2025 Resolution Word(s)

Are you a resolution maker or use the shortened version of choosing a resolution word? I've settled into the latter and often have my next year's word chosen a month or two before it goes into effect. Not this year. It was well into December before I settled on my choice for 2025, actually two sets of two words. They mirror how I felt 2024 had gone and how I didn't want 2025 to go. I'll reveal them in a bit but first, here is the last of the trinket bowls, made hastily on New Year's Day because I'd be seeing the recipient the following day for my regular cut and style. I had plenty of time to make it, but kept putting it off as I so often do with tasks until I was nearly out of time.

My stylist is always interested in my creative ventures, so at my previous appointment, I'd told her about the trinket bowls I'd been making and found it a little difficult to explain what they were and my process. Right then and there I decided I should make her one. She is an avid hunter, her husband hunts too but is also a game taxidermist, and they've even gone on safari in Africa. So I pulled out some leopard and tiger fabric that had come from friend Judi's stash to make this. She immediately said, "This will be perfect for all my rings!" then sent me a photo of it in use. She added that most of them had been gifted to her by another crafty client who makes them. I feel like she herself is quite the hair artist, mine being no trick to keep in check and her personality draws people to her. I'm not surprised that clients often gift her their work as I have.

But I digress. I realized that I'd spent a lot of last year in this same cycle of putting off getting to things or finishing things I'd started, even things that I wanted to do or had gotten excited about. My mental state was one of resisting, and if I could just get past the "I don't want to . . ." quarrel going on in my head, I was fine and getting things done. But I often didn't win.

Sleeves set in but still dragging my feet about sewing up the sides

So why was I resisting so much? To be honest, it may have started with tipping over into my seventh decade, which believe me I wanted to resist. I think I spent much of the year in a funk over it, coupled with a long slog getting my thyroid back in balance which eventually vanquished side effects of anxiety, depression, difficulty sleeping and fatigue. I started having more issues focusing my eyes which is due to dry eye syndrome which started up a few years back, part of my on-going auto-immune syndrome. The pain in my thumb-joints and cramping fingers worsened, making me think twice about picking up knitting needles or needle and thread to sew the pieces of this wool sweater together. I stare at it each evening when I settle in to watch tv, but fear gripping that needle will set off the cramping and the pain keeps me from picking it up. (However, I'm experimenting with compression gloves of two varieties and they may be helping.) Frankly, I grew tired of the constant monitoring of my various ailments and the daily/weekly routines and medication necessary to keep everything in check. Moody and biligerant about these things I could not ignore but wished I could.

That's the other thing I've realized in looking back over my behavior last year. A lot of the resistance was also driven by fear: fear of pain, or not having the stamina to make a longer drive or hike a trail longer than my daily walk, even still lingering pandemic fear of participating in anything involving crowds.  And too much of it driven by the whine of that petulant child in my head. I knew all this fear and resistance was making my world smaller and was having a hard time caring.

But hey! Something reversed after Thanksgiving. I suddenly started feeling physically much better which may be why my attitude uplifted, became brighter. I suddenly did not dread the coming year as another marker of my waning time on this earth but felt I'd have the energy to do more and see more, and really want to. I would take up my resolution word more as a mantra:

RESIST LESS/FEAR LESS

I think this will serve me well, and I pray this looking-forward-to-the-new-year optimism and better health stays with me! This quotation from Rilke is a perfect reminder of what a new year can mean:

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.”

As for last year's word - organize - It didn't help as much as I had hoped in getting me more productive, what with all this resistance in the background. Initially it was good to get the decks cleared and a lot of stuff organized and put away. But organizing is a lot like housework: it is never one and done but something you have to keep doing as new items enter the studio and projects leave messes in their wake. Plus there's always that issue of organizing so well that you suddenly can't find something you know you have somewhere, if you could only retrace your logic to find it. Plus, my muse apparently took off with both boxes of Posca Pens which I realized a few months ago were nowhere in sight, my last memory of one set on the work table and the other on the floor next to some paint I'd been journaling with.. She must be holding them hostage until I get back to my art journaling . . .

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Previous Resolution Word Posts:

• 2008 - Freedom
  2009 - Calm
  2010 - Focus
  2011 - Refocus
  2012 - Balance & Harmony
  2013 - Perseverance
  2014 - Explore
  2015 - Fearless
  2016 - Light
  2017 - Endure 
  2018 - Refresh
  
  2019 - Wing It!  
  2020 - Go! 
  2021 - Finish 
  2022 - More 
  2023 - Continue
  2024 - Organize 
  

 

 

Belated New Year's Greetings

Day 1 and 2

I hope you all had as lovely and peaceful and stress-free of a time between Christmas and New Year's Day as I did. I'd saved videos from Zentangle's latest project Twelve Days Of Christmas that were posted leading up to Christmas day but actually the twelve days of Christmas start on Christmas day. Knowing this and also knowing I didn't have time to fit zentangling into my pre-Christmas schedule, I looked forward to doing a tangle a day during the last days of the year and into the new one.

