In Common with Humans

Latest accomplishment in my continuing quest to, (A) find new ways to cook delicious stuff and make it “healthier” and (B) find new uses for stuff I have on hand:

Low-fat chocolate/chocolate chip cookies made with pumpkin substituted for all the butter, plus 100% whole wheat flour. OMG, they’re great!! I’d tried them with applesauce, but I’ve got all this pumpkin in the freezer. I used it for the last batch of no-sugar whole grain oatmeal cookies, instead of fruit mush, and got pumpkin-oatmeal cookies which were terrific. So today, I tried using the pumpkin in the chocolate cookies, and it works perfectly! I can add pumpkin to just about anything (soup, bread, etc)–it’s low-calorie, fat free and loaded with vitamin A and fiber, and I have a ton of it in the freezer. Good thing I like it, too. 🙂

My next project is to try making the oatmeal cookies with no added fat at all and see how they come out. Currently, I’m still using a little butter in them, but now I’m thinking, why? If I make them even lower-fat, I can eat more peanut butter with them! *g* (Srsly: they’re great with peanut butter, which I weigh out by the gram. I look forward all day to my cookies and peanut butter snack. I buy Teddie old fashioned all natural unsalted peanut butter, and I highly recommend it if you like peanut butter.)

I had to work out recipes for the mini-quiches I made for dad’s Open House. The folks at his rehab group are still talking about them! They wouldn’t stop asking for the recipe! So, if anyone else wants the directions for making those, I have them to send.

When I got home on Wednesday afternoon, I felt relieved that I could start getting back to normal routines, but still up in the air because the whole holiday weekend was ahead of me. I had no plans for New Year’s Eve–I usually don’t, having worked on many past New Year’s Eves (including 1999!) and being just as happy not to be on the roads that night. But I was doing a ritual on Thursday afternoon for the Full Moon/Lunar Eclipse, and I was watching the weather forecasts lugubriously. The weathercasters were all predicting a humungous “stalled” storm and several consecutive days of snow and that didn’t sound like much fun, even if we weren’t getting hit as hard as folks further north.

Wednesday night I started tackling all the stuff that had been piling up for weeks–boxes, and decorations, and piles of books and magazines I’d gotten out looking for pictures for my holiday cards, unopened mail, bills and receipts that needed to be filed–whew. The kissing bush was dropping little showers of dry needles with every errant draft. I took that down, which led to taking everything else down and clearing away all the greenery. Vacuuming up the needles led to vacuuming elsewhere. I’d been intending to make more ritual candles for a couple of months and now I had a pending ritual for which I needed four candles and I had exactly none in stock. So I got out the candle-making supplies and made a couple of batches of new candles. I never did get to cycling and I forgot about doing my hair color, but I did make a lot of progress in getting my work areas cleared out, straightened up and organized, which psychologically felt very good.

Thursday was a very busy day. I’m desperately overdue for a hair cut, but I called the salon and couldn’t get an appointment. My stylist was going home early and had re-scheduled all her Saturday clients because of the forecast snowstorm. I feel like a walking advertizement for the new Wolfman movie, but I’ll just have to wait! I did ritual in the afternoon. I did two workouts, to make up for missing the day before. I did my hair color. I made more candles, because they were coming out well and I wanted a good supply of them, and I made a batch of delicious Italian vegetable soup from leftover veggies and broth I brought home from dad’s.

I didn’t even turn on the TV on New Year’s Eve–that’s another long story for another post. But I put three silver dollars outside on the stoop during the evening. Just before midnight, I brought up the clock on my computer and counted down the last seconds to 12:00. I wished the cats a Happy New Year, went outside, and tossed the coins into the house through the open door. That’s a little prosperity spell I learned from one of the shelter guests years ago. That’s how I greeted 2010: ching-ching-ching, the sound I hope to be hearing all this coming year! Okay, I’m mercenary, but I want By Light Unseen Media to become self-sustaining!

