Well, today it's for interruption. I had another post written, but did not have time to take pictures, without which the post makes absolutely no sense at all (as opposed to the usual word salad rambling sense rife with digression you've come to expect here).
So. Today tastes like irritation, idiopathy, interference, and iodine.
My natal anniversary was this past Saturday, and it feels like this one was a corner-turning one.
I've had them before, some at the usual and expected points (eighteen, when childhood ended) and some not (twenty-four, when adulthood began; or thirty-six, when I started to feel like I could art).
This one . . . this one I feel Lord Shiva dancing in my heart. I is for immolation.
I feel that some significant chapters need to be closed. I'm not going to slam the book shut, tempting though that is, easy though that would be, but some of the principals and semi-laid plans I had are not going to come through the way I initially thought they would. If think is the correct word. I is for intuition.
I love my paper arts, I love my fiber arts, I love my charity knitting, but my studios are in chaos. I can find what I seek, but the finding means moving everything in an N-puzzle algorithm. Move the duffle bag so I can move the couch so I can get to the coffee table, open the door, and then spread the contents out until I find that ball of yarn/piece of cloth/bit of ribbon--then reverse the steps to put it all back.
The time has come 'round to pick the next layer of low-lying fruit and kiss the things I no longer find motivating goodbye. To decide on the ground-level goals, to plan out the 500 foot-level goals, and to see the big picture from space. I am weighed down with shoulds and promises I have made to no one except myself, even though the products may go to others.
Lord Shiva says to open your hands, to clear the path, to sweep the land clean for Brahma.
I is for inspiration.
Showing posts with label Planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Planning. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Sunday, February 01, 2009
F is for . . . Foiled.
Today tastes like fennel and frumenty, falafel and feathers.
As the poet says, the best laid plans of mice and men . . .
I had a post ready to go, but it needed some pictures. Lovely late winter in Arizona day, several finished objects, model champing at the bit . . . and not a single battery in the house.
So I'll be on the back porch taking in the sun with a glass of wine, an audiobook, and a lace knitting project. Pictures shortly.
As the poet says, the best laid plans of mice and men . . .
I had a post ready to go, but it needed some pictures. Lovely late winter in Arizona day, several finished objects, model champing at the bit . . . and not a single battery in the house.
So I'll be on the back porch taking in the sun with a glass of wine, an audiobook, and a lace knitting project. Pictures shortly.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
C is for . . . Creation
Todays tastes like chocolate, cardamom, cereal and cyanide.
It's been one of those weeks when you'd rather do almost anything else except what you're supposed to be doing. I'd rather be reading the contents label on my supplements jar (hey! Nature's Best has more biotin than Life Fitness! What's up with THAT!?!) than knitting, hunting obscure craft supplies on Froogle (where IS the best deal on 3/8 inch mahogany dowels grown on mainland China in an ecologically sustainable fashion) than drafting a blog post, debating colors for a pedicure (Opal White or Snow Frost? Iced Peaches or Cherry Blini?) than working out.
But then, as I was ducking responsibility, I noticed Christine Kane's post from today. About how in order to create change, you first must create a habit that supports the change. It's not enough to have a news flash that you must change X right now, and then jump on it; you need to figure out what step you can take to change X and take that step each and every day.
And to make it simply about what you do. Not a big thing, with trumpets and fanfare and crowds bowing down in the streets, with vestal virgins scattering rose petals before you, but just what you do.
And so I was reminded that I planned to post once a week to this blog, and that I had planned to do so yesterday, but something was shinier, so . . .
Ahem. This is what I do. See you next week.
It's been one of those weeks when you'd rather do almost anything else except what you're supposed to be doing. I'd rather be reading the contents label on my supplements jar (hey! Nature's Best has more biotin than Life Fitness! What's up with THAT!?!) than knitting, hunting obscure craft supplies on Froogle (where IS the best deal on 3/8 inch mahogany dowels grown on mainland China in an ecologically sustainable fashion) than drafting a blog post, debating colors for a pedicure (Opal White or Snow Frost? Iced Peaches or Cherry Blini?) than working out.
But then, as I was ducking responsibility, I noticed Christine Kane's post from today. About how in order to create change, you first must create a habit that supports the change. It's not enough to have a news flash that you must change X right now, and then jump on it; you need to figure out what step you can take to change X and take that step each and every day.
And to make it simply about what you do. Not a big thing, with trumpets and fanfare and crowds bowing down in the streets, with vestal virgins scattering rose petals before you, but just what you do.
And so I was reminded that I planned to post once a week to this blog, and that I had planned to do so yesterday, but something was shinier, so . . .
Ahem. This is what I do. See you next week.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
B is for . . . Box Jumps
Today tastes like bananas and butterscotch, beef and bilirubin.
New year, new slant on the workout. I still am athletically declined, but having been given notice by the doctor that I will lose weight or suffer the consequences (and what vey ugly consequences they are, m'dear) I am ramping it up a touch by incorporating a cash-out.
See, Crossfit incorporates a warmup into its workout. Or rather, "a workout before the workout," as one member refers to it. Three rounds as quick as you can--leg stretches (15 seconds per leg), 15 squats (I use a 25 pound dumbell and do goblet squats, I feel silly doing air squats), 15 sit-ups (on an incline board), 15 back extensions, 15 pull-ups, 15 dips.
Now you're ready for the workout.
So I've been warming up and working out for a year (and a third, come Sunday). I know where the holes in my armor are, and this year I've decided to get out the brazer and go to work mending them.
Unfortunately, the only way to improve a physical skill is to do more of that skill. Over and over and over. Which leads us to box jumps.
I hate box jumps.
To perform a box jump, you set up an object that will support your weight in front of you. Squat down, feet together. Now jump up onto that object, both feet at the same time--otherwise you're doing step-ups. There's a balance component to getting your body settled upon landing on the box or on the floor as you hop down again. You need explosive strength in your hips and thighs to get enough air to land on the box instead of tripping over it.
As your box gets taller, there's an abdominal element since you have to haul your trailing legs up to get your feet on top of the box.
Yup, this is an example of Prime Suckitude. So of course, this is now the cash-out for the workout. 20 box jumps.
So I'm hanging with some pals, and we get to talking about chick stuff--bodies and maintenance of same, and how we wish things were different, and one notices that I've lost a bunch of weight. How'd I do it?
So I explain the workout, starting with the warm-up, and then go into the workout of the day--three rounds of 45 pound thrusters and pull-ups. The first round you do 21 of each, then 15 of each, then 9 of each. That doesn't sound so bad, she said. The kicker is, done right, you complete the workout in under five minutes. Done well, you complete it in under three minutes.
You could hear crickets chirping.
And a moment later, the group was back into bemoaning how hard it is to get fit, how hard it is to lose weight, how hard it is blah blah blah let's go get pastry.
Excuse me? Pastry? Weren't you just talking about . . . and now you want pastry?
Ok, I get it. Pastry is easy. Talking is easy. Wishing is easy.
But easy doesn't get'r done. Easy doesn't get the bar up over your head. Easy doesn't own your desire.
If you have a desire, then it only seems right to determine the cost of that desire and then decide whether or not you're willing and able to pay that price. The cost of a fancy vehicle is money, money, money; for the payments, the insurance, and the gas. The cost of six-pack abs is a strict diet and exercise routine.
Now, being unable to pony up is one thing. (Although one might want to consider what stands in the way and work on that, if one desires the object sufficiently. There are ways to make more money, more time, and exercises are almost infinitely modifiable to suit innate [or inert] athletic ability.) But it seems that most who claim to be unable are just unwilling.
I can't because I don't have enough money. Couldn't you take in a roommate, get a second part-time job, cut back on expenses? Instead of cable TV, go to the library? Well, yes, but . . .
There is a yes-but for everything. I have my own yes-buts. And the only one that trumps the others is "Yes, but THIS is what I really want."
And I really really want to be able to do box jumps at 36 inches. (Hell, just to be able to do them reasonably well and not internally whine all the way to the gym on a jump-centric day.)
And so, the cash-out. Four inches at a time, up and down, forward and back. Working my way through the yes-buts.
New year, new slant on the workout. I still am athletically declined, but having been given notice by the doctor that I will lose weight or suffer the consequences (and what vey ugly consequences they are, m'dear) I am ramping it up a touch by incorporating a cash-out.
See, Crossfit incorporates a warmup into its workout. Or rather, "a workout before the workout," as one member refers to it. Three rounds as quick as you can--leg stretches (15 seconds per leg), 15 squats (I use a 25 pound dumbell and do goblet squats, I feel silly doing air squats), 15 sit-ups (on an incline board), 15 back extensions, 15 pull-ups, 15 dips.
Now you're ready for the workout.
So I've been warming up and working out for a year (and a third, come Sunday). I know where the holes in my armor are, and this year I've decided to get out the brazer and go to work mending them.
Unfortunately, the only way to improve a physical skill is to do more of that skill. Over and over and over. Which leads us to box jumps.
I hate box jumps.
To perform a box jump, you set up an object that will support your weight in front of you. Squat down, feet together. Now jump up onto that object, both feet at the same time--otherwise you're doing step-ups. There's a balance component to getting your body settled upon landing on the box or on the floor as you hop down again. You need explosive strength in your hips and thighs to get enough air to land on the box instead of tripping over it.
As your box gets taller, there's an abdominal element since you have to haul your trailing legs up to get your feet on top of the box.
Yup, this is an example of Prime Suckitude. So of course, this is now the cash-out for the workout. 20 box jumps.
So I'm hanging with some pals, and we get to talking about chick stuff--bodies and maintenance of same, and how we wish things were different, and one notices that I've lost a bunch of weight. How'd I do it?
So I explain the workout, starting with the warm-up, and then go into the workout of the day--three rounds of 45 pound thrusters and pull-ups. The first round you do 21 of each, then 15 of each, then 9 of each. That doesn't sound so bad, she said. The kicker is, done right, you complete the workout in under five minutes. Done well, you complete it in under three minutes.
You could hear crickets chirping.
And a moment later, the group was back into bemoaning how hard it is to get fit, how hard it is to lose weight, how hard it is blah blah blah let's go get pastry.
Excuse me? Pastry? Weren't you just talking about . . . and now you want pastry?
Ok, I get it. Pastry is easy. Talking is easy. Wishing is easy.
But easy doesn't get'r done. Easy doesn't get the bar up over your head. Easy doesn't own your desire.
If you have a desire, then it only seems right to determine the cost of that desire and then decide whether or not you're willing and able to pay that price. The cost of a fancy vehicle is money, money, money; for the payments, the insurance, and the gas. The cost of six-pack abs is a strict diet and exercise routine.
Now, being unable to pony up is one thing. (Although one might want to consider what stands in the way and work on that, if one desires the object sufficiently. There are ways to make more money, more time, and exercises are almost infinitely modifiable to suit innate [or inert] athletic ability.) But it seems that most who claim to be unable are just unwilling.
I can't because I don't have enough money. Couldn't you take in a roommate, get a second part-time job, cut back on expenses? Instead of cable TV, go to the library? Well, yes, but . . .
There is a yes-but for everything. I have my own yes-buts. And the only one that trumps the others is "Yes, but THIS is what I really want."
And I really really want to be able to do box jumps at 36 inches. (Hell, just to be able to do them reasonably well and not internally whine all the way to the gym on a jump-centric day.)
And so, the cash-out. Four inches at a time, up and down, forward and back. Working my way through the yes-buts.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
A is for Admire
Today tastes like . . . almonds and apples, asparagus and arsenic. See a theme developing?
A is for Admire. And Advice. And Alphabet, as you Astute Tonstant Weaders will have Assumed. (Enough with the freaky Germanic capitals, Already.) (ouch)
I have already 'fessed up to my somewhere-between-schoolgirl-and-stalker crush on Patti Digh (and if you haven't read her luminous essays on 37 Days, why not?) I am in awe of her concise prose about the ordinary, how she polishes the everyday and holds it up in a shining example of the things we take for granted, the things we think are just intuitively obvious . . . and the lessons we learn when we discover these obvious and granted things are neither.1
And one of the tricks she's used to keep the posts flowing is the alphabet meme--each post is based around a letter of the alphabet. Well--that means there's (counts fingers, toes, borrows co-worker) twenty-six posts right there. At my rate of publication, that's half a year of material, not counting the times I actually have something to say, or a finished object to show, or even just a nifty snap off a random camera.
So I'm stealing the idea. A is for Avarice, after all.
1. My favorite essay? "Open the Mudroom Door for Tycho". For me, it's an essay about the stories we tell ourselves about other beings and their actions--and a reminder to tell ourselves the kindest possible version of that story before we act.
