alisonknits

Random Henge Report

I have the knit blogging blues.  I just don't feel I have much to blog about.  Hm... maybe it's time for me to copy MamaCate and try my very own Random Wednesday.

• This weekend a couple of my college buddies came to visit, and we explored America's Stonehenge.  Did you know that America has it's own henge?  Well, apparently we do.  It claims to be 4,000 years old and it is in Salem, NH, mere minutes from my house.  It was kind of interesting, but sort of underwhelming.  I suspect the real Stonehenge might be a bit more awe-inspiring. 
• Oh, but there are alpacas there.
• Actually, I think that's random enough for the day.  Wish me luck getting my knitting mojo back sometimes soon.

Why I'm Not Blogging

How sad is it that I can't even keep up with a once-a-week blogging schedule?  There are a few reasons for this.  One is that is that I'm not really knitting anything blog-worthy lately.  Seriously, people, I'm bored by my own knitting, so how can I blog about it?  I did manage to almost finish one of the for-hire projects last night, holding this out as a carrot, which I plan to buy with the proceeds.  (Now that will be blog-worthy!)  With the help of my dear friend Cristina, I decided today that I'm going to price myself out of doing this again any time soon.  If someone is dumb enough to pay me $350 for a large stockinette rectangle, then I'll do it.  It will be my mission to give them sticker shock.  Only then will I make a fair wage for my labor, so rudely taking me away from what I want to knit.

Another reason I haven't been blogging much is that I work six days a week (not all day on all of them, but still) and I can't seem to wrap my head around doing something on nights after work besides vegging in front of the TV.  Usually (as regular readers may have noticed), I do blog on Mondays, my one whole day off most weeks.  Last week I spent the day futzing around, basically frittered away the day.  After a particularly busy Sunday at church, I needed it, and I tried really hard to feel okay about this.  It is my day off after all.  But the house was (is) a mess, surely I should work on the house?  Or pay some bills?  Or at least blog?  But I didn't feel like it.  And it's my day off, my one day off, I can do what I want, right? 

As much as I tried to give myself permission to do nothing, some part of me felt guilty all day, and the next day.  But as I read the workshop topics for the UUA's Mass Bay District annual meeting, I noticed that one of them was on observing the Sabbath.  And it occured to me, maybe Monday is my Sabbath.  Heck, taking one day a week to refrain from any work is a many-millenia-long religious tradition, so that should be good enough for me. 

(All right, I've never heard of any traditions that have Monday as their Sabbath, but since I'm a UU, I get to pick my own Sabbath day.  It's so great to be a UU.)

To Hell and Back

Hell = High School

I spent much of the weekend reading my journals/diaries from high school.  It was a harrowing journey.  I had a lot of teen angst, and I often felt like a hypocrite because I put on a happy face all the time.  It was truly amazing to see how much I changed over those four years, from teenybopper crush-head to disaffected youth.  I'm really glad I was so faithful in my journaling, because it's kind of wonderful to be able to read them over as an adult - it gave me a lot of insight into my character.  That sounds so pretentious.

I started keeping a diary when I was 9, and wrote a lot from high school to my mid-twenties.  I don't keep up with it as well today, but I often feel that it is my best spiritual practice.  When I was doing The Artist's Way, I wrote a lot - a major part of that program is to write morning pages, three pages of free writing, each morning as soon as you wake up.  It's really an excellent discipline.  I hope to get back to it.

Sometimes it seems like writing a blog is like a replacement for journaling for me.  Which of course is silly because a) I'm not very faithful about blogging, either; and more importantly b) a public blog is not the same as a private diary.  I hope I can do a better job at keeping these purposes separate in the future.

Anyway, my stroll down memory lane also reminded me how much I miss working with youth.  Maybe I'll put out some feelers and see if there's a UU youth group near me that needs a new advisor for next year.  Hm...

Obligatory Knitting Content

I taught the first of a two-part of a socks class on Saturday.  I wish more people had signed up, but I may have turned some people off with my prerequisites.  Still, I wanted to be sure that the class would move at the necessary pace to learn each part in the allotted time, and I was delighted that the timing worked out the way I'd planned.  That hardly ever happens when I teach a class for the first time.  I wrote out a generic sock recipe for any gauge/size, in a narrative rather than pattern format, and we started mini socks in worsted weight yarn on 24 stitches.  Saturday we did the foot, heel and started the gusset. 

As for my own knitting, I have nothing new to show you.  I've done a little on the for-hire knitting, but am still largely avoiding it.  Must correct that today, which is, in theory, my day off.  But I don't really get those.  Whine whine whine. 

But I want to have something really spectacular on the needles, like a complicated lace or Fair Isle, and I can't start anything like that until I can clear out some of the backed-up UFOs, crank of the for-hire stuff, and figure out what big project I want to undertake.  Firebirds is a strong contender, but I don't have $200 to drop on the kit right now.  Maybe I can do something in lace from the stash.  Must. Finish. Something. First.