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Stop it.

Just stop it.

I know, you’ve got a whoooooole day to squander.  Plenty of time, right? You can cook, knit, do the sudoku, do the cryptic crossword, and still have heaps of time left over.  Plenty of time for writing/whatever thing you were going to do today.

Probably not.  I have this conversation with myself nearly every weekend.  I start working on a crossword over breakfast, and then the next thing I know it’s 12:30, I’ve done nothing but drink endless cups of tea and doodled in the margin of the paper. Time wanders away from me like a bored cat when the string it’s playing with goes limp, vague sense of disgust and all.  I’m of two minds about this: one is that, well, I subscribe pretty heavily to the belief that rest and idleness aren’t the same thing: that just because I haven’t written as much as I had planned (or knitted, or cooked, or whatever) doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve wasted time.  I think resting and moving slowly and quietly are really valuable things and good for the brain.  But on the other hand, I’ve got goals I want to get to, and I’m not going to get to them without concentrating on actually, y’know, doing shit.

My To Do lists are a bit stupid, too.  I inevitably cheat and pad them out with things I’ve either already done or really will do anyway, so that I can tick their boxes and feel smug that I have completed “make to do list” and “brush teeth”.  Plus, they get out of hand quick and then get too long and a bit overwhelming, so I end up losing them somewhere over the course of my day, and playing hours of Auditorium instead.  (Actually, just posting that link was risky: I nearly got sucked into playing it again. But man, what a fantastic game.)  I can’t be the only person who has this problem, because the net is chokkers with productivity “tools” and advice sites.  One of my favourites is now do this, which lets you put in a list of things to do, and then it flashes them up to you in your browser, one by one.  As you finish, you click “done” and it goes to the next one. The idea being, of course, that you focus on just one task at a time and chip away at it until it’s done.  (What a novel concept.)  But for me, this has the same problem of getting overwhelming: I quickly end up with a huuuuge list and feel uneasy about it and go off and do something else entirely.

Over on Zen Habits, the author Leo recommends choosing just three things in your day that you want to get done; your Most Important Tasks or MITs.  This is getting a little bit too, uh, “management” for me, but there’s a lot of value in the idea that you forcefully limit your To Do list to just a couple of things and concentrate on those.  My problem has always been that I end up spending an hour or so deciding which of the many things I’d like to do qualifies as a Most Important Thing.  Bam: time suck.

Just before starting this post: I put some bread on to rise, began roasting some vegetables for the soup I’m making, and got halfway through yesterday’s sudoku, which is now sitting next to me on the floor (normally I have some knitting with me as well).  I tell myself I’ll do some writing while the bread rises/vegetables roast, and that I’ll doodle on the sudoku (or knit a few stitches) “while I’m thinking”.  What kind of bullshit is that?  I am not a multitasker.  My Mumini is, to a spectacular degree, but I am not.  I have to do one thing at a time, and it’s probably best that I just accept that.  Actually, it’s strangely liberating to remind yourself that there is a hard limit to how much you can do in just one day, or just one weekend, and proceed at a more comfortable pace.

So, how am I going to get around to any of the things I want to get done? By stopping. I’m going to close the RSS feed reader; close my email program (I just spent ten minutes deleting old emails, what a waste of time); and just open up my text editor and write.  I’ll keep an eye on those roast vegetables, too, but mostly I’m just going to write.  I’m not going to try and knit, surf the web, do the sudoku or anything like that while writing: I’m just going to write.  This is a novel plan for me. (Hah! Write! Novel! Geddit? Ah, nevermind, you’ll figure it out.)

