Enchanting Juno

Good Stuff.

So I didn't go to Maryland S&W.  Or Connecticut.  Nor will I go to New Hampshire this coming weekend.  I would actually like to go to NH but I can't face the drive this year.  Between gas prices and available time, I just can't.   I'm going to spend the gas money on dirt and flowers and spend some of next weekend grubbing in my back yard.

Instead I hope to go to SOAR again in the fall.

The festivals are truly wonderful, particularly as a way to connect with what I like to call the like-mindedly odd, and of course to shop.   They can encourage frenzy in the unprepared.  Or even the prepared with insufficient emotional resources.
If I needed to supplement the wool erupting in every corner of my house. 
Which I really don't. 
I had friends over last week and I was showing off stash - the way one does (Or is that just me?) - and I just got kinda flummoxed.  I have at least three fleeces unwashed in my kitchen in the corner (Maybe the garden grubbing can be supplemented with some fleece washing?)  At least 5 processed into roving.  One three that are washed but still locks or partially locks or half carded.  It goes on.
And that doesn't count the bags from the Spinning Bunny, the roving from the Woolen Rabbit, Spinners Hill, Buckwheat Bridge, Carolina Homespun, Spunky Eclectic, Abby Franquemont.  All gorgeous and inspirational materials.

This is just off the top of my head.  And does not include yarn.  And I do not have the least among stashes, if you dig what I am saying. (Is this like every stash reduction post in blog land?  I hope not.  As a note, I am comfortable collecting wool as a hobby, but want to collect not heedlessly grab and horde.   Fine line sometimes?)

Perspective, children, is what I need.  Perspective and goals (I suck at goals, my whole life I have sucked at goals. So maybe intent is a better word.)

Perspective and Intent.

I love fiber.  I want it to continue to be a force for good in my life.  Which means it can not always be a primary line item in my budget, an excuse for heedless acquisition without purpose or a place to hide from the rest of my life.
Sometimes that's what hobbies are, a refuge.  And that is good, shelter from the storm is essential.
But it can go wrong too - I was watching some frenzy of acquisition on some board somewhere recently, someone gnashing and weeping because she had missed out on some exclusive yarn somewhere and I was startled to discover that I understood her upset.  My rational mind was all - dude that's crazy, it's yarn - and my irrational mind was all - let me corner the market on this, my preciousssss.
This was right around when I chased down some rare sock yarn last week.  Because you know, I am SUCH a sock knitter.
But it tied into what I have been thinking about recently, about that perspective and intent.  I'm not 14 any more.  I don't give a shit that I am not a cool kid.  I have LOTS of shoes and yarn and more importantly, a home and friends and family and thoughts and dreams and hopes and the best cat in the world.  I woke up in a pool of sunlight in the first world, I am tall and strong and healthy and I am so fucking lucky I can hardly look at it sometimes.

But there have totally been times I was in danger of pulling the refuge in after me, of having the shelter become a cage, of becoming so obsessed with the tangibles of fiber stuff that I forgot the intangibles of it, the depth that is possible, to appreciate, to see.   Forgetting that there will always be something else exquisite to discover, always be another fleece, another yarn.   I hate that me, that forgetting, greedy me.

For this to work, I need to learn, I need to have balance and I need to be traveling somewhere - and I don't mean New Hampshire.  I mean if I try and have every festival, every moment crammed in, I won't SEE any of it.  I mean I need to take the learning and DO something with it. 
I need to knit a sweater that challenges me. 
Spin more than 3 ounces of a single fiber.  Knit something with it.
Learn to use the knitting machine that's been behind the couch for 2 years. 
Sew up some of the fabric piled in the guest room, be damned to mistakes.

Be damned to mistakes is it, really.  No one is imperiled by my fiber mistakes.  Not even me.

I read something great about mindfulness recently and if I could remember where I would give you a link - but she made the point that mindfulness wasn't getting it right every time, it was trying as much as possible, making small corrections, failing sometimes and keeping the arc of progress going even when intent falters in a moment.

So SOAR is my choice this year, to learn and apply that learning, to find inspiration and the tools to follow it somewhere, instead of every festival in a chaotic spring of blurred experience.  Less buying (Notice I don't say NONE), more using.  Lots of talking to people.  Maybe some beer.  Moments savored not gulped.  Sunlight.  Sheep pictures.  Laying on the grass.

Still going to Rhinebeck though. 

Come ON.

Base Notes

When I was a wee lass I went to boarding school.  I think it was the first time I became aware of stuff as desirable in a way that related to other people.  Not that I never wanted anything prior to sleep away school: I liked shiny things as much as anyone - makeup and I were old friends,  I liked pretty clothes and blown-glass horses standing on a sunlit shelf.  What book bag one carried was socially significant.  Hell, I got up and curled my hair before school every day, something I have a great deal of trouble believing now, and yet, I remember it.  I know I did it.  There were trendy girls and not, and I knew I was Not.  But I don't think I had yet had a moment where I looked at someone else's stuff and coveted it, pined for it.   Mostly, if I had enough to read I was happy, though envious of the more petite and socially graceful.

But in boarding school there were girls with money, girls who brought their own rugs to the dorm, girls who had more shoes than I had novels, girls who liked New Wave, girls with Good Jewelry, girls wearing those Guatemalan woven hooded shirts with the pouch in the front, girls who collected vintage dresses.  It was a word of stuff such as I had never imagined.  Some of it was healthy - choosing things to represent who you are and want to be is normal I think - and some of it was money substituted for love or peace (and it was still a lot more innocent than the mass marketed consumerism we live with today).  It was a world before aspartame.  A world before the internet and all the acquisitive impulses that has fertilized.

The first day I was there I fell in love with "American Pie"* as well as with the idea that you could hear of a song and track it down and listen to it - oh, this world before iTunes, where you had to look for old vinyl if you wanted it.  And it wasn't long before I had a poster of Adam Ant, another by Robert Doisneau, a crush on Simon Le Bon, the beginnings of a fine collection of dangling earrings (come to think of it, I had those when I got there), a new opinion of the clothes my mother bought for me and a collage of words and images cut out of magazines hanging on my wall. 

One of the things that lots of girls had that I had never considered for myself was perfume - my mother had perfume she rarely wore and yet cherished, my grandmother traveled in a terrible cloud of Opium.  This was grown up stuff.  Not for me.  But the little bottles fascinated, the tiny samples of fantasy you could send away for.  I ordered Tatiana - something about the shape of the bottle, the description spoke to me and I waited for it and adored it except that I hated the way it smelled.  Hated it.  There was another, something with roses, that provoked the same loathing.

