sweetgeorgia

What I did on my Gap year

It was exactly one year ago today when I started on my trip to Fiji. I didn’t think that I’d be away from work, friends and family for so long. In fact, the idea started out as just a three-week vacation… which became a hiatus from work wherein I declined all new projects and clients and explored other avenues of creativity, design and content development. Two of my close friends got married while we were in Fiji and, outside of sporadic wedding planning, we did a little bit of surfing and a lot of sunburning.

Traveling ended up being a very small portion of my year. Although I did travel to London several times, I think my travels and explorations were mainly internal. I started a couple new business ventures (because you can never have enough new ideas), looked back at the last ten years and looked forward ten years, discovered new friends and old souls, snowboarded during all my spare days this past season, uprooted and moved my possessions three times, and got divorced from my husband of six years. I tearfully sold my childhood and family home in Kitsilano … the one housing my entire dye and design studios… and am joining the hoards of people looking for a place to live in Vancouver.

My internal travels still take place every day. I question and I doubt. I look at different paths and avenues and simultaneously get inspired and despondent. These travels never end but I am just grateful that I don’t need to walk these paths alone. My family and friends have been an unmeasurable support and I am very very grateful for them.

Yesterday, I received news that I’m back on the practicing registrar for pharmacists… so I’m returning to practice in a field I thought I’d never go back to. I’m learning to see that not everything is black and white… and adjust to seeing all the shades of grey in my life, appreciating all the subtlety. And I’m also starting to knit again. Finally.

The back and front pieces are done. All I need are sleeves now. Why does it always feel like “All I need is ‘fill in the blank’ now”? I don’t know. But at this particular moment, all I need are sleeves now.

Here’s to the end of my gap year and to a most beautiful fresh start.

Screw it, let’s do it.

Okay, enough waiting. Enough hemming and hawing and fussing with my skirt hem. Friday, April 18th sounds like a good day to re-open the SweetGeorgia Yarn shop… so we’ll open up at 9 AM PST. I still have a bunch of work to do before Friday (like sorting out shipping costs and such) and I’m sure there will be some growing pains, but there’s no way to know without going ahead and trying.

If you visit the shop site now, you’ll see that it’s still password-protected. No worries, there won’t be any password required on Friday when we open. See you then!

Revamp

The dust is settling now… I think. I’ve been reworking the blog, trying to drop in all the ideas that I’ve had for a while now, but managed to break nearly all the photo links and things. I’m working on fixing it all! In the meantime, if you haven’t yet changed your subscription settings, the sweetgeorgia feed is now at http://feeds.feedburner.com/sweetgeorgia. Sorry for the inconvenience… and don’t breathe in any dust.

Every shade of white

It’s breathlessly beautiful up here at Whistler Blackcomb. I’m almost tempted to not return to real life. Almost.

It’s pretty white up here though and sometimes all you see is miles and miles of white marked with tiny little coloured flags. But it’s fascinating to me… you think that all you see is white and nothingness, but really you see all the subtlety of light and shadow and every shade of white you can imagine. Cool white. Warm white. White in the morning light. White in overcast light. White in blindingly beautiful bluebird skies. I fully expect and look forward to being visually assaulted when I return to my yarns and dyepots next week.

Return to [sweetgeorgia] Mountain

Soon soon soon. We’ll be re-opening SweetGeorgia Yarns online in the next few weeks after I return from Whistler. My office is starting to look a lot like it once did… piled high with brightly coloured yarns and fibres… tags hanging delicately off the end of each skein. I’m excited to show you what I’ve been working on, but here’s a teeny tiny sample…

Yep, that last photo is my fridge full of pre-mordanted yarn. All I need to do now is add some colour… soon soon soon.