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Archives for January 2009

Discipline and Abundance – words for 2009

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I have been wanting to write about this since before Christmas, and then I had this feeling that it was too late, since it’s hardly the beginning of the year anymore, and then I remembered my treasured personal motto, “Better late than never.” (That, at least is a fitting motto for a notorious procrastinator.)

This is the third year that I have been choosing a word of the year. In 2007 it was “effortlessness” which made me give up on everything, in 2008 it was “healing” which made me realize that I’m far from healed, and also I got pointed towards therapy over and over again, I don’t know, maybe that’s a sign or something. Nevertheless some things got better, so there was actual healing in some areas of my life where I didn’t even realize I was in need of it, like my marriage.

This year I had the feeling that I needed something different, and so the first word that spoke to me was “discipline”. If you don’t know about the practice of choosing a word for the year, I got the idea from Christine Kane, who wrote about it at least here and here (the second link will lead you to a series of posts, go there – you’ll enjoy them).

So, discipline it was. That’s only fitting since this year seems to be all about getting back on track – again. I already had the feeling that I needed to re-cultivate my “inner parent“. Usually I know fairly well what I “should” be doing but mostly I don’t do it. Which is really lame, and has made me unhappier, more tired, and heavier over the past two years or so. For the whole time that I un-changed all of my new shiny and healthy habits, one at a time, I resolved to get back on track. Every single day. But every single day found myself, knitting in the midst of dirty dishes, dreading the grocery shopping, procrastinating for as long as five days about it. Each week I would firmly decide to do the shopping on Thursday, then Friday, then Saturday, and sometimes it would be Monday until I went and got something to eat for my family.

I know it’s pathetic, and it’s not very good for my self-esteem but I also know that I’m not the only one on the planet doing silly things like this. So, starting on December 27th or so, when I felt like this was about to be my beginning of the new year, I got a bit more no-nonsense about my decisions. So, right now, it’s no question of whether I tidy the kitchen in the evening or leave it until morning, I just tidy it in the evening, regardless of how I feel. Also I do my morning routine which consists of meditation, morning pages, and another round of tidying and cleaning.

For the past two weeks I even have been doing the grocery shopping on Thursdays, and some rudimentary house-cleaning on Fridays. I always want to put off the cleaning (and the shopping) until the weekend, and on weekends I always have the feeling that now is the time for knitting and sewing, and reading, and such. Then I think, “But I can always do it on Monday.” which I then don’t and another week goes by with dust bunnies all over the house.

So, discipline turns out to be a very good word for me for this year. Since I’m not procrastinating as much I have more energy, I’m going to bed on time (again more energy), and I don’t spend all my time and energy worrying about things I should be doing.

When I chose discipline, though, I had the feeling that if I only concentrated on that I would soon feel deprived, and resentful, and so I chose a second word to focus on – abundance. I want to concentrate on the fact that there is enough of everything in the world, even energy and time, that I don’t have to hold on to things I don’t love and need, and that there always will be more.

So far this also has worked very well. While there have been a few students quitting during the past months there seem to be more coming as replacements. When I’m not afraid that there never will be cake any more in my life it’s easier to eat just the one piece that makes me feel good instead of the two or three I usually would be eating.

2008 was not the best of years for me but I have the feeling that 2009 will be decidedly better.

Did you choose a word of the year? Will you? Tell me.

My Yarn Stash

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Just the other day I was telling somebody on ravelry that I don’t have much stash, also I’m running out of sock yarn. When I have finished the two pairs of socks currently on my needles there is no more new sock yarn.

On the other hand I can barely close my yarn drawer, and there are projects, patterns, yarn and needles everywhere in the house. How can those two things be true at the same time?

So I decided to a) think about it, and b) pull out the wool and have a look at it. I haven’t gotten as far as actually looking at it right now but thinking about it helped a little. I think I might start to understand what’s going on here.

