A Brand New Chapter

In which Angelina takes up knitting needles once more
(but will not be knitting anything challenging)

So very much has happened recently that when life gets quiet I get nervous about what it might be brewing up. On the other hand, I feel a line has been crossed. A finish line in an endurance race which just makes me think of the time my Dad made my try out for the track team in sixth grade and I had to run the four hundred run in front of T, the love of my life* from the time I was 8 until I was 12, and I passed out on the field. When it comes to endurance I'm clearly not a champion.

Still, the atmosphere around here is clearing up. I have that feeling that a new era is dawning.

Total random side note: I love Janeane Garofalo in Mystery Men. I love Mystery Men**. The guys are watching it in the other room. Seriously my kind of hero movie.

Anyway... there's always room for more crisis in life, there's always room for more tragedy, we all know that. That's a given. There's no point where you can't experience more. People like to say that "God" will only give you what you can handle and I take great exception to that. If God only gave people what they could handle then people like the Yates woman wouldn't have murdered all of her children in an act of desperation. My great uncle wouldn't have spent the latter part of his life in an insane asylum. People wouldn't be going postal all over the planet. Those are people who couldn't handle what life gave them. You could argue that they're all examples of truly insane people, but aren't insane people still people worth God's consideration? Shouldn't God be especially considerate of their limitations?

No, lots could and still will happen in our life here. Both bad and good. Life doesn't sit still. But today feels quiet. In a good way. You know, if I can just stop my mind from wringing it's hands, so to speak. Even with all that could continually go wrong, it really feels as though a corner has turned. Or a new leaf. A fresh day. Pick your cliche, they all work here.

Max apparently told Philip that he can't go any amount of time without cats in the house. So we are putting the word out that we're looking for two kittens. We want them young (8 weeks old) so that Max can have the experience of having kittens instead of an older cat which is what Ozark already was when Max was born. So if anyone local to us hears about some one's cat about to have kittens or whose cat just had kittens- please let us know. Although I do not feel that getting more cats really soon would dishonor the memory of our recently departed cranky old bastard cat that we loved so dearly, I must admit that I can't think of getting an orange male tabby any time soon. Also, we won't get purebreds. Not only couldn't we afford them, but we prefer our animals of mixed heritage. We also prefer them free.

My visit with my new psychiatrist went much better than my visit with my ex-therapist. I feel that I am now in competent hands to deal with my head. You know when you have found a good match because you just feel relief. The Doctor gave me a much needed medical vote of confidence.

Now that I don't have a business to run or worry about, I can take up some dropped projects and reluctantly abandoned activities such as knitting. Three years ago I promised Philip a knitted scarf. I bought the yarn and still had it sitting around. I think I knew I would have to return to knitting at some point. Although I do want to learn some crocheting as well, I don't know any crocheters here in my town to show me the ropes. So I will wait a little to tackle that one. This week I re-learned to cast on under the supportive eye of my knitting friend Lisa E. and am working on a very simple garter stitch scarf for Philip.

I just talked to my sister last night who has also started knitting. It gave me such a warm fuzzy feeling. My sister is a very urban, cool, chic, hardworking person and I absolutely LOVE the idea of her knitting because it is so domestic (yes, I know, all kinds of non-domestic type people knit these days...I maintain that it's still a very domestic activity) and there's a part of my sister that is very home centered, though she has not been able to focus on that for a very long time. Knitting is something you can do anywhere and although maybe, like me in the past, Tara won't keep at it, but it still made me so giddy to hear that we are both knitting now.

I have a cold. I'm alright with that. I mean, I wish I didn't have a cold, but I'm just rolling with it as though I was a really mellow person who isn't bothered by the small stuff.

I haven't been able to focus on my yard in such a long time. I turn my eyes to it now and feel that stirring of excitement I often feel when I have all the planning in the world to do. In my Master Gardening class yesterday we spent half the day learning about growing berries. Berry growing is so much more exciting to me than conifer growing, so I was in heaven. I'm thrilled that I don't like raspberries much because to grow them here is to sign a binding contract with ROOT ROT. We learned about strawberry growing as well and they come with a butt-load of diseases and problems in this region, yet when grown well produce a better quality fruit here than when grown in California. Philip loves strawberries so I keep wanting to grow them for him.

Yes, I said "Butt-load".

I finally have my new camera back from the shop. Fixed and ready to record all my new adventures.

One more tidbit before I run off to do some dishes and take a shower...

If anyone has been hoping for a bath bomb tutorial, Whipup will be posting one I wrote on January 31st, so be sure to stop by and check it out. Obviously if you have any questions after reading the tutorial I will be more than happy to answer them either here or there.



*Fully unrequited love. Just as well. I heard that later he dropped acid like it was candy.
**On line reviews of this movie aren't too great but that's such a crock. It is brilliant.

The incredible shrinking fiber

Lisa and her family came over yesterday in a mutually beneficial gathering, as most gatherings between good friends are. I was relieved of my duties as sole entertainer for the six year old set, and Lisa got to use my upright washing machine for her felting project. I am super charmed by felting in all it's forms. My first introduction to it was through my friend Lucille who makes hand felted fairy dolls. That is the kind of felting you do with barbed needles that you poke into soft drifts of fluffy wool to stiffen it into shapes. It's a very dangerous craft.

