This Season

Hello,

I read the Yarn Harlot's post last  Tuesday about the end of summer and she mentioned how she feels like September marks the beginning of a new year more than January to her, and I have to agree.  I've long thought that to be true in my own life.  There's something about this time of year that evokes a sense of new beginnings to me.  I always looked forward to it as a kid when summer was drawing to a close.  There was the excitement of new school books, different subjects, learning new things, and new experiences, as well as the change in the scenery with all the colourful leaves that I enjoyed collecting and pressing.  It always seemed like new possibilities were on the horizon, and then of course, it was that much closer to Christmas, which as a child was a huge excitement all in itself.  As I got older new subjects became more of a worry than something to look forward to and school in general began to loose it's appeal.  But then I took up knitting again.  Now when fall would roll around I would start dreaming of trips to the yarn store 2 hours away to buy soft, chunky wool to knit up into cozy scarves, and I'd begin making my Christmas gift knitting list for family and friends.  I would spend hours pouring over all my knitting books and magazines looking for projects and then spend many a chilly Fall evening knitting away.  When I finally learned to make things in colours and designs that actually suited the recipients instead of just what I wanted to knit, my handmade gifts became much more well received.  I must admit that it took quite a while before I actually learned this, and I spent many hours knitting projects that I was enjoying but the giftee would not.  I had lots of disappointments when the things I made were received as graciously as possible (or sometimes not) but I could see it was not what they were hoping for and they were only trying to be polite (or not).  This is also around the time when I learned to only knit for those who actually appreciated my work, then and only then did my gift knitting become an enjoyable and fun process.
This year when I noticed the leaves starting to turn I got a feeling of dread, because I remembered that I had lost my enjoyment of Fall and Winter.  Somehow over the last few years it fell out of favour with me.  Not even fully knowing how it happened, it just did.  Even knitting didn't make it better.  I would live in a perpetual state of being grumpy about the cold weather, shorter daylight and windy days, and I'd miss the warm sunshiny happy days of summer.  I'd begin longing for the year to be over and Spring to be back again.  The turning leaves I seen the other day were signalling a time of year I was not looking forward to at all.  I started thinking I wish I could hold onto Summer forever, but that is when I remembered something I had recently read - It is possible to change old mind-sets and renew your mind with new positive ones- It just takes actually putting them into action and perseverance.  So I thought, what a better time of year than Fall's "new beginning" to start this in my own life?  So that is exactly what I am setting out to do.  I am going to embrace each season and each day and find the lovely therein.  And maybe even get my joy for knitting back along the way.

xoxo