bee creative

permission to be tired

  Reality is that some nights being creative is an effort.  Maybe someday sewing will become this way for me too, but for now knitting is what I turn to on those nights.  Something that I can make without too many decisions that have to be made, something that I can give order to (which brings me peace), that I can do mindlessly and yet still feel like I am creating. 

Day 23 of the sky scarf: the blue streak has now been broken by a dash of gray.  Sometimes knitting the two rows for my sky scarf is enough to motivate me to continue making something.  Other nights it's enough.  It is okay to be tired. 

The moon is nowhere in sight tonight, but it has been beautiful the last couple nights.

Just like moon cycles I come back to favorite poems.

"Under the buttonwoods, beneath a moon nailed fast. 

He wanted his heart to stop beating and his mind to rest..."

Wallace Stevens, from "This Solitude of Cataracts

What if making is sometimes about finding a place for the "mind to rest?" 

adding a touch of pink to the sky

Wool roving that I added to the elderberry dye bath.  I knew right away that I wanted to add some to the sky scarf.  It's just the pink-peach of dawn on the horizon. 

Close to the color of Chattanooga's eggs too. 

Scarf at day seventeen.

A fragment of a poem I've recently found (and a poet that I want to read more by):

 

"But tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her

barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window

in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor.

She will look in at me with her thin arms extended,

offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light."

Billy Collins

 

time for one thing...

Dawn this morning over laid with knitting

Knitting the sky.

And spinning the clouds. 

blue eggs...blue skies?

My mother found some local wool for me from a new source.

Seems that it would be perfect for a project suggested by a friend (thanks Sherry!).

The idea is to "knit a stripe in colors to match the sky" every day for a year.  (Leafcutter Designs)

I'm going to tweak the idea a bit by spinning yarn that is a mix of the colors I see in the sky at some point during the first hour after dawn.  It just seemed more meaningful to me to choose a time of day.  That and on any given day we can have everything!  Started this on Monday so I'm at day three. 

I did start with one stripe of hand spun that someone else did, but I'm going to try to do the rest myself with local wool. 

And then:

Arranged in a nine patch for Jude. 

For the last three days I've collected three eggs.  All the chickens are laying now.  The ones to the left are from Chattanooga and should be blue/green.  Not quite yet.

Does anyone know if Ameraucana chicken eggs become more blue as the chickens get older? 

The other thing that is fun about this is the difference in size.  Chattanooga has been laying for about a week and her eggs are tiny.  Rosemary has been laying for a month.  Her eggs started out small too but are already getting larger.  They are in the middle.  Jitterbugs eggs are on the far right.  She is two years old. 

One more nine patch.  Blackberries arranged on top of wool dyed with elderberry leaves. 

I rolled it up and tossed it back in the dye bath with the elderberry leaves.