The Recurring Persian Dream

About two and a half years ago, I found and fell in love with the Persian Dreams pattern.

WildJen's Persian Dreams (on Ravelry here)

That one is the one that really knocked me on my ass. I could not resist it. It remains the most beautiful piece of knitting I have ever seen.

A month later, I had a Come to Jesus with myself and decided I was crazy enough to knit this BUT not crazy enough to make all the color changes called for by the pattern. Solution: Self-striping yarn left from my Felici obsession. The amount remaining from knitting a pair of socks was enough to make one hexagon.

Two and a half months later, I was on block 6 of 24 and had redevoted myself to it.

Two years later, block 7 wasn't even close to being finished.

You know what's coming: DEPTH YEAR.

(mine ravelled here)

Yesterday I finished block 7. 

It took me the entire portion of the non-eating part of today's lunch break to get here: 

I didn't have a crochet hook, so I had to learn a new circular cast on. In case you ever find yourself in a similar predicament (and let's be honest, why would you?), I recommend this video. 

Even if I didn't have the cast on delay, let's be real about this project. It's going to take for-freaking-ever. There are 24 blocks. All of those blocks have live edges--288 stitches of live edges--that will be kitchner stitched to adjacent blocks.

I've thought about the best way to do this without plunging into the Pit of Despair. 

I thought about blocking the hexagons when I have a third of them done, and grafting those eight together. Maybe breaking up the project into smaller bits would be helpful. I could try to convince myself that things unfold as they should and trust that each hexagon was created at the right time in the right pattern with the right yarn. Just take a deep breath and work in tiny bits and believe that it's going to be gorgeous at the end.

I miss you so much, President Obama.

So, after giving this a lot of thought, I've decided there's only one path to completion here: Abandon any hope of completion. Lean into it. Accept that the rest of my life will be me knitting stranded colorwork with fingering weight yarn. If by some miracle I get finished with that before I die, the remainder of my life will be kitchnering together said pieces.

At the end, there has to be some sort of border around the whole thing--some way of dealing with the remaining live stitches. Lots of people have done i-cord rather than the 20-row border. Since I will never get to the border, I'm not bothering to think about it.

If I'm not enjoying knitting this, then I should quit. There is no reason to keep doing it in hopes of a finished product because it will never be finished.

Here comes block 8.

Hard

I'm finding things hard.

News stories make me want to lie down in the road and never get up, but I feel guilty not listening.

I feel despair at the decisions our political leadership are making, and I feel like my letters are pointless.

Plus, should I really have to tell anyone, but particularly our elected leaders, that their job is to watch out for those who need it most? That they need to be most concerned with the poor, the jobless, the homeless, those needing extensive medical care? Isn't this obvious?

This is clearly not obvious, as evidenced by the bullshit form letters I receive back from those elected officials.

I am disgusted and appalled by Trump and cannot understand why there are those who are not equally disgusted and appalled. This then makes me feel badly because I feel I am living a double standard: I expect you to understand my position but I do not have to understand yours.*

I feel confident we're more fucked up than ever before, but then I remember mustard gas and Hiroshima and Vietnam and KKK lynchings. Then I just wonder if we're doomed to be a racist, violent, hate-filled species that kills itself off.

Personally, I'm having a harder time than usual with the short days. I bought a light therapy box, but I still struggle with feeling I should just sit on the couch and eat mac and cheese until March.

I then feel guilty that I'm struggling because I live in the first world, have a job, have good health, have a wonderful partner and friends, etc.

So many things in my life are great, but... it's just hard right now. I'm putting a lot of energy into life. I'm forcing myself to stick to my workout routine. I'm using the light therapy box. (I typed "life" therapy box. Freudian slip.) I'm making sure to get good sleep. I'm trying to eat healthily more often than not. What I want is to watch British murder shows and eat mac and cheese and not move. What I'm doing is quite different, but I'm so tired.

It's just hard right now. It'll get better. The only way out is through.

*Because my position is right, damn it. Sigh. Not helpful.

