Enchanting Juno

A middle aged woman in the middle of her life.

 

I am obsessed with cleaning right now.  It is most unlike me, generally I inhabit a world of minor sloth and need 3 days to make things presentable when people might be coming over.  This is a limiting way to live by the way - either be tidy or don’t give a shit.  Giving a shit while being a sloth is just one more way to piss on your psyche.

It’s just been a weird couple of years - not just for me obviously - but the economy sucks and there’s not as much money as there used to be and on top of everything I’ve had all these weird energy problems and physical problems and vitamin deficiencies and black moods and a general lack of optimism and internal paralysis, which all kind looks like the grumpy side of normal but turns out not so much, and results in my looking at the rug and going "fuck the vacuum" and spending 6 hours dicking around on the Internet and going to bed at 2 am.

Which sounds like a bid for sympathy - which I have no desire for and is at least one of the big reasons I haven’t written here in so long.  When all you have to talk about is fear and your health and you don’t want helpfully unhelpful suggestions and virtual hugs well...you best keep quiet.  Plus I think there was a need for relearning the difference between public and private.   (Just look at that passive voice!  Shocking)

Anyway.

I can only do yoga maybe twice a week for most of the last 14 months - because of the weird pain that may or may not be a bad disk - or is a bad disk but may also be something else too, who knows - and it’s lost something for me because so much of each practice is spent on the internal measure of "can I do that? does it hurt? enough to qualify as against doctor’s orders? should I sit down? if I don’t sit down am I going to have to take painkillers at 4 am?"

This makes the still quiet mind rather difficult to find and I have more or less made my peace with the fact that this is just the way things are right now and someday I will be able to do yoga again in a way that feels progressive and expansive, but now is not that time.  OM.

Plus work is massively stressful right now - and by right now I mean since June of 2008 - and I have survived that by shoving the big picture concerns wholesale out of my head and just trying to cope with the day to day mechanics.  

I feel like there’s a theme here.  Of endurance without grace.

But another thing is happening, which is as I get a tiny bit better physically, dominoes are crashing over in my soul.  Synapses firing, connections I have painstakingly carved out over years of therapy are suddenly alive with blood and oxygen supplied by renewed health.  I can see my own failures and strengths SO clearly and without judgement - more wonder and concern.  Is that REALLY how I have been, as I look at a neglected responsibility I have indeed shoved out of my head successfully for years.  
So I has in yoga the other day and a particular professional concern was nagging at me and I started to wrap it in mental oilcloth and shove it out of my field of vision and I suddenly saw that that was exactly wrong.  

Constantly shoving things away takes so much energy, all the energy in my universe in fact - and it solves nothing.  You have to inhabit your worries.  Stand next to them, get to know how real they are and only then make a determination of how much of you they deserve. Breathe their same air.  I knew this after my father died - that if you fight the enormity of grief it will destroy you - but as with every important thing I know, I seem to need to relearn it in different contexts instead of integrating it as a universal rule.

So I have stopped trying to empty my mind.  I think the trick is not to be empty but to be full and yet not agitated, ideally full and at peace with the work in front of you.  "Hey there, worry.  How you doing?"

I think I finally understand how some people get so much more done than seems possible to me, and yet are not insane.

So far this has resulted in one of the most productive weeks I have had in years, and a sudden burst of unforced domestic cleaning and organization.  It’s not done. I’m coming home at night and doing a bit more every day - but I don’t have a project list.  Project lists are for remembering things at work and groceries.    I can’t describe this exactly - it’s an organic expression of something, not a chore?  A manifestation of sanity in the form of clean windows.
Also I made my own cleaning products.  Very satisfying.

 

In the kitchen

There was a ghost singer in my kitchen when I came downstairs this morning.  I recently brought home the almost unused iPod dock I kept at the office and set it up on the counter, but my iPod is in some kind of slow death throes, and erratic about its connection.  Or the cat walked on the dock control.  Or I have a ghost.   Or all three, really.  It's an old house, who knows who still lives here with me. 

(I discovered recently that while I do not believe in god, I do believe in ghosts and possibly reincarnation.  Which I find wilding illogical and rather charmingly un-analytical, like all belief systems. Most unlike me.)

I wanted music in the kitchen because I'm spending more time there these days and it's a 70 or 80 year old addition, on the wrong side of the house's original brick wall and the only place in the house that music played in the living room is not perfectly audible. 

My father asked me once how I knew what to order in Chinese restaurants, in a curiously naked voice that told me more than I had ever understood about him and the comfort of the known.  He liked the things he knew and might have liked the things he didn't, if he had known how to ask without looking ignorant.  My mother was never afraid of the new in the kitchen but hates and distrusts food so profoundly that enjoyment never comes into it, and is prone to fads, rules and ritual around eating.  It took me several years of therapy to understand what hunger WAS, much less to begin to understand its role and the signals it sends me. 

I know a few people who grew up sane about food - perhaps insane in other ways, but the kitchen wasn't a place of stealth or danger.  I find that such an astonishing idea, so alien I can only dimly imagine the edges of what it might look like.

But I'm cooking now because I am not eating wheat or cow's milk for a while - part of correcting my mal-absorption issues - and I am finding a new kind of satisfaction in filling the fridge on the weekend with things that are tasty, and mostly healthy and sustaining and good.  All these years I've been trying to learn to feed myself without hurting myself, and I think I'm finally walking down the right street.  

I started writing this with an image in my head, of little prep bowls filled with spice and curry paste.  It's almost a pleasure now to prep ahead instead of cook hurriedly, carelessly.  I want music, because I'm taking my time, hanging out with my dinner, keeping the kitchen tidy as I go.   Cooking as part of life, not an enemy or an obligation. 

 

And then, I went to yoga.

It's raining unexpectedly, brutally, from an grey summer sky, which I like, despite the fact that my rain jacket is in the trunk instead of the office.

I've always loved rain, except during the vitamin deficiency years when I was too depressed to cope with it. 