A is for Admire. And Advice. And Alphabet, as you Astute Tonstant Weaders will have Assumed. (Enough with the freaky Germanic capitals, Already.) (ouch)
I have already 'fessed up to my somewhere-between-schoolgirl-and-stalker crush on Patti Digh (and if you haven't read her luminous essays on 37 Days, why not?) I am in awe of her concise prose about the ordinary, how she polishes the everyday and holds it up in a shining example of the things we take for granted, the things we think are just intuitively obvious . . . and the lessons we learn when we discover these obvious and granted things are neither.1
And one of the tricks she's used to keep the posts flowing is the alphabet meme--each post is based around a letter of the alphabet. Well--that means there's (counts fingers, toes, borrows co-worker) twenty-six posts right there. At my rate of publication, that's half a year of material, not counting the times I actually have something to say, or a finished object to show, or even just a nifty snap off a random camera.
So I'm stealing the idea. A is for Avarice, after all.
1. My favorite essay? "Open the Mudroom Door for Tycho". For me, it's an essay about the stories we tell ourselves about other beings and their actions--and a reminder to tell ourselves the kindest possible version of that story before we act.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Word of the Year
Today tastes like blueberry muffin tops fresh from the bakery, with the decadent crumbled topping; piping hot dark roast coffee with just a little cream; maple sugar bacon; and wet silk.
I've written before about Christine Kane and how she doesn't form New Year's resolutions, but instead, sets an intention by selecting a word to live by for the next year. Not something to beat yourself up with ("Excel!" "Perform!" "Flagellate!") but something to quietly guide you ("courage", "desire", "dream").
I've decided on "Complete."
See, Mormons have been known to envy my stash. Food, yarn, paper, fabric, cosmetics . . . honey, I could be snowed in here for a year and come out with my sanity, leftovers, and projects still in the works, with my face freshly scrubbed and hair washed. I have cut all the easy stuff, I'm doing better about not bringing in more stuff, now it's time to dig a little deeper.
I need to finish the dribs and drabs of this and that. I need to use it up and toss it, rather than cutting it in half all the way to Zeno's Paradox. 1 I get about three-quarters of the way done, and then I get fear of completion. I will never have another project/bottle of conditioner/bar of soap again, so I have to get another whatcher available in the stash. Then I start using less and less of the nearly done item, so as to make it last.
And then I finally get down to the last use and instead of taking inventory (what do I have already that will serve this purpose) I put it on the list and get a second . . . only to discover the original first waiting in the stash for me.
Enough. Use it up and toss the empty. Check the stash and replace from stock. Complete what you started.
And what about the stuff that you buy, try once, and don't care for? The projects that seemed like such a good idea when you began, but now you find you can't stand tole painting/needlepoint/crocheted toilet paper rolls?
Simple. If you cannot complete a project started, then be complete with the process. Have the pleasure from having enjoyed whatever it was and wherever you got to (the quilt from cherished t-shirts that you drew up a sketch for and never cut out, the pants you were going to make into shorts that no longer fit, the layette set of one bootie and half a sweater for the child now in middle school) and then repurpose or get rid of the materials. Send the pants to Goodwill if they aren't shreddy junk, rip the layette and make a Linus binkie, throw out the t-shirts.
Make some peace, and make some space for the things that matter to you now. Soon enough, they, too, will fall by the wayside--and that's okay.
1. You can never get from one point to another, because first you must travel half the distance from here to there, but to get to the halfway point, you must get half of that distance, but to get there you have to get halfway from the start to the quarter-point, and so on so on so forth. So yes, the three year old is right--Christmas is never going to come!
I've written before about Christine Kane and how she doesn't form New Year's resolutions, but instead, sets an intention by selecting a word to live by for the next year. Not something to beat yourself up with ("Excel!" "Perform!" "Flagellate!") but something to quietly guide you ("courage", "desire", "dream").
I've decided on "Complete."
See, Mormons have been known to envy my stash. Food, yarn, paper, fabric, cosmetics . . . honey, I could be snowed in here for a year and come out with my sanity, leftovers, and projects still in the works, with my face freshly scrubbed and hair washed. I have cut all the easy stuff, I'm doing better about not bringing in more stuff, now it's time to dig a little deeper.
I need to finish the dribs and drabs of this and that. I need to use it up and toss it, rather than cutting it in half all the way to Zeno's Paradox. 1 I get about three-quarters of the way done, and then I get fear of completion. I will never have another project/bottle of conditioner/bar of soap again, so I have to get another whatcher available in the stash. Then I start using less and less of the nearly done item, so as to make it last.
And then I finally get down to the last use and instead of taking inventory (what do I have already that will serve this purpose) I put it on the list and get a second . . . only to discover the original first waiting in the stash for me.
Enough. Use it up and toss the empty. Check the stash and replace from stock. Complete what you started.
And what about the stuff that you buy, try once, and don't care for? The projects that seemed like such a good idea when you began, but now you find you can't stand tole painting/needlepoint/crocheted toilet paper rolls?
Simple. If you cannot complete a project started, then be complete with the process. Have the pleasure from having enjoyed whatever it was and wherever you got to (the quilt from cherished t-shirts that you drew up a sketch for and never cut out, the pants you were going to make into shorts that no longer fit, the layette set of one bootie and half a sweater for the child now in middle school) and then repurpose or get rid of the materials. Send the pants to Goodwill if they aren't shreddy junk, rip the layette and make a Linus binkie, throw out the t-shirts.
Make some peace, and make some space for the things that matter to you now. Soon enough, they, too, will fall by the wayside--and that's okay.
1. You can never get from one point to another, because first you must travel half the distance from here to there, but to get to the halfway point, you must get half of that distance, but to get there you have to get halfway from the start to the quarter-point, and so on so on so forth. So yes, the three year old is right--Christmas is never going to come!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Another One Bites the Dust . . .
Today tastes like capers, yellowfin tuna sashimi,and plum wine. Salty bitter sour, buttery, and sweet. The flavors of a minor victory.
So . . . If you read the last post, you've found out that I am giving up consumption for a while. (Consumption be done about dis?) I feel up to my earlobes in things that never get an honest chance to be used because there's too danged many of them. Like having too many projects on the needles--you knit and knit and knit, but never get anywhere.
A good chunk of the charity stash is in fine weight acrylic on cones. Apparantly I'm not the only knitter with eyes bigger than her needles, because one day, while I was working at a Project Linus Blanket Bee, a donation came in. It seems that they'd finally had to put Aunt Suzie the crazy machine knitter away, so they'd cleaned out Aunt Suzie's attic and found she'd been insulating with yarn; could we use it?
No kidding, there was a pile of yarn about the size of a VW Bug sitting there on the floor. You could swim in the stuff like Scrooge McDuck.
The hoards rushed in and scooped up the worsted, but there was a bunch of acylic laceweight cones left that no one wanted. I was trying to be good, but when our Project Coordinator asked me to take a look and see if any of it could be used . . . well, I only have so much self-control. Prolly take a particle physicist to find it--it's very very small, and has an enormously brief half-life.
So I ended up with cones and cones and cones of laceweight acrylic. To go with the skeins and skeins and skeins of babyweight acrylic I already had . . . but my secret plan was to twine several skeins/cones together to make worsted weight. And I have a pattern I like for this, and you don't have to twine it all before you knit, and . . .
And you can see the same little devil on Crazy Aunt Suzy's shoulder whispering that, hey, after all, she knit with MACHINES, so it was so much FASTER, she'd blow through her stash in NO TIME, so she ought to buy some MORE . . .
So . . . I've been nibbling away at the cones, just like I nibble away at the big skeins, and just as I nibble away at the tiny leftovers until it's all gone into a blanket, buh-bye. But dang, there's a lot of yards on a cone.
Hence, it a little celebration when I finally eat that last bite and leave only a tail to finish in. One of the purtiest sights there is, a nekkid cone.
I wrapped it in part of the binkie it gave its yarn for. One down . . . eleventeen to go. I'm looking forward to the day when I finally finish off the cone of white the SIZE OF MY HIPS. Seriously, that cone has gone into at least two three by five foot blankets, and is still rolling along.
So . . . If you read the last post, you've found out that I am giving up consumption for a while. (Consumption be done about dis?) I feel up to my earlobes in things that never get an honest chance to be used because there's too danged many of them. Like having too many projects on the needles--you knit and knit and knit, but never get anywhere.
A good chunk of the charity stash is in fine weight acrylic on cones. Apparantly I'm not the only knitter with eyes bigger than her needles, because one day, while I was working at a Project Linus Blanket Bee, a donation came in. It seems that they'd finally had to put Aunt Suzie the crazy machine knitter away, so they'd cleaned out Aunt Suzie's attic and found she'd been insulating with yarn; could we use it?
No kidding, there was a pile of yarn about the size of a VW Bug sitting there on the floor. You could swim in the stuff like Scrooge McDuck.
The hoards rushed in and scooped up the worsted, but there was a bunch of acylic laceweight cones left that no one wanted. I was trying to be good, but when our Project Coordinator asked me to take a look and see if any of it could be used . . . well, I only have so much self-control. Prolly take a particle physicist to find it--it's very very small, and has an enormously brief half-life.
So I ended up with cones and cones and cones of laceweight acrylic. To go with the skeins and skeins and skeins of babyweight acrylic I already had . . . but my secret plan was to twine several skeins/cones together to make worsted weight. And I have a pattern I like for this, and you don't have to twine it all before you knit, and . . .
And you can see the same little devil on Crazy Aunt Suzy's shoulder whispering that, hey, after all, she knit with MACHINES, so it was so much FASTER, she'd blow through her stash in NO TIME, so she ought to buy some MORE . . .
So . . . I've been nibbling away at the cones, just like I nibble away at the big skeins, and just as I nibble away at the tiny leftovers until it's all gone into a blanket, buh-bye. But dang, there's a lot of yards on a cone.
Hence, it a little celebration when I finally eat that last bite and leave only a tail to finish in. One of the purtiest sights there is, a nekkid cone.
I wrapped it in part of the binkie it gave its yarn for. One down . . . eleventeen to go. I'm looking forward to the day when I finally finish off the cone of white the SIZE OF MY HIPS. Seriously, that cone has gone into at least two three by five foot blankets, and is still rolling along.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Obsessions, Posessions, and An Epiphany
Today tastes like that apocraphal morning after. Where you've been subsisitng on Ryecrisps, cucumbers, and green tea for a month because there's a big blowout coming up and you want to splurge, and then you do--cream puffs and champagne and red meat and Really Exquisite ChocolateTM and lots and lots and lots of each of these, and then some more. Wheeee!!!!
And then you wake up the next morning, and the Party Bus has left the station. Without you. You're standing in the terminal huffing diesel fumes with your luggage piled around your feet, and confetti drifting in the breeze like colored dandruff.
It finally hit me this afternoon. I hire someone to clean my house, but I told her (counts on fingers) three years ago that we'd handle the decluttering and putting stuff where it belonged.
The house sparkles. What you can see of it under the piles and mountains and heaps of stuff. Most of it stuff that entertains me--stuff to make stuff with, stuff to watch while I'm making stuff, stuff that honors a relationship. We don't really buy much new except for clothes (and even then, I'll buy socks and undies at the discount store, and outerwear at Goodwill if they have something just right).
And this afternoon, it hit me. I am a slave to my stuff.
When things go missing, it sends me into a tizzy. But there's no place to put it, or the place is so cram-jammed with other stuff that I can't find it even though it's right in front of me--there's just too many things!
So not only do I have a bunch of physical stuff, I have emotional stuff about my physical stuff. Stuff about my stuff, and stuff about being stuffed with stuff.
I have clothes I don't wear because they don't fit my body. (Too small in the waist, too big in the hips and thighs. In the same garment!!! What am I going to do--regain the inches I've peeled off in exactly those spots?) Clothes I don't wear because they don't fit the image I want to project. (Punk and goth are just not the same after twenty-five . . .) Shoes that hurt my feet after a few minutes, but that aren't anything special to look at. (If you wear nine-inch heels, you're expected to be sculpture. But if you have a pair of two-inch heeled pumps that are just as uncomfortable, there's no payoff. They're just pumps, for heaven's sake!)
A lot of my stuff is stuff to make stuff with, and a lot of that is stuff that gets sent out into the world. I knit for charity most of the time. I knit for myself and those close to me sometimes. I get that. I get that the hard part of getting rid of stuff I don't need will be getting rid of the stuff to do stuff with.
So I'm starting where it's easy. I spent an hour last night working on the casual side of my closet. I need seven T shirts (five to work out in, two to slack around in). Done. I got rid of the extra jeans (only need two pair -- Casual Friday and a spare). Cleared out old and cherished sweaters that I could fit THREE of me in--they were "oversized" when I bought them, and there was a LOT more of me then.
Tonight I'm going to hit the work side of the closet. Then maybe I can see what I really have to wear. I don't need more than three pairs of black pants, ten overall printed T's, and ten silk shirts. My black jacket needs replacing--but I have it's sucessor on hand. I just need to take it to the tailor to have a couple of buttons moved and the sleeves taken up to 3/4 length.
That gives me two week's worth of outfits (or two wardrobes--one fall/winter/spring in the T's, one for hot and muggy summer in the silk). Maybe I'll watch for 3/4 sleeve plain color T's to go with my broomstick skirts for summer, with flats. I love the look of those skirts, and how cool and floaty they are when the humidity's high. Maybe I'll put that on my want list and see if the urge cools down. (For a while, I really wanted a laptop. REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted a laptop. Would have sold my soul for one. Last week, DH Gareth found a great deal on a used one on eBay, and asked if I wanted one. A laptop? For what? I spend too much time online as it is . . .)
