Only Slightly Productive

This is how my day went:

I woke up late, cuddled the still drugged-up kitty for awhile, and so got out of bed even later. I made tea, had brunch (having missed the appropriate hour for breakfast), then did a little homework and started laundry.

When I looked up, I was horrified to realize that it was almost 2:30 in the afternoon. How had my day slipped by so quickly?

That feels like a million years ago. The moment I looked at the clock, time stopped like a bunny in the headlights. It's a very strange feeling.

You know what else is a strange feeling? Getting approved for a new apartment! The landlord called this afternoon sometime after time stopped and told me that our old apartment in San Jose raved about me as a tenant. I expected a positive response, but there's always the fear that the manager secretly loathed you, or that today is the day you find out that someone's stolen your identity and racked up a bajillion dollars worth of medical bills. But none of that happened, and I got approved! Wahoo! I'm super-excited about this; I feel like it's a great new beginning. I'm stoked about pretty paint colors, possible chalkboard cabinets, and putting prints on the walls. I spent the day perusing IKEA's website looking for rugs, a couch, and other sundry things to put in my new place.

And now I'm going to go make popcorn, cuddle the drugged kitty some more, and start reading Great Expectations. It seems fitting.

Who Gets the Best Drugs?

Last night was a boatload of fun. Us girls discussed derby names (shhh don't tell that we told each other!), the Potential Hardass Girl on the team, we got our fingers going in the air a few times during stories about Boys and How to Reject Them, and over all had a great time. Randy met us out, and he was amused by my shiny new friends (who are o-m-g so 22, but not crazy [yet]). It was a fabulous mix of old friends and new, and you may have noticed that I enjoyed myself thoroughly, despite drinking minimally so I could drive 35 minutes home at 1:30AM.

I paid for it 5 hours later. Mes amis, I am no longer, to quote Jenni, "eighteen anymore." Neither am I 25, or even 30 anymore. Bless their little hearts, they thought I was 24 and also a size 4, so I will love their noggins until kingdom come. BUT. Five hours of (bad) sleep later, I hauled my (very sore) butt out of my loft bed - veeeeery sloooooowly down the ladder - stuffed the kitty into the carrier, and hauled his loudly protesting self to the vet for his 8am tooth cleaning.

At ten, the vet called to say that he did, in fact, need to have teeth pulled, that he needs antibiotics, that he's a very handsome kitty (natch), and that he could go home at three.

At ten-thirty I met the landlord of the apartment I hope to have keys for by this time next week. No word on that front yet, but should my paperwork come back from the San Jose apartment in order - which it will, as we never paid late and all the damage in the apartment was wear-and-tear - I should be painting my room next a lovely French-ish blue by Monday.

At noon I was at Nadia's house. She took the burden of driving off of my hands and we went to go find IKEA frames with which to frame my lovely prints from Rebekah (no luck, grr!), and to find the aforementioned French-ish blue paint at Home Depot. Several paint chips found their way into my purse, then we called it a day.

I picked up the still loudly protesting kitty at 3:15 and was handed a release form not for the kitty himself, but for the controlled substance pain killers (morphine) I'm supposed to shoot into his mouth for the next 3 days. Apparently if I sell them, I could a) make a shitload of money and b) go to jail for a long time.  Meanwhile, Darcy has been staggering around with wide opium eyes, miscalculating jumps (much to our amusement and subsequent guilt) and being not-so-surprisingly amenable to sitting in warm laps. Poor toofless kitty!

Clearly the answer to the above question is: animals.

Potential Problem

Not roommate drama, thank goodness. But it just occurred to me that I have a seirous issue with finishing the NaBloPoMo thing: I am going to the Sticks of Chicago again for Thanksgiving, where I will be sans internet for 10 days. So much for every day of November! But I'm going to try to make every day until then. Unavoidable lack of internet isn't worth giving up on the exercise.

So for those of you who don't know, I'm a World of Warcraft nerd. I've been playing since launch 6 years ago with a group of real life friends; we thought it would be a good way to al keep in touch, and even though some of them have dropped out over the years, it has indeed proven a good way to keep our long-distance friendships alive. I've also made a bunch of friends through our guild, which we've been a part of for the last 5 years. It started as a group of people in their early-to-mid-20's and is now a guild of people from about 25-40 years old. Having grown-ups to play video games with makes everything so much better!

Anyway, that's what I've been up to today: playing video games. Tonight I'm going to a jazz night at a bar downtown with my fellow Fresh Meat and hopefully dropping off my application for the 1-bedroom apartment I looked at on Friday. Should all go well, I'll have keys on the 15th!

Also, my butt hurts today in a very "getting in shape" kind of way. Woot!

National Something Something Month

Holy tiny pill bugs, y'all, it's November of 2010. How did that happen? My mind is appropriately boggled. Today I am listening to In the Heights in preparation for going to see it on Friday. Can I tell you how much I love this musical? So much.

My last post kicked me into high(er) knitting gear and I have progress to show you! I finished Baby Evelyn's tiny dress.