Lisa's felting projects involved knitting bowls and purses and then shrinking them in hot soapy water with a good deal of agitation. (Many people who stop in at my blog are already old hands at this kind of felting, I am posting the process for my own benefit and interest because this is my first time seeing it myself.)

So here is Lisa stitching up the seams for what will become a super cute little purse.

This purse is a much larger one which, as you will soon see, becomes much smaller. This one turned out to be a little too wide and not tall enough to be a convenient purse shape, so Lisa is working on options for improving it. We have included the ruler to really give you the sense that we are serious scientifically minded people around here. We're not just going to tell you how much wool shrinks in agitated hot water, we're going to PROVE it to you. Which is exactly what you were hoping for on this lovely Sunday morning.

This is a tense moment in the project, the moment when things go in and will never be the same again. Lisa included some jeans in the wash because the heavy material helps in the felting process. I love how my camera flash has white washed my washer so that you will think I actually keep it clean. Uh, which I do of course.

Lisa is not at all obsessive compulsive. No, she is checking on her project every 69.2 seconds because she is a dedicated crafts person. Here is the little hand bag, not quite ready. In this photo you can observe the stitch definition. The object of this activity is to have the fibers shrink and tangle enough that stitch definition disappears.

We decided to recruit her husband Mark to lure her back to her lentil salad. But luckily, we didn't have to resort to timing the intervals between her visits to the washer, chaining her to the table in between times to keep her still. (Felting is exciting, it's difficult to sit in an aura of zen-like calm when you have such amazing things happening in the laundry room.)

So here's the giant bag. Much smaller now. (Aren't you glad we included the ruler? Because otherwise I doubt you would believe us that this bag shrank several inches. Only habitual sweater shrinkers would believe us.) (I admit to being a sweater shrinker. I will damn myself further and admit that laundry is still one of my greatest shortcomings. I truly suck at it. Yet I maintain the dream that one day I will become so good at it people will ask me how I get my shirts so clean and soft.)

These are the two bowls Lisa knitted. She's actually already made several cool ones. They will now need to be blocked in order to dry in the appropriate shape. Chick enjoyed the smell of the wool and copped a few licks. Here she is inspecting the bowls for possible spontaneous movement.

It took a while but we did find good containers on which to block the felted bowls. I can't wait to see these bowls on a counter with fruit in them. I think Meyer lemons in the green one, and bananas or green apples in the multi-colored one.

This little bag won the beauty contest in tonight's project. It turned out to be such a nice shape and size and the color combinations (to both of us) are quite tasty looking. (I often think of colors in terms of their edibility. When I was dabbling with oil painting as a teen I told my mom, who is an amazing artist, that I wanted to internalize some of the paints because the colors just seemed so delicious. She confessed that she often felt that way too.)

Watching Lisa knit so many great projects, and now to see how cool felting is, is kind of difficult because it makes me want to get out my knitting needles and get to work. Knitting, for me, is one of those extras that I don't have the brain space for currently. When you get in a flow with an easy project, it's not that difficult, but I just haven't got any room for any extra projects. I'm hoping that this summer I will have contract sewers in place, that our store will be running more smoothly and prosperously, and that we will have our T-shirt collection and canning jar labels mapped out. Then, maybe then, I can start knitting again.

Not like Lisa though. She is quickly becoming a skilled artisan. She's already learned to use multiple needles, to do some cool stitch details, and to increase and decrease like a pro. All I want to do is a few scarves, a couple of knitted blankets, and my real dream....is to make a shawl/poncho like the one the grandma wears in the movie "The Secret of Roan Innish".

On another subject: all that pasta..... I've heard a couple of protests about all the pasta and how tantalizing it looks and how one cannot shed pounds while eating pasta. So true. (But remember, I'm trying to dry pasta to store for later, not to eat it right now.) It just so happens that I have bought (and received) 125 lbs of various dried beans. I don't even know how to cook beans from scratch. I mean, I can cook the lentils and the split peas no problem, but black beans and kidney beans...not so much. In the past when I've tried cooking them they either never get done enough to eat, or the second they are tender enough to eat they turn to mush. So the next cooking segments will be all about beans: a great high fiber, low fat, and tasty filling food.

So Chelsea and Matroskin from Helsinki: I am determined to count calories all week. Because it's very important that I lose a few kilos of fat so that I can join Bitter Betty in the vintage pattern wardrobe fun. I have a LONG* way to go. So the challenge this week will be making good food that is not going to glue itself to my bones. Clearly, soup will have to be on the menu. But what about some Angelina style huevos rancheros with only a tiny bit of cheese instead of the truck load I usually must apply to all foods?

Chelsea has given me some ideas on cooking beans well, so I will attempt her method today and report back on my most scientific findings.



*Just so we're all clear what a LONG way to go means to me: at least 50 lbs just to be able to fit in some of my vintage patterns. That's what I call long. And even when I get there (notice I said "when" and not "if". That's very optimistic of me.) I will still be on the chubby end of normal. I just want us all to be clear that I'm not making a mountain out of a paltry ten pounds or anything. But hey, if Anna Nicole Smith could do it, why not me? All I need is a lot of methadone, trimspa, and various other pain killers and narcotics.