Just Because

My internal wiring goes berserk when I find a card as great as this:

This photo is by Jeannette Ordas, the creatrix behind The Beautiful Project.
You can find her cards at Good Egg Industries and her etsy shop.

Yes, I had to. Because it is, I think, the perfect, not-too-sappy, I-love-you-like-crazy card.

(Ah, love. Moo.)

The Distance Between Two Points

There is, actually, a connection between these disparate, simultaneous urges I've had lately to worship all that is mediterranean and blue, and want all that is autumn-y and crisp:

My very new, very own craft room.

This weekend, Rick and I picked up rollers and painted. In a flash – and really, it was the fastest, fuss free-est painting we have ever done – the back room was transformed from its pasty white primer to the softest, warmest blue. Which is also, I discover, a blue of many hues; by turns steely gray, pale violet, and chalky spring-sky. It is almost its own mood ring or amazing Technicolor dreamcoat.

I am fascinated by it. I will even sneak away to the room at random times of day just to see what color it is right at that moment.

It’s rare when I become this attached to a paint color I’ve picked. While true that I normally like them enough, generally speaking, once the allure of new color has faded, I am left with little more than a painted wall. You know? Sort of ho hum, here I am in the room with green walls. And: that thing you can’t find? Did you check inside the pink room? Never before have I loved a color to the point that I've found myself wishing to be inside the room whenever I'm not.

Unfortunately, I lack the photographic mojo required to begin to capture this blue for you. I have tried, in different lights, at different times of day, with different camera settings, to provide you the sort of proof required to assure you that I am not crazy on paint fumes over here.

This, however, is a task that demands the mastery of Jen Gotch. I am thoroughly inadequate for the job. As inadequate as I am at describing the millionty-one shades of blue and blue-violet of this hydrangea flower, which is also responsible for stimulating my recent over-interest in blue. Though the attempt provides its own satisfactions, if I do say so myself.

So this blue on my walls has awakened in me a sort of blue worship. Which feels a bit taboo actually, growing up as I did in a very anti-blue house.

Really.

I’m not sure what exactly it was my mother thought she was avoiding; maybe one of those overdone, smoky blue, country-themed houses that spread like viruses through the suburbs? Or could it be that she just really, to the core of her being, dislikes blue and all that blue stands for? Impossible, I think; I shake my head at that. But maybe, I guess.

At any rate, loving blue feels like a rebellion. – I can already hear what my mom will say about the new paint the first time she sees it: “Well, it’s nice enough, dear. If you like it. Not a color I would ever pick though.” – Almost as if, by painting my little room this shade, I have lifted a loud, defiant middle finger to my history and my upbringing. Which makes me laugh.

But this blue is also inspiring. Not necessarily the rebellion part – I fear I’m too old to be energized much by that – but more the transformative part. The way the color itself transforms to new levels of beauty throughout the day. The way it has transformed the room into a space that invites creativity. And the way that the simple choice of blue has transformed me.

Which brings me to my yearning for autumn. This blue has inaugurated for me the era of the craft room. (Craft! Room! I squee, on the inside.) And it is a delightful place to be.

So I am ready for you, Fall. I have the space now. Space enough to accommodate all your demands for the making of things that are warm and cozy. I have a room with a sewing table and a comfy chair, and I’m happy to sit there all day.

Please hurry along now. Won’t you?

Almost There?

1. Autumn walk, 2. tiptoe #9, 3. Eastern chipmunk, 4. autumn love

It’s premature for this, I know – it’s 97 degrees outside and only the beginning of August; there’s the state fair and a long, Indian summer ahead – but I am yearning for Fall. For apples and pears and stew. For crunchy leaves and crisp air and the promise of rain. For sweater knitting and quilt making and afternoons spent – lazy and warm – in the comfort of my bed.

Blue

Gloriously so.

It's Come Roaring Back, With Needles Blazing

It’s no secret that I haven’t been much of a knitter lately. In fact, I can hear you now, saying to yourself, incredulously, “She knits?!” – or, depending on how you know me, “She still knits?!”

Yes and no. I do, in general. But no, I haven’t been lately.

I seem to have made the mistake of casting on for two pair of knee-high socks at the same time. Only to find that whatever impulse to create I felt in any part of my being quickly drowned in a sea of fiddly, small stitches churned out in round after endless round of knitting with sticks as slight as toothpicks. And, bound by my guilt of setting aside a perfectly good work in progress to sate my fiber lust with another, I have responded by simply not knitting at all.

I go into this, I guess, to make two things clear: 1) I had no idea that Twist Collective even existed until this morning (I seem to have missed all the hype and buzz that accompanied the making of the premiere issue), and 2) Twist Collective is a fiber-loving force to be reckoned with. (Seriously. Check it out.)

I stumbled upon it today (their very first day, even!), by chance, through the wonder that is Ravelry. And oh my! am I in awe. Gorgeous designs and gorgeous photography. And gorgeously written articles to boot.

The combined sum of which have completely sent me to some sort of handcrafted, fleecy nirvana, where the streets are paved with the qiviut lovingly hand-collected from the molting muskox in the spring. I have now spent my entire morning clicking at yarn sites, conducting my own, thoroughly unscientific comparisons of fiber content, drape, and wraps per inch, and generally tending and feeding my now-reclusive inner-knitter. I am even hatching plots to get clacking on a sweater. Or two. And maybe even – dare I say? – a pair of socks.

Welcome back from exile, knitting urge!

(I have missed you.)