Baby Bliss Dress, Pagewood Farms Alyeska yarn, "River Rock," 365 yds.

That's my hand for scale, and while I have long fingers and it's one of those rare weeks when my nails are all the same-ish length (one will break today because I said that...) which would be reason enough for a blog post, the real point of a hand-for-scale is OMGTINYDRESS!! I'm sending this today because I'm pretty sure babies grow quickly and if I wait till tomorrow it'll be too small. Thankfully Ev's momma plans to make more babies for me to swathe in knitting.

I finished sock #1 of the Primaveras while I was watching derby practice, and then because I couldn't find my Pistachio Mitts, I started some new ones. Also, I don't like the Primavera pattern very much; it feels like it takes forever, which might be a result of making ahem longer socks or maybe the M1R/M1L increases that are not my favorite. Anyway, I made myself start the second sock before I started the second mitt because I've never yet fallen prey to Second Sock Syndrome and don't intend to start now!

One sock and one mitt does not a pair make!
Creatively Dyed Calypso yarn, "Gris"

I also started another sekrit thing - what can I say, it's that time of year! - but here's a fairly innocuous picture of the beginning:

SEKRIT! THING! Number 1 million. I like sekrits; they make me sunshiny inside. 

THB has been expressing his desire for more knitted stuff by asking if everything on my needles is for him. I keep saying no, and he keeps pouting; it's a little game we play, and I think it's adorable that my little brother wants more knitting from me even if he can't manage to keep the knitting I DO make for him (hence the title of the most recent socks I finished for him).

So that's the happs at the moment. Except that it's November, which in the knitting community - or at least, the online knitting community - means it's National Sweater Knitting Month, or the impossible to remember "NaSweKniMo." This is an offshoot of National Novel Writing Month, which might be more than national and is also mostly and online thing, just sayin'. Anyway, the point of November in the online world seems to be to challenge yourself to do something you usually wouldn't be able to do and to hold yourself accountable.* This is an excellent exercise and for the last 2 years, I have tried and failed to complete a Salina sweater - I may have mentioned this the other day - so this year I am going to try to knit a whole different sweater. THAT will show tricksy Salina in its Time Out Box on the closet shelf! (I may anthropomorphize my knitting occasionally. It's part of my charm.) Considering that I've only ever completed one grown-up sized sweater, I feel that this is a reasonably challenging challenge, yea? Now I just have to pick the yarn and the sweater. But, like always, mis cucarachas, there is a thing.

You may have noticed that I like buying yarn. I love colors and shiny and soft stuff, and it piles up around me like so much possibility. But once a yarn is knitted, it is a completed thing and no longer a possibility. Something in me rebels at this, and my mantra at such times is, "there will always be more yarn," but it doesn't make the changing from possibility to thing any less stressful. It's easier with socks because they don't take long and I've been making them for long enough that I know how to make them fit me. But sweaters can go wrong in so many ways, and I'm my own worst critic. Ai-yai-yai.

Thus, today's knitting is about choosing a pattern and yarn from my stash that I will spend the next month turning into a sweater.  I've got a few patterns and yarns in mind, so now it's a matter of matching them up and remembering that even if the sweater doesn't fit me right off the bat, it will fit someone - and even if it doesn't, I can always rip it out and try again. Paciencia y fe.

It's a beautiful fall day in California!

*My RSS feed has just informed me that it is also National Blog Posting Month which is totes an internet thing. I think I shall try this little exercise because I am Raych and Bekah's Biggest Fan Girl in a Non-Creepy Way and also a Follower. Also, bananafish.

No mustard, just catch-up.

My internet friends! I have missed you! It's been a month and ::mumblemumble:: days, and in that time I have finished precisely NO knitting, so I blame my absence on that. There are several half-finished and even some mostly-finished projects sitting on my desk right now, but since I am a Gold Medalist in the Procrastination Olympics, I don't know when they will be done.

So what else have I been up to? I suppose I could show you my Hospital of Unfinished Goods. It's not a Graveyard as yet - after all, they're still on my desk in their little quilting cotton bags (thanks, Mommy!) instead of shoved on the top shelf of my closet like last years November Sweater*. We shall proceed in order of completeness, from least to most. It's more climactic that way.

Creatively Dyed Yarn from MWF&F with Meghan. Calypso base, "Gris" colorway.

These are the Primavera Socks (Ravelry link) from Natalja. They came about because I needed "cooler knitting" (according to THB) than the next project for an event I was going to. More on that later. During the event, I made it all the way down through the heel and about 3" onto the foot of the first sock, so they're about 25% finished at this point, or maybe a little more since the leg is 9" long before the heel starts. I've been experimenting with taller socks because I am now apparently fully a wimpy Californian and cry about 60-degree weather. The mind boggles!

