Maitri's New Year's Rockin' Eve Spent Cutting Hair, Spool-Knitting, and Watching The Ball Drop at Midnight...

This is what I call the "Chop-Shop" school
of hairdressing. Don't laugh. Be BOLD, try
it sometime, even if you have a grey parrot
in the background shouting, "NO, NO,
don't do it! You'll look HIDEOUS!"



To say that I am not exactly a party girl is putting it embarrassingly correctly. The Golden Girls whooped it up more than I do on New Year's Eve. I'm always grateful just to make it until midnight and not fall asleep between 9:00 and 10:00. As I write this it is now nearly 9 p.m. on New Year's night, and I am writing with pugs snoring loudly all around me. Yes, we rock here, we really do. Really. (I heard you laughing, by the way...)

Well, I'd had a nap yesterday (I'm a real ball of fire!) so I was going to make it up. I promised myself that I would watch the ball drop at midnight and then pray for all those poor people in Times Square that they might make it out alive. Have you seen that crowd? It's positively horrifying. I turned the tv on about 5 minutes to midnight, I was on the phone with one of my dearest and best friends in Canada, (of course she had 2 hours to go up there before the calendar turned for her), but she whooped it up with me for a minute and I got to wish someone other than dogs and birds, "HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!" We shouted and after a lot of well wishing it was now 2008 (at least here) and I ended up not going to bed until 2 a.m. I got busy watching t.v. and doing fiber work, and I felt like some wild, unruly hooligan up that late!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, I cut my own hair, taking the scissors and just having at it! Wheeeeeee, such fun, and FREE! I also color my own hair with color kits (main brands only cheap) from the Dollar Store which would make me quite the thrifty one except that that money and more goes to feeding 5 parrots and 4 dogs. Well, we all have our priorities!

So after cutting the hair, showering, and coming downstairs in a fresh clean cotton caftan (Oh, I felt so good...) I settled into spoolknitting. This spoolknitter is a "Mighty Mama" made by Noreen and Jim Crone-Findlay, not only my dear friends but makers of most of the tools that I use. You really need to go to their site and see their goodies!

Well, I was spool-knitting with one of my favorite Mighty Mamas (I have several and adore them all and they each were special orders and have very special meanings to me...), which is the most gorgeous Phoenix, and it says around the spoolie, "Like the Phoenix I rise again and again..." This has been such a potent symbol for me throughout my life. Here it is, and the yarn that I spun and let sit for a few weeks has a tight twist which creates wonderful ripple effects for this project, and in fact is what I call one of my "thin" yarns which makes some people shudder. Most people would consider this a thick yarn, and my art yarns are very, very thick with many elements. It's fun doing all kinds of yarns, and this particular yarn I'm spoolknitting will be the center of a very large piece....

Spoolknitting right off the spindle...





Spoolknitted Handspun...



I spoolknitted for a couple of hours and then moved to working on Cecelia's face. (Cecelia is one of my Rainbow Serpents, wearable art, and if you look through the last few entries you will see her in process. She is named for St. Cecelia, The Patron Saint Of Music.) Someone wrote in here and gave me good advice. I was at the end of my rope having spent days beading and crocheting, working on her face. These serpents are whimsical and so must their faces be. And she had to have a mouth to sing! But I just wasn't happy with it and I was ready to rip it all out and start over on the face. The reader wrote in and said, "Don't rip it out! Let it sit for awhile and then come back to it with new eyes. You may see her differently." And she was right. I looked at this peculiar, whimsical little face made of old Chinese beads and a lot of crochet in many colors of yarns with the wide open mouth, singing her songs to the heavens, and my heart just melted. And so I will keep the face but still have some work to do on it. Here you can have a little peek of the face in process...





There is a good bit of crochet yet to be done, but I'm
happy with her face so far. The turquoise edge goes all
the way around, very wide, but is folded back on one
edge while I was working...


They say that what you are doing as the old year turns to the new will have a great influence in the year to come. I am finally so at home with what I'm doing I found it just right to be doing my fiber art as the year turned. And I will be working very hard in the weeks ahead to make as many things as I possibly can to get up in my shop and will see a very active store as the year moves ahead. This is very exciting for me and it feels just right. I have a wonderful feeling about 2008. I think it is going to be a very good year in many directions!

So yes, we had our "New Year's Rockin' Eve," it just wasn't, by the world's standards, quite so rockin' as the rest. But we live a quiet life here and our transition from the old year to the new reflected the life that we live and love so well.

In ending, I want to leave you with a wonderful quote from one of my all time favorite books. It is a book of essays by writer Jim Harrison who is well known in many genres, a real outdoorsy big burly man, as well as a gourmet cook. Tough and tender. Thoughtful, a Zen man, and so much more. His essays were pure revelation to me, and I have not only read this book several times, but nearly 8 years ago, on a trip out to California (From NC) with my then partner, we took turns driving and the one who wasn't driving spent a good deal of the time reading this book aloud. She was enchanted and it is, to me, a very magical book. The book is Just Before Dark, "Collected Non-Fiction," and was published in 1991. Here's a little line that Harrison wrote that fits this time so well...

"I have a good memory, though good is somewhat questionable, since there is a tendency to over-remember life rather than to look for new life to be lived."

I think this is so important because there is the tendency to cling to the past (good or bad) and get stuck there. Change is growth, and it's time for all of us to draw a line in the sand, step over it, and turn our back on the past and look out into the vast expanse of the future ahead. The good memories will always be with us, but we needn't let them rule today. Too many people get stuck and are so afraid of change that it begins to be like wearing that old comfortable pair of shoes. Too often they are falling apart on our feet and we still refuse to let go. It's time for us to look to the future, to look for the new life to be lived. I am incredibly excited about all that will be coming to me in the year ahead. I hope you can feel that too.

And so I wish you all a happy, healthy, glorious new year. Embrace the changes, celebrate each day's lessons, and "look for new life to begin." How could we have a better new year than beginning it this way?

Many blessings to each of you, and love to you from my animal family and I here a the cottage. In the next entry you will hear about how this has been the Year Of The Pug, and all of the many lessons I have learned from these funny, adorable little dogs. Find something to love, love it well and with your whole heart, and the radiance of that love will fill your life and days....

Love,

Maitri