Day 3 and 4

Rather than work on individual tiles, I worked these in my "and then add red" sketchbook which accounts for the splashes of red in these tangles originally presented in blacks and greys. Some I liked the results of better than others but oh do I love what that red does. Don't forget that you can click on any image for a larger version to view details.

Day  5 and 6

The Zentangle people had settled on a theme for this group of tangles, that being "drawing behind". It's a simple basic zentangle technique that makes your work look much more complicated than it actually is, as does the final step of shading with graphite pencil.

Day 7 and 8

This page has one I wasn't very pleased with and one I rather liked. On the top one, the original curved lines to make the swirl were done with a wet paintbrush loaded with pigment off a watercolor pencil (or in my case, Inktense pencil). Shaky hands and a too small paint brush hindered my swooping of arcs which should have been a tad farther apart to fill up more of the square and make room for inner tangling. The bottom one if full of what we quilters call feathers but in this case, all jumbled up like after a pillow fight. White and red berries nestle here and there.

Day 9 and 10

These two were fairly fun to do. Rick drew the diagonal tangle going over and under itself while Maria added the drops that Rick pointed out looked like Japanese Lanterns, and so they do. As for the bottom one, who does not like a good swirl which in this case comes off looking a bit like clefs. I wasn't crazy about what was added to the space between the outer auras, would definitely do something different if I drew this again.

Day 11 and 12

I was pretty pleased that I stuck to my plan to block out time to do twelve consecutive days of tangling, but I won't lie. By day eleven I was ready to be done, and that top tangle didn't help my attitude any. They did it on a rectangular tile while I had pre-drawn squares on my pages. It would look better if the tassel part was longer but in truth, I didn't like this one much, especially the tassel part. I'd been having trouble drawing lines over this paper which is not very smooth and my unsteady hand coupled with working in the sketchbook didn't help. drawing long curving lines so close together and over and under each other was not the meditative process it could have been. I probably should have found a different tangle to draw, but so close to the end, I just sucked it up and worked it. But the one below was pretty fun. I actually didn't like day one's zentangle at all. It is pretty rare that I'm not willing to even give one a try (see previous description of tangling the top one). Instead, I knew I'd been saving a somewhat Christmas-y tangle for over a year, never adding it to this sketchbook until now, on this last day. Looks a bit like a stocking hat, does it not?

I'm glad I did this as I do enjoy tangling and have been away from it for a long time. What are vacation holidays for anyway? What special thing did you do over the holidays to relax you or kick off the new year?  

Holiday Greetings

 

View From My Back Deck

Well look at that! We'd gotten a dusting of snow the night before but I thought yesterday was supposed to be rainy. 

It snowed lightly all day but with not much accumulating - only a couple of inches. Definitely helped put me in the mood to finish up writing on Christmas cards.

But today it has warmed with gusting winds. All this is melted off the trees, roads and lawns. Beautiful while it lasted.

Can you believe it? My deck plants are hanging in there still! On closer inspections, I can see that the local deer that pass through have nibbled some leaves off the geranium but otherwise it is holding up.

I think it may be because we haven't really had a hard freeze yet. Just chuckle at that lovely yellow snapdragon bloom.

Still dawdling on sewing together my sweater but did get as far as to realize that these quilting clips might be perfect for holding the sections together as I sew. I may have to get another package because these are working great. With most of my holiday preparations taken care of, I think I can convince myself to focus on finishing this up now.

How are your holiday preparations going?

Lay Flat Notebook

I've been working on a new book structure this week, something I've had in mind to give a friend for far too long. Time to get it done so it will arrive by Christmas. It's from the April Handmade Book Club offering and when I first watched the video I wasn't sure about it, but a bit intrigued. It was billed as a way to use up leftover papers for the signatures (you can make it any size) and quickly sew into a book with a cover that is just glued onto the first page of the first signature and the last page of the last signature. I'd pulled the image with the saying "Don't Let Anyone Steal Your Joy Today" off the internet (no attribution), thinking it would make the perfect cover for a "What was the very best moment of your day?" notebook.