This is a plain Hap Shawl, or will be. I decided over the summer that a Hap Shawl was just what I needed, mostly because I wanted an excuse (HAHAHAHAH!) to buy a bunch of Dream in Color Baby lace yarn. And then it came and my Grand Plans for the color scheme were thwarted due to the deadly difference in real color vs. online color, so I just HAD to get two more skeins of lighter for the center (shown here) and now I have an extra 2 skeins of Baby in a periwinkle blue and a medium charcoal grey. I think I will make Wicked sweaters out of them for when it's not so damn cold in California...

I keep using this picture because it still looks the same.

This is my Hera Mountain Ridge Shawl, recently returned to me by my mother. I left it up there during a visit just after I posted about it, and she thought it was hers until she opened the bag (we have a lot of similar quilt cotton bags because she makes all of them. I am a lucky girl!). I think my Knitting Mojo was in the bag too since I really want to finish this now!

Pagewood Farms Alyeska Sock yarn, "River Rock," 360 yds. + 5 yds of misc yarn for finishing!

THIS is my Baby Bliss for Miss Evelyn's first birthday. In true knitter fashion, her birthday has come and gone and this is obvs. not yet finished. It is currently in the same state it was ON her birthday because I ran out of yarn and have to go stash diving to find something similar enough to sew on the second strap with. Sigh.

ETA: I sucked it up and finished this after I wrote this post! Wahoo! That's 365 yards added to my 12-Mile-Quest total.

Panda Silk, "Black"

And finally, the thing that's the closest to being done is my Silky Shetland Shorty, which is currently shoved in a bag in disgrace. I have ONE SLEEVE CAP left - about 15 minutes' work - but before I can do that I have to figure out how to stop the underarm from unraveling. ARGH. I think some knots and a little Fray Check will probably solve the problem just fine.

Obviously some of these pictures are old. I've been struggling with the light in this house since I moved in; it turns out a fancy paint job doesn't help with photography!

Let's see, what else has been going on? Mom and I went to the CogKNITive Fiber Retreat for the second time this year. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and THIS time I brought home some yarns and some fibers! There aren't pictures (yet) but I picked up some gorgeous RedFish silk in tonal greys to make a shawl I can wear with my black dresses, some white alpaca lace from Alpenglow Yarns for something similarly pretty and warm, and a braid or two of Bee Mice Elf for the spinning I haven't been doing. A couple of highlight pictures:

I can be a highlight, shut up!

Knitting and Spinning in the evening

I love this wine. It is full of win.

Mmmm. crab rangoon! A favorite.

Caffeination is key in the morning. And anytime, really.

And finally, we come to the aforementioned Event. I tend to be a diver - that is, I decide I want to do something and I don't really research it out first - and this was no exception. At the end of September, I was looking up dates for the next roller derby bout in my area and discovered that there was a Derby Boot Camp scheduled for 10/10 where the derby girls would teach us how to skate! So I took THB and his girl, Friday (see what I did there?), down to the newly-opened local skate shop and got myself a pair of bomb skates, some pads, a helmet, and headed out to learn how to fall down on roller skates. The other local team's tryouts were for 10/17, so I went thinking that if I didn't make it, it was no big deal - the Boot Camp team's tryouts were in January. But I DID! And now I am part of the newest Fresh Meat class for the Sacred City Derby Girls! I am ecstatic and so ready to get on skates next Monday to start my training, you have NO idea!

So that's the state of things. THB, Friday, MyNadia and HerHusband and I went to the Sac City Roller Girls v. Bakersfield Revolution last weekend, and it was GREAT.

After the anthem I stopped taking pictures because we were busy drinking, like good derby-goers should.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and  I cannot WAIT to play some derby. Expect catalogues of bruises in the future!

To finish, here is an adorable picture (though I say it myself) of THB and Mr. Darcy. Awwww!

*The astute among you will notice that this is from 2008. I didn't even blog about Salina last November, despite trying to finish it. This November's not looking good either. Sigh.

A Quiet Holiday

Today it is raining outside
But my house is snug and warm.
There is completed knitting

Citron #2, 440 yds.
Malabrigo Sock "Velvet Grapes"

And Knitting-in-Progress.
I am listening to Anna Karenina and watching the rain on the windows. The spring green of my walls keeps the room cheerful even when outside is cold and damp. I have hot tea with milk, warm handmade socks and nothing to do today on this last day of my between-term-vacation. It's peaceful here, unlike so many places in the world. I wish I had a skill that would allow me to go to Haiti and help Doctors Without Borders, but I fear I would just be in the way, so I stay home and knit in the rain. On this day, the anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I am knitting prayers for Haitians into the socks I make. Prayers for peace, for health, for aid. Prayers that this disaster will open up new lines of communication between Haiti and other governments of the world and help this little nation blossom into peace and prosperity. My prayers climb the raindrops like a child climbing up the down escalator, high into the heavens that have finally opened up and wept for the devastation of a people who did not deserve such a blow. Weep, you heavens. I will pray.

Filmy Goodness

Happy Kate Winslet Day, everyone!

