What to Blog?

Good thing I checked the mail, I wasn’t sure what to blog about today.

I finally broke down and bought French Girl Knits, by Kristeen Griffin-Grimes.  I was never in love with the book. the patterns were interesting, but not interesting enough for me to actually own.  One of the Knit Picks catalogs sold me on Celeste (Rav link), which is a long light coat knit, that they had made a sample of in a light blue.  I was shocked to realize that it was a pattern out of this book.  I’ve been looking for a long sweater coat ever since I left my very favorite one from Burlington Coat Factory on the plane.  I was so sad when I lost that sweater.

I picked up Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knits.  I haven’t ever looked at what is inside this book, but I have high hopes given that some of her out of print books sell for hundreds of dollars.

Knitting On Top of the World by Nicky Epstein.  I happened to look over this book at Barnes and Noble once.  I like to take the kids there to play with trains and look at books.  This book had a bit of history on how knitting has travelled throughout the world and how different areas have adapted knitting to their culture.  It was pretty expensive though to buy without many patterns I liked.  However, KnitPicks always has great sales and when I found…

The Book of Wool, by Clara Parkes.  I own The Book of Yarn.  It was interesting, I think I did lose some air of appreciation of the book the longer I have owned it.  This book has really impressed me.  I happened across it in one of my outings with the little ones and this book is the reason I now own the others.  (I love KnitPicks book sales and free shipping.)  It goes over types of wool, what the staples look like, the type of result you will typically get from each type of wool.  I liked this book so much, I actually found myself reading the book in the store.  I am glad I checked online before my final purchase decision.

Excited!

Guess where I’m going!  So excited!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I like to do.  What better way to find out about food and wine?  Better yet, a friend of mine told me she’s been before in the past and the food was wonderful.

So, my newest theory is that things experienced in life should be based off of what you enjoy.  Perhaps even with another person, but not a necessary in the equation.  I’ve always liked fine dining, something from my childhood and my mother’s love of cooking.  Wine is something I’ve gotten more into over the past year, only because I’ve had the opportunity to try some very nice wines and thus my tastes have become more developed.

The biggest issue I have is my ability to socialize.  I typically do well, however I am shy.  This causes me some anxiety when meeting new people and being in new situations.  (But it’s going to be fun.)  ^.^

This is the latest fiber sample from Lambspun.  I love these tiny little samples.

Duck and Cover

What do you do when you find yourself in the middle of two friends? I want to go hide under a rock please? >.< (Reminds me of an episode of SpongeBob where everyone is hiding under a rock.) Don’t you all know I have my own set of unique issues to contend with? Oh right, we’re not discussing that. ^.^

This looks interesting, and I encourage everyone to check it out.  I’m very excited about it, although I don’t think I’ll be able to go since I’m busy during the week and the weekends are planned carefully. If I do, I hope I get to check out Terroir.  I also think you should check out the 5th annual Denver International Wine Festival. If I can puzzle out a way with my schedule I will hopefully attend.

It’s Rare…

…that I get a headache that lasts all day, makes me ridiculously grumpy, which nothing seems to cure.  Did I mention, lasts all day.  Not a stabbing sort, but just the dull sort.  Everything aggravates it, light, sound, 5-year old boys (bless his heart brought me cups of water with a straw).  Today is Sunday, for another 21 minutes.  This will be Monday’s post.  I’m cheating.  I also took a pain medication because, this headache just wants to stay with me and I’d like to pretend to get a little bit of sleep before the sun rises.

Although, daylight’s saving time started today.  Sunday seemed like the longest day ever.  Every time I looked at the clock it seemed like a different time.  Although, that could be because the clock on the microwave doesn’t match my phone, nor does the car for that matter…note to self, fix that.

This is my latest spinning project.  It’s the last sample I have out of one of the sample ziploc bags I bought from Funky Carolina.  There were about 9 samples weighing 1/2 ounce each and so much fun to spin.  I got to practice my 2 ply and Navajo plying skills.  This is the last sample out of that bag.  My next spinning project will be blue, I’m just not sure what blue yet.  It will also be bigger than 1/2 an ounce.  Sort of daunting and yet exciting since I haven’t done an actual spinning project for quite a while now.

