The Dark Phase Of The Year Approaches
The Dark Phase Of The Year Approaches
I Will Not Hibernate; I Thrive In This Time
I have spent all Summer suffering through the heat. It is what I do, so don’t feel too bad for me. Very slowly the temperatures are dropping and the area is cooling off. I might be the only one praying for heaps of snow, but again, that is what I do. I don’t get it where I live, but I can always hope and dream…and remember I grew up in the mountains where snow fell soft and deep.
This is my favorite time of year, when Halloween begins to dominate the scene. This is when I stock up on everything from clothes to decor to yarn to candles. If it is related to Halloween, chances are I need to buy it now because for the rest of the year it will disappear and I will spend the rest of the year pining for the Halloween merchandise to return to stores.
Halloween-time is a lot like back-to-school-time. Stock up on everything you can think of so it lasts throughout the year.
Now, with the days turning darker faster, bringing cooler temperatures, I can again take control of my kitchen. Remember, heat and I are foes at the moment. Now come the days of baking breads and rolls, cookies, shortbread and chocolate chip. Swiss rolls, cupcakes, and muffins. Oh my!
I can pick up my crocheted granny square blanket that I started earlier in the year, but then it became too heavy and too hot to continue to work on. I have a beautiful skein of hand-dyed black and orange sock yarn. This yarn has always wanted to be a shawl. Now is the best time to whip that up. Then I can pull out yarn and work on my next sweater. No, I cannot finish all that one after the other. I cannot complete a queen-sized granny square blanket, knit a shawl, knit up a sweater, all before Halloween. I work on my knitting until I get tired, then work on the crochet blanket for a bit. Luckily, the blanket works up fast.
The one thing I have been planning on and planning for is a new step in what I am currently doing. I am planning to update and redirect a few things, but the gist is I will soon be creating original art around a monthly theme. I don’t want to simply do a single piece each month. I have ideas for more than that. I am still working with and locking down the themes and the formats I want to use.
I have also been delving more into junk journaling and collaging in my journals. I haven’t kept an active art journal for a long time and I miss that deeply. You can expect some of that to filter in and through the work I will be doing. I will share more details once I have things decided upon and made up.
Also, there are new developments in my planner system and the way I am organizing things. I will not ever bother with one book to rule them all as a planning format again. I will have videos popping up pretty soon to show you what I have been up to.
Something blooming in my heart and on my desk this month is the monthly subscription box from Cocoa Daisy. I, so far, am planning to use the insert I receive monthly for a different sort of memory keeping. I am not quite clear on that part yet, since my normal memory keeping is in my Bullet Journal. Maybe I will pick some of my Five-Point Journaling back up and put it in my Cocoa Daisy insert.
I had intended to start up a sort of scrapbook/collage/arty junky journal for October, but with the Cocoa Daisy insert I will have that flexibility to create on those pages while adding whatever writing I want or need to that as well.
What are you planning for the coming Autumn? For the coming Winter? Do you have plans? Are there things that you normally do only in the cooler months? I’d love to hear all about it.
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I'm excited about this time of year, too! In the autumn, I love to get out and hike more, exploring views and scenes that I can photograph with the changing colors. This winter, I'm planning on starting a new art journal (alongside a new course I signed up for) and trying to combine art with lines of poetry. It's been a long time since I played with paints and drawing, as well.