Through everything I have continued with two of my favorite activities: knitting and photography. They offered solace and distraction from the pain and anger. So let's review some of those highlights.
I finally finished the Einstein coat. It took 18 months of [sometimes] mind-numbing monotonous garter stitch but I was pleased with the results.
It's a great dog-walking coat on chilly late fall days and nippy early spring evenings. Would I knit it again? Probably not. But I'm glad I saw it through to the end.
I especially love the wonderful celtic knot buttons that I found at the Elegant Ewe in Concord NH. They were a little expensive but worth it for the way they dressed up the coat.
Losing my job gave me time to explore the world with my camera. Over the past two years I have taken hundreds, if not thousands of pictures in all seasons, mostly of the natural world around me. Here are a couple of my favorites.
Flowers in general, and Irises specifically have always been attractive subjects. Cliche, I know, but beauty is beauty and it is easy to see why they have been painted and photographed so frequently over time.
Perhaps because the winters are so stark and cruel here in Maine, we feel the need to saturate our senses with the colors and fragrances of so many flowers. It is our way of assuring ourselves that Spring always returns as we shiver and shovel our way through the worst weather in January.
That's not to say that winter cannot have its own special beauty. Something as ordinary as frost on a bedroom window on a sub-freezing morning can be as beautiful as the most elaborate and exquisite stained glass panel in a church. It was amazing to pick out the shapes and "pictures" in the frost. But it was reassuring to know I didn't have to go out in that cold that particular morning.
I did a whole series of these photos which are available here.
I fully intend to get back on this blogging horse and continue to ride it very regularly. It makes me sad to think of all the good things that I have missed writing about in the past two years because I was too preoccupied with the awful feelings of depression, rage and hopelessness that seemed to consume me. But I've turned that corner and am finally on the road to happy again. If you want to follow that journey, welcome aboard...if not, that's ok, too. My blog and I will get along just fine!