The Stillness of January

I stop knitting in January.

I'm not sure why it happens, perhaps something to do with the mania, the colors, the frenetic activity of the holidays, but after every New Year's I find myself looking at my knitting and then turning to something else.

This year it's mystery novels. Probably most years it's mystery novels.

It doesn't really make sense to me. January is quieter than December. There's more free time, time that in December is filled with card writing and present wrapping and food eating. In January, I breathe a sigh of relief that things are normal again. Normal means knitting.

But somehow not in January.

The end of December often brings tempting knitting presents, new yarn or needles or patterns, and one would think that would get me excited.

But it doesn't.

Plus, January is cold. And dreary. And often gray. One would think sitting on the couch in the evening with bright yarn in my hands would be irresistible.

But it isn't.

Thankfully, this has happened enough times that I recognize it for the temporary state that it is. I wait it out, reading and not worrying that a lack of interest signals an end to my hobby.*

I think I'm nearing the end of the Not Knitting now. I think this is what's going to do it for me.

Gradient yarn dyed during my class at Nomad Yarns,

paired with black Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Worsted

*Terrifying. What would I do with all that yarn?

Three Gatekeepers

Let me start by saying this isn't written passive aggressively. I have a nice family. Andrew has a nice family. Nobody is intentionally a jerk to anyone else, and everyone pretty consistently works to get along.

That being said, holidays can be trying. We have expectations of how they should be, and those expectations are unreasonable (or at least mine are). We are spending time with people who we love and yet may think in really different ways than we do. They may have different political views--and holymarymotherofgod I'm praying we can avoid all political conversations over the holidays because it will be very hard to contain my rage if someone says something stupid-- and religious views and views about how we should be living our lives.

So, for you, but mostly as a reminder to me:

from here

Let's practice!

"It is incomprehensible to me that she remains married to that asshole."

True, but not kind or necessary

"I don't mind that there's bacon in those green beans."

Kind, but not true or necessary. 

(I don't have to apologize for being a vegetarian. 
I don't have to make a big deal of it either.)

Here's a tricky one:

"Your sugar-crazed, monstrous, spoiled, banshee children are destroying Mom's house and ruining Christmas."

No. Just no.

However:

"Your children are setting fire to the centerpiece."

True, necessary, and not unkind.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Let's be our best selves out there... 
and forgive ourselves when we fail.

Socks, socks, socks!

This weekend I finished the requested Hanover socks for a friend's kid who is headed to Hanover as a freshman. When I washed them, I threw another couple pair I finished this summer that are going to be gifts. 

The Hanover socks are 6-row stripes. The leg and top of foot are 3x1 rib.

Hanover socks (mine ravelled here),

knit in Opal 4-ply in 5180 and 5188

A friend requested navy socks. The solid color let me play with a lace pattern I've been wanting to use.

Rose Ribs socks (mine ravelled here),

knit in Cascade Heritage Solids in 5623

Whenever Knitpicks comes out with a new round of Felici colors, I set some aside that I think specific people will like. I think Holly will like these (and I bought some of the same colorway for myself--I'm no dummy).

Baker Street socks (mine ravelled here),

knit in Knitpicks Felici in Baker Street

These are also 3x1 rib. The difference between these and the Hanover socks is that I did a round of k1, sl1 each time there was a color change on the leg and top of foot. It just adds a little more interest, both to the knitting and to the finished socks.

So, does anyone remember back in January when I wrote about being more intentional and allowing myself to not get things done? I'm not going to lie; I don't feel like I'm doing very well at that. I did the Knitsonik mittens, which was a project that took some intention and planning, but I don't feel like I've been successful at addressing my Crazy besides that. I do not lie fallow well. I don't give myself very much space to just be, and I think I'm doing myself a disservice.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't a huge problem. It's better than a crack habit, for example. I am a work in progress.

And friends get some nice socks as a result.

Procrastination

I've never been a big procrastinator. You can choose to feel impressed by that, or you can choose to know it's more obsessive behavior than virtue. To-mae-to, to-mah-to.

