After the reckoning, a plan

It's hard to believe that it's almost August! Before long the summer will be over, and life will begin to calm down a little bit. It's time to look ahead to cooler weather, to sweater wearing (and more sweater knitting), to Rhinebeck and the KR Retreat. I need to keep my eye on these prizes, so that the rest of my brain can concentrate on what is at hand: intense work, longer hours, and a tired, tired self, for another month at least.

Then I will be able to unwind, breathe deeply, and best of all, stop having to think so hard! Sometimes I remind myself of the Scarecrow in "Wizard of Oz", with his furrowed brow and finger to his temple. I really don't spend every waking or sleeping hour in a tight knot, unable to take a breath and enjoy my life. I do exist outside of work. But in the summer, when it seems that everyone else is taking time off, or at least has a little more free time, my life is so full that I must schedule time to relax.

I know that many people do just that all the time, that it's not so unusual. But I know myself well. I'll "forget" to take time for myself, and give it all to my job, unless I make a conscious effort to add that time to my plan for the day. They make fun of me at work when I say that I'm going to go home early, because they all know that I'll be found wandering around an hour or so later, in a stupor, reciting purchase order numbers and cursing the inventory system.

So these thoughts, and the reckoning I made the other day, and the fact that I am tired of being cranky, and what Purlewe had to say on the subject (her definitions are the best!) are leading me in the direction I want to go. All my unfinished and half-started knitting projects, and the closed watercolor palette and dusty brushes, are telling me to stop and choose something. Anything. Settle down, go deeper, find a focus. Knit because yarn through fingers and over needles feels so good and satisfying. Paint because touching the loaded brush to the paper releases joyous, beautiful color. Proceed, Jane.

I signed up for the KR Retreat the minute Clara posted this week's newsletter. I know what time away, doing something I love with other people who love it too, means for my soul. I can't go paint watercolors in Italy this year, or even get to South Carolina for an Art by the Sea retreat, but I can paint right here in my own back yard. (hmm, I might do that today). I can do this new knitting thing in Virginia in November, too, and all the planning and imagining and anticipating will carry me over any rough roads that might be ahead.

And who knows -- I might even dust off and oil up the wheel, my sweet old Ashford. It's been whispering its own version of a Siren Song. I've also been thinking about Why I Don't Spin. Yes, I do know I think too much. My friend K, who just started knitting again after a long break, says he knows that if he starts spinning again right now he won't want to do anything else. He learned to spin at my house, so I know he's right. He's an amazing knitter and spinner, but if he has to choose one thing at this moment in his life, knitting is the right one. I am trying to apply that thinking to my own situation. I want to do some of everything, but I know it's just impossible. Here I go.

And I have blueberries for fuel.

A reckoning, sort of

I received the beautiful knitting basket I ordered from the KR Boutique. It is perfect, just perfect. Delicate, yet sturdy, the way a good basket is meant to be. All the little details, from the wheat-colored embroidered lining down to the matching zippered pouch that was concealed inside the zippered pocket of said lining, made me giddy. What to put in this delightful thing? Knitters don't become faint in the presence of inspiration; we take action.

I was inspired forced to sort through some of my other baskets and their overflow, and I am shocked at what I found. Well, not so much shocked. I know me. So I spent an hour or so untangling little messes, muttering, discovering long-lost needles and patterns, and -- here, I knew it was bad, but this bad? -- making a pile of knitting. I can't even call them WIP's. It was a pile of knitting, plain and simple. I had to face it.

