Inspiration Mondays: Growing Possibilities

It's been raining most of the day here, and, being a holiday Monday, the day lent itself to three things:

1. Dreaming of sunshine.
2. Snoozing on the couch.
3. Making doughnuts.

And I did all three.

First things first, with thoughts of sunshine, I dug through my yarn basket and pulled out these treasures:

The skein on the left is madelinetosh's merino light in Candlewick. The two centre balls are Elsebeth Lavold's Hempathy in Golden Yellow. The skein on the right is my own handspun mentioned in a previous post, which I display with great pride!

I only have partial plans for all this yarn, but I'm particularly inspired by the Hempathy at the moment, because I'm currently very interested in plant fibres. I have been thinking a lot linen, a similar kind of fibre, especially after watching this video:

BE LINEN MOVIE from Benoit MILLOT on Vimeo.

The sight of those coils of flax is mesmerizing, and probably a bit misleading (I've heard it's tough to spin, and hard on the hands), but I love the idea of taking that rough plant and making it into something to wear. Like, how the heck did anyone figure THAT out?

I have some wild flax that grows in one corner of my garden. It's kind of a cool patch of land because I just let it go wild. Here's what it looked like last summer. How pretty, huh?

I am truly inspired by the fact that someone saw the possibilities in this plant and went ahead and made some fabric out of it, despite all the hard work it takes to prepare this fibre by hand. Someone then recognized the potential of sharing this fabric with the world, and built an entire industry out of it. The cities grew around this industry, and it is now a major part of fashion and daily life.

All because someone gave a little bit of thought to a little blue flower.

I think the true inspiration from this is that there's something important to remember about possibilities:

A possibility does not instantly change your life. It needs hard work and graft to make possibilities into something worthwhile. It involves sticking out your neck, trying, falling down, trying again. There is not one right way, but there are many ways. I must trust my own instincts and face failure, one step at a time. And in the same way, I can not judge people for fearing new possibilities if I fear them myself, and if I can not see and feel excited by them.

Anyway, after I played around with that yarn and made all these realizations, I had a nap this afternoon, and then got up and made these:

They're baked, not fried, and I coated half in cinnamon and sugar and the other half in a dark chocolate glaze I whipped up. And they're both quite tasty... pillowy light, and awfully good. I have a few favours to repay, and I think I'll use these for that purpose, but I'm thinking the hubby would probably like to keep a few. We'll see how many are left tonight!

All in all, it's been a pretty productive day, and exactly the sort of day I needed. The rain will end at some point, the flowers will grow, and the donuts will get eaten. I feel as though a seed has been planted in my soul that I need to nourish and cultivate into a part of me that welcomes possibilities and new ideas.

It's amazing what comes of playing around with a few balls of yarn, huh?