Like The Queen
Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.

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Tuesday, January 20, 2004  

I remember as a very little girl, my dad trying to talk his mother into coming for a visit. She wouldn't come. She hardly ever traveled outside her 10 mile circle of influence and if you wanted to see her you had better be prepared for a road trip. She lived in D.C., just up Wisconsin Ave from her Georgetown birthplace, in a comfortable Chevy Chase neighborhood. That day, when Dad disgustedly hung up the phone he muttered something about “that stick-in-the-mud. She won't even come visit her own son.”

Years later, while talking to Mama on the phone I invited them down for lunch. She had barely repeated the invitation before I heard Dad howling in the background about how he couldn't go anywhere; he had chores; he had responsibilities; what did I think I was doing asking him to drive 2 hours in the middle of the day, just for lunch?

The big joke is, I completely understood. There is a thread in our family that nests so utterly, so completely, that we can barely open our doors. I love my home. I love the light of afternoon streaming in through the windows. I love the snug way it holds us inside; so strong, so secure we didn't even feel Isabelle when she was knocking down trees, not 50 feet from the house. I love the brick walk that takes you out to the maple tree, surrounded by periwinkle I dug up from Rose Hill when LD was a freshman in college. I love my praying place, where sometimes the connection with the source is so strong I can feel my spine being stretched as I walk through it and my arms are lifted heavenward. I love seeing a light on, far across the field, when I drive home in the dark.

And I hate to go back to work after a long weekend.

Wahhh!

But other than that, I'm doing just fine. Still slightly high from 2 days with fiber buddies. I have a heavy schedule this week, with a board meeting, schlepping around the legislature day on Thursday, and Mama's birthday dinner out and the first of my winter knitting classes. I'm hoping to have a class of students doing self-chosen projects, with me as the mentor; for intermediate knitters. I have 2 students for sure and the offer of several more if I can move the class to the local private girls high school. Seems more teachers want to take the class than are allowed off-campus on a week night. I'm perfectly fine with this and can't imagine any one else caring where we meet. Tonight is the general session where students can select projects and make plans for purchases. It's possible we'll head up to Fredericksburg on Saturday and do some major shopping. That's an easier trip than the one to Richmond, although if we go to R'nd we can also hit Ben Franklin which carries lovely Patons Classic Wool.

I got almost all of my knitting books, and darn near all my books, period, organized and shelved yesterday. I'm embarrassed by just how many books I have. Especially when you consider they were scattered everwhere, mostly in heaps on the floor. I didn't cull much, a few cook books and gardening books I really don't need or want, duplicate stuff, mostly. I had only 2 Family Circle Easy Knitting mags and I dumped one of them. I don't really need easy knitting instructions any more and I was uninspired by anything in the one issue I dumped. I didn't get to the 20 inch stack of all the other magazines. I'll go through them all slowly and see if I can, or want, to cull any of them and if so, they'll go into the back-issue boxes at the library. There are enough knitters in my community now, to justify the storage space.

The most interesting thing about this process was seeing how my tastes changed over the years.

I am so impressed by KnitDad and Martheme and their knitting goals I’m toying with making some of my own. I have so much stuff I want to do I almost don't do anything at all. I think setting up a schedule, with blank amount of time spinning each day and X amount of time knitting, would help me move through some of this stuff. I'm not yet ready to commit, but one thing I'm seriously considering is scaling back my computer time. I do spend an awful lot of hours here and my projects languish as a result. Besides, there is the garden looming - either I tidy it up or plow it under. It's beyond neglect, right now. It's a wreck. And I would like to draw more and even paint some.

No doubt about it. I need a second body to live the life I really want.

And there, my sweets, is the real motivating thought flowing beneath this steam of consciousness.

posted by Bess | 7:15 AM
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