Apparently, I've been in a time warp for the last month. You can tell just how crazy things have been by the fact that I have been listening to the same playlist for the entire month just due to lack of time to change it. I mean, that's not hard to do - unless you've been a droid person for the last all the years you've owned a smartphone and now you're switching over to mac software and pulling your hair out and cussing alot. In that case, user ignorance is also NOT on your side and you might quickly feel doomed and overwhelmed and just let the same Rolling Stones album you've had since you were 16 play OVER and OVER for the 48 hours a day you are driving everyone around. If this is also you, you are now appreciating the cruel irony of that song. Also, if this is you, we are living a parallel life - call me sometime, maybe be can pull each other out of the vortex and enjoy a cup of coffee - LOL.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I decided years ago to just stop that cold turkey. It becomes harder to do the more you realize that the person making all of your life choices is YOU and, by process of elimination, one can only then determine that you are choosing your path, no matter how crazy it is. When you get there, it just seems silly to feel any drama about it. Ya are what ya are - if that makes you angry, change. I'm more in the stepping back and taking a much needed moment to laugh
at with myself stage.
You may be wondering, what does a woman with three kids entering various very important phases of their lives (year 2 @college for Thing 1, Senior year for Thing 2 and Freshman year for Thing 3), two designs in the making with nearing deadlines, a class to teach at
Fiber College next week, a handful of articles to write coming due, and a busy club and business to run do? The answer to that question might should have been become a ninja master at time management or, possibly, forgo and opportunity to volunteer and participate in the parent's fundraising group for her kids football team. It might have needed to be something like, 'voila, you are now functioning like a sane person!' Ha ha - none of these have happened, though I'm starting ninja time management training as we speak. Instead, I chose option 1153:
I did this. Meet Bruce Wayne, our puppy. Yeah, I said that. He's a puppy. He's almost as big as a full grown 'regular' dog but this is no regular dog. He's a Blue Harlequin Great Dane puppy and will likely weigh more than me at full maturity.
So, the last month has been prepping for the coming school year (starting very soon at a theater near me) and doing some puppy/mini horse training. It really hasn't been all that bad. Bruce is a super good puppy and lots of fun to pal around with.
He loves riding in the car with me, which is good, because with two kids in practice doing 2 a days for football and a girl in school 55 miles away - I spend alot of time in the car. He's super fond of yarn but does not destroy knitting. He doesn't like the whirring of the spinning wheel but, since he's already discovered it is very sacred to his mom, he has chosen to ignore it instead of agressing against it. He eats peanut butter cookies like they're going out of style and is generally my best pal. I don't know how to tell him that I can't take him with me today - he hears keys jingle and gets himself in the car.
During all of this driving, I've stopped here and there for a few shopping endeavors. I stopped into one small shop and found these totally unloved shells on a clearance rack - all tangled up and a little rough. I immediately wanted to bring them home and make them cookies but, they're shells. Instead, I decided to do them justice in another way. I've had these batts in my head for a while.
They are 'abalone' batts. I wanted to make a batt with just a touch of sparkle, and I mean just a touch. I wanted to sparkle to play backseat to all of the colors and layers of visual depth created by using the contrasting colors against a slate grey background. I find abalone shells fascinating. They are kind of blingy, definitely rich in jeweled colors, and, yet, silver and black at their core. So much in there!
Now, I know the obvious thing to do would have been to spin these with abalone shells but I tend to shy away from blatantly obvious so I opted to go with my little unloved shells and some dyed freshwater pears. This is a corespun, beaded and bejeweled treasure! There are over 50 shells and 30 pearls in this strand and it's still only 4.6 ounces of worsted weight YUUUUM! This is one of the yarns I'll be teaching the method/process for at Fiber College next weekend!
I'm in love and I still have another few abalone batts left so I'm thinking of working up a combo of art yarn and traditional yarn for a project. I'm probably going to put some in the shop for the upcoming update but, you know, I'm stingy so I'll keep some for me, too:) Want a closer look at the shells and pearls?
Neither of the two things featured in this post were penciled in, in any way, in my to do list and upcoming project goals. I guess I just needed to veer from the path a while and remember how to fly by the seat of my pants. This was not helpful when I finally sat back down to the 'real' list and realized the impossible window was now even more impossibly narrow than before but I consider it more like spirit food. That window will likely stay impossibly narrow for a while. What makes it even possible at all is the energy we bring to it and, to get such energy, I sometimes have to take a detour and dip my toes into the pool of just plain crazy. Who am I kidding? It wasn't just a toe.
