Close the door, please.

In my simple yet complicated uneventful life, some things happen which I would like to redo. Things I say to people (foot in mouth situations), judgments I have passed on opinions and the opinionated, and generally, things I regret. That's normal, right? So far, so good. Life, however, my Assiduous Compadres, is not built as such. You know that. I knew that. Everybody remotely sane (hereby excluding many, many people, unfortunately) knows that.

This even applies to my crafterly pursuits, believe it or not. I'll start knitting something, carefully choosing my yarn, and I'll spend three or four weeks working on it, loving it, fondling it, and being proud of how awesome it's going to look. Generally, just so you know, I knit things which are shaped like rectangles. One morning, I will wake up, sit on the sofa, open the knitting drawer, pull out my project and start pulling on the yarn to destroy it. I am no longer satisfied, and no longer have any interest in finishing it. I feel no pain. I wind the yarn back onto its ball, and begin a new project. This may seem harsh and pointless. I understand why you may think that. At this point, the rectangle thing is probably ten or twelve inches long. But to me, this is a form of control: I decide and assume the decision. I control the outcome, and I have to power to undo something I have done. It feels good, even if sometimes it is slightly guilt-tinged and can make me wish I had spent my time on something I would actually finish. Okay - now those of you who want to hypothesize and try to apply this theorem to other things in life just to see if it works, be my guest. It works. *wink*

Today, I have things on my list. I have been putting them off for a very long time. But first, for your enjoyment, and as a sort of 'case in point' thing, here are the things which have been started and not finished.

All in all, fifteen projects which, in the last 5 years, have not been completed. Maybe I should stick to one thing at a time. I think I'm going to go start something new.

Fibre Love.

Last Saturday morning, my Loverlies, I woke up really early.

I don't know why. I would have liked to sleep in. Anyhoo...

I went upstairs, yawned for a while, sitting in the stairs between the kitchen and the living room, scratched behind a few cat ears and slowly made my way to the kitchen after having drawn back the curtains in the dining room. I am realizing, writing this, that I am making my house sound huge. It is. I live in a mansion, have I not told you? I have sold most of my estates, such as the chalet in Switzerland and my pad in Hamburg, but have yet to find a suitable owner for the one in Brazil. It's...I don't know - it's too beautiful, although it reminds of my villa in Costa Rica, but I cannot part with it.

(Several hours later)

Hello, Loverlies! How are you? Been here long? What? I was talking about my estates and I was using my John Cleese voice? Oh, dear. I am SO sorry. I sleepwalk. That happens. Let's start over.

Last Saturday morning, I woke up really early. I'm talking 5:15, which is my weekday wake-up time. I went upstairs, sat in the stairs, scratched behind a few cat ears and slowly made my way to the kitchen to make some coffee. I was planning on sitting in the living room to watch a movie until The Man woke up. He sleeps through almost anything, but I was feeling rather lazy and looking for an excuse to sit in my jammies and sip coffee, so I chose a few Pixar classics and sat down, headphones on, with my knitting. Just as I was starting the movie, I heard some scratching noises coming from the corner of the living room.  "Come on, Ezio. Lie still. The Man is asleep. Don't start now..." I begged him. But Ezio was doing his groundhog pose, sitting up on his hind legs, looking at my knitting cabinet intently. I swear, he does this. The hind legs thing.

I walked over slowly, and sure enough, there was a weird scratching noise coming from inside the drawer. "F*%@ing mice", I thought. I cracked open the drawer ever so slowly, baseball bat held three-quarters of the way down in my left hand, ready to wield the Fury of Almightyness into their helpless little faces and completely smash my beloved knitting cabinet. Well, not really. Knowing me, I would have collected the mice by their little tails while making gentle cooing sounds and put them in a shoebox for the day, given them human names such as Edward, Elliot and Ingrid and fed them some grated carrots and pieces of cheese. I would then have taken them to the park and set them free.