And then? Maybe the living room and kitchen, possibly the library. Yeah, the library makes more sense. Get rid of the books that are taking up space, that I've read enough times that I don't reach for them, that I can get at the public library if I have to have to have them. Then maybe I'll have room for the DVD's that I watch as I knit.
I don't expect I'll ever get really Zen and spartan, like those hypermodern rooms featured in magazines where everything is streamlined and stark--the colors are white, eggshell, and sand, with one lily in a black glass vase. I just don't want to wind up with banker's boxes of stuff piled in closets (Jeans, Stuffed Animals, LP's, 8 Tracks [flinch]) or stacked in rooms and screened with gaily-printed curtains. I don't want to live in a pile of decorative clutter any more.
I won't be a slave to my stuff.
And then you wake up the next morning, and the Party Bus has left the station. Without you. You're standing in the terminal huffing diesel fumes with your luggage piled around your feet, and confetti drifting in the breeze like colored dandruff.
It finally hit me this afternoon. I hire someone to clean my house, but I told her (counts on fingers) three years ago that we'd handle the decluttering and putting stuff where it belonged.
The house sparkles. What you can see of it under the piles and mountains and heaps of stuff. Most of it stuff that entertains me--stuff to make stuff with, stuff to watch while I'm making stuff, stuff that honors a relationship. We don't really buy much new except for clothes (and even then, I'll buy socks and undies at the discount store, and outerwear at Goodwill if they have something just right).
And this afternoon, it hit me. I am a slave to my stuff.
When things go missing, it sends me into a tizzy. But there's no place to put it, or the place is so cram-jammed with other stuff that I can't find it even though it's right in front of me--there's just too many things!
So not only do I have a bunch of physical stuff, I have emotional stuff about my physical stuff. Stuff about my stuff, and stuff about being stuffed with stuff.
I have clothes I don't wear because they don't fit my body. (Too small in the waist, too big in the hips and thighs. In the same garment!!! What am I going to do--regain the inches I've peeled off in exactly those spots?) Clothes I don't wear because they don't fit the image I want to project. (Punk and goth are just not the same after twenty-five . . .) Shoes that hurt my feet after a few minutes, but that aren't anything special to look at. (If you wear nine-inch heels, you're expected to be sculpture. But if you have a pair of two-inch heeled pumps that are just as uncomfortable, there's no payoff. They're just pumps, for heaven's sake!)
A lot of my stuff is stuff to make stuff with, and a lot of that is stuff that gets sent out into the world. I knit for charity most of the time. I knit for myself and those close to me sometimes. I get that. I get that the hard part of getting rid of stuff I don't need will be getting rid of the stuff to do stuff with.
So I'm starting where it's easy. I spent an hour last night working on the casual side of my closet. I need seven T shirts (five to work out in, two to slack around in). Done. I got rid of the extra jeans (only need two pair -- Casual Friday and a spare). Cleared out old and cherished sweaters that I could fit THREE of me in--they were "oversized" when I bought them, and there was a LOT more of me then.
Tonight I'm going to hit the work side of the closet. Then maybe I can see what I really have to wear. I don't need more than three pairs of black pants, ten overall printed T's, and ten silk shirts. My black jacket needs replacing--but I have it's sucessor on hand. I just need to take it to the tailor to have a couple of buttons moved and the sleeves taken up to 3/4 length.
That gives me two week's worth of outfits (or two wardrobes--one fall/winter/spring in the T's, one for hot and muggy summer in the silk). Maybe I'll watch for 3/4 sleeve plain color T's to go with my broomstick skirts for summer, with flats. I love the look of those skirts, and how cool and floaty they are when the humidity's high. Maybe I'll put that on my want list and see if the urge cools down. (For a while, I really wanted a laptop. REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted a laptop. Would have sold my soul for one. Last week, DH Gareth found a great deal on a used one on eBay, and asked if I wanted one. A laptop? For what? I spend too much time online as it is . . .)
And then? Maybe the living room and kitchen, possibly the library. Yeah, the library makes more sense. Get rid of the books that are taking up space, that I've read enough times that I don't reach for them, that I can get at the public library if I have to have to have them. Then maybe I'll have room for the DVD's that I watch as I knit.
I don't expect I'll ever get really Zen and spartan, like those hypermodern rooms featured in magazines where everything is streamlined and stark--the colors are white, eggshell, and sand, with one lily in a black glass vase. I just don't want to wind up with banker's boxes of stuff piled in closets (Jeans, Stuffed Animals, LP's, 8 Tracks [flinch]) or stacked in rooms and screened with gaily-printed curtains. I don't want to live in a pile of decorative clutter any more.
I won't be a slave to my stuff.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
If I Had a Nickle . . .
Today tastes like the remains of a good idea, and frustration with what I hath wrought. Yup, carmalized brown butter Rice Krispie Treats just about sums it up.
See, I had almost the perfect pattern for a Linus binkie. One pattern row, one simple return row. But I wanted it in strips for portability and because it is so hot and humid that my brain cell has wilted and I can't remember the winter when I shivered in my thin, thin blood and moaned about freezing in the sub-100's and wore fingerless gloves to the office amid remarks about not getting but a half-day at Christmas and my diminutive (stature-challenged, differently large) son (male offspring) Tim.
So do I listen to good sense and sit down with the pattern? Well, to a point. Perhaps the one on my head.
I count out the repeat (15 stitches) and then, rather than spending 20 whole minutes swatching, I go off chasing undomesticated waterfowl across the 'Net, looking for the PERFECT perfect pattern--a ripple afghan, knitted, in strips.
I spend 40 minutes on this wild goose chase. Fruitless? Absolutely. Like a plum tree in Phoenix in the height of summer. Crispy fruitles; branches on the ground fruitless; crawling off to dip roots in the pool before expiring, gasping, on the lawn fruitless.
Then I sat down, counted carefully, cast on . . . and in ten minutes had my pattern proofed. Grrrrrr . . .
It's gotta be the heat.
Here goes: the PERFECT Ripple Pattern
Leftmost strip: CO odd multiple of 15 plus 4: 1 SS, 2 garter edge, pattern, 1 SS
Center strips: CO same odd multiple of 15 plus 2: 1 SS, pattern, 1 SS
Rightmost strip: CO same odd multiple of 15 plus 4: 1 SS, pattern, 2 garter edge, 1 SS.
Work first 4 rows and last 4 rows in garter.
Pattern: Sl 1, k 2, *k2tog, k 5, yo, k1, yo, k5, ssk* end as per strip. Purl back starting on row 6.
Gotta be the heat.
See, I had almost the perfect pattern for a Linus binkie. One pattern row, one simple return row. But I wanted it in strips for portability and because it is so hot and humid that my brain cell has wilted and I can't remember the winter when I shivered in my thin, thin blood and moaned about freezing in the sub-100's and wore fingerless gloves to the office amid remarks about not getting but a half-day at Christmas and my diminutive (stature-challenged, differently large) son (male offspring) Tim.
So do I listen to good sense and sit down with the pattern? Well, to a point. Perhaps the one on my head.
I count out the repeat (15 stitches) and then, rather than spending 20 whole minutes swatching, I go off chasing undomesticated waterfowl across the 'Net, looking for the PERFECT perfect pattern--a ripple afghan, knitted, in strips.
I spend 40 minutes on this wild goose chase. Fruitless? Absolutely. Like a plum tree in Phoenix in the height of summer. Crispy fruitles; branches on the ground fruitless; crawling off to dip roots in the pool before expiring, gasping, on the lawn fruitless.
Then I sat down, counted carefully, cast on . . . and in ten minutes had my pattern proofed. Grrrrrr . . .
It's gotta be the heat.
Here goes: the PERFECT Ripple Pattern
Leftmost strip: CO odd multiple of 15 plus 4: 1 SS, 2 garter edge, pattern, 1 SS
Center strips: CO same odd multiple of 15 plus 2: 1 SS, pattern, 1 SS
Rightmost strip: CO same odd multiple of 15 plus 4: 1 SS, pattern, 2 garter edge, 1 SS.
Work first 4 rows and last 4 rows in garter.
Pattern: Sl 1, k 2, *k2tog, k 5, yo, k1, yo, k5, ssk* end as per strip. Purl back starting on row 6.
Gotta be the heat.
Friday, August 08, 2008
Citius, Altius, Decubis
Today tastes like endive, licorice basil, fresh tomatoes still warm from the sun, and balsamic vinaigrette with enough garlic. All the very best parts of late summer.
It’s Friday and once again the weekend is rolling up like a 48 hour juggernaut. Tonight, apres gym , I plan to sit in my favorite armchair with something cold and tasty and knit on the current obsession until my fingers fall asleep. Which may not take very long. Yesterday’s workout included 135 pull-ups, so by the time we finished, I had trouble getting my fingers to wrap around the combination lock. My hands still feel a little off.
Saturday means a Project Linus gathering and an opportunity to work on the blanket nearest completion. I have learned that I like the strip blankies a lot better–they’re so much more portable and less ghastly during the dog days. It’s worth the finishing work to sew the seams and add a border post-knit. I have two strips and a bit done in an estonian star stitch, and one strip and a bit in a favorite knit and purl pattern.
Sunday will get poured into the current obsession again. Why no pictures? It’s a black lace shawl, which will be lovely when it’s off the needles and blocked, but right now . . . it’s a forlorn black blob. It started as a little black strip, then became a little black blob, and now it’s a bigger black blob. Not very exciting to look at. (Although Thorax thinks it’s stunning cool in the sun where you can see the blues and greens underlying the black, and is scouting locations for the shoot. I have been telling her that there is no way in hell I am subsidizing a trip to the Manhattan garment district for a blog post.)
After this, I have a couple more shawls that need to be worked up, but my heart is lusting after garments. Real garments. Made to fit a body, not just shapes. Garments with sleeves and closures.
Bizarre, huh?
Maybe not so much. I have cones of rayon chenille I bought back when I was flirting with the idea of knitted suits (before I understood just how much stockinette that would entail). I’ve meant to knit up some twinsets, because that might actually happen. The rayon doesn’t hold heat well, so these would be cozy and nice in the air-conditioning of summer, and just enough in winter. I’m thinking top-down u-neck shells in the round with bust darts and waist shaping and shirt-tail hems paired with cabled v-neck cardis that button up. I have a jacket whose fit I like a lot (length and everything) to mimic for the cardis.
I’m woozy with lust for this one pattern in the fall 2005 Knitty (an online knitting magazine). I love the trees on the front, so of course I want to make copious changes.
I want the trees on the back; I want something more like the Gondor motif in LOTR; and while I want the leaves on the sleeves, I want saddle sleeves that are bracelet/three-quarter length. I’m thinking I’ll have to knit the back from the bottom up, but then I can construct the saddles, sleeves, and fronts from the top down. And rather than do the fronts in a pattern per se, I want to do stochastic cables like Lucy Neatby’s Cables After Whiskey. That’ll be enough texture to make the sweater cohesive without being fussy and over-the-top.
See, the back will be fussy and elaborate, with fancy sleeves, and the front will be interestingly crunchy with nifty buttons and fancy sleeves, so the sweater will look like it all belongs together. It’s all crunchy and textured from any viewpoint. But at the same time, it’s not all complex and ethnic funkified museum-piece work.
But first I’ll need to swatch. I think I’ll swatch random cables, as that should give me a good idea how many stitches I’ll have to play with over the back. I may design trees on the fly up to where the branches go, or steal a tree from another designer.
And I have more ideas for Linus binkies. I want to use some multi-strand knitting and do random cables in a strippie so the colors shift softly while the stitches wander around. I want to take odd balls and do the three-ball trick where you knit one row of color a, purl one row of color b, then knit one row of color c and just keep moving them along. This creates a kind of blend between variegated and its homemade pooling tendencies and “I’m trying to use up every bit of my yarn” stripes. Doing slip-stitch work at the same time makes cheerful peerie type patterns.
So I’ve got startitis again. (Which is a good thing, actually. Earlier this week I didn’t want to knit on the current obsession, I didn’t want to think about knitting, I didn’t want anything to do with sticks and string.1) I just need to get some of these off the needles before I wind myself up into too many things at once.
1. This is how my obsessions usually end–I took down the quilting frame, and haven’t made a top in years. I put down the crochet hook, and aside from knitting-related work, I haven’t made a crocheted item in forever–although the aragumi movement is calling me, a little2. I deco’d for about a year before the fire died.
2. I want to knit or crochet tiny penguin mascots3 for me and Gareth.
3. We were working out one day, and I was frustrated at my utter lack of pullups. I growled, “I’m tired of being weak,” and Gareth misheard me as saying “I’m a tiny penguin.” The Tiny Penguin has become our gym mascot, embodying perseverance and fierceness. Penguin up!