It was a lesson that took some time to assimilate, that affectation is useless, that you can't wear it or be it if it isn't you.  Scent is visceral.

Somewhere along the way I fell hard for Obsession and wore it it a toxic 80s cloud through college, alternately with Fendi and Chanel 22 and one or two others I think I owned for the bottle rather than the smell.  The imagery of perfume advertising captured me far more than fashion did, this idea of bottled identity, projected personality, applied confidence, the way perfume allowed boys and girls to bridge the gap between each other, an excuse to move closer, a catalyst for the profound intimacy of breathing someone in, the way scent changes with time and sweat to define evenings, moments, memories.  There was a boy in college I loved.  We kissed once and the whole evening is scent-colored in my head, tied together with vanilla and amber and terror and hope and desert air.  I think that might have been the beginning of the end of Obsession, that and I swear they changed the formula along the way.  Much sweeter now, almost intolerably so.

Later I wore Fracas - which was worn in a book and I fell in love with it and found it and adored it for real, then Agent Provocateur.....then nothing for most of my 30s, except on special occasions.   I tried clean scents, green teas and grapefruits, daytime scents, but they didn't stick.  Mostly they smell like the detergent aisle at the supermarket to me, scent afraid to be a smell.  They have no dirt in them, no life.  I like dirt.  Eventually I got rid of the old bottles - keeping just Fracas, Agent Provocateur which I still loved, and an old bottle of Obsession I never touch but still smile when I see.

Perfume was a branding idea in someways, a projection of what I wanted to be but was not quite yet and around the time I started therapy I think I stopped trying to project something - sexy! mature! confident! clean! professional! - and started trying to be it instead.  Whatever it was going to turn out to be.  I stopped wearing makeup regularly at the same time, and took up exercise instead, and casual clothing.  I went inside my head, not to hide, but to do a little work.  How could I assume an identity when I was actively trying to map my own?

I've come to miss it though, the enhancement of image, the mood interaction, the fantasy, the engagement of the senses.  I have a much better idea of who I am now and it occurred to me recently that I want that again.  Lipstick.  Dresses.  To enjoy the scent rising off my own skin.   It's a flirtatious impulse obviously, but not just in a sexual sense.  I have this desire to engage with the world more, to meet people's eyes, to talk to them, to hear them, to have my shutters open.   To have gravity on my personal planet.

Which led to my falling down the rabbit hole into Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs.   Some of you are probably familiar with them - the gothic perfumer.  They have perfume oils with literary antecedents and florid atmosphere, fantastic descriptions and complicated associations.  And they sell samples of most of their scents.  Perfect for the mild obsessive on a personal quest.

It's a site that demands a certain amount of surrender to the inside of the creator's mind, and it overwhelmed me for a long while.  Couldn't give in.  I would try to pick out six to try and get confused by what was sample-able and what wasn't.  How everything interacted.  How to find something when I wanted it.  So I would click away.   But a few months ago, I wasn't overwhelmed, I was enthralled.    I ordered a bit of this and a bit of that and was charmed to my toes by the story each perfume was crafted to represent.  It is brilliant, almost performance art.  Is this my story?  Do I only think so until the reality of a scent hits my system?  What do I like?  Why? What am I surprised to like or hate?

 

I've been trying one or two every day - depending on how I like it or how long it lasts.  I have dozens and dozens.  I'm going to have elimination rounds.  I'm on a mission.  I'm having so much fun. 

 

* While I was looking this up to add the link and reading about how Killing Me Softly was an inspired by American Pie, Killing me Softly came on the radio.  Literally as I read the words. How spooky is that?

The train of thought is leaving the station.

How loathsome is the word spunky.
Though now that I have said this I recall The Spunky Eclectic, which is a fantastic place run by a fantastic person, and anything but loathsome.  How about I amend that to 'spunky' in conjunction with 'heroine'?

I was looking at my amazon shopping cart - I have found the perfect gift for the world's most difficult recipient and because I have the self control of a wayward 6 year old, I will be sending it along to them as soon as I get my holidays bills sorted, instead of properly waiting for an appropriate gift giving occasion.  I also found the perfect gift for my dad, if he were still living, but since he is not, I shall buy it and read it myself.

Anyway - while I was gloating over these two items and their carefully selected -  even winnowed - companions in the shopping cart, awaiting my first discretionary dollars of 2008, I found a listing of recommended discussion topics (Amazon is another place apparently afflicted with discussion boards.  I have complicated feelings about discussion boards, which I will spare you), one of which was ...wait, allow me to get the correct text....

Ah, can't find it again - something like "desperately in search of spunky heroines", which immediately caused my gorge to rise.  As well as my dander.  Someone told me last week that her daughter's approaching toddler-hood filled her with dread re: the thorny subject of dolls.  Which she herself didn't play with and which she associates with the direst kind of retro-femininity.  This is despite the fact that she knows - intellectually - that there are many fierce and partisan feminists and millions of strong, kind women who played with dolls quite happily and without harm, in her gut, it feels wrong.  And though I played with dolls happily and for years, I completely understand the power of this irrational conviction:  the whole idea of a spunky heroine acts on me similarly - spunkiness, which implies a brave and energetic spirit, is certainly not a bad quality.  But it is an UNDERDOG quality, with a diminutive feel - when applied to a female protagonist it has a paternal air of head patting and a distinct whiff of glass ceiling.  Someone who is ascendant cannot be plucky.

This is the exact same feeling I get when someone talks about Hillary Clinton's neckline instead of her policies, or possible character as a world leader. 

(And how about the Iowa Caucus?  I NEVER thought Obama would take it - but the combination of wins by both Huckabee and Obama I find a little hallucinatory.  Welcome to the split personality of the American people.  What a strange country we are.)

It is a wonder I ever get out of the house, when a passing line on a website loses me an hour of annoyance, irritable mental hunting for understanding precisely the root of annoyance and then writing about it.

If I ever find happiness, it'll be when I stub my toe on it.

Heh.  Met a goal, not a goal person.  Not the writing of greatest clarity.  Oops.

It is totally possible to meet a goal without having one.

I find with most things that I do much better if I sneak up on them.  Emotional growth, human understanding, knitting, exercise....if I make a chart, a goal statement and specific plan, the first thing I do is exactly the opposite of what will make progress happen. Maybe clean the cabinet under the sink.