What really happened, though, as I know you are all sitting on the edge of your chairs, is this. I cracked open the drawer, and here is what saw:

"What the heck?" I thought. So I took a closer look. It seems my embroidered Squibbit is loving my Sock Monkey. (the Monkey's not really, technically, a Sock Monkey which I made, but he used to live on a sock, and I saved him from Doom and am keeping him for some other project. Turns out he was showing the Squibbit how to monkey around...ahem...) Don't they look happy?

They look almost as happy as Ezio does with his white ribbon. He looks like he's going to a wedding or something. I got this off a gift wrapping and he loved it, so I put it on his collar for 15 minutes. The Man would like me to tell you that I have a mental illness, although I am not sure what he is referring to.

Inventory.

On the needles right now:

- a baby blanket I started months ago for a baby who is now all grown up;
- the cuff of a glove for The Man which I started months ago and am not sure I'll finish;
- the first 3 inches of an alpaca wrist warmer for my little neighbor, which I started last summer;
- about half a fuzzy scarf, striped moss green, lime green and beige;

Goddamn it. Why start if I won't finish?
Okay. I'll finish the scarf first, it's almost done.

Thanks, guys.

The Thing in the Box.

It's there.

It's in the box.

The box has been sitting on the floor for days. The oblong metal keeps its secret under its lid, which neatly snaps into place when gentle pressure is applied. I've been sitting here for five minutes, looking at it.

There's my first knitted glove in there. I'm going to knit now.

Recycling Spies.

As a follow up on my last post, for anyone interested, I did not finish all of my knitting projects. I finished one of them. I completely unraveled another (which was halfway done but had a very obvious mistake in it) and started two new ones. Nice going, don’t you think?

Okay, on to the topic at hand. It hit me like a brick last Wednesday: my neighbors, if they are so inclined, know me very well.

For instance, they now know that my teeth enamel needs special care, that we’ve quit smoking (ahem – again), and that our noses are sensitive, so we get the three-ply lotion tissues when we have a cold.

They also know how many kinds and boxes of tampons I go through in a month. Great to know when you meet your neighbor on a brisk evening walk – “Heeey hi, so I notice you’ve gone Super-Plus, eh? How’s that going? Cramps? Any cramps at all? No? Hah.”

They know where I bank, what periodicals I subscribe to and that we are amateurs of red wine and martinis. In fact, they know when we’ve gone on a bender and finished the bottles in the bar. They probably think we’re alcoholics by now.

Is there such a thing as recycling spies or is my lack of nicotine turning me into a paranoid wreck? A purely rhetorical question, obviously, as I already know they’re watching.

Hee hee. Just kidding.

The Omission That Never Was.

In the past hour, I’ve caught up on the blogs I read, I’ve checked my e-mail, and I’ve had two cups of tea. Oh – and I’ve determined two things:

Thing the First: I want to finish all unfinished knitting projects that are lying around before the end of 2007. That’s five knitting projects at least. I’m pretty sure I’ll find some I didn’t even know I started when I open my knitting bin.

Thing the Second: It takes fifteen tablespoons of sugar to fill my sugarbowl.

I woke up with a start at 6:00 this morning and got really irritated because I had to go to work. I know it’s Sunday – and I knew this when I woke up. But I had forgotten to activate the autoreply on the general e-mail at work telling people we’re away and will get back to them as soon as we’ve returned. So that was a really crappy thing to realize on the second day of your holiday. I was getting ready to get dressed, let the man sleep, take the bus, and go to work to fix this, when I had a brilliant idea: test it first...what if you did activate the autoreply rule? Hmm. Yeah. Fat chance, I thought, you did everything else you had to do, tied all the loose ends and had to forget something. So I tested it. And it answered! Phew. No going to work for me today.

My penguin pyjamas are keeping me warm, the tree is lit, my tea is getting cold, and I’ve got some serious knitting to do. So I’ll catch you all later.

Happy Holidays to all, with my best wishes for peace, good health and discoveries for 2008.

2008? Holy crap. We’re 8 years into the future.

Captain Grilled Cheese and the Vegan Lasagna.