Feel free to celebrate by watching your favorite Kate movie or perhaps one you have never seen. For myself, if I can't find a copy of Titanic in our house (likely, depending on THB's movie collection), I will indulge in Sense and Sensibility while adding a few choice titles to my Netflix queue.

Officially Grown-Up (???)

Today, somewhere in the wee-sma's of the morning, I turned thirty-one.

Since last year this time, I have finished my undergraduate degree, split up with ManCandy and moved in to a little house with my brother, THB. I successfully dodged a bullet in Portland shaped like my friend LB (the last time I let that bullet hit me, it hurt. After 7 years, she can be taught, ladies and gentlemen!). I decided that grad school and teacherhood were not for the nebulous Future, but for Today! And that Portland Shannon-igans are for Tomorrow (which is much closer than the nebulous Future). I moved from a three-bedroom apartment full of 4 years of accumulated stuff to a 9'x9' room, and somewhere along the way I got rid of an entire dumpster-load of stuff. I started going to the gym for real - I know because I'm looking forward to going there tomorrow. I changed my cut-off age for men from THB's birthday (June '84) to MY birthday.

I feel like a grown-up.

And how did I spend the moments between 30 and 31, you ask? Well, at the Sugar Hill Gang concert I went to with friends in Folsom on Saturday night - wait, what? Let me start over. Last night we - THB, his girlfriend K, and some other friends went out to see the Sugar Hill Gang and stick around for 80's night. This is particularly amusing to me because the LAST time I saw SHG was at the Colorado State University Homecoming Week in 1997, also known as my freshman year in college. This is my first year as an undergrad; my life is chock-full of interesting little cycles like that. Anyway, there was an attractive man there whom K said I should go talk to. In keeping with the recently-resurrected Whim Game, I did so, earning myself 3 points. And starting at midnight I earned another 3 by spending the rest of the evening kissing a stranger. Life, my friends, is too short to pass up opportunities to feel that special chill down your spine in the instant before you kiss someone for the first time. Someone who tells you that you have a perfect face and lady's hands. Who doesn't get weird about the goodbyes that mean he's obviously not getting any - even when you frack it up by sending him on his way with no way to get in touch with you, only to see him looking for you moments later as you pull out of the parking lot. The spine-shivers may fade, but the elegant compliments will be treasured for some time to come.

And really, it wasn't bad for a trial run on my (very rusty) charm. I am under strict command by my brother Kai to demand phone numbers and the names of various family-approved punk bands from the next Whim Game Victim I meet.

Someone told me recently that the 30's are when I will really start to understand myself. I think that's already beginning to be the case, and I'm proud of the choices I've been making - even the silly ones.

In the next year, I plan to actually complete the 12-Mile Quest, possibly change my name (don't get all excited, it's not as momentous as it sounds!), work on my 101 in 1001 goals, and most importantly, find my groove, dust it off, and apply it daily.

Happy birthday to me!

Irregularly Scheduled Programming

Here is a brief update on my life in bullet-list format:

*I am moving on Friday morning, which is roughly 36 hours away.

*Moving sucks.

*I hate packing boxes, especially when all the fun stuff (like stash and books) is packed and all the lame stuff (like little things that don't really go together but fit nicely in this box) is left.

*I also hate seeing the box mountain grow because my room is teeny and my box mountain is getting bigger all the time.

*I am going to miss Panza a very great deal, but he will be happier with Roomie, and Darcy will be happier as an Only Cat.

*This is the order in which things will go into the truck:

Mattress

Stash

Books

Everything Else

Therefore, I will not be turning over my stash all willy-nilly to whomever asks for it. Or to anyone, for that matter. So there!

*"Box mountain" sounds vaguely dirty.

*Every time I feel like I'm making progress, it turns out that the progress is not, in fact, as much as I thought.

*If my mother, who is driving the U-Haul, does not make it to my brother's house, please hunt her down and retrieve the stash. I'll even offer a reward. She's a shifty one, my mom.

*I plan to resume blogging (and podcasting) once I'm settled into my new place, especially because I have lots of stuff to show you. Some of it is even finished.

*In my new place, everyone understands that value of a clean coffee mug. This is of pivotal importance because in my current place, I am apparently the only one who can scrub coffee rings off the inside of a cup.

*Clearly, there are benefits to moving.

*But, moving still sucks.

The Signing

It's been so long! There are lots of things to catch up on, but I thought the signing that I went to with ManCandy and my friend Cyn deserved its own special place in the sun.

On the 19th of July, the three of us gathered together to head to Comix Experience in San Francisco to help celebrate their 20th anniversary.
Mr. Gaiman was signing and promoting Who Killed Amanda Palmer, which sounds like a delightfully dark and strange book. I'm looking forward to owning a copy sometime in the future.

I had never been to a book signing before, so I didn't know exactly what to expect. I found it charming that for the first 5-10 minutes that he was up in front of a mere 100 people - and this a gentleman who is used to signing for hundreds of people at a time - he shifted nervously back and forth and didn't really make any eye contact with anyone. After 20 years as an author and who knows how many public appearances, he was still a bit wary of the crowd; I found it very sweet.