Despite that, I've been avoiding the second Knitsonik mitten. So many ends! So many color changes! 

Tuesday, I decided I was being ridiculous, and I started. Of course, once I began, I really enjoyed it. I love stranded colorwork knitting. I don't know why I thought this was going to be unpleasant.

Yesterday at the end of my lunch hour, I had this:

I have the tip of the mitten and the thumb to knit. Then it's weaving in the ends and blocking. True, there are many, many ends, but, even so, we're not talking about a lot of time left to finish this.

Let this be another reminder to me that the thinking about doing something is often much more unpleasant than the doing of the something. For people like me, the motto needs to be: Stop thinking. Just do.

The Devil as a Dance Partner

A month or two ago, I started carrying a small notebook in my purse. When I found a quote I felt was important, I wrote it down. My hope is twofold: By writing them, I hope to internalize them more than I would by just reading them; and when I need to be reminded of the Truth, I can read some of the things I've written down. If it's in the notebook, it is true.

Many of the quotes are Buddhist.

We are what our thoughts have made us, so take care what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far. -Swami Vivekananda

Do what is good and ask not what follows. -Kenko

All paths are paths to God, because, ultimately, there is no other place for the soul to go. Everything has come out of God and must go back to God. -Paramahansa Yogananda

But not all of them.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. -Douglas Adams

All things are difficult before they are easy. -Italian proverb

and my latest addition:

I know the devil fancy me. Don't mean the motherfucker get to dance with me. -Macklemore and Ryan Lewis in the song "St. Ides"

At the moment, I'm struggling with my weight.* It is hard for me to keep a positive attitude and harder still to believe that I am not screwing everything up when really I just need to be a little more careful about what I eat and how I exercise to get back on track.

The devil is me, the part of me that says I'm never doing enough, never going to escape the patterns of disease that led to my father having bypass surgery at 43 and killed him at 57.

I acknowledge that devil, and I tell her to fuck off. She cannot dance with me regardless of how much she wants to.

I've got my own dancing to do.

*I know it's a very first world problem to have. Still, it's a problem for me.

Not Getting Things Done

As many people do, I did some naval gazing around the New Year. One of the things I decided to work on was the intensity with which I work to Get Things Done in my hobbies, which, by definition, should be enjoyable.

I have a knitting project going nearly all the time, and I get twitchy in the brief moments between the bind off of one project and the cast on of another. I rarely allow myself to lie fallow, and that means I rarely let my brain really contemplate new projects that would be creatively fulfilling.

For example, I own the Knitsonik Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook. I think I would really enjoy finding an object that is meaningful to me and developing a stranded pattern inspired by that object. But that takes time, and instead it is easier for me to cast on another pair of socks.

Then I have to Finish the Socks.

When I finish the socks, I have to start something else... which then has to be finished. You see the track this Crazy Train barrels down.

So, one of my new year's goals is to be more intentional. I want to give myself creative space. I want to knit less. I want to give myself permission not to Get Things Done. I want to color in a coloring book if that sounds fun, and I want to give up on a sweater that I don't love, and I want to tell the voice in my head that insists I continually do something productive to shut the fuck up.

Um, but I can't do all that right now. (Can't can't do that right now?) Right now, I'm doing some knitting for a designer, and it has a deadline.

But after that, I'm going to Not Get Things Done.

The Gate With Mood Swings

A lovely blessing...

...unless the left side of the gate is open. 

Falling Stars Hat

I've owned the Falling Stars kit from Knitpicks for.... a long time. It sits on the shelf and pleads with me whenever I walk into the yarn guest room.

Recently I knit a laceweight sweater as a test knit. I decided if I could knit a LACEWEIGHT SWEATER and then put it in the mail for someone else to enjoy, I surely could knit myself a fingering weight sweater that I'd get to keep.

I decided not to knit the hat that they suggest you knit as a swatch to get comfortable with the colorwork. Then I decided I was a) too lazy to knit a proper colorwork swatch that would then get frogged, and b) not stupid enough to start a very frightening sweater without doing a little bit of prep.

