Friday, December 31, 2010

In With The New Year and New Habits!!

This week has gone by in a haze of coughing sneezing and sleep! We have all succumbed with the younger recovering much faster than the elders!! SIGH!! We are all coming around however and looking forward to the New Year to come. I have spent parts of several days down in the studio finding bare floor, filling the outdoor garbage can and organizing. I am making great progress and I will be sharing some images with you soon! I also ahve gessoed some jouranl pages as I am determined to get more disciplined at using my journals to focus my efforts and to become more productive and less scattered. We shall see. I ahve so many ideas racing around in my head at any given time, that I am often paralyzed by not knowing which project o wrok on when. My jpurnal should help serve as a receptical for the chaotic idea traffic snarl in my head.

So tonight I am planning on sitting down in front of the fire with my black pen in hand and emptying my brain of the creative ideas taht i ahve been trying to track. I simply added some watercolor squares of paint to the pages to provide boxes to contain the river as it flows out and onto the page.
As I was recovering this week, I picked up another quick knitting project. I amde this Moebius cowl from a ball of blue mohair that was left over from a past project. This was a very interesting project that is created using a long circular needle and tworows of caston stitches that run like a rainroad track till they finally end in a single twist.
The definition of a moebius shape (strip) according to Webster's is:
Mö·bius strip (mā′bē əs, mō′-)
a one-edged geometric surface with only one continuous side, formed by giving a 180° twist to a narrow, rectangular strip of paper and then connecting the two ends together
also Möbius band
Origin: after A. F. Möbius (1790-1868), Ger mathematician
This was great fun and knit up in about 3 hours, including figuring out the cast on. there is a great You tube video by Knitter Cat Bordhi, that covers the cast on in depth. Got to love You tube!!!

You can see the single twist at the top of the above picture. Once the knitting was done the scarf was done- no seams no blocking - ready to wear!!! I am wearing it now in fact and it is so nice and warm, with no scarf ends to worry about dragging thru one's soup!!!
I was warned by several knitting friends, this project can become addictive!! I am going to make several more in various sizes (they can also be pulled down over the shoulders to become a wonderful warm shawl.
Today we decided to travel up towards DC, to IKEA, to check out the selection of sofas. We have had our current sofa for 18 years. It has had two new slipcovers and has been hauled across this country several times and has survived for 9 moves. It is tired , poor thing . We lucked out at IKEA and found what ewe wanted almost immediately and at a wonderful price. The worst part was waiting int he warehouse area and then the unpack of the boxes to stuff the whole thing in the back of our Ford FreeStyle. Year sof packing and moving have made both Tom and I very skilled packers and despite sceptical onlookers, we got it all in!!!

Here is Tom amidst the unpacked parts on our family room floor.
The dogs were quite stressed as we dismantled the old sofa and lugged in out the door. They were not happy!!! More unexpected human behavior, throwing off their doggie groove!!! I was about to put the couch throw blanket into the wash but decided that it might be better to wait. As you can see Buddy agreed!!


Pepper, on the other hand, climbed up on the recliner and sat there sighing heavily, registering her discomfort with the whole event. It seems that some things will take some getting used to, or not!!!
So we are going into the New Year on the mend, chasing this wretched virus out the door! I want to thank all of you for all of your wonderful comments and support . It is the companionship,comments ( I love, love, love getting comments) and friendships that I have made thru blogging that keep me at it. I never imagained how much of an impact this blog would have on my art life and my personal life in general. I hope taht the new Year holds wonderufl things for all of us and that we can all grow in our mindfullness of others who have needs greater than our own!




9 comments:

Peggy Beck said...

Happy New Year to you and I love the Mobius Scarf. I own one a friend made and love it but have never made one. Inspiration already for the new year. thanks for sharing this. It's quite a beautiful color too. Like the new sofa and the doggies will adjust I'm sure. Looking forward to following your journey in 2011. Thanks for the inspirations.

Anna M. Branner said...

Here's to a great new year full of inspiration, motivation and COMPLETION! :)

Unknown said...

Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

You Elizabeth are very very brave to have a white sofa with dogs. Mine would be black in days....Glad you are slowly on the mend. Mobius scarf is quite pretty. for some leftover wool...Great intention to journal in a more organized way, I would like to too. Happy New Year. xox Corrine

Julie said...

Sorry you've been sick but I'm glad you're on the mend now. The new sofa looks very comfy. I hope 2011 is a wonderful year for you and I shall look forward to following your path through the year :) xxx

Trina Lucido said...

Oh my gosh, I hear ya on the waiting in the IKEA warehouse! I remember that was always the fly in the ointment! Your poor doggies! I read somewhere that Christmas time is "frightening and confusing" to dogs because things are moved around, there's a tree in the house, etc, etc. So a new couch with no good old smells must be very confusing for them! It looks beautiful, by the way! Happy New Year!

Debrina said...

Hi Elizabeth - Happy New Year to you too. I loved your comment on my blog - it's true - we escape by doing art, I'm sure it's the only way I've kept things in perspective so far. Toddlers can be pretty full on! Lol.
Anyway - love the way the animals have taken over the new couch! Family has a way of doing that!

Grangry said...

Happy New Year! Glad you are all feeling better. Here in the UK we are all hoping to avoid the predicted 'flu epidemic. I've had a 'flu jab! Love that scarf - I've thought of having a go at one of those, but when it comes to knitting I'm a bit of a "nitwit" and cannot get the hang of those circular needles at all. See you on the Sketchbook Challenge!

Susan Elliott said...

Congrats on the new sofa! We have been battling colds but all is well....

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