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2010 03 09 bethini chatter Comments (1) Permalink

The Washing Monster

I procrastinate a lot.  I think there’s probably a fairly robust argument to be made that currently working on this blog post is a form of procrastination, since I’m supposed to be working on something else, but let’s move past that issue, shall we?

washingmachine

Fig. 1: Artist's depiction

I have always used doing the washing as a procrastination tool: I hate that I do it, since I don’t like washing and I don’t think washing every single weekend is necessary or even useful, on the whole, but there you go.  I sit down, an empty block of time on my hands, and open up the file I’m supposed to be working on — and then, ooh, what do you know? I really must go and do the washing!  I hate it, and I’ve struggled to neutralise it, even when I can see it coming.  I won’t even ask for help, even if there’s heaps of washing to be done and the help would be readily and cheerfully provided.  Instead, I just stomp around, resenting the washing machine and its relentless consumption of my weekends and free time.  Which is hardly fair.  My washing machine is no monster, despite me calling it one all the time. It’s just me, being stupid and failing to prioritise properly.  If you were to ask me “which is the more important job for the day: getting all the washing finished or writing up that short story you’re thinking of?” I would say short story, but I would do the washing.  And then I’d get pissy about the state of affairs I had manufactured, wherein I run out of weekend and do not get any story written, short or otherwise.

And then the feminist guilt would get me.  I’d ask myself if all my fiery suffragette predecessors had risked social ostracisation, jailtime or worse just so I could spend my weekends washing work clothes, answer “no”, and get pissy with myself for failing them as well as myself.  Oy, the drama. The most frustrating part of it all was that I knew what I was doing — I could see the pattern in my head, I could see what I was doing wrong, but it was just so heavily entrenched in me to do washing every weekend, that my responsibility to it should be a higher priority than any ambition or creative pursuit, that I struggled to push it away.

I had a revelation while travelling in New Zealand. I had lots, actually, but this is the most relevant one right now.  When I couldn’t remember if I had worn something in my suitcase or not: if I can’t tell the difference by smell, no-one else can either.  While I am not employing this principle to the same degree in my daily life as I did while travelling, it did make me stop and think. My clothes mostly don’t get that grubby, unless I’m exercising (and I change for that) or unless I actually slop something on myself (granted, this happens frequently).  On the whole though, I can get a few wears out of everything without anybody noticing or sticky-taping signs to the back of my chair or anything. So I’m doing less washing, because I’m wearing things more times before I wash ‘em.  No biggy. It’s working a treat and my weekends rock a whole lot more. I’m astonished at how much more free time I have, and this is reconciling me to how much of my precious, short, finite time the washing machine has already eaten.  It’s crazy.

And if you think it’s gross, you just stand closer and tell me.

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2010 03 06 bethini chatter Comments (0) Permalink

Things making me happy right now

Happy-Figs-2010-1

What? Doesn’t this fill your heart with joy and your mouth with eagerness? Really? Sheesh. Sweet bitty-lucking fries, these photos are driving me crazy with desire — and the real thing is only about two metres away from me.  I spent an hour or so after lunch yesterday with M and my Mumini following the creek that trickles through the bottom corner of Mumini’s property outside town. It’s the most wonderful spot in the world: there’s a pine gully full of rabbits, and once you get through that, you’re at the creek, a rambling, untouched affair lined with poplars, wild blackberries, wild quinces and…oh, baby…wild figs.  Dragonflies — red, mauve and electric blue — dart around; there’s no traffic noise or city sound; only hills and rabbits and the trickling creek.  We spent a fair bit of time filling our bags with figs, getting our fingers sticky and eating any that tore in the process of harvest. M carried the rake and knocked the out-of-reach figs down for us short folk (duck’s disease runs in Mumini’s line of the family).

When I am old and tired; when my memory leaks and floods my mind with images of fear and confusion; I hope the memory of eating warm wild figs in the late summer sun, joking with M and my Mumini sticks firm and reassuring in the chaos of my greying mind.

Anyway, if figs don’t simmer your spuds, here are some other things currently pleasing me.  Here is an awesome shot of a bearded dragon, an agile and wily creature, about 25cm long from snort to tail (but it’s a pretty damn long tail), who was cruising around the rose bed at Mumini and Dadini’s place yesterday:

Mr-Lizard-2

Pretty cool, huh? Doesn’t he look all circumspect and cautious? He’s totally sizing me up.  He decided I was cool; I decided he was cool;we rolled on in our separate ways.

Here’s another picture of a lizard that I like:

blog-gecko

That right there is a Wellington Green Gecko and he is adorable.

