Enchanting Juno

You and me, alone together. No one watching.

So this is how it happened.  Last night I realized that tomorrow was Hallowe'en and not only that, but I would be home.

Clearly, I was going to need some chocolate for the high-school hoodlums who stand silently with their pillowcases, radiating wordless menace (by the time I am home from work, I've mostly missed the little kids) at me.  I exaggerate.  A little.

So I went to the store, timing it carefully so as to drive out of the shopping center right into the worst of rush hour congestion (this was more a lack of foresight than intention, but the timing was so true, I might as well have planned it).

There's me and a hundred cars, dinner hour approaching.  Yesterday I had only had a salad for lunch and no breakfast and I was getting kind of hungry (a check of the calendar this morning indicates that today is Day 21, which also may have been a factor in the equation.)

So me, a hundred cars, hungry and with PMS looming and a bag of peanut butter cups.

I think you know what happened.  It was over quickly, as these kinds of encounters so often are, and I felt terribly cheap and queasy after.

I tried to create karmic balance with vegetables after I got home, but it was Too Late. 

Today I am nursing peppermint tea and my skin doesn't fit, I'm mildly depressed, I've got dark circles under my eyes and I am exhausted, despite going to bed at an entirely reasonable hour. Sounds like a hangover.  A hangover after a bad one night stand.

In fact, it IS a hangover, a sugar one.  Well, sugar and whatever else is in those things.  I feel exactly like this:

Rhinebeck Pumpkin, courtesy of the CIA

I find this all pretty compelling, because as my fitness and diet improve, my system has little to no tolerance for these things and my body's vengeance is swift and brutal.  It isn't anything obvious like digestive upset I could take something for either, it is more of a systemic rejection.  I wonder, did I feel like this all the time for all these years up to the most recent few, when I discovered exercise and vegetables?  And how can I make myself remember this feeling the next time Hallowe'en, traffic and hunger combine to offer temptation? Because this is one cheap adventure I'd like to skip next time.  Really.

Hallowe'en Bonus:  One of them women in the office made these for today.  Of course I can't eat one, see bodily vengeance above, but I can share it with y'all.

Vampire cupcakes.  Cherry filled.  How fantastic is THAT?

 

 

Interlude

There are few things more lowering that to be in bed in the morning, awaken to the sound of the garbage truck crunching outside the window and the certain realization that the trash is still in the kitchen.

Dammit.

Your groove I do deeply dig

When it comes to avoiding the accusing gaze of one's computer, things have gone too far.  Something about the one-two punch of SOAR and Rhinebeck knocked the blog right out of me.

(OK, YouTube is dangerous.  Any cultural memory available at any hour of the day or night, at your service. )

Ate too much last night - not just too much, but wrong food - American Chain Restaurant food, where even the chicken and steamed broccoli entree is somehow weighty indeed.  Haven't felt right all day - was about to stick a spoon in Mr. Ben And Mr. Jerry's Finest Creation (Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream, ohsweetbabyjeebusYES) when it occurred to me that I was compounding the problem and went and made a quick stir fry with a ton of edamame and roasted walnuts.
I feel better.

Let that be a lesson to me.  Again.

Rhinebeck was overwheming. I bought a ton of stuff (and yet I swear I saw only 1/3 of the vendors), I saw a lot of people I'm crazy about for not nearly long enough, not a one of them.  I have fragments of memory, rather than a sense of an experience.  Too soon after SOAR for comprehension.  But it was good.  Life continues, sweater continues.  Update pictures soon - want to get sleeve two underway first.  And maybe some spinning as well - need to get to work on the things I learned how to do at SOAR before I forget them all.

Missed your cheery little faces.

Gratuitous Sheep:
These two were making with the kissy face through the bars.  I mean, I don't want to be anthropomorphic, but I swear they were making out.  Jailhouse love, baby, Jailhouse love.

Karakul.  Look at the coats on them - I'm a sucker for the primitives.

Cotswold. 

This goat was, I swear to god, laughing at me while I tried to take the picture.  Goats are like that.

