Life as Art

Relish11 prompt (day 2):  Our lives can be as much about consuming as they are about creating, it seems. But what is most interesting in hindsight is what we have given life to as we went through the course of our days. It doesn’t have to be literal art, like a painting or a poem (though those are beautiful and essential too). Consider what was a creation of your own mind this year. What art did you make?

Since I started #reverb11 with a response to Gwen Bell’s abrupt departure rather than the first prompt “One Word”, I’ve decided to combine that prompt with the one above from #relish11.  On the one hand, I love all the options and variations that have sprung up to fill the void left through the absence a unified #reverb11 community, but I still wish it weren’t so fragmented.  So I’m going to bring reverb and relish together in this post!

My one word for 2011 would be craft which is my avenue of artistic expression.  I don’t draw very well, feel awkward holding a paint brush, can splatter paint when I have to, but am too much of a perfectionist to be a true artist.  Craft, however, fits my nature and my upbringing.  When I was growing up in western Pennsylvania, every woman did some sort of craft, be it knitting, sewing, macrame, pottery, decoupage, black velvet painting (it was the 70s after all), and their homes were filed with their art.  My aunt Gail’s home is still the epitome for me of what a warm & crafty house should be; her home was packed with handmade crafts, and like many women in my family (including my mother), she had a portion of the basement sectioned off as her workroom.  When I read “that article” in the Huffington Post, I thought of Aunt Gail, the original tough gal, and how she’d make short work of the author of that piece!

This past year, I learned to knit.  I’ve been referred to on different occasions as the “mad knitter” and the “knitting nazi”, and I admit I’ve taken to the craft 1000%.  My daughter models the first really beautiful scarf I knit as a gift for her in the picture above,  and I’m busily making some beautiful hybrid mittens out of Rowan Aura for her as a Christmas gift.  (Let’s hope that last bit saves me from her ire at having her picture in this post!  As part of last year’s Defining Moment, she should be used to reverb by now.) My mother kindly gifted me a class at Vogue Knitting Live for Christmas which will kick off 2012 in the best way possible.  Don’t be surprised if 2012 also sees me yarn bombing as so many students have predicted over this past year!

Knitting wasn’t the only craft I undertook in 2011 however.  This blog started as part of #reverb10, has grown to include podcasts, and is the true “creation of my mind” over the past year.  My first blog post of #reverb11 came out of my love for this process and disappointment at it being so carelessly discarded by its founder.  Through this blog, I’ve met so many amazing people and shared so much that I can’t imagine giving it up. The discipline of writing every day last December finally convinced me that I can write regularly and be read by at least a few people.  The learning curve between maintaining privacy and writing publicly took some time to work through, and there are still those that don’t understand why I need to be so active online, but I’ve come to terms with my craft, my blog, and as a result, my self over this past year.

As part of #reverb10, I produced a wordle of the blog and did so again for this post.  I think the words included truly sum up the past year, and I’ll be interested to see how much they change between now and December 2012!