Day 19

Fall, or autumn, whichever you choose to call it, is upon us.

What plans do you have for this year’s? It seems to be unlike any other what with the US elections right round the corner, Corona unleashing hell, everyone staying at home more, etc.

My fall this year looks like tons of knitting, for starters. My mitts are coming along swimmingly and I am about to start my second project from the Knit How book. I have fallen in love with this knit designer’s stuff and have already downloaded four patterns that I am planning to work on for two sweaters and two cardigans. I am so flipping excited. I am about to choose the colourways for them and I am on the fence whether to go to my go-to palette (earth tones) or go wild.

If that isn’t a beautiful sweater then I don’t know what is (Image: PetiteKnit)

Chunky knits, here I come!

Couldn’t resist the urge to post another one (Image: PetiteKnit)

Fall is that perfect season where I can actually do “cozy” and feel that it’s just right. It’s the season for baths, candles, hot toddies, teas and hot chocolates. It’s that time where I can put on a sweater and wrap a scarf around me and it’d be warm enough. And now with the mask steaming up my face, I feel like I’d need even fewer layers than I usually would. I love it when I can smell the chill in the air, see the leaves changing their colour and when everyone around me doesn’t seem to be hating the cold just yet.

In the cooking department, I would like to experiment with new recipes, new ingredients. Maybe do some fall-inspired stuff, finally incorporate pumpkins and squashes into my repertoire in a way that won’t make me gag.

Aesthetics-wise, I have been trying to take it easy. What’s the point of putting on blush and highlighter if it’s all going to rub off? I still try to do a bold lip sometimes because it’s fun to feel like I am keeping a secret from the world under my mask. Gotta be careful of it rubbing off too, though. But really, lately the focus has been on the eyes, as I am sure it is for the rest of you. Mascara, bold shadow, strong brows and a bit of highlight right on top of the cheekbones where they peek above my mask.

Bring on the fall season! Don’t forget to break out the cream!

_{Image: From Britain With Love}

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Day 16

More knitting talk. Hope you’re not bored of it yet.

One of the most important lessons that knitting has taught me is to embrace the technique of tinking. For those of you who don’t knit and are too lazy to alt tab and google it right now, to tink means to undo a row of knitting one stitch at a time in order to correct a mistake.

One painful stitch at a time.

How does one find a happy medium between embracing one’s mistake and restarting from square one?

Being a perfectionist, this was a ridiculous concept for me. Isn’t it just easier to unravel the whole thing and start from zero (AKA frogging)? And that was exactly what I did in the beginning, to some of my friend’s annoyance. They saw that my work was okay, and I could have just undid one single row and go on from there. But I refused. I wanted to do the whole thing perfectly from start to finish and it was a lesson to myself to not make the same mistake again. What I hadn’t realised was that if I had tinked, then at least I can see how I made the mistake. By frogging and ripping the whole thing out, then the mistake would always elude me.

See where I am getting at?

Fast forward to a year later, now I know how to tink and I understand it. But the whole ”one stitch at a time thing” was still impossible for me to embrace. Now I would much rather move on in the guise of ”embracing the mistake” than undoing the work.

But sometimes you just have to. If one really wants to be proud of one’s work and wear one’s work, especially with something like knitting, then sometimes the best thing to do is to know when to call it quits and undo your work.

This has been one of the hardest lessons so far and I am still on my journey to making myself comfortable with it.

Checklist for the day:

• Tink the mitt
• Reknit the mitt
• Start second mitt
• Write entry for my book for Big
• Cook
• Clean
• Blog
• Play with Little
• Talk to Big
• Watch a few episodes of the second season of The Leftovers

_{Image: Zofia Niemtus}

Day 15

Time and time again I catch myself coming to this earth-shattering revelation: creativity comes in spurts.

I am taking a currently taking a break from something that I just got back into yesterday after an eight-month long hiatus from knitting. It has been about two years since I started knitting and I technically only have one finished project to show for it (but in three different colours), but I love the process. It keeps my hands busy and in the end I have something beautiful and useful to show for it!

Being creative and/or finding the energy to rediscover it is one of the most nourishing things one can do to keep the anxiety at bay. It is also one of the hardest things to do when we are at the eye of the storm.

One of the best books out there to get started is Knit How published by the well-known Pom Pom Magazine.

Such a great resource. Also their images are super beautiful.

Their drawings are intuitive and easy to understand. They also have loads of interesting starter projects to inspire you and to get you motivated. My thing right now is to start from the very beginning of the book and move my way through the book until I “graduate”, wherein I’ll knit myself a sash and then I’ll get started on my long-awaited funnel neck jumper. Currently I am working on my baby project: fingerless mitts.

Wish me luck and see you tomorrow!

Checklist for the day:

• heather grey
• charcoal grey
• bordeaux red
• chartreuse green
• mustard yellow
• antique lace white
• oatmeal white

_{Image: © Zeina Abirached/Flickr}