I've never liked being told what to do, apparently not even by myself.  Which is totally strange really, because you would be hard pressed to find a less indirect human being than I.  Even when I am trying to be delicate and nuanced, all I end up doing is choosing the delicately nuanced word that most brutally rips the band-aid off.  I have a near-genius for it. 
Someday I must tell you about the incident that ended with my closest friend calling me an overeducated WASP bitch - mostly as a joke.  I was trying so very hard to be smooth about the question I had been asked, too. 

It never works. 

A few months ago I was talking about this with a friend - who had just said that I default to forthright, which made me gloomy.  Because, well, it IS true and it seems like such an unsophisticated way of being.  Am complex person, dammit.  So I was glooming - not unlike Eyore - about the problem that is my tendency to leak the truth, and his response was "well, not for you it isn't".  Which has been an interesting way to think about it.  Not my problem?  If another person is troubled by honesty or perception then that might be...their difficulty?
But isn't...everything my fault responsibility problem?  Huh.  (This person also suggested that the DVDs I have in my possession which belong to someone else that I have tried to return and not gotten a straight answer to where to send them are in fact, at this point, mine.  And maybe I could just let go of fretting about my obligation to the original owner at this point.  Huh again.)

Anyway - I do have goals, but making a list and systematically setting out to meet it doesn't work for me.  Instead, I have trends, trends in increased health, fitness, intellectual and emotional development, satisfaction, dating, cooking, bill paying, organization, etcetera....and of course, knitting. I like trends.  Trends leave room for back and forth progress without feeling like a failure, trends allow for maneuvering room, trends allow for flexibility.  Trends allow for falling without failing, for getting up and beginning again without having to start over.  Starting over sucks the energy right out of the soul (well, in this context anyway).

The way I see it, we are always Works In Progress, and there is no end to that.  And absolutes give me indigestion.  So do rules, for that matter.  So no resolutions, no goals.  Be or not be.  Stay in motion.  Some days better than others.

In the back of my mind I began the year thinking that I would like to get it right with a few sweaters, that I would like to get a handle on my fit issues, and choice issues for projects, and have some sweaters I liked to wear and you know, stop dicking around with being half-assed about knitting. No plan, just something to keep in mind.  To inform my choices with.

And here I am, in December. a lot of finished work that works for the last 12 months.  But no plan.  Never a plan.
Just a thought to guide me.
 

 

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. 

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.

cogitation.

I am having the hardest time writing these days - most unusual for me to have nothing to say.  Usually - in life as well as blog - I have so many words I trip on them trying to get the thoughts out before they evaporate, stumble on my tongue, typo as my hands trip on each other (I am the world's worst typist).

The thing is, they rarely do evaporate.  The ones that are worth something, the thoughts that have legs, they float in my head, they stay and sit and become more complex thoughts.  Which sometimes doesn't happen if I am rushing around.

There are times, of course, when the words tumble out with urgency because the thinking is already done and I am on fire to tell, tell, tell someone what's brewed in my head, what realization, what revelation.  But on the occasions I don't know what I think until it comes out of me, I am starting to understand that I might be jumping the gun, that if I slow down, hold on, form and shape before I speak, I might see more of the detail, feel the layers more acutely. Learn.

I've been walking around recently feeling everything more acutely, really.  Not in a bad way - of course, I don't think anything one can feel is really bad, even if it hurts like fire - more of an enhanced awareness.  I feel both fiercer - capable of more than I may have thought in the past, however you define more - and gentler, rooted in the earth.  This is a new one for me, I'm used to feeling ungrounded, not like I could ground others.  This week anyway.

All this is so amorphous, I can't get stories out of it.

I've noticed at the gym my routine is changing - in the beginning I did weight training exclusively, and slacked hard on cardio for cardio's sake.  It is frankly boring - does anyone love the elliptical machine, or do we tolerate it out of necessity (perceived or genuine)?  Starting 6 months ago I began lightening my weights - strangely my back pain eased at the same time - and learning more about core development.  Now I am never happier than after I've spent an hour with my abs, not because I am working my six pack, but because the more I work with my core the better I feel, more stable, calmer, balanced. Upright, graceful. Thinking more slowly with my body. 

Yoga is clearly around the corner.

Evolutionary change is the only way I know.  Making a big decision to become something new has never worked for me, sudden shifts upset my personal apple cart and I've never been able to not snap back onto the accustomed path.  But constant minute adjustments over time - if I look back, the arc of  change has been remarkable.  A friend told me this spring - when we were driving home from Maryland after the Sheep & Wool festival, actually - that she can't believe how different I am from the woman she met 7 years ago.  When I was, really, a bit of a hermit. 

(We had to stop for a minute and marvel at the 7 years part.)

Since my friendships have evolved as surely as I have, she is one of the few with that length of perspective on it.  And she's right.   

I was at the Rolfer earlier this week for a tune up and I had the cashmere scarf with me, in progress.  She touched it with that look on her face - you know the one, the one that says that the scarf turns out to be for her, not me, I just didn't know it when I started it.  I finished last night and need to pin and steam it before I send it over. 

I'm glad I've slowed down enough to see those moments sometimes now.

So how did your week start?

Sunday night I was at the computer when the cat ran in looking a bit wild eyed and disheveled.  She had something hanging out of her mouth and since she has a habit of swallowing bits of yarn whole, I made a grab to try and get it away from her. 
I missed. 

I always do, but I have to try, yarn not being so good for the digestive system.

While missing my grab it occurred to me that that is not a yarn color I use a lot - too much of a neutral - and in fact it looked a bit smooth and...was moving.  Only then did I realize that she had a mouse  - in my defense it took this long because she had the entire thing, whiskers and all, in her mouth, leaving only the tail exposed.   Once she knew I knew - she very kindly likes to share with me - she ran back upstairs.

I followed to find that she had released her toy and was stalking it around the living room.  At this exact moment the mouse - which was tiny - cowered under the treadle of the Majacraft and the cat lurked on the other side of the wheel.  I know this is all very organic and circle of life and all, but I have trouble watching Miss Kitty play with her food, and so I grabbed a glass from the table and scooped the wee beastie up when he made a run for it.  Which left me with a terrified animal in a drinking glass and a bitchy, complaining one underfoot. 
My life is exciting, yes?

