mrr design

Slow life continued...

the garden

Giant sunflowers at the local grange fair, August 2010

Inside the exhibition hall

Hand knit: slow life.

Not first place, but a ribbon nonetheless.

It was the grange fair that motivated me to finally finish this sweater

which has been on my needles for, dare I admit, four years.

Reading outside on a summer day: slow life

stopping all chores and plans

devouring a book in an afternoon

That is just how I enjoyed Dominque Brownings's new book,

Slow Love.

I absolutely loved it. It is a great follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love.

Browning continues writing about slow life on her blog,

Slow Love Life ,

of which I am devotee.

This idea of slow life brings me back to yesterday's Swan's Island post. The Swan Island newsletter reports on Dominique Brownings's visit to their studio. I encourage you to read the newsletter. click here.

The owners of the Swan Island Studio say this:

"Our approach for the past 20 years has been the same:

do things right, slowly and with love,

and the rest will somehow fall into place."

I tried to slow down these past two weeks. I was on vacation from the day job. The plan was to get my daughter off to college and then to work in the studio to prepare for the autumn MRR Design season. Sometimes things just do not happen the way you expect; life intervenes.

My true passion for creating things has nothing to do with what I do daily to make a living. MRR Design is my escape from my daily work routine. I create one object at a time, by hand. Nothing high tech about it. I am trying to build the business but it is hard to do 2 days a week. But I will persevere. I am good at that.

I will continue to pursue my passion at night, and on the weekends. Especially now that Miss Is is off to college, my days of daily, active mothering are over. Sad indeed, but exciting too. Life is evolving. It is thrilling and rewarding to watch Miss Is grow. I tried to do things right, slowly and with love as I raised Miss Is. I think it worked; Miss Is is blossoming into a young woman. Everything is falling into place. So now I have to work on myself, to do things right, slowly and with love. And hope it all falls into place.

I am trying to find balance. I am looking for answers. I am trying to rejuvenate my spirit because my happy demeanor has taken a few hits lately. So I scrapped the idea to work hard in the studio during my two-week break from the day job. I wanted to relax. To sit quietly. To think. Often my reverie was interrupted. But I kept trying. I simply sat down and decided to finish knitting a sweater that I started years ago. The goal was to finish by the grange fair. And I did. Slow life in motion. I started with skeins of yarn and two needles. Steady and slow like the turtle, then voila - a beautiful, cozy sweater. It is a bit short, but I am pleased. Every time I wear it, I will feel happy and accomplished. So now on to sweater #2, on the needles for 6 years or more. I am determined - it will be done by Labor Day.

Note the pink and white blanket pictured in the middle of this post; it looks like a Swan Island blanket. I found the blanket on Martha Stewart's now-defunct shopping site years ago. Maybe Martha was inspired by the originial Swan Island blankets.