I know there have been a million pictures of Capitan Tightpants here, but what was amazing about this is - he did it ALL weekend.  I saw him a half dozen times, and always in this position.  He must have glutes of solid rock.  I am respectful.

And the horses are so beautiful.  Click for big and look at the size of the hoof here - like a dinner plate.

This one is tragically pissed off at my recent not here-ness ("am I not cuter than any sheep?  And yet cruelly, cruelly abandoned....").  I am summoned back to make a lap.

 

We are everywhere.

Yesterday I was tired.  Well, I've been tired for days, but this was the kind of tired where I squeezed every last drop of snooze-alarmed sleep out of the morning, threw on whatever was handy and failed to comb my hair before it dried (a little funny) on its own.

I left the house in jeans, black suede sneakers and my Maryland S&W baseball shirt from 2 years ago.  It is my favorite, but I rarely wear it out, as I am a little dubious about the flattering.

So I go to work and get through the day and after that I get my list together and go to the market as there is not so much food in the house.  In my Whole Foods there is a brief cheese filled transition between vegetables and fish and I usually book through it pretty quick because there is little in the world that makes me queasier than the smell of fish. 

What I am saying is that I've closed off my senses to get by, so it takes me a minute to respond to the guy in waders who is trying to get my attention.  I'm looking around trying to figure out what he's trying to tell me and gradually my awareness comes back on line and I realize what he is saying is "Does that say Maryland Sheep and Wool"?

Why yes.  It does.

Turns out his mom goes every year.  She's crazy about wool and knitting and spinning, crazy weird as well as crazy fond. 

We get like that.  Lots of fleece? I ask.

Oh yeah, the attic is full.

It happens.  I'm going to Rhinebeck this weekend.

He nods sagely - yes, that's a good one.

And then he grinned in a companionable way - an initiate to the mystery, if not necessarily an acolyte - and returned to his fish.

I grinned back and returned to escaping the fish smell.

I almost went back and asked who his mother was.  I mean, it IS possible we've met.
But then I started thinking about the fact that this man equates me with his mom.  Even though I doubt there were 6 years between us.  That is moderately less warming.

On the way home from SOAR there was a wicked cool car from the 40s, done up in matte paint and four hooded dudes who fancied themselves quite a lot.  The car was cool, enough so that we stopped to comment and admire.  And these guys were horrified; we were not the desired demographic.  The distress was so palpable it was funny. 

Computer says yes.

I've been staring at the blog for a while trying to think of a way of explaining the past week. 
Can't even sum up.  Brain full, heart full.  Rather tired.  Cat mad at me.  SOAR good.  System full.

Maggie Casey taught me how to spin long drawn in about 10 words, something I have struggled to learn at home for a year or more.  Click.

(There were additional words of guidance from Charlene and Kim to my right as the class progressed that helped to solidify things, I very much do not want to leave that part out because they were fantastic and helpful and illustrate beautifully the point that this event is about learning & teaching rather than ego.)

Judith McKenzie McCuin explained something about yarn construction that made my eyes spin around like cherries in my head and now I know I can make yarn that will make a good sweater, instead of just a good skein.  Also, I maybe need a loom.

I spun bison.  I did it well.  I spun COTTON.  Not quite as well.  But I get it now.

From Margaret Stove I learned to make the finest springiest merino lace weight.  Someone spoke to me while I was learning this and I had nothing left to reply, my whole being was in the thread in my hands. 

And that's just the surface of it.

Rhinebeck is so much fun it really maybe ought to be a controlled substance, all these fairs and festivals are wonderful, but they are nothing like this, this intensity of learning and connection, these incredibly generous people - not just the mentors but everyone was interested in making everyone better, sharing technique and information and time and joy and wine and everything.

If we are lucky, a few times in our lives the wall of our mental house falls down - or explodes outward - and we get to step over the broken rubble and walk this entirely new landscape of mountains and possibility and a giant sky and new pathways full of knowledge and our own potential to grow, change and eventually, contribute something.  There is possibility.  And ponies.
And the world expands.

