What the Process Looks Like

Sometimes we make the process more complicated than we need to. We will never make a journey of a thousand miles by fretting about how long it will take or how hard it will be. We make the journey by taking each day step by step and then repeating it again and again until we reach our destination. --Joseph B. Wirthlin

Even after all of these years of posting on this blog, I still feel sheepish (heh) when I don't have a finished project to share. This is a knitting blog, after all. What's worse is that I'm finding it hard to think of anything yarn-related to write about. But is this only a knitting blog? I have to remember that this is the space where I share the creative things that breathe life into my day. Still... even though my current project feels like one of the more epic ones, I'm still finding it enjoyable. The comfort of a familiar stitch pattern and the softness of the laceweight BFL make it an easy project to come back to each time I pick it up, even it is only sporadically throughout the week. I would be lying if I wasn't looking forward to it being finished. I did weigh the leftover skein and was pretty pleased to find out that I have a little less than half of the yarn left. So here it is, with sleepy doggy added for scale:

In the meantime, I suppose I should share what I've been up to when I've been dodging my knitting. I've been struggling with sore feet recently, a result of trying to get back to a regular running routine without doing any of the necessary stretching and strength training that accompanies such activities. I'm lucky enough to have contact with folks who can help me with my injuries, and with a lot of stretching, massaging, icing and rest, I'm finally starting to feel like things are going the right direction. I'm trying to be kind to myself through it all. Tara Brach says, "We cannot judge ourselves into improvement." Here's hoping.

In the meantime, I've been busy carefully pottering about the garden, feeding and pruning my flowering shrubs gingerly, hoping to the heavens I'm not killing my garden with my overzealous snipping. In the midst of it all, this African violet that I've been routinely watering and feeding in the house has suddenly decided to bloom. It was a shock: I really thought it was going to be one of those plants that were just going to live in my house with free room and board without the reward of any blooms. And now, the intense purple blooms are so attractive that the hummingbirds and bees keep stopping and hovering at the window, trying to figure out how to get in to drink from them. I'm thinking I'm going to have to move it soon before one of the birds knocks themselves out:

It's a long weekend here this weekend. I skipped the gym yesterday to give myself a break and decided it would be more fun to take this little mug for a nice hike in the woods. He is a funny wee adventurer, totally incapable of walking in a straight line for all of the sniffing he has to do on the way. He was totally and utterly happy, as you can see:

We stopped at a park to have a picnic on the way home. This park happened to have a lovely dog park at it, which Seymour enjoyed immensely:

It was a busy, happy day. He was totally, happily exhausted and slept the whole way home:

I've got one more evening before I go back to work tomorrow, so I think I'll go finish dinner before I settle down for some stretching and icing, with interludes of knitting in-between. At this rate, I suppose I'll have one project done by the end of this summer. Is that a goal? Perhaps... but perhaps it's it's a time for me to also enjoy summer for a change. Have a good week.