Then we all shuffled back outside to wait in our original places in line - we were 35-37 - to come in and get our books signed. This is where I ran into a bit of a dilemma.

You see, back at the beginning of July, I packed up several boxes of books and took them up to my Mom's. Then, just before the signing, I realized that my copy of Coraline was not, in fact, on my living room shelf; it was neatly packed in a box with the rest of my Gaiman books, 3 hours away. This is what I get for being "organized" and "doing things beforehand." My copy of The Graveyard Book was still on my nightstand, so I took it and my Coraline glove (there is still only one...). Cyn, however, saved me. It turned out that she had the same edition of Coraline that I have, so we worked out a trade and Cyn bought a copy of The Dangerous Alphabet instead. I owe you big, sister.

As I walked up to have my books signed, Mr. Gaiman spotted my Coraline glove and asked if that was indeed a copy of the ones from the movie. The conversation went like this:

NG: Is that a Coraline glove?
Me: Yes! I made it. ::stupid grin::
NG: I saw someone on the internet making those full-sized pieces!
Me: ::squee!:: That was me!
NG: That's brilliant! You were on my blog!
Me: Oh, I know!
(By this time, everything out of my mouth was followed by an exclamation point.)

Mr. Gaiman put the glove on, jumped up, and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. I may have turned bright pink - I probably did. I may have also offered to make his daughter Maddy a pair in time for this winter, which gave him a papa-twinkle in his eye.

It was wonderful. My only regret is that I should have given Cyn my camera instead of a girl who worked there - Cyn would have gotten the pictures I really wanted: my Neil Gaiman hug and him signing my Coraline book with the Coraline glove on. But in the end, I was totally chuffed by the whole experience.

So that's it. The Coraline thing came full-circle and I got to spend some quality time with good friends; all in all, a glorious day.

In The Mean Time...

The post about my morning in San Francisco with ManCmandy, AuntieSocial and Mr. Gaiman is coming soon.

In the mean time, go here. You won't be disappointed, I swear.

I may be adding Wayne Lawson to my List of People With Whom I'm Allowed To Sleep.

Enough Said

Coraline Glove
Originally uploaded by TikaBelle

It was a great day.

An Open Letter

Dear Fellow Apartment Complex Residents,

I hope you enjoy the pool outside my window. It is very well-maintained and set in a lovely sunny spot, to be sure. The pool furniture is even mostly of this decade, which is an improvement over most apartment pools. It is clearly a lovely spot to take your kids after school, or on a weekend afternoon. However, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you of a few things.

First, the pool hours are until ten at night. This is not a suggested time, as we are grown-ups and are in bed by ten most nights. Also, the nice French-speaking people upstairs have a toddler who needs his sleep, or NO ONE sleeps. Not even us. So please, out by ten.

On a related note, the pool does not open again until nine in the morning, and this includes weekends. When your children wake you up at 6am on Saturday, please refrain from sending them down to the pool to scream. You bore them, now you have to bear them.

On another related note, if your children are screaming at the pool, take them home. If you are not there supervising them, I will seriously consider calling the police because I am tired unto death of having to yell out my window at children who are trying to a) drown one another or b) kill themselves by running around the pool.

Second - or possibly fourth - please do not have sex in the pool. Please. This relates intimately (har!) to point number three (or five):

We, of apartment six, can hear everything you say and do at the pool. Every. Little. Thing. We apologize for the inconvenience to your no-longer-private conversations, but the builders saw fit to give us single-paned windows and it's not our fault. So all those sweet nothings you drunk teenagers are whispering to one another, all those drug deals, all those midnight swims? We can hear them. Or witness them.

Thank you for your attention, and have a lovely summer! If you don't, we'll know about it.

Sincerely,

Tikabelle and ManCandy

How to Win an Argument

"Baby, where are the pan lids?"

"They're in the cupboard with the pots and pans."

"They don't go there! They go on these conveniently placed pot lid racks on the wall."

"But there's no more room on the wall. So I put the overflow in with the pans."

"Honey, there's no more room on the wall because you let the second pot lid rack fall down." 

"WHAT? I didn't let it fall down!"

"Maybe not, but you certainly didn't do your job as a man and put it back up, now, did'ja?"

Game. Set. Match.

Hair

The last time I cut my own hair, I was six years old. My best friend Bonnie and I had decided to save our mothers the trouble of cutting our then-waist-length hair, so we stole a pair of scissors and slipped out to the woodshed. Even then, we must have known we were doing something bad, otherwise why choose the woodshed? 

When we traipsed back inside, proud of our new 'do's, our mothers were properly horrified. I vividly recall the ends of my hair brushing my chin while my mother spanked me, and the look on Bonnie's face as her mother did the same.

