Permission

I could feel it building, deep inside, and in my shoulders. It began to keep me from taking deep breaths. I know myself well, and I saw where I was going.

"I'm on the verge of being too hard on myself," I told a friend. The response: "Give yourself permission to dream. You're right where you're supposed to be."

That's the best advice I could ever ask for.

So today, among the housekeeping and knitting and coming and going, there will be dreaming. I have permission.

Perfectly lovely

It's only taken me a year to finish this Hitchhiker scarf. Simple as it is, it took so long because it kept being pushed aside for other, more "urgent" projects. It's on its way to my sister Sarah (the quilter), and I hope she'll put it aside for next winter, since it wasn't finished in time for this one.

What keeps me from finishing perfectly lovely projects? Distraction, or too many ideas, or deadlines? Sometimes.

It doesn't really matter. Making stitches with beautiful yarn matters. Wrapping my sister in a scarf matters. Discovering the next thing I want to knit matters.

What keeps you from finishing your perfectly lovely projects? What a silly question.

Hitchhiker Scarf, madelinetosh tosh merino light 

Balancing

I am very sure that this moment is about balance. I haven't lost it, not at all. I am in balance, like this day—the first day of Spring.

Because it is a beautiful day (cold and windy, but bright) I'll be able to photograph a project I've designed and plan to publish on Ravelry. And I'll be able to go to Long Beach and take a walk by the water. And then, I'll be able to come home and work on my resumé (and a couple of Great White Bale spreadsheets) in the afternoon sun. All this, because my life really is as it is meant to be.

Being at home

I've been spending almost all of my time at home, for weeks now. First, there was the move that the bookstore was making, and there wasn't going to be a place for me to work until things were settled in the new space, so I brought my office home. That fit the timing for the surgery I was going to have, which meant that I'd need to be home to recuperate.

The surgery (repair to scar tissue left from previous surgeries) went well, but the work did not. I was working on our website as usual, but while I was, the bookstore was making some hard decisions. The website was eliminated, and so was my job.

Losing my job is a subject for another time. What I'm thinking about today is how much I love my home, my tiny space, my little calm place. It was remade by my sister Sarah when she came to be with me for the surgery, and on the final day, just a few hours before she had to leave, we took pictures of the amazing transformation. My mother's dresser, her little overnight case on top; my knitting spot on the couch, the new television. There's much more that you can't see in one photograph.

And there in the middle: the beautiful, beautiful quilt Sarah made for me, which she put the finishing touches on while I was sleeping.

There's no place like home, is there?