I just read a short piece on old friendship and at the end it said So-and-so is a writer in Glasgow and I got this sharp mental cramp that was in my ribs as well as my brain.  That's my life.  The one I would have if I were less duty driven and less of a coward and you know, wrote consistently instead of avoiding it out of fear and uncertainty. 

It might be time to do something about that.  She said for the 100oth time.

I want to do something about that.  Which, might be a first time.

 

*you should know that this is not a statment of despair or underconfidence.  Except for the remains of a miserable hacking cold, I feel pretty awesome these days.   I say this to forstall the encouragers and scolders who want me to Understand My Own Value or similar. 

It's more of a diary note.  I felt this way on this day and want to remember it.

Small bites

My car is being detailed RIGHT NOW, which is very pleasing to me.  Life feels so overwhelming these years that I'm trying to just do a project until it's done and then do the next one.  I figure if I keep doing this life will still be confusing but it won't have that extra edge of despair, which, you know, is good.  Plus I might discover something good along the way.

Small bites.  One of the projects was my car which has attained the age of 9 and a half.  I spent several months going Car payment?  NO.  Car payment? Yes?  And decided to keep the Jeep going until I have saved up properly for a new one or until it stops, smoking, by the side of the road and I have no choice.  So over the last few months I have fixed and serviced everything, including some bodywork.  The top-to-bottom cleaning is the last step and then I will, you understand, have actually FINISHED something on my list of looming things.  It's a remarkable feeling.

I cleaned behind my stove the other day and found a cutting board I've been missing for YEARS.  That's another thing I've been meaning to take care of for a long time.  Also a good feeling, plus the floor cleaner is so organic you could eat it AND smells like spearmint.

Next up: the cat's teeth.  Which is a whole thing.  She does not care for going to the vet and she is quick and wiley and suprisingly bright for someone with a brain the size of a walnut. 

So I got smacked around this morning my my own head, which is always fun.  There was this guy, he's a dick but I used to love him and I just found out he's been sick, the bad kind of sick, so I sent him an email saying I'm glad you're not dead. 

But then I woke up today all freaked out and had to work through why - one of my friends (who, fairly enough, despises him) thinks he's a trigger for self-loathing but honestly I do not need anyone to make me self-loathing, I do that ALL BY MYSELF, or more accurately, the skills for that were instilled a long time ago.  He - well no way to summarize in any useful fashion.   The harsh judging of the me is self-inflicted though,  I just used him as an excuse to doubt myself - it it hadn't have been him it would have been something else.   His dickishness took other forms.   I'm sorry he's been sick though.  It makes me really sad.

I'm getting better at this stuff though, the friend who told me about his thing was having a Real Bad Day herself and I don't think I let my old habits in this matter stop me from being there for her.   I'm pretty happy about that too. 

The thing that I'm most mental about right now is the future.  Having a plan.  Going somewhere interesting.  Work. 

Which is counterproductive.  You just get there - where ever there is - by doing one thing at a time and hurdling the mounds of self hate when they erupt in front of you and trying not to fear the moments that happen.  Or at least that's what I think.  I hate a plan. Long for it, but hate it and wouldn't follow it if I had it. 

What is WITH the conviction that absolute security is a) desirable and b) even possible?  Isn't it a flat line?

 

 

 

 

 

The new normal.

I'm reading this New Yorker piece right now.  Atul Gawatabe is a doctor and writer - I read one of his books and it changed the way I understood pain, or began to change it.  This essay is a commencement speech to the new doctors graduating Harvard Medical School and outlines the changing world they will practice in and the challenges of reorganizing our national treatment system to reflect economic reality and the changed boundaries of medical practice.

He talks about the move "toward generating treatments and diagnostics that do not stand in isolation" and that made me stop.  I've been thinking a lot this past week about the stand alone nature of medical services and how that's not necesarily a good thing.  

I hurt my hip a few weeks ago, a old pain that suddenly blossomed and blossomed again - I triggered it in November and noticed that I was having muscle spasms in conjunction with family visits and laughed at myself, and stretched and mostly got better and then hurt it again in February again in conjunction with a family visit, and then hurt it again, 3fold, in April around some family stress.  Since mid-April I've mostly been sitting.

I saw a massage therapist and a chiropractor and read books on trigger points.  It never occurred to me to go to a doctor because it was a soft tissue injury and in the past I've been told the pain was probably arthritis and offered an xray which I didn't want.  I don't think it's arthritis and I didn't want to have it pigeonholed due to any deterioration that might show up ( I'm 42, I'm over six feet tall, and not slender.  I am SURE I have joint degeneration).  This thing I have - I can feel the trigger points all over my hip and leg, both the massage therapist and the chiropractor say the joints feel un-arthritic and mostly, I was tired of mentioning it to medical people and getting a quick off the cuff - arthritis.  degenerative hip disease.   Which may have been based in training and experience but felt like both dismissal and a blind alley.

But I was also not pushing.  I was rejecting the attitude I perceived but not attempting to change or challenge it.   This is a hard one.   Because if you don't ask a question - challenge your OWN assumptions about what's being said to you until you really understand, at the very least - you'll never have a complete answer.

Here's the thing. 

We have this cultural narrative that things fail as you age.  You turn forty and shit goes south.  Over 40 eyes.  Strength.  Immunity.  Speed of healing.  Physical integrity. 

A couple of years ago I had a lot of trouble with bleeding gums - dentist checked everything, sent me for blood work, nothing turned up or helped.

In 2008 I was tired.  I felt old, I didn't like walking, I stopped going to the gym for 6 months and bickered with a  friend who seemed to think there was something (morally, not physically) wrong with me for not getting around more or better.  My feet hurt.  My legs fell asleep a lot when I sat cross legged.  I had a couple of UTIs that turned out to be precurors to a kidney stone, after which I felt a lot better. 

So much better that I didn't question any further why I'd been so tired in the first place

So much better I started yoga in 2009, which was life changing. 

