What I can learn from the dog

 - EMPTY HEAD -
I was sitting in the car early this evening, twilight fading; parked on the busy main street of our town, with cars flitting by in a whirl of white and red lights.

I had grabbed a noteook on the way out the door, just feeling as though my head was so full that I could not make sense of it all. My brain has a mind of its own ... At the top of the page I have written "EMPTY HEAD", and then I have jotted down a random list of unconnected things:

• think about people that I find inspiring (and why)?
• work on tapping into local culture, and;
• creative networking
• on having too many things that I want to do
• make time for meditation (empty my head)

... and inexplicably ends with:

• What I can learn from the dog.

... and I really don't know where that came from. But it does rather demonstrate the "my brain has a mind of its own" thing.

I started writing this blog to establish a sort of record of all my makings and creative thoughts. But lately I have come to feel as though I am having to work at making it work and struggling against some unspoken pressure to keep it moving. (Are you still with me?)

With the necessary routine of domestic life and the busyness of work, maintaining a dynamic and fresh presence in the bloggy world, is in the end, really just more work. And that's not what I had intended at all.

That aside, I am very rarely idle and without some "makings" and "doings" to hand. My mind is busy with everything and nothing. Every day I think of something new that I would like to make, or some design that I could develop. But there is only one of me, and I am tired and slow, and have finally learned that I must patiently finish those things that I have begun before I launch into the latest-great-thing on the menu.

I seem to exhaust myself just  thinking about all that I want to do and am often confounded by the constraints of my role as Corpus Domestica (I just made that up, but you know what I mean). I find it interesting that my list started out with "doing" type things, but finished with "being" things, i.e. to

• make time for meditation, and; 
• what I can learn from the dog

The dog (Watson): joy personified (or dogified if you're being picky). He is uncomplicated, unguarded; finding wonder in small things. A collector of twigs and leaves, cardboard boxes and empty milk containers pilfered from the recycling basket; a chaser of balls, and bugs, and dust bunnies from underneath my comfy chair. He is light and life and love; untiring and boundless, living moment-by-moment and ever ready for whatever will happen next. Unworried by expectation, self-imposed or otherwise.

Wow.

The first thing on my list was that I wanted to reflect on who I find inspiring, and who would ever have guessed that it would end up being the dog.

There need not be any great urgency to bring every idea to fruition. There is a [significant] limit to what one lone person can do in a day; it is good to stop, to empty my head, and take inspiration in the simple reviving joy of a dog.

And now that my head is empty and my heart is at peace I think I will go and pick up my knitting.

Evie 
x x x

Untangling

I am sitting at my favourite table in my favourite cafe in my favourite town at the top of the Mountains, sipping hot tea and watching the world go by ...

... and this nasty mess of wool is nesting in my lap. The untangling process has begun. You know how it got to be like this, don't you? [see "What The Dog Did"]. I need not say more.

I had thought I might try casting on stitches for the beginnings of baby socks, but I gave up that notion when I saw the extent of this sad woolly tangle.

And all the while I am basking in sunlight and admiring embroidered cushions with bright coloured flowers,

and bobbly fringes.

I've drunk three cups of tea in the bright morning sun, and have untangled and balled-up this much yarn.

But I've bundled it up now and paid for my tea. And back up the hill there are daisies in baskets, (it must be a happy thing to own a flower shop),

and there are pink tarts and brown sprinkly sweet things in the baker's window. I am looking (but not buying) ...

And now I have finished, after stoppings and startings. Untangled, re-balled, and ready for socks (tiny ones). Just another one of my favourite things.

Evie xxx