Creative Incubation

"This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be, This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen."


Joseph Campbell, in 1985 interview with Bill Moyers

I sometimes find that people think I am the "crazy cat lady" or the old curmudgeon.  I go into hibernation in the winter.  But when I saw this quote, I knew it was more than this explanation.  I am using this natural time of hibernation to go inside and create and find my peace of mind however I can find it.

Certainly the world is a crazy place, but for the most part it doesn't involve me.  I stay home and create in my space I created to find peace.

It almost sounds selfish to say I enjoy my solitude.  But solitude should not be equated to isolation.  I am not isolated any more like I used to be.  I do go out occasionally, and I do interact with others. 

I do talk to the cat and dog, but for the most part Noodles is the only one who interacts back to me.  He and I have an "understanding".  Poor Patty is not so swift in the brain matters.  So, I guess one can say I am the "crazy cat person".  I have wonderful conversations with him.  And he listens.  He looks at me full own and listens.  I know, I know, crazy, huh?

I am sorry for all that is happening in the world right now.  There is sadness, earthquakes, weird weather all over, and yes, the world is still going on.  But I have managed to sit in my chair and chug along with the Fair Isle vest without worrying too much.  I did get to see the Sherlock Holmes movie the other day on the t.v.  I didn't know the actors, but I really enjoyed their antics.  The end was clever with a flying dragon and the heli-hotair balloon over London.

I have a hawk that visits the big bird feeder in the garden.  He is not after seeds, of course.  But it was some shock to look out and see this huge bird sitting on top of the feeder and not a sign anywhere of the little songbirds.  I have never seen this happen before, but maybe it has and I didn't catch the rascal in the act.

We had one day of a very wet sloppy snow, and it is gone with the warmer weather.  Yes, it got chilly for one week, and now it is closing in on 50's again.  Sigh!  I give up trying to understand it.

I am also getting close to making a decision for the brown sweater.  I had to hunt for the pattern that I started with.  I went through 4 books, and finally found it.  I actually am combining several patterns and making it my own.  There will not be a gusset.  I don't want the ease there, and it is always a wad of fabric I don't like.  So I am calling this a semi-gansey or maybe a faux gansey.  Anyway, it is my own fault if it doesn't work out. 

So nothing else to report.  I just wanted to share that wonderful quote I found of Joseph Campbell's. 

Color in My World

Right now as I look out my window it is gray, cloudy, and dreary.  Except that when I look to the left, there are 10 male cardinals sitting in a wonderful array of red against the gray, dreary world.  I am so amazed when I look at a cardinal up close and personal.  There are so many shades of color in their feathers and the orange in their beaks.  With all that, there is the black accents and gray little feet.  Actually the females beaks look more orange because of the contrast with their feathers.

Why am I going on and on about colors in feathers?  Well, I found a new tool that Sherwin Williams sent me in an email yesterday.  It is called Chip It.  I have it on my Favorites on my Tool Bar.  I can take any photo that I can find and use it to create "chips" of color from that  photo.  There are other sites that do the same.  There is also a site that the woman herself pulls paint colors from photos and they are not computer generated.

Okay-first of all- I remember all too well how interesting it was in my art classes to learn about how color works, etc.  Some of my instructors would tell us to look at various museum pieces and study how the artist used color to create the composition.  We often were required to sit in museums or galleries and try to draw a similar composition.  We were never warned that there are laws to prevent one from "copying" someone's work.  We never did feel like we were actually duplicating someone's work-just studying methods and skills of the artists.  I will never forget the "lessons" I learned at the Art Institute in Chicago.  They had just opened their Impressionistic wing, and I was in AWE of the works displayed.  I was able to get close enough to think that the artist had to nuts to use that technique or those colors or whatever.  But from across the room it was magnificent.

Now I know that some people think that my taking any photo that I find on the Internet and chipping it is breaking some copyright law.  But I am not trying to duplicate the photo or picture.  I just want something to help me extrapolate the colors from the chosen picture.  Then I will try my best effort to translate those computerized chips to real-life yarn colors.  I want to use it as a tool to "see" colors instead of the entire composition.

I am right now knitting a Fair Isle vest.  I originally was inspired by a photo of the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  The friend that commissioned me to knit this goes there every year and I felt that was an appropriate choice of inspiration.  I showed him my choice of colors in yarns, and he wasn't really excited about the darker blue color.  My color palette was going to be darker blue and ivory.  So I waffled back and forth, knit a swatch to get my thread count, etc.  Then I made a brave move to do what I am doing now.  It is darker brown, oatmeal, and a lighter brown as the primary colors.  I haven't been comfortable with this choice since my original idea was blue.  But the other day I looked at the knitting from across the room, and it was RIGHT!  I had made the right choice. 