At least until the fall when I had episodes of exhaustion, shaking hands, weak arms and dizziness that ended up in a diagnosis of iron deficiency.  The symptoms got better with a supplement, and then came back last spring: this time the tests came back Vitamin D deficient.  Again supplements helped but I came back less strong (my gums got a lot better though).

Somehow I failed to notice that "better" was not the same as "as well as before."  It's so hard to hold onto the emotional memory of before, the phsyical memory of wellness.

I was dizzy all last summer in yoga when it got hot (which was pretty much every day, oh summer of 2010, you steamy minx), blamed the D deficiency, struggled to regain strength in my arm and have been struggling for months for focus, or desire or passion or SOMETHING that would help me focus on the future and what I need to change in my life.  I cry a LOT in therapy these days. 

I have muscle spasms in my leg/hip and neck/shoulder that have nagged and lingered for years.  I haven't spun much for the last 2 years because my neck freezes up.  Yoga helped a lot, but I've been plateaued in yoga due to what seemed like the limitations of my strength and fitness and an unwillingness to engage with pushing past that.  Because I lacked will.  Or something.

I developed allergies for the first time 18 months ago, and ached in my knees and hands all winter.   And let us just say that digestively, things have not been good for a good year and a half.  The hand tremor came back a few weeks ago - it does when I skip vitamins for a few days.  My feet started to fall asleep when I sit cross legged again too.  And my little toe started to hurt randomly and sharply.

I'm writing this all down because it's so absurd.  I went for a physical last week and I told my Doc I felt great.   I wasn't lying.  I'm IN good shape (well except for having to sit on my ass for the last 6 weeks while my hip slowly mended) and it feels good to be physically coherent, but I've also...persuaded myself that none of this is oh, large enough to matter.   I'm just getting older and well, this is part of it right?

Um. No.  What I am is nutritionally deficient. 

Not all the tests are back yet, it could be a lot of things (I'm betting on celiac disease) but I am low enough on B12 that my doctor was surprised I was not showing neurological symptoms.

I think I was.  My vision is better since I started getting injections last week - no more '40-year-old-eyes' focus problems or dry eyes  -  I've got better concentration and reading comprehension, better thinking, better memory for details.  I didn't realize I was foggy until I wasn't anymore, I didn't realize I'd become a pessimist until it started to lift, I thought my recent lack of follow through and motivation was a character flaw, until I found myself fitting thought to deed all last weekend instead of looking around wondering where the two days went (sleep mostly).  The degree to which my hip began to work again as soon as the b12 hit my system tells me a LOT of that is probably related too.   Toe pain and feet falling asleep?  Also gone.

I'm LUCKY.  I'm middle class with health coverage, I can GO to the doctor.  And yet I've been walking around for 4 years at least, starving my system of essential components - because I never mentioned my bleeding gums to my GP, and and went to the Gyn not the GP for excessive abdominal/hormonal bloating and talked about vitamins with HIM, but not the bloating with HER  and downplayed my loss of vigour to myself so deeply that I could look my doctor in the face and tell her  I felt great when I was starting each day so bleak in my heart I had to force myself out of bed. 

I'm pretty sure from the questions she asked me that she didn't believe me, which I appreciate very much.  But I wish I'd known 4 years ago that bleeding gums might be a sign of vitamin deficiency not just gum disease - or that vitamin deficiency was actually, you know, SERIOUS - and had enough of a sense of the interconnectedness of all things to mention it during a physical.  Because the information I bring, the assumptions I make and the questions I ask as the owner/occupant of this body are the connective tissue between all the disparate parts of our medical and mental health systems. 

I've decided that this summer is going to be GOOD.   Because I haven't had the energy for optimism since 2008 and that's just way too long.   And if you have any niggling little things you aren't taking seriously?  Do me a favor: write them all down and go to the doctor. 

 

 

 

 

Sand in my pants

A few weeks ago I had a yarn sale and I sold - a little more than half the yarn and stuff, which I think is pretty good for someone who rarely talks about knitting any more.  I'll list the rest of it through Ravelry at some point and then move onto another bit of closet clearing out.  I'm on a kind of mission to open up the space here so I can see and use and live with what I have. 

Part of me is kind of on my ass about not being more Purposeful about the Future.  (I should have a plan right?  Plans TOTALLY always take you where you really want to go!  Yeah!)  But part of me is still kind of clueless, but is finding it useful to try and let go of pointless stuff, extra stuff, stuff that doesn't get used.  I'm trying to have some kindness to the clueless part, because that part is also the exploring part that actually lets me learn stuff and grow and shit.  Planning Girl is the fraidy cat with the change problem. 

One thing was slow to go and it blew my mind:  The Louet Victoria, the wee portable spinning wheel.  I thought it would go first.

I've listed it in the appropriate forums on Ravelry and had a series of emails saying "Is it available?" which, when I say yes, were never replied too.  Except for one who said OMG I want it, and then emailed again to say Oh never mind, people say its too small to use. 

I began to doubt that I was selling something good.  Maybe it WAS crap and I'd...forgotten?  After all, I wanted to sell it.  There MUST be something wrong with it.  Was I just bored?  (This is possible, I can totally be that shallow. )

Fortunately, before I got too crazy, I began to fall in love with spinning again - it's been probably two years since I spun regularly.  But it's coming back to me now.  I've been in the spinning forums a bit, doing a little reading, reactivating the knowledge lying dormant in my brain.  I've been clearing off half spun projects from the various bobbins littering my house (seriously, I can see 26 from my living room couch) and rediscovering what I love, what I know, what I can do.  This is a great craft.  I remember now.  My hands are remembering now. 

Last night I did a little short forward draw.  It was niiiice.

So the Victoria sits and I find myself thinking of her in dismissive terms, somehow convinced by the lack of eager buyers and my own desire to move on that there was something less than admirable about her.   And then the newly reanimated spinner in me said....um, excuse me moron, but that's not right.  You spun MARAGRET STOVE style lace weight yarn on this.  So there's something wrong with your mental math here.

So I got it out.  I looked it over, set it up.  Inspected it visually, checked all the screws.  Replaced the scotch tension band, which was worn.  Wiped it down.  Set it up.  Spun some.

