Enchanting Juno

the yarn we make OWNS the yarn we buy

Also I want to make sweet sweet love to the Verizon network specialist. 

My Internet went bye-bye Sunday night and unusually, it was not a problem with the Mac Time Capsule thingy, which is a clever idea but an imperfect technology and takes a little time off every once in a while, but with the FiOS router which lost it's IP address. Or something.  I was describing this to someone last night and I said iSp which makes me feel retroactively dumb, but there's no way to correct that without looking like a tool, so I shall have to just soldier on.

Tech A got a little forest-for-the-trees about the presence of the secondary Mac router which no-ma'am-we-cannot-provide-support-for, and obviously the failure of the Mac unit to communicate with the Verizon base-station is not our problem.  No matter that I pointed out that a) it had never had a problem in the previous 6 months of my FiOS relationship and b) it was the VERIZON router that was failing to be seen wirelessly, not the Mac router, which was, by the way, disconnected and unplugged and no longer involved IN ANY WAY, please imagine it to be in Tahiti enjoying a pleasant rest, and yet the Verizon router was still not working, let us focus on that please.

He was a Mac hater and once he exhausted the 2 steps on his script had nothing to add except to explain to me that he found the Mac upgrades difficult.  To which I said, I would be sure to take that into account the next time I buy a computer, but it was rather late to do anything about it NOW.  Could we focus on the moment?

Fortunately he recognized the moment I was about to go from Forgive me, can you tell me what comes next now?  to WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CANNOT OFFER ANOTHER SOLUTION YOU MISERABLE SON OF AN ACRYLIC AFGHAN and passed me up the line to Tech 2, a network specialist, who helped me change my encryption, which had mysteriously reset itself and got me back on line in 40 seconds, at which point I professed my love and elevated him to the status of god.

I get antsy when deprived of email.  I am however, trying to spend less time on line.  Someone said something on Facebook the other day that struck a cord:   Am I going to get where I want in life spending 6 hours a day on Ravelry?
Now, I do not spend 6 hours a day on Ravelry, but I have been, if you add it all up, a little more involved with the ether than is strictly useful, or even healthy, for the last little while.  It is so easy to get distracted and read fascinating things and chat with friends and flirt with boys and look at Facebook and scan patterns and order shoes and cruise how-tos on any possible subject until suddenly, it's bedtime and you've been on your ass all evening and how did that happen? 

Life's Rich Pageant includes many things that are outside the magic box and this is good to remember.

In other news:

So, new president last week.  That was cool.  I am keeping the counter in the sidebar for a little while, I like seeing it at zero hour.  And I have added the White House Blog to the sidebar.  Someone asked me why I didn't blog the Inauguration/transition.  Truth is, I didn't have much to say:  It was a good show, I'm a fan, Dick Cheney in a wheelchair was noteworthy but in the end a bit unsatisfying (I would have liked it maybe if the earth had opened and Satan had come to collect his soul personally, but then, I only believe in Satan as a metaphor anyway). The speech was good, I got a bit choked up watching our new president's face assume the office - it was nice to see a political figure who takes that seriously, who has some gravitas.  I enjoyed watching the previous president's face while Obama indicted his entire philosophy of governance.   I was glad that there didn't seem to be anyone with a gun, I was on edge for the worst possible thing all the time.  And for sure, this is a remarkable moment in marking progress in race relations.  But only a moment. 

And nothing's fixed in a moment.  Racism and sexism still haunt this nation, and there is much work to be done to repair the errors of the past and build a nation we can all breathe in.   He's made a start I approve of.  It IS nice not to flinch with shame when the news comes on.   I really liked that that was the tone he took, no more easy solutions. Or non-solutions.

In a very positive way, I say....we'll see. 

Been losing yarn recently - the gorgeous gray Shetland I spun several years ago eludes me - I am trying to lay my hands on it so I can finish the last bag of locks and make a determination as to what I can do with it.  (Also I had a house guest this weekend I wanted to show it to).  No where to be found.

2 skeins, dk-ish to light worsted weight 2 ply, a bit sheepy smelling, answers to the name Freedom?  Seen it?