This was SOAR.

I used to be a reader.

Before all kinds of things happened.  Now I'm a knitter with a lot of unread books.  Not that I hold knitting to blame.  Things unfold as they unfold - maybe knitting rose up to fill the gap left by the absence of bookwormishness, maybe it was time for a lifetime emphasis to shift.

I just got so raw that the fictional emotions and experiences of characters would haunt me.  I don't really believe in fiction in some ways - if it came out of human imagination, then it is true, one way or another.   Some times calling it fiction, making it a story rather than a tale, gives a narrative even more power, creating a road of access to things the audience might reject awareness of if the things were "real."

Whatever the reason, I kept buying books that interested the self I was becoming, but I mostly didn't read them.   Happened again last week, got a recommendation here, a review there and suddenly there's a box of books on its way.  Started me thinking about this reading thing, and what it used to mean and why that changed and what place I want it to have and how that matches up with who I am.

Introspective might as well be my middle name, really.  If this bothers you, you should maybe read something else.

So I went into all the corners of my house and picked up this stack there, and that pile here.  And while I was at it, maybe these history texts can move on and that pile of historical novels too and let me just alphabetize that and before I knew it, I had a library again, rather than a jumble of books.  It has really been awhile.

I had to move the drum carder first, which kind of tells you how things have been.  Needed doing anyway.....look at this:

Definitely time for some housecleaning.

So once I cleared a shelf or two I started filling it with this jumble of unread things. 

Some of these I have owned for a decade or more, some for only a few weeks.  I'm aiming to make a decision about each one - read it, or send it on.  How long will it take you think?  3 years? 10?  Forever?

With all the book shoving about, not as much knitting as originally planned.  But this is still moving along quickly. 

Telescoping universe

I was going to take pictures of an older finished object for you - the post is all done but for pictures and it's rather good, if I do say so myself.

But instead of that or knitting, or organizing the bookcase, which were the sum of my rather tenuous plans for the day, I have been reading the Inheritance of Loss, which is really a devastating book in such a number of ways, starting with the fact that I will never be that good a writer (selfish first, please), running through the realization that my world is too small and ranging into colonialism, and racism and injustice and the weak show that is good intention most of the time, particularly when movement peters out at the far end of intent and doesn't manage the thrust into action and change, selflessness.

More and more I think capitalism is maybe fundamentally selfish and yet, I can't quite get my head 'round the alternatives.  There's pride in nationalism so narrow and limiting and yet, love of culture so profoundly valuable, the customs, the history so precious to who we are, human locusts destroying and changing everything in the act of living.

The extra weight I carry is more than a private difficulty, really more of an affront to those who have so very little.  I go to the store and think about healthy choices and I have Whole Foods and Wegman's and Trader Joe's and an infinity of options and they are good, but they are luxurious opulent abundance in this world, not necessity.  And yet good fresh vegetables ought not to be the high end choice, but even here in the first world there's less and less food in the food at the affordable end of things.  The expanding American girth is a sign of self destruction at a cellular level.

So I go and clean the bathroom, a manageable task, and find myself using a metal dpn to pull the long hair from the slow drain, trying to clear it enough that baking soda will clear the rest.  And it is a sloppy, disgusting human mess I don't want to touch even though it literally comes from me.  In the end the lye dissolves the human remains, the clog is beyond the reach of my digging needle point.

freakish speed.

I would like to explain that I am not a fast knitter.  There is ample, ample evidence to bear this out, if you look at my production time over the three years of this blog. 

I don't make so much knitwear.

Which is why this is freaking me out a bit.

I started this a week ago tonight.  This yarn is teflon, greased lightening, magic fast - just smooth knitting perfection. 

I go in at the waist in back more than poor plastic Ivana, so the sweater is a tiny bit looser on me. And there are still sleeves and button bands and cabled ribbing.  But I'm over a third done by any measure.