On the way to the back door I thought - I should blog this.  Because that's the kind of freak I am, people.  I started to pick up the camera - I mean, I can't blog this without a picture of a mouse so tiny he can't jump out of the cup in my hand, right?
But someone - I was on the phone this whole time, did I mention that bit? - said I couldn't take a picture of the mouse in the cup, it was creepy and wrong, so I released it undocumented (and slightly damp as he'd been sitting in a few drops of iced tea), and boy am I sorry now.  I mean, really.

(unrelated Toronto picture for visual interest)

And then I went to call and find out if I needed to report to jury duty the next morning, as instructed by the state.  My number was not up yet, so Monday morning it was off to work with me. 
Only to discover the office fridge appeared to have died over the weekend and had defrosted all over the floor and also?  Was dead.   And something didn't smell so good.

So I went to Sears, but they weren't open yet -  I would think they would have opened by then, wouldn't you? And I couldn't wait and anyway by then I realized I could probably get a fridge delivered  from the office supply people - I love them THIS BIG, the office supply people - which is why I was at the deli buying a (cold) Snapple while some morning program played on the wall TV.  Barry Manilow was playing Copacabana, which is a song I love un-repentantly.  So I watched and enjoyed the ladies in the street in New York, who were getting all the way down with it, if you know what I mean.

(another unrelated Toronto picture for visual interest)

Mr. Manilow really needs to lay off the botox, I'll tell you that.  He's all tan and highlighted so his whole person is the same kind of fig newton-y (the newton part, not the fig part) biscuit color and the only part of his face that moved was his lips.  His eyes too, but the lids around them were immobile, so he looked impossibly shifty instead of like a groovy hep cat, which is what closer to what I think he was aiming for.

Now that was creepy.

somewhere without bounds

I plied this weekend.  But I have no pictures for you - the new yarn is not dry and the light sucked anyway and both for the same reason, which is that it was so humid the air felt wet.  One of my neighbors was on her way out for a run when I saw her Saturday, mad creature. 
Of course, I saw her on my way home from a hour at the gym, so I might be mad too.

It was so damp that the sky above the lights - I went to a minor league ball game Friday night - was hazy like the bathroom after a shower, so damp I felt like my eyes were fogging over, no matter how furiously I blinked, so damp I walked in a dream forest rather than a parking lot with my plate of funnel cake, cake that J and I ate so fast it didn't have time to cool, though the powdered sugar vanished into the heat under our fingers far faster even than we could consume it.

Funnel Cake is actually a little bit disgusting.  Despite the number of festivals I have been to in recent years, I haven't eaten much fair food and my childhood self did not find the funnel cake nearly as greasy as my adult self did.  It would be better for a few minutes on a draining rack, I think.  Not that that is going to stop me.  If you assign moral value to food - which I don't anymore, though I was raised to - then funnel cake is delicious sin, kissing an old boyfriend you know you ought not touch but do, do, do, have to.  The sweetness lingers on your lips, un-regretted.

All summer each weekend has slipped past with no activity.  Monday meant a guilty sink full of dishes and a disgruntled feeling of having failed to meet my own expectations and leaving the house on a weekend became a bit noteworthy.    This weekend I stayed in on Sunday as a heat avoidance technique - see misty water colored air of Friday and Saturday - rather than an act of passive drift, but I also did my dishes as I cooked and washed the slipcover on the couch and put away the clean laundry the same day I folded it which was also the same day it was washed.  Nothing is molding in the washer.  I shaved my legs.  I read a book.  I scrubbed the tub.  I made eye contact with people when I went to the market Saturday.

There is still cat hair collecting in the corners of the stairs.   Not too much at once, you understand.  But still.  I feel awake.

For all the delicate flowers.

Or as my brother told me once "if I exposed you to direct sunlight, you'd turn to dust, dude."

Nothing but love and respect from that boy, nothing but love and respect.

It turns out there were 5 not 6 (the sixth bottle was a gift with purchase cleanser from RoC.  I love me a gift with purchase.  You should see my new Vichy knitting bag).  The fifth bottle is a small SPF 20 facial fluid from Vichy and still in my purse.

The Roc and Vichy I was able to try in the store, the Ombrelle and Aveeno I bought untested, but have tried since.

The Ombrelle is a pump spray and goes on clear.  It claims to be odor and dye free, and sweat and water proof.  Active ingredients:  3% Parsol 1789, 10% Oxcrylene, 6% Oxybenzone, 5% Octisalate.  No smell that I could perceive, dried fast, didn't sting and may very well be available here, as none of those are the non FDA improved ingredients.  It leaves faint residue on the skin, but not a bothersome one.

The Aveeno is a clear aerosol spray which I am not loving.  It went on clear, but it has a very strong baby powder-ish scent - can't quite place it, but it has been in my bathroom before.  It stung for a minute and the scent lingers.  The active ingrediants are similar to the Ombrelle, with the addition of Homosalate 15%: Parsol 1789  3%, Oxcrylene 2.35%, Oxybenzone 6%, Octisalate 5%.

The Vichy Capital Soleil 30 is what I wore all day today - its a cream for face and body, goes on white, absorbs quickly and leaves no sticky residue.  The first sunblock I've worn all day without thinking about.  It had a very faint scent that dispersed quickly, so fast I never got a handle on it.  Active ingredients Octocrylene 10%, Titanium Dioxide 3.3 %, Parsol 1789 3%, Drometrizole Trisiloxan (Mexoryl XL) 1.5%, Terephalylidene Dicamphor Sulfonic Acid (Mexoryl SX) 1%. 
Its only been a day, so no promises, yes?  But I will mention it if any sensitivity builds up.

The last one is from RoC: Ultra High Protection Suncare Spray Lotion SPF60.  I like the application - a pump spray of a thin white lotion, it doesn't spray coat, it puddles and must be rubbed in.  But it disappears quickly and I wore the sample for a day without noticing any sting or reaction.  Again, I'll be trying it out and I will let you know if any sensitivity develops.   The active ingredients are ....completely covered by the security sticker, which I cannot get off.  So I dunno what to tell you.  The proprietary ingredient is Tinosord M+S and the lotion has glycerin and Vitamin E, that much I can read.

Gotta go wash my arm - that Aveeno smell and sting is not dispersing.

Oh, and the skein in the middle is the Dream In Color Cloud Jungle.   I loooove it.  Trying desperately to finish something so I can justify beginning Laura's Vino Cardigan.

Morning sunshine.

I had some pervert email me on the dating website recently going on about our deep compatibility and waxing poetic about the wonderful conversations we would have over the coffee he makes from fresh ground beans every morning.

