beebonnet report

love and beauty

One of the strange blessings you get when your heart is ripped wide open, is that now your heart is wide open.  Like that first morning blink when the lights get turned on, at first it seems as if you won't be able to sustain this level of interaction with the world.  Not only is the pain exquisite, but also the joy, love, and beauty.  But the longer I have lived with my heart wide open, the more I have come to appreciate, and even thrive with, this level of interaction in the world. 

Although I don't recommend this method of opening your heart, I do recommend always looking for the hidden blessings in the bad moments.  We wouldn't choose to get our blessings that way, but, if you have the courage, you can find treasures to sustain you.

Wishing you all joyous holidays, full of love and beauty.

 

or the sea

"the cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea" 

                                                                                                                                                         - isak dineson

 

One of the ways I have been coping with loss in my life, is to remember the things I have and to be grateful for them.  Early on in my grief journey I began posting photos of friends on my refrigerator to remind me of all the people I still have in my life, instead of always thinking of what I have lost.  But, for a long time, I still wasn't sure how much of my former life I could regain.  Sometimes when our trajectory changes, we can't take everything with us.  I thought perhaps I had lost my knitting and spinning mojo for good, but it turns out that it was just in a state of suspended animation.  As the shock has been wearing off, I've slowly become more interested in yarny things again, and, like a little trickle in spring that soon becomes a rivulet and then a stream and then a river, my fiber mojo is starting to thaw.  Starting with Stitches Midwest, and continuing with SOAR this year, I have gotten reconnected with my tribe, the fiber tribe. 

And now, just this weekend, I have gotten reattached to my local fiber tribe, too.  Each year we have two retreats, one in spring and the other in autumn.  Our autumn retreat is held in a vacation home by the Pacific ocean.  We snuggle in and share stories, knowledge and plenty of good chocolate!  We spin yarns both literally and figuratively.  Wine, laughter and love flow around and through, and healing happens.  And while all this great love fest is happening, yarn gets made too!

The restorative powers of ocean breezes, long walks, fresh wool and good friends have conspired to bring me back to some balance.  Once again, I am grateful for what I have.

trajectory

I am sitting in my darkened house, feeling a bit sad that I had to cancel my classes at Stitches East due to the flu from hades that invaded my lungs this week.  When you're ill  you are a walking Typhoid Mary that should be quarantined away from all decent (and indecent) folk.  And yet, you crave contact and comfort when you feel vulnerable and in pain, some kind of human touch.  So as I was wallowing in these thoughts and hacking up a lung, a little voice that's been in the back of my mind got a little bit louder... perhaps it's time to resurrect the blog.

Every day the trajectory of our lives is changed by events, most of them small noise adjustments along our flight path.  We adjust and maintain, deciding whether to alter slightly or get back on track.  But every once in a while a real game changer comes along, something that changes our trajectory so dramatically that we can do nothing but fly off in the new direction, helpless to adjust our speed or get back to our path, without a guess as to where the new path will take us.

February 21, 2013, my trajectory changed.  This was a big one, the biggest one ever.  My beloved Rustle, the love of my life for 25 years, suddenly passed away.  It is breathtaking, cataclysmically mind numbing, to be thrust into this situation.  The  disorientation and pain is so great that it feels like there is nothing else, your new reality feels like an atom bomb in your psyche.  And, in fact, although I am no longer imploding, I haven't yet really caught my breath.  I would love to find my way back to that original path where Rustle and I exist in the same plane, but we all know that isn't possible.  The truth about trajectories is that they are fundamentally a function of time and we cannot undo the changes, we can only adjust. 

At first I was so disoriented that I wasn't sure whether my trajectory had changed or had, in fact, stopped entirely.  When I discovered that I hadn't stopped in my tracks, I wasn't sure what parts of my old path were intact and coming with me on the new path.  Would I still be a knitter?  Would I live in Eugene?  Would I sell all my wordly possessions, buy a winnebago and move to Tibet?  Suddenly all possibilities were open, I had 359 degrees of freedom left to me and one degree heartlessly denied.  It is both awesomely fierce and awesomely frightening to have this much freedom.  It feels groundless, meaningless, weightless and even sometimes a little exhilarating. 

Out of this void of widowhood, I have to find my ground, my meaning (I could stand to lose a little weight, so I'll let that part continue to fly). 