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I tend to write in circles, this I know.  My biggest frustration right now is how stale I’m beginning to feel and apparently writing about it instead of fixing it is more interesting to me.  Go figure.  For instance, it’s been 4 1/2 years since I have even attempted to learn Korean.  I haven’t bothered furthering my educational goals in 5 years.  I haven’t made any progress in furthering skills in about 6 years.  I don’t pursue reading actual things (instead of mind candy) like I wish I would.  I can’t figure out what is stopping me in all this.

I’d like to think it’s time.  I am continually having to deal with issues from the divorce (it’s been 5 years).  Work tends to have a cyclical stress period, but I’m pretty used to that.  I’m tired.  For instance, this week, since it snowed 14-16 inches, the kids were off of school for 3 days.  So with the weekend we were home for about 6 days in a row for long stretches of time and I felt like I was constantly washing, cooking, or cleaning.

I’m also finding myself in quite a conundrum.  I hate being single.  There’s so much room for interpretation, which usually ends up with me interpreting something incorrectly and ruining a friendship, pretty much forever.  I know that there was a time that was me before I was married, during the time I was married and after the divorce.

Before I was married I was complainy (yes making up words now), worried about being too single, and worried about what I was going to do with my life.  I was independent, but a full time student that lived at home and was in too much of a rush to get on with it. Whatever IT was.

This led me to being married, where I was depressed a lot of the time, lost the ability to communicate, felt guilty most of the time and, thought I was going crazy.  There were, what I perceive to be happy times, although many of the good and the bad, I just don’t recall at all.

To where I am at now.  I’ve gotten a lot of my ability to communicate back, my independence, my self-control, but I think I’ve lost my ability to trust.  I’m now at a point where it seems as though I can only stand being around a person if I can develop the ability to make exceptions for them.  If I make too many exceptions, then it just falls apart, but if I don’t make enough, they can’t seem to get to know me at all.

And now I’m rambling.

So, am I looking for that perfect person?  Or the perfect situation?  Do either of those really exist?  Why can’t I accept a person’s situation if that person just cares for me and my situation without any judgment?  D once told me, the only thing he knew that I wanted more than anything else was simply someone to love me.  I know he’s right.  So why can’t I just accept the situation, you know, the good with the bad?  It just scared me when I thought about the type of life I would have with him, even though he had a basic plan.

When do we know we love someone?  Is it okay to do so when you know it most likely would never work?  Oh I don’t know…dang it, where did I leave instructions where all of this was explained?  >.<

Meandering

The only thing I’ve been doing, other than fretting about everything in my life, is spinning.  I have not gotten a chance, nor the motivation to take pictures of this process.  Somewhere in reskeining every handspun I have ever done I’ve lost the motivation to blog about it.  Oddly enough I did finish that project.  New labels to boot.

What I’ve been bad at is taking pictures of the roving before I spin it.  I’m not getting any better at this.  I think the samples came out better looking once I set them.  They looked less like over spun sadness and more like yarny greatness.  The part that I’m not sure about is that I’m producing final products that are about 22 yards long.  What do you do with 22 yards?

It’s now November and my thoughts are starting to turn somewhat to the Christmas presents for Thing 1 and 2.  Thing 1 has decided she would like a purple jellyfish for her present.  Thing 2 would like a longneck in black to match his sharptooth.  This year, I find myself having great ideas to handknit things for people, but little motivation in doing so.  I do find my scarf project to be taking up most of my knitting mental capacity.  Not because it’s hard, but because I’ve developed this severe knitting monogamy as of late.  Unfortunately, this project doesn’t really inspire great bursts of knitting, but just little spurts.  It accompanies me to most places in a clear ziplock bag, just as a travelling companion.

