Dammed

I was minding my own business last week, when my business sneaked up on me and demanded my attention.  Turns out that when you write a book, the publisher sends you a bunch of mocked-up pages for review, and you are supposed to go over everything and make changes & corrections, etc. and of course, hurry up already. Receiving the pages was not a surprise.  Receiving them right now was.  I somehow had it in my head that this part would happen sometime in June, and my attention is well and truly diverted at the moment.

So while I am nicely focused on all sorts of things that are not my book at the moment, my book needs me, and I can't seem to get past this weird emotional blockage I have about doing that work.

Once I got past the ebullient feeling of seeing my little project all grown up and polished into real book pages, I found that I couldn't look at it for one more second. 

What vexes me, I wonder?  Here is a list of possibilities (bear with me while I navel-gaze my way through this one, won't you?):

I am nearing the end of the process, but I'm not really ready to let it go?
I have been so focused on teaching, talking, and talking about teaching that I forgot how to write?
I have been so focused on writing that I forgot how to knit?
I'm bored stupid with my own work, and the sight of projects I've been looking at for a year is making me squirrelly?

Probably all of the above apply, but that last one seems most likely.  I am so out of love with everything in my book.  The thought of combing through all of it again appeals to me in the same way as the notion of hosting an intestinal parasite.  I can't believe I ever thought any of it was remotely interesting, never mind clever, and I'm sure my publisher must feel the same way.  How embarrassing for both of us: me for creating drivel, and them for printing it.  I know that big undertakings always get like this at the end, and let's face it; I have never worked this long on anything before without being handed a newborn infant for my trouble.  I also know that (much like with the newborn infant) I'll probably love it again later.  But I really need a break from it just now.

And then there's the profound lack of gratefulness inherent in this attitude:  "boo hoo...my book got published and I'm tired of thinking about it....." Makes me sick just hearing it come out of my head.  What kind of picky princess gets all the way to the finish line and then lays down for a nap right in front of it? 

My kind, it seems. 

There's only one thing to pull me off dead center when I get like this:  I hereby promise myself a fiber-related treat at the conclusion of required efforts.  Gotta love self-bribery.  I also hereby solicit suggestions for fiber-related motivational enhancers.
 

Partly Cloudy

The view from my lap today looks like this (I like to knit cross-legged = ergonomic nightmare, but it somehow works for me so I haven't changed):

Do not be fooled:  The lace pattern you see (still unblocked, of course - use your imagination) is working at long last, but only because it (wee bugger of a lower border) has been frogged no less than three times.  Please Note:  This is a lace pattern I have executed successfully in something like twenty incarnations. 

My propensity to beat the tar out of a concept once I have mastered it causes me to recycle certain design elements until I lose interest in them, or until someone else points out that it's enough already, whichever happens first.  It's like when you finally find a recipe that everyone in the room will eat, doesn't cost a fortune and requires mostly normal ingredients (a convergence of cosmic proportions), and then you keep serving that dish until everyone is sick to death of it, mostly you.  This is the lace version of chicken and rice: Delicious and nutritious, and no one has noticed (YET) that it's the 4th time this week.  My time with this one is clearly at an end, however, and this is how I know:  I can't knit it anymore.  Sick of it.  It's dead to me.  I'll love it again a year from now, but for today I wish it were over.

The real problem, of course, is that I have angered the Knitting Gods, and they are toying with me.  I knew I was dangerously close to running afoul of their good graces, but I brazenly flaunted my new love affair with spinning, anyway.  I am just too besotted for any class of self-control.  If loving yarn is wrong, I don't wanna be right.  Last night I made my first 3-ply, and you would think I had cured the common cold.  I showed it to the smallies, who did their best to humor me: "Wow, Mom, that's really yarny".  Then to Phillip: "Where'dya get that from?" (evidently failed to notice the new spinning wheel in the living room floor, or the spouse glued to it).  Then, in desperation, the Dog:  Nothing.  Crickets chirped in the distance. 

It was a wake-up call, of sorts.  I resolved to stop tempting fate by neglecting my first love.  I reminded myself that the blog is labeled quite clearly "Knitting", not "Spinning", and that I have a responsibility not to bite the craft that feeds me by rambling on and posting endlessly about spinning. 

Too late.  Knitting Gods pissed off = lace border all jacked up. 

Bought and paid for it, I did, with my frivolous disregard for the danger inherent in flouting the rules.  Let's hope I can mend my evil wandering ways before this poor little cardigan pays the ultimate price.  The retribution of the petty and vengeful Knitting Gods is both swift and fierce.  Let's hope I can avoid further Wrath.  Me=Reformed. 

As If.

 

Left My Heart in San Francisco

They came.  They Knitted.  Their Hats were Mad.  Here are the Bridge Knitting Guild of beautiful San Francisco, CA, working furiously on their self-designed hats.  

Know what I love about knitters?  They are always doing something beautiful, even when they aren't trying to.  This is the setup one of my students gave himself to design a motif with.  No one could fail with colors like that; and the matching pencils to draw with...pure magic.  The resulting hat was, too.

After class, we toured the Castro neighborhood, where I took in the sights (and smells!).

Here is my best friend's Best Friend.  Her name is Lilly, and she is one rock star poochie.

I got a spinning lesson, and I'm pleased to report that both my string and my nerves held together.  Sorry, Knitting: you have to move over and make room for my new love: Making Yarn.  It is so much fun that I am in danger of giving up sleep to make more time for it.

Then I went home, where my sweet little family were waiting for me, as well as my own spinning wheel, with whom I now am friends.

I decorated it with a favorite passage.  You can do the same if you visit here They had never made a spinning wheel quote before, but I think it looks great!