I have had as many ideas about my future as there have been days since that event... x10.  I was going to get a puppy, a pony, a new car.  I thought it would be grand to live in a tiny home built into a trailer that I towed around behind me wherever I went.  I could move to a farm.  Or perhaps I would move to a new city, Portland? Los Angeles? Chicago? Paris? Timbuktu? I could buy some income properties, I could buy a new camera, I could buy some new shoes.  Some of these possibilities are still on the table, one or two have actually become reality (hello shiny red fluevogs!), but most of them have been entertained and set aside and, for the most part, I am glad that I haven't (yet) done anything super crazy. 

I wasn't sure if I would, could, should share this story on the internet.  I spent a while thinking about it, then a while more.  I have spent 8 1/2 months deciding that, yes, I do have the courage to share a tiny bit of my life again with my readers (if any of you are left out there reading blogs, or reading my blog).

So here I am.  On my new trajectory.  Don't know where I'm going, but I need some company.  I hope someone out there is still listening and willing to share the ride...

mojo... come back!

For a while I felt I had lost my knitting mojo.  Deadlines and non-stop stressful knit-related thoughts will do that to you!  But now that I've got a little breathing space... the mojo has been creeping back and my fingers have been itching to sing with the needles once again.  What better project to ease me back to knitting fitness than petiole?  I love Miriam Pike's designs, and this one is my favorite so far. It's sophisticated and homey at the same time with a graphic quality that appeals to my design side and a leafy shape that appeals to my nature-loving side.  What's not to like?

I'm making mine with one skein of Hazel Knits entice in Emerald City (how appropriate since Emerald City is one of the nicknames for Eugene - it looks a little more blue than it really is in this photo) and one skein of String Theory Caper in Avalon.  Both of these yarns have a bit of cashmere in them and this is turning out to be one squishy, cushy, cozy shawl!  I should be done right about the time the cool weather finally finds us this year.  Can't wait to wear this baby! 

The knitting is easy, fairly mindless, but with enough distractions so you don't have to poke your eyes out in screaming boredom.  Perfect for getting your knitting chops back in shape.  Thanks Miriam for helping me get my mojo back!

the theory of life...

Recently life has been throwing me quite a few curveballs.  Someone very near and dear to me was diagnosed with cancer, family members have been ill, and home life has gotten a few complications.  All of this has meant that blogging went right out the window.

Most of this stuff is back on track now, we continue to hope and send love to those in our little world who are needing it.

And in the meantime, I launched my second magazine!  Skein Theory came out early in October and we are proud, proud, proud.  Like a mama duck whose ducklings have just taken to the water for the first time.  In case you haven't seen Skein Theory yet, GO now!  Check it out!  Tell us what you think.

We had many goals with this issue.  We wanted to showcase the beautiful work of the designers in the best light.  We wanted to celebrate the beauty and diversity of real women.  We wanted to bring the readers useful tips and information.  And we wanted to inject our own quirky style of whimsy and artistic flair into the publication.  I hope we succeeded on all counts.

So take a moment to stroll through the pages and then let me know what you think!  If you think we managed to hit our target, let us know. If you think we missed or you have other suggestions or criticisms we want to know that too.

We have a lot of fun coming up with the creative themes for the magazine.  This time around we have three different editorial stories each with a very different feel from the others. 

Our Big Sky story is inspired by the romanticism and mythic qualities of the the American west and its pioneer history.  Sweet Life is a story about life's little pleasures and the accessories that make life fun.   Dreams was inspired by dreamers as diverse as Joseph Campbell, Jean Cocteau and Marc Chagall, we tried to impart a sense of myth and beauty as well as our own brand of fun quirky into the shots for this segment.

Most of all, I hope you enjoy looking at Skein Theory as much as we enjoyed making it!

If you got a weird msg from my assistant...

If you got a weird message from my assistant Miriam, it's probably Miss Marple laughing at you....  This is what happens when Miriam goes home.

 

 

summer's busy workers

Spent a day on the coast this weekend, trying escape the heat.  It was downright frigid in Yachats, I was sorry I didn't bring a jacket!  But we saw lots of beautiful scenery and flowers, and some industrious summer workers...

The Sock Report - now available in print!

Lookie, lookie!  These just arrived today.  The Sock Report is now available in print!  You can purchase it at your LYS (they can order it from Unicorn Books) or you can purchase it directly from us.  It's also now available on Amazon.  Yipee! 

