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.