The Returning of the Sun

 

This year the solstice falls on Dec. 21, at 7:20 pm.  

At this time of year, especially when we are having a particularly grey, dreary time, I remind myself frequently that as quickly as it goes south, the sun will come back.

This year seems particularly fraught with so many things causing stress to so many.  And yet, we go on.  Because what choice do we have?

I keep my Winston Churchill magnet on the fridge to remind me to not stop.  After all, who wants to stop while they are *in* hell?

I continue to struggle on with chronic pain.   The new treatments are beginning to help but change is never comfortable.  OTOH, I'm not taking opioids anymore and the brain fog is less.  So that's a plus.

I find myself considering (only *just* considering at this point) what I need to do to clean up my mess(es).  The yarn seems to be never ending, and that is a good thing - up to a point.  But also a bad thing.

Some of the yarn I inherited and frankly?  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it.  In the meantime the ideas for the new weave structure continue.  Since I still have 2/16 cotton to use up, plus that (I hope) last stash of linen, I expect I'll be weaving towels for a while.

The latest towels are really hard to photograph.  The dark blue gets washed out into a faded, unattractive greyed blue.  They look SO much better in real life!  But I'm also tired of weaving dark wefts on dark warps.  Once the current dark blue warp is done, I'll move on to the much brighter blues next in the queue.

The 16 pounds of yarn for warps will do 5 warps, yielding around 18-20 towels each, depending on the length (and if I make any boo-boos).  So over the course of the next months, another 100 towels or so will be coming off the loom.  Since we seem to be locked into a very dreary, dark and depressing winter (so far) the much brighter colours will be welcome.

I have kind of fallen in love with the idea of tiles and can see myself spending more time down that burrow in the idea rabbit warren.  Once the brighter blue warps are done I expect I'll go back to white so I can weave that bright red linen singles I 'found' when I cleaned up the yarn storage area for the HVAC installation last month.  I'm not sure I can weave the rest of the linen on a 2/16 warp as most of it is heavier.  But I also 'found' some more gigantic mill cones of fine cottons, and a couple that *may* be a cotton/linen blend - I need to do some burn tests.

At some point I have to address the rayon stash.  I have a lifetime worth of fine rayons suitable for scarves - and shawls.  But right now I'm focussed on weaving down the cotton, so the rayon is just kind of there, in the corner of my eye.  I'm ignoring it - for now - but I really need to deal with that, too.

I don't 'do' new year's resolutions.  If I need something to guilt me into doing something, I will very quickly give in and not do it.  Because I don't 'do' guilt trips.  Guilt has never been an effective way to entice me to do something.

Instead I make plans.  I set goals.  But I don't set up punishments if I don't achieve all my goals.  

So, this year I will do the same as I always have done: wait for the returning of the sun, keep weaving as much as I am able, keep working on stash reduction, keep exploring new ways to play with string, keep encouraging others, as best I can.

Keep on, keeping on.  It's what I can do, so I will.