The price for the print version is $16, same as the online version, plus shipping.  So for those of you who like to have copies in your hands... here it is.

The print run is done, but the full shipment hasn't gotten to us yet, so there is still a delay of perhaps a week if you order.

 

garden break

Here at Rustling Leaf Press World Headquarters we all cram into a single basement office where we run hard on our little hamster wheels bringing you the best in knitwear.  Every once in a while we need a break though and when it's not a tea break or a cat-petting break, it may as well be a garden break.

In my dreams I am a great gardener.  My garden looks like a cross between an English cottage garden and Hendricks park.  In reality my backyard is a tangled forest of weeds, trees and shrubs that are threatening to eat my house.  When we first moved to the Pacific Northwest, I didn't understand the way plants work here, I was used to Southern California where, if you ignore your garden, it shrivels up and blows away.  Here, if you ignore your garden you'll be hacking through blackberries until the end of time.

When we first bought our house I thought our yard was charmingly rustic and woodsy.  I didn't realize those were just high falutin' words to describe overgrown, neglected and weed-choked.  My first year here I was completely overwhelmed by the garden and let it do its own thing (bad idea), the next year I tackled it with a vengeance and chopped out a metric tonne of blackberry vines.  The next year there were twice as many blackberry vines, a billion dandelions, a big weedy thing called Dock (that I've decided to like so I no longer have to classify it as a weed) and some aggressive plant called Bishop's weed.  I cried uncle!  The faster I pulled things up the faster new weedy things filled in.  Last year and this year I decided to work smart and I have focused on just one small piece of garden.  I figure if I can't afford the big gardener fees and teenagers to hack blackberries back, I'll focus on something do-able.  I've managed to keep one small patch relatively weed and blackberry-free and I'm slowly filling it with flowers.  It's a constant experiment to see what will do in my shady tree-filled yard.  Some of the flowers are leftovers from the previous owner(s). 

It's always fun to see what comes up in the small magic-patch outside my office door and how it changes throughout the year.  Right now we're featuring these lovely models...

These windswept beauties are some kind of curly-petaled daisies.  This is the way they look when they first open up - all blowsy and voluptuous like Marilyn Monroe on the beach. They make those Shasta daisies in the perfect garden down the street look, well, garden variety.

I've got nothing against garden variety though.  These are my garden-variety snapdragons.  I've got them in red and pink.  I've always loved snapdragons ever since my grandma (the greatest gardener of all time in my little world) showed me how to pinch open their mouths.  I just love their old-fashioned charm and whimsy.

I got around a little bit of my weed anxiety by hooking up some hanging baskets.  I get the beauty of flowers without the heartbreak of a losing battle weeds.  Another favorite from my childhood is fuchsias.  I always thought of them as little ballerinas.  They do well here in my cool, shady garden so I hooked up 3 baskets of them in different colors and varieties.

Don't you love the color on these?  They're some kind of salvia I think.  They occupy the sunniest corner of my garden and I'm surprised to see they came back strong this year.  I plant a lot of things, some make it in my shady tree-choked yard, and some do not.  It's all about a battle for survival here at beebonnet manor. 

And here's my other variety of curly daisy.  These grow face up to the sky and have gently frilled petals hanging down like a skirt.  They're kind of like a punk version of those Shasta daisies down the street.  They grew up in the suburbs, but they gotta be a little bit different.

And that concludes the garden break for today.  It's back to the hamster wheels for us (now where did I put that oil?....)

so cute you just want to pinch them!

I've gotten a little obsessed with Chris deLongpre's Pocket Pals!  This pattern is so quick and fun, it's kind of like potato chips.  You can't stop at just one!  And they're super easy too.

I was totally in love with the owl, so the owlie had to come first.  This cutie pie made a great, super fast, baby shower gift!  He's so cute I just want to pinch him!  I used felt discs for the eyes since I didn't want any babies chewing off the buttons.

I then moved on the the mice!  Even when I followed the pattern wrong (baby blue mousie) they ended up cute.  I purposely left a bit of yarn at the end of the tail for my ultimate purpose (below)

Of course they were soon discovered by that great detective Miss Marple.  Not much escapes her eagle eyes!

And a logical progression was soon in motion...

I was able to apprehend the red mousie, but the baby blue one is still on the lam somewhere.  I'm sure Miss Marple will eventually find him... she always gets her man...er.. mouse.

Last I heard someone was whispering... beaver... I'd like a nice little beaver to play with!