It’s fun to knit, it’s just that after knitting about 2 rows, some 600+ stitches, I’m tired and I just tuck it back into its bag for another time.  I know this is the point where I should break out into a sock or something.  My sock motivation has completely dried up.  I blame this on the fact that my attempt at Jaywalkers was not a good one and the toe up pattern I like I can’t find, and the person who created it no longer has it on their website nor do they claim it’s existence.  (I do know I’m not making the pattern up in my head though, since I did run across it in my garage when I moved, only to misplace it in 5-6 boxes of  papers I need to sift through.)

Halloween was lovely with Batman and a vampire this year.  Thing 1 and 2 actually ran out of steam before I did, which was shocking, but they made out like bandits.  I think this is the first time that I took them out by myself.  We had a lot of fun despite the snow still on the ground.

 

Worth…less?

I could blame it on the 14 inches of snow.  At least I think it was 14 inches.  All I know is that school was cancelled for 3 days.  Thing 1 and 2 have been good little things.  I could sure use a vacation.  Somewhere warm and beach like.  Tomorrow is Halloween and somehow trudging through ice and snow for treats is not amusing me much.  I’m sure it will be fine.

It’s occurred to me recently that I have nothing to blog about.  I don’t knit much.  I cook on rare occasions.  I’ve been spinning, but just little samples and of course I haven’t been taking any pictures lately.  My personal life, is complicated as usual and somehow less than appealing to write about.  So…

What’s a girl to write about?

And We’re Back…

I’m feeling better.  Finally.  >.<

This is my attempt at congee.  Not too bad.  It tastes ok, it has carrots and celery.  I added soy sauce, scallions and sesame seed oil.  I think perhaps I’ll add chicken next time.  ^.^

My friend recently asked me if I had started knitting anything else.  Me?  World’s slowest knitter?  Why no!  I’m still knitting a scarf.  She said if the recipient doesn’t like it, she would be more than happy to acquire it.  I think this is the second repeat.

Then she said I was probably using the cheap yarn on the scarf I’m pondering out for her.  ‘It must be like 98 cents or something.’  Oh, wouldn’t that be nice?  Super cheap, super awesome yarn?

Right…

You can always tell when I start to feel better. I start to think more. Sort of a blessing and a curse I suppose. On one hand not to be so dang ponderous is great, but on the other hand I’m so hot and I feel so awful I want to sleep under my desk.

I had two ponders today.

First, I think we’re all a bunch of plagiarists. We’re all borrower and tweaking someone else’s ideas. We, as individuals, are plagiarists of our ancestors. Our personalities, looks, etc are borrowed over time and smushed up into this whole that we call ourselves. We’re only unique because no one can remember which ancestor we may have taken after, and after all humans can’t trace their family lines all the way back to the time of primordial soup.

Second, people are thoughtful. I think. Even when we don’t think they are.

Third, I think I just made up the second one because I forgot what the other one was when I was opening up the type box.

Fourth, this apparently is what I think of when I am recovering from the flu. Huh.

Plague 2009

I have the plague, also known as, most likely the flu.  I’ll be back when I feel less like the gum on your shoe.

Project!

I have been spinning for about 4 years now. I’ve never been able to really figure out how to estimate yardage based off of weight. The principle just doesn’t make any sense to me. I’ve tried taking my scale and weighing a yard or two and doing the math to estimate the yardage from there, but still I didn’t like the method nor cutting the yarn. Instead I took tape measure and measured out the length of a wrap around my niddy noddy. I would then count how many loops I had in a hank, multiply that by the previous measurement, divide by 12 and then by 3. This method would give me a very rough estimate of the yards, but it was enough to get an idea.

This past weekend a friend of mine offered to assist in my project. This meant, I got to send him links to websites I found that had ideas on them. He would offer his opinion on the matter and I would sort of nod. It worked out well, after all my knowledge of building things with power tools is somewhat limited, although my supervisory experience is exceptional. This is what we ended up with.

I found that my former method of estimating yarn is about 12% – 20% off. I decided to leave the WPI off of the new labels. All in all I am quite pleased with the result.