Still Seeking Inspiration

So I'm still feeling pretty unmotivated and uninspired. I think that it is actually getting harder as more is expected of me. I went into work for most of the day on Wednesday but it was a colossal effort for very little payout. It was nice to see everybody but I was caught up on my paperwork after two hours and since I wasn't able to see students there was nothing else for me to do. I don't think it's worth it until I can put partial weight on it and can drive myself. Then I will be able to see students and start feeling more productive again. I did find a very helpful forum that I thought I would share called ehealthforum. I was most interested in the posts from other people who have had my surgery and their recovery but there are groups with all types of injuries or illnesses. It was nice to read other people's stories and get some encouragement and ideas.


I spent the afternoon today looking through last years Fall Collections for inspiring knitwear on InStyle. I know that I'm looking backward but I live in the midwest so we are usually at least one year behind. I'd have to say that Missoni was the most amazing discovery. His collection was full of extra long scarves and hoods often times in layers like this look. I spent over an hour looking at the line. I also adore the color palette and is very similar to the organic yarn that I recently bought and have been working with. The colors are more muted then my usual fair but I think it is appropriate. It's more earthy and bohemian which I think will go over well at next year's Strange Folk Festival.

I was equally inspired by the Michael Kors look in the type right corner of my mood board. This lime green super scarf and hat with ear muffs is a great pop of color and style. There wasn't much else in his collection that got my juices flowing though. The Marc by Marc Jacobs line, including the top left look, was full of great color combinations that I loved.

I'm feeling the call of the fiber much more strongly tonight than I have in the past month. It's definitely time to get the needles clicking again which will hopefully help me to feel more balanced again.

Inspire Me

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‘You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.’

— Jack London

I know that you would think with 4 weeks on the couch that I would have a whole lot of finished knits to show for it. But you would unfortunately be wrong. The first 2 weeks are a blur to me since I was in a lot of pain and taking some serious pain meds that left my brain in a fog. The last two weeks have been pretty unproductive too. I have a small pile of hats that I've made and that is it. Ani was over tonight and looked at the few things at the end of the couch and she said "is that it." I thought you would have filled a room with hats by now.

I made the Flickr widget of my knitted creations at PictoBrowser to help get my creative juices flowing. I have been completely lacking in inspiration. My craft room is a cluttered mess at the moment and I can't really get in there to get to my yarn. When I'm lacking inspiration normally I will go in my room, get out piles of yarn and start playing with different color combinations. I will look through my stitch books until something lights my fire.

I had Mike bring me out some books and some yarn but it just wasn't the same. Tonight Ani went deeper into the yarn stash than Mike chose to venture. She drug a bunch of different things out and helped me to come up with some color combos that peaked my interest. That is what I needed to do a week ago.

I'm not going to beat myself up about not using this time off from work more productively. My body was healing and that was the priority. I wasn't really in a position to make the most of the time and sometimes you can't force it.

I've been thinking a lot about the direction that I want to go with my business in the next year. I just don't know if trying to sell on-line is really worth it to me. It is a lot of work for very little pay off. I'm sure I will have a post soon with my thoughts on this.

A Needle Woman

It's Monday morning but at least the sun is shining. I have a cold/flu and am still not feeling entirely human but I made it to work today, so that's a start. I spent most of the weekend horizontal on the couch, sometimes knitting but not pushing myself too much. Sometimes you have to step away and look for inspiration other places. I was watching a lot of PBS and caught the latest episode of Art 21. It's a series on art in the 21st century and this weeks episode was on Systems. You can watch the entire episode here and any other episodes from this season.

With my Masters in Counseling I've done a bit of reading and study in systems. Systems as it applies to psychology is different but it's all related to how things interact with each other and the different parts of a whole. All of the artists in this episode are creating their own systems and logic through their work. The most fascinating to me was Kimsooja who is a Korean artist who works primarily through videos and installations. She is also a textile artist and her roots in sewing show through in my favorite of her work "A Needle Woman". You can watch the clip of the show that absolutely mesmerized me above or you can see a slide show of her other work on Flickr here.

In "A Needle Woman" 1999-2001, she stands with her back to the camera, facing the flow of people and records the reaction of those who cross her path. She is the fixed needle in the metaphor, and the people are the flow of the object that she interacts with and changes in some way. She has stills on her website from all the different videos from all over the world that she has done.

One thing that Kimsooja talks about in her interview on the Art 21 blog is how she discovers “artistic questions and answers from our daily life activities.” I can't fully explain how this helped to inspire me but suffice to say that it gave me some renewed vigor in my work. I'm thinking again about how I can combine different fibers and textures in my knitting and I'm also thinking about some different artistic avenues using fiber. I'll talk more about this later after I've had time to think about it more and have a better visual picture of what I want to create.