So It's Been a Minute

Greetings, Gentle Readers,

For those of you who are still subscribed, first let me thank you for your readership. To those who sent me words of kindness and care while I’ve been sub-radar, thank you also, from the bottom of my heart.

By way of explanation for my absence, I’ll offer this: Within a three week period, my daughter left home for college, My mother died, and my husband of 25 years announced that he wanted a divorce.

The trifecta of loss sent me into a pretty dark place, from which I am still gradually resurfacing. To say that my heart broke is an understatement of preposterous proportion. It was more like a complete throttling of the spirit, and a smoking crater was left where everything I cherished used to be. I was reduced to survival-only mode, and just didn’t have the heart to blog while it was too hard to find anything positive to say.

Through all that though, I managed to continue teaching, find gainful employment, and while not really designing or writing anything, I did knit. Always I do knit.

So now I’m reinventing, and putting my arms around a new normal. Over the next little while, I plan to find my footing again here on the blog. This has always been my happy place, and I’m privileged to share it with you. Please bear with my while my posts are all over the map; I have a lot to process and share. If you see posts that are under the Not Exactly Knitting category for a while, it’s because I’m basically rebuilding my house. More on the why of that will come.

For now, I’m delighted to show you what I’ve been up to since Pandemic Stay-At-Home rules have been in place. To begin with, I built a staircase:

Yeah, that was a big job. I had no experience, little guidance, hardly any money, and a fierce drive to succeed. Not unlike when I taught myself to knit. Never underestimate the power of a woman with tools, be they needles or nailgun.

I’ll talk more about the process of how I got it done, but for now I’m doing the big reveal first for once.

And yes, I still have a thing for bees. I think it’s because they don’t know they can’t fly.

Con-graduations

18 years ago, my husband and I got a new roommate. We worried that she would be hard to get along with, having heard stories about how small people could do horrible things like keep you awake all night and make you touch yucky stuff at alarming intervals.

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To our surprise (although the stories were mostly true), Lindsay fit in pretty well at our house. Once we understood that we were no longer in charge of daily operations, that is. She was especially gifted at snuggling, and almost never spit strained peas in our hair. She also had a stunning ability to attract the attention of strangers, moving through the world much as though she were sitting atop a parade float. Smiling and waving were natural additions to her repertoire.

Lindsay outgrew us intellectually pretty early, so we sent her to school in order to be among her equals. That's when her super-powers really became apparent. She developed an uncanny ability to connect with other humans, enhanced by deep and effortless empathy. By then she had recruited a younger brother who completed the household staff, as well as keeping us all further entertained. Going forward, she started to teach us the value of a fearless curiosity, too. No subject was safe from her tireless exploration, from paleontology to figure skating. And of course, she wanted all her adventures to include her little brother.

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By the time she turned ten, I realized that I could no longer remember what we used to do before we met her. All our days and nights had been taken over by her relentless love of books, climbing trees, and of course, skating on "my ice". That's when I finally noticed that one of her super-powers is controlling time: she can make it race by faster with each day.

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And then one day last week this happened. It turns out that her two high schools (going to just one at a time was too slow for her) have run out of things to tell her, and she has picked out a college to attack next fall. It's far enough away that she'll have to keep us awake all night by means other than loud crying. Or laughing. Or reading with all the lights on.

As always with big transitions like this, I'm scared of the unknown. But Lindsay isn't. She's anticipating it with the same enthusiasm she showed on the first day of Montessori; blazing into adventure without a backward glance. 

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I recently found Lindsay and Campbell roughhousing on the same patch of grass in the front yard that they've been using for that since the day we moved here. One last precious summer stretches out before us, with promises of lazy iced tea afternoons, and late nights of stargazing on the front porch. And after this one, things will never be quite the same. My Smallies are no longer small, and that reality is enough to break my heart.

So until September, I'm going to reject the facts completely. I'm going to proceed with ironclad denial, and enjoy every single minute, until the leaves turn and the trunk is packed. I'll probably bury my sorrows in yarn then, and I'll rely on you, Gentle Readers, to hold my hand. And possibly the car keys, if I decide to go join Lindsay at college.

Nesting

Nothing in the world would make me take on a project like this:

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A truly God-Awful specimen from the early 1980's, complete with oak-tone veneered particle board, broken hardware and mirrored panels that defy explanation. And the filth? So. Very. Dirty. And yet, my children decreed that it was the very thing we needed, and convinced me that it could become wonderful, with their help. So we parted with $5 at Goodwill, and home it came. I am such a sucker.

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We cut the all the sides out and replaced them (along with the mirrors) with punched sheet metal. We replaced all the hardware, and added new feet.

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After a solid week of filling, sanding, painting, sanding, painting again, steel-wooling, distressing and waxing, it started to come around. The children were right. It had become, if not wonderful, a suitable nest. And a not half-bad shabby chic end table for the living room. Which we would not have needed, but for this:

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Her name is Ruby, and she came home to live with us yesterday, on Easter.

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Ruby is a wee little Scotty, who has stolen our hearts. She's already supervising my work, as you can see. Born on Valentine's Day, she's just eight weeks old, but already completely full of Scottitude. She knows her name, how to get our attention, and even, thankfully, likes her little nest.

To all of you who sent your kind words of comfort last December when we lost our Paisley, I knew you'd want to see this update. Order has been restored to our universe.