You can see the difference in skeins in the picture - oh, how cruel is a flash at night! I'll try to do better this weekend - but in person it's completely unnoticeable.  Just the price you pay for variegated colorways - I should have alternated rows or something, but whatever.  I may alternate skeins in the arms, since those rounds will be so much shorter than the body rounds and I hate a color pool.

In the size I am making the pattern asks me to reduce about 8 stitches to begin the ribbing, and I have chosen partially do so along the sides for some very subtle waist shaping.  I do hate a baggy side.  As well as a color pool.  (Picky, picky).  Other than that - and an accidental extra stitch in the back which I will worry about when I have to and not a minute sooner - just following along as written.

Watching a little too much TV as I go, I think my brain is starting to leak out my ears.  Anyone have an audio book they particularly like to knit along to?  I can't read and knit at the same time.  Get car sick.  Which is too bad, becasue I kind of lost my shit book buying in the past week - not even knitting books.   Tell you about it later.  Maybe have to organize the bookshelves to make room.

Not a light novel or anything - I enjoy reading such things, but my ears like something different to keep them busy.  I have The Professor and the Madman to start, if that helps.  The OED is about my favorite book in the world.

Dr. Who tonight - season finale, and then three hours of knitting time Saturday watching the three parter again in sequence to get the full effect. 
Hi, I'm a total geek.  But what'll I do with no David Tennant this fall?

uncanny, really.

   

Assorted nonsense.

Even though I don't actually believe that the planets determine our paths, I have trouble resisting a horoscope.  There's something so appealing about a fortune cookie solution, a one-line equation for understanding, an answer of any kind.  A simple one. 
The other day I followed a link to this: 
“If Aries likes you, they will be direct (indeed, very direct) about it. If they don’t like you, they’ll be direct about that, too… Aries don’t take the time to reflect on the “rightness” of something – they feel it instinctively…or they do not.”

This is so me I can not even begin to tell you. 

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I've been having this thing recently where I am feeling kind of raw and open.  Moved by something.  It took me a long time to understand that it was happiness.  Not as bubbling as joy, but far more pervasive.  Turns out I have no frame of reference for a feeling this strong that isn't sad.  I find this kind of weird (but encouraging too).   38 years old and still a whole lot to learn.

I hardly know what to do with the time this has freed up though.  New hobby?  Get my bike out of the basement?  Knit more?   (It will pass, I know.  Emotions are by their very nature mobile.  Like a lava lamp.)

image from here

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I found out yesterday that I will be seeing an old friend at the end of the month.  He's from the UK and its been close to two years since we were in the same room, though we email steadily.
I've been trying to get him into bed for years - see Aries comma persistent - and yesterday we had a long talk about why that's not going to happen.  It was one of the truest conversations I've ever had and it was fantastic.
Honesty is so underrated.  Because with this unresolved question removed, all I am left with is a joyful feeling of anticipation and pleasure at the thought of his company.
I find it odd and sad and funny how I still can confuse myself about what I really want from people, about what my feelings mean.
I have learned so much from my friends - I am so lucky this way - and I hope they have learned a tiny bit of something from me.  That would make me happy.  Happier.

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I can now do short row shaping more or less without fear or anguish.  Wraps are idiotic though.  I did Yarn Over short rows this time and they are much neater, though not perfect.  Practice, practice, practice.  But seriously - for sweater fronts?  Forget the wraps and google other short row techniques.

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I Simpsonized myself last night - despite the surrender to the Burger King promotion machine this entailed - and I am finding the likeness oddly....accurate.  It's compelling.  Like getting a glimpse of how someone else sees you, as opposed to how you see yourself.  Had a couple of these moments recently and it is really perspective shifting.  (Also, it is a remarkable piece of software.  Completely useless and yet...)

Left it on the computer at home last night - will add it later for your edification and amusement.

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Typepad is only emailing me about 2/3 of my comments.  This has been going on for a few weeks and it is driving me crazy.  CRAZY.   They've finally stopped telling me the spam filter ate them and gone off to look for a bug (free translation of tech support response), but so far no progress. 

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It is very "I" "I" "I" here today.

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Must go process invoices.  Bon chance.