Twists of Fate

The Veil between the worlds is thin, and thank the gods the time has come to take a step back and evaluate the past year, and plan for the coming one.

This past year was a very stressful one for me. Work just completely spiraled out of control beginning in mid-October 2007. I don’t really even remember October-March…I was working like 60 hours a week, and even with a short getaway to Orcas Island to stay in a ridiculously beautiful and amazing rental cottage, I was burned out by the time my team launched these online campaigns for three huge products at the end of February. I was acting in a supervisory/management capacity even if it wasn’t in my SOW, was working with a total DICK of a vendor who was brought in by the ultimate client to “clean up the mess” her coworker (who she eventually had transferred to a different job by being a total bitch) made, and generally life blow big fat chunks until about the end of March. At that point, I was able to work only about 45 hours a week, as the new folks were a bit more up to speed, asshole!vendor was busy doing his documentation (after I spent nearly 35 hours a week for four months refining everything with him) and I could try to relax a little. At which point I was told, “It’s like you’ve just stopped working.” Buh? Things are finally clicking along and you think I stopped working? This woman was the worst manager I’ve ever run across.

So I said “fuck all y’all” and got out as soon as I could. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t until mid-June, as finding my replacement took forever and a day. Only the last of three potential replacements had the moxie to keep it running, and I pity her for stepping into that role. I was sad too, because they finally replaced the asshole with a truly lovely FTE that I wish I had had more time to work closely with. She was no nonsense, totally understood my job and the fact that I’d kept the whole freakin’ machine going for sixteen months with little to no help, and she even gave me four days off right before I left.

I think I pretty much slept until the end of July. Complete and total burnout to a level I’ve not experienced before and hope to never live through again. I finally began being more aware of life in August, and began looking for a new job with an eye to start right after Labor Day. HAHAHAHAHA! I am funny person, apparently, because it’s only TODAY that I have an interview for a new position with a client.

This job is about 5000x less responsibility, stress and doods. There’s apparently this whole thing that I haven’t done for two years now that’s all the rage among kids these days. I think they call it a “lunch hour”? And something called “a 40 hour work week”?

Whoa. Innovation happens when you’re not looking, doesn’t it?

In all seriousness though, it’s a couple of steps back in my career, but I would be happy to land the job. Because my life has been so far out of balance for so long, I’ve burnt out the TILT light that was warning me of serious consequences. This job is something steady, where I can find my feet again and perhaps take some classes or have the time to get some certifications…that sounds like the path to take at this time.

One of the things I hope to do in the dark time of this year is to try to find that balance again. Yes, work might be a bit boring, but on the other hand, I might actually have the energy to see friends. Do some crafting! Read more books! Enjoy time spent with other people instead of resenting it because I’m so exhausted all I want to do is sleep! To think about more than the job, to have my last thoughts before I fall asleep be something other than spreadsheets, flow charts or wire frames and instead be filled with hope or dreams of romance, or love, or laughter and joy. To wake up feeling positive, instead of like I’ve been run over by a truck which was followed by a steamroller and then some sort of street sweeper that was spraying acid instead of water.

Another thing that’s been sorely lacking has been concentrating on my spiritual side. No ritual, other than some small offerings on the Sabbats. Esbats? What are those? Tarot? I don’t even know where I put all my decks. Astrology? I’ve got a stack of about thirty books that are awaiting my attention.

One other intriguing thing that a couple teachers have mentioned to me is the idea that I’ve got a very, very, VERY thin barrier holding back a talent for working with the dead. The last teacher was gobsmacked by the energy I can raise when I put my mind to it. But I haven’t done anything with these potential gifts, and I think I’d like to spend the next year or so learning more about them.

It’s that time of the year again. The veil is thin, the year is ending, the new one to begin again soon and with the rebirth is a whole new realm of possibility is open for exploration. It’s time to honor not just the dead (I still miss you Jayne and Bill), but to lay to rest those things which no longer serve me, to rest and make room for the coming of the light and new growth in a few months.

The wheel continues to turn. This year, I hope to truly make a new start and the best of the time and gifts I’ve been given.

Blessed be!

Of COURSE after I posted about going to Stash Only status, the lovely Impulse of Delight had an update AND after a conversation with a friend who has a birthday after election day, I didn’t have anything like the right color of sock yarn in my stash. And, honestly, the studio is freakin COLD and I didn’t want to deal with dyeing the right stuff.

And she had the perfect colorway and….

Yeah. Fell down. Bought yarn. Bad me. No biscuit.

However, I am choosing to think of this like a training session. Going cold turkey on anything has never worked for me, and this is a season to think about forgiveness, yes? My new year starts November 1, if I go by my witchy calendar, so I’m going to give myself a pass and not beat myself up and instead make a perfect pair of socks for a friend who has never received a knitted gift before ever.