It’s Friday and once again the weekend is rolling up like a 48 hour juggernaut. Tonight, apres gym , I plan to sit in my favorite armchair with something cold and tasty and knit on the current obsession until my fingers fall asleep. Which may not take very long. Yesterday’s workout included 135 pull-ups, so by the time we finished, I had trouble getting my fingers to wrap around the combination lock. My hands still feel a little off.
Saturday means a Project Linus gathering and an opportunity to work on the blanket nearest completion. I have learned that I like the strip blankies a lot better–they’re so much more portable and less ghastly during the dog days. It’s worth the finishing work to sew the seams and add a border post-knit. I have two strips and a bit done in an estonian star stitch, and one strip and a bit in a favorite knit and purl pattern.
Sunday will get poured into the current obsession again. Why no pictures? It’s a black lace shawl, which will be lovely when it’s off the needles and blocked, but right now . . . it’s a forlorn black blob. It started as a little black strip, then became a little black blob, and now it’s a bigger black blob. Not very exciting to look at. (Although Thorax thinks it’s stunning cool in the sun where you can see the blues and greens underlying the black, and is scouting locations for the shoot. I have been telling her that there is no way in hell I am subsidizing a trip to the Manhattan garment district for a blog post.)
After this, I have a couple more shawls that need to be worked up, but my heart is lusting after garments. Real garments. Made to fit a body, not just shapes. Garments with sleeves and closures.
Bizarre, huh?
Maybe not so much. I have cones of rayon chenille I bought back when I was flirting with the idea of knitted suits (before I understood just how much stockinette that would entail). I’ve meant to knit up some twinsets, because that might actually happen. The rayon doesn’t hold heat well, so these would be cozy and nice in the air-conditioning of summer, and just enough in winter. I’m thinking top-down u-neck shells in the round with bust darts and waist shaping and shirt-tail hems paired with cabled v-neck cardis that button up. I have a jacket whose fit I like a lot (length and everything) to mimic for the cardis.
I’m woozy with lust for this one pattern in the fall 2005 Knitty (an online knitting magazine). I love the trees on the front, so of course I want to make copious changes.
I want the trees on the back; I want something more like the Gondor motif in LOTR; and while I want the leaves on the sleeves, I want saddle sleeves that are bracelet/three-quarter length. I’m thinking I’ll have to knit the back from the bottom up, but then I can construct the saddles, sleeves, and fronts from the top down. And rather than do the fronts in a pattern per se, I want to do stochastic cables like Lucy Neatby’s Cables After Whiskey. That’ll be enough texture to make the sweater cohesive without being fussy and over-the-top.
See, the back will be fussy and elaborate, with fancy sleeves, and the front will be interestingly crunchy with nifty buttons and fancy sleeves, so the sweater will look like it all belongs together. It’s all crunchy and textured from any viewpoint. But at the same time, it’s not all complex and ethnic funkified museum-piece work.
But first I’ll need to swatch. I think I’ll swatch random cables, as that should give me a good idea how many stitches I’ll have to play with over the back. I may design trees on the fly up to where the branches go, or steal a tree from another designer.
And I have more ideas for Linus binkies. I want to use some multi-strand knitting and do random cables in a strippie so the colors shift softly while the stitches wander around. I want to take odd balls and do the three-ball trick where you knit one row of color a, purl one row of color b, then knit one row of color c and just keep moving them along. This creates a kind of blend between variegated and its homemade pooling tendencies and “I’m trying to use up every bit of my yarn” stripes. Doing slip-stitch work at the same time makes cheerful peerie type patterns.
So I’ve got startitis again. (Which is a good thing, actually. Earlier this week I didn’t want to knit on the current obsession, I didn’t want to think about knitting, I didn’t want anything to do with sticks and string.1) I just need to get some of these off the needles before I wind myself up into too many things at once.
1. This is how my obsessions usually end–I took down the quilting frame, and haven’t made a top in years. I put down the crochet hook, and aside from knitting-related work, I haven’t made a crocheted item in forever–although the aragumi movement is calling me, a little2. I deco’d for about a year before the fire died.
2. I want to knit or crochet tiny penguin mascots3 for me and Gareth.
3. We were working out one day, and I was frustrated at my utter lack of pullups. I growled, “I’m tired of being weak,” and Gareth misheard me as saying “I’m a tiny penguin.” The Tiny Penguin has become our gym mascot, embodying perseverance and fierceness. Penguin up!
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
What Does It Mean When . . .
Today tastes like durian fruit, sweatsocks, and day old reheated coffee.
Just realized I hadn't touched this for two weeks. I'm behind on the stories project; working on finishing up June. I wanted to be done with Veil of Isis by July 5, to work on Irtfa'a for the Tour de France. I'm not. I haven't made a single ATC this year except for a private swap group among four artpals.
Things that make you say Hmmmmmm.
It's a chicken and egg thing. Has my production (and joy in production) slowed down because I'm monitoring it? Because I shifted to a goal-oriented list rather than a list of inspiration? Is this a Heisenberg I see, handle toward my hand? Maybe.
Or have I just now become aware of slacking because I started monitoring? Because I set goals up, and now know when I fall short?
Or on the third hand, is it part and parcel of the listmaker's bent, that putting things down on a list makes it seem like EVERYTHING on that list is attainable? "Goals for the year: Win the lottery; lose seventy-five pounds; become a supermodel/actress/ballerina/veteranarian/astronaut; write a world-changing novel; found my own religion." Hey, that's only five things. If I take two whole months to accomplish each one, I'll still have eight weeks to spare.
Well, that way lies the path to the Self-Flagellation MachineTM. Hear it warming up in the background? (should should should should Ought Ought Ought Ought MUST MUST MUST MUST) [ hits off switch ]
So. Groundhog Review Day has been an interesting experiment, but I think it's going in the shed with the other tools that didn't work. I think it might be useful for another application, something with finite boundaries that lends itself better to being broken into chunks and then periodically reviewed.
Oh, you mean like GOALS, rather than PATTERNS. My GOAL is to attend Fashion Institute of Technology and get a degree in Fashion Design. My PATTERN is to design and fabricate knitted articles, both clothing and blankets. My GOAL is to lose twenty-five pounds this year, my PATTERN is to find a fitness routine I can enjoy and put it into practice.
I've been trying to use a hammer as a screwdriver. It works eventually. The key word being "eventually."
Just realized I hadn't touched this for two weeks. I'm behind on the stories project; working on finishing up June. I wanted to be done with Veil of Isis by July 5, to work on Irtfa'a for the Tour de France. I'm not. I haven't made a single ATC this year except for a private swap group among four artpals.
Things that make you say Hmmmmmm.
It's a chicken and egg thing. Has my production (and joy in production) slowed down because I'm monitoring it? Because I shifted to a goal-oriented list rather than a list of inspiration? Is this a Heisenberg I see, handle toward my hand? Maybe.
Or have I just now become aware of slacking because I started monitoring? Because I set goals up, and now know when I fall short?
Or on the third hand, is it part and parcel of the listmaker's bent, that putting things down on a list makes it seem like EVERYTHING on that list is attainable? "Goals for the year: Win the lottery; lose seventy-five pounds; become a supermodel/actress/ballerina/veteranarian/astronaut; write a world-changing novel; found my own religion." Hey, that's only five things. If I take two whole months to accomplish each one, I'll still have eight weeks to spare.
Well, that way lies the path to the Self-Flagellation MachineTM. Hear it warming up in the background? (should should should should Ought Ought Ought Ought MUST MUST MUST MUST) [ hits off switch ]
So. Groundhog Review Day has been an interesting experiment, but I think it's going in the shed with the other tools that didn't work. I think it might be useful for another application, something with finite boundaries that lends itself better to being broken into chunks and then periodically reviewed.
Oh, you mean like GOALS, rather than PATTERNS. My GOAL is to attend Fashion Institute of Technology and get a degree in Fashion Design. My PATTERN is to design and fabricate knitted articles, both clothing and blankets. My GOAL is to lose twenty-five pounds this year, my PATTERN is to find a fitness routine I can enjoy and put it into practice.
I've been trying to use a hammer as a screwdriver. It works eventually. The key word being "eventually."
Friday, May 30, 2008
Which Chinaman Did I Just P*ss Off?
Todays tastes like chop suey with pencil shavings, sweet and sour lamb, and pine needle dumplings. Interesting, but not something I would have chosen intentionally.
Work is . . . interesting. SideKick, the associate, just gave notice; Boo's health is questionable; and Hopalong is debating striking out on his own. I am tap-dancing.
Hopalong just came to feel me out about my future plans. If he leaves to form "Hopalong, P.C." would I come with? More work, more money. If he stays with "Boo and Hopalong, P.C." am I interested in staying and moving up a rung in what I do for the firm while they hire Jennifer to come in and do what I do? And on the third hand, what if we do something totally different?
The only real answer to that is, "I'm always interested in discussing options."
Jeez, I feel like a politician. This language is not natural to me.
So I'll just sit down and knit. Knitting is soothing. Hey, I just started something on MmarionKknits about Clark's Southwestern shawl--someone asked if there were cows, and I suggested an O'Keefian motif of clouds, orchids and cow skulls--and eight people said they'd add something like THAT to the queue. And I see in my head a ruana-like garment with a semi-circular back, and neck shaping, and rectangular panels down the fronts. A big cow skull (right) and a big saguaro cactus (left) and then clouds at the top of the back, orchids in the middle, and smaller cow skulls at the base, edged with three-four vertical repeats of horseshoe lace blocked to points.
Oh, and I wanna knit Irtfa'a for the Tour de France KAL, and maybe get to my Spade shawl for the Olympics, and I have one Linus all but finished--what's this? Mmario has a Pi R Square variant up? I have GOT to knit that! Oh, and I have Veil of Isis OTN, my first beaded shawl, and I need to knit up the Mystery Stole with the swan's wing for Lyhr 2009, and I have these great cool knitting project bags that I NEED to start using and . . .
Uhm, knitting? Not so soothing. Interesting, but not soothing.
Sewing! Sewing is fun and Zen. Dollmaking is sculpting with a needle, where you take the fabric and then cut away everything that does not look like a Hideous Fairy cum Dweller of the Deep.
And then if you're really lucky, you know a group of dollmakers to trade with, and there's all kinds of cool projects like a beaded bag. Which I have cut, and am ready to quilt as soon as I get the batting and get started and it's only due in a month . . . oh.
Sewing. Interesting. Not calming.
So who set this curse on my head? And how do I get it off?
Work is . . . interesting. SideKick, the associate, just gave notice; Boo's health is questionable; and Hopalong is debating striking out on his own. I am tap-dancing.
Hopalong just came to feel me out about my future plans. If he leaves to form "Hopalong, P.C." would I come with? More work, more money. If he stays with "Boo and Hopalong, P.C." am I interested in staying and moving up a rung in what I do for the firm while they hire Jennifer to come in and do what I do? And on the third hand, what if we do something totally different?
The only real answer to that is, "I'm always interested in discussing options."
Jeez, I feel like a politician. This language is not natural to me.
So I'll just sit down and knit. Knitting is soothing. Hey, I just started something on MmarionKknits about Clark's Southwestern shawl--someone asked if there were cows, and I suggested an O'Keefian motif of clouds, orchids and cow skulls--and eight people said they'd add something like THAT to the queue. And I see in my head a ruana-like garment with a semi-circular back, and neck shaping, and rectangular panels down the fronts. A big cow skull (right) and a big saguaro cactus (left) and then clouds at the top of the back, orchids in the middle, and smaller cow skulls at the base, edged with three-four vertical repeats of horseshoe lace blocked to points.
Oh, and I wanna knit Irtfa'a for the Tour de France KAL, and maybe get to my Spade shawl for the Olympics, and I have one Linus all but finished--what's this? Mmario has a Pi R Square variant up? I have GOT to knit that! Oh, and I have Veil of Isis OTN, my first beaded shawl, and I need to knit up the Mystery Stole with the swan's wing for Lyhr 2009, and I have these great cool knitting project bags that I NEED to start using and . . .
Uhm, knitting? Not so soothing. Interesting, but not soothing.
Sewing! Sewing is fun and Zen. Dollmaking is sculpting with a needle, where you take the fabric and then cut away everything that does not look like a Hideous Fairy cum Dweller of the Deep.
And then if you're really lucky, you know a group of dollmakers to trade with, and there's all kinds of cool projects like a beaded bag. Which I have cut, and am ready to quilt as soon as I get the batting and get started and it's only due in a month . . . oh.
Sewing. Interesting. Not calming.
So who set this curse on my head? And how do I get it off?
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Flippin' Spades
Today tastes like bitter coffee and wafer cookies--the good ones with the creamy frosting, not the crappy buck-a-pack ones. The vanilla ones were okay, but the chocolate were bad, and the strawberry were only good for feeding to the seagulls.
I have finally managed to flip the spade lace! Here comes the knitting wonk post I warned you about. The rest of you can look at the pretty pictures and come back when we have more fiction, or other pretty pictures, or some cheese to go with the whine.