Horse-trough-Hall

Here is a sign indicating where, in Hall, NSW, you may find somewhere to water your transport. Good to know.  This sign was across the road from where we had breakfast. While our horses died of thirst.  No, sorry: we drove in automobiles. No horses were dehydrated in the making of this blog.  Aw hell, have some more fig porn:

Happy-Figs-2010-2

This is my breakfast tomorrow.  Probably my lunch, too.  I’m so happy right now.

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2010 03 04 bethini etc.
foodin Comments (0) Permalink

The simmer-Part 2

So, I recently wrote about the heavenly slow-moving cookery I undertook on Sunday afternoon?

Well, in addition to slow-roasted vegetables which were turned into slow-simmered soup, I was doing some other slow-moving cookery.  Namely, I woke up my sourdough starter, Pongo, and fired him up.  There are two cooking streams feeding into this:

Firstly: Since we’ve been living in a share house with some family, I’ve kept Pongo in the fridge, which drastically slows the rate of yeast development in the starter and slows the need for feeding.  So yesterday I pulled Pongo out of the fridge and fed him up, developing the foam and robustness that indicates a healthy yeast colony. He responded really quickly, indicating that the yeasts were alive, awake, and rearing to make bread (or beer, I suppose).

Secondly: M and I have been talking about dispensing with our electric bread-maker.  We use it for kneading and rising, and M pointed out that if we could do those things by hand, we could get rid of yet another unnecessary Thing in our lives. To that end, he’s been developing some pretty l33t sk1llz in kneading and shaping by hand (rising just tends to happen naturally).  I learned from the best, and he showed me how best to knead a Pongo-based bread, teaching me how a hand-kneaded dough feels and responds when it comes together and the glutens start to develop.  So before breakfast, this was underway:

Sourdough--3

A hand-kneaded, wholemeal sourdough dough.  The ingredients: wholemeal flour, warm water, sourdough starter (i.e. Pongo) and a pinch of salt. A little elbow-grease was followed by a lot of waiting. I mean, nearly all day. Sourdough starters are much slower to get going than dried yeast, which is how the sour flavour develops through the dough.  In fact, this dough was sluggish enough that I worried it wasn’t going to come together at all.  I shouldn’t have doubted Pongo: the last two or three hours of rising saw an exponential BOOM in volume, as the dough suddenly swelled up in that way that excites all home bread-makers. Into the pre-heated, cast iron pot it went.

Sourdough--1

Sweet Zombie Jesus, I have never had a Pongo loaf come out this fantastic. I can hardly believe how richly-flavoured and delicious this stuff is. This is a really good picture: it accurately shows off the crumb and the thickness of the crust.  What it doesn’t show is the divinely rich, mature, tangy flavour of the wholemeal bread.  I am seriously in love with this stuff, and expect it will make up a significant part of my diet over the week.  I had fond hopes that this dough would come through for me: I didn’t realise it would come out this good.  And it is very, very good (needs a hint more salt). I’m so happy. Pongo is on the rebound, having been fed and responding with a rush of fermentation and growth: he’s happy too.  We might just make some more bread later this week.  Depends how far this one gets us…

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2010 03 02 bethini foodin Comments (0) Permalink

The simmer – Part 1

I think my favourite cooking techniques are the slowest.  Today I slow-roasted some red capsicums and tomatoes:

Roast-vegetable-soup-8

(mmmmm, can’t you hear the sizzling?…I rubbed them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper, and then left them at 150°C for about an hour). Then I chopped up some carrot, garlic, chillies, ginger and onion, and sweated those in some butter for a while; then threw in the above, peeled and chopped, with some tinned tomatoes, basil, bay leaves, a dried, smoked, chipotle chilli and a bit of salt.  Oh, my, yes.

Roast-vegetable-soup-4

This is the pre-serve, simmering-actively shot.  After simmering all afternoon, from about 12:30 until 4:30, I fished out the dried chilli and bay leaves, and puréed the rest. Spicy, robust, smoky and deeply flavoured: magnificent.  I served it with some grilled cheese-on-toasts, which were generously spread with my Dadini’s Hot Stuff tomato relish.  A perfect match, I might add, especially when built upon a slice of M’s fine home-made bread.