Today, I couldn't stand my scraggly ends for one more moment. The way they were just this much too long in a pony tail, the way they made me look unkempt instead of hip (it's a fine line!), or the weird coppery color that is the result of however many years' growth covered in old dye. And so today,  twenty-four years after that fateful afternoon beneath the mountain ash trees, I again took shears to my own head. Well,  I'm not certain if that's the right phrase, since I took two inches off the ends, leaving me with a measly 34 inches instead of the former yard. Those of you who know me well enough to see my hair down can breathe again - it was ONLY two inches. You probably won't even notice. 

I can now understand the compulsion to simply keep cutting until your hair is either even or short enough that it doesn't matter.  I didn't keep cutting, but I have to admit: my hands were shaky and I needed a glass of wine afterward. 

And I wouldn't have stopped if my mom weren't coming on Friday to fix whatever I may have messed up. I don't think she'll spank me this time around, but I have to confess: I'm not entirely sure.

Huh.

I've just spent the last hour and a half tearing apart my closet, and I've come to a couple of conclusions:

1) Since the last time I dressed up regularly, I have gained a size or two. Not enough to mean the clothes totally don't fit so I can get rid of them. Oh no - the Clothing Deities are much too crafty for that. I've gained just enough weight so that I can get into them, but they are clearly ever so slightly too small. There are two ways to deal with this:
a) diet more and exercise more, which usually becomes simply "don't eat until you're skinny" in my crazy former-ballet-dancer brain, or
b) get rid of the stuff that doesn't fit and replace it with stuff that does, because I'm 30 now and not likely to be the same size I was when I was 23 again. Which given a) is probably a good thing.

I've never been in a situation where I'm tempted to keep clothes because "if I lose a few pounds, they'll fit again!" Suddenly I understand that particular feminine inconsistency, and I hate it. Therefore, I think I may go with option b.

2) Of the going-out clothes that do still fit me, most are sleeveless - as is appropriate to California, I suppose. However, it does mean that I would desperately like something to cover my shoulders on this California-chilly February afternoon. Something that is pretty, matches my chocolate-brown dress, folds up small and keeps me warm in either the over-air-conditioned buildings or the winter breeze. Something not a coat, or sweater. Perhaps rectangular, or maybe even square. Heck, triangular would work too, considering the back of the dress has a triangle point. Something like a shawl, maybe?

Color me an idiot, but the thought of matching a shawl to a particular dress so they would, well, match just never occurred to me. Please excuse me while I go bang my head against the desk for awhile, then dig through my stash for an appropriate color of lace yarn. Not that I'm in any sort of hurry to get this done; the next time I have to dress up for anything will probably be next Christmas, after all.

I'll Pass, Thanks.

I have stuff in various levels of completion! First, the Ribbi Cardi. After careful measuring, I have discovered that my hips are not the same size as my bust. They are, in point of fact, several inches larger, which tends to make my store-bought sweaters either ride up my hips or sag in the chest. I have made a quietly personal (and now painfully public, apparently) decision to buy clothing for the size that I am instead of the size I was four years ago or the size I want to be in 6 months; a decision which also affects the size of sweaters I choose to make for myself. So I cast on the 42" size for the bottom of the Ribbi Cardi and slowly decreased up to the 38" size. I'm fairly certain it will fit perfectly, and if it's a wee bit off the double-pull zipper should take care of any slight discrepancies between my hips and my tape measure. I know this, because if you look at the bottom of the Ribbi Cardi model, there is no doubt in my mind that, were the zipper fully zipped, the ribbing would pull in a generally unattractive fashion.

So anyway. I'm done with the back and working my way up the left front:

I will probably over-dye this a darker blue; in the ball it's not quite as ugly 70's blue as it is knitted up.

Also, I got my Black Bunny Fiber Club 2 shipment! I don't mind telling you that I was a little stressed when I heard that the shipments went out while I was away from home for a week. Things around here tend to disappear if they're not nailed down, and the mental picture of some gangster thug's face while opening a stolen package of bright green wool didn't quite make up for the fact that I wanted the wool for my own. The stress was compounded when I arrived home last night to a package on the stoop for ManCandy but not for me. Thankfully, it was squished into our tiny mailbox with the rest of the mail, and both Mr. Darcy and I got to approve of it fully.

Black Bunny Fibers "Sonata," 100% Wenseydale, 8oz.

I'm not sure if Carol at BBF knows that my wheel is a Sonata, but I found the name amusing nonetheless.

Also, I finished spinning and plying my Tobacco Road!

CMF SW merino, "Tobacco Road," 903 yds, 8 oz.

The two large skeins are 3-ply from 3 bobbins, and the left skein is the navajo-plied remnants after the first bobbin of singles ran out. Clearly next time I will have to weigh out better, but since I have enough in the navajo skein for heels and toes, I'm happy. The yarn is a bit hard with not much bounce, but I'm hoping a good Soak and hanging in the sun will help out a bit. Next time, I'm going to attempt to put more air in my singles - watch and see how that works out!