Hmmm. A bit noisier than I remember.   Oiled the bobbin shaft and the bearings. Better.

I remember I haven't used her in 2 years.  Even sealed bearings need a touch of lube after that long.

Changed the ratio.  Spun some more.   Tightened the sliding flyer hooks.  Filled the bobbin quickly, easily. 

Oh. This is a great little wheel.   A useful, flexible, usable, space-respecting, thoughtfully designed and highly portable fiber tool.  It tucks away in a closet when you don't want it, you could carry it across town on your back without strain, you can do whatever you need in a class with it - seriously.   

NOW I remember.

I wish I had something profound to say about the way self doubt can make you nearsighted, or far sighted or no-sighted at all.

(She did find a new home.  I'm picking up my new-to-me Little Gem this weekend.   Everything works out.)

Dance of Shiva

It’s been a year.  More than a year.  

I thought of it because I was wearing the same dress this weekend.  I think I’m going to throw it in the rag pile, it’s pilling badly and also, I don’t like the way it fits anymore.  I can’t tell if that’s because my body has changed, or my PERCEPTION on my body has changed - both of these things are true - but now it seems baggy, like something a sad girl would hide in.   
But wearing it made me think about when it was new, which was when I went to Sacramento to have my mind blown a year ago December.  

I’ve never told you this story.

  When you’re as tall as I am and a girl, people cannot not stop telling you about it, every day they stare and point and come up to you and ask how the weather is up there.  They want to know how tall you are, if you play basketball, if your boyfriend is taller than you.  Often they don’t look at your face to see that you are 10, 12, 15, 17, they look at your body at your breasts and legs and hips and they forget they’re talking to a child, to someone who might not know how to defend herself, to someone who is shamed and embarrassed by the attention.  They say damn girl, wrap those legs around me, they say you’re an angel fallen from heaven, they say My God, you’re huge.

They stare at all the things that mark you as different and eventually you understand that there is no real difference between a stranger's compliment and a verbal assault.

When I was a girl it was impossible to find the right clothes to fit in, to find shoes that fit, to not hit my head, to get my knees under the desk.  Even today - in my 40s and becoming more invisible every day - I can’t go a week without catching someone staring or pointing or remarking.

My senior year in high school was a good year for me in a lot of ways.  I’d begun to grow into my tallness a little bit and was less self conscious, I’d lost some weight and gotten into decent shape biking to my job the previous summer.  I still thought I was 30 pounds overweight, mind you, and that boys - one boy - didn’t like me because of it.  But I also felt more normal than I ever remembered, I had friends in my class, I was growing into my own opinions, had become a little bit outspoken even.  I was sorting out my feet and didn’t trip as much. 

Somewhere I have a Varsity letter in Badminton from that year, the only time I’ve EVER voluntarily been on any kind of team (I was forced to be on the basketball team in middle school, and played field hockey as well, though I think that was just what we did.  7th grade most improved player, which is another story entirely)  I don’t think I could hit a birdie anymore, but I was, erratically, very good then. And when the season was over I decided to take a dance class.  

It seems wildly out of character, in retrospect.  I don’t think I’m a good dancer now, and I dislike being looked at, but my school had a very good dance program, I knew a lot of the girls who were in it and it seemed like fun.
And it was.  The early bits were stretching and bending, teaching your body the individual movements and beginning to build the strength and flexibility to make them.  I turned out to be flexible and strong, I liked all the pieces broken apart, I felt like I was good at it, or could be.  When we started to put the pieces together into a simple routine, the teacher went slowly and I mostly got it, but not firmly.  I started to feel less good but was keeping up until a hideous flu came through campus.  

I was in History and the teacher asked me a question and I burst into tears, which startled everyone. I couldn’t answer because I couldn’t even hear her over my headache and ended up in the infirmary.  I missed some dance classes while I was sick, and finagled a little extra time off from the nurses because I was reluctant to go back when I knew I was already a little behind.  And when I did,10 days later, I was finished. They were doing things I didn’t recognize, I had no idea of the steps or patterns.

When we got past the point of familiarity I felt choked, panicked, clumsy, absolutely terrified.  
I started standing in the back corner of the studio, and when we got past those first 3 or 4 steps, the ones I had learned in the beginning, I’d start to feel frantic and hateful, sick and choking, incompetent.... and I would evaporate out the back door and hide in the ladies room until class was over.  
After college a friend was trying to teach me to ballroom dance and I had...I guess a flashback?  That same sick conviction of my own ugliness filled my lungs, took my air, and I had what I think was a mild panic attack and could not continue.

I should have asked for help.  But I didn’t know that then.  And the teacher, well, I think if she were a good teacher rather than a good dancer, she would have reached out to me to help me bridge what I had missed, but instead she confronted me in front of people one day with...my cowardice I guess? For hiding, or not knowing the steps...and ignored me the rest of the semester.

For years this memory was absolutely clear.  I could have told you what she SAID that day, except that it was a thing I was careful to not ever think about because the memory was almost as humiliating as the reality   

And then I went to Sacramento and did a workshop with Havi and tried Shiva Nata.  I was into it, I think.  I’d been doing yoga for 8 months, I felt like I was over my self-consciousness.  I hadn’t thought about dance class in years.  I was energized by possibility, which is one of my favorite things. I envied the other participants a little, who already knew some shiva nata, who already knew what they were working towards. I am fascinated by Havi, and trust her.  I was ready.

Dance of Shiva is based on patterns.  There are arm and leg movements that you are working in opposition to each other, it’s fairly ridiculous to watch, and it’s incredibly, incredibly hard.  It’s supposed to be impossible, as I understand it, because the idea is to fill your mind up with physical math, to distract it so it cannot get in the way of insight.  So we spread out - me in a green dress because I’d left my yoga clothes at the hotel - and started to learn the patterns.  And for a minute it was fun.  
And then I started to fall behind (I am pretty sure there is no behind).
I could feel my self hardening. My face got grimmer and grimmer as I held myself harder and harder to the spot I was standing on, making mistake after mistake after mistake.  It was the worst feeling, it was THAT feeling, I was in that class again, I didn’t know where to put my body, and my sinuses filled up with wet concrete and shame and I broke, fled to the studio bathroom.

