choose your colours

2pm, Wednesday afternoon – feeling free.

This, just this very moment after finishing work, is seriously my most blissful happy moment of the week. I’ve finished my admin job, biked home, picked 30 sweet pea flower stems and balanced them in Susan Halcrow’s tiny cut glass jug. Alfie sits beside me, Teep is on my knee, colours are coming together for my next set of motifs in my pullover project (that could end up being a jumper).  There are two great passion flowers out in front of me and I’m surrounded by the scent of star jasmine, regular jasmine, and sweet peas. Honestly, these simple things (and a cuppa) signify Freedom. Freedom of mind, creativity and the senses. These simple things are utterly blissful.

Knitting is many things to and for me – today, it is freedom.

I’m looking at my yarn colours, choosing / feeling my way through them so that I sense what will work in the pattern changes so that they both balance as a whole and shine individually.

When I lived in Shetland, my inspiration was taken from my surrounding landscape and the stories of the woman that lived in the house that I had bought from 1876 to 1960.  When I teach my colour blending workshops, I show how to feel colours with your heart.

Today, back in the city, this Wednesday afternoon, I feel the joy of the colours of the flowers that I have grown, from their vibrancy and scent.  On my tiny slabbed area, in front of my small flat, I have grown an abundant, cascading mass of sweet peas, Star Jasmine, ordinary Jasmine, passion flowers, agapanthus and many other things.  It is survival of the fittest in the tiny silly border. All the plants are growing across each other, elbowing with their leaves to reach higher.   The sweet peas are so pretty, in shades of purple, fuchsia, pale pink, port, red, lilac, and white.   The little jug of flowers sits on the table, the cats join me on cushions that are placed either side of mine on the bench, a cuppa, my swatch book and then the yarn begins to join the table top.  The yarn comes alive and colours become inspired by the sensory pleasure of just feeling free, from not having to work again until Monday.

My knitting is not about just choosing colours from a pile of yarn, or shop but the colours come by feeling them through a sensory connection and today, it is a tiny jug of sweet peas that triggered the feeling of being free.  

If you would like to join me in one of my colour blending workshops, the overview and information is here