I’m in love with the slow-moving cooking.  It’s rich, deeply-flavoured, savoury and you get to spend the whole day inhaling the heavenly vapours of your labours.  (Plus, being daft and easily-distracted, I can wander off, do other stuff, and then come back to the delightful surprise of a whole pot of soup waiting for me! Whee! As well as easily-distracted, I am also forgetful.)  This is my favourite kind of Sunday: slow, savoury, resonant with the smells of all the things I don’t have time to cook on weekdays. (Well, I do, but I don’t like making everyone wait until eight o’clock for dinner.)

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2010 02 28 bethini Cooking Comments (0) Permalink

The pile on the bedside shelf

How do you choose the next book you want to read?  The majority of mine are currently being selected from either: (a) a pile I put aside when we were putting the rest into mid-term storage (while we’re living with family) — I saw this as a good opportunity to force my hand and try to make myself read books that had been on my to-read list for ages; or (b) a stack I bought at the last second-hand book fair run by Lifeline (a biannual event, and man can you score there!).  I have a massive to-read list at present, even limiting myself to those two sources.

When I’m buying books second-hand, I’m far more likely to take a punt on a writer I’ve never heard of, or a book I know nothing about; I guess it’s because financially there’s less at stake (I’m a genius).

Carefully-orchestrated pic of my bedside reading

Carefully-orchestrated pic of my bedside reading

But there may be more to it: in second-hand bookshops, and along the groaning tables of the Lifeline Book Fair, books are just books.  I find, whenever I’m in regular bookshops — uh, first-hand bookshops? — I’m overwhelmed and disoriented and a little surprised to find books at all.  I admit, upfront, that I hate shopping and I hate malls and therefore am usually tensed up and crankypants by the time I even get to a first-hand bookshop, so that might have something to do with my overall negative perspective on such places.  But as far as I can tell, first-hand bookshops are always swimming with advertising paraphernalia, posters and danglies from the ceiling, and huge intimidating towers of books with their authors strutting all over the covers, toothily grinning and insisting upon their authority.  It’s sensory overload.  The cash registers are nearly hidden behind stacks of twee spontaneous gift ideas, like magnets or precious tiny books of quotes or wry little books of sayings and cartoons, or tiny boxed “kits” of the giftish variety.  Racks and racks of whatever is on the Top 10 list at present, instructing a bewildered and overwhelmed public as to what they Should Be Reading. Oy, I’m breaking out in hives just thinking about it.  I think that’s why I like the second-hand places so much more: the books are priced and then distributed according to subject matter then author’s surname, and, well, that’s kind of it.  The rest is left up to the tides.  What comes in and what gets sold are not predicated by pushers and sales reps, but by luck and circumstance. That kind of appeals to my romantic side: the fact that I was able to score Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma yesterday at the second-hand bookshop thrilled me to pieces, because it was so unexpected and statistically fairly unlikely, so there’s a sense of treasure discovered.  I wonder who finished it and passed it on?  I’m grateful to them.

I chose three books at the second-hand bookshop yesterday: the aforementioned Pollan, a book of Sylvia Plath’s poems, and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.  I’ve heard a lot of excellent things about The Year of the Flood, Atwood’s most recent novel, and as I cast my dusty, steam-and-gear-powered memory back to Year 12, I recall reading The Handmaid’s Tale.  I really liked The Handmaid’s Tale: it stayed with me and gave me a lot to think about.  So why, I am astonished to ask myself, have I not pursued Atwood’s stuff further?  To that end, I sought her titles out at the shop and procured Alias Grace, more or less at random.  It was only after I left the shop that I realised I had my first introduction to Sylvia Plath in Year 12 as well.  I remember liking some of the imagery, but I rejected a lot of it outright, in keeping with a fairly well-established and easy-to-find bias against modern poetry — indeed, most modern arts — that some of my family and peers carried. It was easy to conform to that, so I did so, and I fear that I may have deprived myself of years of fantastic reading.  So now I’m reinvestigating her stuff.   I think, just between you and me and the rest of the Internet, this is the first book of poetry I’ve bought off my own bat — not as a required text for a course or anything like that.  Huh, fancy that.

