Winter begins
Different spots and time of day, same perspective. That top one? I think it’s begging to be made into an embroidery pattern.
Tilden Park, Berkeley Hills. Wordless Wednesday.
Color = Happiness
The day after my last post, in which I commented that I had not yet witnessed any other crafters aboard the train, I met three. What’s more amazing is that two of them were crocheters! The third was knitting furiously on a rather complicated looking sweater, which I found intimidating.
I ended up having a talk with one of the crocheters, a lovely woman, all the way home. She asked about my project, and I asked about hers. We commiserated a bit about finding time to crochet. She is making a brightly-colored ripple blanket with a K hook (for those of you non-crocheters, that’s a medium-large hook). Her first ripple stripe is a cheery lilac, and she was preparing to start on her second color, bright apple green.
As she worked she confided that her blanket was for her own bed. Too many times, she said, friends ask her to make them something and don’t realize the time and effort that goes into her creations. One friend had asked her to make a king-sized blanket for $100. No thanks, she said, she’ll just make things for herself and for charity. I rather agree with her. If I give you something I made, it’s because I think you’ll appreciate it. Most people don’t value the handmade, having become too accustomed to cheaply made anonymous big box store items. What I make isn’t designed to be easy come, easy go – and if you’ve ever spent hundreds of hours on something like I have, you know what I mean.
She said something to me that resonated with me as she described her vision for her blanket. Since it is for her she is going to make it as many colors as she likes, even though people said she is crazy for putting all of them together. Because she loves color.
Because to her, color means happiness.
Lovely.
I’m pretty sure I had a clever title earlier
As these things go, however, it has vanished. I’m not even sure what I was going to post about. Seriously, if you people want to get something clever out of me, you should figure a way to get me to write posts while walking home after work. But right now it’s 10 pm, so my brain can only offer up the dregs from a long day of the usual daily fare.
It’s the daily routine that concerns me today. Life amazes me in its infinite variations on the unchanging daily routine. Today I woke, went to work, walked home, cooked and watched TV. Three years ago, when this blog started, I had the same daily pattern. Now I have the same job, same husband, but many things have changed in that unchanging routine, and I have changed along with them. It seems that life is a type of evolution, the constant incorporation of new ideas and knowledge into life, and the constant response to what we encounter.
Now for an apt aphorism: change is the only constant. I have often created change in my life when it was not otherwise forthcoming. I was an impatient young woman, and did not appreciate gradual evolution. When I wanted something to change, I wanted it to happen RIGHT NOW. I still struggle to appreciate/acknowledge incremental patterns of change. I suspect that, when I am older, I will conclude that gradual is a great deal more powerful than sudden change, no matter how dramatic it might be.
An example. Today I cooked zucchini-basil soup: I sauteed a mirepoix base, then stewed it with zucchini and vegetable broth. Finally I pureed it with fresh basil and silken tofu. We ate the soup with spicy kohlrabi and green garlic latkes with mint-yogurt sauce. Except for the tofu and yogurt, it was all vegan and all farm fare, down to fat little carrots from my MIL’s garden. Four years ago? I was likely to be found eating a BLT from a sandwich shop, and didn’t know what a mirepoix was. Why the change? Mostly, because my encounters with my own and others’ illnesses during the past four years inspired me to be conscious of how I treat myself. I know now that my body believes in tit for tat: it treats me as poorly as I treat it. And I figured, while I was at it, I might as well figure out how to make healthy = tasty.
Food is but one example. I still have a cat and dog, but not the same ones. Caring for my sick dog and cat through their long illnesses … I don’t even have words for that experience. I now live in a house half the size of the one I used to, and have about 40% less stuff. I have taken interesting trips and seen new places. Valued colleagues have come and gone. I defied Texas and chose to walk a lot of places now instead of driving. I think much differently about my crafting now and the place that making stuff has in my life. I have new skills, new ideas, and new confidence. I have learned more about myself.
The discipline of staying put is hard for me. I can be mercurial and unpredictable. On the other hand, assuming that life stagnates if you’re not on the move is just dumb. Although I still believe in forcing change to avoid habitual ruts, at nearly 35 I am starting to appreciate how the small things cause transformation as surely as tiny roots break apart huge rocks.
A note on photos: I am starting a small container garden. Plants, I think, are a great metaphor for incremental change. Take the last photo, for example, of roots I’m growing from an ivy I bought nearly 10 years ago. It joins an older sibling I started growing three years ago that is now taking over a windowsill.
