Its in the detail – a journey for 2015

It feels like its only just been New Year but we here are on January 10th already. Time has flown by and I’ve hardly had chance to properly think about what I want to achieve this year.

Like many crafters I have so many projects in progress its sometimes impossible to choose what to spend time doing and I end up doing not very much on anything. That should maybe one of my resolutions – to work on one thing at a time and finish it properly before going onto the next. Can’t see it happening in reality though.

Part of the fun of crafting for a hobby is to go with the flow and let the creative process take you off in new directions. Silversmithing, jewellery making and crochet continue to be my main passions but I recently decided that I should add a bit of knitting into the mix. Over the holiday my Tesco Clubcard points reached some sort of limit and I had to spend some of them so I did what I usually do – bought another magazine subscription.

So far I’ve had several years of Making Jewellery magazine this way and I’ve also now signed up for Making. Sadly, my two favourite crochet mags, Simply Crochet and Inside Crochet aren’t available in the scheme so I had to get those separately. The new acquisition is the magazine Knitting – which cost £22 for a year with Tesco points, which I think is about 66% discount, so a good deal.

The first issue for my subscription came today and I had a sneaky look through it while I ate a healthy breakfast while waiting for my son to pack (he went back to uni today).

Would you believe it – the supplement has some crochet patterns in it as well – YAY! My use of Tesco points is truly vindicated.

Seeing the detail

Although I haven’t made big lists of resolutions and new goals and plans (as I think I should have), the lazy days between Christmas and New Year did give me the chance to think about a change in the way I look at things. Being busy most of the time, I often forget to notice the world around me and one thing that I have gained from reading Lucy’s blog at Attic24 and other blogs is that the detail of everyday life is to be celebrated.

Not sure how long this will last but I am determined to make an effort to peer at my surroundings each day. If possible, this will mean going out for a daily walk but with work commitments I have to admit its not always possible. My main motivation is to become more aware of colours and how they fit together in schemes. During last year I learned a lot about this and I want to start creating my own colour choices for projects. In the past I’ve been a bit scared of doing this and have tended to follow the lead of others who are so good at it, perhaps doing things a little bit my own way. But this year I am going to spread my creative wings – and probably nosedive a few times, but that’s all part of the fun!

Its in the detail

Everyday this year so far I’ve taken lots of pictures and chosen one each day to post to Facebook to show the detail of something that I’ve noticed. My choice for January 1st was this picture of cherry tree bark, which is really beautiful and has colours that I didn’t expect.

Today’s was a picture of the waves on a nearby small lake in the town of Askern, which is where I stopped for today’s walk on the way home from taking my son to the station.

Now, if you know of Askern, you probably wouldn’t have named it the prettiest place in Yorkshire but the little lake, which is just off the main road, is lovely.

Its not very big so I walked around it three times and pottered about along the little row of shops by the lakeside too. One of these was a florist and was selling off large bunches of flowers cheap – 2 for a fiver – so I got some of those as well.

Askern Lake

I must have passed this lake hundreds of times in the car but this is one of the few times I have taken the time to really look at it.

Today was very breezy and this short walk was just the thing after three days getting back into work mode. It was cold and windy but sunny with a lovely blue sky.

The lake was packed with birds – swans, geese, ducks and a few seagulls sheltering inland from the stormy weather.

You can see in the picture above that I was just as interesting to them as they were to me. They obviously thought I had brought bread, as a lot of people do, so they homed in on me every time I stopped to take a photograph.

They looked a bit disappointed when all I had was an iphone…

By the time I had done a bit of shopping in the supermarket and packed up the car, the light was fading so I went for one last look at the lake as the light had changed dramatically.

This may be one New Year’s resolution that I do keep up. When you start to notice detail and colour it gives you ideas and I’ve been playing with my yarn colours this week, making lots of teenie tiny crochet squares. I have a few more to finish then, during the best of the daylight tomorrow, I want to take lots of pictures and will blog tomorrow about my scheming with colour.