Well, I have a name of someone who can help me. He's on vacation today but should be back tomorrow. So perhaps the Nightmare of Setting Up Cable Internet is very nearly over.

(It would have helped had the cable modem come with, you know, instructions on what to do to set it up.)

I worked a bunch more on the Landscape Shawl. I will be glad when the 47" circular needle arrives so I can move it onto there...I will take a photo before it gets too big again and has to be "scrunched" on the longer needle. I'm pleased with how fast it's going. It's not like a lace shawl where you have to be concentrating every stitch; the pattern is pretty easily memorized.

I also wanted to comment a bit more on color, and the meanings of color, and how I seem to react to color.

One thing I've noticed is that my color preferences shift over the course of the year. I particularly notice this with buying and using quilt fabric. It seems that I'm always wanting fabric a "season ahead" of where I am. In the winter, especially the January to March stretch, I want pastels, those bright pale leaf greens, spring colors in general. Then, I decide I want deeper, richer colors - summer colors (the quilt top I am currently working on has fabric purchased, I think, in February.

Then, when the heat of summer begins to get intense, I go for fall colors - golds and deep greens and oranges. Even more explicitly, I look for leaf prints and harvest prints. (My next quilt that I want to start has these colors). Or I go for the darker "reproduction" fabrics. (One of the sets of fabrics I bought on my last quilt-shop trip - or rather, which my father bought for me - is a patriotic-themed set in burgundies, deep blues, and tans. And often around about October I start thinking about the Christmas fabrics I have stored up.

I've decided that I do this because I get tired of one season at about its midpoint, and start longing for the next season to come. And I start remembering the good things about the season-to-come (flowers in the spring, fresh tomatoes in the summer, cooler temperatures in fall...) and it's almost as if I can once again begin envisioning a quilt in those colors...it's very hard for me to put together a top out of, say, autumn colors in January, because it's as if I am not thinking about that season, that somehow at that time it doesn't resonate for me.

One thing I've learned is that you often need to follow your particular muse with projects. I've put projects away for long-ish periods of time just because I lost the desire to work on them. When (if) that desire returns, I pull them back out. (Or, as is often the case, I find them months later when I'm cleaning or rearranging and I wonder - why did I ever stall out on this? And I pick it up again).

So, for me, having a "stash" is important. Partly because I often cannot buy simply as the project occurs to me (because a big buying expedition involves either a trip to places an hour or more away, or ordering stuff online, and often the inspiration fades before I have a chance to get what I want). But also because it's a joy to cycle through the stuff, to pull out stuff I bought last year at this time and didn't have a chance to use....to have the colors I work with change with the seasons.