It included, in no particular order:

• Branching Out Scarf, 40% completed (and in danger of being abandoned because I'm just not feeling the love)
• The Fabulous Manos Wildflower Cabled Pullover, 25% completed (if it weren't hot as blazes, I'd be working on it) (and it lives in my other favorite knitting basket, the Lantern Moon old-timey, new-fangled one that folds up)
• Washcloth, simple bias garter pattern, 50% completed
• Something circular in blue alpaca, frogged immediately
• Amazing Twining Lace Scarf, 25% completed (I am feeling the love, so it goes right into the new basket)
• Mistake Rib scarf in the yarn I bought in Italy, 50% completed (definitely a mistake, to be frogged)
• Go With the Flow Socks, 70% completed (and usually in the bag I take to work)
• Waving Lace Socks for my friend Virginia, 25% completed (I think that's about as far as they'll get, since she deserves so much better than the mess I was making of these socks)
• A fingerless mitt in Mt. Colors Bearfoot, 95% completed (I want to re-knit the tops because they're too long) (and that means I need to find the second one)
• Another washcloth, an experiment in attaching a lace border, frogged
• Berry-colored socks in some weird pattern that I made up on an trip to visit my mother, who was ill, frogged to eradicate the bad memories
• An inch of something in Elann Baby Cashmere, also begun on a trip to visit my mom, but discarded when nothing went right, frogged
• At least three more socks in the early stages (we're talking cuffs and maybe an inch more)(*sigh*)
• Braids Cardigan in Elann Highland Wool, 40% completed (and waiting patiently for my Manos obsession to subside)

What is going on here? As I said, I know me. I start things when I'm antsy. I'm looking for ways to soothe, or solve, or settle. I cast on, knit until the world calms down, and I'm fine. Or, I knit until I am frustrated and wild-headed; I wasn't going to be fine in the first place. The result: a pile of knitting.

Either way, all these bits and tangled and sometimes beautiful things are Jane. One day I'll tell you a sweet story about my mother and her "Janes" but it will have to wait until I have knitted or written my way out of this bloggy shyness.

Here is my recipe for a good kind of solitude: It's a dark, foggy, humid, hot day, but my AC is on; I have the day off; I have exactly two errands to do; I rented a bunch of episodes of "Prime Suspect"; I have blueberries; I have endless knitting possibilities (see above).

A Fine Day

It's been a relaxing, knitting, blog-fiddling, peach-mango smoothie-drinking kind of day. And it's Sunday, to boot! (You may have noticed a recurring theme here at Not Plain Jane).

The temperature is tolerable with the windows open, and there's even a breeze. I'm almost ashamed to complain about keeping the AC on, because I'm so grateful to have it at all, but too many days without fresh air makes me nuts. I do love to turn it off and throw the windows open.

Besides, Herself enjoys a good nap on the sill, and I like to oblige. She's not setting foot out the door again till the ground is frozen and the deer ticks have retreated, so I do what I can.

Knitting progress is slow, but steady. I've been working away on the Amazing Twining Lace Scarf, which still has me all tangled up in its beguiling symmetry. The pattern just makes so much sense. Isn't that Amazing?

"The song that is irresistible"

I tried to resist the Siren Song of the Amazing Twining Lace Scarf, really I did. I thought, "I'll just cast on and knit a few rows to see if I like how it looks."

We all know where that leads, don't we? We think we'll just swatch a little. We'll test the yarn. We might as well choose the needles while we're at it. We leap overboard.

It's so seductive, this geometry of lace. With each row the pattern builds, twines, and wraps its little tendrils around my knitting fingers. I am caught. Completely ensnared. I tell myself that I won't forget the mostly-finished sock, that I promise to knit a few rows at work. If I can knit just a bit more on this scarf, just to see what happens next, I promise I'll be good, I swear I'll get up and switch the laundry, brush the cat, call the sister.

I am so weak. I'm going back to knitting now.

The day after

I am Harry Pottered out. I have a sore thumb from handling so many books. It weighs about 2.5 lbs. Multiply that by a gazillion, and that's why my thumb hurts.

At least I know my brain still works. It's been contemplating some of the beautiful yarn that my KR Secret Pal sent me (Hi, Mary!). It's a lovely lavender (Supermerino, color 124) from Art Yarns, and I've been looking at it, petting it, and wondering what to do with its 500 yards of wonderfulness. What do you know, someone over at KR posted about a scarf they're making, and I knew immediately that this yarn and this scarf are destined for each other. It's the Amazing Twining Lace scarf in Knitter's Best of Shawls and Scarves.

