Resolve

I am back: slowly, but the daily routine I worked to establish last year will not be held off. My body and mind have begun to insist on it. This is good.

Sunday evening I submitted the new cycle of poems for my daughters to a chapbook contest, more than 24 hours ahead of the deadline, hurray! This week there is no contract work on the horizon and I must begin again the job hunt. Boo, I mean hurray!

There are too many inconsistencies in the entrelac scarf (boo) and I love the yarn so much that I want it to be perfect (hurray). Last night I went to the knitting group at Studio 490 just so I would have nothing else to do but sit there and rip it all out. This was fussy because the Noro yarn is so prone to splitting. I had to tease apart a million snags. So there is still more ripping to do before I can start knitting again from the beginning.

I set the alarm for 6:45, but my brain woke up at 6, like it's supposed to, and here I am doing what I like best at the start of the day: reading blogs, filling my brain with ideas.

Over at Water Blossoms I found this excellent quote from Leonardo da Vinci:

Obstacles cannot crush me.
Every obstacle yields to stern resolve.
He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

I just love this photo of Brenna taken on the beach at Poplar Bluff on December 29. The wind was biting. Marian was bundled with multiple scarves (both the ones Danny and I made for her and one she bought herself at Good Will), and I had my hood drawn tight around my face, but Brenna was doing that adolescent thing, not needing clothes. I had to take my gloves off to use the camera, and my fingers were numb. I don't know how she managed, and yet looking at this, I envy her contact with the elements. Bren is the quintessential beachcomber, and picked up that hardhat along with a zillion bits of beach glass, shell and driftwood. This is a picture of creative absorption.