So--you have a pretty lace pattern and a great idea for its use. The only thing is . . you want the pattern to orient from a different direction.
Example: Meet Mr. Spade Lace.
He's very handsome. I like the lines of texture that form along the edges where the decreases make the spade point. Another designer, Anne Hanson, has created a very pretty shawl (click here to see) using Spade Lace.
I like her choices of stitches . . . except that the spades are upside down in the final garment.
See, Spade Lace orients such that the points point away from the cast-on edge. Anne knit Casino from the top, i.e., the cast-on edge is at the neck of the garment, and it flows down the back from there. So the points of Spade Lace trail down the back of the wearer.
Anne did a nice job turning this into a feature of the pattern (go see here). She knit a triangle shaped shawl, so the bottom point is the final repeat of Spade Lace.
Personally, I don't like simple triangle shawls. They require clutching and pinning and fiddling to keep on your shoulders, for the most part. I really like faroese shawls. They give you wings! Really, when they're on, they have these neat little pockets that your shoulders slip into, and then they hang on your body like they're part of you. You have to take them off to get out of them, they don't slip and slide and crawl all over.
And I'll bet you saw this coming: I like to knit them from the top down.
Bottom up directions read like this: Cast on a gazillion stitches, or knit three miles of edging and pick up one stitch for every other row. Knit forever, decreasing at the edges and center back panel. When you're almost done, decrease frantically at the shoulders in order to get to the neckline before you run out of yarn.
Bleh. And bleh again. I like the control that comes with top-down. I can decide when to quit and have a finished garment, even if it's more a capelet than a shawl. The rows get longer as I go, but psychologically, that's easier for me than facing long long rows to start. And I can control the fullness of the thing from the top, making fake increases when it's "big enough, but not long enough."
So, inspired by Anne's Casino I decided to make a faroese using an inverted variant of Spade Lace.
Ready for some acrobatics? Ready, set, flip!
And here's the boiz side by side:
How's it done?
Knitted lace is a tricksy thing. Sometimes, you can get away with just knitting the pattern in reverse, changing left-leaning decreases to right-leaning decreases and vice versa. Othertimes, you're going to have to re-engineer the pattern to make it flow the way you want.
First, get a good grip on the pattern you want to flip. I knit several repeats of Spade Lace to see how the increases and decreases made the pattern what it is. When I turned my swatch around, I noted that I was going to have to reverse the order of the YO's and decreases. As you can see, this made the individual motifs a little smaller. I also needed more rows to get all the features in.
Second, consider what you want from the final product. You may--or may not-- get a perfect horizontal mirror of your original pattern. What about the design is making you want to turn it over?
What appealed to me about the lace was the line of the decreases as they outlined the spade, and the little turnunder that changed the shape from an arrow (pointy tip growing at an angle, then going perfectly level to a stem) to a spade (pointy tip growing at an angle, then rounding at the corners and dimpling at the stem). But increases and decreases often do not exactly mirror each other--a three to one decrease doesn't look quite the same as a one to three increase. You'll note that in the Inverted variation, the yo's and the dec's are reversed from the original. The stem is smaller. Those were choices I made as I went through making it come out right.
Preserve what you love.
Third, have a good understanding of lace engineering. For every increase, you need a decrease SOMEWHERE IN THE PATTERN or you will wind up with a bunch of stitches you didn't account for. Oops. This especially bites when your pattern insists that it's ready to repeat . . . if only you knew what to do with those extra three stitches.
The original Spade Lace ("OSL") is 12 rows, multiple of 18 plus 1. Motifs are alternated on the half-drop principal so they tile. As one spade grows thicker, the two neighboring spades taper off, until maximal bulge meets stems. And just for fun, there's patterning on both sides. The knit rows have four increases and two decreases. The extra stitches are decreased away on the purl side. One repeat of the lace, therefore, is a half-motif, a full motif, then a half-motif.
So okay--we'll have a half-motif, full motif, half-motif in the inverted lace ("ISL") as well. That's part of how a half-drop works, after all. We know we'll want lace to define the stems and outline the motif. We know we have the option to work decreases on the purl side to compensate for increases on the knit side.
I knit a swatch of OSL, placed a lifeline, then started my ISL right on top. This let me see what I was trying to reverse right there on the needles.
I started with flipping the pointy tip. In OSL, the tip is formed with a double decrease on the purl side halfway through. I made this a double increase on the knit side at the beginning. Gotta start somewhere.
I counted increases and decreases on the knit row, then incorporated additional decreases on the purl row to make the stitch count come back even. That set up the lines of the lace, and after that, it was mostly following the logic of the pattern as far as increases/decreases. And ripping! Lots and lots of ripping! The blessing of the lifeline was that I could rip back, knowing I couldn't lose anything serious.
The most challenging rows were where the old motif falls off and curls under and the new motif begins. This happens twice--once for the center and once for each side. Unfortunately, there's no substitute for skull sweat and elbow grease sometimes.
Keep copious notes of what you do. It took about three weeks of real time to get this flipped, so about 12 hours actually interacting with the needles. You won't remember it all. I reached row 14 of my initial run, and realized I was going to have to make some major changes at row 7. My notes gave me a starting place to determine where this point should be.
Some laces may not flip attractively. But this method gave me a place to get my fingernails under it and get the piece pried up.
I have finally managed to flip the spade lace! Here comes the knitting wonk post I warned you about. The rest of you can look at the pretty pictures and come back when we have more fiction, or other pretty pictures, or some cheese to go with the whine.
So--you have a pretty lace pattern and a great idea for its use. The only thing is . . you want the pattern to orient from a different direction.
Example: Meet Mr. Spade Lace.
He's very handsome. I like the lines of texture that form along the edges where the decreases make the spade point. Another designer, Anne Hanson, has created a very pretty shawl (click here to see) using Spade Lace.
I like her choices of stitches . . . except that the spades are upside down in the final garment.
See, Spade Lace orients such that the points point away from the cast-on edge. Anne knit Casino from the top, i.e., the cast-on edge is at the neck of the garment, and it flows down the back from there. So the points of Spade Lace trail down the back of the wearer.
Anne did a nice job turning this into a feature of the pattern (go see here). She knit a triangle shaped shawl, so the bottom point is the final repeat of Spade Lace.
Personally, I don't like simple triangle shawls. They require clutching and pinning and fiddling to keep on your shoulders, for the most part. I really like faroese shawls. They give you wings! Really, when they're on, they have these neat little pockets that your shoulders slip into, and then they hang on your body like they're part of you. You have to take them off to get out of them, they don't slip and slide and crawl all over.
And I'll bet you saw this coming: I like to knit them from the top down.
Bottom up directions read like this: Cast on a gazillion stitches, or knit three miles of edging and pick up one stitch for every other row. Knit forever, decreasing at the edges and center back panel. When you're almost done, decrease frantically at the shoulders in order to get to the neckline before you run out of yarn.
Bleh. And bleh again. I like the control that comes with top-down. I can decide when to quit and have a finished garment, even if it's more a capelet than a shawl. The rows get longer as I go, but psychologically, that's easier for me than facing long long rows to start. And I can control the fullness of the thing from the top, making fake increases when it's "big enough, but not long enough."
So, inspired by Anne's Casino I decided to make a faroese using an inverted variant of Spade Lace.
Ready for some acrobatics? Ready, set, flip!
And here's the boiz side by side:
How's it done?
Knitted lace is a tricksy thing. Sometimes, you can get away with just knitting the pattern in reverse, changing left-leaning decreases to right-leaning decreases and vice versa. Othertimes, you're going to have to re-engineer the pattern to make it flow the way you want.
First, get a good grip on the pattern you want to flip. I knit several repeats of Spade Lace to see how the increases and decreases made the pattern what it is. When I turned my swatch around, I noted that I was going to have to reverse the order of the YO's and decreases. As you can see, this made the individual motifs a little smaller. I also needed more rows to get all the features in.
Second, consider what you want from the final product. You may--or may not-- get a perfect horizontal mirror of your original pattern. What about the design is making you want to turn it over?
What appealed to me about the lace was the line of the decreases as they outlined the spade, and the little turnunder that changed the shape from an arrow (pointy tip growing at an angle, then going perfectly level to a stem) to a spade (pointy tip growing at an angle, then rounding at the corners and dimpling at the stem). But increases and decreases often do not exactly mirror each other--a three to one decrease doesn't look quite the same as a one to three increase. You'll note that in the Inverted variation, the yo's and the dec's are reversed from the original. The stem is smaller. Those were choices I made as I went through making it come out right.
Preserve what you love.
Third, have a good understanding of lace engineering. For every increase, you need a decrease SOMEWHERE IN THE PATTERN or you will wind up with a bunch of stitches you didn't account for. Oops. This especially bites when your pattern insists that it's ready to repeat . . . if only you knew what to do with those extra three stitches.
The original Spade Lace ("OSL") is 12 rows, multiple of 18 plus 1. Motifs are alternated on the half-drop principal so they tile. As one spade grows thicker, the two neighboring spades taper off, until maximal bulge meets stems. And just for fun, there's patterning on both sides. The knit rows have four increases and two decreases. The extra stitches are decreased away on the purl side. One repeat of the lace, therefore, is a half-motif, a full motif, then a half-motif.
So okay--we'll have a half-motif, full motif, half-motif in the inverted lace ("ISL") as well. That's part of how a half-drop works, after all. We know we'll want lace to define the stems and outline the motif. We know we have the option to work decreases on the purl side to compensate for increases on the knit side.
I knit a swatch of OSL, placed a lifeline, then started my ISL right on top. This let me see what I was trying to reverse right there on the needles.
I started with flipping the pointy tip. In OSL, the tip is formed with a double decrease on the purl side halfway through. I made this a double increase on the knit side at the beginning. Gotta start somewhere.
I counted increases and decreases on the knit row, then incorporated additional decreases on the purl row to make the stitch count come back even. That set up the lines of the lace, and after that, it was mostly following the logic of the pattern as far as increases/decreases. And ripping! Lots and lots of ripping! The blessing of the lifeline was that I could rip back, knowing I couldn't lose anything serious.
The most challenging rows were where the old motif falls off and curls under and the new motif begins. This happens twice--once for the center and once for each side. Unfortunately, there's no substitute for skull sweat and elbow grease sometimes.
Keep copious notes of what you do. It took about three weeks of real time to get this flipped, so about 12 hours actually interacting with the needles. You won't remember it all. I reached row 14 of my initial run, and realized I was going to have to make some major changes at row 7. My notes gave me a starting place to determine where this point should be.
Some laces may not flip attractively. But this method gave me a place to get my fingernails under it and get the piece pried up.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Insert Evocative Title Here
Today tastes like chinese long beans, like rapini, like underripe cucumbers. Bitter. But I like it. Because it is bitter and because it is my heart. 1
It's one of those weeks where everywhere I turn, everyone does it better than me. Whatever it is. Whoever they are. I'm hip-deep in exchanges where others are posting swag and swag to be, and I look at what I have planned, and it looks like a dog's breakfast.
I'm busting my hump to chart a lace pattern. It's one of those times where you read the written pattern--multiple of 18 plus 1--then you check the actual directions and count stitches for the first row . . . and notice that you have to have 25 to work across once. My math may not be the best, but when I take off my shoes and count, 18 plus one DOES NOT EQUAL 25.
But it has been charted by someone else, and used to good effect. I have a plan to use it to great effect, if I can only get reality to cooperate with my dream. I may be smoking something. Won't be the first time.
Oh, I got it charted, with a great deal of skull sweat and test knitting. My hair caught fire two-three times, but it's charted. Now all I have to do (she said modestly) is reverse the pattern while keeping the character of the stitch.
You can stop laughing now.
You Big Dawg Knitters are nodding along--you know it's not just a matter of working the directions backwards. You know it's not even as simple as working from the last line to the first and reversing decreases.
Did I mention that this pattern has unbalanced increases on the knit side that get decreased away on the purl side? If it actually works, there will be a knitting wonk post to beat all knitting wonk posts detailing my thought processes as I flipped the lace. This is one of the Holy Grails of knitting--figuring out how to take a pattern you love from the bottom up and make it work top down.
I know this. I know that I may be Galahad here, cursed to see it once and never to grasp it.
And yeah, I'm doing this to myself. I'm looking over the shoulders of a couple of knitalongs where some knitters are discovering that there are patters where you have to --gasp-- pattern on both rows without resting, OMGBBQ! Yup, I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places. 2
So I go to write on the Neverending Story Project. I have a lot of catching up to do. Amazing how they pile up when you don't get that story a day done each day. I'm banging along with my perpetual duo, and each story, due to the brevity of the format, feels like a scene in a chapter rather than a chapter in its entirety.
And I have the sinking feeling that I'm telling the same parts over and over and even fifty-five words is too long to forestall tedium. And on the other hand, if I collected them all into some sort of order, I might well have something worth exploring one of these days real soon now.