Just a couple of minutes later, I heard fireworks outside, and they sounded like more than firecrackers. I looked out the kitchen window, and there in the western sky, perfectly visible from my driveway, were professional-caliber fireworks. I have absolutely no idea where they could have been coming from! There isn’t a public space that I know of to the west closer than the high school in Townsend, and these were much nearer than that. They didn’t last as long as a public show would, either. I went outside and watched them, and when they finished, I clearly heard voices whooping and cheering. That was a pleasant surprise but remains a mystery!

Friday was a holiday, so my usual Friday errands were on hold. I calculated astrological transits for January and February and wrote them into my date book, paid some bills, and otherwise had a quiet day.

Saturday, I got up to several inches of snow, with more falling. I’d wanted to go to the post office. I decided to go out and shovel, clear off the car, and go, for no more urgent reason than because I hated feeling trapped by mere weather. I got the mail and the local paper and filled the car’s gas tank. The driving wasn’t too bad, but things were a lot quieter than your average Saturday. I spent a lot of the rest of the day working on financial spreadsheets, personal and business. I was actually amazed to see how well I did for 2009 when compared to 2008. I wasn’t consciously trying to economize, but I seem to have been doing so without thinking about it, because I saved tons of money in a lot of areas. I’m starting out 2010 with almost $2000 more in my bank account than I had on January 1, 2009! I was especially amazed to see that I cut my heating oil costs in half–whether that’s from burning all that firewood or not, I’m not sure, but it’s a drastic difference. I saved substantial amounts in other categories, too, including the gas and electric bills, groceries, cat food…just lots of things. My property taxes are going up but not as much as my health insurance is going down. At any rate, it feels pretty good to be weathering a recession in such positive financial shape! My natural frugality and good management skills are really paying off, literally and figuratively. Maybe I should start teaching workshops! *g*

By this morning, we’d gotten an inch or two more of snow plus a lot of drifting and dropped snow from all the trees and so on. I went out this afternoon and did the clean-up shoveling: the mouth of the driveway, and the newspaper box, the woodpile and the path to the compost pile, and cleaned off and scraped the car. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere (the Ashby UU church cancelled its service this morning because the roads were so bad, I had an e-mail about it). But I like to clear everything out just in case I want, or need, to get out quickly. Two days of snow shoveling in a row is not my idea of a good time, but I shouldn’t complain! I am truly blessed to be fit and hale enough to shovel my own snow, and this wasn’t a lot of snow, comparatively speaking. It’s been another quiet day, but I’m getting things lined up to launch back into projects and work. The new computer will be here soon and I want to have everything ready for that! I have manuscripts to read, editing to do, queries to answer, and my own writing to finish–and that’s just for starters. I’ve had quite as much holiday cheer as is good for me! I hope all of you can say the same. 🙂

I’m actually quite glad to see the end of the Never-Ending Holidays. They were enjoyable, but I ate too much, spent too much, my healthy routines were all disrupted, my productivity went to zilch, projects have been back-burnered for too long, the final phase of the reducing part of my dietary regimen has been treading water for weeks, and I need to really crack down and get back to work!

Last Sunday, I met my sister Jill down at the Leominster shopping area (a bewildering maze of stores and connecting roads that include Market Basket Plaza, The Mall at Whitney Field and a cineplex). She wanted to see the movie It’s Complicated and check stores for shoes and discounted Christmas cards; I needed to go to PetSmart because I’d run out of cat food. My usual shopping patterns have been all disrupted due to the holidays and socializing, and I’ve been spending tons of money on food for parties and dinners and forgetting my own staples!

I bought our movie tickets. Jill and I checked the stores (which all close at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday) and had a bite to eat at the Border Grille. We both wanted to eat lightly, so I had a house salad with no dressing (that’s how I eat them now) and Jill had a side of guacamole. Our server was visibly disappointed that we ordered so little, and Jill, who waitressed in college, left her a whacking tip.

