Jung At Heart

On New Year's Day I started my From My Window photo project. Each morning, right after I get up, I take a picture from my window and I plan to do it for daily all year. Today closes out the first month. And this week, another milestone -- sunrise started coming before 7 a.m. Here is what I saw this morning at 6:57 a.m.

This project is teaching me a lot. About the variety of color in the winter landscape. The hint of lavender I can see even some gray and cloudy mornings. The silent beauty of dawn. 

Doing this, maintaining the discipline of taking that picture each and every morning, allowing the variation in times because I don't get up at the same time every day, and resisting the temptation to make it prettier or otherwise different from what my eyes see as I look out the window is in itself full of lessons. I don't use the zoom. I don't crop the photo. I let it be itself. I had no idea what drew me to it when I started it a month ago, but it has become an essential part of my day. If you want to see the whole series to date, click on the Flickr badge on the right.

Today I have more knitting time. I have completed 9 1/2 repeats of the motif preceding the wonderful center pattern. But because I am making it long, I am not yet halfway through them -- 20 repeats are required now. The nice part is I have less need to look at the chart as I knit -- memorization is a good thing!

Time to get back to the knitting!

With apologies to Dave Mallett, who wrote about gardening, inch by inch, row by row, gonna make Arabian Nights grow. And grow it does. Here's where she was early this afternoon --

So you can see she's growing. Today was a really busy one for me as I finished up prep for a seminar I am teaching tomorrow on blogs and blogging for Senior College here -- being a deadline worker, of course I was doing the last of the prep work today. And tomorrow, I will be teaching all day. So there is a bit of a slow down in progress. I'll get probably 3 or 4 more repeats of this motif -- out of the twenty total needed for this half -- done by Friday morning. Then the weekend means lots of time to work on her.

I really like In Treatment  which premiered on HBO last night. It is the best I have seen in portraying therapy and therapists so I will be watching all the episodes and making a post on them each day. You can find the first one here.

Longer posts and more pictures will be back after tomorrow, I promise. Keep knitting -- and let me know what you think about In Treatment.

I am truly a knitter obsessed. With Arabian Nights. It isn't easy in the face of the writers' strike, meaning there is not much on television while I knit.So it's Netfilx and audiobooks. Smart me, I just started listening to Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, which is over 40 hours long! Meanwhile I am accumulating clues for The Fisherman's Wife shawl, Secret of the Stole ii, and Spring Surprise mystery KALs for later. I am not even tempted to swatch the new ones!

I have finished the heavily beaded part of this half so the knitting is going faster. Here's a look at where I started this morning --

I've got pulled pork cooking in the slow cooker, my audiobook, lots of tea and my comfy chair so I'm ready for a nice day of knitting.

Well, by Tuesday night I had the beads and yarn and pattern in hand and I was all set to go. Then I read the beginning of the directions :"String 1588 beads on yarn" -- and they are for the fringe and edge! So Tuesday night I strung beads. And strung them. You know, 1588 is a *lot* of beads.

I wanted to get to the knitting so I got up early yesterday and cast on and plunged it. Only to discover just as I had to stop for the day that I had cast on 2 too many stitches. :::Big Sigh:::

I met with one of my groups yesterday morning, worked with a couple of patients and finally last night I was able to get back to the knitting. Big decision -- fudge corrections or rip it out and start again? Now I confess that were I doing this just for me, I would fudge it, but I felt that it deserves my very best effort. So, I ripped it all out and decided I would start again in the morning.

Which I did this morning. In between work and other chores, I managed to complete the first 20 rows, which doesn't sound like a lot but the beads make the going a little slower. I was right that the beads are spectacular against the yarn. The pattern is very nicely done and I am really enjoying knitting it. It's gloomy out so the light is not terrific and it is tough to really capture the colors, but here is a first look for you -- I will have a good deal more to show tomorrow.

According to this site, the moon I see outside my window this evening is the Wolf Moon. 

It was fiercely cold here today -- the high was 14F but the wind chill hardly made it above 0F.  One of the other names for January's full moon, the Ice Moon, seems appropriate for us.

