Mondays Can Be Inspirational - First Edition

I've decided to add a weekly feature called, "Mondays Can Be Inspirational." Let's face it: Mondays are horrible. I usually go to bed on Sunday night with all sorts of good intentions: I'll get up early. I'll do a workout, some stretching, and then jump in the shower and hit the ground running.

The reality usually works out like this: Alarm goes off. I turn it off and go back to bed. I get up 30 minutes later and arrive at work somewhere around on time. It's terrible.

So, every Monday, I've decided to have something to look forward to. I'm going to share something that inspires me. Here goes:

It's probably not surprising that colour is exciting to me. A glance at my past projects will show you photo after photo of variegated yarns, bright reds, yellows, greens... even greys have a richness to them that makes my eyelids lower with pleasure. I simply love colour, all hues and tones, and am easily inspired by stark contrasts, and, perhaps not as often, by subtle hues.

It wasn't always about yarn. I have a past life as a jewelry designer. I have a cupboard full of beads and wires and neckchains that make me blush when I think of the size of the stash (I'll get around to destashing them sometime... any takers?). I used to fall asleep at night engulfed in thoughts of colour combinations, bead shapes, the angle of wire-wraps...

Nowadays, I think about the stitches in the project I'm currently working on, but if I've just purchased some yarn, I'm dreaming about the colour of the yarn, and what it's begging to become.

I happened to glance over at my yarn basket and noticed that I have an increasing amount of blue yarn. That, in and of itself, is strange for me. Why?

Because blue is my brother's colour.

Growing up, my brother always loved blue. Everything he owned was blue. In fact, I'm pretty sure most of his clothes have blue in them (unless they're from a particular sporting event, then he has to forgo it for the moment). He loved blue so much that I would never, ever choose it for anything I owned. It made me feel like a thief, a fraud. That's his colour. I think I might have even shied away from blueberries because of it.

My colour was red. That's probably not a shocker either. I have lots and lots of red yarns, red earrings, red clothes... It will probably always be my colour, and I will always be drawn to it. I'm fortunate that most reds look good on me, which,unfortunately, only enables my yarn habit further. "Red! That's my colour! I'll take six, please!"

It's only since adulthood that blue has entered my wardrobe, and heck, I'm glad. Have a look at this collection:

The deeper blues cause me to get lost in dreams... the depths of the ocean, or the mystery of deep space. Regal. Vibrant. Amazing.

That tissue box was thrown in at the last minute. I know, it's weird, but tissue boxes these days are made with the most amazing patterns that I often catch myself staring at them in the supermarket. Really. It's true. But come on... that is one pretty tissue box! It has a couple of squares of other colours: orange, green, white. The collector in me wants to keep it forever so that I can have that colour combination handy when I need it, but the lazy part of me knows that it will get recycled by my husband before I know it. It's probably for the best, otherwise, our house would be full of empty tissue boxes.

Of course, blue is not just blue. It is enhanced by the material in which it is rendered: silk, alpaca, glass, paint. The four balls on the left are an alpaca silk blend. It will become a shimmering, lacy shawl that will sit against my skin in luxurious warmth. Maybe I'll add some beads. I imagine it draping the head of an Egyptian queen, framing her face and her dark eyes as she sits in a hall with a floor of lapis lazuli.

I've tucked my own handspun yarn just next to them. It is likely going to become a lacy cowl, probably lined with fleece because it's a bit scratchy. Or maybe not. I'm actually enjoying the time I'm taking to dream something up with that one.

It took me a while to put that yarn away because I got stuck staring at the pile. It was a good thing to take them out, though, because it helped me to remember what I actually had hidden in the yarn basket. Maybe, just maybe, it'll stop me from purchasing more to add to the stash.

Probably not, but we can always hope.

I hope my brother won't mind me stealing his colour for a while. I feel a little sorry that I didn't do it earlier. Think of all the beautiful things I could have been making all this time...

And all of the blueberries I could have eaten. What a shame. What a shame...