I checked out Newbury Comics while I was down there and really liked it. 🙂 I discovered that they sell both Manic Panic and Special Effects hair color. Hot Topic has discontinued the Color Fiend color I’m using now, and I’m going to have to find an alternative after I finish the bottles I’ve got left. It’s hard to find a real violet-blue, the blues tend too much toward blue-green.

I didn’t think much of It’s Complicated. I certainly appreciate a film that shows people my age being enthusiastically sexual, involved in relationships and otherwise fully engaged in life. I don’t so much appreciate a film that shows people my age behaving like infantile idiots. I was thoroughly exasperated with Streep’s character early on, and her situation seemed highly implausible in many ways–she runs her own business but hardly ever seems to be at work, she has this stunning house, gorgeous garden, expensive wardrobe, three kids in college, is about to put a big addition onto her house–how is she paying for all that? Alec Baldwin’s character is a mega-jerk, period, I couldn’t sympathize with him at all. He cheated on his first wife with a young bimbo, divorced his first wife to marry the young bimbo, and now he’s cheating on the second wife, while getting aggressively jealous of the unattached men who are interested in his ex-! His obesity didn’t make him a middle-aged Everyman for me, it just made him a fat slob–and underscored the gender double standard, because all of the 50-something women characters are slender as reeds, despite how much of Streep’s gourmet cooking they eat! (I found the food in the movie very distracting: all I could think was, “how can they all be eating so much rich food all the time and not be morbidly overweight?” It also seemed like another gender stereotype, the woman who nurtures by feeding everybody.) I did like the ending, and the score is by Hans Zimmer.

On Monday, my sister cooked fresh salmon for dinner, and I went up to the lake after getting my laundry done and hung on the line, running a few local errands (in a short but intense “snowburst” that made driving tricky) and doing cycling early. I’d ordered some CDs for Jill and they’d arrived, so I had one last gift to wrap! There are two things I always do with my sister: drink, and take long walks. (Generally not in close juxtaposition. 🙂 ) As soon I arrived, Jill was ready to take a walk, so off we went–a non-stop brisk march around the lake and back for over two hours! Woof, was it cold, too. For dinner, I ate all the leftover salad from Saturday, with no dressing, because no one else was going to eat it, plus some steamed broccoli, and a little salmon.

We spent some time working on dad’s holiday letters. Jill has been coaxing dad to send out cards or letters, to stay in touch with his social network, for a couple of years. Mom always took care of the Christmas cards and dad just didn’t feel up to it, he got very down at the holidays, missing mom. He had a picture of his kitty that he wanted to put on the letters, and last year, I used that photo to make a pretty graphic header, but then dad didn’t get a letter written. I had a database I’d made from mom’s address book back when Jill and I sent out a mailing for mom and dad’s 50th anniversary.

On Monday, we worked on updating that database for dad to use as his Christmas card list. Jill and I also started taking down some of the holiday decorations. We sat up late watching my new DVD of All About Eve, which Jill had never seen before, and I did more on the socks I’m knitting.

On Tuesday, I did chores and took the trash and recyclables to the transfer station, did workout early and went to the lake. By this time, I was starting to feel just a bit holidayed-out. I was tired of driving so much, I’d given up even trying to quantify my caloric intake, I was tired of doing workouts early every day…*grump* I was hitting delayed Scrooge syndrome. I did manage to squeeze in sunset attunement for the first time in days–I got to the lake just in the nick of time to scuttle down to the basement with my cell phone alarm as a timer. Dad’s cat, who hasn’t decided he likes me, was hiding down there and was not pleased to see me. I added insult to injury by doing my attunement in the chair he’d been sleeping in while he scowled at me from a few feet away. 🙂 The weather was brutal, it never went above 15 degrees with a roaring wind all day.