  1. I usually put my leftover yarn in the attic. Sadly the “leftover yarn boxes” are full. More knitting means more leftovers. This is one of the reasons why there is a lot of yarn in my yarn drawer.
  2. When I ordered the yarn for my last two sweaters online I, of course, ordered a bit more than I thought I’d need. Since the shop isn’t nearby I can’t just go and get more. Actually, with the last sweater I ordered the exact amount of yarn needed and I have about 2 1/2 skeins left over. I know, it’s a mystery. That accounts for 400 g of yarn between the two sweaters. The leftover yarn would make great mittens or hats (I don’t knit scarfs, hate making them). Only the colors don’t match anyone’s coats.
  3. Even though I thought I don’t have any more sock yarn there is in my yarn drawer: a) an almost finished pair of summer socks, b) leftovers of two pairs of socks, enough yarn two knit another pair out of the same yarn, c) between 40 and 60 grams of each skein of Wollmeise sock yarn that I’ve ever owned (which might become either striped or fair isle socks at one point).
  4. There is leftover Wollmeise lace yarn, enough for a lace scarf, or if combined with the two other colorways of Wollmeise lace that I have (that accounts for two of my currently active projects), there might be enough for yet another stole,
  5. There is yarn I bought in order to make yet another lace stole, this one will be for a friend.
  6. There is leftover yarn from making a scarf and hat that will eventually become a pair of fair isle mittens for me. (
    And it would be nice if I finished those before August. So that I can actually wear them.
  7. There are three balls of cotton sock yarn that I wanted to design socks for. They have been sitting in the drawer, untouched since July. I had an epiphany last week, and have declared that I will just make socks following a pattern. Designing should be fun, not a chore. The pattern is sitting on my piano at the moment, the yarn is in the yarn drawer. And I won’t start them soon, since it’s not summer yet.
  8. There is enough cotton from 1994 to make yet another preemie blanket. Only I hate working with cotton.

I think that’s all, apart from the hat that needs seaming that sits on top of the fridge, the lace shawl and pirate scarf that need blocking that sit on top of the dresser, the two pairs of socks, and two lace shawls in progress that sit on the kitchen bench, the unfinished cotton sweater that sits in the knitting basket in the living room (it only needs another sleeve and a button band to be finished), and a ziploc bag with the cast-on for the aforementioned baby blanket that probably will never happen.

So, you can easily see why I have the feeling that I’m in desperate need of wool, can’t you? O already ordered yarn for another sweater (one that I really need), a knitted doll, and a pair of socks. I’m desperately waiting for them to arrive. Before I run out of yarn and things to knit.

I feel quite virtuous, though, because only half of the drawer is full of wool. The other one is occupied by my fabric stash. That somehow overflows into the rest of the bedroom too…

P.S.: I just remembered the spinning stash, and the handspun. And the yarn that was a hat that was too big for me until half an hour ago when I wound it on the niddy-noddy to re-knit the hat. Ouch.

Cake project done

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Though calling it a “project” is somewhat weird. But of my many big (and much more smaller) projects the first one, the making of a lactose-free Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte was completed successfully and on time for my husband’s birthday. Look:

schwarzwalder

I started the whole thing almost a week before by buying all the ingredients. I found a recipe online (only German, sorry), and substituted the whipping cream with lactose-free whipping cream, and the chocolate with yummy dark chocolate that has no milk in it either.

I was completely nervous beforehand because I never made a cake like this in my life. I started on Sunday (after my son had gone to bed) and made this:

boden

My cookbook was not entirely helpful with this because it said to bake it until it felt like “cotton wool”. When I first pulled it out of the oven it did feel right but further probing with a toothpick revealed that the insides were still liquid, so I put it back, and the next time I looked it was starting to turn too dark.