But I had struggled and struggled and tossed and turned to get those colors from the photo.  Now that I have the chip it program and other programs, I am hoping that it will be easier in the future to pull colors.  Our brains do funny things when we look at pictures or photos.  I am hoping to use this as a tool to help "see" color.

So right now I am happy to just look outside and see my red dots on the branches.  Have you ever looked at the colors in a finch.  They don't turn bright gold until after winter season.  So it is a brassy yellowish green.  The purple finches have wonderful stripes on their vests. 

So while we languish in this dreadful time of the year when we have to put up with clouds, drizzle, maybe snow, gray, look for the color surrounding us.

One Month Later

I started this one month ago.  I finally got my yarn ordered, received, swatched and set to go.  I made a few blips along the beginning, and finally found my system was the best system.  I made the decision to do a regular rib knit along the bottom instead of the corrugated rib.  I also decided to use the oatmeal color instead of the dark brown.  I am on the second peerie now.  When it is finished I will be halfway on the body part.   Anyway it goes, I am happy with it.  I like it.

So yesterday I took a day away from knitting and putting my eyes out.  I tackled the BIG job of cleaning out the closet in my designated sewing room.  OMG!  There was just stuff and stuff and stuff.  I opened bins and cleaned out boxes.  I had one bin that was just art stuff from when I painted.  There were old sketch pads and papers and all the myriads of pictures I saved for ideas. I found sketches and some scrap pieces I had practised colors on.  Stuff!

It is amazing the junk we save and I am sure there is a reason to save all of this junk.  I even found the admission essay for master's work.  I was amazed that I used to write really well.  I was accepted into the program I had applied and had my finances arranged.  Then Life intervened and I never got to go.  I found a short story I had written for a class, and I had a nice A for that.  Funny to read that now too.

I found pictures and two picture albums.  Stuff! 

I burned a huge lot of paper and I have loaded the car again for Goodwill.  After I finish this closet, I will have one more closet to sort through.  Oh, and I have to finish the shed when the weather is nicer.

My eyes were burning on Sunday and I decided that I needed to take a break.  I don't know what possessed me to tackle the closet, but I am certainly happy that I did do that.

So I guess I will tackle the knitting this afternoon after I finish working out a system to store what I saved this round. 

I have always had a habit of writing down quotes when I find them.  I have them all over my house.  I like to review them and study them.  I have always done this.  I also used to save newspaper articles and put them up too.  But I have discontinued that habit with the internet so handy these days.  I know this sounds quirky, but I really like quotes.  I don't know why.

Anyway here is one I found in my piles of  paper yesterday:

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind could invent.
                                                                   -Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson

And I think that sums up my thoughts for today.  I think there are 41 days to Spring.  A friend told me she is already picking daffodils.  Mine are putting on buds.  What a mess our winter has been.

Well- It's Mid-Winter!

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. ~George Carlin

I refuse to just natter on and on about the weather.  But it is weird!  People are fallen out all over the place in eastern Europe, and Alaska is having record winter.  I am not going to complain too much.  But thunderstorms in February are strange!

Okay-now that that is over, I will discuss my mundane life.  I am knitting.  Wow-really.  I am getting really close to half-way on the vest body.  Maybe today, maybe today and tomorrow knitting.  I am not knitting much on brown semi-gansey.  I take it along since it is just circular stockinette knitting right now. 

Patty and Noodles went for yearly wellness checkups and meds.  Both passed without any difficulty.  So far, so good.  Last year was a record year for disasters in pet kingdom in my household.

So I am hibernating and nothing new is going on.  I am entranced with the stranded knitting. I have to stop and refocus my eyes periodically.  I am not sure how anyone in their right mind could actually knit this stuff for a living-which people did many times in the past.  How did they do it?  I have to stop and rest my eyes and walk around.  Aren't we such lucky people that this is fun and not a mandatory thing in our lives?

I thought today I would spin, but I looked in my bin of fibers and couldn't really get excited about any of it.  I know that I want to spin this or that, but nothing excites me.  So I made biscuits.

Well, like I said, nothing new is going on.  A new month and a bit closer to March and Spring. 

Have a good week.  Enjoy the snowless days while we can.

I Will Not Give Up!