Jill and dad had gone to see Sherlock Holmes in Gardner–why I didn’t go is a long story for another post. They didn’t much like the movie, I’m waiting for the DVD. I brought cabbage from home and cooked dinner with the holiday leftovers, making Bubble and Squeak with the leftover roast beef and gravy. We spent the rest of the evening doing a “mailing party.” Dad had written his holiday letter, and when I got there I set it up for him with the graphic header, and made the labels with mail merge, and we all sat and folded, stuffed, stamped, stickered and sealed the letters. Even dad’s friend Z. helped. Then Jill, dad, Z. and I took down, packed and put away every scrap of holiday decorations, even the tree. Jill was cleaning out one of the bathrooms and sent me home with three bags and a box full of odds and ends. Jill and I stayed up late watching my new DVD of The Apartment and I got more knitting done.

Jill was flying home on Wednesday, but she wanted to see one more movie with dad, Nine, and go to a seafood restaurant. Legal Seafoods was farther than Jill wanted to drive, so I suggested Weathervane, of which there is one in South Nashua. So, Jill and dad drove to Manchester Airport via South Nashua and saw the 10:40 a.m. show of Nine (too early for me!), and I met them at the cinema afterwards. We went to Weathervane and had a nice seafood lunch, and then Jill and dad headed for the airport while I ran errands. I had books from two different libraries that were all a day overdue!

Happy New Year, wherever you are, whoever you’re with! 🙂

I hope everyone is having a nice “intra-holiday weekend!” 🙂

My sister’s plane arrived safely and almost on time yesterday. The weather eased back from initial forecasts, fortunately, and the expected freezing rain was not in evidence–when I left for my dad’s house shortly after 1:00 p.m., I only had to brush a dusting of light snow off my car.

We had a low-key day, although I spent a good part of it cooking. I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever cooked a beef roast before, and this was my first try at Yorkshire pudding. The food was an hour later than I aimed for, but a spectacular success. My dad only likes beef incredibly well-done, and the rest of us like it extremely rare, which is one reason that beef roast has not appeared on the home table very often. My solution to this was to cut a fourth of the roast off and cook it first, in a separate pan. I cooked it to be well-done; then, to keep it warm, I put it in and out of the oven with the rest of the roast a few times. That poor piece of meat looked just pitiful by the time dinner was ready–you’d have said it was the most-overcooked piece of expensive beef on the planet.

And my dad loved it. He went absolutely nuts over it! Well, whatever makes him happy, that was the whole point! I certainly didn’t stint on quality, that was a fine piece of beef. The rest of the roast was very rare indeed, and it was ambrosial, as far as the rest of us were concerned. The Yorkshire pudding was also a success, puffing up and doing exactly what it was supposed to do. There’s not much to it, though, when it’s all done, it’s pretty insubstantial! We also confirmed that dad’s smoke alarms work when I pre-heated the pan of drippings as directed and they smoked up the kitchen (oops).

The rest of the meal was a huge salad, a very modest amount of mashed potatoes and gravy. We didn’t plan any dessert, but I had brought sugar cookies, peppermint bark, and some of the leftover Open House petits-fours from the freezer. I drank way too much wine and got totally snookered. 🙁

We opened presents after dinner–and we still have a couple of gifts that got misplaced or need to be picked up (I’d ordered something for Jill and totally forgot about it! According to the tracking number, it’s at the post office now. They closed early on Thursday and I haven’t gotten my mail since the 23rd). Of course, my big gift is the new computer system, and that will be delivered in a couple of weeks. But I also got DVDs of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Body Heat and All About Eve, an extra-long bread knife I asked for, a four-quart sauce pan I asked for, and my AAA membership renewed for 2010. Apparently I’m getting another DVD which got hidden too well–dad moved a lot of things around for the Open House and you know what happens when you do that!

My sister and I stayed up late watching Body Heat and all the extras on the DVD. It put dad to sleep, though! I didn’t get home until past midnight.

Today Jill and I are planning to get together at the mall and go to a movie she wants to see, I’m waiting for her to call. I’ve gotten cycling done early and otherwise I’m having a quiet day. Jill is here until Wednesday, and after that, I need to get myself back into my regimens and routines. It’s been an unusually extended holiday period with dad’s Open House and everything. But not bad! 2009 is wrapping up like the year as a whole: pretty darned good!

