New Obsessions

Things change.  Life changes.

And so do my obsessions.  What do I mean by that?

My mom took me to the Renaissance Festival when I was 12, and I spent the next 20 years learning everything I could about everyday life, needlework, and clothing construction in the second half of the 1500s.  Every facet of every hobby somehow related back to that obsession.  Knitting?  I got into it when I started researching knit stockings in the time period.  Blackwork embroidery?  Same thing.  Even machine embroidery was something I could use to recreate something from that time period...

I returned to knitting ten years ago as a means to relax and challenge myself at the same time.  It worked, and my home became buried in wool.  I'm still knitting, but not as obsessively as I was even a few years ago.  Now I knit primarily because I want the finished item and enjoy the process, not so much because I need to learn new techniques and challenge myself to the difficult.

In 2010 I started sketchbooking.  Sketching from life and watercoloring became a new obsession, and I did it everywhere, every day.  I've taken several classes, practiced a bunch, and still carry a small book and watercolor tin with me all the time.  It's a journal, of sorts, with a visual component that many journals don't have.  But it's not quite the obsession it was.

I think maybe I'm tempering that obsessive side of my personality as I age.  Or something, anyway.

But now I have a new obsession...tapestry.  I can see the possibilities in translating my sketches into fabric art, using my handspun as weft, playing with motifs from (you guessed it) the Renaissance period... Basically pulling together a pile of my obsessions from the last umpteen years into an art form that appeals to me, slows me down, and enlightens my brain.

It's enough to make me start to feel good about getting rid of the remnants of past obsessions, to let them go, to simplify the "hobbies" and settle into something more like expression and less like reproducing something others have already done before.

It's enough to bring me back to blogging!