Daily Creative Practices

I was feeling a little down this week. I've been wanting to find time to do little paintings, but it seems like I keep running out of time once some of my more mandatory projects have been attended to. (School work, getting groceries, etc.) I thought about how I could "make time" when I realized that I have quite a few daily creative practices already. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I had reasons to celebrate.

The daily comic has been updating daily for a few months now, but behind the scenes, I'm still catching up on the backlog. This week, however, I finally finish editing Book 2. Hurray! I'm on to editing Book 3 and it feels like a big hurdle has been crossed because I am still drawing in Book 3. I'm looking forward to being entirely caught up, although to get there, I know I have to continue to make it a daily practice.

Related to editing the daily comic, I make it a practice to draw the daily comic daily. The goal is to never have a backlog. I finally found that I if I drew the comic while eating breakfast, I had more success. Now it just feels wrong not to draw it in the morning.

Another thing Connor and I have been keeping up on is writing with our non-dominant hand. We started in July as a way to prove that there is no such thing as talent. The idea was that talent is just a culmination of practice. Well, I'm not sure if either of us has seen much improvement in our non-dominate handwriting, but both of us have noticed that our left hands have felt much stronger. The experiment continues.

These three daily practices have required making a habit, but my last daily practice is one that I just can't help myself: knitting. Just about every day I've got knitting in my hands and a few more rounds find their way onto my current project. And let's face it, my current project is probably socks.

Does anyone else have a daily creative practice? Or is there something you'd like to make a daily creative practice?

Fantastic Yarn Day

Last Thursday was a really, really, really good yarn day. Two different packages full of yarn showed up. And since they were sent by two different methods, they showed up at different times. I got to be excited twice in one day. Although I didn't open them right away. (With good reason I assure you.)

And that reason was because I went down to the Holland Road Yarn Co on Willis St. in Wellington and taught a class on starting the Southern Skies. Well, of course I forgot to take a picture of everyone. But I did get a picture of Jenn's start on her Southern Skies.

Now, being at the Holland Road Yarn Co, it's hard not to leave without some yarn. I'd been there earlier in my trip, so I thought I was safe. Not so. They had restocked their Mythral.... and they had the Rata color way that I had been unsuccessful in procuring the last time I'd been in New Zealand. I hemmed, I hawed, I bought.

But with only 8 balls (I had bought all they had in stock) I wasn't sure I'd be able to make the sweater I wanted. After talking to Wei Siew about what my options might be, she dove into her stash and came out with 5 more balls... in the same dye lot. She asked how many I needed, but I honestly couldn't answer her because my jaw had dropped. Too bad there isn't a picture of it. She said I could take all of them after I was unable to scoop my jaw back up off of the floor. She also gave me a project bag. I suppose stuffing one's half knit sock into one's pocket guarantees sympathy from another knitter.

So after all that, I did finally open my yarn packages. I ordered 5 skeins of Anna Gratton's 4ply Pure Wool in Natural White for a super secret project. Poor Wei Siew has had to listen to me prattle on about what they will grow up to be.

And after knitting part of a sock in the Stray Cat Sock that Wei Siew treated me to, I went ahead and bought myself two more balls in the Jaffa and Silver Star color ways.

So if we knitters are to learn any lesson in all of this, it is that if you are far away from your yarn stash, you will start building a new one.