I've gotten the yarn for Arabian Nights all wound into a nice ball. Susan tells me the pattern should be here for me tomorrow sometime and the beads should arrive then too. Tonight I am going to swatch the yarn to see what needle size I like. I tend to use 3's or 4's with this weight yarn, but we'll see. Want to see the gorgeous yarn again? I knew you did so here it is --

Two more rows to go on Clue 3 of SSS. New clue comes out tomorrow but I won't start it. You have no idea what a novelty it will be for me to be faithful to Arabian Nights, forsaking all others until I finish it. A true test of my mettle!

One more moon picture

I have been thinking a lot about fearlessness these past few weeks. I think I have written before about being fearless when it comes to knitting and I am about cooking as well -- I am willing to plunge in and do anything and without anxiety. I was talking with a relatively new knitter a week or so ago and I asked her what she wanted to knit next now that she has completed a scarf. I know that I would be moving on to a sweater or socks or something, but it would be all about what it is I *want* to knit, not what I think I am able to knit -- because I know I will only grow my skills and learn more by stretching to do that thing I haven't done before. Besides, the idea of knitting rectangles, whether for scarves or potholders, over and over again always in stockinette, garter or ribbing, would quickly become boring and and might put me off knitting. But she is much more concerned with making a mistake and only attempting projects for beginners. Her fear keeps her from leaping in and going for what she likes. I always figure that the worst that can happen is that it doesn't turn out the way I like, but I can always rip it out and knit it again or use the yarn for something else. In short, there is nothing really big at stake, so mistakes and having to struggle to gain mastery feel very low risk with knitting or cooking.

As I was musing about this, I happened to pull Women Who Run With the Wolves off my shelf. I have had this book since it was first published in 1992  and I have recommended it to so many people over the years, but I have not re-read it is a long time. Anyway, I followed a reference into the notes in the back and read this:

"Regarding the creative life, one of the most common fears is not precisely a fear of failure, but rather a fear to test the mettle. The thinking goes something like this ... if you fail, you can pick yourself up and begin anew; you have infinite chances ahead of you. But, what if you succeed, but in the mediocre range? What if no matter how hard you try, you achieve, yes, but not at the level you wanted to? That is the far more bedeviling issue for those who create." (p. 491)

And that's it, isn't it? Because who wants to be mediocre? As a knitter, tis fear does not dog me, because for whatever reason my sense of myself does not ride on my excellence as a knitter. But when it comes to my work or writing, then the niggling voice of the what-ifs creeps in and I become less than daring.  How about you -- how do you wrestle with fear?

The yarn for Arabian Nights arrived today and is it gorgeous! No photo can catch the complexity and depth of the color, but this comes close--

I'll be getting out the swift and ball winder in a few minutes. I'm hoping the pattern and beads arrive Tuesday -- no mail Monday because of the holiday -- so I can get started.

This is a waiting time. The yarn, pattern and beads for Arabian Nights are on their way.

Around 10 o'clock this morning, the first clue for the Secret of the Stole ii will be released.

The snow started a half hour or so ago; now the wait for it to change to  the always delightful "wintery mix".

The flower buds are up so now the wait for the amaryllis blooms

But most of all, today I am waiting for this:

My new MacBook!

It started snowing just about the time i got up this morning and soon was coming down really hard. We've already had about 6 or 7 inches of new snow now and looks like we will make it to the 12-14" forecast. It's windy and blowing and cold -- good day to knit and listen to books.

A couple of weeks ago I received an order from Yubina.com -- and it was yellow cashmere and silk, though I thought I had ordered a red. Seems  that I clicked on the wrong box. And though yellow is not my color, I figure I will find a use for it. So I ordered what looked like a nice heathery blue -- 4 800 yd skeins of their cashmere and silk. Well that came today. And it came wound on 2 small cones and is more slate than blue and finer than the yellow. I can't really even tell if it is the same yarn. I am hoping that it will fluff a bit with washing. And I guess it will look good when I find the right pattern. But I must say I am underwhelmed by these yarns. The price is good and the yarn feels fine but it is not at all the same quality as what I get from Colourmart and the colors shown on the site are pretty far off what I see when I look at the actual yarn, whereas I have been happy with the Colourmart colors.