I was waiting for the horror of a concerned person following me but they didn’t and eventually I stopped crying, blew my nose, washed my face and went back out there.  Nobody looked at me funny.  I got back on the floor and followed - badly - along.   

Which sounds like nothing.  A beautiful nothing.  I was fine.  The memory was there, but the misery was not.  Instead I had a smooth hollow pit, like after a tooth pulling.  You keep putting your tongue in it but the tooth is gone, the pain is gone,  it’s just a depression in your jaw that gets a little smaller every day.  I had trouble telling the story even now because...it’s not important.  I don’t feel it.  It’s not a horrible memory anymore, it’s barely even a memory.
 
The shiva nata experience was harder to write because that IS important.  I told Havi that day that Shiva Nata was horrible - and she said she knew and was sorry.  And this is true, so very true, but it’s not a bad thing.  At my yoga studio recently we were talking before class about the other classes at the studio - there’s a bit of a bottleneck in beginners recently and the teacher asked me about my experience in the more challenging classes.  I said it was harder and I could see faces around me closing.  I booted that pretty badly, because I think she was trying to encourage people to go further.  But, it IS harder.  For me, that’s the point.  Hard is good.  Hard is change, or learning.  Hard is mistakes, which is how you learn.  Hard is leaving bad stuff behind.
Hard is love, and therapy, and sticking with new things after the first attempt.  
Hard is good.

I have the DVDs to do shiva nata at home.  I’ve lost them in my house.  I mean, if I wanted to I could find them pretty quickly, but I’ve made sure not to look.*

I had no idea that THAT memory was a source of particular pain, though I can see how it connects to a certain unwillingness to look a fool or take physical risks.  Having it rise up and explode was a complete surprise.  On a day to day basis I don’t feel different.  There is no magical clarity.  Just a calm, healed spot on my psyche.
So I’m scared of what else might come up, what other bit of pain or humiliation is lurking in there to be released.  Even though I know it’ll be ok, even better, after it does.  

I love that, the reluctance to change when change is clearly the only way to escape a painful thing, the reluctance to be hurt on purpose even if we know the pain is easily survivable.  I’m having a flare up right now of an on-again off-again muscle spasm in my leg.  I was at the gym doing sit ups Friday and every time I passed the hip pivot point I had to brace myself before I crossed the twinge.  Even though I know from experience that not using the muscle makes it worse and it’s at a totally manageable ouch, the avoid-the-ouch instinct is mighty.  Humans.

I feel pretty stuck though, right now.  Might be time.  



*the morning after I wrote this I went looking for something else and there was this envelope next to it.  What is thi.....the Shiva Nata DVD.  Very funny, universe.  Very funny.

Stash Sale, part the second & last

And, onward.  One item has escaped back to my stash so I need to keep focused.  Here's all the rest in one go, never mind what I said about three posts.

Unless specified, stored in plastic bag or bin in the yarn closet.  There is a cat on premises, thus there is probably cat hair on or near everything I own.  Flat shipping rate of $6 per box in US (Can or Europe will be actual shipping costs), buy more and save!  Paypal (you pay 2.9% +$.30 Paypal fee) or personal check.  Edited to ad:  contact through comments here or email to Juno [at] enchantingjuno [dot] com.  If you try on Rav I will not see it in time.

16)  Schaeffer Yarn Company Andrea, one lovely and mysterious skein of laceweight cultivated silk.  I say mysterious because I have NO RECOLLECTION of this yarn.  No memory of when or where I got it, nor, frankly, why, because its washed denim blue/green is a beachy watercolor, where I tend to go big for mountain sunset oils or river rock colors.  The silk is gorgeous to the touch, 1093 yards of laceweight.  $44.00

 

 

17)  Oh, this one hurts.  Shadeyside Farm Studio Alpaca Blend.  Eleven 210 yard skeins.  Paid$165.00 at Stitches East in 2005.  I was obsessed, visited this yarn for the whole weekend and finally ordered it the last afternoon.  I was going to make the Aquarius  pullover from The Knitters Stash - which is what they had the yarn knit into in the booth.  It was gorgeous.  It IS gorgeous. The colour is called Faded Glory and it's kind of this wonderfully dirty slate gray/green and it's 50/50 wool/alpaca which means I will NEVER EVER wear a sweater made of it, because I will crawl out of my skin.  Because alpaca makes me itch.   Yours for $132.00

 18) Jute.  I was going to make shopping bags, because I was obsessed with the color of this and that was what I could think of to make with it.  Copper colored, from School Products, four 175 m skeins.  Retail $26.00, yours for $20.

 

 

 

 

 

19)  Eleven skeins (273 m) of Shelridge Farm Wool/Cotton for the Celtic Icon cardigan from Inspired Cable Knits.  This is the pattern yarn for this sweater and it's a nice knit.  But it is also Cherry Pink, which I love in the ball but... I just rid of a t-shirt this color.  Every time I put it on, I took it off right away - I'm just not comfortable wearing it.   One skein has been cable swatched, I will include the swatch.  Paid $ 165.00, yours for $132.00

 

 

20) Oh, this is a nice yarn.  I had three skeins and knit a gift out of one and 1/2ish of them.  Great color, lovely fiber. Blue Sky Alpaca Melange Alpaca fingering weight.  1 skein and 21 grams.  Yours for $9.50.

 

 

 

 

21)  Cascade 220. I know I bought this, but I do not know what for.  It's unlike me to buy 3 skeins of something with no project in mind.  20 skeins with no plan, sure, or 3 skeins of something exotic.  But three skeins of a workhorse with no plan?  My brain is mysterious.  It's a great red, it's going to waste here.   Retail $21, yours for $16.50

 

22)  Cashmere! Three 150 gram cones of 2/14  (heavy) laceweight from Colourmart.  Colour Black Mack, a two tone dark marled blue    There's about 1150 yards per 150 grams.  Paid 108.00, yours for $86.00.  I think I was planning to hold all three ends together and knit a pullover.  But 1150ish yards isn't quite enough for me there.  It's too much for most things and not enough for a sweater (for me).  Bad planning.