As a typical morning for me involves leaving 10 minutes late with wet hair and an unmade bed (and that's a reasonably good day) and I don't drink coffee, I think he might be barking up the wrong tree.

(I should clarify that while I found his morning habits disturbing - all that alertness, she shuddered - the designation of 'pervert' is made for other reasons and not with whimsy.  And I am not at all judgmental about these things.)

I am going to have to reconsider coffee though. 

I made all kinds of plans for stepping down from the sweet, sweet poison of Diet Coke, but found myself unable to comply.  The tree of knowledge is powerful - once I read what I read about what this stuff actually does, I couldn't bring myself to drink it again.  Cold turkey by default.

The first four days were worse by far than quitting smoking in terms of the physical misery - headaches and exhaustion and muscle weakness, despite substituting iced tea for caffeine replacement (the day I accidentally drank decaf tea was particularly brutal).  But Saturday I woke up and thought that I might want to live after all, and unlike my experiences with cigarettes, that seems to have been the end of the craving.  I am finding it physically impossible to drink as much tea as I once drank cola though, so I am running at a caffeine deficit.  I'll get used to it, I know, but I'm an odd combination of more alert - from not being full of weird chemicals, I expect - and completely shattered.   

My hands looks smaller to me, my rings fit more loosely and overall I seem less water retaining around all my edges, my joints seem more flexible and aches and pains less - I'm going to the gym for the first time in 10 days tonight though, so I expect this will be corrected soon - my appetite is less and my heart rate down about 10 beats a minute, so I think I'm on the right track.   If I could only wake up. 

Oh, and several of you asked would I be willing to repeat hard blocking on a sweater every time I washed it.  I probably would, it just doesn't seem like that much trouble to me.  It also probably wouldn't be that necessary that frequently - how often do sweaters really need washing?   Then again, Matilda Jane is the first thing I've finished that I actually do wear a reasonable amount, so my perspective may be off.  Generally wrinkles and cat hair are my primary problems, which can be addressed in other ways more effectively.   
There seem to be as many definitions of blocking as there are knitters - which I think is as it should be, I'm a big believer in finding your own best method.  I AM going to take my yarn more fully under consideration before I act - understanding the properties of construction and the materials can't be a waste of effort.  I want to test a swatch of the blue stuff I'm working with now in the wool cycle - I think a spin in a lingerie bag might be a very good way for this yarn to get clean and stay fluffy, despite the handwash only label.  JoVE and Webbo are right to question care labels - people wore silk and wool long before there was dry cleaning and everyone survived it. Of course, that was before washing machines too, but experimenting to find the simplest effective method is totally worthwhile.

Check your wallets.

The oddest thing happened Friday.  A call from the bank to verify a transaction.

A contribution of 1 dollar to the Islamic Friendship Society.  On my debit card.

Not my contribution.

The bank spotted it as an atypical transaction and froze the card, so no harm done.  But freaky.  Apparently when someone gains access to a card number they often do a trial transaction to see if anyone is paying attention.  No idea how the number was obtained - with the international yarn commerce and ebay and etsy and Amazon and paypal and all, I use on line shopping a LOT and it must have been something in there.  But no idea what or where. 

I have this idea that maybe once a year I should call my bank and credit card companies and get them to issue new numbers on my accounts.   And maybe for online things I ought to designate ONE card NOT linked to my checking account that I keep a very close track of, and maybe chill with the online shopping in general.  It certainly wouldn't hurt me to save rather than spend for a while.  The stash is splendid and would carry me through a period of non-acquisition.

And then on Saturday I forgot I was debit-cardless and spend my last cash-in-hand on Harry Potter and some wiper fluid for the car and was left to face the weekend with only ONE DIET COKE.  Fortunately, on Sunday I found 10 bucks in the bottom of my purse, otherwise the biologic longing for aspartame might have finished me off. 
Can anyone recommend any way to wean oneself off the artificial sweetener without the crushing headache and the jitters?  Because more and more, I think the diet coke is probably worse than the smokes.  This stuff is not right.  And really, I quit smoking, I can do hard things, but I can't seem to quit diet soda.  I used to think it was the caffeine - except the last time I tried to stop I discovered that Fresca satisfied the craving.  Not caffeine, aspartame.
Anyone done this? Can you tell me how long it takes for the peculiar longing and the spiky headache to subside?

So it was a quiet weekend.  While tidying, I found some more yarn lying about the place - it's everywhere.  Read Harry Potter, watched Firefly on DVD (how did I miss this the first time around?  Fantastic.), knit quite a bit.  Did the dishes.  Dazzling, huh?
It has been a number of quiet weekends in a row for me and I am starting to realize I am a bit depressed, not just in a bad mood.
I think I have to admit I want certain things in my life to change and it will take not introspection, not therapy, not self assessment, but actual slog with work and home  over many months to make it happen.  Actual slog that will seriously cut into my recreational activities.   I hate that.
I am so spoiled I make myself a little nauseated, really.   You mean, I have to stop playing and WORK for the future I want? 

Jeeze, OK.

10, maybe 11 inches off by the time he was done cutting.  And still below shoulder length. 

Maybe it WAS time for a change.

And no, smart asses, I won't be covering the fleece for the rest of the season.

And since its cheap to blog just my hair twice in a row (some would say, cheap to do it once, to which I say....pashaw), a update on the state of fiber here.

Buckwheat Bridge wool/mohair singles, which I find devastatingly pretty.  Next for this, another bobbin of similar for a two ply laceweight.

Three bobbins of sportish weight singles from the Rambouillet/Llama from Morro Fiberworks.   Most of one 13 ounce bag of roving.  I was going to make a three ply, but I think it'll be a very heavy worsted and much too heavy and warm.  Samples as soon as I have time to ply.  I have in mind some kind of jackety cardigan.  If I go with the two ply, a very long one.

Blue sweater and orange shawl are the same but slightly larger.

And I planted flowers on the front step today and cleaned up a bit.  Still looking for a suitable pink flamingo for the window box.  Or maybe a gnome.

Knowedge of fiber is SO useful.

So a few weeks ago I was driving around NH and every time I got out of the shot gun seat my hair was tangled in the back.   This car has higher seat backs than mine and well, really, it was kind of felted.  Which the smartass in the back seat was quick to point out.

If you go here, you can see what it looked like that weekend.

