Whatever I Feel Like I Wanna Do, Gosh!

Napoleon said it best.  That's going to be me this year, and not just when it comes to crafting.

I found my Fade.  From top left, clockwise: Madelinetosh- Reindeer, Knit Picks Stroll- Raven, Tanis Fiber Arts- Too Tartan, Madelinetosh- Chickory, Voolenvine Yarns- I am no Bird, Madelinetosh- Modern Fair Isle, and Gynx Yarns- DenTown.   An improvisational mix of yarn types.  Off the cuff sounds really good about now.

Since the first of the year I've been going through a sort of bootcamp for my health.  Basically, it requires I live a lot like I did as a young mother.  Those were the days.. sigh.  No mother of small children under 5 thinks they'll look back at those days wistfully and think... I wish I had all that free time again.  But I found myself looking through photo albums and thinking exactly that.  I wasn't just feeling nostalgic for quality time with both of my children, or the time when they were in a small enough package that I could swing them up on my hip and carry them through life with me.  I'll always miss those things, but what struck me was how balanced my lifestyle was then.  I had time for everything important to our (and my) well-being.

I ate regular meals, had quiet moments each day, spent so much time outdoors, and loved working alongside someone (especially a toddler who was mostly unfolding the laundry in order to "help" fold it).  I cooked all of our meals and it was always something different.  We ate super healthy, avoided dairy on purpose, and gluten incidentally.  After the first year of my daughter's life, we slept at least 9 hours a night.  Nine hours.  I was alert and enthusiastic and everything I did had a sense of purpose.  I felt reborn when I had my children.  I knew what I was here for and everything clicked into place for me.

So how did I let that all get screwed up in recent years?  You know how people always say stress will wreck your body, but you ignore it because there seems to be no way around these stressful things in your life?  Yeah, that.

Last year I planned to de-stress and get back to the basics of simple living, but apparently, this process will be like peeling an onion.  It's time to peel away another layer.

So, if I have a goal for 2017 it's to regain myself.  I am older, I have extra weight on me from the hit my hormones took,  my face is also very scarred from that too, and my back is messed up from neglect and too much sitting and driving in recent years.  I don't expect to be 24 again.  But my enthusiasm for living fully hasn't diminished, its just been reined in by too many responsibilities to other people.  Strange as it feels, I think it's time to do whatever I feel like I wanna do.  At least more often.

That's why I cast on Andrea Mowry's Find Your Fade.  I didn't need to cast this on, except that I did. It's creative and addictive.  I'm also using yarn that holds special memories for me.  It's a perfect first project for 2017.

I cast on with Gynx Yarns' DenTown colorway, a yarn dyed in the colors of the buildings in Denton, Texas' downtown square.

(more on ravelry, kollabora, instagram, and flickr)

These photos of the square were taken in the same time period as the one of my children, above.  It was 1999 (Ignore the time stamp on the photos, it's wrong.)  This is super nostalgic for me because some of my best times with my husband and daughter were spent living there.  We loved going to Recycled Books and Records and the ice cream/ soda shop together.

Sometimes my husband would pick me up on campus and we'd eat at Andy's.  It was a college town, close enough to Dallas and Fort Worth to have loads of stuff going on, but still far enough away to have a small town feel.

I like that my DenTown yarn will be knit together with some other favorites for this special project.  So what about you?  Have you found your fade?