Twists of Fate

I remember.

Picture from here.

Alas, not the funky plot device found in Harry Potter, though I will say that my thoughts are swirling here on the eve of a significant date.

All day I’ve been picking up WIPs or potential projects, and putting them down again without making a single stitch. I’m too scattered, too wired, and too upset to really concentrate on anything. Now that I’ve typed that though, I may just work on another “no-thought scarf”. It’s the one I had with me at the Stitch ‘n Pitch, at Stephanie’s signing, and perhaps now it’ll see me through the day tomorrow.

For those who are interested, it’s a modification on the feather & fan pattern (as dictated to me via email by a fellow knitter when I was very “I love this yarn but don’t know what to do with it?” one day). Very simple, very repetitive, but it goes quickly and looks fan-no pun intended-tastic in the Colinette mohair.

I have a lot of mohair that’s knit on 9-10.5 needles. I’m not really sure why. It’s certainly not the softest yarn ever, even with a soak in conditioner-enhanced water. The colorways are just so lovely when the yarn is knit up in this pattern though. And the scarves themselves are certainly warm, and are a nice colorful accessory in the fall and winter.

I’m not really emotionally ready for fall. I’m pretty darn sure that I have some SAD happening begninning in November/December. But this year I’ll have the fireplace, and the spinning wheel, and a couch to sit and knit on. I hope it’ll help me stave off the blues as the seasons turn.

It’s so strange - I can see a reflection of the waning moon in the glass of a picture near the computer. It’s bright and gorgeous and I wish, oh how I wish I didn’t live in the city and could go outside and spend some quality time with Her. As it is, I’ll enjoy the light for as long as I can tonight, and in the evenings to come, as all to soon the fall and winter Pacific Northwest skies will hide Her from sight for months on end.

Hmm. This wasn’t really a post about much of anything. But it did help me find a purpose for the rest of the evening, and I think I’ll sign off and go work on that scarf.

I hate relying on other people to get things done. Call it a quirk in my personality, but it drives me batshit crazy when people don’t come through when they say they are going to.

I should clarify that this is in my personal realm, not work. I can do teamwork really well at work, and if someone falls down on their end of the job there, well, I’m not usually the one who has to clean up the mess. Manage it, yes, but folks are pretty good about cleaning up their own messes. Or, you know, you take it away from them and give it to someone else who WILL do it, with an attendant reward of some kind to make up for the fact that their coworkers suck.

But when it’s something I want for my personal life? I *hate* relying on people. Example: it feels like an eternity ago when I went in to special order this Henry’s Attic Yarn for my project. It was probably only last week, or maybe the week before, but she assured me she was doing an order w/in the next couple of days. I called to check, and they ordered it yesterday. Arrrrgh! I can’t order HA yarns as a pee-on little knitter, as far as I know, and I don’t have wholesale accounts set up just yet. So I have to rely on other people, and you know what? I hate that.

Considering how much of a slacker I am with things I promise people, I realize that this is complete and total hypocrisy on my part. It’s just a charming facet of my personality that I have learned to live with. Sort of. It doesn’t mean I don’t fly off the handle once I politely hang up the phone with the nice person at the yarn shop. It doesn’t mean the air in the car *isn’t* blue when some asshole cuts me off with two feet to spare and then slams on his brakes in 70mph traffic on I-5. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to strangle the gas store clerk with the pump hose when they give me attitude about buying a pack of gum or smokes.

I just vent those urges elsewhere, and stay out of prison that way.

Granted, the yarn thing isn’t a big deal, but I had hoped to get it sooner. I guess this just gives me time to get a stainless steel pot, a McMorran yarn balance, the dyes (I have some Country Classics, but am pondering if Jacquard Acid would be better?), attendant dye-things, and get the skein winder up and running. And the table cleared.

Some days, I wish I weren’t so impatient. But at least I’ve learned to avoid knitting on the lace shawls during days like these. That way lies tears, disaster, and occasionally an impromptu haircut (don’t ask).

Canby, OR is probably too far for my little car to go anyway. I realized today that I won’t be able to go to OFFF and take the classes I had hoped to get to attend. It’s just too much money to justify at this point in time. Classes at any festival are likely going to be too expensive for me for a while. I am wondering if it would make more sense to see if there’s someone around that does private home lessons. I have a wheel here that they can use, and we could set up stuff side by side in the living room and have at it. I really think that might be a better way to go in the long run, though of course you get to meet all kinds of groovy people at the festivals.

Not much knitting going on at the moment. I did, however, add Big Girl Knits and Knitting Nature to my library tonight. Brother mine is in town for more classes, and we went to sushi and then hung out at a bookstore for a while.