 

 

 

 

 

23) More cashmere! FOUR 150 gram cones of 2/14 (heavy) laceweight from Colourmart.  Colour Spruce Tweed, which is a two tone green marl.  .  Same as above, about 1150 yards per 150 grams.  I am weak in the face of Colourmart basically, but this green never really hit my happy color place.  Two of these have been tied into hanks, two are still on the  cone.  Paid $144.00, yours for $115.00. 

24)  Oh this is a fun one.  Way way back in the early days of knit blogging Fluffa was making a ribbony poncho for her sister.  I was charmed.  I bought the yarn.  I was going to make this fringy sweater coat (I know) (I know) from one of the Phildar magazines.   And...here we are 6 years or more later.  26 balls of Phildar Phil Ruban in chocolate, one swatched, but will include swatch.  Really lovely silky cotton ribbon yarn.  This was 130 euros, which  is..175 dollars ish.   Yours for $140.00

 

 

 

 

 

SOLD 25)  10 balls of Rowan Felted Tweed DK in Ginger, one swatched and ripped.  You know what is dumb?  Buying 10 balls of yarn in the color you are about to dye your hair.  I swear, it's close enough that when I hold a yarn ball up to my face I feel matchy-matchy.  Tom and Loenzo say, and I agree, that going together is WAY better than matching.  So there you go.  Paid $100, yours for $80.  Because I am not going back to blond.

27)AL de Sauveterre Klee Scarf Kit. Paid $110.00, yours for $88.00, including the knitted already bit.

One thing I am noticing is that a LOT of the things I'm letting go are from 2004 & 5, when I first started knitting seriously, began blogging, bought freely and was HEAVILY influenced by my new knitting friends.  Take this scarf:  One of my VERY first cashmere purchases, Stitches 2005.  But I've been knitting on it on and off for years, and I'm maybe 1/3 of the way through, because it is too fiddly for drunk group knitting and I  am more and more sure that this is a set of colours and a style I will ever wear, which means I don't give it concentrated time.  And so it lingers.  But it's beautiful. 

28)  Jaegar Albany - 20 balls of pretty wine coloured cotton ribbon.  I had SUCH a plan for this, and no idea what I was doing - There was this sweater in an old IK in ..something really different.  I was going to rejig, but my ideas about yarn conversion were hazy.  I had 30 balls at one point, I think.  That's enough to make a dress. 

20 balls, discontinued, retail $150, yours for $100.

 

 

SOLD 29) 20 balls Jaeger Extra Fine Merino DK.  I'm having a hard time with this one too.  I was going to make a henley.  Which I still think is a good idea.  And I love this olive,  it's got a bit of dimmensionality to it.  Thus the hard time.   Paid 175.00, yours for $140.00

 

 

 

 

30) 14 skeins of Jaeger Luxury Tweed. The combination of the pale blue - I need colors to have a little dirt in them - and the 35% alpaca have kept this one in the bullpen.  It really is gorgeous and fluffy like kittens.  I bought it because of Clara's review.  In fact, I want to go buy it again after re-reading that.  But alpaca.  So - retail $120.00, yours for $95.00

 

 

31) Stitches 2005 AGAIN.   I tried on this capelet as a joke and was unexpectedly not laughed at.   The designer had noted the poncho trend and written up a pattern for a buttoned poncho her mother in law knit for her in the 70s.  It's cute, but one strand of Briggs and Little held together with one strand of Joseph Geller Peruvian Tweed is HELLA thick for a knit three together.  I knit aobut a third and then ran out of steam.    And now I realize that I will not wear a capelet because what do you do with your purse strap?  And if I did it wear one it would be made of coating and dressy.    So after 5 years, I'm ripping it out.  R.I.P little poncho.   If you want BOTH yarns, I'll throw in the pattern.

4 Skeins of Briggs and Little Regal 2 ply in Brown.  One partially knit and then rewound.  Paid 22, yours for $17.50

32) 2 huge skeins of Joseph Galler Peruvian Tweed - you know I think this will be the second time I bought and then sold this yarn.  Slow learner on the alpaca front, though I COULD wear it as a cape, if I thought I would wear a cape.  One partially knit and then rewound.  Paid $55, yours for $44.00. 

 

 

 

33)  Three 150g cones of black-watch-plaid-green cashmere single laceweight from Colourmart.  I have no idea what I had in mind.  Hold them together and have not quite enough for a fine gauge sweater?  Knit a really, really big fine lace shawl?  I used to date a Scotsman entitled to wear that plaid, and I swear to god, I can't even look at this color.   Which is too bad, because this is pretty stuff.  Paid 108.00, yours for$86.00

34)  I go a little bananas buying yarn in Toronto. This is from Romni wools in 2007 I think.  2006?  I was obsessed with this big Fleece Artist Goldilocks boucle shawl I had seen someone wearing and twice bought yarn to make it.  One is here and the other only got as far as what you see in the picture (there is only so much garter stitch in boucle a girl can do).  I will reball it if you want, or leave the shawl unripped if you want to carry on.  Your choice.  Paid $55.00, yours for $44.00

 

 

SOLD 35)  Romni Wools Again.  Canada = Fleece Artist/Handmaiden yarn I guess.  Which makes sense.  Two fat skeins of copper Fleece Artist 2 ply Kid Silk.  Incredible drape.  Paid $40.00 yours for $32.00

 

 

 

 

36)  Sometimes I buy cashmere for no reason at all.  Jade Sapphire 6 ply, one skein.  Bought on a yarn field trip to Philly at Loop.  Was going to make little mitts I think.