You'd think that I would begin on the Easter Egg I have half-finished for Jasmin, but no. I'm in full-fledged Crown Mountain Farm mode, so last night I hauled out my (sizeable and hardly dented) CMF stash and came out with this one:

CMF SW merino, "Under the Boardwalk" 8oz (carefully weighed out)

I haven't decided yet whether I want to 3-ply it from 3 bobbins or whether I want to navajo-ply it to maintain the colors, but I don't have to make an actual decision until I've finished with the first two chunks. This is my new Tour de Fleece project: to spin up, ply, and finish this yarn before July 27. I think I'm going to have to take my wheel to the Campbell Relay for Life on the 12th. And speaking of worthy causes...

*****

It turns out that Stephanie Pearl-McPhee isn't doing the Knitting Olympics this year. When I heard the news, Jasmin and I were on IM, and I pish-tushed the Yarn Harlot's humanitarian revulsion for China, saying that the Olympics are supposed to transcend that sort of thing, and besides I plan to knit while watching my favorite Olympic sport: the equestrian 3-day eventing.

Three years ago, my mom's friends Cevie and Don traveled to China to adopt a baby girl. Her name is Ana Lin, and she turns four in August. Last year, ManCandy and I met her at Cevie's house, where she was shy, retiring and generally a quiet little kit of a girl. This year, she has blossomed into a full-blown bunny - adorable, friendly and cheerful. I introduced her to my horse, Shara, to the chickens and to our decrepit Peking duck, Donald (7 years old, blind, bedraggled and still king of the roost); I helped her pick carrots from mom's garden to feed the horse and my brother Gabe taught her to throw a ball for Sadie, our golden retriever.

Blurry but cute.

When she asked what kind of meat was on the ribs we ate for dinner and was told "pork," she did a creditable impression of a pig, complete with pretend rooting over her plate - much to the delight of me, my brother, ManCandy and HeteroLifemate. Possibly also to the embarrassment of her mother, but I have a feeling her dad taught her that particular gesture. She fetched things from the kitchen, actually helped with dinner (instead of the expected "helping" with dinner), and was generally an utterly adorable child.

She asked me about my spinning wheel, and when I told her it was for making yarn, she replied, "Oh, from wool!" I blinked several times - it's not often one gets to be in the presence of non-Muggle toddlers - and she seized the opportunity to ask me to teach her to spin. With such an inducement, how could I not?

I let her treadle with no wool on the wheel, and then let her treadle while I worked some wool up into a quick thick-and-thin navajo-plied length - perhaps 4 yards or so, which she took home to make, I later learned, a necklace and bracelet for her dad. She was fascinated and excited, and overall I decided that it was a fabulous way to spend the first day of the Tour de Fleece.

While Ana Lin was treadling away, I reached up to fix her hair bows, and noticed that her head was oddly shaped. The back of her head is flat, with nearly square corners - the result of spending the first year of her life on her back in a Chinese orphanage. Her actual skull is malformed because she spent so much time laying down - and not only laying down; she was completely swaddled and unable to move. For an entire year. This three-year-old girl has post-traumatic stress disorder to the tune of a medic alert bracelet because of the way she was (not)treated for the first 12 months of her life - her mother told me that she was lucky to be picked up once per day. As a baby. What a disgrace to modern "civilization."

So I publicly rescind my pooh-poohing of the Yarn Harlot's reservations regarding the Beijing Olympics. Sometimes we.. errr, I, rather... get so wrapped up in what I want to do that I don't stop to think if it's right or not. But I'm a knitter and a spinner and an artist, as well as a teacher and a nanny and a sister/daughter. All seven of those things make Stephanie right about China and its attitudes toward human life - not to mention rights - and I think it's time we stood up and made a bigger deal about it. I, too, will not be participating in the Knitting Olympics this year, and while I will probably still watch the 3-day eventing, it will be with a heavy heart. I know that as protests go it's no more than a squeak, but it's what I've got and I'm going to use it.

Special of the Day

It's officially Finals Season. I took my first test yesterday, and this morning I woke up crying.

Now, this is not a plea for sympathy. Far from it - during Finals Season, tears are the order du jour, as they say in Frenchish. The Season also comes with it's own brand of snark from me and usually an examination of everything that's WRONG! in my life. Suffice to say, ManCandy is trying hard to simply stay out of my way while simultaneously hovering because he likes to fix things. Poor dear.

Here is what is coming up in the next 10 days:

Tests: 4
Papers: 4.66, repeating, numbering roughly 30 in page number.

Plus, everything in my house is filthy (see above, re. WRONG!). The laundry has gone straight into Piled Up, the floors are covered in the detritus of the ongoing Kitty Wars, my bathroom is probably a HazMat zone and I had to clear space on my desk this morning for a cup of life-giving coffee - but I don't really have time to do laundry, vacuum or scrub until the papers are written and the tests are taken. Ugh, ugh, and double ugh. Don't even mention knitting or spinning - Finals Season makes martyrs of us all.

In fact, I shouldn't even be here whining. Hans Holbein has paintings that need to be discussed, and the specter of 12 pages on the experiences of 2 groups of American women in 3 different eras is beginning to haunt my waking nightmares as well as my sleeping ones. And I have 14 minutes before I have to leave for the train.

