The cold’s at my back - Day 14
I should be knitting. Usually by this time of year I have some kind of a hand-work project going, something small that I can tuck into my messenger bag for those rare but appreciated moments when my hands are both free and itchy for progress. I miss the feeling of wool sliding between my fingers, the sharp poke of the needle denting the pads (I hold them all wrong, all wrong I tell you).
I miss letting my thoughts unravel and seeing how my state of mind affects the stitches, watching my tension show its pinched face in my ruined guage in an instant. I don’t even mind tearing it out and sitting with my breathing for a little bit until I feel my shoulders drop back down away from my ears, my forehead smooth out, my lips turn up, the muscles in my body tingle. It’s good to pick it back up and start fresh with a quiet(er) mind.
I would like to remember to approach the other tensions in my life this way, rather than all the talktalktalking about it, the explaining, analyzing, second-guessing, wise-assing, bad jujuing that I tend to do when life happens. I would like to have a better awareness of my internal guage when it’s getting all fucked up. How great would it be to have something to hold in my hands, something that could show me (outside of me and away from my bullshit filter) that I’m headed for the ward. Before I’m apoplectic and foaming at the mouth.
My friend Cheril asked to borrow a couple of my knitting books and it made the ache resonate all the way down to my overtired, eight-to-five toes. Maybe I’ll start a pair of socks after the holidays, I haven’t made socks in years. Shall we do a January NaSoKniMo? Anyone?
The garden isn’t finished, I never did order that manure, and it’s rained so bloody much on my days off this past month and a half that I feel like I run out and scramble to do one little task and have to run back in for cover, sneezing and coughing all the way. We still have massive piles of sopping wet leaves all over the yard, and down by the road we still haven’t even raked. The perennial bed is in dire need of a shave and a haircut. Brr. It’s cold out there.
I’d rather sit inside with my laptop and a cup of tea, or a good book and a cup of tea, or a good movie and a glass of wine. I’m ready for winter to come on full-bore with slippery roads and slushy stains all over the floors so I can just abandon all hope of accomplishing the garden work on my list for this year and start making plans for 2007. It looks like an improvement from here.
"Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon?"
~Hal Borland
November 14th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
I love the sort of business that frees your mind to just be– knitting (though I’ve never knitted anything useful– I think my ideal project would be an endless blanket, a la Like Water for Chocolate), peeling potatoes, hand-stitching, all that sort of thing. It’s good to be able to build something that holds back the crazy.
And now I’d like some wine.
November 15th, 2006 at 3:29 am
I’ve only knitted three projects before deciding I just couldn’t maintain another activity in my life. But i loved the repetitive nature of the knitting. I found it soothing.
As for the garden…yikes! I am all at once dying to get out there, clean up, and fix up the yard and also to hibernate inside until spring. I just can’t do anything in the garden right now because of being too busy and it being too cold and wet. I’m working on letting it go and knowing that somehow I will put the garden in order again in a few months.
you’re a very busy lady, so maybe it’s the same for you too, needing to just let it go until early spring.
November 15th, 2006 at 7:55 am
oooooo - yes to NaSoKnMo or whatever it was . . . tho may i cheat and crochet instead????? sending you good vibey hugs from the my workaday world to yours . . .
November 15th, 2006 at 8:02 am
Ooh, I really want to try to knit a pair of socks. (I did one once but they were all wrong–too big and loose and sloppy. I didn’t follow directions….) So, yes, maybe, to January sock month!
November 15th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
I need to learn to knit.
Girl, I hear you about the garden work. Oy.
November 15th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
We had one beautiful, 70 degree day here this weekend. I ran to the garden center, bought 150 bulbs and a couple of bags of mulch and redid my back flower bed. It has been yucky and cold and rainy ever since. If I hadn’t had one perfectly gorgeous, can’t-waste-it day staring me square in the eyes and daring me not to, I would have just let the overgrown petunias and marigolds collapse into soggy ruin for the winter.
November 16th, 2006 at 9:30 am
I keep toying with the idea of taking up knitting, but my big question is - what do you do while you’re knitting? You can’t read, can you? I think I have a problem with the idea of letting my mind take a (much-needed) rest. I can’t ever just do one thing at a time; I’m such a pathetic multi-tasker.
But still, I remember crocheting when I was younger, and how relaxing it was. So I’m very tempted.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Flower Guide Online…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…