I combed it out, to the detriment of my follicles, and thought no more about it.    I have a life-long difficulty with bringing myself to get my hair cut, which my hairdresser will be happy to discuss with you at length and with profanity.  I'm always coming in 3 months too late for a trim.  Only this time it as been more than 8. 
What can I say.  I like it long.

So a few weeks ago I noticed that the same felty spot is always getting kind of tangled.  And seems to be a frequent location of breaks in the fiber.

And I'm on the phone with the smartass from the backseat talking about how maybe its time to get a trim because if you compare the texture of the root growth to the tips, you can really feel the difference in the cuticle, how ragged it is.  And how I'm noticing that that weak spot in the back (voice on phone goes, you mean the FELTED spot) is prone to breaks in the staple.  And you can really see the difference in condition from one end of the fiber to the other.

And she says - "you're calling it fiber?"

Pause.

"Well, it IS fiber."

"But you're evaluating it using fleece judging techniques."

Pause.

"Well, it IS kind of the same thing........."

And there is choked laughter followed by the faint (snorted) words..."you have to blog this."

Which seemed perfectly reasonable to both of us.  Life really is weird.  Or maybe we are just weird.

So I went to see my guy.  Who was horrified. 

"That has to go."

I know.  I start to explain about the weakness in the fiber and he shudders, and lops it off wholesale in a ponytail.  I think he thought I would protest, but my attitude has changed - this is isn't an emotional attachment any longer, its damaged fiber.  And I can't work with damaged fiber.

He tried to throw the tail away before I could see it - to protect my feelings, I think - but I saved it for y'all.  I mean, really.

You can see how thin the cut end is compared to the rest.    Washing, over processing, sun exposure and one too many tight ponytails.

Would you buy a fleece like this? 

Didn't think so.

hoist.

On Sunday I did a very American thing: I went to the mall.  For the second time in three days.

It happened like this:  I thought I might like a new T-shirt, so Friday at lunch time I nipped into Old Navy.  A dangerous place at the best of times - look, cheap cute shirts! - they were having a monstrous sale and since I was on a 20 minute limit I threw a load of things onto the counter and went home 187 dollars the worse for the adventure. 

And then at the end of the day I pulled all of it out and thought "Self, you do not need 187 dollars worth of things you didn't have time to try on in the store.  And I went through it all and added, "Self, what were you thinking HERE?" to my mental conversation and sorted it all down to two arguably useful light cotton summer shirts and a really, really cute sundress, because it was adorable, and really I am susceptible to cute summer dress fantasies, I am.  And then I loaded the remaining things back into the shopping bag and put it by the front door and on Sunday afternoon I put it in the car and drove to the mall.

Which is how I came to be thinking about how American the Mall is as a weekend activity.

Net loss of 68 dollars. 

As I was pocketing my debit receipt there came upon me a moment of truth that what I was looking for when I gave into the initial impulse was not a new t-shirt - because I have 12 million t-shirts - but for my existing t-shirts to look better.  Aimless shopping is a manifestation of dissatisfaction, you understand, the trick is to identify the root cause. 
Result: a quick hop over to Kohl's and, for less than my Old Navy return, 5 new bras.  Not interesting bras you understand - I have lots of them, they stay looking great because they only get worn under the three things that demand that particular structural undergarment or neckline, but boring everyday light colored ones that are plain and unpretty and hold everything up very nicely so that my old shirts look great.

As is the way of bras, two will be worn only twice before some quirk of structure makes me reject them with instinctive revulsion when they are the only thing left at the bottom of the drawer of a morning.  They will stay there until the moment two summers from now when they are all that is left and this same scenario plays itself out all over again.

One will be perfect but fall apart immediately.

And two will be perfectly fine and last until they are old and gray and cause a vague unhappiness when I look at myself wearing them under a t shirt.

Same dollars - a few fewer actually.  Very different outcome.  Still a consumer outcome, you understand, which is a separate concern, but purposeful rather than purposeless.  I regard it as an improvement.

(I am aware that spending this much time thinking about, shopping for and discussing the support of my secondary sex traits in order to be attractive - however I define that - has several layers of - is it irony?  Whatever.  I am a tool of the Patriarchy.  No matter how I fight.)

Did some knitting this weekend - visited the Subversive Lace exhibit Saturday which meant 3 hours of train time, which meant a new project.    Kind of an overall meh reaction - not to the knitting, to the museum.  I'm glad I went, I'm very glad that textiles of this nature have been given a serious exhibition and granted some ground in the vernacular of contemporary art.  I wish that the overall content had been higher quality I guess. There were some extraordinary things - a shetland blanket with a knit/purl pattern spelling out "it sucks", a perforated car that left patterns of dirt lace on the floor, a dress bound in I-cord veins.  A set of hand cut panels of muslin coated with gesso and graphite were visually stunning and had a weird organic sense of growth and motion about them.  A couple of three-dimensional pieces that kind of invited you inside them - one felty/cellulose/fiber one with letters that I wished passionately had had text instead, and one that was a tangle of wires and made me think of Dr. Who.  A knitted lead teddy bear that had this marvelous sagging heft to him.   Clothing knit from shredded Financial Times - which actually had some edge as social commentary.

But there were a few things, a few too many, that made me think of middle school art class too.  Leading to some further ruminations on art and craft and where the intersection lies. Or more correctly where one leads into the other..or fails too.  Though.... I used to go to museums and just accept that what I was looking at was art, and perhaps because I have some stake of my own in the textile arts, this was the first time I can remember just staying - uh uh, nope, not buying it. 

But all in all, the MOMA store was more entertainment, plus more Muji recycled cotton socks, always a good thing.  More consumerism I am afraid.  And someone else's Muji sock pictures, as I am too lazy to go upstairs and get them. 

Cast on Candace Eisner Strick's Adagio shawl on the way to New York, to the astonishment of the man across the aisle who kept talking to me despite my earphones, about how I should look into the internet as a means of selling my knitting.  No amount of telling him I had no desire to sell my knitting, or ignoring him, had any influence on his discourse.

Yarn - 100% silk hand-dyed by Judy.  Three minutes later I pulled it out because I misunderstood what CES meant by crochet chain cast on, and in the silk didn't want to deal with sewing down the live stitches.    Is it too, too, TOO that I was sitting on the filthy floor of Penn Station - surely one of the more disgusting places in North America - photographing my error for the blog? 

Note to self - when finished blogging, go put those jeans in the wash.

Fantastically easy to memorize pattern, much more progress on the way home.  I do love me some orange.  Judy does nice work with color, yes?

