Quietly Creating & Missing Pickle Chips

Hi!

Happy Sunday!

What are you up too?

Yesterday Chop & I went and saw The Grand Budapest Hotel! We very much loved it. As always, it was like an amazing visual feast. I'm always such a sucker for his palettes and details.

I've been slowly but surely working on my Romi Hill Mystery Shawl.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot lately about "purposeful" & "quiet" creating. The kind of projects where you focus a lot on the process and not so much on the end result. I've also been thinking about seasonal flavors of potato chips.

2014 is turning out to be my year of purposeful creating. Everything I've done so far has been a slow journey.

Part of this is because my hand gets cranky if I knit or stitch for long increments of time. Part of this is because I literally don't have the energy to do a million things. And part of it is because I work full time on Pumpkin stuff- my personal crafting time is limited, therefore I want to make it count and be special.

Here is what I'm doing differently:

Love it or leave it! If the project I'm working on doesn't give me 100% satisfaction- it's a goner. I've always been pretty ok with this part, I've frogged countless knitting projects and taken apart many quilts but now I'm being more diligent than ever. See you later lame projects!
Use materials that bring you joy: Special yarn, special fabric, favorite sewing machine. Let's use all the favorites! I've been debating destashing stuff I no longer love because it stresses me out to have a ton of things that I'm not using. I literally put 95% of my fabric stash into storage because I felt like a jerk.
Make the process count. My knitting time is limited (my left hand gets sore) so I make it special. Favorite music or an audiobook, cup of coffee, new project bag, cute stitch markers, etc. I'll knit uninterrupted for an hour, rather than "knitting" for three hours but really I'm not knitting, I'm looking at facebook or getting distracted by other stuff. This is the hardest one for me.
Figuring out which part of crafting brings you joy and focusing on it. I personally do not enjoy full sized quilt making. At all. I never have. We sleep under a down comforter, not a quilt for this exact reason. I enjoy it even less if I'm making the same block.over.and.over.and.over. But I *love* fabric and I love small patchwork, especially if it tells a story. So this year I'm taking traditional blocks and making a sampler. Just from scraps. When I have time. I don't have a giant master plan, I have some loose ideas. That is how quilting brings me joy: handfuls of scraps, loose plan, favorite small blocks.
The WHY. I think the number one question I get when I'm stitching or knitting in public is why? Why craft? Why create? Can't you buy socks at Target for like, a dollar?! WHY DO YOU DO THIS?! Example: Why am I knitting a shawl? Because I absolutely love these two yarns. Because I want to support the designer. Because I wanted to support two indie yarn dyers. Because I like getting a little piece of the puzzle each week. Because I love taking photos of WIPs. Because my favorite feeling is watching something newly finished floating in bubbles of Soak Wash & anxiously tapping my fingers because I want to see how GIANT it gets. Because I absolutely want a navy & purple shawl to wear next fall. Because it's cozy! Totally cozy! Because I hate being cold! Each project I'm asking myself WHY. But this doesn't mean "justify yourself". That's totally different and you should never have to justify your creations. Ever. Which brings me to the next part...
Enjoying the result. I have a confession to make. (I'm making my "serious Amanda face right now") I don't share many of my finished projects because it makes me uncomfortable when people ask me things like "do you sleep?!" "how do you knit so many socks, you must not have kids!" "do you even make quilts anymore or do you just knit"? or comments like "you are a machine"! It makes me feel almost ashamed about how much I do and don't create. And then I feel like I have to justify how much I create, why I spend my time/money/etc creating and well...that sucks the joy right out of it! I recently talked about this with a few online friends. They shared similar stories about how they'll finish a quilt, take DOZENS of photos but only share three because they are afraid of people commenting about the mistakes or asking why they chose certain fabrics instead of more "matching" prints. Or the fear of "overgramming" a project. One knitting friend said for every finished sweater she shares, she's actually knit two but she's embarrassed to share them all after someone added up the cost of her finished sweater collection! Who even does that?! RUDE! I *hate* feeling like social media makes me not want to celebrate my finishes. I *hate* that my friends don't share 9 million photos of their finished quilts. I hate that I've only seen like, 5 of my friends finished sweaters when I now know she's knit a dozen! I'm not sure if this sort of negativity happens offline, I only have three local friends and so far none of them have been like "AMANDA WHYYYYYY ARE YOU MAKING HALF A DOZEN PINK QUILTS!!!!!" (correct answer: Why WOULDN'T you?!) The things we create we SHOULD celebrate. We should be proud. Technically, in the age of $1 Target socks, we don't HAVE to create. But we do. It doesn't have to be fancy. I truly feel so inspired when I see someone do something like turn handspun yarn into a sweater. Or switch from aida to linen and *get* it. Or make a quilt and share their favorite block, even if it's not perfectly pieced. There is something WAY more inspiring to me to watch a project grow and turn into something than see three photos of a finished quilt with the pattern name, fabrics used and that's it. I guess I want to see more of why we create and more of us enjoying the things we make!

This year I'm probably going to create less. But I'm definitely going to try and enjoy every single second of it!

And I'm also going to throw a mega hissy fit if the Safeway in town doesn't bring back pickle flavored Lays potato chips.

SO! to summarize!

More creating with less pressure, enjoying the process, sharing more, more favorite stuff being used and hopefully pickle flavored chips being consumed while doing all of these things.