When one of your dilemmas in life is selecting which of many interesting books you will read next, life’s pretty fine. I still feel as though I am rediscovering reading: I want to hold books up to people and ask if they knew about this strange new technology or witchcraft. It’s pretty sweet.

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2010 02 21 bethini etc. Comments (0) Permalink

What’s important?

How the hell would I know?  I’m a short-arse with blue hair and a predilection for polski orgorki straight from the jar. I think about this question a lot, usually while munching said polski ogorki.  The same answers come up, over and over, from almost everyone you ask.  Family. Health. Etc.  Those are givens.  That’s like saying oxygen or water are important. (Or sandwiches.)  As predictable as such answers are, I think this is a pretty valuable question to ask yourself.  If you know what’s important — to you, anyway — then you’ve got an idea of which direction to move in and which things are worth you expending a few of your precious God-given seconds on.  And if you’ve got no idea what’s important, then you know what to do next: find out.

So, what is? I came up with a list to start with.

  • Enjoying what you eat and drink.  Is there anything worse than choking down some bilge because it’s convenient? I accept that there are times we have to eat crappy, crappy food and drink crappy, crappy fluids because someone we care about (or are desperately trying to suck up to) has prepared it for us — pretending you’re crazy about pad thai when all you really crave at a cellular level is Froot Loops (or vice versa) is no mean feat, but we’ve all been there and it’s totally worth it if it means preserving the feelings of someone we love.  But scarfing down weird processed crap in the name of ease-of-preparation?  No sir.  Not for me. Good food and drink is too important
  • Flossing and sunscreen.  Undeniably important.
  • Animals and plants. Specifically, ones that intersect with your own life. I think there’s a pretty strong impulse in most people in this regard: that’s why we have pets and potplants, even if it’s just some poor struggling succulent on the windowsill. For me, the itch gets scratched through running in the park and around the lake, bushwalking and looking for platypuses, visiting my cats (who still live with the rest of my family) and a beloved brown canine menace that I cohabitate with and who has a love-hate relationship with my clarinet.  Without these, without access to animals and plants (and birds and interesting bugs and snails) I don’t know what would happen to my brain. Something gross.
  • Finding your own voice. I can’t emphasise this enough. Working out which of the conflicting hunches, suspicions, prejudices, assumptions and “facts” in your head are yours and which are memories of things other people have said (and which you’ve adopted) is one of the most fundamentally important things anybody can learn.  Realising that you disagree with what someone else has asserted is really important: even more important is learning that that’s completely okay and does no damage to your relationship with that person.  I think it’s really easy to accidentally adopt the viewpoints or assumptions presented to you by people you look up to, even if you look up to them for reasons completely unrelated to those viewpoints or assumptions. And when you learn that: holy cow, stand back, because you’ve just found your own voice and it’s got shit to say.
  • A good scarf in winter. Does a lot more for warmth than you’d think.
  • Yoga in the morning. Wine in the evening.
  • Something to work on. I tend to think of Freud as one-third brilliant and two-thirds offensively barmy, but I do agree with this idea, often attributed to him: “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness”.  I think that love and work are two key steps to happiness and health.  A goal to work on, combined with an environment of love (for others and for yourself), may not guarantee happiness, but I think it’s a strong start.

I don’t know where all this gets us.  I think these things are important, very important, but I’d be interested to hear challenges or contradictions.  I’d also like to throw the question open to all and sundry, to the birds in the hedges and the twits in the street: what do you think is important?

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2010 02 18 bethini etc. Comments (0) Permalink

Knitting report! Stat!

Okey dokey folkeys, let’s talk knitting. M got me a new camera for my birthday before we headed to NZ, and I have been ROCKING that baby.  And its macro setting.