Also I made a thoroughly awesome and somewhat sparkly skein of fat fluffy yarn at SOAR.  Well I began it at SOAR in Maggie Casey's excellent retreat session, and finished it over Christmas (yay for remembering a new technique for several inert months.  Can't find my notes either).  Can I find it?  No.  I took it to the office for a daylight picture a month ago.  It's not at work any more.  It is in none of the usual places.  SUPER bulky but light and airy.  Natural gray with streaks of blue firestar.  Yarn I made the way it is ON PURPOSE.  And pretty.

 
It WAS going to be a hat.   A really, really good one.  The fiber was from Morro.  Sob.

I'm obsessed with gray yarn right now. 

The only knitting going on is slow progress on an old sweater.  Somehow I have made up my mind I need to finish it before I go on and lord, it bores me.  It's blue.  My favorite blue, mind you. 

Took this months ago when lady bugs were in season.  So it is even a LUCKY blue sweater now.  Not that you could tell by my progress. 

I want gray.  Or cashmere. Or new.  Or all three.  Or two of the three. 

I know, I know, start something.  But the thing I detest most about myself recently is the not finishing a damn rubbishing thing.  So it's a struggle for my soul now, not just a sweater.  Rassenfracking transitional stages.  Fucking evolution of the self.  Dammit.

I spun this weekend, that was cool. 

As the good doctor said to me recently, really, I am great.  I know how it might look from far away, but I am.  There are half written posts littering the place, posts that might even be good and worth reading, posts with books, and racism and growth and steam curled around cooking pots and books and lost skills and respecting history, but me, I have been as settled as the wind for a while and nothing is finished.  I might have mentioned it?

(I know the title makes no sense, I started out intending to write about the spinning.  Everything in the fullness of time, my poppets)

Auld Aquaintance

So, can I let you in on a little secret?  I didn't hate aught eight.  Not a bit.   Everywhere I go people are muttering good riddance, and I feel bad going, no, it all turned out to be kinda terrific. 

This doesn't mean that I am not worried about the future, my house value, my business, our country, the economy, the old president, the new president, Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, whether or not my brother and mother will murder each other, alternative fuels, the state of the world or the inevitable return of the appalling Governor of Alaska.  But a year is a big thing, a vast and astonishingly fast moving thing and it can hold a lot.
Mine mostly held good stuff.  Or stuff I ended up feeling good about, if you want to look at it from another angle.

I like New Year's in general though.   I like the idea of a holiday of self assessment.  A pause to consider before getting on with the business of living.

In truth I spent most of 08 thinking about one thing.  Well, a person.  Sort of in relation to a thing.  Or maybe concept?   But what I was doing really was thinking about my own belief in myself, my perceptions, my identity and comfort with all these, and learning how to plant a flag on who I am.
There were arguments as friendships redefined themselves and moments of panic and fear as I began to let some of my edges show on purpose.  It's not that they never showed before but it was more like they were escaping in unpredictable ways, rather than just being a part of me.  Trying to hold them back went poorly a lot of the time and the first attempts to just be were bumpy. 

Did you know I am funny?   I had no idea.  Also, I've been cheerful for about 5 months now, long enough that I have started to stop referring to it as freakishly happy and just started to call it me.  I dunno, I could go on and on about the little things and how they all add up but that seems boring and also, a bit forest-for-the-trees, so let's just say - that hope doesn't seem either forlorn or quite as audacious as it used to be .  And for that reason alone I will remember 2008 with fondness.

I read Neil Gaimen's blog pretty regularly, which is odd only in that the only one of his books I have read is 2/3 of Coraline.  (Which was great but I was reading at someone's house and that was as far as I got while I was there.  I liked it enough that now INTEND to read a number of his titles.  So many books.....)  I dunno how I missed him during the heavy science fiction and fantasy years.  I think I associated him with comic books at a time in my life I thought that that was a geeky boy thing, and never got back to it after I discovered I LIKE geeky boys.  And their things.

I like the blog though, I think the way he handles his fame is really wise and interesting and he seems like a genuinely nice man and honestly self-effacing, a thing there are not very many of, particularly on blogs.   Anyway, I like what he said about new years very much, so I am going to quote it, advise you to read the whole post with particular attention to the obituary link, and wish you a very wonderful evening and the best possible 2009 we can all manage working together.

"I'm lucky. I have good friends, and I have a fine family. I get to work with amazing people. 

And in addition to everything I said in http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/12/as-i-was-saying.html....

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be,  be wise, and that you will always be kind."

He should think about writing, yes?