I had one of the best Christmas Eves I can remember, and I’m having a very peaceful and relaxing Christmas Day–at home, alone, decompressing from the holiday run-up. I have more holiday starting tomorrow!

under cut for length

A very Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it!

I had a very nice Solstice. Of all the Sabbats, it’s always the one I celebrate the most ambitiously, with Samhain running a close second.

I decorated the altar and the Yule Log with ivy and holly, and I had some greens on the mantel. I didn’t have as much greenery this year as I’ve had in the past, because all the re-arranging in the living room has eliminated the places where I used to put it. My observance started right after sunset attunement on Sunday. I went out and walked around the house, starting in the north, scattering the ashes from last year’s Yule Log fire all the way around. There was a very pretty sunset, pink and orange through the trees in the southwest. Then I came inside and started the fire. I did a Tarot reading for the coming octave. At 11:59 p.m., the precise mid-point between sunset and dawn, I put the Yule Log on the fire. Then I stayed up the entire rest of the night until dawn. By that time it was 22 degrees out with a blustery wind, and I put my coat on and walked down and got the newspaper. The sunrise was bright red and orange and absolutely beautiful.

I can’t pretend I maintained a concentrated “vigil” the entire night. I was just awake for the whole night, and that was hard enough! For one thing, I participated in an online meeting, via IRC, at 8:00 p.m. To keep myself awake later on, I did my cycling at 3:00 a.m., took a shower at 5:00 a.m. and then got the laundry done, this being something I normally would do on Mondays. But I did it, I stayed up for the whole night and greeted the rising Solstice sun.

I caught a couple of hours of sleep, got up and did my ritual to conclude at the exact turning of the Solstice point, at 12:35 p.m. local time. I used a small charcoal disk and burned real frankincense and myrrh for the ritual incense, which was wonderful but left the whole room in a smokey haze (good thing I’m not sensitive to that!). It was a very good ritual, too.

I was rather tired all Monday afternoon, but I got prep work done for my last video production class that evening. As I drove over to class, which was two towns away in Ayer, I noticed that a lot more people had gotten their holiday lights up this past weekend. Either they delayed for economy’s sake or they just hadn’t gotten to it yet. On my way home from class, I did something unusual for frugal me: I took a very roundabout route home just so I could look at as many holiday lights as possible. They are pretty, but there are definitely fewer lights than I’ve seen in past years. The most popular color scheme, by an overwhelming majority, is all white lights. Multi-colored lights are unusual, and I see very few blue lights, which a couple of years ago were a bit trendy. The most popular light arrangement, by an overwhelming majority, are single electric candles in all the windows of the house, with or without other kinds of lights as well. Everybody has those electric candles, and I don’t think I saw a single house with any other color of electric candles in the windows than white. The runner-up for popular light arrangements are “icicle lights” and/or those netted lights placed on shrubbery. As pretty as the lights are, I have to say, it’s almost a bit monotonous. I saw very few lighted trees placed where they showed through windows, too, and that seems different from past years.

I just finished my gift shopping tonight, and I’ve done almost all of it online. I went up to Pheasant Lane mall today and ended up very frustrated. I came home and got online and bought nearly everything from various online vendors–Amazon, TigerDirect, Overstock.com, a couple of things I’m having shipped straight to the recipients. I am not inclined to feel much sympathy for the complaints of brick-and-mortar merchants after my shopping experiences this season–and I haven’t necessarily bought from online mega-marts, either. I buy from a lot of small vendors online, too.

With the big health insurance reform vote looming on Thursday (Christmas Eve!), I also wrote e-mails to both my Senators (Kirk and Kerry) and my Representative in Congress, John Olver, asking them to support the health reform bill and the public option, and telling them what my experiences have been with the Massachusetts universal health care law. I did, in fact, change my coverage to a lower level plan with higher deductibles and co-pays, so my premiums for 2010 will be slightly lower instead of 30% higher. But I can only downscale my coverage so far before it’s the minimum I can get, and if health insurance costs keep skyrocketing at such a ridiculous rate, I won’t be able to afford coverage at all. I thought Senators Kerry and Kirk, and Rep. Olver, might be interested to hear that the exact same Fallon plan has increased in cost by 64% in just two years!

