Horrific dreams, and I think I broke my car.

A calming picture, because one is oh, so needed right now!

This whole day has just been off and terrible, and it started with a particularly horrific nightmare I had last night. I dreamed my niece was missing -- I'd started walking her to school through the big, scary woods behind her house (which isn't really her house, and a forest which did have, in my defense, well-lit paths and other people on them at the time) and let her go the rest of the way on her own. She never got to school.

There was great consternation all around, and we were all afraid she was dead. I was sure, though, that she was alive and in the forest, so I girded my loins and went in (by the way, my brother had a much nicer home in my dream -- the main room was huge, with massive picture windows looking out over the wooded hills behind the house; if I hadn't been so verklempt, I'd have set a spell and just watched the wind in the trees). I found a massive fortress or castle, all in ruins, and I saw her walking across the battlements, looking down at me. At the time, I was merely concerned with getting up there to her, helping her escape whatever had captured and put her there, but now...I have an impression that she was annoyed with me.

Of course, at that point I awoke. In my dreams, my niece has always symbolized my writing. I get the feeling that my writing self is resentful of the time I'm spending working in Desklandia, because for the past two weeks (as I've adjusted to a full schedule again) I've not done anything. I've barely even blogged, and that does count toward my daily writing totals (hey, every little bit counts when you're trying to maintain a writing habit.)

And there was a little part of me worrying that the fact that the niece went missing meant my writerliness has gone missing, too. I'm always afraid that one day I'll find out I'm not really a writer after all, I'm just a poser, avoiding the real thing I am, which is most likely demented cat lady (or dog lady, really) or perhaps a postal worker -- and we all know the job prospects for postal workers right now.

So I'm blogging. Toes in first, then we'll ease the rest of the leg over the side, yes?

In other news, I think I've broken my car. Seriously broken it, this time. I was on the highway and it suddenly slipped into second. I made it to a non-highway road and it just as suddenly went back into regular drive gear. Criminy. It was shifting hard into and out of second as I accelerated all the way home, too.

I still think, no matter what the brother says, that my transmission is going. Shot to hell from that badly done transmission fluid change (don't ever, ever, ever get your transmission fluid changed at the places that specialize in oil changes -- they don't put the right stuff in). But brother thought my fluid might just have been low, so I added some in. Now I think I might have added too much.

Sigh.

At least I have some nice, new sparkly yarn in the mail (as of tomorrow). I bought it as a special treat, for having got the temp work, and I couldn't, in all good conscience, tell the dyer who specially hand-dyed it for me, to keep it because I'm having car trouble. It's not her fault, and she started working on it before I sent the payment because I was so certain I'd be ok for a while.

In any case, $29 is a drop in the bucket compared to what new transmissions cost. So I might as well fiddle as this Rome burns, at least when it comes to my yarn.

Perhaps I'll feel better tomorrow, if I don't have another creepy dream where Nieceling runs away to castles in dark forests to spite me.

I've really learned my lesson this time.

For sure. I mean, how silly could I get to forget this one?

There's the square I'm hosting for the blanket KAL. Finished, if not done and dusted (look at those yarn ends!) The actual knitting took maybe...um, two or three hours? The finishing took nearly an entire 24 hour day. I had to keep stopping and starting and weaving the damn thing over again.

Sorta sucked the joy out of it for me, you know?

Here's a shot in progress, so you can get an understanding of what went into the making of the square:

Those pins? There to keep the square at the proper dimensions while I worked.

I saw this "stitch" pattern in a tea cozy pattern once and was instantly enamored. I had to try it out, and you can see that I have now, indeed tried it out.

I believe it will be the last time I ever use it. Don't get me wrong, it's lovely, and it might work better if I used the bulky yarn the original pattern used, but sheesh. So complicated!

And, just so you can see how secretly lazy and lame it is, here's a close-up:

I still kinda like it, though. 

I got mail!

I found this in the mailbox today when I got home -- a lime green envelope with a smiley face on the back!

And this is what was in it!

The ladies in the Selfish Knitting group on Ravelry decided to make and sell a series of buttons celebrating the joys of selfish knitting (ie, knitting only for yourself and the truly knitworthy, and only knitting that which makes you happy to knit). The dedicated little artists that inspired the project designed a virtual armada of button choices. The profits are going to charity (I believe it's going to be Heifer International), so I figured I could find a bit of pocket change to get a few. Choosing the designs I wanted was the hard part -- even at my most flush, and even considering how low the prices were, I didn't have enough to buy one of each. Sigh, decisions! I hate making decisions.

I'm really loving the redhead in the middle there -- the button is much nicer in real life, the colors are sharper. Also Fiber Floozy (the large square one) is looking a bit washed out in the picture, too.  They're all really gorgeous on my desk, all shiny and colorful and swanky.

Me likey.

What's that? Why of course I have an old fashioned letter opener. It was my grandmother's. I keep it in the pen holder on my desk:
  

It's heavy, it's pretty and in a pinch I can use it as a bone folder. V. handy. Plus it looks intimidating. I almost wish I got more mail just so I could use it more often.

May you have a Saturday replete with pleasant surprises in your mail and selfish knitting in your favorite chair.

PS-- I have a real bone folder, although mine is made of yak horn instead of bone. What can I say, I was being extravagant while in my bookbinding phase. Plus yak horn doesn't flake or chip like bone does.

Although it also can't be sharpened down into a cutting implement like bone, either. So you win some, you lose some.

