Re-Birthings

I had to go away for a long while, regroup. Rethink my place in the world. And realized that, without a journal to keep me oriented, I tend to forget things like "order in which things happened" and "where is that recipe that I liked?"

I can't keep this as a straight-up yarn blog anymore, mostly because I am so much more. I like a place to keep my recipe innovations, and a place to keep my book lists, and a place to whine about my shoes. I still knit, but it's not my primary mode of self-expression anymore. Hell, my stash is so large that if I quit knitting now, my mom would probably murder me.

So I'm making this an everything and nothing spot, a place to dump the contents of my mind when they come up. I think that will work best for me, to be honest. I need to start keeping track of myself again, if only so I have notes on what I was thinking two weeks ago.

Yeah, it's sort of like that.

To catch everyone up: We still have two cats (Yoda and Ebony), and Rex the WonderPibble. I still share a house with both of my parents and a brother I waver between wanting to shove under a bus and wanting to give a medal. I had a severe bout of mononeucleosis (sorry, I have no idea what they call that in Europe -- uhhh, Epstein Barr?) that left me super wiped out for the better part of six months, that I'm always on the cusp of relapsing into. I just attended the American Library Association Conference in Chicago and brought home more perfect-bound bundles of printed paper to drop on top of my already precariously stacked To Be Read pile. And I'm in the middle of knitting Nieceling a pretty thing for her wedding (can it be? The little piglet that bruised my ribs the very first time I held her is already getting hitched up? I'm not crying, you're crying!)

You could say I've been busy.

But that's no excuse for ignoring my journaling! How the heck will I be able to track my life's milestones without a list somewhere! So I've dusted this off and am starting anew.

To begin: My To Be Read list. It's huge, it's papery, and I better get cracking on it or the advance reader's copies I have will be still waiting until everyone's read and resold their publisher copies at a used bookstore. I'll have to talk about the first book I've started: Whichwood, a YA novel by Tahereh Mafi. It doesn't come out until November, and I tucked into it the day I picked it up at ALA.

You will be hearing more about it!

A week and a half to go!

Until the new year, that is. Everyone continues to heal up (blessed be), things are peaceful and quiet -- maybe a little too quiet.

Yes, in my family it is tradition to take good fortune as a harbinger of the bad. It's a screwed up way to live, and I wish I didn't do it, but there it is. Particularly after this past year, I'm a little frightened to have faith that life isn't about to stab me in the back.

I'm working hard on mom's mink neckwarmer. It's beautiful and soft as kittens, and I love it. She will enjoy it, too, I know. Plus, being an infinity scarf, she won't lose it. The benefits of felting an acrylic/mohair blend scarf by wearing it -- you get it replaced with mink.

I'm lining up my projects for next year, and I'm spoilt for choice. I've already decided to join my hermit's club's Ravellenics team -- Team Knit Alone. We don't officially register for the games, just knit along. I'm going to finish my Hue Shift Afghan because my colorway is the shockingly appropriate "Rainbow".

Look at the rainbow -- LOOK AT IT!!!!

I'm also thinking about working on my Double Cross scarf, because it has sparkles. Rainbows and sparkles? Oh, yeah.

Sparkly rainbows would be better, but I'm limited by my stock

 

I've been trying to narrow down my book list, but am not having much luck in figuring out which books to remove. Truman Capote will have to come off, sadly -- In Cold Blood is, technically, non-fiction. I think I may have to simply choose a book by an author who has several on the list as I come to the author on the list. I'd have to read two books a week, on average, to hit 100 books next year anyway, and that's not going to be feasible. I have a hard time mustering up enthusiasm for literature, anyway, not sure I could make it through two a week. That's like...eating peas every day for every meal. Urgh. I'll just have to see how many I can get through. Anything over three will be a major improvement for me.

 

I only have one more work day left before we close the office for the holidays. Wheee! I won't finish up mom's scarf in the next three days (unless I give up going to the bathroom in favor of sitting for the whole day in my chair, knitting like a fiend), but that's ok. I'm sure I'll get it done over the holiday break. Then I can maybe move on to another project, pick a book and get started on all my goals at once. 

 

But for now, I'm off to watch the first episode of season one of Sherlock. I need to watch them all over again before the third season starts up on the 19th. Possibly twice.  

2013, I will be glad to be quit of you!

On the one hand, you could say my family has had wretched luck this year. On the other, you could say, we've had terrific luck.

I mean, if his kidneys hadn't started failing, my father would be dead of a massive heart attack by now. If the angle of hit had been any degree different, my brother would be dead in a hit and run accident instead of recovering from surgery for a broken pelvis. If it had been a tumor instead of a stroke, my mother's cat would have no chance for recovery, instead of the 75% he's got (and she really, really, really needs her little furry friend right now).

I'm not sure what that adds up to, other than I'm really tired of this year and for what feels like the first time ever, I'm looking forward to next year. Hopefully it will be way, way better -- or at the very least, much more calm. We wouldn't have needed our fabulous luck if we hadn't had so much bollywoggle going on. So no bollywoggle for a little while, just enough time for me to get bored again...yeah. That's what I want for Christmas.

