Monthly Archives: August 2011

Friday Gauge Check: On the Way Out

Friday, of course, means it’s time for our Friday rituals, the ceremonies of escorting one week out and preparing the next one.  Which, around here, is the Gauge Check, where I take a look at my week and figure out where I’ve come from and where I’m going.  Sometimes there are goals, sometimes I just talk about what’s going on in my life and my crafting.  You are all welcome to join in in the comments.

Happy Friday, folks.

Fancy intro!  I figure I should start introducing my Gauge Check for the sake of the new readers, which I’m sure there are some.  Or there will someday be some.  Or something.

Unsurprisingly, I’m thinking about transitions.

I’m sitting on the floor in the living room of my apartment.  On the floor, because there’s no furniture left in here – the only furniture left in the apartment at all, in fact, are three folding bookshelves (that are coming with us), the bed (which is sold, and is getting picked up on Sunday) and the stand the bird cage is sitting on.  I almost sent that with the charity truck, too, but I decided that it would be easy to throw it in the car on Sunday and take it to Goodwill myself, and in the meantime I have a place to keep the birds safely out of the way.

I have, for the first time, hired someone to clean my kitchen and bathroom, and she’s here now.

There’s a certain amount of guilt in that; I am able-bodied and perfectly capable of cleaning my own house.  I have to admit, though, that it’s nice to be able to sit here and work on this blog post and not think about having to clean the kitchen and the bathroom.  The fact that there’s not any furniture left in my living room is due to my own diligence and organization; the fact that most everything is in some kind of container (box or otherwise) is because I put it there.  I have done plenty of hard physical labor this week.  This morning I’ve made three trips to the Dumpster.  Do I need to clean the place, too?

I sound like I’m whining, or making excuses.  If I’m trying to convince someone that what I’m doing is acceptable, it’s mostly myself.

It doesn’t help that I’m a thirty-something white woman who was born in the deep South, and the person cleaning my house (whom I found on Craigslist, and corresponded with entirely via email) is an older black lady.  We’ll call it residual cultural guilt and leave it at that.

So what have I done this week, besides packing, cleaning, and throwing away?  (Where did we get so much STUFF? Our apartment is NOT THAT LARGE.)

Not much.

I finished a pattern repeat of the Argyle State scarf.  And then I ran out of yarn.  It isn’t long enough to be a real scarf yet.  So I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.  Probably try and buy more yarn.

Got a very little bit done on the December Little Shawl, and a few rows of the Scottish Boxes socks.  The conclusion I’m rapidly coming to on the Scottish Boxes socks is that they’re not really meant to be a purse project.  There’s too much counting to be social when I’m working on them, and the thick-and-thin nature of the yarn means that I can’t just look at my knitting and eyeball the pattern, I actually have to count.  Spending most of my time packing also means that I haven’t spent much time out of the house.

I took a break and spent Wednesday with a friend, which is when I worked on the December Little Shawl.  I’m nearly out of yarn, so I keep eyeing the yarn and the project and wondering how many more rows I can do, and I’ve come to the realization that I don’t like to be nearly out of yarn.

As realizations go, this one isn’t very significant.  I mean, who likes to wonder if they’ll be able to finish a project?  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s response to being nearly out of yarn is to knit faster, hoping that she’ll run out of project before she runs out of yarn.  My response is apparently to knit slower.  Really slowly.  As in, put the project aside – perhaps in the hope that it will suddenly develop more yarn?  I’m thinking, as a result, that if I buy more yarn for the Argyle State scarf, I’ll get my mojo back and actually finish the damn thing.  With the December Little Shawl, though, not only is there no more yarn to be had (this is handspun I bought at the Ren Faire), but I’m knitting until I run out of yarn, so running out of yarn is actually the goal!  I want to use all of it, so I’ll probably end up tinking back a row or two in order to complete the bind-off.

The Swan Maiden Mitts are up to the thumb gusset, so I need to figure out where I put the other mitt (it was just here, I swear) so I can check the starting point against the complete one.  Also I have this irrational fear that I will make two right mitts or something.  I made the first mitt in the pattern, so if I make the second one, it will absolutely be the other hand!  See?  Irrational.  Still going to check before I start.

Alvida is tucked into her carry bag, so there will be no more spinning until we’re settled.  I packed her yesterday, although I spent some quality time working on her first.  My spinning chair went on the charity truck, so there wasn’t any use in leaving her out.  (Sitting on the floor, remember?)  While I call it my spinning chair, it’s really a very basic dining room chair from Ikea, so it’ll be easy enough to replace when we get to Portland.  Maybe with something a little nicer, even.

So it’s all over but the details, at this point.  I have a few more errands to run, but then it’s off on our adventure.

We leave Monday.

Wish us luck, and if I don’t get to update before then, I’ll see you next Friday in Oregon!