This is just a brief little note to myself that is based on perseverance.  I struggled for the first two rows on the Fair Isle vest.  I was determined to do everything according to Meg Swanson's video.  I was going to set up my pattern work just like Meg.

Okay, Okay!  Not exactly like Meg's vest, but close. 

So after unknitting the second row not once, not twice, but three times, I screamed.  I am sure that this is early onset dementia.  I cannot believe this could be so hard.  I got to the last stitch, and I was one stitch off somewhere in 288 stitches!  ARGGGGH!

Why was this so hard?  I have done Fair Isle before.  I have done charts before.  I have done more complicated knitting than this.  What is wrong?

I went to bed so frustrated that my eyes were watering from trying to read the damn chart.  I lay in bed thinking about the damn thing, and I finally gave up and went back into the living room/knitting room and went back over the thing from the beginning.  I finally found the mistake within the first 20 stitches, which meant I would have to unknit back to that mistake.   The next day, of course.

Well, after a fitful night of sleep, I tackled the dreaded vest thing while I was fresh and the light was bright.  I unknit to the mistake, counted out loud, and got to the end without a mistake.  And I did what I had been taught by my grandmother-I set up markers in certain places that tell me if I am on track.  And it worked!  I went back to my own way of doing the thing, and it worked!

I am cruising along now with one OXO and one Peerie finished.  I am on the second OXO and I am sailing along.  I know immediately when I have a mistake and I unknit back to that spot and continue on without frustration.  Sorry Meg-I can't do it your way.  I have to do it my way.

And one might ask-Why is it so hard to get this thing going?  It is because I am centering the pattern so that there is the center of an X on the front and the center of an O on the back.  It makes it "pleasing" to the eye.  Or something like craziness.

Anyway, now I am unsure if I like the color of the Peerie.  I am going to look at it again in the daylight.  It seems awful bright to me.  Like "Look at me" bright instead of blending in pretty.  I am unsure if I can actually unknit that much knitting.  Is it worth it?

My brown semi-gansey is still growing, but it is slow going.  I pick it up when my eyes bother me from chart work.  And it is faster knitting than two-hand stranded work.

I can actually do the Fair Isle while t.v. is going now.   So my method is working.  I only made one mistake last night, and I figured it out before the marker came up.

No other news.  My neighbors are gone for a coupla months, and I am getting the mail, the newspaper, and checking on the house once a week.   I talked to one of their sons and he wanted to make sure I would call him for anything that goes on at his folks house.  This is my third winter to do this and I can't understand why everyone is so nervous this year.

I leave you with these two definitions.  People tell me I am stubborn, and I can be bullheaded.  But there is a big difference.  Have a good weekend.  

  

Perseverance-Steady persistence in adhering to a course of action, a belief, or a purpose; steadfastness

 

Stubborn-Unreasonably, often perversely unyielding; bullheaded. Firmly resolved or determined resolute
   

A Lot of Sun, A Little Spring, A Few Storms

Okay, I know that everyone and everybody has talked about the weather.  But isn't it weird?  Today I have the back door open and the heat is turned off.  Patty likes the opportunities of going out and exploring all on her very own.  I allow her the freedom because that is a big step for a scared little dog.

And then there were the tornadoes!  I know that every time there is unusual warm weather and sudden colder weather that collide "up there" some where, there are serious storms.  I also know that that is usually the case from March on around here.  Whew! 

I feel like I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop.  We have February and March to get through yet.

I am plugging along on the semi-gansey with the stockinette knitting round and round.  I am a teeny bit over halfway up to arm hole.  The Fair Isle vest is coming along.  Now that I have my tried and true method in place, I am having success with the knitting.  I am almost through with the first OXO section.  I am ready to see a Peerie show up. 

I finally opened the door to my sewing room and straightened up the mess in there.  I am forcing myself to finish the binding on the quilt that was laying over the back of the chair.  I pat the pretty blocks I last worked on, but I am going to finish that binding.  It felt really good to feel the cloth again.

My friend CF spent the night Sunday night, and we went to the new Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville yesterday.  It is very lovely and the architecture is fabulous.  They have a nice collection for a beginning and it will be interesting to see what they add. 

Today my friend CS came over with her spinning wheel.  She felt like she needed a refresher course, but I allowed her to just feel her own way through getting started and spinning.  She does fine and just needs some encouragement to "just do it".   We had a great catch-up on everyone and some gossip, and it was fun to just "visit" over the wheels.  She is going to take her wheel with her to Colorado when they go next.  That will be great quiet time to just sit down and spin.  She finally relaxed when we got back from lunch, and I didn't have to say much.