The next day I cut the cake into three layers by means of sewing thread, borrowed some equipment from my mother-in-law, and went looking for the rest of my baking equipment in the basement. At about six in the evening I had this:

kirschen

After whipping enormous amounts of cream, dumping one layer crosswise onto the other, smearing the whole kitchen with cream, and another hour of work the cake finally was done. The next morning we ate some of it for breakfast. It tasted delicious, and my mother-in-law has declared it to be “better than store-bought”. Ha!

schwarzwalder2

I’m happy that this went so well, even if it was a bit wonky, but then it’s a cake, not a sculpture. My husband was duly moved and said that it was one of his very favorite birthday presents. I also gave him a knitted hat with the needles still in it ( a very traditional gift), and a set of Monty Python movies to take his mind off the unfinished hat, and he liked those too.

I only fear that I might have started a tradition of handmade birthday cakes around here…

I have multiplying projects

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In fact, they are multiplying like bunnies, I seem to be unable to stop them, and it feels like a disease.

It all began last Thursday, when I realized that since my husband, who is lactose-intolerant, seems to be okay with lactose-free butter, cream cheese, and such I would be able to make a lactose-free Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (“Black Forest Cherry Cake”, I assume) for his upcoming birthday. I have never done such an elaborate cake (three layers, lots of whipping cream, chocolate batter, cherries, and decorating) in my life. So I had to make it into a project, complete with research, lists, the purchase of supplies, and a timetable to get it ready on time.

Then, on the same day, my mother-in-law approached me with a newspaper clipping of a fabric sale. Because my son had told her that he wanted to have a dolphin costume for carnival. Um. I really had hoped he had forgotten. I have tried to steer him towards nice pirate costumes, and books, and stories for months now, to no avail. Because the moment somebody told him the motto of this year’s kindergarten carnival party (above and under the sea) he wanted to be a dolphin. Now I’m stuck with the task of constructing, and sewing a dolphin costume. I thought I had found a clever way to make it easy when I found a how-to in a blog, but that costume was immediately rejected by my picky son. He wants one that looks like this. Which is for adults, has fans and ventilation and costs somewhat about 1,000€.

I spent most of Saturday researching dolphin costumes, thinking about construction, picking out fabric, and ordering some. Both my son and my husband told me they’d help with this but then, none of them can sew.

The third project was another upcoming family event. We have been invited to celebrate the birthdays of my husband uncle and aunt with them This shouldn’t be a problem at all, only I found myself worrying about every aspect of the whole thing on and off. What to wear? Will we go by train or car? (They’re living a little more than 100 km away.) When we go by train, how long would that take? Would they have room enough to take all four of us in their car from the station? How will the weather be? They are living in a place where people go to have skiing vacations. Our car isn’t exactly up to that. When we go by train how will we take the car seat with us? And on and on.

For once I decided to accept that I am a person who will worry about these things way too early. That telling myself not to worry doesn’t work. So I sat down, researched timetables, routes, printed out maps, ordered a lighter car seat for our son, discussed everything with both my husband and my mother-in-law, and now I’m set. I asked my mother-in-law to ask her brother-in-law if his car is big enough, and otherwise to please ask her other son if they could pick up one of us at the train station. Now I’m much more at peace with the whole thing, I have done all I can, for now.

I thought these projects were enough but then I got an invitation on ravelry to join a group planning the first ever German raveler meeting. I looked at it, and I could go because it’s the last weekend of summer vacation. Then I took a look at the workshops they offer. I wasn’t interested much. Then I saw that they are still looking for people to lead various workshops. And then I volunteered to hold one on sock construction according to Cat Bordhi. Then I started worrying again. Trains, hotels, workshops, what to wear (it’s in September, mind you). How to do the workshop. I even started mapping out a plan for the workshop, and again I found that I probably will continue doing this over and over again, until I write it down. So, today I might be doing just that. Sit down and plan a workshop I’ll be giving in September.

Seriously, my brain feels like it’s bursting. I’m longing for the promise of “mind like water” but I’m doubtful if I can achieve that in any amount of time. Everywhere I look in this house there is something screaming “do me!”, “clean me!”, “put me away!”. We’re slowly getting there but then there’s still the other things I already started like: the knitting projects currently on the needles, the knitting projects I just ordered the yarn for, the stories I started writing that aren’t finished yet, the finished knitting that still needs taking pictures of it, the 1,047 things I have to remember, people I have to call, e-mails I have to write. Things like “fill out this slip and bring it to kindergarten on Thursday”, “ask so-and-so about this”, “remind so-and-so of that”, buy this, take that away, go there, do this, and don’t forget anything.