With Apologies to the Bard (aka, When English Majors Knit)

Suit the yarn to the pattern, the pattern to the yarn; with this special observance, that you o’er step not the modesty of wool: for anything so overspun is from the purpose of knitting, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as it were, the skein up to finished object; to show needles her own stitches, scorn her own row count, and the very gauge and fiber of the fabric his woven ends and blocking.

 

Friday Gauge Check: I can fix this in blocking, right?

Ah, blocking.  The step of the knitting equation that can be best summarized as, “And then, a miracle happened!”

Well, not really.  Blocking can be relied upon to open up lace patterns, smooth down and even out an occasional weird-looking stitch, sharpen corners, make a project a little bigger, add some structure, and straighten out curling edges.  I am assured it can turn a freshly bound-off shawl from a pile of yarn to a beautiful heirloom lace object.  Blocking can’t erase mistakes, but it can make them less evident.  And that is all wonderful.  Proper blocking is the last step in the process, the graduation ceremony from WIP to FO.

What blocking does to knitters is give them permission to make mistakes.  Project a little too small?  Block it.  Laying funny?  Block it.  A sweater big enough to use as a bedspread?  Block it – and then give it to someone else.  That ship has sailed.  While proper blocking can’t fix a dropped stitch or a mis-twisted cable, it can hide a multitude of sins.  Blocking is the closed closet door in the tidy room; it suggests that on the other side of the door, the closet is just as neatly organized as the rest of the room.  You know that you seriously considered moving the armchair in front of the closet to make sure the door doesn’t pop open, and it took the full force of your weight to get the door closed in the first place, but nobody else will ever have to know, because that door is shut.  The recipient of your beautifully blocked gift will never know that you spent six hours in a frenzy of knitting the night before to get the damned thing finished, and half the stitches were weirdly shaped and the other half were grubby from when the dog laid on them, because now it looks absolutely perfect.

I’m probably musing on blocking this morning because I’ve hit the point in the moving process where I just want to be done with it.  I’ve sold nearly every piece of furniture not immediately being used (and some that were), I’ve given away ridiculous amounts of clutter, I’m still selling and sorting and planning and packing, and I keep finding more things hiding in corners and in closets that require some sort of decision to be made on its destiny.  If I put four beautiful handmade walking sticks up on Craigslist, would anyone buy them?  What about this box of assorted shiny rocks, or this statue of Kwan Yin (didn’t we get rid of all the statues of Kwan Yin? where do they keep coming from?) or these candle holders?  Should I just dump them on a charitable organization and let them sort it out?  This is the moving equivalent of the knitting black hole, the spot where you just keep knitting and it feels like you’re not making any progress.  Yes, I’ve sold things!  I’ve given things away!  LOTS OF THINGS!  Things are gone!  Why doesn’t the space look any emptier?

I’ll be over here, sobbing in the corner.

Okay, I’m a little better now.  I just needed a minute.

I’m sure I’ve talked about this to the point where everyone is sick of it by now, but moving with Isabel was always a tremendous ordeal.  At some point during the process, I would have always pushed myself to the point where I was literally sobbing with exhaustion.  I didn’t know it was a real point, prior to Isabel.  Life lessons, guys.  Life lessons.

This move is not like that at all.  Jack is working ridiculous amounts of overtime over the next two weeks, so I’m handling the bulk of this selling-giving away-throwing out decision making myself, but he trusts me to do it and he’s helping every chance he gets.  This move is not an Isabel move, not by a long shot.

However!  I do have to keep in mind that moving, no matter how badly you want to do it, is still stressful.  This is a thousand times easier than any move with Isabel, absolutely – but it’s still inherently difficult.  It’s okay to be stressed about it, and it’s okay to want to to be over.

And really, in the long run, the little decisions I’m making now won’t matter.  Two weeks from now, I probably won’t even remember what I gave away on Craigslist versus what I dumped at Goodwill, and five or ten bucks one way or the other won’t make a huge difference.  It’s okay to give up and just call Habitat for Humanity and arrange for a pickup.  It’s okay to let go, and do the stuff that matters, and let the rest of it take care of itself.

Knitting and spinning are keeping me stable and sane.  I’m working on the second Swan Maiden Mitt, I did about half a pattern repeat on the Argyle State scarf, a few more rows on the leg of the Scottish Boxes sock (I know), and I cast on a baby blanket for my brother’s baby.  I don’t know if she’ll live to see it finished, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing (sad to say), but I have to try, at least.  She deserves that much.

Well, I have another bookshelf sold, and the dishes packed to go tonight.  (One kitchen cabinet COMPLETELY EMPTY!)  Progress is being made.  All I have to do is remind myself of it.

Goal for the week: keep going forward.  One more week closer to the end, and the end is very nearly upon us.

Have a good week, kids.  Check your gauge in the comments, or tell me your moving horror story!

Friday Gauge Check: Ready to Move

I talked yesterday about taking the art off the walls.  Today, we emptied out the bookshelves in the dining room and the bedroom, and they went off to their new home.  The finches have been moved to the smaller cage, so they have a chance to get settled in it before we start disrupting their universe further.

