unleash the power of inspiration...

                                         unleash the power of inspiration...

Speaking of time...this year seems to be flying by! My fifth pattern for my Webs Yarns year as Designer in Residence has just been published. It's called Changing Tack and you can find it here. 

I hope that you enjoy the photos- this month selected to show how Mother Nature tells time - by the sun.


Please check back next month to find out what my latest fascination is.

See you next month!       
Fiona xxxx

INSPIRED BY TIME?

This month's post is a bit more abstract than usual. I'm in the middle of pondering an idea so I don't quite know where it is going, and if anything will come of it.


Last week I was reading a novel and came across a line that struck a chord with me. This is something that I find happens quite often, but I never know where it's going to lead me. In the past a phrase or word combination has lead me to explore it and interpret it in a design, but sometimes they end up being simple musings.


The protagonist in the book was an author who had shot to fame and fortune by writing a book based on his discovery of a family secret. In the early part of the book several tools are used to give the reader an impression of him. One of which are his answers to a journalist's question about why he loves watches so much. It turns out that his father gave him his first watch just a few weeks before he disappeared in an apparent drowning accident. The line that caught my attention was him saying "you never forget your first watch".


I stopped reading and thought about it, and yes I could distinctly recall my first watch and how proud I was of it. So I asked a few friends about their first watches. With just one exception they could all remember. The descriptions were very detailed and each person became animated when they described it to me. Of course we are able to recall something we spend a lot of time looking but it seems to me that there is something more at play.  


My first watch was given to me by my grandmother for my birthday. I had been desperate to have a watch but was told that I could only have one after I could tell the time. So for me it was not only a gift but also a sort of badge that I could display to mark my achievement. As I pondered this I realized that being able to tell time is a point in our development when we become more aware of how our world functions. I then got to thinking about how I felt quite differently about my first digital watch (a few years later) and how currently many people (myself included) rely on a phone for a time check. Wrist watches have become simply a piece of jewelry. Times (and the way we tell time) have changed. Do 6 year olds even learn to tell time using a clock-face anymore? 


Time is a recurring theme for me, in fact it was the topic of one of the chapters in my cable book "Inspired Cable Knits".
"Our most precious commodity, next to love, may well be time. We all yearn to have more time, either to get more work done, to spend with friends and family, to participate in favourite hobbies, or just to relax. Time may be a man-made invention, simply a tool for measurement, but it is a powerful force in our lives".


The other thing about time is that it is based on the 24 hour clock and 24 is a magic number! It can be divided (into whole numbers) so many ways; 12, 8, 6, 4, 3 & 2. It's very useful when creating pattern repeats, and devising repeats that sit well together.  I have just realize that I might to go off an explore the idea of representing time zones or time periods in terms of pattern repeats..... 


Even though I was so proud of having learned the skill of being able to tell time, being aware of the passage of time is something that still eludes me. The curse or joy, depending on how you look at it, of the creative process - you completely lose all sense of time when absorbed in something that you are fully concentrating on....like reading a book.

On-line, On-nine
Monthly post on the 9th of each month! 
On-line, On-nine  Sept 9th 2015