Do you think Santa can slide some peace and quiet under there?

I'm making progress on the one and only knitted Giftmas gift I am working on -- an eternity scarf for Mater Gloriosa made out of Lotus Yarns Mink. Mink. 

 

All your arguments are invalid at the word 'mink'. It's soft and squishy and I'm enjoying greatly working on this. Of course, I still have the green mink for myself that I'm going to be working with to look forward to in 2014.

Not sure what I'll make myself, but after this year, I should be knitting for myself in all mink. 

Although I think my first order of business is going to be scheduling a nice vacation for myself and a friend someplace warm. I'm thinking Vegas. Not the 'flashy-lighty, ringing-slot machine, screaming old ladies' Vegas, but the real Las Vegas. The daylight Vegas. They have museums and places of interest and national parks. And the sun shines there, and it's warm. 

I'm thinking I may have to find a week or two in February because if I wait too much longer, I may go spare and beat someone up with a stick. And no one wants that.

In other news, next year is going to be my "Year of The Novel". I have a list of 134 books that were considered by someone  to be great novels from the 20th century (before you ask, yes, I took all Ayn Rand's stuff off there -- the cat had a stroke, I don't want to have one, too). I'm not sure how to liquidate that down further, other than maybe choosing one novel by each author (some of them have as many as four books listed). I was actually even going to remove V. S. Naipaul from the list on the basis of I have no idea who he is, but then a quick Google search told me he and I share a birthday. So he must be awesome. I will have to read both of his books on the list.

And since I doubt my knit coven is going to buy the leftovers of another yarn shop next year, I'll maybe actually make progress on the destashing front. I hope so, my yarn stash is getting out of hand!

Let's hope next year goes half as well as I'd like it to -- peace and quiet and reading and knitting. I could use a little boring.

Sorry, went AWOL for a while.

I can't explain it, really. I got busy. I went to my favorite place in town and did some thinking:

Then I went to the movies again and did more thinking. And then I've been thinking all week long.

Well, I say I got busy, but what I mean is I just Went Inside. Another Jungian Introvert will understand that, the general public maybe not so much. But I needed some hermit time with just me, myself and I. I've been doing movies like mad lately, and they've been movies that have gotten into my head and started moving furniture, re-shelving my books and dusting around the nick-knacks, pushing them slightly out of alignment. I had to go inward or I'd have imploded.

Then I realized that I'm horribly under-read. My grade and high school literature experiences were decidedly Steinbeck heavy. For the record, I detest Steinbeck. If I never read another of his over-rated pieces of drivel again, it will be too soon.

Why the hateration on Steinbeck? Well, let's see. I read Of Mice and Men...four or five times, The Pearl twice and was threatened with The Grapes of Wrath until I was allowed to shape my own literary experience that year and spent the time reading off the shelves (and chose the Gothics; Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, I discovered Ann Radcliffe) and wrote two term papers for my grade instead of taking tests, reading along with the others and writing only one.

The lack of variety, I realized, has stunted my growth. I thought all literature sucked because Steinbeck sucks, but that's not a valid comparison. Steinbeck is not all of literature and literature is not, thank God, only like Steinbeck.

I hadn't realized until I saw Midnight in Paris how little actual literary experience I have. I'd never read Fitzgerald, I'd never read Hemingway. I've never completed a Dickens novel, or an Austen book or any of the others my peers have complained about through the years. No Herman Hesse, no Somerset Maugham. No official Poe, no official Mark Twain. For the price my parents paid, you'd think I'd have gotten something a bit more sophisticated than the All Steinbeck Channel. So yesterday and today I've been trolling the libraries and bookstores, trying to find some new reading material.

Yes, that's an audio version of Austen up there. I have trouble with the language in Regency novels; if I have it read to me I understand it far better from vocal context than if I'm reading it with my eyes. I'm trying to translate the book, if you will. I might have to go that direction with Dickens. I'll give it one more go with Martin Chuzzlewitt, but if it's too bendy for my eyes to follow, we're going to try the audio book route.

The one you don't see in there is the one I read last night, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. That one I took a flyer on and bought, so it's now on my bookshelves. I actually quite liked it. He used language in a very pretty way, although his commas confused me. What can I say, I have a comma style. It may be right, it may be wrong, but it's my style.

Anyway, I started Hemingway this evening. My friend who went to MiP was right; the Hemingway in the movie spoke just like the real Hemingway wrote, and it's hilarious. Oh, it's a generational thing--sort of like in the movie The Maltese Falcon when Humphrey Bogart's character looks at another character and says (in what must have been menacing fashion in the day but now was just amusing), "I'll slap you 'til you like it." I had to shut the movie off at that point; you must see why.

So I'm starting some assigned reading this week. We'll see how long the kick lasts. I'd like to know if there's some kind of proper Literature I'd have liked that I've missed because of poor lesson planning and bad communication between teachers in my over-priced private schools.

Actually, it's kind of funny; I read Of Mice and Men twice in a row under the same teacher. You'd think she could have remembered something like that. I sure did. Blech.