So I knit the hat.

The colorwork is beautiful.

Despite that, I have been looking at it for a month, and I still don't know how I feel about it. I'm not sure I like the purls. I'm not convinced the result is worth the hassle of four thousand yarn colors tangling around one another. I'm not sure I want to try intarsia bobbins even though I own them. (I know. It makes no sense to me either.) I'm afraid the sweater won't fit. I'm worried the neck is too high, and the wool will be scratchy on my delicate self. I am filled with trepidation and can't seem to move past it.

Plus, there will be a steek. Terrifying.

So, I put the hat where I see it all the time and the rest of the kit back in the yarn guest room. It's only been a few years. Maybe I'm just not ready yet.

A Reminder

I think everybody does it. I look at my life and see only the things that I perceive to be lacking. I look at my job and I see the frustration, the annoyance with coworkers' habits, the fact that I'm not able to sit on my couch, knitting and eating bonbons all day.

I forget that my job is actually pretty great. I'm helping people have a meaningful place to express their religious identity. I don't have to deal with people all day (just some). I have my own space. I work very normal hours. I work with people who care about each other, even though that sometimes feels little more like a dysfunctional family than I'd prefer.

And, for the love of all that is holy, I am lucky. There are so many jobs that suck, not just ones that I might not enjoy, but ones that are dirty and smelly and filled with assholes and dangerous. So. Many.

So, as a reminder, I made myself something and hung it in my office.

Get a grip, Bonnie. You do not work in a Chilean mine.

Amen.

Tractor Repair

In my neverending quest to use up scrap yarn, I made a "My Favourite Things" scarf in 2013. I've never been happy with the way the tractor turned out. Back in 2013 I wrote, "The tractor turned out a bit wonky, but intarsia is of the devil. I was lucky to emerge as unscathed as I did."

After nearly two years of the puckering bothering me, I decided to bite the bullet and do something about it. I threaded a cable into each stitch of the section above the tractor.

Then I pulled out the last/top row of the tractor section.

Then I started to unravel.

It took about an hour just to get the section undone, and then another several hours to get it reknit. I tried to strand as much as I could, and I ended with duplicate stitch.

Then I kitchnered the top row to the row I had on a cable. It was 240 stitches. The only way out is through.

It's better. Not perfect, but better. I can definitely live with it, and I'm happy I redid it. I wear this scarf a lot, and I want to be happy with how it looks.

Own the crazy, my friends. Own the crazy.

Nothing

Some friends have been talking about decluttering, I've been reading about it on Rachael Herron's blog, and I read an article in Real Simple as well. It seems the Universe was encouraging me to think a bit on that, and that's how I found myself Sunday evening standing in front of my bookshelf.

The magazine article recommends breaking a job into small pieces so as to avoid being overwhelmed. I thought that was a good idea and worked on the bottom two shelves. It was nearly all books and notes from college and grad school.

One shelf was almost entirely notes from classes and papers I'd written. I recycled everything. I have copies of my master's thesis somewhere else, and vanity will probably always require me to keep that. Everything else went into the recycling bin.

As I pulled the books off the shelf, I was prepared to feel nostalgia. Instead, I felt disdain. Why in the name of all things holy was I keeping Kant and Kierkegaard? I didn't like reading them the first time. Was I keeping them as some badge of honor? I read this, and it is a testament to my nerdiness? I kept a few of the books, but most of them went into three boxes. Yesterday I took the books to the bookstore. As is my way, I kept reminding myself to view this as a donation rather than a sale. They would offer me fifty cents, and I would happily take it because it meant those books were out of my life. Instead, they offered me $11, which I immediately gave back to them to purchase two gifts for a friend. I left feeling like a goddess who had just transformed something worthless to me into something that will be valued by someone else.

When I finished with the recycling and boxing, I moved binders containing programs from shows we've seen--and we do love live theater quite a bit and have a ton of them--to one of the empty shelves. The rest of the books seemed to exhale, and there was once more no real empty space.

