Quietish

I’ll warn you now that I’m in a mood to whinge, so the post below will follow accordingly.

I shouldn’t complain. Life is good. Really.

But the crafting? Not so good.

Knitting goes. It’s fine. I’m just a bit uninspired and when I am inspired, I’m too busy to do anything about it. I would be tempted to cast on every project I have the yarn for, but I would like to keep on with my tactic of not exploding my head.

I would like to quilt. I want to try paper piecing like Jen does. I want to make up crazy HP themed appliqué designs as well. The problem? I have a very lame fabric stash. It’s a stack of highly-patterned fat quarters, mostly. This makes it hard to find anything worth cutting into tiny pieces to sew back together. And if I did have a fabric stash, I’m not sure where I’d put it anyway.

I have been daydreaming about beading. Beads are beautiful. I want to loom bead. I want to learn the peyote stitch. I want to work with tiny, tiny Delicas. I don’t know how to start though and, as is usual around here nowadays, I don’t even have time to put the research into it. Although I think I’m hitting the bead market with Susan.

Yeah, you’re right. I have so much to do that not only can I decide what I want to do more, I don’t even have time to consider. So, it’s knitting by default I guess. I can cast-on a new project in my sleep.

I’ve managed to squeak a little reading in lately, but it’s still not enough! And my little dream of one day actually writing again? Just as I lost my ability to speak German with any fluency when I quit using it, I fear I will not know how to string a sentence in English when I finally do sit down and try to put something out. I can picture showing up for my first day back in college classes (maybe next year? gulp) all eager and happy-go-lucky with pencil in hand, only to have my brain leak out my ears when the Freshman Comp professor assigns the first essay.

This last weekend I spent a few hours in the tattooing chair of a very good artist that’s working in Oklahoma now. People that do such good work always make me wistful about art. I’m annoyed that I quit back when I was in the right place to keep going with it. Now I’m all rusty and feel like I’ll never catch back up. The idea of trying for art school now is laughable. I can’t find time to sketch even weekly.

While I’m at it, I suppose I could go ahead and mention that this year I’ve also had weekly guitar lessons. Full disclosure and all that. I’ve been at it since February, when I decided that I’d been wanting to play for as long as I could remember and should finally just go for it. I’m happy, I love it, I look forward to every session. It is VERY slow going though, I assume because my practice-at-home time consists of a few minutes here and there of grabbing the thing up and playing a few bars before having to put it back down. I really am not used to not being instantly good at something. (Double negative, wheee!)

As is consistent with my above statements about not knowing how to write anymore, I shall now end this post with no real point. I’m frustrated and while I know that you all will have great advice and wonderful words of encouragement, I’m just gonna have to live through the frustration for awhile. It’s just part of my regular cycle and when it’s done I’ll pick back up and happily move along. I just like to whinge about it now and then.

At least I’m thinking about creative things, right?

Thanks for listening. For sticking around, I’ll post the pic of a hat I started last night.

Ciao.