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While trying to figure out when and how — and even, if — I would haul myself back into a regular blogging practice, I have also been re-prioritizing my interior life, purging all kinds of stuff that is no longer of use. The great thing about decluttering is that fresh space appears. A predictable scenario, but thrilling, nonetheless. I’m not sure which came first: the decluttering or turning sixty, but the combination has been sobering; the view forward is way shorter than the view looking back. What to keep, what to toss into the memory files of stuff I used to like to do? It is now clearer than ever that the joy of playing with images and color and typefaces is a keeper, it is most definitely where I find my flow. As psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains in his book, flow – the psychology of optimal experience, “flow [is the] state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter …”
I may have fallen off the blogging wagon but in the interim I stayed current with my favorite creatives. My online friends, I call them. Knit and yarn designer, textile artist, kindred lover of brilliant colors, and sheep farmer Kristin Nicholas is in that crowd. This collage is an homage to her, my first steps out of hibernation and back into my flow. All patterns are available from her web site, except for the mittens, which can be found in the Fall 2008 Vogue Knitting magazine. However, the Heart to Heart mitten pattern on Kristin’s site is delicious, isn’t it?! … Enjoy!