The Roller Coaster

At one point during the day I described yesterday as being quiet as the grave, well my shop anyway. After schooling was wrapped and the children remained uninjured...barely, I sat waiting for a sale, a convo, something. Nothing came and I spent much of the day unraveling a frightening yarn mess. The cats had befouled the bag which held the blanket I've been crocheting for ages. They missed the blanket itself, but got the two large skeins of yarn. I washed them in a garment bag, but I suppose it was naive to think they wouldn't still tangle. So my time was wasted in the pursuit of tangle free yarn. Once I was granted success in that endeavor, it was back to worrying about the quiet of my shop while the Internet declared that Cyber Monday was much busier this year. This is the point where I sucked it up and went to work.

 Most of the time when I design something I have a purpose in mind or a base design to start from. I generally know what I'm trying to make when I start. This time I just knew I needed to reach inside my head and pull out something new. Obviously the sale pendant and it's subsequent earrings were still in my head so I started with that.

It wasn't too hard to figure out how to connect the motifs, but the top row was something else entirely. It wouldn't stand on its own as is and I didn't think the point of the original motif would work at all. Honestly I'm not sure why I went with the inside ring, but I really liked it once the prototype was finished. I just did a three repeat section to test the idea here. I still had to go back and add joining picots to the first row and I tweaked the stitch count of the chains as well, but I managed to focus and get the entire choker made. There was however absolutely no light at this point, unless you count the neighbors garish backyard Christmas light display shining technicolor puke in our back windows. Sorry, got off track...it's really bright. Anyway, I'll get the new necklace finished, photographed and listed today. I really do like how the design turned out, it feels a little Art Nouveau to me. Of course my knowledge of art movements is seriously lacking, so I could be completely wrong on that. How about, I love the flow and flowery feeling of it.

Luckily after I started really working on this piece the Universe rewarded me with a couple of sales. I am renewed, reinvigorated and given fresh purpose for the week. I suppose that's just the life of a maker though, we ebb and flow. Once day we think the world hates and ignores us and we're crushed under that imaginary weight and the next we are inspired and the act of creation raises us up. I'd say it's like being bi-polar, but I'm sure it doesn't even come close to that. Instead I'll say it's like a strange roller coaster, sharply up, sharply down and occasionally it just goes around and around in circles until we almost lose hope and now I'm over analyzing. Time to get on with the day.