The Real Simple article suggests that as you weed out books that aren't important to you, you'll get a little thrill to look at the books you kept and how they say things about who you are as a person. My shelves say I love theater, gardening, children's books, fantasty/sci-fi, Buddhism, and knitting. Those shelves speak the truth.

That night, as I was lying in bed, I tried to quiet my mind and see what I was feeling. Did I feel lighter somehow? Did I feel sad?

I felt nothing. No relief, no sadness, nothing. I think those things had been irrelevant to my life and happiness for so long that their presence or absence made no difference. A song from Chorus Line ran through my head.

They all felt something, but I felt nothing except the feeling that this bullshit was absurd.

-Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban

Well, HUH.

You know how sometimes you pop your head up from your life, look around, and think, "Well, HUH. How the heck did that happen?" I had one of those moments on Friday.

I was at Andrew's grandpa's house, and he had a stuffed bear wearing a Get Well Soon sweater. It was being aggressively loved by a great-grandchild, and one of the adults realized unraveling was happening.

They asked me if I could fix it. I could, but I didn't have a yarn needle, so I took it home with me for repair.

I was sitting at my dining room table, repairing this crappy stuffed bear sweater, and I had a moment.

How the heck did I become the person who knows how to fix sweaters? 

How did I become the mender, the maker, the knitter, the creator?

It's mostly knitting, but not exclusively. Case in point: In the background of that photo, you can see wax paper. That's because I was making Christmas ornaments earlier in the day. I spend a startling amount of time making things. This is surprising since I spent the first 25 years of my life living almost entirely inside my head, devouring books and thriving in academia.

Life is surprising and weird, folks. Huh.

Don't Should On Yourself

I have gotten bogged down by the shoulds:

• I  should eat that butternut squash my cousin gave me. She grew it! It's horrible to let it go to waste.
• I should cook more.
• I should figure out what to do with the strainer full of tomatoes from the garden that are getting old in my fridge.
• I should eat the mushrooms I got in the bin. Organic produce is a luxury, and I should not be wasting it.
• I should read more books, especially the ones people have given me.
• I should do more yoga.
• I should be tracking my food on Weight Watchers more faithfully.
• I should be making more Christmas presents.
• I should be making something other than Christmas presents so I could blog about them.

It's gotten overwhelming, this litany in my head. How to combat it? I should meditate more.

Sigh.

True Story: Support Desk

I sent this to the Support Desk (which is not particularly supportive, so I think they should change their #&)% name):

I'm not positive you guys are in charge of exorcisms, but my phone is possessed.

Randomly, while the handset is hung up, it will start beeping a busy signal and the screen will say Unknown Number. I have to pick up the handset, hang it back up, and then it will do it again a few seconds later. Typically, it does it four times in rapid succession and then stops. It's not near a time when I make or receive a call, and I'm positive the handset is hung up properly when it does it.

This has been happening for months, but it was sporadic enough that I never bothered anyone about it. Nobody else has complained about their phone doing it. Today it's probably done it 6 times. It's possible it's trying to push me over the edge.

If someone has time, can they see if this is a known problem with the 7965 phones or if there's anything I can do? Thanks.

Well, now it's probably done it 30 times, which might as well be 30 million. It did it while I was on the phone with the support desk. My phone put the support desk on hold and started beeping at me from a new line. I may or may not have said, rather loudly, "Oh, FUCKER."

I mentioned this is my busiest time of year at work, right? I thought so. 

Send good energy and chocolate covered coffee beans.

Notes to Self

Dear Self,

I have lots of yarn. I have lots of yarn to make lots of things. I have lots of yarn to make lots of things that I want quite a lot.

Let's review:

Falling Stars http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/falling-stars (purples)

Weekend Getaway Satchel http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/weekend-getaway-satchel

Circinn http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/circinn (two shades of gray)
Rocky Coast Cardigan http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/rocky-coast-cardigan (palm green)

Wray http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/wray (light grayish silver)

Thermal Pullover http://www.ravelry.com/projects/bonniebeth/thermal-pullover (blackberry)

I own the yarn for ALL of those projects, and I like all of the projects. 