Last night my husband and I made a sublime meal -- Duck Pot Pie which I found here. It takes a bit of prep work, but is so worth the effort. this is one we will repeat and use as a dish when we have company.

I've a patient to talk with and knitting to do now. The snow keeps falling.

While I await the yarn and pattern for Arabian Nights -- have I said how excited I am to be the test knitter? -- I'm bringing other projects up to date.

Today I finished Clue 2 of the Secret Spring Surprise stole -- I like the complexity of this pattern. I still choose to fly without a net, so haven't used lifelines. Probably means I am courting disaster, but it's only knitting. I really like the color of this yarn a lot -- it is so soft and pretty.

I have a couple of other things I will work on while I await the test project -- a cardigan I started in DK silk from Colourmart, some socks of course. I plan to give all of my knitting time to Arabian Nights when it comes. I have downloaded Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, which is a bit over 40 hours long to listen to while I knit.

Also arriving next week is my new MacBook. My husband's bit the dust and we decided to get a new one for me and give him mine. So by Friday I should have a nice shiny new one, complete with keyboard which has not had the letters worn off. I'll hardly know what to do!

I was thinking about Project Spectrum 3 this morning as I walked around the house. One of the things my own From My Window project -- a photo every morning from my dining room window -- is teaching me is about how and what I see. It is giving me the opportunity to look more deeply into what catches my eye and to reflect on why. 

Someone who was looking at my series asked me why I wasn't using my zoom to hone in on details in the view. Well, I had to think about that because I had made the decision not to zoom and I didn't know why. Then it came to me that the project is about what I *see*, with my eyes as I look out. And I just don't have a zoom feature on my eyes. So what I take is what I see, as closely as my camera can capture that.

And as I look at the pictures, I am amazed by the light and by the shifting color, even in the winter landscape, generally assumed to be drab. The soft bits of pink and lavender that the rising sun gives, the blue of the water and the snow.

Color -- I love color! One of my brothers is a painter. In the ways that kids do, unconsciously, we chose different strengths to develop so I left art to him. Years later, when I was in my early 50's, I decided to take a painting class. I did not discover any latent talent as a painter, but I *loved* buying paints -- tubes of watercolor and oil paints. I still remember the color Opera with great fondness. And the reds -- oh my!

Beads and yarn have become my color obsessions these days. I seem to have to put beads into the lace I knit. So I have been buying them in different color families. Because, you know, I never know when I will *need* them.

And today, the light and the beads came together and caught my eye.

Now off to work. My dream group is coming this afternoon and we will bathe ourselves in the images of dreams.

As I said yesterday, I have been thinking about these mystery lace knit-alongs and what it is about them that grips me so. Here I am having done 3 of them and embarked now on another with 3 more due to start over the next few weeks so clearly there is something about them that grabs me as other things have not. 

I've not done any of the other kinds of KALs; the social aspect of knitting something that many others are knitting doesn't do much for an introvert like myself. Even with the mystery ones, I put myself on special notice very soon after they start and I do not  participate in the email chat that accompanies them as they go along.

I would not likely knit a sweater I couldn't see before beginning it because style is such an important factor there. Though the shape of these shawls and stoles is a known factor, for me all of the interest lies in the interplay of the lace patterns and the yarn. I really enjoy starting and having no idea what the finished object will look like other than, of course, knowing the basic shape. The mystery of it all is so paramount for me that I don't look at pictures other people post of their progress.

This is persistent thread in my life -- an engagement in process without knowing where things will end up. It is certainly a major piece of my work. When I start out with a new patient in therapy, I have no idea where the journey will take us or how long it will be. Its expression in knitting is certainly more mundane than in my work but significant to me nonetheless.

Are you part of any of these mystery KALs? What draws you?

Clue 1 of the Secret Spring Surprise stole was released Tuesday and I have gotten about a third of it done. Of course I forgot to take a picture while the light was good today -- so look again tomorrow.

It was COLD here today -- our high was 4 F. That's right, FOUR DEGREES. And the windchill was around -15F. 

You can see the cold in my morning photo today --