn’t say he had to be nice. So I guess you do have to be aware of your preferences and just as importantly, what you most certainly don’t want. Sometimes life offers you things that you are meant to turn down. Lists and affirmations help you come clear on those issues.

Another problem with visualization as a meditation, a practice where you find your deepest feelings and see yourself already in the desired situation, is that many people seem to focus on something they’re actually obsessed by. Becoming financially very rich very fast, meeting that film star etc. In fact I believe that if you’re really good at it, it can be very unhealthy and wear you down instead. Deplete your energy, an escape from life as it is right now. So not only are you not getting your desire, you’re not getting anywhere.

The third link that came up for me as I was drafting this post in bits and pieces (jotting down keywords more like), was this. Today I have no idea why I included it, maybe you guys can make sense of it. I’ve certainly had my fair share of burnout in my quest for purpose….

Burnout: How To Recognise It, How To Fix It + How To Get Better At It

I know there’s probably a booklist a mile high and an even longer blogroll of people talking more eloquently about these things than me. But for some reason I learn better when I say things myself. Also, even though I do read very fast, there’s a limit to how much I have time to search and digest, so a few things I just have to do the hard way and figure out, even if I’m just reinventing hot water. So I’ll insist on throwing this kind of rants at you once in a while as part of my open intentions project. I can’t afford a therapist. 😉 And this is a lot more fun too I’m sure.

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* And after writing that, I stumbled on this quote from Paulo Coelho: “Life has a way of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once.” Well, Synchronicity I have to believe in, since it keeps happening to me all the time. Maybe just a question of “you see what you focus on”, but it does appear to be a little bit spookier that just so. And that is another blog post to be written or not.

What Is Your Spring Wish

PiaChit Chat

Jamie asks this at Wishcasting Wednesday: What Is Your Spring Wish.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m experimenting with intention, affirmations (more on that later in the week) and making them public. Which in itself is an exercise in accepting/daring to show vulnerability because half your readers will probably think all this is ridiculous.

So, my spring wish is no less than “inner peace and an untethered heart”.

Play along according to the rules on Jamies page if you like.

filmscan017