Therefore I do not need to be swayed by a new pattern for which I have no yarn. Fire Opal Tee, I am looking at you.*

Love,

Bonnie

*That second picture is what is tempting me. I'm besotted with the idea of having a black Fire Opal Tee with either elbow length or long sleeves. In my head, I look a little rock and roll in it.

Now I Understand

It's been a rough few weeks at work. Everything seems to be breaking, and I don't know how to fix most of it. I keep reminding myself that the "only way out is through"* and that my background is in theology instead of IT and therefore I shouldn't expect to be able to fix IT problems.

Still, there's only so far that reasonable attitude can take me. Last night I stopped at the grocery to pick up the necessities: milk, bananas, and Ben & Jerry's Phish Food frozen yogurt.

Milk. Check.

Bananas. Check.

The frozen yogurt is on the top rack in the freezer. The flavors to the left and right are there. I can see the Phish Food, but it's too far back on the rack and I can't reach it. I spent a couple of futile attempts trying to reach it with other things. I briefly consider asking a tall stranger to help, but reject that idea since my attitude is lousy enough I don't trust myself to appear cheery rather than crazy. No need to scare strangers in the freezer section.

Is it more likely that I a) have pissed off the Universe in some way, b) the Universe is saving me from myself by not allowing me to medicate through chocolate, or c) there's been a run on this particular flavor and the Universe has nothing to do with it?

Okay, I know the answer is C. I really do. But still.

*Thanks, Alanis.

Hooray!

Yesterday, I e-mailed my doctor.

Dr. B,

Wow, shingles suck. I stopped getting new blisters last Friday, so I think the antiviral helped. The pain is still significant, but not bad enough I can’t manage it. The only way out is through, right?

My real question is about being contagious. The day after I found the beginning of a rash and the day before I came to see you, I knit a hat for my neighbor’s newborn. I haven’t given them the hat because a neighbor who gives a newborn chicken pox is the worst sort of neighbor.

Are there any guidelines about being contagious? If I wash the hat in hot water and machine dry it, does that kill the virus? Am I better off just pitching it? What about the remaining yarn? Does the virus stay live on it? For how long am I contagious, until the rash is completely gone or longer?

Thanks!

This morning, he called me and assured me that the person would have to "have their nose right in your rash" for it to be contagious. Do to the placement of my rash, this is highly unlikely. He reassured me the hat wouldn't give the baby chicken pox. I asked if just to be safe washing it in hot water would kill anything that happened to be on it. He said if the yarn could handle it, washing it in hot water was fine. Overkill, but fine.

Obviously, I'm going to wash and dry that booger, and then I'll probably ask Andrew to wrap it instead of me because there's no harm in being careful. Better crazy than a contagion, right?*

Let's take a moment to thank my doctor for allaying my fears and praise God I used acrylic yarn.

*I think I've just stumbled upon a t-shirt design for OCD folks.

Embarrassment of Choice

I'm knitting. I promise.

I have one sweater finished and one sweater that just needs buttons. But it's HOT. Soon I will take pictures.

Also, I'm doing Christmas knitting, which can't go on the blog. Christmas is less than three months away. Knitting takes a long time. End of Public Service Announcement.

So, anyway, let's talk about something else today. Let's talk about one of the downsides of the Internet: the Embarrassment of Choice.

Let's say that I decide I want to do some flower embroidery. I would feel more confident if I had a template, so I go online.

image from here

Great. But maybe there's something greater. 

image from here

Ooh, that's pretty. If I'm thinking about buttons...

image from here

Stop getting distracted. I don't want buttons, I just want a simple, colorful flower to embroider.

Do you know who knows color? Kaffe Fassett.

image from here

And on and on it goes until days have passed and now I'm looking at pictures of bunnies sniffing flowers in Mongolia and I've completely forgotten that I ever wanted to embroider a flower at all.

Sometimes, there's just too much choice.