It's Here!!

I came home last night to a big box from Paradise Fibers, and instead of taking a picture I opened it and immediately set about putting my new wheel together. The whole affair took about 20 minutes, but it would have gone faster if I'd done what the very first direction said and read through them all first. I was convinced that there would be a part missing or something would be cracked or damaged (the box with 500 "FRAGILE!" labels was not in pristine condition... UPS I'm looking at you!), but everything was present and accounted for. It is beautiful and needs a name, but that will come in time.

The photo is a bit dark, but it's the best i could do under the rushed "I wanna play!" circumstances. To start, I grabbed what was left of the Daphne roving I bought from Zero back in July and just... started. No books, no real instructions, just started. And shockingly, it went just fine, but there was a nagging fear in the back of my head. Spinning is great, the wheel is gorgeous, but what if I get bored? What if I hate it and it's just one of those things that the moment you get one, you don't want it anymore? I went to bed terrified that all of my longing was for nothing, and (worse) that ManCandy's and my family's good wishes and money were for nothing. It's a sinking feeling, that.

When I woke up this morning, I realized something. I'm not a spinner yet. I haven't read a book or taken a class, I haven't played with the Wheel for more than an hour, and I'm not good at it yet. I hate not being good at things. If I'm not good at something immediately, rushing to the head of the class without studying or working at all let alone hard, I give up and find something I am good at. Knitting was the exception; I plowed away at it until I felt like I could call myself a knitter because if it could be considered child labor in the 17th century, I could certainly do it. Spinning is a natural offshoot of knitting - or perhaps the other way 'round - and it's something I will have to get good at. I hopped out of bed and threw on a sweatshirt, then came face to face with the Wheel. It looked intimidating.

So I put on a pot of coffee and read my internets. Then I listened to CastOn and played some WoW (don't get me started...). But after about a half an hour, the thing sitting next to me started to whisper quietly of the roving in my closet, the fleeces my mother gave me, and the possibility of plying what was on my drop spindle with whatever ended up on the bobbin, which ended up being this:

Not super pretty, but not a complete disaster either. I put that bobbin on the built-in Lazy Kate, put on a fresh one and snugged up the Scotch tension (brilliant system!), and wound the singles from my drop spindle onto a second bobbin. Then I plied them together all by myself, and when the wheel singles ran out and I still had half of a bobbin of drop spindle singles left, I Navajo plied the rest. And here it is, my first bobbin of yarn from my first roving ever. Unfortunately it's superwash, otherwise it would make a great felted project. As it is, I'm not sure what to do with it; it won't be very soft or easy to work with or even very nice to wear, but I'm proud of my little bobbin anyway.


Oh, yes. That feeling of worry is gone, all right. Although as I sit here, my feet have the stranges feeling of treadling up and down despite being flat on the floor.

The Nature of Forgiveness

A long time ago, there was a Girl who met a Matchstick Man. Their love was as turbulent as the class 5 rapids in the nearby river and pulled them down to the depths of despair only slightly more often than it sent them to the heights of delight. The Matchstick Man had a Matchstick Heart that had been splintered before, and although the Girl could not see the real reason for his pain, for the Matchstick Man hid his truths behind glassy blue eyes, she bore the brunt of his anger and hurt. The Girl was trusting and allowed her naive heart to blind her sense of Self. In the process, her own heart shattered, and soon she was just as fragile as the Matchstick Man. She thought things would work - after all, were they not now the same? But Matchstick People cannot be together; all the slivers work their way under the skin and cause festering pain that leads only to more pain and no love. The Matchstick Pair went up in the flames of passion and anger, and the Matchstick Girl ran away to try to salve her heart.

The Matchstick Man tried to apologize, but the Matchstick Girl did not believe him. Although she was no good at holding grudges, this one time she had bound her heart together with iron bands of anger and pride. Time after time, way after way, the Matchstick Man tried to make his apology felt, but it was no good. Eventually he gave up, but the Matchstick Girl did not care. Years slipped by and the Matchstick People (for they were a pair no longer) saw each other occasionally, but were very careful not to speak beyond the pleasantries required by Regular Folk. Seven years passed, and the Matchstick Girl looked at her heart one day, only to realize that the bands of iron she had so carefully wrapped her heart in had dissipated into the ether. She couldn't put her finger on the moment they had evaporated, but in their place was a simple silk ribbon the color of the sky before the morning has truly arrived.

Forgiveness is a slate grey blue. A color that is undefinable, uplifting and sad. I don't know when I stopped being furious, and I know even less when I stopped being hurt. It happened as slowly as scars begin an angry red and fade to a nearly-indiscernible tone; that is, one day you look and realize you can't see it anymore. By then, it becomes trite to say "I forgive you," just as it was redundant to say "I hate you" before the fading. So instead, I'll say this: our Matchstick Year helped me become the person I am. The water under our bridge may have once been tinted the blue of tears, but it's just water now, and I forgave you without even knowing it, long ago.