hey everybody,
I’ve been reading Susan Cain’s newsletter called Quiet, where she recently wrote a lovely piece with ideas about approaching life in 2024. For instance, how do you start your day? Lots of us jump right into the fray of emails and phone calls and errands to get done. But Susan makes a case for a less jarring way to ease into the day, a way to spend more of our time in general, actually: direct our attention towards things and people that make you happy.
I tried it. On as many days as possible, I didn't open my email inbox or social media first thing. Instead, I put on some music and did some reading or worked on a fiber project. It was a great way to get centered on the things I wanted to do, and I was happier about dealing with things I needed to do later on in the morning.
If you’re having trouble finding time or motivation to try a freeform project and you have the luxury of devoting some time first thing in the day to something different, you might want to give this idea a try. It can be a really relaxing way to start the day, and you may find that focusing your attention on something that you love first thing in the morning sets you up to approach the challenges of your workday more creatively.
This technique of starting the day with music over social media or tv has been very helpful to me with regard to making progress on this piece, the Organic Freeform Shawl, the sample for a class (of the same name) I'll be teaching at the Carolina Fiber Fest in March.
starting the new year with swatches and experiments
I’ve spent a fair amount of time this January dealing with Acute Angle Glaucoma in my right eye (I'll put some info about this lesser-known type of glaucoma at the end of this letter as a PSS 👁️). It presented as an emergency, and recuperation has been exhausting and slow, but it is going well. The situation provided me with lots of unavoidable downtime.
While it has been possible to crochet for much of that time, it's often been difficult to focus on my WIPs. So, when I felt crafty, I tried to spend some of the downtime thinking about freeform crochet in general, making a few notes about ideas, and doing a little bit of experimentation with some of my favorite stitches. Regular readers may already know that this is something I enjoy doing anyway. Heavy gauge yarns made everything seem to work up quickly.
Guess I've had leaves on my mind; it seems like I can never get enough of leafy knitting and crocheting.
what I love about this
There are many fibercrafts that I love. Even when I don’t actually do them (I’m not really a quilter, for instance), they are often a source of inspiration.
I’ve enjoyed ogling these two quilt photos recently. Log cabin construction in quilts always draws me in, especially random log cabin, as seen in the quilt above from the Sue Spargo Instagram account.
This quilt, by Carolyn Murphy from studioquilts on Instagram, also uses a very modern, random take on the log cabin concept. There’s just something about these modern, wonky versions of log cabin construction that always makes me want to start one myself. I used this sort of log cabin inspiration to make my Valentina Cowl last year, making the irregularly shaped “logs” with a variety of yarns, colors, and knit and crochet stitches.
There’s something very compelling to me about having a structure that has rules (in this case straight lines and right angles), but allows for great freedom within those rules. Logs can be any size. They can be made of any craft, any stitch, any yarn, and technically, if the lines and angles aren’t perfectly maintained? No big deal. Working this way, you can be truly improvisatory, as long as you start measuring when the piece gets close to size so you can stop adding logs when it's big enough. So much fun.
The next photo shows a few more pieces I’ve done for a fresh new Valentina Cowl as I write up a recipe for the design. I’m using a single colorway of Noro Yukata yarn to make writing up the design a little easier. It’s fun to do that, to use a pre-selected palette of colors in a large ball of Noro, but it sure was exciting to put together all of those yarns for the original cowl in the photo above.
a couple more things you might like
I’m hoping that Cottontail Farm from VA will be bringing lots of their woven bookmark kits to the Fiber Fest in Raleigh this spring. I think I need one. If you check out their IG page at the link above, look for the finished bookmark pictured in a November 2023 post. So cute!
The mini yarn minder I ordered from Lemonwood came fairly quickly, and it’s a pleasure to use. It’s great for knitting or crocheting out in the world, and if you don’t want to hang it from your wrist, you can get the table top adapter, which works kind of like a purse hook.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading!
Lisa
PS: 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 The 100 Day Project is coming up soon; day #1 is February 18th. If you can find a way to come up with a small, repeatable “task” that relates to the art that you like to do, I highly recommend doing the Project. I had no idea how rewarding it would be when I started mine last year. Read more about it here.
PSS: 👁️ Regular glaucoma is a long term condition where pressure builds up in the eyes and can cause vision loss before a person even knows they have it. Acute angle glaucoma is different, in that the high pressure comes on rather quickly, as it did in my case. My particular eye anatomy was the problem: the drain channels that help regulate pressure in my eyes were smaller than average to start with, and they naturally shrink with age. In many cases, an ophthalmologist can recognize when conditions are right for AAG, and a very easy laser surgery can fix the issues without incident. Mine went unrecognized, however, so it presented as an emergency. It was scary, but once it was diagnosed, swift treatment started to relieve the super high pressure in my right eye, and it was ready for laser surgery the next morning. It’s taking a long time to heal, but the steady improvement is encouraging, and it makes me hopeful that any lasting effects will be minimal.
It's never been my intention to use this newsletter to share details about my personal life, especially long-winded medical details. But, knowledge is power. If you happen to have this condition laying in wait, it can be identified by an ophthalmologist who is a glaucoma specialist, then it be corrected before it reaches emergency status. If your eye doc doesn't happen to be a specialist, ask them to invite one of their glaucoma specialist colleagues into your next eye exam for a consult. It’s a simple fix to avoid unnecessary suffering.
I love this - It was a great way to get centered on the things I wanted to do, and I was happier about dealing with things I needed to do later on in the morning. I can appreciate how doing what brings you joy first provides energy for other "have to dos" later :) So glad you are healing from your eye difficulties. The quilts are inspiring indeed. Your work is gorgeous as always :)
I am sorry to learn of your glaucoma scare. I applaud the morning pivot you share. It works for me, too. Lots of beautiful work and ideas here.
Perhaps we should collaborate to create a promo for Fiber Fest I can include on my newly acquired internet radio station, @wnxc right here on Substack.