Now, I must vacuum.  Pray excuse me.

Thank you for your support.

First, if you happen to subscribe to this site, my thanks.  When I told my brother that there were people out there who actually signed up for my blog on purpose to read it, he looked at me kind of funny.
Of course, he looked at me kind of funny when I told him I had a blog in the first place.  Also when he realized I had more than one spinning wheel.
But that's what little brothers are for, the mocking. 

I've been having a wee bit of trouble in the past weeks with my feeds and no one can seem to find the trouble.  Basically there are 3 feeds provided by the Typepad and one works better than the others and that seems to just be the way things are.  And even though Bloglines and Newsgator picked them all up just fine for years, now two of them are timing out on the pick up and that's the way things are NOW and no one can tell me why.

So.

If it seems like I haven't been posting much and then you look and there are three or four you've never seen, chances are you use one of these two feeds:

http://enchantingjuno.typepad.com/knit/index.rdf
http://enchantingjuno.typepad.com/knit/rss.xml

If you would like to actually get the updates you are signed up for, might I suggest this instead:

http://enchantingjuno.typepad.com/knit/atom.xml

In whatever aggregator you use, click the edit function and paste the 'atom' url over the others and update.

I have also signed up for feedburner, so you can use this one:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/EnchantingJuno

In theory it consolidates them all and solves the problem, but I dunno yet, I've only been signed up for five minutes.

just add water.

I got a catalog in the mail yesterday from art.com.  Some of the images are rather attractive, some are not...but art?  Can you get art from mass mailing?  A tapestry print of Klimt's The Kiss - a fine painting yes, but woven in cotton/rayon for the low, low price of 255.99?  I really don't think it is the same.
This is design - color to enhance the living environment - and I don't criticize that, color to enhance life is essential (I remind you my living room is orange) and Poppy II would look splendid over my bed. 

But brushstroked canvas?  That means a probably computer generated print with manual or mechanized clear texture laid over the top.  The illusion of creativity.

I have art prints - but I like them for not pretending to be the Kandinsky I cannot afford.  And it isn't that I don't think beauty and mass production are compatible.  I mean, if anyone has eight of these lying around I'd be happy to find a place for them.

Really, it would be no trouble. (I sat on these chairs at a great restaurant in Philly last weekend.  Gorgeous and still comfortable after three hours of words and food. The most charming waitress in the world, cute as hell, helped me find out where the chairs came from (I was a woman obsessed, I tell you) and didn't once give us the evil eye for ordering desert and keeping her from a second seating.)

Satisfying shape and color can be found at Maria Yee, or the yarn shop, or the museum gift shop, or the back garden.  And designing furniture, or yarn, and applying historic motifs to everyday objects, and gardening are all creative acts.  I am positive whoever made my lentil salad was an artist of no small genius.  Warm goat cheese and sherry, mmmmm.

But in general, I think something has gone missing.

I used to think the martha-fication of design was a good thing, that it could only be pleasant and positive to have elements of clean shape and color trickle down the market to permeate everyday life.  I was pleased when suburbia began looking pretty sharp in capri khakis and duck's egg blue fitted Ts and you could get garden implements in a fetching shade of green at K-mart, for what could be wrong with having everyday objects designed well and prettily?

Nothing, except that there's a uniformity to it now - these catalogs thunking through my mail slot have a sameness despite their frantic pace of renewal to tempt our short attention spans.  A blandness to their careful images, a tendency to be a bit indistinguishable despite the several aesthetics competing for my dollars.

I remember a time in life when if I heard live music and it deviated in any way from the familiar recorded version, I deemed it a failure.  Of course, I thought soulfully romantic black and white photography was the apogee of style then too, so clearly I knew very little. 
Now when I hear someone play I cherish the performance, the alchemy of the moment, the version of a song brought out of that day and time - the flaws and chemistry and serendipitous joy that make it unique.

Because there is such a thing as a perfect moment, but I'm not sure there is much else that can be.  Or should be.  When we try to make our sweaters, or houses, or children, or lives perfect, they lose something.  We lose something, holding so tight that the good stuff can slip through our fingers like water.

I used to have this friend who fought so hard against feeling scary things, feeling anything soft - maudlin he called it -  and was battered and made remote by the struggle to resist.  It is odd too, when I think that he was the best museum going companion I've ever had, observant and engaged and seeing so much in everything that he awakened my eye for the world utterly.  He wasn't afraid to let the emotions and impressions of an artist into him, though he refused the necessary surrender in his own life.

Because you do have to surrender to things if they're going to touch you, feel that the flaws and pain and exhilaration and risk is where the beauty is  - beauty rather than prettiness.  I think that while there is absolutely craft in art, there is also emotion, passion, expression.  Things that are missing from catalog living.

I see us all spinning and knitting, making music, hurling down mountains one way or the other, the explosion of crafting, sewing, writing; slow food and great home cooking, esoteric tea drinking and passionate gardening as part of a compulsion to restore some art to our lives, to get past the plastic and find passion, color...a sense of our selves as creative individuals outside the blank, bland face of mass style.  Someone said to me - a new friend I think - at that dinner with the chairs, that with everything going on, it gives her hope to find someone talking passionately about making a great lentil salad.  I absolutely get it; behind the fear and uncertainty of the world, we're trying to make something good, to taste, feel, live.

 

wind effect. yeah. that's it.

You ever get that feeling that no matter how old and theoretically wise you get, you still will always get certain things wrong?  That your timing will be off, your perceptions clouded and the wrong foot always out first?

I just discovered my shirt was on backwards.  That about covers it. 

I had this vivid dream about an ex last night - this extremely vivid, conversational dream that felt so real I was surprised when I woke up and he wasn't there.  I can't remember what we spoke of, just the part where I realized that he'd played some kind of trick on me and I hit him hard, and he laughed because he knew he deserved it.  I think I woke up sad because it wasn't true.  I miss talking to him.

And I tried to IM another ex last night - which I shouldn't have done at-all, we are so past anything useful. Which he confirmed by logging off rather than replying which was slippery and avoidant...but you know, not out of character.  And the other thing I realized this morning is that today is a weird anniversary for me relating to this guy and no doubt that was what was behind it all. 

And I emailed another guy, someone with whom I'm trying to get together but with whom I suspect I have missed the window and that just annoys me because when will I learn how important timing is? You don't get to be Special Naked Friends with someone via blundering harassment.   

