Just scrumbling along…

30 April 2009.

What a day it was. It started out exhausting before I even got myself out of bed. I woke up early and turned on the laptop because I couldn’t go back to sleep. Big mistake 🙁

I spent the morning, mourning, at a creative group Annie invited me along to, as she was giving a workshop on scrumbling, which is freeform crotcheting (and/or knitting). Very textile-arty. Examples nicked from the web:

No patterns, no rules, just totally freeform. LOVE it.

I met some absolutely incredible women. A lot of them spin and weave their own wool. Some start from scratch with their own alpacas. Outrageously creative women, some of them. Women who travel the world and one who spends our summer here, then heads of to France for six months to live in THEIR summer. I am green with envy. I learned other things to do, like felting on muslin or other light fabrics, and I have all sorts of ideas popping in my head now.

That was followed by lunch at the pub with the lot of them. Just the local pub, but a very nice meal of Thai chicken salad, washed down with a lemon ruski (which I learned in the US after much difficult explaining, is a lemon beer over there). The drink cost $8. EIGHT BUCKS!!! I can get a four-pack for nearly that much.

Then rushing here and there, pick Liam up from school, take him back to Anne’s to be ‘babysat’, while I take off for a counselling appointment in the next town. I finally made it back to Anne’s at dinner time, and God BLESS her she had cooked us all something for dinner.

A busy busy day and followed up by an exhausting session with my counsellor. Shit, she’s good. She knows how to dig down to the deepest stuff and drag it out. Hence the exhaustion. Emotional and physical, yet again. But even with all the tears and grief in the session, there was a lot of laughter too. And exhortations to keep practising Loving Kindness meditations. She went on a buddhist retreat on the weekend. And is going on an actual 10 day Zen Buddhist retreat some time soon. WOW. And with that group of women today I laughed hard, laughed as I haven’t laughed in a long time. I think I might go there again next week 🙂

More new plans in the wind … when Annie and I move in together I will be creating her a website, an e-store for her textile art. And I will set her up an ebay store as well. I’m looking forward to having her creative impulse around full time, which in turn helps me to re-gain some of my creativity. She says she is looking forward to having “live music” in the house and she expects me to sing and play guitar around the house.

Exhausted. Grief, misery, creative aMUSEment, belly-laughing, merriment, love, melancholy, tears, meeting new people, calm and still quiet sadness. It’s been a full day. I might have lost my magic along the way this past year, but by fucking GOD I’m getting it back, getting back to being an independent wild woman. Oh and the stirrings of wanting to get out there and photograph is starting again. AND … though my writing has been very much belitted by one individual this past year, I’m feeling free enough to try again … short stories even. Life, sanity and creativity is on the return.

Tomorrow (actually today because it’s the wee hours already) will be similarly busy. Another bloody appointment with Centrestink. But then an ‘artists date’ at Spotlight to gather up more yarn supplies and different sized crochet hooks and just THINGS. Opshopping for old bags that we can use for either just the handles, or covering with scrumbling. I’m looking forward to that. Then, Liam goes to his father’s for the night and I can sleep in Friday morning. Bliss, as it’s getting to be the kind of cold that makes you wish you could stay in bed all morning.

On andon a random side trip. I think I love Carson McCullers. At such a young age, she knows what is is to be a misfit, and she certainly knows all about solitude and loneliness. What a book this is. It’s taken me a couple of years Rena, but it was so worth the wait. Thanks for the recommendation!