I've yet to try a "quick and simple" project that didn't take me longer than anticipated and wasn't full of problems. There was so much I had to think through as I went through the steps. At first, I was delighted to find enough leftover papers from a different project to make 4 signatures measuring 5" x 4-1/4" when folded. I was equally delighted to find a document I'd made to print lines across the 8-1/2" width could be quickly edited for my 5" height. I got the lines printed, folded the signatures and put them under weights while I puzzled my next steps.

I decided to print the cover image plus a different one for the back cover onto matte presentation paper in order to get the best colors. It's not heavy enough though to be a cover on its own but it was suggested that a flimsier paper could be glued to card stock or a file folder to give it added strength. I wasn't sure how the paper would react to glue but remembered I had 6" squares of double-sided Scor Tape. But then I started worrying about how the printout would hold up as a cover as I read through the directions of how to treat the printed page. My ink is not the archival kind the is water resistant. I thought about a tip Laly Mille mentioned if your inkkjet printouts ran or blurred when painting over them: just spray them with workable fixative first. Aha! I do have fixative on hand so after applying the Scor Tape to the images and doing a test run on different images, I sprayed them with fixative. Once dry, I trimmed them to size, stuck them to a file folder and trimmed again.

Now for the sewing. Instructions suggested a "cutting" method rather than punching holes which required clipping all four signatures together and "sawing" with a crat knife across the folds down through all paper layers. I was not the only one who struggled with this, finding first of all that my biggest clips would barely open wide enough to capture all signatures, and second of all the sawing took way more time than if I'd just made a quick template and punched holes in each signature individually. Even on the video instructions, the teacher's cuts did not make it through all pages, and many of us found the same, ending up needling holes the rest of the way. The binding itself was done a bit differently to create link stitches rather than true coptic stitches which are stronger, but this was primarily meant to be more a notebook for making lists with glue added over the spine for strengthening. But first, those covers needed gluing to the first and last page, kind of tricky but I got them on. I let them dry for a bit before wedging the book between other books to keep it upright for the spine gluing. Ohhh, I wasn't at all sure about that step and feared the glue would show white on my buff pages. But after a night of drying, it had gone clear. Whew! It opens nicely, does lay pretty flat and will make a nice gift. Will I make this structure again? Not sure, but at least now I know some of the pitfalls.

Almost Done

I thought I'd be able to post a picture of a finished sweater today but the suggested tubular bind off of stitches around the neckline ribbing took way longer than a traditional bind off would. It is done using a regular needle (which you should be able to see in the picture) to wind around and through stitches before dropping them off and it seemed slightly different from the sewn bind off I did on the grey socks but with the same effect - a slightly stretchy finished edge. I worked on it through three tv shows last night! I found I had to have the instructions right next to me to keep track of where I was in the sequence, couldn't seem to keep track otherwise. By the way, picking up stitches with those markers spaced along the neckline really did make that process easier.

So now I'm ready for the final stage: sewing the sleeve caps to the sweater armholes followed by sewing up the long seaming of the sides and sleeves. I am resisting this part, realizing I'm feeling a lot like I do when I get to the binding on a quilt. Actually setting in sleeves when I made my own clothes found me similarly resistive. Definitely not my favorite part. I did a quick check of sizing after the binding off was done, slipping my head through the neckline opening and holding the sides together with my fingers. It will get a blocking after all the seaming is done but it looks like the fit will be just fine.

Helpful Tip

Finally tackling the dreaded finishing touches to my sweater, getting those shoulder seams whip stitched together so I can knit the collar. I've never liked picking up stitches at the neckline, always feeling that it is a guessing game to get the right number so stitches evenly distributed. It's been a long time since I've done this and thought to check a reference book I have on hand to see if I was doing it right (I wasn't). And that is where I found the helpful tip for distributing the stitches - use stitch markers to break up the neckline evenly! Almost a "duh" moment. I did some math and came up with a breakdown of 7 sections of 15 stitches each. I'd bought a packet of safety pin-like markers back when I was knitting socks, didn't even know they existed until they were used in a PBS knit & crochet show I'd started watching. They worked like a charm. Onward!

I'm having a hard time adapting my routine to the time change that brings darkness so early to the day. I am so used to walking between 4:30 and 5:00 or so when I know my mail will be waiting for me as I pass the mail locker on my way by, but now it is almost dark by 4:00, so an earlier walk it is and a second trip to the mail locker after dark. Any change in routine leaves me floundering for awhile and wanting to resist it but I'm trying to be more positive this time. For instance, I'm meeting different people walking their dogs at this earlier time. Still, I'm getting caught out by the switching around and not getting into the studio as I want. The day just magically disappears even faster it seems. How are you coping with the time change?

And do you have plans for Thanksgiving? If you are traveling, may it be safe and delay free. If you are hosting, may all conversation be light and loving, and all food comfort for the soul.