So two days of visits and I am tired.  Isn't this my time to be a hermit?  I guess with the nicer weather people are out and about.

I almost have the shed cleaned out and organized.  I watched Peter Walsh on the OWN network last night and that motivates me to get rid of more stuff.  The people he helped last night had an airplane hangar filled to the rafters with "stuff".  Whew!

Jeopardy is on.  Gotta go.  Have a good week!

January Is A Strange Month

 A while back, I asked a photographer why I always have trouble photographing my skeins of yarn.  I know I have a little bitty point-and-shoot camera, but surely there has to be some way to take a good pic of yarn.  My main problem is the glare that comes from the skein.  I don't know if there is something in the fiber or the dye, but it glares.  The photographer suggested I get a portable light diffuser and try that.  So I got one.  My photo assistant had to help me with this.  This first shot is with the sun behind me.  See my shadow?  This one is with the sun facing me, but the camera down facing the light diffuser. 

 We seem to be having a little turf problem in the family.  Noodles has tried to be the dominant one in this family.  Friday night he took over Patty's new bed.  This is Patty's Christmas present and she LOVES her bed.  Well, you can imagine what happened when Patty saw that.  She rolled her eyes and couldn't get up courage to take it back.  So she jumped in my chair and made a nest of the towel I keep in the chair for pet hair.  I took the chair back, straightened the towel, and told her to get up her courage and let him know what she wanted. 

 So she jumped up on the chaise, turned her back, kicked everything off that she could, tried to dig up the quilt that is on the chaise for pet hair, and generally sulked through the evening.  It was  pathetic.

Today, two days later, Noodles ate a few bites of Patty's breakfast.  I don't think he has the teeth to chew such big bites.  But he managed two bites.  This is pathetic.  And dramatic, huh?

So this is my photo of the newest yarn.  There is no glare.  As he suggested I added a black board to absorb light.  The only problem now is washed out colors.  The pink is really coral and the blue is really turquoise.  So I am happy I fixed the glare problem.  Just how to do I get real color?

So what is happening with the weather?  If anyone figures it out, let me know.  I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

In knitting, I am working on the semi-gansey I am planning.  I love, love, love the targhee wool I am using.  I am convinced that this is going to be one tough sweater.  It will be an everyday sweater for sure.  No fancy stuff with this sweater.

I am also knitting the ribbing on the Fair Isle vest.  I finally made some decisions on the colors I want in it, and ordered all the yarn Friday night.  I think it will be non-traditional by the time I get it done.  I am using a  k1p1 rib instead of the corrugated rib.  The person I am knitting this for is thin and uses his vests as a substitute for fat stores.  So I wanted a snug rib to hold it close to his body.  There is more stretch there with this rib and I think it is more appropriate for him.  I am also doing the ribbing in a light color instead of a dark color.  He wears khaki pants a lot, and I think the color I chose will go with the khaki pants.  There will be less transition between colors.  Okay, I know that last one is an excuse for using the lighter color instead of the darker color.  But I think it will work just fine.  

I haven't been spinning this week at all.  I finished the stretched merino, and I am so not in love with stretched merino.  I have been knitting like crazy on the two sweaters.  I also taught a class yesterday, and I had to knit my sample pieces and get the instruction sheets copied, etc. 

So what to spin now!?  Well, I think I want to tackle the camel/merino that I bought a long time ago.  There isn't a lot there, but I can always order more if I get excited about it.  I also have a new bit of BFL handpainted that is really yummy looking.  4 ozs is multi-Fall colors of cranberry, orange, green and yellow.  4 ozs is just cranberry.  I like it a lot. 

Has anyone else noticed there is nothing on t.v. any more?  I have my favorite shows, and I suffered through all the Christmas reruns.  I like HGTV, but I don't care about million-dollar homes and how people decorate them.  I also cannot take the sulky, spoiled kids who are buying a home and want two sinks in their private bathroom, a spa tub, a rain shower, and BIG walk-in closets.  And big, beautiful kitchens that have all their wants included.  I was flipping through channels and I caught, "I don't really cook anything at all, but I want to be able to have my friends hang out in a pretty setting.  I need a lot of room to go from the refrigerator and microwave."  Please tell me this is crazy!

Well, it is time to go see if there are any podcasts I want to listen to while I putz around in the studio.  I just finished a good audio book, and I may have to get another one out of the local library.  

Have a good week.  I think we are to have rain tomorrow, and one bad cold day.  But the rest is looking good.  What a strange January this is!!