Rainy Day Musings

I have always considered the rain to be healing—a blanket—the comfort of a friend.-- Douglas Coupland.

It has been raining and raining and raining here on Vancouver Island for the past couple of weeks. I think the weather people are saying we've had more rain in the past month than we did last year or something like that. In short: it's wet and cool out there.

I am missing the sunshine and when I look back at photos over the past couple of years around this date, I see lots of my flowers in bloom and my plants looking big and green and lush, and I feel a little sad...

... but then I remember how much I worry when we don't see any rain after the end of April. I remember how much I worried when we were nearly evacuated last year due to a nearby forest fire. And I only need to look out my window to see the shrubs that still have burned leaves on them from the extreme heat last summer. And then I feel ok about the rain.

I've been feeling pretty tired over the past couple of weeks. I think after a stretch of prolific creativity, I hit a bit of a wall and had to sit the heck down. I napped and watched tv and ate toast and drank tea. I think I've finally reached an age when I realize that those are the most restorative things I can do when I hit a wall like this: just wait until I feel ready to start again. I thought I wouldn't have much to share on the blog this week, but when I looked through my photos I realized that there's always something happening around here...

My notebooks arrived from the printers a couple of weeks ago. I am very, very happy with them. I was very surprised to see them come out so well:

It took me a while to find a printer that would print them with the binding along the short edge like this. I really wanted the tea stain to end up in the corner of the cover, but it turns out that this is really unusual in the printing world. I ended up using Personalized Paper Manufacturing Group and was really pleased with them. They even called me to be absolutely sure that this is the layout I wanted. I am very happy with the colours and was even happier with the speed with which they shipped them. 

I still have no idea what I'm going to do with all of these. I am toying around with the idea of re-opening my Etsy shop, but I honestly don't know if I could be bothered with shipping these things out. If you are interested in one, please leave me a note and we can see if we can work something out.

In other news: I have been thinking about trying out a weaving project with some gradient yarn I bought a while ago. It's a silk/cotton/viscose blend that I bought when I was home in Winnipeg a few winters ago:

My only problem is that my weaving knowledge is basic at best, and I'd really like to do this yarn justice on the loom, if that is indeed where I will use it. To that end, I've been busy reading books and watching videos and scratching my head, trying to educate myself as best I can before I dive in. It's been interesting to learn but frustrating because I can't quite bring myself to start yet. I think I need to research a bit more before I dive in. Watch this space:

My current knitting project is coming along pretty well. It was feeling like a bit of a drag for a while there, but I think I am nearing the finishing line. This is a project made from the Skies Light Mini Hanks Assortment Pack which is nine mini-skeins of their fingering weight indigo-dyed cotton, one of each of the colour ways. I was really concerned about making the minimal yardage into something wearable, but it's turning out to be quite a long short-sleeves cardigan. The last two skeins are in shades of green, which I wasn't that sure about, but I'm quite liking the effect now:

 

This was an experiment in converting a circular shawl pattern into a cardigan, and while I am pretty pleased with the result, I don't think I'll be trying it again. It's much easier to get a better fit with a top-down cardigan pattern. This fits pretty well, but it's a bit snug where I separated for the sleeves. I think it'll work out in the end. I'm also playing around with using the very last green skein to pick up and knit all around the front and neck edges to give the front a bit more coverage. I find cardigans a bit annoying because I don't like how the fronts flap open all the time and I'm not very good at figuring out flattering ways to close them. We'll see how it goes.

I looked out the window the other day at the back deck and saw a few stones I'd left out all winter on the railing. There was a wee seedling that sprouted in amongst them:

I went out and looked at it for a long time. I've been feeling frustrated lately. There are so many things I'd like to devote my time to, but I keep hitting roadblocks... not enough time, not the right space to work, not enough knowledge to get started, not the right supplies, not enough energy... and at the end of the day, I just feel tired and grumpy about it. But looking at this reminded me of something I'd heard in a podcast this week about how to bounce back from burnout. One of the people in the podcast talked about how a time when he was unemployed, and how decided one day to start writing down ten ideas every day. Sometimes, it was ten good ideas for himself, and sometimes it was ten ideas for a big corporation. And sometimes he would just randomly send them to the corporation and see what happened. 

And I just loved doing it. I was getting excited about things that were never going to happen. They were just happening in my brain. -- James Altucher

I suppose that one of the reasons I feel frustrated is because I am so driven by productivity that I get down when I can't get to my final product. But there is beauty and happiness in possibilities, in just trying something out, even when there is absolutely no real chance it will amount to anything. That little seedling? It's not gonna grow into a tree, even if I carefully pick it off the railing and put it in a pot. But it's beautiful in its own essence of possibility.

Apparently, I get philosophical on rainy days.

I'm off to knit and to muse some more. Have a good week.