It’s not so much about time management, it’s about brain management, and about emotions management. I have written about this in a post titled “How to be creative when you don’t have the time (part 3)“. Time to revisit myself maybe.

December Just Posts

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buttondec2008

Welcome again to the Just Post roundtable. After two years of this it is time for change, as you probably have read in last month’s post.

With things like this, like collecting links to blog posts about social justice, and writing about social justice, there always is a doubt whether it’s going to make a difference. Well, it seems that it does. When last month Mad, Jen, and I announced that we would no longer do the Just Posts, De wrote a comment saying,

This morning, right after I got up and affixed my re-usable menstrual pad, I packed my daughter her snack with an aluminum water bottle, and groaned that it was raining again on a Wednesday, when I go to walk dogs at the Humane society. Just the first five minutes of an average day, and everything about it was brought about by the Just Posts.

I also know that this project of ours has changed my life. That the bloggers I read change the way I think about things and people. You can see how much writing on the internet can do if you go over to the Mama to Mama project. This started as an idea, and words written on a blog, too. Amanda Soule, the woman behind this, asked people to donate handmade hats for newborns in Haiti, and now she has 5523 hats, and 169 blankets to send to families in need. It’s amazing and heart-warming to see how words on a computer screen move people, and then, sometimes, they even do something.

This project also shows why I am a bit uneasy about this form of charity. First, I have done nothing but write about it, and put the button on my blog, which feels like not nearly enough. And second, and much more important, while it is marvelous that there will be more than 5,000 babies with hats in Haiti, the real problem is that there is a place on this world (and more than one) where babies have to die because of a lack of hats and blankets. The thought of a nice little cozy baby makes me all fuzzy and warm but then I turn around and there are people who don’t have water to drink, people without food, without medical care, without much of anything in the middle of war. And a few hats won’t change that.

So I beg all of us to do what we can, send money, and hats, and write about things, and put buttons on our blogs, and maybe volunteer a bit, and in the middle of that, please, don’t forget that all of this is political and global. These are big issues that need to be tackled, issues that go beyond giving spare change to beggars.

In the world as it is now, the only way for someone like you and me seems to be to start small. See, De, and I and some others I know are using re-usable hygiene products, and water-bottles, and cloth grocery bags, and while it might seem futile, especially if you’re the only one you know who recycles, and buys organic food, and takes the train or walks instead of driving everywhere, and then there are all these people around you who say it’s all a sham anyway, and that you won’t be making a difference; I tell you: don’t listen! Really. It’s way better to start small, and try, and maybe fail than to shrug your shoulders and say, “I can’t make a difference anyway.”

And so I’m really happy that there still will be Just Posts in 2009 because Alejna from Collecting Tokens and Holly from Cold Spaghetti graciously stepped in and will be continuing the Just Post tradition that is all of two years old now. Thank you very much to you both.

Now here is this month’s list:

Alejna at Collecting Tokens with Coventry Carol
Atherton Bartleby with I think I hate you
Cecilieaux with Cut off Israel now!, It’s a Madoff, Madoff, Madoff, Madoff world,
Liberal, Conservative, Democrat, Republican, Green and Why Conservatism Was Always Doomed
Country Girl with This is a Great idea
De with Mini Rant
defiant muse with harm here is harm there
Em at Social Justice Soapbox with Resolutions for a New Year
Erika with A Day without a gay (or making an actual impact)
girlgriot with Small World…Small City…Small Minds and Not Making People Invisible
Holly with Twelve STIs of Christmas
Jozet with “Redistribute the Wealth” My Hot Green Butt
Paul Newnham with The Day After International Day and Letter to the PM
Rebecca with Big Box vs Buy Local and Small is Beautiful and Affordable
Zoom at Knitnut with Bank Street Bully

The Just Post Brides Farewell Posts:
Alejna with Better for me than a scone and a latte
Bon with At epiphany
Emily with Doin’ it all for my babies
Holly with Example is not the main thing in influencing others it is the only thing Jen (ponderosa) with Fare Thee Well
Kate at Peripheral Vision with Doing More
Magpie with A Just Post Call for Help
Mary G with Resolution in 2009
Metro Mama with An Ongoing Offering
And please, do go over to Jen and Mad, and read their posts too.

