pointysticks.net

Sometimes blessing come in strange packages. In early 2000 I was a bartender/waitress at a job that I hated. One night after a nightmarish shift, the boss pulled me aside and told me that I needed to find a new job. Matt picked me up from work as usual and as I slid into the car I said “I have good news and bad news.”

“What’s the bad news?” he asked.

“I was fired.”

“What’s the good news?” Matt asked, looking worried.

“I don’t have to work here anymore.” I said.

Well, this morning I woke up and Matt was sitting on the bed next to me. “I have good news and bad news.” He smiled, “The bad news is that I was fired, and the good news is I don’t have to go back there anymore.”

What can I do, what could I say? I just laughed. We talked about our finances for a little while and figured that if we were careful we could probably turn the Great Escape into a full time gig, I could also continue with some of my little pin money projects and we’ll be (as always) just fine. Maybe a little tight at first, but generally okay.

So we did some shopping, took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese, talked shop (this time our own) and have just generally taken things slowly today. I think Matt’s head is still spinning from the change, I know my equilibrium is a little off too. This is way more exciting than scary.

Look!

Who installed toddler 1.0 when I wasn’t looking?

She stands! I had just put the memory card into the camera and was going to take a picture of her playing and she stood up on her own, with no support. This is so awesome.

Oooh. I barely had the first pair of Josey’s socks off the needles before he stripped off his cotton socks, threw them in the garbage and slipped on the new pair. How is that for appreciation? He didn’t even give me a chance to block them. In fact, Josey wasn’t going to give me a chance of even taking a photo of them because he won’t take them off. I’m sure that he must have taken them off when he took a shower this morning, but I couldn’t find them (I looked) until he walked out of the bathroom, socks on feet.

Here’s the second pair that I finished for Josey, not yet blocked (I should consider myself lucky that I got this far without them being confiscated by the bigfooted 8 year old.)

I LOVE using the counting bracelet, far superior to actually trying to remember what round I’m on, and way prettier than my previous counting system (post-its and pen.)

I had plenty of extra time for knitting today because the Stayton area had apparently run out of internet. I called tech support for our ISP and half way through our troubleshooting session when the tech support guy (that strangely enough does *not* have any sort of foreign accent) says “Hold on” and after a few moments tells me that there’s an alert for the whole area. So I was able to get online about 3 hours later, boggled that it took so long for them to notice there was a service problem in the first place (my ISP is actually quite good.)

I also managed to get two, count them: “one” and “two” collection agencies off my back. #1 Collection agency was for a telephone service that I’d cancelled and they dropped all of the charges instead of just the charges that I was contesting (I would have paid the remaining charges, but they offered) and #2 was an emergency room visit that should have been covered by insurance (so they are billing insurance now.) YEAH for me! There was a time that I was so timid I would have simply paid for both instead of researching the bills and contacting the companies in question. I feel so grown up– when did this happen?

I don’t know what to knit now. I have some gobs and orts that would make for some really pretty color knitting, but then I also have some lovely serious yardage that would make for some cool socks. So many choices, that’s the great thing about spinning though isn’t it? I can think of my options as I spin and I’m not sitting around literally empty handed.

Funny thing about vengeful people, they never seem to have anything better to do that sit around thinking of ways to make other people miserable. Sorry excuse for a hobby in my opinion. Of course, I try to let silly things like logic and reason dictate the course of my actions, and vengeance just isn’t a very good use of my time or talents (although it might put to excellent use of my terribly inappropriate sense of humor.) Maybe it’s because I’m intrinsically lazy that exacting revenge is just too labor intensive, when I could (and more often than not do ) just pretend that the person I don’t like doesn’t exist and go do something constructive.

No, that’s just not good enough for some people, they want their pound of flesh for their (in *this* particular case) imagined slights. Never mind that they invest their lives, their whole beings into trying to make my life suck. Well, it’s annoying– but it’s not going to work. It’s not that I’m Buddha-like in patience, or that I have some zen master secret, because I don’t; it’s just way easier to live my blissful little life worrying about the big things and making snarky remarks when the pressure gets to be too much.

So much easier than trying to fight the universe.

This isn’t to say that I’m incapable of taking a stand when the occassion calls, it’s just that I’d rather let the insignificant go and pay attention to what is important in life– like knitting socks! (Smooth transition from rant huh?)

Yes, knitting socks. Josey has once again outgrown his socks, at eight years old he’s not so little anymore I know, however it seems like every time he takes a nap he grows two more inches and his feet gain a size. How and when did my little kid turn into a big kid? I can barely finish a pair before he outgrows them, I know I should probably make those heel-less socks for him so that he can wear them longer, but the normal socks are nice and don’t take that long to knit.

Finished spinning up the blue stuff (now I need to ply it) and back to spinning the lead gray merino. My hands seem to be getting better at adjusting automatically to spinning different fibers, I find myself thinking less and less about how to compensate while spinning, it just happens now. Very cool spinning development, and very exciting for me.

Finally! I get to spin something other than the merino. There are now two HUGE balls that I’m going to ply from for Matt’s sweater. After a few different plying samples, knitting swatches and torture tests I decided to go with a four ply yarn for my dear husband.

My friend Tric and I worked out a really cool trade, she sent me some beautiful stitch-markers and a counting bracelet in exchange for some of my work. They are so beautiful, I told her that I was going to wear a couple of the stitch markers as earrings when they aren’t in use in my knitting.

Things are crazy around here, I used yesterday morning to clean up the shop. Not just tidy and trash– full throttle uber-cleaning and reorganizing our work space. I also took the initiative and found a couple of wood suppliers that are fairly local to us (stocking and re-stocking woods on Tuesday) and ordered more shipping supplies.

I also realized (Friday) that my nose hole (no, not my nostril, but the hole punched in my face to accommodate jewelry) seemed to be shrinking, so I put my nose-ring back in. I haven’t worn anything from my nose since mid-2002, and of course, I haven’t dyed my hair traffic-cone orange since 1999 (I guess I’m just a little more domesticated). Now that I’ve put the ring back in without wearing it for so long, I’m stuck wearing it for about a week before I can safely take it out again. It’s actually kind of odd, I notice that people that don’t know me don’t really notice the ring but people familiar with me can’t help but stare at the shiney thing on my face.