I've always wanted to knit this scarf, but for the longest time I thought the pattern was "too hard" for me. That's a load of whatever, because I've attempted and accomplished more complicated stuff than this. The chart was holding me back, but I've mastered charts and I've begun to prefer them over line-by-line instructions. Grafting two wide pieces intimidates me, because I loathe the Kitchener stitch. I do know how, but I really, really hate to Kitchener. It's the price I'll pay to make this scarf, because the pattern is beautiful, a little complicated, and should show off the yarn perfectly. Did I mention that I can't stand to Kitchener? I think it might be one of the few things that I have to re-think because I am left-handed.

There's nothing else in knitting that I have had to do differently because of my handedness. In fact I might be in danger of becoming some sort of radical, because when I read KR topics about how hard it is to learn to knit if you are left-handed, I want to reach through the Internet and strangle someone. I taught myself to knit by reading a Coats and Clark's booklet, and I seem to have managed for all these years. What's the big deal?

I am the only left-handed person in my immediate family, the smack-dab-in-the-middle child, and the most earnestly creative one of all five of us. Nobody ever wanted me to conform, no teacher ever forced me to write like a scrinched-up crab in order to master perfect penmanship (and I've been told my handwriting is lovely, thanks to Mrs. Weiss in the 3rd grade), and I will never understand why left-handed children are made to feel like they are hopeless cases when it comes to anything requiring dexterity. They seem to grow up into fearful adults, at least creatively (the "Oh, I could never do that because I'm left-handed" thing). If anything, I am more dexterous than many right-handed people, simply because I learned to be adaptable at an early age.

Back to the Kitchener. I can do it, but it's not natural for my brain to work in the usual direction (from right to left), so I always have to stop and think too much about it. This is why I have developed my own little formula for closing the toe of a sock, without grafting. So there. I'll just have to grit my teeth when it's time to Kitchener the Amazing Twining Lace scarf.

I've made some changes to my blog template, and I'm feeling pretty proud of my HTML-ing. I'm not sure how much I love the little piece of a watercolor that is up there now (here is the whole painting), but at least now I know how to change it. Thanks to Marfa and RoseByAny, I learned a few things this week!

Getting over it

This is how I seem to go about my life (to paraphrase Rita Mae Brown): I have a fit and fall in it. Then I climb out.

As I was peering up over the edge of my scheduling fit pit, things began to rearrange themselves. This one wanted to work an extra day, and that one's plans for Sunday fell through. Before I knew it there I was, applying more white-out to the schedule book and giving myself Sunday off.

If you ever think about how nice it would be to run a bookstore, and if you imagine that it is all quaintness and reading and talking to nice people about Great Literature, stop yourself. One of the things you will do, week in and week out, is create a functional schedule that takes into account factors as diverse as the weather, Harry Potter, and the lives of up to a dozen people who make up your staff. This is how my fit came about. (By the way, another thing you will do in your bookstore is lots of heavy lifting.)

There. It's over now. Back to my own life. I finished the first Go with the Flow sock. Nice, stretchy, easy pattern, all good. I cast on for the second, and (probably because I did it from my pit) had to re-do it four times. Five, really, because I have to do it again. I made all kinds of silly mistakes -- too many stitches, too few stitches, joined the first row backwards (don't ask how that works), and a plain old mistake two rows in that was just too much trouble to fix.

There are no Shoalwater shawl pictures yet. Blame it on my fit, or the weather, or whatever.

I've been trying to make a new banner for this bloggy thing, and all I need to do is figure out how to make the image big enough in the first place. I'll get there sooner or later. I want to put something like this at the top:

I took this picture on my birthday weekend in late April, when my two sisters and my cousin came to visit. This is why I live here. The ocean isn't exactly in my back yard, but it's close enough that I can smell it in the early morning, and I can stand at its edge whenever I want. I never go to the ocean in the summer, though. There are too many people, and it loses its magic.

So on with the day. Errands, mostly -- the stuff I hate to do on my Precious Sundays.