Story of the Month: Surreal

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(Seems like I’m still not on top of everything yet, but this month I managed to write, um, half of the story for the writer’s group meeting. The prompt was “surreal”. Of course I only started writing at noon, helped my husband cook while typing on the computer, and then had to teach right up to the moment when I ran out of the house to catch the train for the meeting. I really hope to finish this, tie the two strands of the story together, ply them so-to-speak. I wrote it as stream of consciousness as I could.)

Falling

Diving into the night as a floating wind came by to grip me, cars on the highway passing by. The moon staring at us while we were heading for the shoreline; the green fish staring at you while we wove our way through the algae, downwards into the deep blue cool, threading deeper and onwards. The caves nearby whispering to us while we floated between the corals, creatures like jewels asleep in the liquid dark.

Out to the open, the ocean, the blue, the dark, the cool, the wet, outwards, and downwards, into the depth. Our eyes blind from the cold, the pressure, the lack of light, only illuminated by smallish animals, wearing lanterns, and luminecence. Down through the sand to the point where there’s rock, always rock underneath.

Resting there for a while, pausing the race, not moving, letting the cold streams run over us, resting, but not for long, onwards, and upwards, outwards, throught the deep, the blue, the cold, through where the water is calm always, up, and through, through the waves, the white crust of frothing waves, going up and down, right and left, never still, never at peace, drifting on. And on, always moving, riding the wind, the water, the dark.

Erin and Heidi at the mall, carrying their totes, their make-up, walking slowly because of their shoes. Very pretty shoes, there had been a sale, and so they had spent the last of their paychecks on these, sexy shoes with high spiky heels that made their ankles look pretty and slim. They looked very much alike from afar, their hair done into a puffy mass of curls framing their pretty faces. They liked make-up, those two, their eyes all heavy eyeliner, smoky shadows, and fluttering lashes, their mouths rose-colored glittering pouts.

Floating on the water, being rocked by the waves’ motion, waiting until the annoying moon starts to pale above us. More blue, more light, more warmth, rushing in, meeting the morning. Still, beneath us the dark, the cool, the deep, unchanged by light’s arrival. Onwards again, taking hold of the wind, merging, waving in and out, the air, the light, colors getting brighter, shiny. The water, sparkling with light, reflecting warmth, deflecting hearts.

The girls are speaking, endlessly, giggling, and gossiping, talking, never listening. Just an endless stream of syllables put forth with a meaningless smile. Both of them connected to the ether by invisible strings, their cell phones humming; shiny, sleek, bluetooth connectors at their ears and lips. Connected not with the world around them, with the people they see before them, with smells, and sounds, and sights right there but only with other people hanging from the same strings, never being where they are.

They walk slowly, taking care with every step; the sexy shoes demand attention, their totes getting heavier, the mall a whir of color and movement.

Onward and upward again, the air, the wind, the light, gliding, soaring. You and I, me and you, moving, sensing, now the sun is up in the sky, a one-eyed giantess bringing life and scorn, making the world bright, shiny, and slightly harsher. We know that the staring moon is still there but now he can’t see us anymore. Nosy he is but now he’s pale and in the presence of his big warm mistress he’s too far away to catch us. So we seize the moment, go on and on, rounding the globe, moving in, and out, up and down. Fear of falling isn’t hindering us. Going down deep we meet rock again, and again, going up there’s air and light, dust and sparkles, creatures big and small. Moving, moving, always moving. We wave in and out of the streams, the rivulets going down, the vapor going up, playing like dolphins. Come on my love!