Paid $41.00, yours for $33.00

 

 

37)  I remember this one.  1st Maryland Sheep and Wool, shopping with TooMuchWool. We were dazed I think.  SO much new stuff to see, new fibers, handmade yarns.  So I bought this little skein of heavy silver mohair.  No idea what I paid, or how many yards or anything.  It's SHINY though.  $15.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

38) My first Rhinebeck was in 2004.  I was a baby blogger and people kept talking about this thing, this place, and I looked at a map and realized it was only a few hours away and so on Sunday I went and wandered around in a daze. I caught sight of people I recognized from the internet and I saw yarn like nothing I had seen before.  I bought 4 fat skeins of this thick and thin single yarn spun from what I am now fairly sure is Ashland Bay top.   I even knit it into a sweater.  Which was extremely fitted, but unfortunately not WELL fitted and made me look like a badly overstuffed chair.   Not the smallest idea what I paid for it.  Yours for $60.00.  

39) 2 Skeins and a bit of Reynolds Blizzard.  I was and remain fascinated by this yarn.  I crocheted a giant wrap/throw of this just because I thought it was fuzzy and soft (it is). These are leftovers from that.  $12.00

 

 

 

 

40)  6 balls of Louisa Harding Fauve in black.    I was - and am - obsessed with the Coachella tank from Knitty, but am not crazy about the Suede yarn specified. (Does anyone know what happened to Fathom Harvill? Don't think she blogs anymore)  These next two were purchased as possible subs, but they're stretchy where suede is stable, and heavier.   $18.00

 

SOLD41) 10 Balls Louisa Harding Fauve in Fawn.  Ditto. $30.00

 

 

 

 

 

 42) And LAST.  Bag of Mystery single balls.  Nothing in it goes together.  $25.00

It's that closet clearing time of year: STASH SALE, part the first

I dunno if this will still work, since I don't write about knitting much anymore.  But tell your friends!  Yarn for sale!  And yarn stories!  There is Narrative: many of these have been with me for some time.  I love them many of them to the point where I keep trying to put them back in the closet. But it's time.  The cat needs dental work, the AC is busted and really, I have too much stuff, more yarn than I could knit in 20 years.

Just because it's beautiful doesn't mean it has to live here.

Unless specified, stored in plastic bag or bin in the yarn closet.  There is a cat on premises, thus there is probably cat hair on or near everything I own.  Flat shipping rate of $6 per box, buy more and save!  Paypal (you pay cc fee) or personal check.  Edited to ad:  contact through comments here or email to Juno [at] enchantingjuno [dot] com.  If you try on Rav I will not see it in time.

Also, there are 41 lots or something, so I'll do this over three two posts.  If you are looking for a travel wheel or a wheel bag, those are here.

SOLD 1) 3 Balls Adriafil Frou Frou for which I paid the absurd sum of 12.00 each in 2005  - yours for $20!

This was going to be fringe on a shawl made of item number two, which is a tragic tale.

2)  10 balls South West Trading Company Phoenix, color "chocolate" Retail $130.00, yours for $90.00 (as you can see, it's been ripped and rewound into balls of assorted size)

When I was a wee knitter, inexperienced and optimistic, I knit this into something designed for Rowan Summer Tweed, which is a yarn entirely unlike this one.  It had a v-neck , pretty slipped stitch edges and a cable up the front thus:  

  I knit it very tightly on addis and it was beautiful, as you can see.  It was also 1000 grams &  1700+ yards.  And a tank top. 

I put it on and, naturally,  the hem dropped to my knees, the armholes to my elbows and the v-neck to  well below my bra.  In the fullness of time, when the weeping ended, I ripped it out and intended to knit a loose simple shawl from the remains.  It is time, 6 years later, to admit that this will never happen.  And that a worsted weight 1700 yard shawl would cover the earth.

SOLD 3) Two balls of discontinued Debbie  Cashmerino Superchunky one intact, one wound into a ball. A gorgeous red.  Retail 40, yours for $30.00.  Many times, this was going to be a cowl.  Now it's your turn.

4) 2 balls Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino.  The yellow one in the picture was viciously mauled (see cat, yarn stored in a basket, the greater wisdom of experience) and tossed.  Retail $18.00, yours for $12.50.  The child for whom these were going to be baby booties is 4.  Ahem.

SOLD5) 2 skeins of Artyarns Silk Rhapsody in a delightful seafoam.  Purchased at Purl in New York on a fine sweaty summer yarn crawl.  Retail $88.00.  Yours for $70.00.  It's a gorgeous yarn but I could never think how I would wear a shawl out of this.  Apply some imagination to this pretty thing and be sure to send me a picture highlighting the failure of my creativity.

SOLD 6) One skein of Malabrigo Worsted in colorway Malilla, swatched and then rewound into a ball.  Purchased in Toronto at Lettuce Knit summer of 08.  It was going to be one of those fat yarn/kidsilk scribble lace scarves, except these are Not My Colors.  It was very hot that day.   $7.00

7) 4 400 yd skeins of merino tencel sock yarn from Mind's Eye in Boston, dyed Indigo (unclear on if that was an actual indigo dye or an indigo-toned dye).  Retail $80.00, yours for $60.00

Man, I really used to overestimate yarn quantites.  This was going to be a shawl.  Another one to blanket the earth, I think.  

SOLD 8) 1 skein plus a large ball of the most fabulous heavy worsted angora goat (Polly Anna) and wool (Claudia) blend boot sock yarn, artisan made, from the Mountain Fiber Folk in Vermont.  If I knit socks I would make these my inside-the-snowboot socks, with a silk liner (this is not soft sock yarn).  But I do not like making socks and so far, no one can be persuaded to do it for  me.  I feel regret,  it really is lovely.  But it's been in there since 2005? or 6.   No idea of retail.  A lot.  Yours for $30.00

SOLD 9) Save me from this cone.  Seriously.  It's 10000 yards of fingering weight 50 wool/50 alpaca.  2 pounds 6 ounces.  One of the very first things I bought when I discovered Yarn on the Internet in 2004.  You know what I know now that I did not know then? Alpaca makes me ITCH.  Hats are fine.  A sweater? Forget it.  But it's too nice to toss.