Sunday morning

I like my Sundays. They're either quiet or busy, but they are all mine, on my terms, with my rules. Not the store's. I tend to parcel out the hours carefully, evaluating as I go along. Do I really need to get on the highway and go to Target today, or can it wait? Do I want to screen the phone calls, or go ahead and pick up? Do I feel like knitting, or taking off on a little adventure? In other words: What do I feel like doing today?

That's going to change this week, because Harry Potter Weekend is coming, and I'll have to give my Sunday to the store. Never mind that work is already filled with enough, well, work for two of me. It is what it is, and I guess I'd better get over it. I could knit instead of fume, I suppose. Or knit and fume, but that can make for some bad knitted vibes down the road ("Why do these socks make me feel so grumpy? Oh, right, I knitted job rage into them!")

The beautiful Shoalwater shawl is pinned out on my bed/blocking board, the weather is cooperating (sort of sunny, not too humid), and if Miss Annabelle will kindly refrain from parking herself on it, it will be dry in a few hours. I used my new blocking wires, and pinning and arranging took about half the time it would have without them. Later in the week I'll take it outside for pictures, where its loveliness can be captured in more flattering light.

So, I've been working on this blog thing (which feels a bit like a nice room) for a couple of weeks now, arranging and rearranging, placing the furniture just so, adding knick-knacks of information and randomness. I still think of it as a kind of frivolous experiment, but at the same time I'm growing fond of it, and more comfortable all the time. We'll see.

Going with the flow

I told you, I have a hard time with endings. My solution? Start a pair of socks. These will be Evelyn Clark's "Go With the Flow" socks from IK Summer 2005. I have had this Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock (the color is called "Sandridge") in my stash for a couple of years. All of the sock yarn in my stash waits patiently for the right pattern to come along, and I am liking this sock, so the wait was worth it. I tweaked the stitch count to get a better fit, but otherwise I'm following the easy-to-remember pattern.

The sock is Part One of my plan to Get Through The Summer. I figure if I take some knitting to work, and take a little break in the middle of the day to do a row or two, then I'll remain sane. It's working so far.

Part Two is so obvious, yet somehow feels decadent. I'm going to read more books. How could it be that a person who works with books seems to read so few of them? I'm becoming a fan of Audible and listening to books on my Treo. I'm already a big fan of my Treo 650, as anybody who knows me is probably tired of hearing. The very notion of downloading books to an SD card and listening to them on my PDA makes me giddy. I just finished Carlos Ruiz Zafon's Shadow of the Wind (I highly recommend!) and I'm about to start either House of Mirth (Edith Wharton) or History of Love (Nicole Krauss). Or maybe not; I have a few other ideas as well.

Part Three of my plan involves fresh blueberries at every opportunity. That's easy.

Now about that Shoalwater Shawl...It just needs blocking, and then it will be officially finished. Today is dark and dreary, so after I get home from doing errandy things out in the world, I'll be quite happy to spend some time on it. If it gets to be too late, blocking will have to wait until Sunday morning, because my blocking board is also my bed.

One foot in front of the other

That's how I've gotten through this week. I'm off today, relaxing and enjoying the return of nice weather. I'm still working on my shawl. Experiments with needle sizes for the i-cord edge finally resulted in actual knitting, rather than knit a few inches, rip them out, knit some more...you know, the usual song and dance.

I love my job. I love books. I even love selling books. I don't love the Summer Stress, the insomnia it causes, the long hours, or the really hard physically-demanding days. I think it all balances out, though.

Still, right now, I wouldn't mind being someplace like this, my favorite watercoloring spot in Tuscany. Look closely, and there's my painting stuff, on that shady block, overlooking the vineyards at Villa Vignamaggio. That was a magical morning. The air was September-in-Italy crisp, the sky was too blue, and that hour I spent there still fills me with happiness and contentment all these months later.

I'd love to go there again, even just to sit in that spot to refill my well with the beauty of that place and the loveliness of that time. One of these days I might. And what's to stop me from finding some other magical spot in another corner of the world? That's what Side Trips is for.