A new purpose

A lot has happened since I started this blog in March of 2005.  I suppose we all grow and change with time, and yet it seems like 2005 was a lifetime ago.  In March 2007 we learned that my beloved had lung cancer and our lives changed completely, before we were even completely aware of what was happening.  Several health crises later, this summer has been the calm where we reclaim our lives, where we finally begin the retirement we thought we were starting two years ago.  We are still discovering what this new stage will bring, we are still discovering if this is another period of quiet before the storm, or if perhaps the calm will settle in for a while.

I have been using the time exploring various creative interests and also catching up, slowly oh so slowly, on the many many things I let slide over the past two years.  So much sliding was going on around here that it is fully possible that, had we not shored up the deck and the pool that was sliding down the cliff to the house below, the weight of all my unfinished obligations might have pitched us over the edge.  But we learned that there is more steel and concrete in this family than just that which holds the newly rebuilt deck and pool in place.

I have been knitting and sewing, and I have several finished projects that are finished or nearly finished, but I have also felt a certain miasma concerning my blogs.  It has not been that I don't want to write.  I write daily in my journal.  I think of blog posts and yet they never materialize.  I am not the person I was in 2005.  At one point my life seem fragmented, so fragmented that I felt broken into a thousand tiny pieces.  There were pieces of my life that seemed held together by the presence of the blogs.  But now the blogs themselves seem fragmented, no longer offering a true reflection.  Each of my blogs started with a clear purpose and framework. At the time they worked.  But this structure, and the very existence of multiple blogs no longer works for me.  I need to find a way to integrate my blogs into my life, not fragment my life into my blogs.

But how to begin?

Oddly enough it came to me while I cleaned out the china cabinet this weekend.  It had been a long time, since before G's first bout with illness, before the lung cancer, and it was desperately in need. The glass front of the cabinet was cloudy and smudged, the glass shelves harbored a layer of dust, the glassware itself was dull and lifeless, much the way I felt my life had become until very recently: dull, lifeless and full of dust.  

So Saturday night, late, I covered the table in plastic and towels, brought out a couple of large basins of water and set to work.  It was the kind of task that I put off because it seems like such drudgery, and yet once begun I savour the process.  After removing everything from the cabinet I dusted and polished the wood, removed the glass shelves and polished them until they shone, and the cabinet was there waiting to be populated, fresh and shiny and like new.

As I cleaned everything and put it back, I started reflecting on the history of the pieces and how they reflect our lives, our families, our history.  There is the very modern scandinavian china we chose and still love and the large contemporary hand thrown plates with the silver and black rims we purchased when we threw an engagement party for G's daughter.  There is the lovely silver chalice given to us by G's aunt Hilda on our wedding day, the chalice that was given to her grandparents on their wedding day in 1866.  I thought of Aunt Hilda as I polished that chalice and looked at the faded photo of her grandfather that remains on the cup.  Aunt Hilda's cup shares the cabinet with my grandmothers water goblets, my great-grandmother's china and my great-aunt's china.  I felt like I was in the presence of these women as I dipped the plates and glasses in water and gently dried them with piles of linen towels.  A couple of Vaseline glass plates from my grandmother became  collection of uranium glass, accumulated slowly over the years.  The yellow-green glass looks beautiful in front of the plates that G's grandmother brought with her from Austria, one of the few family possessions that survived the move.  There are the champagne flutes I don't even like, but which were given me by two old dear friends, now both deceased,  who I feel are with us in spirit every time we use the glasses.  All of these things coexist harmoniously in this cabinet, each contributing another piece to the puzzle of what makes us who we are.

As I listened to my murmuring thoughts it occurred to me that as old and new live in the china cabinet, all my ruminations, thoughts, and passions can live in the words of this blog, and it is this blog that is the perfect place for me now. 

When I started writing Purls and Murmurs in 2005 I chose the name because I love the way my mind can wander when I am knitting, and the way the word purl can function as a noun or a verb, thereby fitting all my purposes.  And yet somewhere I had left the purling of my thoughts and behind and let the blog become a repository of plans, patterns, and finished objects and not a place of dreams and reflections.

Here I will continue to write about knitting.  But I will also write about my sewing and gardening and whatever else catches my fancy.  If you come here only for the knitting  I hope you will not be too disappointed, but I had almost forgotten that I am writing this blog (once these blogs) for me.  I hope you will join me.  

As to the archives of Dooney's world and Sewdistracted, for now they will continue on in their current locations for now.  I see that I have much to learn and I hope to be able to create a place here where all the archives of all three blogs can exist in one place.  

Comments

[Lisette]

I don't see why our blogs must be separated by theme, after all our lives are full of diversity and everything together makes who we are. Looking forward to reading more of your blog.
Lisette

[Gina]

I think the blog merge will be very successful.

[materfamilias]

What a lovely piece you've written here, Mardel! I'm glad you've found a way to continue blogging -- I'd truly miss you if you stopped. I think that holding all your activities in one blog makes perfect sense and your various readers can weave in and out of them as they see fit -- I originally thought my blog would be a knitting blog, but it very quickly showed me it had other plans . . .

[Liana]

Oh, I'm so glad you're planning to continue to blog. Halfway through, I suddenly feared you were planning to quit, and I would miss your voice and presence so very much. I see no problem with your having many subjects on one blog. It will be exciting to see what category your new posts fall into, like a small treasure hunt. Lovely china closet and what beautiful pieces and memories.

[Luni]

I understand your need to organize the things that crowd your life. I hope the blog consolidation works for you as well as the china cabinet dusting did.

[Shannon]

I'm happy to hear that you have a certain peace back in your life. It's sounds like this blog can be a way of moving on with your creative endeavours and act as an outlet for your ruminations. I look forward to reading what you have to say.

[karent]

Quite a revelation, I think, this needing to merge all the pieces. You may have felt disjointed, but reading your blogs over the past year or two has shown how lives are made up of so many different parts. Even from my seat, it feels good to have everything falling together into one. I hope it continues, I think you're due. K