Right here, right now

I've been very busy naalbinding all week and today's post will be illustrated with my creations: a pair of socks for myself and six colourful pouches that I may be selling at some medieval events this year. ^^

I love how these socks came out - they fit really perfectly, which is not that easy to achieve with naalbinding.


I would also like to share with you some of my thoughts on the the idea found in the book called "People in Quandries: the semantics of personal adjustment" by Wendell Johnson, 1946 - the trap that people find themselves in, it's called the IFD trap.
I stands for Idealizing (thinking about what it's going to be like, when...), what Dr. Wayne Dyer calls "the psychology of tomorrow".
F stands for Frustration (because of Idealizing you are never happy in live, because you are living in the future).
D stands for Demoralisation (how do you deal with Frustration? You are Demoralised and you Idealize again, and it's a vicious circle).

I've been in this trap all my life.
Mainly in the first part of it, that is Idealizing. I've always been living in the future, not enjoying the present moment but always thinking how happy and perfect my life would be in some time ahead of me, when something happens, when I get a better job or when I live in a bigger apartment, ect, ect. I even lived with the following philosophy: I would do something or try something or change in some way if I (had more money, lived somewhere else, got other education, had some other talents, ect, ect). But unless it happens I won't bother to even try.

There I was, waiting for the miraculous changes in my life to come. And only recently I've realized that I should start doing something in order to initialize those changes that I wanted to see in my life. I need to change my way of thinking about my life and living my life. I have to see that, although there are some limitations (or are they really?...), I can start making small steps towards my dream future. But those step will be made right now, in the present, there is no other way to do it.



And as a food for your thoughts, here are some questions (taken from the lecture of Dr. Wayne Dyer) that we may ask ourselves and think about the answers from time to time:

If you had only 6 months to live,
- How would you change your life?
- Who would you choose to live with, if you could choose anybody?
- Where would you choose to live?
- How much sleep you would get if you had no clock and no ability to measure time?
- How much and when would you eat if there wasn't something like meal times?
- What would you do if there was no such thing as money? What you be doing in your life on a daily basis?
- How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were? Old, middle-aged, young?
- How would you describe yourself if you couldn't use any labels?

and then act every day as if it was to be true, grabbing everyday by its throat and living to the fullest. *^v^*

Now I'm off to another naalbinded pair of socks - this time for Robert. ^^

Creative thoughts

Yesterday, while continuing my embroidery project, I listened to the audiobook by Wayne Dyer "Creating Your Life With Your Thoughts" and something gave me a food for thought.

(apart from the fact that Mr. Dyer shouts at his listeners... I mean, not in an aggressive way, but his tone of voice is somehow disturbing, not a silky smooth voice like Sonia Choquette's voice I got to know from her audiobooks, btw, Sonia has also been a personal psychic advisor to Dr. Wayne Dyer ^^)

The general idea of Mr. Dyer's book is that our thoughts create the reality around us, and when we focus on good things - good things happen to us, and when we concentrate on bad things - we invite them into our lives. What we think about - expands. All the certainties and doubts equally.

Which I translated onto my life and my thoughts and all that has been happening to me up till now. How many times have I thought "Yes, I want to do it!", but then, in the next sentence I thought "Yeah, but... I'm maybe too old, it's inconvenient, I'm not skillful enough, it'll never be I wanted it to turn out, ect, ect...".

My biggest obstacle was the artificial idea put in my head throughout my childhood that it's not good to be openly happy and thankful for all the good things that were happening in my life, because it may cause the immediate turn of luck. If I'm too cheerful about my good relationship, my boyfriend will leave me. If I'm openly happy about the lottery winnings I'll loose the money in the near future. Don't tempt the Universe with your happiness because the Universe just waits for such silly people and changes their luck for worse.

From this idea comes the following behaviour: I say to my friend "Good luck at your exam!", and she immediately says "I'm not going to say thank you, because I don't want to jinx it!..." and runs away with a fear of being touched by the good wish which can bring ill-luck on her. Many people behave like that, and I used to do it a long time ago but then I started to fight this prejudice.

Why would the Universe (or God, or the High Spirit, however you want to call it) find the pleasure in making our lives miserable?...

I tend to favour the other concept, namely the one which says that the Universe answers our thoughts and intentions, and if we trully want to be happy, healthy and wealthy, it will come to us one day. But we have to clean our subconsciousness, getting rid of all the thoughts about the possibility of being jinxed, of not being good enough, not being able to achieve something, of being prejudiced, ect.
I'm not saying this is an easy process, it's like teaching an old dog new tricks and all, but it's definitely worth a try!

Embroidery

My TAST journey continues and I find more and more pleasure in making my pictures. ^^ They were just three blank pages last week (only with the black words on them), but as I look at them, each moment I have new ideas and add some elements here and there. I match the stitches, the colours and the whole pictures comes together. This weekend I'll be probably finishing the first panel and will be developing the second panel, of which I have a more or less clear picture in my head. The third one is still a mystery, although I started some elements on it.

I am trully amazed how easy it is for me to compose those pictures - up till now I've only embroidered drawn patterns or cross-stitch patterns, and now I let my imagination do the job! *^v^* I'll stick to pure embroidery in this first project but next time I'll try to be a bit more adventurous and add some patchwork, yikes!

As far as my sampler book, I thought about it and decided that I won't need a book binding skills for now, because I'll be doing the individual pages with stitches on them and I'll keep them in the plastic envelopes in an office binder. I want to have them in an alphabetical order so I may bind them into a book form later, when I have most of the pages with stitches ready.


Weaving

Today I spent my day painting my Ashford loom with a wood stain, and then I got carried away and sanded and painted the wooden table form IKEA and two wooden stools... *^v^*

Now I'm waiting for my loom-in-many-parts to get dry and we'll be assembling it tonight, so first weaving trials tomorrow!

Happy weekend, everyone!