Tangent

I had a few ideas rumbling about in my head today for tonight's blog post. Nothing about knitting, of course (the good news is that I'm just about finished my secret knitting project, so we should be back to knitting content shortly), but little tidbits, morsels of my daily life with the fam while on staycation.

For instance, we've discovered the barboteuse (basically a kiddie pool) at the local municipal park, and it's been a blast, for the kids and myself.

I've also continued my adventures in jam-making and made a batch of black cherry preserves yesterday. Here's an interesting fact: it takes 52 minutes to pit and stem 2 kilos of cherries.


And today we visited the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa and saw, among other things, the Mythic Beasts Exhibition. Sadly, our camera died shortly after this picture was taken, hence the lack of a non-blurry image...


Yup, this is what I was planning on writing about. Sort of like little gems of domesticity, I suppose.

But when we got home this afternoon, I was feeling a bit ill (The double quarter-pounder I ate at McDonald's apparently isn't agreeing with me - go figure!), so I retired to my boudoir and picked up a book my stepmother Margot gave me while I was visiting last week, A Gift from the Sea.

And now I'm feeling introspecty and reflective. Asking questions, analyzing my reactions to certain passages, wondering if I'll react to the same passages if (when) I read this book in a year, five years, a decade from now...

The book is about the challenges of finding serenity, or "grace" for women in modern society. I haven't finished it yet, but one of the keys to finding that balance, according to the author, is simplification (less stuff, less clutter, less pointless busyness) and solitude (to re-source yourself, to "fill the spiritual pitcher").

This might seem very personal and unrelated to the main topic of this blog, which is supposed to be knitting. But oddly, it's not. Knitting, writing this blog... I'm left wondering if they're ways of filling up time with pointless clutter to quiet the soul from expressing it's demands, or if they're part of my re-sourcing process, part of my creative alone time.

You'll be glad to hear that so far, I'm leaning towards the latter.

Happy Knitting Everyone! I'm off to read, ponder and reflect.