I'm sitting at my kitchen table, drinking coffee and watching birds go all out on each other for seed in the snow. I've been watching them for two days now and I can't get enough. There are cardinals, sparrows, eastern towhee (thanks Amy for telling me the name), titmouse(mice?), chickadees, and a few others that I can't name. The more I watch them, the more I think about our (potential) new home and all the little things I'm looking forward to, all the small touches that make a house a home. Bird feeders and windchimes and suncatchers in the windows, the familiar holiday decorations that a family sees year after year, the smells and sights that let you know this is your home not just the house you currently occupy.
I try to envision what our home will be like and I realize that it's entirely up to me (well, us, but mostly me) to make this house into the home we want it to be and I start to feel a little lost. I start to think about the
things I'll need, the art for the walls and candles to burn and the wreaths to hang for this to be our home. And then I remember that we don't have those things that we've never before placed much importance on those things and then I get sad.
But THEN I realize that that's really stupid. And it is. Then I say to myself, K, don't be daft, don't be a consumer, don't go blow your tax refund on some crap to hang on the wall. So I take to the internet for inspiration, to my old favorites. There is a very particular aesthetic that I associate with the kind of lifestyle we hope to lead once we settle. A country, farmhouse, handmade, soft, and homey aesthetic. A simple aesthetic. There's a woman named Amanda Soule. She has a website,
SouleMama. I WANT to BE her. Meaning that her aesthetic, her STUFF, is the stuff I want.
But, it's sooooo haarrddd to make all that stuff. The knitting and the crocheting and the sewing and making stuff..I mean, I kinda know how to do it, but I've never actually completed a project involving yarn or fabric or needles or any sort. Never. I lack follow through (to put it mildly).
But, since I don't have crafting gnomes at my beck and call to create pretty things for me, I guess I better get crackin', huh? One of my goals for this year is to actually complete a knitting project and I thought dishcloths would be a good place to start.
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All your dishcloths are belong to me |
I mean, dishcloths. That's gotta be easy, right? Plus, it's something for my
home.
For a person who knits, I'm sure it would take all of about an hour to make a dishcloth. I'm giving myself until the end of March. I have a goal. I have a deadline. And soon I will have a dishcloth.
Tally ho!!