So I go to read my email. And Li'l Brah has posted a poem on his blog which not only piques my curiosity (really? Give up the chance to fanbabble at Shakespeare and Lincoln???) but containes that amazingly evocative line "I would give up all the fallen leaves in Gesthemane" and now I can barely see out of the bright green lenses that are my eyes. (I got even. I sent him a poem by Rumi. Hah!)3
So, in order to close with something gone right, there will be knitting:
(Eventually. I haven't made time to block the completed item yet, but will stick a picture here soon soon.)
Summer in Kansas, done Helen's Lace, Bucks Bar colorway. I started this shortly before I broke my hand last winter, and it was one of the first things I picked back up, solely to prove to myself that I could still knit lace.
Probably not the best choice. The silk kept catching on the Velcro of the brace, and I couldn't use my right hand the same way, and yeah, the pain pills interfered with the counting somewhat. ("Five, six, seven, thirteen, yellow . . .")
About halfway through, I realized it was literally riddled with errors and I wasn't going to be able to change patterns. So I ripped the whole thing out back to the cast-on row, made charts and charts of what I was doing and where I was going, and started. All. Over. Again. After the New Year.
Once I had all my tools in place, this was a fun little knit. Even the gazillion rows of the border where I had to have the charts handy for every stitch, and cheered when I finally turned the middle corner.
Not entirely unlike turning the middle finger.
1. Google Stephen Crane and "In the Desert."
2. See Robert Frost's "Desert Places."
3. Li'l Brah, hope I didn't out you to the 'rents here. Butcha know, you shouldn't post it to the intarwebs if you aren't willing for your mom to find out . . .
P.S.--And in yet another example of serendipity, the quote of the day for a group I read was this:
"The artist's personality, built upon strong desires and compassionate vision, is by its nature prone to depression. Therefore an artist will be visited by depression as a matter of course; his job is to recognize how his own thoughts and feelings contribute to his sadness. He can discourage these visits by affirming his freedom and worth, by remembering to love, and by gently encouraging himself to believe in a world of renewed possibilities. Depression may be natural, but still the artist can dispute and overcome it."
--Affirmations for Artists by Eric Maisel
Talk about your basic Godsmacks . . .
It's one of those weeks where everywhere I turn, everyone does it better than me. Whatever it is. Whoever they are. I'm hip-deep in exchanges where others are posting swag and swag to be, and I look at what I have planned, and it looks like a dog's breakfast.
I'm busting my hump to chart a lace pattern. It's one of those times where you read the written pattern--multiple of 18 plus 1--then you check the actual directions and count stitches for the first row . . . and notice that you have to have 25 to work across once. My math may not be the best, but when I take off my shoes and count, 18 plus one DOES NOT EQUAL 25.
But it has been charted by someone else, and used to good effect. I have a plan to use it to great effect, if I can only get reality to cooperate with my dream. I may be smoking something. Won't be the first time.
Oh, I got it charted, with a great deal of skull sweat and test knitting. My hair caught fire two-three times, but it's charted. Now all I have to do (she said modestly) is reverse the pattern while keeping the character of the stitch.
You can stop laughing now.
You Big Dawg Knitters are nodding along--you know it's not just a matter of working the directions backwards. You know it's not even as simple as working from the last line to the first and reversing decreases.
Did I mention that this pattern has unbalanced increases on the knit side that get decreased away on the purl side? If it actually works, there will be a knitting wonk post to beat all knitting wonk posts detailing my thought processes as I flipped the lace. This is one of the Holy Grails of knitting--figuring out how to take a pattern you love from the bottom up and make it work top down.
I know this. I know that I may be Galahad here, cursed to see it once and never to grasp it.
And yeah, I'm doing this to myself. I'm looking over the shoulders of a couple of knitalongs where some knitters are discovering that there are patters where you have to --gasp-- pattern on both rows without resting, OMGBBQ! Yup, I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places. 2
So I go to write on the Neverending Story Project. I have a lot of catching up to do. Amazing how they pile up when you don't get that story a day done each day. I'm banging along with my perpetual duo, and each story, due to the brevity of the format, feels like a scene in a chapter rather than a chapter in its entirety.
And I have the sinking feeling that I'm telling the same parts over and over and even fifty-five words is too long to forestall tedium. And on the other hand, if I collected them all into some sort of order, I might well have something worth exploring one of these days real soon now.
So I go to read my email. And Li'l Brah has posted a poem on his blog which not only piques my curiosity (really? Give up the chance to fanbabble at Shakespeare and Lincoln???) but containes that amazingly evocative line "I would give up all the fallen leaves in Gesthemane" and now I can barely see out of the bright green lenses that are my eyes. (I got even. I sent him a poem by Rumi. Hah!)3
So, in order to close with something gone right, there will be knitting:
(Eventually. I haven't made time to block the completed item yet, but will stick a picture here soon soon.)
Summer in Kansas, done Helen's Lace, Bucks Bar colorway. I started this shortly before I broke my hand last winter, and it was one of the first things I picked back up, solely to prove to myself that I could still knit lace.
Probably not the best choice. The silk kept catching on the Velcro of the brace, and I couldn't use my right hand the same way, and yeah, the pain pills interfered with the counting somewhat. ("Five, six, seven, thirteen, yellow . . .")
About halfway through, I realized it was literally riddled with errors and I wasn't going to be able to change patterns. So I ripped the whole thing out back to the cast-on row, made charts and charts of what I was doing and where I was going, and started. All. Over. Again. After the New Year.
Once I had all my tools in place, this was a fun little knit. Even the gazillion rows of the border where I had to have the charts handy for every stitch, and cheered when I finally turned the middle corner.
Not entirely unlike turning the middle finger.
1. Google Stephen Crane and "In the Desert."
2. See Robert Frost's "Desert Places."
3. Li'l Brah, hope I didn't out you to the 'rents here. Butcha know, you shouldn't post it to the intarwebs if you aren't willing for your mom to find out . . .
P.S.--And in yet another example of serendipity, the quote of the day for a group I read was this:
"The artist's personality, built upon strong desires and compassionate vision, is by its nature prone to depression. Therefore an artist will be visited by depression as a matter of course; his job is to recognize how his own thoughts and feelings contribute to his sadness. He can discourage these visits by affirming his freedom and worth, by remembering to love, and by gently encouraging himself to believe in a world of renewed possibilities. Depression may be natural, but still the artist can dispute and overcome it."
--Affirmations for Artists by Eric Maisel
Talk about your basic Godsmacks . . .
Monday, April 07, 2008
Second Review
Spending a year with the Groundhog Resolutions system of David Shea's (see the posts for March 3 and February 2, 2008 if you want a review). Essentially, you make your New Years' resolutions on the second of February, then review your progress once a month, on March 3, April 4, May 5 etc. Mine were:
1. I will not beat myself up for falling short of perfection with respect to this list.
2. I will complete 9 knitted projects this year.
3. I will complete three spreads per month in the art journal.
And boy, I'm glad I made number 1 a priority.
Not only am I late with the April review, I'm not making progress with respect to the rest of the list. I'm wondering if this is more than I'm willing to take on, given the rest of what I do. (I work out 5-6 days per week; I write a 55 word story each day; I post here once a week. I refill the well with words others have written. I take on projects to enliven my world.)
I know that my muse tends to wander off when I work a creative job for my livelihood. She doesn't care for the spotlight. She wilts in the heat, and the "fun job" becomes just like any other job. The joy of creating gets sucked out, leaving a rattling husk.
I've been knitting and knitting and knitting like a fiend on two projects--a blanket for Linus and a shawl for me. The Linus binkie is nearly complete--technically finished, even--but it needs a border. It's been nagging me for a border since it was about half-through. Fine. I'll knit the border on because I can't let it go without. I'll know it's really only half-done.
The shawl is sooooo very nearly done I can taste it. I have about 20 more repeats of the big edging to do, and 2-3 rows along the hypotenuse, and we're through. That's essentially another day's work, so I may very well post two porjects for April, which would put me neatly back in the running for nine knitted projects this year.
I thought about picking up socks for the rest of 2008, I really did. I could bang out my nine projects easily. However, the amount of stash consumed would be negligible, and that's really what it's about for me. Making stuff from the stuff I bought to make stuff with. That's what matters to me now.
And, of course, making stuff takes time. I'm not slacking on the knitting front.
I am, however, slacking on the art journal front. Part of it, I suppose, is that I'm working in images only, working fairly slowly, and working to make complete pieces without any journalling. I've struggled to keep to fewer than 10 words per spread.
The result? I have not done any art journal work since mid-March.
No wonder. It's hard to dance when you've shot yourself in both feet.
So . . . what can I do?
I can finish out this section, doing a little at a time--maybe even the timer system that has worked for me in the past. (Set a timer for one hour, and knit. Set it again, and do paper arts. Set it again, and read the current novel. Lather, rinse, repeat.) Given how achy my neck and back are from sitting and knitting and reading charts (that's what really kills me, turning to read and leaning to move the row marker, and repeating every few stitches and every row) that may well be a good choice for next weekend.
Once this section is done, I can change to doing single sheets rather than spreads. I can use the same technique as far as binding is concerned, where I do one section at a time and knot them together at the end, but I can work on one page at a time. I certainly can also give myself premission to journal or doodle in the blank spaces, and just work to create a single focal point to work around.
All it has to please is me, after all.
See you in May!
1. I will not beat myself up for falling short of perfection with respect to this list.
2. I will complete 9 knitted projects this year.
3. I will complete three spreads per month in the art journal.
And boy, I'm glad I made number 1 a priority.
Not only am I late with the April review, I'm not making progress with respect to the rest of the list. I'm wondering if this is more than I'm willing to take on, given the rest of what I do. (I work out 5-6 days per week; I write a 55 word story each day; I post here once a week. I refill the well with words others have written. I take on projects to enliven my world.)
I know that my muse tends to wander off when I work a creative job for my livelihood. She doesn't care for the spotlight. She wilts in the heat, and the "fun job" becomes just like any other job. The joy of creating gets sucked out, leaving a rattling husk.
I've been knitting and knitting and knitting like a fiend on two projects--a blanket for Linus and a shawl for me. The Linus binkie is nearly complete--technically finished, even--but it needs a border. It's been nagging me for a border since it was about half-through. Fine. I'll knit the border on because I can't let it go without. I'll know it's really only half-done.
The shawl is sooooo very nearly done I can taste it. I have about 20 more repeats of the big edging to do, and 2-3 rows along the hypotenuse, and we're through. That's essentially another day's work, so I may very well post two porjects for April, which would put me neatly back in the running for nine knitted projects this year.
I thought about picking up socks for the rest of 2008, I really did. I could bang out my nine projects easily. However, the amount of stash consumed would be negligible, and that's really what it's about for me. Making stuff from the stuff I bought to make stuff with. That's what matters to me now.
And, of course, making stuff takes time. I'm not slacking on the knitting front.
I am, however, slacking on the art journal front. Part of it, I suppose, is that I'm working in images only, working fairly slowly, and working to make complete pieces without any journalling. I've struggled to keep to fewer than 10 words per spread.
The result? I have not done any art journal work since mid-March.
No wonder. It's hard to dance when you've shot yourself in both feet.
So . . . what can I do?
I can finish out this section, doing a little at a time--maybe even the timer system that has worked for me in the past. (Set a timer for one hour, and knit. Set it again, and do paper arts. Set it again, and read the current novel. Lather, rinse, repeat.) Given how achy my neck and back are from sitting and knitting and reading charts (that's what really kills me, turning to read and leaning to move the row marker, and repeating every few stitches and every row) that may well be a good choice for next weekend.
Once this section is done, I can change to doing single sheets rather than spreads. I can use the same technique as far as binding is concerned, where I do one section at a time and knot them together at the end, but I can work on one page at a time. I certainly can also give myself premission to journal or doodle in the blank spaces, and just work to create a single focal point to work around.
All it has to please is me, after all.
See you in May!
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Groundhog’s Day Resolutions
Today tastes like lamb, green chile, and refried beans on fry bread. With a fry bread disc waiting in the wings with chocolate and butter. Circulation is overrated, right?
I’ve talked before about waiting to make resolutions until February 2, because the three-month holiday at the end of the year is like a busman’s holiday–we go to work, we do our thing BUT there’s a party at the end of each month. Halloween and the extra candy we buy for the trick-or-treaters (funny how it’s always a bag of our faves, isn’t it?) Thanksgiving and the groaning board feast (and the three weeks of leftovers; anything is better with butter and cream sauces). Then Christmas, with the cookie exchanges, the fruit and cookie baskets from associates who want to be remembered, the special celebratory goodies (ain’t Christmas without Julie’s fruitcake and Sam’s candied nuts). By January 1, we’re feeling bloated and hungover, not just from the champagne, but from the vacation from reality we’ve had.
So we’re ready to make resolutions. Lots of resolutions. All of them involving hair shirts, because we’ve partied so hard for the past ninety days. No fat, no sugar, no salt! Exercise three hours every day! More family time, more me time, more work time, fix the house up into a palatial mansion!
And then we drop them, and beat ourselves up for dropping an unrealistic expectation.
