SUNDAY INSPIRATION: JUST ONE LOOK AND I COULD HEAR MY HEART SING

My, My! How could I resist ya? How could I resist a book with this cover, and this title, and this much delicious color, looking so sad and neglected, having been dumped in a bargain bin in the aisle of my grocery store and marked down to a fraction of it's original cost? Especially when the first thing I spotted when I flipped through it's pages was a darling, hand-knitted tea cozy?

That tea cozy was just the first in a long string of commonalities, of shared background, beliefs, interests and inspirations, that seem to link me to the author of this book, Ms. Jane Brocket. Here is a sampling of what I found within the first few pages, which is all I've had time to read so far:

• Domesticity, not domestication - "There is a world of difference between domesticity and domestication. This book is about domesticity and the pleasures and joys of the gentle domestic arts of knitting, crochet, baking, stitching, quilting, gardening and homemaking. It is emphatically not about the repetitive, endless rounds of cleaning, washing, ironing, shopping and house maintenance that come with domestication. Domesticity rises above the bossiness of cleaning products and media exhortations to keep our houses pristine and hygienic, and focusses instead on creativity within the domestic space."
• Coming Out - "It still isn't easy to come out as a practitioner of the gentle arts. I know, because I tried, and failed, for many years. I was embarrassed about the knitting and my obsessions...So I knitted and quilted and stitched in isolation...This muddled approach--great private pride in my ability to knit and sew and bake, plus a personal recognition of their value, combined with a public silence about my cherished activities--finally came to an end when I discovered the world of knitting and craft blogs. I was immediately drawn into this mostly female community of domestic artists who shared their creations and wrote articulately about the values and processes. Here, at last, was the opportunity to unite my creative and intellectual interests, and I joined the blogworld with yarnstorm in February 2005."
• Inspiration, A Habit of Seeing - "I used to assume inspiration was the province of artists and poets...I was wrong. Inspiration is inspiration, whether the end result is a painted masterpiece, a soul-searching sonnet, a richly colored homemade quilt or a batch of freshly baked scones. We shouldn't diminish our creativity by despising the results of our inspiration, but instead celebrate and exploit the wonderful feeling of elevated energy and enthusiasm we experience when we feel inspired. That quickening of the senses and the heightening of the imagination are, I'm sure, just the same for the Matisses and Wrens and Brownings as they are for the rest of us...We can walk through life without seeing, without taking in the details, the words, the colors, the pictures, and miss the whole point of inspiration. Or, we can adopt an approach that allows us to stop a while and look and listen and reflect and enjoy...For the one thing that sets creative people apart is that they have all acquired the habit of being receptive to inspiration, actively seeking it or even simply recognizing it...the domestic artist is in the glorious position of being able to find inspiration in daily, domestic life."
• The Hidden Advantages of Being a Blogger - "Writing yarnstorm has made me focus each day on something positive so that I have a subject for my posts. When I started photographing the details of my domestic life, I was quite sure I would run out of material in a matter of weeks. But, instead of exhausting all possibilities, I actually found myself unearthing more and more sources of inspiration, all within the confines of a quite ordinary, domestic life."

P.S. Many thanks to purlbee.com for the image above.