And if I have to dip into my stock of bandaids and Bactine for the occasional stumble, so be it. :)

In other news, I’m really freakin’ glad I called the county Elections office. Despite being on the Absentee Ballot mailing list, and despite my having filled out the form to get all ballots by mail, they didn’t send me one for The Big One next week. That’s since been rectified, and since my county is going to All Mail All The Time voting next year, it shouldn’t be an issue again. I thought being a registered Independent meant they might not fuck around with my rights, but I was WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Ballot should be here this weekend and by gods if I have to sit in my car at the PO to fill it out and mail it back in time, I will. *scowls*

Time to go work on one of the dozen or so WIPs I have going. What shall it be today? I’m thinking the Morehouse Merino Alligator scarf for my nephew. It’s hard to stay cranky when you’re making a smooshy alligator, you know?

I made the mistake of overdoing it a bit this weekend. I’ve been feeling pretty run down, mostly due to stress about employment and if I could get more than about three hours of sleep a night I’d be so, so happy. But no. I went and ran around with a friend on Saturday, and had coffee. Sunday I went and spent an hour outside w/out a coat on at the Ballard Farmers Market (got some good nums, by the by, so I don’t have to go the the store until I run out of creamer), but then.

Then I went over to my friend’s house, who has a sweet sweet cat named Clover. And stayed for two and a half hours.

And my lungs are SO NOT HAPPY with me right now. When I cough things taste metallic, I have a scary wheeze going when I breathe, and my nose hasn’t stopped running for nearly eighteen hours now. I’ve gone through an entire big box of Kleenex and have started on the second, making a good dent in that one too. I’m going to look like Rudolph if I do manage to have an interview this week. Or at least some scary flaking peeling nose-monster. Great way to make an impression!

I need to ship the electric spinning wheel ASAP, but even moving around to get dressed to go take the wheel for shipping prompted a round of coughing that had me doubled over and my ribs aching. I think not today. I feel awful about not getting this out when I said I would, but I hope the buyer understands. I’ve tucked a bit of fiber in the box to try and help make up for it, but I still feel like an ass.

For now, I’m going to go try to find yet another dose of Claritin (this stuff is swimming in my bloodstream and yet nothing is stopping the nose running!), and maybe make some tea to soothe my throat. It feels like I’ve been trying to swallow glass shards or something…good times! :P

If I can stay awake long enough, I’ll start an alligator scarf for my nephew today. Keep your fingers crossed for me?

Sadly, sans pictures, because not only am I a lazy ass when taking pictures of my knitting, I can’t even find the damn camera. Oops. I really hope it’s over in the studio. I will check tomorrow for sure. There may even be pictures fairly soon, as I got the little “picture studio in a box” kit a while ago, and it might be a good idea to bust that thing out and get some pictures taken. The idea of wrestling with the light box tent thing with the backgrounds and all that crap put me right off, but maybe. I’m not promising anything.

Thing is, I’m not sure it’s worth busting out all that crap for the few FOs I’ve got. I finished a pair of socks for my sister, who, after having a baby, understands what goes into making something really well. I’m not sure if it’s a result of growing another human being, or if the concept of actual patience and sacrifice has been rammed home by projectile vomiting or buried under a pile of poopy diapers. Whatever the reason, she’s FAR more appreciative of knitting and of items that she receives that are made by my own very two hands (and the occasional toe). Anyway, socks for her. Dream in Color SMOOSHY (I have to say it in caps…I even do this in real life by hollering “and it will be MY SMOOSHY! at random intervals while knitting with the yarn) in some kind of purpley black lavender tweedy goodness. Lovely yarn. A wee smidge splitty occasionally, but that’s probably because I would often knit on it when tired.

See, as much as I love the look of fancy schmancy socks? If I’m going to knit garments on super tiny needles at this point in my life, they’re going to be incredibly fucking simple. They’re my zoning project. They’re rounds and rounds and more rounds with a side of rounds of stockinette with a bit of round of stockinette for a chaser, and maybe for dessert too. And I’m OK with that. It’s rather nice to watch simple socks with a smidge of ribbing come to life under my hands. I can knit and not think, and listen to, oh, a podcast while making something that’ll warm not just the toes but the heart of the recipient.

Anyway. For ME, because as a general rule from here on out, I think I’m going to do a thing where I finish one thing for one person, and make something for myself. Because I’ve given away pretty much everything I’ve ever made but for a pair of socks from Mountain Colors Bearfoot, and maybe a hat or a scarf. And that’s gotta change. I need to learn to knit for myself. So, because it’s ass freezing cold in this lowest-level apartment I have, even if a lot of it is garden level…I thought a pair of mitts would be a good idea. Enter a skein of STR Mediumweight in…Lapis? The ball bands for all this crap is over in the studio. Which requires going out the door, up the stairs, around the house, down the stairs, through two locked doors and wading through a few bags of processed fleece. Which I’m not going to do right now. Not in the least because the landlady hasn’t gotten the damn outdoor light fixed, there’s no handrail on the other stairs, and there’s little heat because apparently the landlady can survive arctic temps in a tanktop. So there.