David Seah has a system for making resolutions on February 2–Groundhog Day– and then reviewing your progress each successive month, on March 3, April 4, May 5 and so on. The idea is to keep you cognizant of your expressed desires and goals, and to give yourself a reality check. You wanted to lose fifty pounds this year? How’s that going? Have you started an exercise program? Have you given up Doritos? More importantly, has your goal changed? Because goals DO change, and it’s important to honor that.
And at the same time, if you aren’t tracking your progress, how do you know what’s holding you back? How do you know where you need to set your feet and push, versus where you’re rolling like Sisyphus’s boulder downhill?
I’m limiting myself to three resolutions. I’m a listmaker by nature, and once I get started I can make lists that go on for miles. Problem is, that then I wind up not getting everything on that ginormous list done, and then I use it like a tool of Alecto, rather than an instrument of Calliope.
So:
1. I will not beat myself up for falling short of perfection with respect to this list. Progress is progress is progress, with apologies to Gertrude Stein.
2. I will complete 9 knitted projects this year. That should be doable–I knit during lunch and on the way home, so I get about an hour and a half each day built into my schedule.
3. I will complete three spreads per month in the art journal. That’s one per week, with a week off to knit. Again, doable. I may have to work a bit on some that are more challenging (like this week’s entry, which involves some drawing. Eeeesh. I hate my drawing. I don’t know why, I see others who draw in a similar style and LIKE their work. I suspect I just need to do more . . .)
Funny--as I was writing this list, I intended to add "work out 5-6 times per week" and "complete 1,000 inches of art this year" to the list, but I didn't. I realized that I've got a pretty good grip on my exercise schedule--I DO work out 5-6 times per week, and notice when I skip days. I'll often make up for a missed day. And if I adhere to the three spreads per month, I'll easily get 1,000 inches in, regardless of how many ATC's I make this year. Further, I thought about adding a writing resolution--but I've gotten in the habit of these weekly missives, and I've been putting out 55 word stories every day since the first of the year. These have become habits and routines. Forgetting to do them is like forgetting to put on my socks. It takes a conscious choice at a specific moment to make it NOT happen.
Not too shabby.
I’ve talked before about waiting to make resolutions until February 2, because the three-month holiday at the end of the year is like a busman’s holiday–we go to work, we do our thing BUT there’s a party at the end of each month. Halloween and the extra candy we buy for the trick-or-treaters (funny how it’s always a bag of our faves, isn’t it?) Thanksgiving and the groaning board feast (and the three weeks of leftovers; anything is better with butter and cream sauces). Then Christmas, with the cookie exchanges, the fruit and cookie baskets from associates who want to be remembered, the special celebratory goodies (ain’t Christmas without Julie’s fruitcake and Sam’s candied nuts). By January 1, we’re feeling bloated and hungover, not just from the champagne, but from the vacation from reality we’ve had.
So we’re ready to make resolutions. Lots of resolutions. All of them involving hair shirts, because we’ve partied so hard for the past ninety days. No fat, no sugar, no salt! Exercise three hours every day! More family time, more me time, more work time, fix the house up into a palatial mansion!
And then we drop them, and beat ourselves up for dropping an unrealistic expectation.
David Seah has a system for making resolutions on February 2–Groundhog Day– and then reviewing your progress each successive month, on March 3, April 4, May 5 and so on. The idea is to keep you cognizant of your expressed desires and goals, and to give yourself a reality check. You wanted to lose fifty pounds this year? How’s that going? Have you started an exercise program? Have you given up Doritos? More importantly, has your goal changed? Because goals DO change, and it’s important to honor that.
And at the same time, if you aren’t tracking your progress, how do you know what’s holding you back? How do you know where you need to set your feet and push, versus where you’re rolling like Sisyphus’s boulder downhill?
I’m limiting myself to three resolutions. I’m a listmaker by nature, and once I get started I can make lists that go on for miles. Problem is, that then I wind up not getting everything on that ginormous list done, and then I use it like a tool of Alecto, rather than an instrument of Calliope.
So:
1. I will not beat myself up for falling short of perfection with respect to this list. Progress is progress is progress, with apologies to Gertrude Stein.
2. I will complete 9 knitted projects this year. That should be doable–I knit during lunch and on the way home, so I get about an hour and a half each day built into my schedule.
3. I will complete three spreads per month in the art journal. That’s one per week, with a week off to knit. Again, doable. I may have to work a bit on some that are more challenging (like this week’s entry, which involves some drawing. Eeeesh. I hate my drawing. I don’t know why, I see others who draw in a similar style and LIKE their work. I suspect I just need to do more . . .)
Funny--as I was writing this list, I intended to add "work out 5-6 times per week" and "complete 1,000 inches of art this year" to the list, but I didn't. I realized that I've got a pretty good grip on my exercise schedule--I DO work out 5-6 times per week, and notice when I skip days. I'll often make up for a missed day. And if I adhere to the three spreads per month, I'll easily get 1,000 inches in, regardless of how many ATC's I make this year. Further, I thought about adding a writing resolution--but I've gotten in the habit of these weekly missives, and I've been putting out 55 word stories every day since the first of the year. These have become habits and routines. Forgetting to do them is like forgetting to put on my socks. It takes a conscious choice at a specific moment to make it NOT happen.
Not too shabby.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
You Say You Want a Resolution? Well, You Know . .
Today tastes like too much icing, too much roast, too much ribbon candy. Can I just sleep in till Valentine's Day?
It's that wonderful time of the year when we set down the eggnog cups and back away from the fruitcake, and make our New Year's Resolutions. Being a good little lemming, so am I. However, I decided to steal a page from David Seah and do Groundhog Resolution Days ("GRD") this year.
The theory behind GRD is that we are hungover and overloaded on January 1, so we're not really thinking clearly. We've had a three month holiday from life, and consequently believe we can do ANYTHING.
So we resolve to get back into those jeans that we wore at 14, to create a finished canvas everyday (never mind we don't paint), to become an Enlightened Being, and to bake more cookies. Low fat, sugar-free cookies chock full of fiber and nutrition. (Never mind that we hate baking.)
Instead, GRD poposes that we get back into our lives again, get back to our everday routines, and then decide what we want to do this year. On February 2, Groundhog Day.
Then, just like the movie, we check in once a month. March 3, April 4, May 5--see the pattern? All the way through December 12, we ask if we are making progress on our goals, and if not, why not? Is this a goal with measurable results? Is the goal realistic, geven that we have other things to handle? Do we really want what we're chasing, or is it something we feel we "should" want?
I'm just now stepping off the whirlwind roller-coaster of Hallowthankfestivusmaskwaanza. I'm pondering options and alternatives for what I want to do with 2008. I have a huge list--highlights being making more for me, making more for my pet charity, doing more art for me, doing more art in swaps, getting back into the Xfit groove (dropped out during the first week of December. NOT because I broke my hand, but because I've had a cold, then bronchitis, and possibly walking pneumonia. Lovely.) picking up my broken yoga practice, keeping art journals (an actual gonna be bound journal, and a little practice deco with pockets and stuff to put in the pockets), investigating intermittent fasting (to change my relationship with food), and learning how to use Photoshop.
Riiiiight, Spike. Just seeing it all laid out before me like this is a great reality check. (Oh, and I want to write a 55 word story a day, too.)
Perhaps I should resolve to set aside the part of me that is driven. Driven as in suffering because my desires to do more, be more, have more (cupcakes! I want to bake cupcakes once a month for the office!) are in conflict with some basic human needs, such as sleep. Such as play. (When can I play if I am producing? A part of play is to investigate alternatives, even when they lead to dead ends. When producing, a dead end is a waste of time and material.)
Maybe not set aside, but to embrace gently and explain that right now (RIGHT NOW) we need sleep. We are deserving of a nap, of art time without a product at the end of it all, of time to stretch and meditate, of time to move chunks of iron for the pure animal pleasure of exhausting the body, of time to appreciate hunger without satisfying it.
Is that it? Reframing resolutions in terms of deserved play? To remember that I know what is good and best for me, and that I will take those actions as I am able? That I don't need to stand over me with a whip to ensure that art gets made and words get written and to deprive myself of the things I need in the name of the things I want?
Good thing I have a month to think it over and find a way to quantify this.
Or not.
It's that wonderful time of the year when we set down the eggnog cups and back away from the fruitcake, and make our New Year's Resolutions. Being a good little lemming, so am I. However, I decided to steal a page from David Seah and do Groundhog Resolution Days ("GRD") this year.
The theory behind GRD is that we are hungover and overloaded on January 1, so we're not really thinking clearly. We've had a three month holiday from life, and consequently believe we can do ANYTHING.
So we resolve to get back into those jeans that we wore at 14, to create a finished canvas everyday (never mind we don't paint), to become an Enlightened Being, and to bake more cookies. Low fat, sugar-free cookies chock full of fiber and nutrition. (Never mind that we hate baking.)
Instead, GRD poposes that we get back into our lives again, get back to our everday routines, and then decide what we want to do this year. On February 2, Groundhog Day.
Then, just like the movie, we check in once a month. March 3, April 4, May 5--see the pattern? All the way through December 12, we ask if we are making progress on our goals, and if not, why not? Is this a goal with measurable results? Is the goal realistic, geven that we have other things to handle? Do we really want what we're chasing, or is it something we feel we "should" want?
I'm just now stepping off the whirlwind roller-coaster of Hallowthankfestivusmaskwaanza. I'm pondering options and alternatives for what I want to do with 2008. I have a huge list--highlights being making more for me, making more for my pet charity, doing more art for me, doing more art in swaps, getting back into the Xfit groove (dropped out during the first week of December. NOT because I broke my hand, but because I've had a cold, then bronchitis, and possibly walking pneumonia. Lovely.) picking up my broken yoga practice, keeping art journals (an actual gonna be bound journal, and a little practice deco with pockets and stuff to put in the pockets), investigating intermittent fasting (to change my relationship with food), and learning how to use Photoshop.
Riiiiight, Spike. Just seeing it all laid out before me like this is a great reality check. (Oh, and I want to write a 55 word story a day, too.)
Perhaps I should resolve to set aside the part of me that is driven. Driven as in suffering because my desires to do more, be more, have more (cupcakes! I want to bake cupcakes once a month for the office!) are in conflict with some basic human needs, such as sleep. Such as play. (When can I play if I am producing? A part of play is to investigate alternatives, even when they lead to dead ends. When producing, a dead end is a waste of time and material.)
Maybe not set aside, but to embrace gently and explain that right now (RIGHT NOW) we need sleep. We are deserving of a nap, of art time without a product at the end of it all, of time to stretch and meditate, of time to move chunks of iron for the pure animal pleasure of exhausting the body, of time to appreciate hunger without satisfying it.
Is that it? Reframing resolutions in terms of deserved play? To remember that I know what is good and best for me, and that I will take those actions as I am able? That I don't need to stand over me with a whip to ensure that art gets made and words get written and to deprive myself of the things I need in the name of the things I want?
Good thing I have a month to think it over and find a way to quantify this.
Or not.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
What Will You Do?
Today tastes like cough drops, ginger ale, and Kleenex (TM). I've had this verdammit cold for almost two weeks. I'm ready to be done. Since you can't get better until you've passed it along, I am posting this thing on eBay under "Readymade Excuse for Time Off During the Holidays."
Back before the distractions of breaking parts of me, I was doing a systematic appraisal of a point of stuckitude. The final query: What will you do? My answers now are a little different then they would have been before physical difficulties entered the scene.
Which is good in a way. I've said before (maybe even here) that this has been a valuable lesson in asking for help, in vulnerability, in patience. The lessons will appear, one way or another, until they are learned. While this has not been the way I would have chosen to learn these lessons, at the same time, it's manageable. Perhaps I'll actually get them down this time without the forces that may be having to gear up again to hit me over the head with the inevitable stuff that happens.
Anyway, the point I was stuck on was my art. Not just getting my behind into the studio and creating and moving stuff along that had gotten bogged down, but in determining what was on my gotta list, as differentiated from my wanna list, as opposed to my someday list.
Just sorting those out has helped. I've determined some of the things I used to love have less or no relevance to me now, and so I've weeded out that which does not nourish me. I've cleared the decks of my gotta list--even going so far as to remove myself from active participation for several months while I hunkered down and cleared the decks. No one died, went to jail, or lost their kids.
I'm actually doing things on my someday list. I have limits right now, with my hand in a splint, and I will have limits after I get out and can use all my fingers all the time. (See, Universe? I get it. No more lessons needed, 'k? Thxbai.) However, I am doing them. Maybe not the way I keep thinking they ought to be done, maybe without eternal significance and awe-inspiring perfection, but doing them.
If it ain't a YES, then it's a no. And I can list all the things I've said "no" very softly to; said "no" with a weight on my heart; said "no" reluctantly to. And I can go back to that list any time I want and see if they've turned into "yes" while I wasn't looking.
I've found some new tools. Or perhaps, not new so much as buried under a pile of greasy rags and those newspapers I've been meaning to toss. I need to continue to harness the power of the lists, to keep my "To-Do" short and sweet, and to ignore the voices of guilt about the length of the "Wanna-Do" and "Someday" lists. If I keep moving the last two onto the first, and striking out desires that have fallen away, I should be able to avoid getting mired down in this particular bog again.
Back before the distractions of breaking parts of me, I was doing a systematic appraisal of a point of stuckitude. The final query: What will you do? My answers now are a little different then they would have been before physical difficulties entered the scene.
Which is good in a way. I've said before (maybe even here) that this has been a valuable lesson in asking for help, in vulnerability, in patience. The lessons will appear, one way or another, until they are learned. While this has not been the way I would have chosen to learn these lessons, at the same time, it's manageable. Perhaps I'll actually get them down this time without the forces that may be having to gear up again to hit me over the head with the inevitable stuff that happens.
Anyway, the point I was stuck on was my art. Not just getting my behind into the studio and creating and moving stuff along that had gotten bogged down, but in determining what was on my gotta list, as differentiated from my wanna list, as opposed to my someday list.
Just sorting those out has helped. I've determined some of the things I used to love have less or no relevance to me now, and so I've weeded out that which does not nourish me. I've cleared the decks of my gotta list--even going so far as to remove myself from active participation for several months while I hunkered down and cleared the decks. No one died, went to jail, or lost their kids.
I'm actually doing things on my someday list. I have limits right now, with my hand in a splint, and I will have limits after I get out and can use all my fingers all the time. (See, Universe? I get it. No more lessons needed, 'k? Thxbai.) However, I am doing them. Maybe not the way I keep thinking they ought to be done, maybe without eternal significance and awe-inspiring perfection, but doing them.
If it ain't a YES, then it's a no. And I can list all the things I've said "no" very softly to; said "no" with a weight on my heart; said "no" reluctantly to. And I can go back to that list any time I want and see if they've turned into "yes" while I wasn't looking.
I've found some new tools. Or perhaps, not new so much as buried under a pile of greasy rags and those newspapers I've been meaning to toss. I need to continue to harness the power of the lists, to keep my "To-Do" short and sweet, and to ignore the voices of guilt about the length of the "Wanna-Do" and "Someday" lists. If I keep moving the last two onto the first, and striking out desires that have fallen away, I should be able to avoid getting mired down in this particular bog again.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
What Do You Know?
Today tastes like tart tatin, like truffled honey, like fois gras. What a nice day! Lush and sweet and earthy all at the same time.
Looking forward to the four day weekend. Planning to spend all the available time in my paper studio, winding up projects. When I cleaned this last time, I boxed most everything up and then labelled the boxes so I could make my to-do list simpler. I have a box for collabarative art projects ("Other People's Art AKA the Guilt Box"), a box for my personal stuff ("My Next Big Thing"), and a box of collabarative ATC backgrounds ("Jam Stock").
So far, I have nearly emptied the Guilt Box. I did decos last weekend, which cleared an enormous logjam for me. I stopped doing decos this summer. The game just wasn't worth the candle. But, of course, there were some projects I'd agreed to take, and there they were, glaring up at me everytime I walked past my workbench.
And now, they fly free.
So--what do I know?
In this context, I have learned that my listmaking tendencies slow me down. See, I start a list of stuff to do, and before I know it, I have scheduled every single minute of my weekend with stuff to do. Which is fine when everything goes as expected.
Uh-huh.
So I wind up with no more than half my list done, and then there's stuff that pops us that needs to get done, and oh, there's the things I wannado . . . and, and, and.
So one of the best tips I've found is to write no more than three things on your to-do list. And then do those three, pause for a modest celebration of your accomplishments, then write three more. Or take the day off and do what you wannaddo, because, after all, you DID the things on your to-do list.
Example--last weekend, I had three things I wanted to have done before Monday morning rolled around. I wanted to have completed the knitting on one Linus binkie (two looooooong garter stitch borders to be picked up and done), I wanted to have the decos in the Guilt Box ready to fly, and I wanted to finish a set of ATC's and charms for swappage. I put them on my list, posted the list on the calendar (what DID we do before Post-It notes?) and went to town.
It doesn't sound like much. Three things in a sea of thousands, right? But I got all three done in plenty of time to read and go out for brunch and loll around. And now I have a list of three more that I'm chewing through. (The ATC's in the guilt box need to be finished, the Linus binkie needs to be made ready to present, and I have a book form I want to experiment with. Do you have any idea HOW LONG I've been putting these off? Three things at a time may be small progress--but it IS progress.)
So--I know that lists are a valuable tool for me. I know that I can get a lot done in small bites. I know that I need to keep my focus on those small bites, because otherwise, I get overwhelmed easily.
And I know that when I'm overwhelmed, I wind up spinning like a Sufi dancer. And nothing gets done.
Looking forward to the four day weekend. Planning to spend all the available time in my paper studio, winding up projects. When I cleaned this last time, I boxed most everything up and then labelled the boxes so I could make my to-do list simpler. I have a box for collabarative art projects ("Other People's Art AKA the Guilt Box"), a box for my personal stuff ("My Next Big Thing"), and a box of collabarative ATC backgrounds ("Jam Stock").
So far, I have nearly emptied the Guilt Box. I did decos last weekend, which cleared an enormous logjam for me. I stopped doing decos this summer. The game just wasn't worth the candle. But, of course, there were some projects I'd agreed to take, and there they were, glaring up at me everytime I walked past my workbench.
And now, they fly free.
So--what do I know?
In this context, I have learned that my listmaking tendencies slow me down. See, I start a list of stuff to do, and before I know it, I have scheduled every single minute of my weekend with stuff to do. Which is fine when everything goes as expected.
Uh-huh.
So I wind up with no more than half my list done, and then there's stuff that pops us that needs to get done, and oh, there's the things I wannado . . . and, and, and.
So one of the best tips I've found is to write no more than three things on your to-do list. And then do those three, pause for a modest celebration of your accomplishments, then write three more. Or take the day off and do what you wannaddo, because, after all, you DID the things on your to-do list.
Example--last weekend, I had three things I wanted to have done before Monday morning rolled around. I wanted to have completed the knitting on one Linus binkie (two looooooong garter stitch borders to be picked up and done), I wanted to have the decos in the Guilt Box ready to fly, and I wanted to finish a set of ATC's and charms for swappage. I put them on my list, posted the list on the calendar (what DID we do before Post-It notes?) and went to town.
It doesn't sound like much. Three things in a sea of thousands, right? But I got all three done in plenty of time to read and go out for brunch and loll around. And now I have a list of three more that I'm chewing through. (The ATC's in the guilt box need to be finished, the Linus binkie needs to be made ready to present, and I have a book form I want to experiment with. Do you have any idea HOW LONG I've been putting these off? Three things at a time may be small progress--but it IS progress.)
So--I know that lists are a valuable tool for me. I know that I can get a lot done in small bites. I know that I need to keep my focus on those small bites, because otherwise, I get overwhelmed easily.
And I know that when I'm overwhelmed, I wind up spinning like a Sufi dancer. And nothing gets done.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Where are you stuck?
Today tastes like essence of celery seed, wormwood, and cinnamon oil, served on a bed of raw garlic. Total meltdown.
It's been an era in and of itself (Meltdown Man??? Carrying a cellphone, an iPod, and a quadruple shot espresso?) this past weekend. Got done with a roller coaster week at work (busy. Getting demand packages out and out and out, telling stories, kicking ass, and chewing gum. And they make me spit out the gum when I walk through the doors, so that only leaves two things to do . . .) and looking forward to dinner with friends on Friday night. Unwind. Relax. Watch some movies, do some knitting and think about cleaning the paper studio so I can do some work this winter while it's nice and cool.
Then we pop by the house to put some wine for dinner in the fridge (hurrah for restaurants without liquor licenses and no corkage fees!!!) and there's a message on our answering machine. Or rather, half a message. The first half of a collect call.
Gareth and I look at each other. If it was an emergency, wouldn't they call our cell phones? Even if they had to call collect for some unknown reason, most anyone who knows us has our cell digits, and knows that's the fastest way to get hold of us . . . say, the jails out here only let you call collect. And right about then, the phone rang again.
Crisis number one: a friend of ours had been arrested for something we thought was over. Note bene: check all the statutes before running a business, and get at least three opinions from legal experts. Loopholes can turn into hangman's nooses.
So . . . her husband currently does not have a land line, and you cannot call a cell phone number from inside the jails. Ours was the only land line number she knew cold, because of course, she doesn't have access to her cell phone. Or a charger, even if she did. We spent a bunch of our weekend playing operator so she and husband could communicate (long story short, he's not able to visit her as he's a co-defendant in the matter we thought was more or less settled and waiting for grand jury.)
Crisis number two: We got to dinner Friday, and another friend had a sudden death in her close-knit family. She needed a shoulder to cry on, so we spent a large part of the remainder of Friday holding her hand and patting her head.
Crisis number three: Remember when the truck broke down twenty miles outside of Globe? Well, the garage was able to fix the truck, but had no one available to drive it any closer to town. So we got up at o'work thirty on a Saturday, and drove over to Globe (ninety minutes one way) to fetch our errant vehicle back. Not so much of a crisis, but that is one boring drive. And it eats up most of the morning, even when you get up early and hit the road right away.
Where am I feeling stuck after this weekend? I'm feeling stuck because every time I walk through the paper studio where I park my car, I'm reminded that I need to get the place in order for me to work there. I'm not avoiding making art by wanting to clean, I'm wanting to make some flat clear physical space the size of my glueboard in order to have a place to make art. I'm feeling stuck because I think of it on my way to and from work, and while I'm at work. In other words, I contemplate this activity when I'm safely time- or space-bound from actually STARTING this project.
Clever me.
No more. Starting tonight, I'm going to FlyLady my studio. Fifteen minutes a night, finding places for all the ephemera and stuff I've collected over the summer, sorting through things that have been sitting ragged and fallow formonths uhm, years, tossing dried paints and glues and re-arranging whatever needs to be looked after. I have deadlines at the end of the month for charms and ATC's, I have jam ATC's that have been held up for far far too long, I have communal projects I said I'd do that need to be moved NOW.
So--stuck point identified (for now) and plan of action prepared. Off to implement!
It's been an era in and of itself (Meltdown Man??? Carrying a cellphone, an iPod, and a quadruple shot espresso?) this past weekend. Got done with a roller coaster week at work (busy. Getting demand packages out and out and out, telling stories, kicking ass, and chewing gum. And they make me spit out the gum when I walk through the doors, so that only leaves two things to do . . .) and looking forward to dinner with friends on Friday night. Unwind. Relax. Watch some movies, do some knitting and think about cleaning the paper studio so I can do some work this winter while it's nice and cool.
Then we pop by the house to put some wine for dinner in the fridge (hurrah for restaurants without liquor licenses and no corkage fees!!!) and there's a message on our answering machine. Or rather, half a message. The first half of a collect call.
Gareth and I look at each other. If it was an emergency, wouldn't they call our cell phones? Even if they had to call collect for some unknown reason, most anyone who knows us has our cell digits, and knows that's the fastest way to get hold of us . . . say, the jails out here only let you call collect. And right about then, the phone rang again.
Crisis number one: a friend of ours had been arrested for something we thought was over. Note bene: check all the statutes before running a business, and get at least three opinions from legal experts. Loopholes can turn into hangman's nooses.
So . . . her husband currently does not have a land line, and you cannot call a cell phone number from inside the jails. Ours was the only land line number she knew cold, because of course, she doesn't have access to her cell phone. Or a charger, even if she did. We spent a bunch of our weekend playing operator so she and husband could communicate (long story short, he's not able to visit her as he's a co-defendant in the matter we thought was more or less settled and waiting for grand jury.)
Crisis number two: We got to dinner Friday, and another friend had a sudden death in her close-knit family. She needed a shoulder to cry on, so we spent a large part of the remainder of Friday holding her hand and patting her head.
Crisis number three: Remember when the truck broke down twenty miles outside of Globe? Well, the garage was able to fix the truck, but had no one available to drive it any closer to town. So we got up at o'work thirty on a Saturday, and drove over to Globe (ninety minutes one way) to fetch our errant vehicle back. Not so much of a crisis, but that is one boring drive. And it eats up most of the morning, even when you get up early and hit the road right away.
Where am I feeling stuck after this weekend? I'm feeling stuck because every time I walk through the paper studio where I park my car, I'm reminded that I need to get the place in order for me to work there. I'm not avoiding making art by wanting to clean, I'm wanting to make some flat clear physical space the size of my glueboard in order to have a place to make art. I'm feeling stuck because I think of it on my way to and from work, and while I'm at work. In other words, I contemplate this activity when I'm safely time- or space-bound from actually STARTING this project.
Clever me.
No more. Starting tonight, I'm going to FlyLady my studio. Fifteen minutes a night, finding places for all the ephemera and stuff I've collected over the summer, sorting through things that have been sitting ragged and fallow for
So--stuck point identified (for now) and plan of action prepared. Off to implement!
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