I wound off a large ball in a spirit of optimism once.  I will wind it ALL into balls for you.  I will double strand it into balls if you like, or triple.  Just somebody buy it.  Save me from the blue alpaca haunting.  $20.00

10)  A mass (9.25 ounces) of hard to describe cashmere boucle with a cotton binder.  I was going to do this very elaborate huge round lace shawl on 11 mm needles, which was a lunatic decision.  Because BOUCLE.  Kitten soft cashmere boucle.

If you buy it I'll leave the shawl beginnings intact for your amusement, if you like.  S suggested that it would be good woven and I think she's right.  But I do not have a loom.  So.  It's from Hunt Valley Cashmere at my first Maryland Sheep and Wool (which might as well read "from my first coke bender" not that I would do that.  But you know, CASHMERE, in the wild, is not that far off.)

It cost the earth.  Or about $113.00.  And it's yours for $90.00:

SOLD11) Trendsetter yarns Dali.  6 skeins, plus a little bit, worsted weight 100% cashmere in a really violent shade of red that is impossible to photograph.  I look good in red.  Except this red.  Especially with my new haircolor.  It is Not Good.  Yours for $60.00, which is a steal for nearly 1000 yards of cashmere, even if you have to dye it.  Which I recommend. Because as I mentioned, I do not like this red.

SOLD 12) Mad Angel Creations cashmere/wool laceweight in chestnut.  Lots and lots of laceweight, I think something like 8000 yards.  I am not the lace knitter I once thought I would be and it's really gorgeous and should be used.  This one has been in a cabinet rather than in a plastic pin.  $20

SOLD 13) 15 skeins GGH Via Mala.  This is a really interesting yarn, basically 4 strands of laceweight wool  held parallel and gently felted into a ribbon, sorta.  Light. Very bulky, but airy.  I always thought it would make a good sweater coat.  Not my color, as much as I would LIKE to be able to wear all purples successfully.  Retail $150, yours for $100

 SOLD 14) 5  2.5 fat skeins of merino/silk sportweight ordered from Ellen's Half Pint Farms at my first Rhinebeck.  I was drunk. Or something.   First of all, I ordered a double lot, so this totals 3350 yards.  Second of all  I ordered a variagated silvery/taupey/beige that is deeply pretty, delicate, glowing and exactly the same tone as my face in some weird way that makes me vanish when I hold it up and look in the mirror.  I paid, gods help me, $250 for it.  I will break this in half by weight, if that's of interest.  $180.00 for all, $90 for half  (1670ish yards remaining) (this was stored in the closet but I pulled it out this summer and it's been sitting in a bag on the coffee table, just fyi)

 

SOLD 15)  Merino Laceweight:  2 cones of very fine, very soft merino laceweight.  One is pale green (SOLD) and one is pale banana.  The banana has a broken couple of strands on the bottom outside of the cone, snagged I think.  They lived in the wall cupboard, I bought them on ebay a long time ago and I will never, ever knit fine soft lace like these demand.  15 bucks each.  Unknown yardage. 

Cockles and Mussels, alive, alive-o: Pre-Sale sale (spinning equipment)

So in the process of going through the yarn I've found a thing or two else that needs a new home.  While I wait for enough sun to take the last stash pictures I need for the yarn sale, please take a look.

One (1) folding travel spinning wheel, the Louet Victoria S96 Oak.  

 I've had this for 4 years ish and it's definitely been used and travelled.  It's in very good condition and has good flexibility as a spinning tool.  I've successfully spun hyper fine merino laceweight in Margaret Stove's class on this, as well as the less fine woolen yarn I like to make recreationally.  I've taken it on planes as a carryon and it fit in the overhead bin easily.

Here's Abby's review of her Victoria, which convinced me to go ahead with the original purchase (the pictures don't seem to be live any more, but the words are there).  

I want to get a Magacraft Little Gem II and have my travel wheel and main wheel be able to share the 17 jillion whorls, bobbins and accessories I have for my Suzie already.

The Victoria currently retails for between $695.00 and $735.00.  Yours for $525.00 plus UPS ground shipping (or pick up, if you happen to be living in central Jersey and want to do that) 

Update:  Includes a Majacraft MDF dolphin niddy-noddy (I was going to include this with the carry bag below, but it makes more sense with a wheel, you know?  It retailed for 40+ dollars and is no longer made)

Cash in person, paypal (you pay CC fees) or check if shipping.  Includes wheel, 3 bobbins, portable kate and carrying bag.

SOLD Next:  One (1) set of 4 pitch English Combs in Bird's Eye Maple, from Red Barn Farms 

   

Includes 2 combs, comb holder, clamps, wooden covers, diz and threader as well as tine straightening tool.  The handles are 10 inches long and these are heavy - more than 2 pounds per comb.  They are really beautiful bird's eye maple and I can't use them: shortly after I ordered them I had surgery to release the trapped tendon in my right wrist and it's totally healed, absolutely fine and..... will never be as strong as it used to be.  They're too heavy for me to use for more than 10 minutes, so they sit on the shelf.  Which is a shame.   Yours for $200.00 plus shipping etc as above 

Next:  One (1) denim carry bag for a spinning wheel, used only once - link here, at the Woolery.  I bought it for the Majacraft Suzie and it will fit that wheel, the Rose, the Schacht Matchless, the Ashford Kiwi (tightly apparently), and Louet models S10, S15, S16, S17, S51, or S75.  

Retail $189.00, yours for $120.00 & shipping.  It's sturdy, well padded and well made and the Suzie would definitely have fewer dings if I did use it, instead of strapping her in the back seat like a passenger. 

Finally, I'm  throwing it out to the universe that I am interested in selling my custom, purple-heart accented, limited edition Merlin Tree Canadian Production wheel.  This is a more expensive proposition, with logistics: if you're interested email me.  Otherwise I'll get to it specifically later in the year.