Where the bloody hell was I? Oh! Mitts. STR. Maybe lapis. Pattern is Jacoby from Berocco, a freebie. Made because I have an unreasonable crush on Jacoby Ellsbury, and he was actually kicking some ass and making some hits when I started them during the wildcard series against the Angels. They mostly fit…one of the thumbs is a bit tight, but it fits better on my left hand than my right. I did a better job of making sure that the thumb was looser on the second mitt, and…boy howdy is the yarn stinky. I wash tomorrow, I think.

One other thing to wash will be a pumpkin hat I just finished for my niece. Done in Blue Sky cotton, it’s mostly a stockinette beanie with a teeny stem on the top. I made the stem brown, mostly because the LYS didn’t have a green cotton that worked, but I have to admit it’s kind of cute. I barely used any of the brown, so I’ll have to maybe do a brown hat with a small orange leaf motif or something for the niece as well. That could work up to Thanksgiving this year. Hmmm!

Must. Find. Complete set of Size 8 US DPNs though. Knitting with a mix of bamboo and Inox was weird. Kind of uncomfortable.

Last but not least - I have a real live interview scheduled for 2pm today. Wish me luck? If I make it past this round, I should be good to meet with the CompanyX boss and it sounds like she’ll take anyone recced by this particular vendor, so…I think today is the key one. *crosses everything*

I’m slowly but surely working my way through the back catalog of Cast On, and have finally made it into the 40s out of 69. I’m on the one where Ms. Brenda is talking about knitting from stash and, well. Yanno. It might be time for me to try to do that.

With my prosperity of the first half of 2007, I went absolutely batshit insane with stashing. If I saw it, and it was shiny, I bought it. Even if it wasn’t shiny, I bought it. If it was a giant turd that could maybe be polished up a bit and made presentable for one of my turdlike relatives, I bought it. And then I bought a bag in which to carry the turd, and some other accessories with which to make it, and perhaps a companion turd or two so it wouldn’t be lonely in it’s little plastic bag in it’s plastic container and some day, should there be an apocalypse that buries my stash, a zillion years from now the next evolution of our race will be using it to fuel their cars or something.

Just like the turds of a zillion years ago are making it possible for me to store my stash in relative safety.

…I got off on a tangent there didn’t I. Oops.

ANYway. I have stash. My stash? Has stash. It’s spawned little stashes of their own…there’s probably a family tree of sock yarn going back a dozen generations by now. And I hardly ever knit socks.

Time for a change! I think I’m going to try to knit from stash until the end of the year, carrying me through the $winterholiday season and all the god damn gifts that entails. I have a couple of exceptions though.

1. Subscriptions. I have a couple of subscriptions (Sundara Seasons, for example) that it would be terribly rude to cancel right now. Plus, you’ll pry it from my cold dead clawlike hands.

2. Needles - I lose needles like an enterprising toddler loses their diaper. I have a mismatched pair of size 8s that I tried doing a hat on. It was uncomfortable, mostly because it’s so cold in my apartment I’m on the verge of seeing my breath and half the DPNs were metal. Which was cold. So, should I need them, I reserve the right to buy the damn needles.

3. Finishing materials. Buttons, perhaps the skein of yarn used as a contrast should I manage to get around to knitting the sweater that I have the rest of the yarn for. Ribbons. Suede of velcro or anything else that would mean the damn thing is finished.

4. Up to four skeins of something like Cascade 220, because I wanted to try to knit a couple of Boo’s in time for Halloween. And, believe it or not, I can’t find the god damn skeins of worsted I was going to use. Or really any worsted that isn’t already earmarked for projects for which I’ll probably need the full amount.

So there you go. I think it’ll be surprisingly easy to try to stick with this, and should I be successful I may extend it. Hopefully I’ll get a job soon and it’ll be a moot point. But I have enough stash to knit something upwards of probably 125 pair of socks alone, so it’s not like I”m going to run out of supplies in this timeframe. If I get sick of knitting, I can weave scarves on the Harp. If I get sick of both I can dye, or spin. Or needlefelt.

One other thing that will be an exception, I should note here, will be containers for stock dyes. I…am having a hard time figuring out how to make stock solutions. It’s my math phobia. We start talking percentages in solution and while I did great at basic Chemistry, it was in HIGH SCHOOL and there were clear directions. Right now, I can’t quite get my brain to find the directions to make stock solutions with the dyes I have. This vexes me, but every time I want to try to fix that, I freeze. I am seriously hoping it doesn’t lead to Dyer’s Remorse, because I’ve dropped a metric fuckton of money on the basics to get a dyeing business started, and if I can just get over this hump I’ll be good.