For the first time in my life, please sit down, O Witty Funny Sweet Ones, I made lasagna.

As you have guessed from the title of this post, I made Vegan Lasagna, complete with non-cheese. We’re having a potluck lunch tomorrow at work and one of our buddies is vegan. Non-cheese is quite the funny product. The package says – literally – “it melts!” when actually, as I found out five minutes ago when I pulled the dish out of the oven, it does not. But the vegan lasagna making was very pleasurable. It entailed making spaghetti sauce without meat. Instead, I made green lentils to throw in for texture. I had never made green lentils, either. So, Younglings, massive amounts of newness were experienced.

I had a great evening, for a Thursday. After work, I took a different bus and went to my yarn store. Mmmm. Yarn Store. I hadn’t been in over two months. I went around every little nook and cranny, petted the yarn, caressed mohair and fondled silk. It was delightful. I was actually going to get a gift for someone. I bought bamboo needles and a nice ball of textured yarn for her to cut her teeth on. But you know me – I had to get some for myself. Mrs. Yarnlady has these nifty Ziploc bags you can buy. They contain different yarns, ends of balls of yarn and experiments gone wrong. So I just got two skeins of mohair and one skein of wool for $10. Not bad, eh?

Oh – yes – I had grilled cheese for dinner. Because I’m lazy. Okay, no…because it’s good.

Houston, We Are Go.

For those of you who are still following, I have not tried to crochet again. Just so you know. I’m looking for a specific book to help me out, which is probably still in a box. I’ll find it. When I do, I’ll try to crochet again. But for now, well, I’ll do other things.

I find myself at a crossroads of some sort. In fact, I sit there most of the day. I’m able to function in my everyday activities and go through the motions of work and food-making and sleeping and talking to other Human Beings, but in my mind, I am sitting on a gravel road, in the middle of nowhere. And I’m not even scared.

The peculiar thing about this place, if you’ll bear with me, is the incredibly blue sky and – more importantly - the grass. It’s so lush and green! I’m wearing my jeans, the ones I just bought that fit really nicely. And I’m wearing my sister’s t-shirt. I don’t know why, I just like it. So I’m wearing it. The blue one that says Valiquette. I am alone. Somewhere close to me, behind me, there is the sound of running water, a creek, I think.

I am sitting right in the middle of the gravel road, with my legs straight in front of me, slightly apart. My feet are bare. I am leaning on my arms behind me. My palms, flat on the road, are starting to hurt because of the small pebbles digging into them. But I stay. There is a long, thin shadow in front of me, and my eyes run the length of it very often. Over and over again. I do not know where the shadow originates from. Why is it there? What does it mean? Should I try to get there?

Today, I keep my eyes open a little longer. I feel rested, and I am able to follow the shadow for a longer period of time. It’s really, really long. I feel like I’m sitting at one end of Space, looking at the other end. It stretches right to the limit of what I can physically see, somehow. And at the end, I can see there is something, but I can’t make it out. I’ve been working on trying to stand up to get closer to it faster. It takes a long time just to think of getting up: my will is somehow warped. I decide to crawl. Getting up seems impossible at this time. Maybe somewhere along the way, I’ll find something to help me up. I can’t see anything from here – the landscape is perfectly flat and featureless. But you never know.

I’ve taken the habit of lining up the thin shadow to the side of my leg and I push myself forward with my hands toward its starting point, slowly. I will not lose my direction this way. It shifts, swerves, curbs the light and plays tricks on my eyes. So I’ve tamed it and it seems to be behaving now. Every time I come back, I sit back down and shift around until I line up the shadow perfectly on the side of my right leg. It moves a couple of times, I readjust. I start pushing myself forward. I’ve ripped the bottom of my jeans, the sand is sliding in between the fabric and my skin and it’s chapped.

This time, I’ve gotten so close to the top of the shadow I can see what casts it.

