Chris and Nina

One fine day last week I checked the online postage tracking on some roving I had ordered, when I realized that it was sitting in my mailbox, right outside.  It was late in the day, and pretty much dark, but in my excitement to see what the fiber fairy delivered, I neglected both outerwear and porch lights.  This became important immediately for two reasons:

1.  It was raining (of course it was raining).
2.  My sadistic sociopath next-door neighbor had upended several of the bricks which trim the landscape area between our two driveways. 

This subtle, yet significant change in the elevation of the bricks I usually step lightly over on my way to the mailbox resulted in the following; expressed as an equation:

    Ass     x Dirt + Rain + Anticipation of New Fiber = Muddy, Bruised & Pissed
Tea Kettle

I don't remember the last time a stretch of wet flower bed rushed up to meet me so quickly, but the impact on my 39-year-old butt and my forward momentum was both immediate and profound.  Plus I was super muddy, and did I mention Pissed?  What kind of creature arbitrarily turns previously horizontal bricks on their ends?  The woman is a complete menace, which fact I asserted loudly to the sodden darkness around me, along with some other choice vocabulary that I'm glad the smallies couldn't hear.  I hauled myself up from the muck, just as the wetness of the mud broke the surface tension between my jeans and my lingerie.  Now my ass was both bruised and damp.  Recovering my enthusiasm to get to the mailbox, if not my dignity, I limped across the alley like a three-legged card table. 

I relate this experience because it illustrates so perfectly my core assumption:  Fiber Cures Everything.  Look what was in the mailbox that night!

Campbell seized on the fluffy mound of combed top the minute I explained that I had chosen it for him (his favorite colors = green + aqua)  He squished it in his arms and buried his face in it, proclaiming that it was his precious new pet, hereafter to be called "Chris".  Lindsay did the same with her pencil roving in shades of blue and violet, pronouncing hers "Nina", and forbidding me to play with it.  I assumed that as soon as the novelty wore off, the children would allow me to spin the fibers.  Or if not, they had to go to sleep sometime.  Strangely, it turned out to be the latter, when I realized days later that neither child had returned "their" fiber to  me for spinning.  I finally found both rovings in their respective smally rooms, hidden under the beds.  Creepy Development, that.  I don't know if there is room enough in our small house for more than one fiber hoarder.  Especially if they're gonna hog the good stuff:

"Chris": 420 yards of 3-ply BFL, 11 wpi.

Campbell asked for Chris to become a pair of mittens, and possibly a matching scarf.  I am happy to comply.  I love the way Chris' three plies are so blend-y.  Also crazy for the bounce and lustre of BFL.  It's always been a favorite of mine to knit, so spinning it seemed an obvious place to start.  The colorway is called "As Above, So Below", and you can get it here.

"Nina": 2-ply Corriedale, 14 wpi, with my first full bobbin, yardage TBD.

Lindsay has requested that Nina become a triangular shawl, which will be another first for me.  Corriedale is just the sproingy-est - so much fun to spin.  I tried it out in pencil roving, thinking that it would be easy to draft, which turned out to be true.  The 2 plies are very stripe-y, which I completely dig.  This colorway is named "Before Sunset", and you can find it here.

So that's the news from my house:  Butt bruised, fiber found, spinning spun.  Life Is Good.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I snapped out of it and did the required work on my book.  Still haven't decided on what my self-bribery reward will be though...I'm busy rearranging a certain number of my evil neighbor's bricks.

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.