So many iffs, so little time.

So, there you go. I do hope I’m able to carry this through, from Samhain to Imbolc at least, and make many warm things which will help keep those I care enough to craft for warm as well. And keep my bank account from hemorrhaging any more than it has since I’ve been out of a job.

And if I can’t, well, maybe it’s time to re-home some of it.

But not the Sundara. See above for cold dead clawlike hands.

I have a love/hate relationship with professional sports. See, as a kid, I was very VERY active. I swam competitively for over a freakin’ decade. I loved going to games and I loved watching people play. I was the biggest Denver Broncos fan I could be between the ages of, oh, two to twelve, I think. I knew the players. I knew stats. I could predict what play they’d go with on the field and would scream and holler and squee along with the most seasoned beer drinkin’ bozo who ever went shirtless but for body paint in team colors in the stands.

And then the Broncos lost three Superbowls in four years, and my little pro sports fan heart just crumbled. Crushed. Like dust in the always blowing prairie wind, it blew away and left the abandoned shell of a fan behind with nothing but the mournful lowing of “what could have been” echoing off the walls of the ghostly fannish structures.

So which team do I pick to et back on the pro-sports merry go round?

The Boston Fucking Red Sox, of course! Anyone who knows anything about baseball knows that the Sox hadn’t won anything in about eleventy billion years. Hell, even *I* knew that things were a bit of a joke for eternally optimistic Beantown fen, and I had approximately half of a nothing sort of interest in baseball. (Except for the baseball coach at my high school, but that’s a whole nother story.)

Why oh why would a woman who had sworn off anything remotely related to pro sports come back to the fold as a Boston Red Sox fan? Masochist, thy name is moiraeknittoo?

I blame my friends H and J. I’ve never met these women. In the grand tradition of cross-continental pen pals, these two women who I’ve known for, oh geez. Seven? Eight? years are both Sox fen, and over the years of chat and exchange of gifts at birthday and holidays, they, like all good crack dealers, have lured me into Sox fandom. The metamorphosis was slow. It was steady. It was insidious and possibly not premeditated.

And then 2004 happened. And my friends in Teenystateland (my affectionate term for Rhode Island and the Boston area, where they live) were in raptures! Hysterics! We were all out buying lottery tickets because the unthinkable had happened. The Boston Red Sox were the world champions! Obviously the world was coming to an end.

I think at that point I started paying a bit more attention. They were so incredibly happy, these two. They thrive on baseball season the way I swoon at the idea of plunging my hands into a freshly sheared Skylines Farm fleece. Nonchalantly, I began trying to learn the lingo and began turning the game on when there was absolutely nothing else to watch on television. I could identify why they’d get so excited at certain plays in the context of what that meant for the team, and subsequently the fans.

And then there was 2007 and I had to give up all pretense of not watching. I got sucked into the vortex, and was surprisingly OK with it. H & J sent me baseball books to read during “hot stove” season, and I actually paid attention to the roster when spring training rolled around in 2008.

This year, I paid for the Extra Innings package on my cable, and watched nearly every game that was available in my market, all the way on the other end of I-90 from the team’s hometown. I find myself sporting Sox hats, a silly plastic cup direct from Fenway with the game schedule on it as well as a yearbook that’s still faintly beer scented from an enthusiastic but clumsy fan, I have a World Series 2007 fleece, I know the faces and names of most of the current roster.

And on nights like last night, I celebrated along with the rest of the Red Sox nation when they pulled a fucking MIRACLE out of their asses in the bottom of the seventh inning and ultimately came back from a SEVEN RUN deficit to win over the Rays in game five of the ACLS.

And I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT. Part of me is screaming that this way lies more heartache and agony, but sometimes, you just gotta act on faith.

This year, during hot stove season, I’m taking the time to make all of us our own Red Socks (sic). Because I can. Because it melds my knitting and my newly revived sports fannish heart together in a physical representation of hopes, dreams and excellent friendship that spans years and the width of the country.

Go Red Sox! *cues up that Dirty Water*

For those craptastic days where you wish you could head back to bed with a bottle of scotch and a do-over, but you have neither scotch nor a time machine? And instead soothe the savage cranky with some ice cream?

There TOTALLY needs to be a pint cozy. While some make that that to mean a beer, *I’m* talkin’ about the kind that keeps your hand from freezing to the outside of a pint of premium ice cream.

I’m lookin’ to you, oh my indulgence pint of Ben & Jerry’s “Everything But the…” as the inspiration behind this new and revolutionary pattern.

Also, RED SOX OMGWTFBBQ!?!