I worked at that bookstore (B&N, the *enormous* one in UVillage) when I first moved to Seattle. It’s really strange to me, how far I’ve come in nine years. I’ve had a job nearly continuously (even during school, beginning in jr high) since I was twelve years old. It was always about what was available, what would fit into my schedule, and what I could talk my way into. I’m reviewing my resume of the last seven years, most of which were with the same company, and trying to look at it from an outside perspective. I don’t really feel that it captures “me” (though of course what resume really can capture a person?), but I do hope it shows that I’ve steadily worked my way into progressively more challenging positions. Nine years ago I worked as a cashier in a bookstore. Up until last year, I was a Project Manager for multi-million dollar software projects. This past year, I helped a very, very, VERY small Financial Sales Information team ease through the merger of two companies whose combined revenue was half a billion dollars a couple years back.

Life is weird.

I do, however, feel bizarrely encouraged that I can figure out this knitting thing I’m working on. If I, Shy!Woman extraordinaire, can survive going from working with a team of eight women to helping manage a department of over two hundred total strangers overnight, I can figure out what I need to do with this project.

Oh and hey, if anyone wants to look over my resume and help me figure out how to put more emphasis on the project portions of this past year, rather than the financial things, I’d appreciate it hugely. Drop me a line at my email if you’re interested. :D

Today Ze Yarn Harlot was in town to do a signing for her latest book. And, as always, she rocked the house. The very, very full house, as there were hundreds of people at Third Place Books today for the lecture/signing. Seriously hundreds. The staff was looking a little shocked and awed at how many people were there.

I showed up at 4pm to peruse the bookstore a bit before finding a seat, and there were already a respectable number of people there. By the time she took the stage at 5:30? Full! Full to overflowing! I had been in the very back, and we’re talking like 100+ feet away near the Japanese restaurant (the lecture space is also the food court), ensconced at a table over which I spread all my crap. By the time she started? There were quite a few folks behind me.

I got to see many familiar faces - Ryan & TMK, MaryB, two LJ folks, and other people I recognized but for the life of me couldn’t remember their names. Example: the woman with the strikingly pretty grey hair and full sleeve tattoo that prominantly features a koi. I couldn’t find Elaine and Leslie in the crush, but I didn’t venture to the front. I’m not good in front of crowds, really, and by the time I felt like wandering, it was getting close to time to start. And I so totally didn’t want to give up my table.

It was awesome. :D

It was also like Stephanie had been reading my mind. She did poke a little humor (and maybe a DPN) at People Who Are Stranger Than Knitters, such as those that go to Star Trek cons. I was hugely amused at this, because I have a Trek tattoo! And have been to cons, so I guess that makes me doubly a geek. And then! Oh! And then she actually mentioned MacGyver. Yes, MacGyver! It was related to an amusing party anticdote that I won’t repeat here because she tells it with such verve, but it proved to thrill my inner fangirl. One of my favorite knitters talking about one of my favorite (for the moment, for lo, I am a fickle wench) actors’ roles, and it was like a little piece of fannish heaven had arrived at my doorstep, bundled in the newly finished Icarus shawl she was wearing.

Rock. ON baby!

Seeing as how there were hundreds of knitters there, and I was so far in the back? I’ll spare you my picture of the event. Unless someone asks to see it, in which case I’ll unearth the camera and download the pics. I also had a brain wave and left the Q&A early in order to get in line for the signing. See aforementioned hundreds of people, most of whom would like a moment of her time/her signature in their very own copy of Book Three.

And lo, I was apparently Teh Smart One for once and I was first in line for the signing. Go me! I hung out, feeling fairly conspicuous for about five minutes, leaning on a counter and knitting on yet another Colinette Mohair scarf (I think the colorway is Watercolour), but others started arriving shortly and I felt like I was among my people.

Does the thrill of knowing someone you admire, whose words thrill and amuse and move you on a regular basis, who is a celebrity in this little “niche market” of the crafting world remembers your name and who you are ever pale? Because I gotta tell you, for the 30 seconds or so I got to talk to her, I was all aglow in the YAY!ness of knowing she remembered me.

I realize this makes me a huge geek (much like the time Richard Burgi remembered me AND said my name correctly, without prompting, at least six months after he’d met me), but you know? I’m OK with that. She said she was glad I was the first in line, and I was so befuddled by the idea that someone would be glad to see me that I sorta spaced the rest of the conversation. I do know she asked if she was loud enough (yes, although the Mexican restaurant seemed to have issues with their volume control/music a couple of times during the hour lecture), and admired my scarf and commented on the needles I was knitting it on (Lantern Moon rosewood 10.5s, if anyone is curious).

I’m so not giving this scarf away. I had planned it for a holiday gift, but dammit, I’m keeping it. It’ll remind me of a lovely little moment between myself and one of my knitting heroines, who can rock a cowboy hat and her hostas like no ones bidness, and remind me that I can in fact go faster, stronger and higher in my knitting goals.

Thank you, Stephanie, for returning to Seattle on your tour, and for a lovely moment I’ll remember for a good long time. It was like a balm to my cranky soul right now, and I am very, very glad I decided to go today.

Testing the new digs. It would take a better woman than me to figure out how to drill down into the .php files here for Wordpress to configure theme colors tonight. Instead, I am heading off to work on a design project while vegging to either MacGyver or SG-1.

If you find your way here, please comment? I’d appreciate it!