There is a post. It bears many signs, which point in different directions. I can’t read any of them, because they are all written in a language I do not recognize, with symbols I have never seen. All but one. I wish I could get up to make sure what I see is right: I can barely read it, for the sun is my eyes. But when I narrow my eyes and concentrate, I can make it out.

This Way.

Crochet, Dammit.

I sat there. I had the tool and the material; I had the video on You Tube.

I had the will and the couple of beer in me that would make me want to do it. After watching five tutorials and judging them all as interesting in their uniqueness as the last one, I decided I remembered what my friend K had showed me December 31st, 2005. I decided I remembered how to crochet. In fact, I decided tomorrow is when I’ll be making my first crochet scarf. Because if you did not already know, I mainly make scarves. Usually, I knit them. But I am looking to branch out. Who doesn’t?

I have this great collection of crochet hooks. Some are made of wood, most are aluminium. All are idle. They sit in my Boticelli Chocolate metal case of knitting knick-knacks, because I have completely ignored them for the past 4 years. But I bought them at a Christmas Sale years ago and have never, ever used them. Oh I tried. But to no avail.

So the You Tube instructors say slipknot, yarn over, pull through, and yarn over, slip through the two stitches. But I have four stitches on my hook. My yarn won’t stretch, it’s linen. I can’t see shit, it’s 11:30 at night and I spent all day doing stuff around the house. And I’m trying to crochet by the light of the monitor. Maybe I should turn the light on. I want to wrap the yarn over the monitor and strangle it. I want to burn the yarn with a blowtorch. In fact, if I had a backyard that belonged to me, I would. I’d march out there with the barbecue lighter, straight to the fire pit, because for damned sure I would have a fire pit, and I’d light the damned thing – yes, the whole skein of linen – on fire. I think it’s time I did something else. I know it’s time I did something else.

Like forget crochet and go back to knitting.

Tomorrow morning, when I wake up at 7:00, I’ll make spaghetti sauce, and strawberry jam, and banana bread. Then I’ll try to crochet again. Maybe. In the meantime, 8 things I know:

1. I have values and principles;
2. I can write;
3. It’s Saturday but almost Sunday;
4. There are 9 planets in our Solar system (…right?);
5. I have people who care for me;
6. There is always an answer;
7. Things aren’t always what they seem.
8. I can knit, but not crochet yet.

Charogne

Bien fait. Je paie aujourd'hui pour ma négligence.
J'admets avec une grimace que je dois mieux garder l'inventaire de la nourriture qu'il y a chez moi.

Depuis hier, un curieuse odeur flotte dans l'appartement. Pas la fumée de cigarette, pas la litière du chat. Depuis hier, je me dis que je vais faire enquête. Et en entrant tout à l'heure, j'ai été littéralement assaillie par une odeur insupportable. J'ai honte de le dire, à force de chercher, j'ai pu retracer la source des effluves de charogne qui empestent l'appartement: j'ai oublié le poulet dans le tambour. Pestilence! Damnation! Horreur! La pauvre carcasse que je devais transformer en somptueux bouillon vient de passer beaucoup trop de temps sur la sécheuse, dans la pièce attenante à la cuisine. H me l'a fait remarquer, ce weekend. "Faudrait faire quelque chose avec le poulet" Et ce n'est pas tombé dans l'oreille d'une sourde. Mais j'ai...oublié. Pas fort! Cette pièce où il n'y a pas de chauffage est merveilleuse l'hiver: dépendant de la température qu'il fait dehors, c'est un réfrigérateur ou un congélateur. Excellent pour y conserver les biscuits de Noël fait à l'avance, les carrés au chocolat qu'on ne veut pas manger tout le même soir où...les poulets en attente de dépeçage. Avec le temps doux des derniers jours, ça aurait dû rester le tambour. Et pourquoi, d'abord, qu'en janvier, on goûte à deux degrés et à la pluie? Pas normal, pour ce coin de pays. Voilà, c'est le réchauffement de la planète. Ça doit être ça.