Some very interesting astrological aspects taking place, particularly a configuration involving Venus, Jupiter and Neptune, while Mars has turned retrograde until March. I’m almost expecting world peace to break out, looking at all that!

Happy Winter Solstice / Yule to those who observe it!

We got off easy this time here in Pepperell–just a couple of inches of snow and it’s snowing very lightly now, almost stopped. But hey, we paid our dues with 11″ of snow and then pouring rain on top of it, on December 9! There was still plenty of that left on the ground, and I’m just as happy I won’t have to wade through a lot of new snow to scatter the Yule Log ashes around the house tonight (or spend an hour today shoveling, for that matter!). I’ll do Tarot reading and Yule Log fire tonight starting at midnight, and my ritual at the exact time of the Solstice tomorrow (12:35 p.m. local time). I saved a nice whole birch log from the woodpile for the Yule Log and collected holly and ivy from my yard to decorate it. I don’t know if I’m up to an all-night-until-dawn vigil, though! Tomorrow night is the last video production class and I have “homework” for that.

I spent most of Friday cleaning, tidying and putting things away, so the house feels pleasantly rejuvenated. I’d hate to tell you how long it’s been since I did anything much besides occasional sweeping. I scrubbed out the tub enclosure, dusted the most visible surfaces, scrubbed things in the kitchen, moved stuff around to get underneath and behind them, and did a little reorganizing, too. All the “book inventory” is now in one spot! I’m continuing to rearrange the “living room” to be a working studio so I can seriously boost my productivity. I’m making some solid changes in my priorities for 2010–fewer conventions, less “social networking,” more podcasting, blogging and videocasting. Right now, I’m trying out a bona fide ad on Facebook to see what happens. It just went live and I set it to run for a month.

I no longer have a bunny-proof spot for a Yule Tree even if I wanted one: all the tables are now workspaces with computers and equipment on them! I do have some decorations up: a big silver tinsel snowflake/star, and I made a “kissing bush.” This is actually a old tradition, pre-dating the modern sprig of hanging mistletoe. I clipped evergreen branches, bundled them into a sort of fluffy bouquet, hung it up and wrapped lights around it. It looks pretty! More to the point, it’s animal-proof. 🙂

I went out yesterday afternoon because I was nearly out of peanut butter–can’t be snowed in without peanut butter! Despite all the ominous weather forecasts, Donelan’s (the grocery store down the street) was no busier than a typical Saturday, all shelves were fully stocked, even the milk and bread, and no signs of pre-storm anxiety were in evidence. I gave the Salvation Army bell ringer a dollar and he gave me a candy cane. 🙂 At one point I realized with amusement that my characters in Rainbow Stone House were about to get buried–that part of Massachusetts was at the storm’s “ground zero,” they got 15″-20″. I could just imagine them making vampiric preparations for being snowbound!

Cleaning rewarded me with another of those minor pleasant lost-and-found surprises. I’d been grumping because I was sure I’d lost the cap to one of my new 16GB flash drives at video class two weeks ago. It turned up underneath one of the stereo speakers. I have no idea how it got there, but I’m not complaining! Thank you to the fae, the universe or whomever for returning the flash drive cap! 😉

To everyone who did get socked by the big storm, I hope you’re digging out and doing okay!

NaNoWriMo 2009

I keep forgetting about this one.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo in October. It had certainly been successful for me in 2005–Mortal Touch started out as my 2005 NaNo “winner,” although I went on to write 120,000 more words and revise almost every paragraph of the initial 50K before the book was finished.

But I didn’t manage to finish this year–or even come close. I worked away at it doggedly, and posted my word count every day that there was one. But I just had too much on my plate with getting Cat the Vamp released, finishing the edits and layout for Krymsin Nocturnes, and doing Thanksgiving dinner with my dad. I managed to write 20,535 words and that was all I could do.