We had snow yesterday, but before that several days of this weird sideways wind that did something to my body chemistry, made me edgy and jumpy, ionized.  This used to happen to me in southern California when the Santa Ana's blew.  The ex I dreamed of told me once that in the "International Classification of Diseases.....there's a whole section for diseases that have been poorly reported or investigated by Modernmedicinestealerofhope. Several of them, particularly from Tibet, China and into the Indonesian archipelago are psychoses, often ending in severe symptoms and causing people to withdraw from all interaction or to commit violent crimes, which the people concerned and their communities regard as being caused by the wind. Not, of course, that I'm saying you got out of LA just in time before you exercised your right to bear arms, just that as you say, the wind has strong effects on minds".

Which makes me laugh and reminds me why I liked him so.  But if the wind makes me crazy, I guess I can be grateful all I do is give a pointed toe boot to sexual relationships past and present and future, instead of something larger scale and messy for others too.

Oddly, I'm actually in a reasonably energetic mood.  As a commenter noted last week, January - which I my case seems to have lasted from Thanksgiving until the end of February - is finally over.  Paperwork calls, my darlings, paperwork calls.  Back to work.

Wool things soon.

My aura is fabulous, thanks.

The word-a-day people gave me a gift this morning ....

omphaloskepsis (om-fuh-lo-SKEP-sis) noun

   Contemplation of one's navel.

[From Greek omphalos (navel) + skepsis (act of looking, examination).
Ultimately from the Indo-European root spek- (to observe) which is
also the ancestor of suspect, spectrum, bishop (literally, overseer),
despise, espionage, telescope, spectator, and spectacles.]

The moment I discovered the word defenestrate was one of the happiest I remember.  And no, I am not joking and yes, I am that big a nerd.  But really, what a wonderful language we have, that has words for such marvelously specific things...begged, borrowed, stolen and integrated into one large, nonsensical, complex and lovely tongue. 
Today's word makes me just as happy.

And now I am blogging about a word for naval gazing, which is charmingly self-referential, don't you think? 

Thanks to the same folks I have discovered the Visual Thesaurus, to which I will probably now subscribe because, come on, how cool is this?

I suffered a Disappointment on Tuesday and I took yesterday off...to pout, really.   I had Plans which went Unconsummated...canceled in fact.  I was cross, grouchy and generally lacking in perspective.  I stayed home. 

It was an unexpectedly fabulous day.  I slept in, waking at 8 am only to remember I was not late for work, and dozed off again with the cat upside down beside me purring.  I cooked eggs in bacon fat for lunch, which I never eat, because...do I really have to explain why I eat this only once a year?  And does anyone else have a can of bacon fat in the freezer because that's what you do with bacon fat?

I wrote an email to someone I think I might just adore and read an email from another person I adore and recently reconnected with.  I pinned out a swatch for Jackie (no pictures because I can't find my camera cord).  I admired the lettuce plants.

I - and this may not sound like fun, but it was - cleaned the bathroom, going though the cabinets and getting rid of out-of-date, toxic and otherwise undesirable things.  I used to have a makeup habit like I have a yarn habit now, and discovered when I cleaned out that cabinet that, while I need a new mascara, everything else I have now I actually do use on those occasions that call for paint, it all flatters me and I like it all without needed to buy more.  It was such a change from the conspicuous over-consumption of the past that it gave me a pleasantly warm feeling of balance.  I maintained this feeling by carefully not looking at the yarn-, shoe- or purse- collections.

The last time I cleaned the drain I used something that I could probably dissolve an intruder with.  I felt so guilty while I poured that it inspired me to make some changes; I've been switching the house over to non-toxic cleansers and I remembered the other night to replenish the washing soda supply and to pick up some borax.   I cleaned the tub with borax and hot water - I didn't feel sick, my hands didn't burn after and the shine on the tub is the righteous polish of clean, not the sleazy gleam of chemical film.   It was enormously satisfying to walk in to the bath this morning - tidiness, now with extra virtue! 

In my house these days I use rags - some microfiber ones for the mirrors and windows, but mostly old cut up towels and t-shirts, borax, baking soda, washing soda, Dr. Bronners soap, hot water and..because the smell of vinegar makes me nauseated...Trader Joe's Next To Godliness Cedarwood and Clary Sage all purpose spray rather than vinegar for glass, counters and surfaces.

I still need rubber gloves - washing soda and baking soda have caustic elements - but it is weirdly, deeply satisfying to see and smell actual clean, rather than the Pine Scented (tm), eye-watering illusion of clean.  Because I tell you - the Trader Joe's spray does a better job on kitchen surfaces than anything else I've ever used and the same goes for the rest of the stuff.  It takes a hair more work, but not a notable amount, and it works great.  Better than great.  I used to think that Formica had that weird surface smudginess because it was the nature of Formica to smudge.  Turns out that is the residue from Our Love Affair With Chemicals.

I'm also a Borax believer.  I once dropped a bottle of nail polish in my mother's tile guest room floor.  It bounced, shattered and sprayed its full fluid ounce all over the hem of the (new, of course) bedspread.  3 drops on the easily wiped floor, the rest on the bed.  I thought she would kill me.  I used acetone to get the plastic nail polish agents out, but Borax took care of all but the faintest tinge of coral stain remaining.

(Never mind the environmental impact of both the acetone AND the nail polish.  Baby steps.)

Then I went to get my brows and lashes dyed.

Yes, I am cognizant of the disconnect here (I said baby steps). 

But I look fucking fabulous.   Even, according to the wonderful woman who does the dying (I think I go at least 50% to spent 15 minutes with her.  She's just one of those people you feel better for spending time with) down to my aura. 

I thought about it and I realized she's right.  I do feel great.  Last year was a difficult one for many reason - not a bad one, but a difficult one.  There will be setbacks, there always are, but my disappointment was just that - a disappointment.  Not a blow.   And I'm may be starting to feel that my path is becoming clear.  I wouldn't go so far as to say I have a plan - I'm not really a plan kind of woman - but I might have a rudder.  I feel good.

My brows are waxed, my bathroom clean, I have a sense of optimism and I bought some very hot yarn on my way to have a great dinner with a good friend.   My laundry is all put away, I am rich in friends and I slept well.

I forgot to buy cat litter.   

I can live with that.

(I am also interested in any thoughts on what to do with the box of lysol, windex, etc, etc, etc. I have been accumulating.  I don't want them in the house, but dumping them out and recycling the bottles seems counterproductive.)