This month’s emotional state has been a continual pendulum swing between excitement and terror, a state that will likely continue until we arrive at our new home.  There is so much uncertainty, but I want this more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.  This is the move I am meant to make, this is the place I am meant to go.

Previous moves have always been incredibly stressful, but in a different way: what I was afraid of was the sheer act of getting everything done before the deadline.  Isabel was as useless and distressed as a cat in a move, even though moving was always her idea.  She started out excited, but she was never willing to put the work into getting everything packed up and physically shifted.  Shortly after we would get the keys to the new place, she would decide that she could no longer go back to the old place, leaving me to finish the bulk of the moving and cleaning.

This move is not like that.

The simple fact that Jack is just as dedicated to the move as I am, is eager to help in every way possible, makes everything I’m doing seem so much more possible.  I cannot say enough good things about having a reliable partner and a healthy relationship.

I haven’t been spinning much.  The variegated blue wool was giving me fits – it broke, it disintegrated, it just wouldn’t spin well – so I put it aside, Navajo-plied the white Corriedale cross that had been sitting on one bobbin, and started working on a plain dark blue Merino.  That’s working better, but now I have to get past this restless dread that I’m going to have problems when I sit down at the wheel.

So, instead, I’ve been knitting.  (I know, you’re all surprised.)  I managed to force myself to do a few more rows of the Argyle State University scarf (remember that?).  We went and saw Green Lantern and African Cats, and I worked on the December Little Shawl (stockinette stitch makes excellent movie-theatre knitting).  The first Swan Maiden Mitt is done, and the second one has a complete cuff and I’ve started on the lace pattern.

Tuesday, one of my tires gave up the ghost, so I spent Wednesday morning getting the front tires replaced.  Hello, unexpected expense!  I suppose it’s better that it go flat now, as opposed to halfway between Quartzsite and Blythe, or somewhere equally miserable and lonely.

Goals!  Next week, I want to get back into spinning, get that damn ASU scarf finished, and get everything packed that can be.  I think that will be enough work for at least two of me.

If you would like to donate to the cause of getting us safely moved, Jack is doing Tarot readings.  I also do Tarot readings, Reiki healings and attunements, editing and proofreading, writing and advice-giving, and a certain amount of knitting on demand; if you would like any of these services, drop me a line at rippingback at gmail dot com.

Emptying the Soul of the Home

My home is not a place, it is people, sir.  – Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold

Today I am taking the art down from the walls of my apartment.  I started yesterday, and worked for a while, taking my finch collection and Jack’s dragon collection out of their frames.  We are getting rid of the frames; they are from Ikea, easy enough to replace when we get where we’re going, and too bulky and breakable for this trip.

I had to stop eventually, not because I was tired, but because of the shock of it.  It was the art, more than anything, that turned our plain, white-walled apartment with its tan carpeting and beige linoleum, into a home.  It brought colors to walls I could not paint, beauty to an empty space.

Some of them were mine.  Some of them were his.  But mostly, these are the pieces we chose together during our two years here, bought at arts festivals or on countless Friday nights spent in various downtowns turned over to booths and tables laden with creation for a few precious hours.  I hung them, because he told me I had an eye for it.  Some of them were clustered together; my collection of small birds in the dining room, his forest of bare trees by the front door.  The dragons, nearly all by the same artist, in the same size, wound throughout the house in thematically appropriate ways: fire dragons in the kitchen, water dragons in the bathroom.

Tonight, though, they are down, and it changes this place.

Though the books and trinkets were sold off or packed away, it still looked like my home.  Now, with bare nails exposed, the walls look indecent, empty, barren.  There are boxes in various states of fullness in every room.  Some pieces of furniture are gone, while others wait to be cleared to go to new owners. Others wait on Craigslist, still hoping to be chosen.

We have given notice.  It is too late to turn back now.

I am ready to leave the desert, though, to move to a cool green place that seems to have been created with us in mind. Although I’ve never been there, I long for it with something akin to homesickness.  Perhaps it is my spiritual home, the place I should have come from.

Regardless, I will miss our apartment.  We will build other homes together, and I will come to love them every bit as much as I loved this one.  But this was our first place, my first sanctuary from the storm, and the first is always special.  The other places are still hypothetical, bright fantasy places with lots of windows and room for gardens and rabbits and a portable forge, while these three rooms are real, are mine.  Were mine.  Will be mine, for two more weeks, and then they will belong to someone else.

Change, even longed-for, planned-for change, is difficult.  It is a surrender of safety and comfort for uncertainty and freedom.  But I have made this choice before, and I will doubtless make it again, because while I can be a creature of safety and comfort, I am happier when I make the hard choices.

So I have taken the art from the walls, and I have packed the books and the figurines and the toys, the tea and the dishes and the yarn.  I have destashed and decluttered and donated, and have more to go before I’m finished.

Eighteen days left.

I’m ready.