Still, I can’t call it a failure, not by any means. I decided to try and get some actual words down for All the Shadows of the Rainbow, the book that will be either Book 3 or Book 4 in the Vampires of New England Series. (It will be Book 4 if I get back to 99 Covenant Street first, and that’s a possibility because 99 Covenant Street is set in the present day and involves a lot less research. I won’t say no research, but not like All the Shadows of the Rainbow, which covers a period of time from 1955 to 1972 and is heavily tied into historical events of that era. My work table is groaning under stacks of books about the late 50s and 60s, and then there are all the documentaries and videos!) Up to this point, All the Shadows of the Rainbow had consisted of a vague cloud of scenes in my head and one hell of an ending. But once I really started working on it, things started to fall into place.

It definitely helped that I’d already done a 40K-word marathon in September and finished The Longer the Fall. I just picked right up from the ending of that book and ran with it. Almost immediately, I realized that the central antagonist in All the Shadows of the Rainbow is actually a character mentioned in passing in The Longer the Fall and already tightly connected to several characters in the story. That was one of those light bulb revelations–“Oh. Of course that’s who he is. Stupid me, why didn’t I see that before?” The second I realized that, of course, everything about this character and what happens to him and how that will affect other characters instantly became intensely charged, and he just burst into life. His whole personality was simply jumping out when I wrote his dialogue, I didn’t even have to think about it, he was just there, completely distinctive and unique, different from any other character in the series so far. Along with that, the whole flow of the storyline really solidified and started to take shape. It was as if the very act of writing, without even knowing where I was going to go with it, caused the entire book to coalesce automatically. But, it’s been percolating in my head for a pretty long time.

Knitting

I used to knit a lot years ago, and I was quite proficient at it. I taught myself all kinds of fancy patterns and stitches and techniques, and I used to go through these afghan-making frenzies where I would just have to knit an afghan. I did several of them, and a couple of sweaters. I also used to knit slippers for gifts and probably made a dozen or so pairs for various people. I have tons of knitting needles and accessories. But here’s the really stupid thing: I hate, hate, HATE acrylic and artificial fibers! I can’t stand to wear them, they make my skin crawl. So I’d buy cheap acrylic yarn, spend all that time knitting something out of it, and then when it was done, I didn’t want the finished item! I never wore the sweaters I made!

Well, obviously, you can get natural fiber yarns–and that’s a lot easier (and slightly less extravagant) now than it was, say, thirty years ago. But by the time that clicked with genius here, I’d gotten into other creative projects and knitting got pushed back to the 25th hour of the day along with so many other things I do well but don’t have time for.

Oh, I still thought about it. From time to time I brought home some interesting wool yarn, thinking I’d make myself socks. So I had this nice yarn but I never got to the point of using it.

But now, it seems, everyone is knitting. I know all these writers, in particular, who knit. I have men friends with knitting blogs. I go to conventions and people sitting next to me are knitting. Even worse, they’re knitting socks. I mean, there’s just so much of this I can take!

So, very suddenly, I hauled out my baskets of yarn and collections of knitting needles, sorted and reorganized what I had, and started knitting. I’m knitting a pair of socks. I mean that literally, because I’m knitting both socks at the same time. That way, when I’m done, I’ll have the whole pair rather than finish one and have to start all over from the beginning. It’s going to take me a while, because I’m a very practical knitter: I knit to have something I actually want to use, which means I’m knitting wool socks on teeny needles, and I only pick up the knitting at those rare times when I’m listening to something, like a podcast. Remember, I don’t watch TV! I’ve got enough wool, I think, for three pairs of socks. They might change colors unexpectedly, because I don’t really care what they look like. They’ll be inside my boots, and I just love wool socks. 🙂 I may make some sweaters, too, because I have so much trouble finding clothes that are small enough now.

I’m just too damned suggestible! All my friends jump off a cliff knitting, and there I go!

the socks so far