Et là, avec ma journée dans le corps, j'ai payé pour ma négligence. Je crois maintenant au karma. Non seulement est-ce qu'il aurait été suffisant que je doive ôter le couvercle de mon creuset pour jeter les restes odieux au fumet pestilent, mais il a fallu que je ne vérifie pas l'état de putréfaction de la chose. J'ai donc pensé bien faire en faisant d'une pierre deux coups. Je me suis dit qu'en vidant la poubelle de la cuisine (qui est d'ailleurs beaucoup trop grosse et qui est parfois la source d'odeurs désagréables...) je pourrais de facto faître disparaître le poulet en putréfaction. Mais voilà, les restes étaient en train de se liquéfier... J'ai donc versé par inadvertance une bonne tasse de gras et de bouillon puants sur le plancher de la cuisine. Vite! Aux toilettes jeter le reste! Il faut filtrer le mélange offensif! Il faut retenir son souffle! Devenir verte! En échapper sur ses manches de chandail pour que ça sente encore plus! Oui! Oui!

Et là, par -15 degrés, les fenêtres de l'appartement sont grandes ouvertes. Boo se demande ce qui se passe. Et mon nouveau gourami qui nageait allègrement hier encore est mort.

Quelle journée! Ça a commencé par des problèmes informatiques au travail qui m'ont bouffé la moitié de mon avant-midi. C'est à se demander pourquoi je m'occupe de l'informatique au travail. Je n'y connais rien. J'en sais un peu plus que la base. Mais pas de là à gérer la chose! J'aurais aimé pouvoir trouver une phrase, une seule, pour calmer les collègues. Mais l'irritabilité était au rendez-vous. Une chance, l'après-midi s'est bien passé, si ce n'est que du mal de tête et du dos en feu. Je ne suis pas retournée au bureau après mes quatre heures à la bibliothèque.

Qu'à cela ne tienne! Je ne laisserai pas des riens comme ça me faire une mauvaise journée, parce que ça pourrait être pire. Il faut remettre les choses en perspective. La journée n'est pas finie, par contre...il pourrait arriver d'autre chose! Nnnon! Je refuse de me laisser abattre! Il y a des gens qui vivent sans bras, sans jambes, il y a des gens qui ont perdu des êtres qu'il aiment aujourd'hui. Il y a la guerre quelque part dans le monde. Des orphelins, des veuves, des gens qui sont perdus, sans le sou, dans un pays étranger peu hospitalier. Il y a un enfant qui vient de mourir. Il y a une maman qui souffre, quelque part. Voilà. Remise en perspective efficace.

Je vais tricoter, tiens. Ne reste plus qu'à ne pas échapper de mailles...En fin de semaine, j'ai constaté que laisser des tricots en plan dans un sac de papier invitait le désastre. Surtout les griffes de Boo. J'ai donc vidé le bac Rubbermaid vert qui n'était qu'à moitié rempli dans le bureau et je me suis fait un coin pour mes réserves de laine. J'ai de beaux projets dans mon bac vert. Une couverture de bébé pour la petite chose qui grandit dans le ventre d'I. Un foulard pour D. Un foulard crocheté pour moi. Un début de courtepointe. C'est fou ce que le tricot occupe une grande place, maintenant. C'est bon contre le stress. Sauf quand on apprend à tricoter autre chose que des mailles à l'endroit et qu'on s'attaque au jersey pour la première fois. Je pensais bien perdre la tête dimanche, les mailles étaient tellement serrées! Mais j'ai persévéré, pour les cent mailles du rang, et je me suis répété mon petit mantra. C'est juste un tricot! C'est juste un tricot! Il faut le tricoter avec affection et patience, insuffler aux mailles toute la douceur dont je suis capable, c'est pour un petit bout d'amour que je vais aimer avec tout mon coeur!

J'expérimente donc une alternance jersey/point mousse avec le foulard à D et la couverture du futur petit pou (ou petite puce). Et je suis très satisfaite des résultats! Je suis si fière d'enfin conquérir ma peur du nouveau, peur de me tromper, peur de ne pas réussir. Ça fait du bien.