There Are Days . . .

There are days when you do what you do and you wonder why you do it. Days spent gluing bits and bobs to other bits and bobs, splashing paint about, listening to your gremlin ponder just so you can write his words down and destroy them in the name of making. . . well, stuff, because the little green bastard will be the first to inform you that you ain't no artist. (After all, an artist can draw a horse. From memory. And make it look just like a photograph. Yeah.)

There are days when you look at how much you spend a month on postage, how much time you spend on-line, essentially talking to yourself because of how much is missing from the e-mail experience, participating in wht you are aware is a grand illusion of relationship that feels very real on your end of the machine, and presumably feels truly real on the other side of the screen as well, but you'll never really know, now will you?

There are days that you spend searching out new (at least to you) techniques and methods of assemblage and texture and words to pull them all together with, hunting for that pattern you saw just last week (and can't rememeber anything about but the way the colors melded and this would be just perfect for this project now, but looking for "green" and "blue" and "yellow" and "doors" just leads you to porn sites) and darn it all, it was just here somewhere, and you remember you found the link on someone's blog that led you to someone else's blog and well, crap. Maybe something in the history cache will jog your mind . . . oh. Right, you just cleared that five minutes ago to get the latest version of that other site that you visit once a week on average.

But then there are days when your mailbox bursts with postcards from people you correspond with, and some of those cards were made by hand, and some of those cards have witty messages, and then there are the envelopes from countries you never heard about with ATC's in them from people who found you from a group somewhere and wanted to swap, and then there are envelopes packed with decos to admire, work in, and pass along on their flight path--or out into the wide world.

Yes. There are days.

Just for Today

Just for today . . .

I will eat my vegetables.
I will drink my water.
I will take every opportunity to exercise.

Just for today . . .

I will not whine.
I will not say, “But it’s not fair!”
I will not drag my feet.

Just for today . . .

I will do the right thing, even when it sucks.
I will keep my promises, especially those I made to myself.
I will put one foot in front of the other, and celebrate progress made.

Just for today.

Literate Gerunds

Today tastes like fake chocolate, “chocolate flavored” and waxy. There used to be a chocolate flavored gum that would always suck me in with glossy brown promises, but always disappointed once the stick was unwrapped. Thank goodness it’s a short day. Thank goodness we’re headed for the cabin in the mountains after lunch.

I have lots to do and no desire, which is bad. Hopefully getting up into the pines will clear out the don’t wanna cobwebs that I’m mired in.

Thinking about the permanent knitting projects and new ways to organize them. My stash achieved SABLE* status almost immediately after I began knitting, and then blew up after I discovered the internet. Ah, back in the days of the relatively strong dollar, when one could buy laceweight merino from Australia for $22 per kilo. Nope, no typo there. Buy three kilo cones, and get a discount almost high enough to cover the shipping. The shop would wait to charge my card until I verified receipt. And the best part?? I’d ask them to ship “slow boat via China” and get my goods almost three weeks later.

Do I need to go into how much merino laceweight I have stashed and waiting?? Plus, the Project Linus blanket bees with acrylic going begging (and I can’t let THAT happen, can I??) and the short-lived habit of going to the craft store and buying every color of acrylic worsted that caught my eye . . . well, you can imagine the state of the stash.

But I have a couple of projects that are too large to tote around with me so as to take advantage of the snippets of time that so much gets done in, and thus they have to wait patiently for me to get chunks to sink in, like on the weekends watching Netflix. And for the last two years I’ve confined myself to no more than five projects on the needles—one for me, one for Project Linus, one for friends/family, one with an eye to publication, and a wild card. It’s worked nicely; when I get antsy with a big project I can work a small one to completion, or choose something complex for “nexties” if I can’t stand the thought of more garter stitch.

But at the same time, I’ve been feeling like the shoemaker’s barefoot children. I wanna knit for me, ‘cause no one will appreciate the time and effort as much as I will. Sad but true, of just about anything handmade. Each person’s tastes are unique and individual, so it’s rare to find someone else who does it just like you would.

So I’m thinking about a push to finish off the projects currently on the needles, and then not replace them with anything from the Project-O-Rama, so that by New Year’s Day, all the needles are empty. (And then I will probably drop dead, having made the Faustian bargain that I would live until I completed all my projects.) (However, you will note that I did not specify FIBER projects. At the time, I wasn’t into paper. Gotta watch those clauses.)

And then, come New Year’s 2007, I wanna knit for me me me. I’m thinking shawls, shawls and socks. Little 40-day type projects, so I can do a bunch in the year to come. Lovely selfish dreams.

But first I gotta get through these last few.







*Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy