finally

finally, i got over myself and listed something new.
i don't know what my funk has been lately, but i do know that the afghan squares are going awesomely.
i've given in and bought two skeins of yarn for the project, i knew i'd have to, and would want to, as well. it's mostly kureyon which is so my drug/yarn of choice (my #1 favorite reason for winter, sometimes i think!) but i got a different something and alas, the label's in the other room, so i'll chat about that later.
that one looks a mess- they'll all need to be blocked obviously, and none of them are joined. but that pink is even more eyeblinding in person; it's ultra alpaca, so it's got a little bit of shine to it. there are a number of optical illusions to that square pattern and i have spent a considerable amount of time while working on it, wishing i was clever enough to have devised it myself.

while re-examining the wash cloths (and finishing them, because i'm such a stickler about finishing details, i rarely do it as soon as i finish crocheting something) i realized that they are very nicely done. i don't mean to pat myself on the back and risk breaking an arm or anything, but they are nice. that was also when i splurged on one of those wooden hooks, carved to look a bit like a chess piece. it is a nice looking, nice feeling and functional tool. i'd like to have more of those.

and all the while i'm packing up, getting ready for yet another move. i'm quite tired of leaving places, but on the upside, most places have yarn shops. i was satisfied with two in california, and i'll be just fine with the two that there are where i'm going. amongst other things.
(i really am trying to convince myself that two are enough. as i recall, neither of them stocks lamb's pride brown sheep in near enough quantity and neither stocks lanaloft. sigh.)

want

so want.

but then i'll need some alpacas. or their fiber, anyway.

project of last resort.

This
is completely awesome, and I'm doing it now, kthx.
I have a baggie of saved up bits of beautiful wools- mostly Kureyon that I can't find anymore, some alpaca/mohair stuff from a jag of using that last year, a scrappy ball of second time cotton by knit one crochet too (which I feel compelled to purchase every time I see it, as it's got crochet *in the brand name!* savvy marketers, that lot, saying the technique that dare not be uttered in most of these posh yarn shops I semi-frequent) and a bitkin of some groovy crystal palace taos. have some gigantic balls of eco-wool that i got to be the binder and I'm making an afghan.
I've needed to do it for a while, I've been saving these scraps for some time specifically for this project. So of course, now, with everything up in the air and planning a potential/probable/hopeful interstate move, of course now, is the time to start an afghan.
Quit laughing, really, it is! It will probably save my marriage, too. The hyper control freak is making her way to the surface, I spent yesterday cleaning (and cleaning, and cleaning) and I've baked a loaf of bread today as well as a yeasted cake (need to use up that two pounds of yeast that have been goofing around in my fridge. This weirdo needs to keep her hands busy, and I've fallen out of practice recently.

It's not *exactly* what I want to be doing- no really, what I wanted to do was make myself this awesome vest from an Interweave Crochet issue...hm, two years ago now? But my divine cashmerinosilk is the wrong weight (!). So then I wanted to make a new purse for myself (this hobo bag is adding 10 lbs easy to my hips, not quite the thing I'm going for) and I wanted to do the striped side-to-side bag I've been seeing everywhere (or maybe just in my own imagination?)
But. My mistake was in mentioning this out loud. Which got me a crazy look from the s.o. and several "how much yarn do you have anyway, why not use this cashmerino whatever ("but it's the wrong weight!) okay i don't care you've got a lot of yarn. Use that."

sigh. one foot stomp, but I know better than to make it two or three or four- the family made it quite clear that stomping is unsociable behavior when I was younger.
So. Fine. I'm'a Make This Afghan I've Been Meaning To Work On, But I'd Better Have Enough Yarn or else I'll Be Cranky.

cry me a river.

then build me a bridge and get the fuck over it.

sorry for the harsh language, i really do apologize if i've peeled anyone's eyes back and i'm happy to offer eye drops or more soothing language in the rest of this post.

see, for a long time, i didn't know the completion of that phrase. i knew all about the sarcastic tones of "cry me a river" but didn't know the constructive side of that phrase.
i knew all about the world's smallest violin playing the world's saddest song but didn't even realize bridge buildign was part of the expectation. so i sit, with hammer in hand, thinking about blueprints.

two things sat me right back, today. and here they are in no particular order.
first of all, we have hannah. hannah is a normal, healthy and probably bratty and sweet, outgoing and shy, ten year old girl who's been diagnosed with breast cancer. she's probably part of the average american family, penny pinching yet generous, openminded but traditional, grateful and angry, with two parents and two kids. one of whom may very well be the youngest girl in the u.s. to be so awfully diagnosed.

i read this and said to myself, get over yourself. there are worse things in the world than writer's block. there are worse things in the world than a shelf full of unhooked yarn and worse things than empty notebooks. there's worse than this empty headed vacant feeling. but she's better than me too, because she's already over herself. she's moving on past it already. she's dealing with the talk of invaded lymph nodes and being feted at girls' softball closing ceremonies as the recipient of charity. in a world that causes us and helps us to treat each other shitty (oh sorry. i'm a trucker/sailor/mechanic/cook in the mouthparts and let's just leave it at that), she's a rallying point- a reason for little girls not to be mean to one another, but to have someone to help. a cause about which to give a damn. she's a symbol, a statistical unlikelihood and someone's little girl. and even more than that, she's someone's own self. thank you hannah for restoring my sense of perspective.

and in the not quite so dire, but inspiring, i made a trade at an art show at the beginning of the month. after quite some time of frustration, with felted beaded bangle bracelets only slightly appreciated, not valued for their work, materials or worth, a woman was at my table admiring them. her eyes were looking at them the way my eyes do, and when she asked me how the beads got on there, i told her that they went on one by one in an old beadweaving technique. her eyes went wide, and she was the first person i'd told that to whom it seemed to make any impact whatsoever. she then told me she was also there to sell things and that she'd be back after she'd done some business. time passed, and bored (not to mention a tiny bit frustrated), i walked over to her things, where she had a dress, a little orange/coral/clay colored one that was simultaneously really cute and also inordinately sehx-ay. i looked at the tag and was glad to see that she valued her work and time (it was well made and made of a good material) but sad to realize that no way was i going to sell enough at this fair to come even on buying it. plus, although it was good material, it was cotton knit, kind of like a thick jersey, and i'd tried on a dress of the cut a year or two ago, when i was in much more serious shape than i am in now and was disappointed. (it was not made of such good material, and it was a quarter of the price she was asking...in a store, which means that *included* markup and transport costs. which makes me very sad for the people sewing those dresses). i loved it was unsure, but she said "you should try it."
we traded, and my first (and only at this point) front page etsy items went to a home. a happy home, with at least one little girl who looked at her mama's new bracelets with envy. and me? i got a dress that gave me legs, where i've got stumps *and* shows off my waist. without looking trampy. i think it was kismet. anyway, check out karina's etsy shop, and prepare to fall in love with her cute things for behbehs and grownfolks alike. and thank you karina, though you'll probably not read this, for showing me (without telling me) that family and creativity are hardly mutually exclusive, and that putting any of the blame on them for not trucking right across that bridge i built over that river i cried is not fair at all.

burn. out.

i am completely sure this will not come as much of a surprise, given my failure to recently post, but i think i am in the complete, acute, falling in and out throes of burn out.
like the four syllable pronunciation that alicia keys gives "fallin".

i have not gotten back too much on what i've put into the fiber work recently. well. hm. i mean on a grander theme, it's not necessarily a dirty dollars thing. i'm saying i went into it all doe-eyed, and caught a case of deer in the headlights maybe.

i've had no desire to take pictures and edit them endlessly. i've gone into yarn shops and bought supplies, but they languish, languidly, right there on my shelf. gorgeous stuff. silk/cotton. bamboos. crazy great stuff, and they sit. moon pies and cow eyes, and everything pretty much a big fat zero.

which is not to say i haven't been making things. but art shows/fairs/craft things continue to be uphill, as opposed to any other way. from all available evidence, that's kind of how it is. and i will certainly be the first to admit i haven't any sort of successful seeming setup, or over-investment in the outcomes of said events.

and this is the part where i say "buck up, this is where the losers wash out" but...
but...
but i've learned to make (a sort of) okonomiyaki, not to mention finally conquering crepes. i wrote a couple of short stories a month or two ago. i found a sheaf of poetry i sent to my now-partner while he was deployed and completely floored myself. i may be little more interested in that. i certainly long for that one of me, that her more strongly.
(yes, i know i'm whining about/celebrating multiple talents. multiple things i enjoy doing well, and here's how you know i'm listening to my guilty pleasures pandora station, i've got justin timberlake's chorus inviting "cry me a river". don't even start. musically speaking, it's a great freaking song, and it's thursday which is my friday.)

but i feel like i'm getting pulled on, and when i cook, damn sure people appreciate that. and it's no greater an art than evening dinner, so it's something i'd be doing anyway. when i manage to write, i've finally gotten to the point at looking at things in hindsight and realizing i've got a way with it... killing myself softly with my lines, as it were, singing my life with my words.

i'm not going to quit. this is just justification for lack of recent activity. and venting.
i'm sure it happens to all of us. more proof that i'm not invulnerable.

finished, and not

and so i've come mostly to completion on the first of the capes, tentatively called either the laurel or the daphne prototype*. i used the same yarn i used for my new leaf afghan, the pale green cotton. i had a fine time modifying the pattern, as it's not one that instinctively works with increases and slight shaping.
this cape project has been one that tests my innovative abilities, especially regarding the numbers of crochet. however, i've found that i do ever so much better with it when i go at it intuitively, instead of sticking with the strict numbers. i understand the math, logically speaking, on paper, but math does better with pencil and paper than it does with hook and yarn.
i'm already working on a second one, with a shell pattern. it's in a pink that's somewhere between fruity and bubblegum, and i'm using the shell pattern in recognition of my influence for that particular piece; aphrodite.

this project is so fun because i'm playing with ideas that i've loved for a long time, and combining them with something new to me. i haven't made a lot of garments beyond very basic shawls- and there's nothing wrong with those shawls; their simplicity makes them really beautiful and wearable to me. however, cape, just the concept is ever so much cooler. i fear that when people see "shawl" they immediately think that it's for one specific age group, and i don't think that's the case at all. i hate for style to be pigeonholed to any particular decade or time of a person's life (besides onesies, of course) . but the theoretical influence is totally mythology and literature-based. the same woman, my great grandmother, who taught me to crochet at the very beginning also incubated in me an appreciation for old stories; poetry and histories. she was a devotee of the tragic story of the love life of henry the VIII- more tragic for his wives than him, i suppose. she was firmly in anne boelyn's corner; i have to wonder what book in her youth in the nineteen-teens inspired her love for that story. she made certain that i read her old copy of robert louis stevenson's a child's book of verse frequently, and i've still got most of "twas the night before christmas" memorized due to our recitations. that passion ignited, someone, a particular aunt i think, gave me d'auliare's book of greek myths. i read it so often that the spine is a faint memory, and it was one of the books i never marked my place in by turning down the corner of the page. (no, it had a special bookmark, as i remember, a lovely piece of embroidered ribbon with a shiny brass unicorn at the top). it went on many a road trip with me, despite its large size, and the illustrations weren't michael hague or kinuko craft, but they still filled my head with ideas about sturdy, larger than life gods and the mortals under their influences.

so the first cape, with the leafy pattern is tenatively either laurel or daphne. daphne was the daughter of a river god, fated to never fall in love (cursed by a lead tipped arrow of eros', perhaps) and though the beautiful god apollo loved her and pursued her, she was determined never to wed. at one point, apollo's pursuit of her was an acutal chase on foot and when she reached the banks of her father river, she implored him to save her. having little power in comparison to apollo, daphne's father was able to help her, but at the price of losing his daughter. her toes sunk into his sandy banks, her arms reached out as branches and her hair turned into the flickering leaves of the laurel tree. from then on, the laurel has been sacred to apollo, and is the crown of leaves with which victors were honored in ancient games of skill, might, or intellect.

this was an interesting story on which to meditate while crafting the piece, and i anticipate finding the buttons that will truly finish the cape.

a new leaf

the pattern that i'm enjoying working on most right now is the one i call the leaf in my head. it's in a pale green and i'm working up my cape prototype. i've worked with this stitch pattern before, and it's so relaxing and rhythmic to my hands and mind that it's a good meditation to work on.

and i do need to work on my meditation. which is a laugh; meditation is supposed to be non-work, but it's coming so difficult to me. this is one place i do try not to self judge, but there i was, doing so just now.

but i've caught an upswing, it happens this time of year, frequently, coincident with spring and my birthday. i'm not a religious person, but i do celebrate my birthday with a festival amount of energy and happiness. this isn't really a terribly egotistical thing as might be supposed, it's simply to celebrate my own arrival, to give gratitude for the moment of my emergence into this world. (and as always, a moment of gratitude for my mother, as i squirm a bit for her.) it's a convenience, easier than celebrating the day that i first deciphered words via reading or began to communicate myself to the rest of the world in spoken or written words.

i was gifted with a trip to breitenbush hot springs, which is a retreat as well as the spring tubs and found it incredible. the literature and people of the place communicate a desire to provide an atmosphere of renewal and respect and sanctity. a community environment, but minus the loudness generally present in places like rivers and beaches.
it was spring or summer in the pools, and winter, with snow on the trees on the mountains across the river from us. and the noisy river, working hard on its work to make it to the pacific, i think. or to make it somewhere, and breaking down the big rocks into smaller ones, making stones, then pebbles, then sand.

i happily take this chance to turn a leaf, and to embrace all the crawly critters that have taken up habitation underneath.