Handwriting

I volunteer at the local archives. I've been working on cleaning up and mending some old (as in, 1800-1805) legal case papers. It always surprises me, since at the turn of the Nineteenth Century this area was the Wild West, that the crimes seem to fall into two base categories: selling stuff to the natives and "trespass" (or, as they spelled it, "trespaf", if the f extended below the line) which seemed to cover a whole lot of ground. Bad business dealing was trespass, outright theft was trespass, anything that resulted in my money being in your pockets without proper cause -- and a few other things besides -- was trespass.

Granted, horse thieves and murderers were simply hung (there wasn't a territorial jail until 1804, when they got someone who owed the county money to build it -- in a court case I cleaned two weeks ago), and nobody minded much about crimes against women or mind-altering substances and their control, so there wouldn't be a lot of court paperwork dealing with the sort of things I think when I hear "Sheriff", but I expected a little more excitement. Something a little wilder than "he owes me $400 and hasn't paid."

I digress; the fact that most of the lawsuits seem to have been brought before the court because it was a slow day on the farm and they had nothing else to do to occupy their time has nothing to do with the reason I brought it all up. It's the handwriting.

Glory, look at it! The elegant swoops and curves, the flow of the letters...all more interesting due to the fact that -- after careful examination on my part -- I believe these files to be the first drafts and scrap documents. There are few official seals and an awful lot of blanks and cross-outs for them to be the proper versions of the documents.

Still:

They still laid on a lot of love of the curliques and flourishes. This must be their natural writing -- the way they learned to write when they learned initially. Not a special-purpose style as it is nowadays. I've seen court transcripts where the script is nearly identical, meaning they could write very fast in that style. I am in awe.

Also, is it really scary to anyone else that I'm getting to know the court clerks by their writing? That bottom piece there? That was the clerk from Cahokia, out St. Louis way. He had a strangely squat and runic style of writing. It's rather hard for me to read. The fellow back east was more lyrical. Wrote, in modern parlance, like a girl. I don't have any examples of his writing, the other two samples I'm showing are from a law office -- that's the lawyer's clerk. He does the flourishes like damn, though. Very nice.

My point, which I have, admittedly, been hours and hours at getting around to, is that suddenly I'm feeling a bit...inadequate. Handwriting, for me, has always been the slow way to communicate, and my impatience reveals itself by a nearly flat-line that is what passes for cursive writing. I simply have no time to make those bumpy, circular thingies that are actual letters. But the sheer beauty of these documents is making me feel like resurrecting an old skill and making it mine.

Wish us luck.

I'd have posted sooner...

but it's been so long since I've worked more than, say, 15 hours a week that I feel like I have no time to do anything.

Of course, that might also be because I spent all day yesterday out of the house (work for my pseudosister, work for the temp job -- which I'm really enjoying, by the way, -- then went to the movies with a friend). I hate that, you know. Not going home. Waking up, running out and staying out until bedtime. It makes me feel...crowded.

Anyway, here's what I wanted to work on yesterday, but didn't have the time for:

I finished the knitting part Monday at coven. I'm getting ready for the 'complicated' part now. I just have to pick my colors and go.

I think I'll get off the computer, throw my laundry in the dryer (it's in the washing machine now) and then sit to my knitting. I go to bed early again -- since my new wake-up time is 6 in the freakin' am (and what the hell sort of time-of-day do you call that?!?!) I go to bed early every night nowadays.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm really not.

But tomorrow is my easy day -- volunteer obligations are more fun than strenuous -- so I'm hoping it's actually a pretty good day. I'll be napping when I get home, anyway. No laundry, nowhere to go after I get home at 3:30, nothin' on the calendar.

Ahhh. It's like a cool, clean pool on a nasty hot summer's day!

Yeargh.

I did my taxes today. Oh, not the final tax forms, I just did a blitz Turbo Tax version to see what I'll owe.

Not too bad, I only owe $325 between the feds and staties. I was braced for worse. Far, far worse.

I'm going to have a hot cuppa, do some more knitting on the orange square and watch some Supernatural, or maybe finish up the second season of Sherlock that I've got sitting on my desk (and have been avoiding; I know how this ends). Something to ease and soothe me a bit.

And now a photo to liven up the place a bit (and don't you just love the colors?!?!?):

Squares, squares, squares.

I have, for the moment, abandoned the second KAL square of February. I don't like the pattern much (oh, I like the finished item well enough, but the knitting of it is wretched). Well, here it is, judge for yourself:

It's cool enough -- I like the way the yarn carried along the right side is making tidy little chevrons -- but the pattern is written in complicated fashion, and it's just....oooh. Just had a thought. Why don't I go in and fix the darn pattern? Like, instead of saying "Line 12: As Row 3", go back and cut and paste row 3 into the pattern at line 12?

My Bob, I can be so dense sometimes. And why is it that I get these great ideas after a glass of wine? I could easily become a drunk if this continues.

Anyway, I'm also hosting two squares for this project. Which means I get to come up with the patterns and such. I'm very excited, to tell the truth. I just have to figure out how to write the patterns out so they're comprehensible to others.

In the meantime, here's the swatch I abandoned the navy square for:

Yes, it looks unassuming, but there's more to it than garter stitch. In fact, I'm at the 5' mark, meaning I'm halfway done with knitting the base square. As I'm halfway done with the base square, that means I'm a quarter of the way done with the finished item -- as the base square marks the halfway point on the finished blanket square.

Yes, my math is complex. Very complex. And I'm keeping track, you know.

I'm so pedantic!