UFOs! (bold text to indicate sub-heading!)

Silver sands scarf: not wild about the striping, but I’ve decided it’s not for me anyway.  Hoping to whip up a matching pair of simple cuffs or mitts to accompany it.  Plans briefly thwarted when I thought I had reached the last ball of yarn, and much energy was expended spluttering about how such poor yardage was downright criminal (since the scarf was only about 40cm long and I thought I had used three balls) and then much delight ensued when the other two balls were discovered in the bottom of the knitting basket.  Hooray for small delights and also forgetfulness!

Silver-sand-1

Mermaid gloves: finished the first while driving around NZ, cast on the second while drinking in NZ (not as dangerous as it sounds) and am now carrying on, plod plod plod, through the second.  I might have made it a little snug around the top of the arm, but it’s not so snug as to put me off wearing it (I think).  Also, I shouldn’t say ‘plod plod plod’, because frankly the Pomatomus stitch pattern is an utter delight and I’m really enjoying making it.
Mermaid-gloves-3

Gone but not forgotten!

Also, while you weren’t looking, I finished a pair of socks.  Plain vanilla, toe-up, short-row heel socks: they were quite seriously the best socks I have ever made, largely because I took the time to increase before the heel, in order to incorporate a wee gusset before I turned the heel.  That made such a big difference to the fit and also the pull-on-ability of the socks that I have now completely converted to doing all toe-up socks in this fashion.  Sadly, no photos, because these were a birthday gift for my lovely Mumini, and they are now comfortably nestled in her deserving sock drawer.  Probably with a cat on them. I like that.

Probably over-thinking the matter!

One of the things I thought a lot about while travelling is why I choose to do or not do things: I’m surprised to discover how many times I’ve deferred decision-making to other people, assuming that differences in taste amounted to superior judgment.  I don’t like to think I am really as wussy as that sentence makes me sound.  Take knitted skirts.  For a long time, I put off knitting a skirt.  Specifically, Intolerable Cruelty, the gorgeous skirt from Knitty.  I remember seeing that pattern when it first came out, and thinking “that’s awesome; that’s gorgeous: I would totally knit that, except, y’know, it’s a skirt“.  See, my Mumini isn’t mad about knitted skirts, and since she has good taste in most other avenues, I assumed it was Good Taste to not like knitted skirts.  That liking a knitted skirt was a peculiar kink of mine, best left unindulged.  Of course, the idea that liking a garment is some sort of defect or mistake is a peculiar one, now that I hold it up to the light.  Which is a roundabout way of saying I have cast on Intolerable Cruelty in purple bamboo.  This is another thing I can thank Ravelry for, too: checking out all the Intolerable Cruelties knitted up and flaunted all over Ravelry, plus all the people raving about how sexy it made them feel, was enough to make me start to think perhaps I wasn’t so odd for wanting to make it.  Got gauge on the second try, and the gauge is nice and tight, too.  Me like.

Intolerable-cruelty

(Note my sexy macro shot to distract from an essentially dull picture.)

And, oy, if you’ve got the time, let’s talk about that purple bamboo.  I have lost count of the number of projects I have cast on with that stuff, only to frog it back and restart it.  I’m sincerely hoping that Intolerable Cruelty ends up being the most flawless, flattering, comfortable and sexy skirt ever, because that would at least make me feel that I’d been saving the bamboo for just such a garment.  The thing is, bamboo is gorgeous and slinky and nice to handle, but has zero spring and zero memory.  It’s also a little on the weighty side — not as heavy as cotton, but heavier than, say, silk — so drapey garments made out of it really tend to drape, but with the effect of sagging and pulling out of shape, as I discovered when I made a Simple Knitted Bodice out of it.  (Fantastic pattern, by the way, and my bamboo version looked great, but the sleeves got all dangly and saggy and kept pulling it off me, which bugged me after a while.)

Also new!

Skew-1

The Knitty winter surprises came out yesterday, including the fantastic sock pattern Skew.  This arrived just at the critical psychological moment for me: I had unearthed a skein of multi-toned/semi-solid sock yarn in browns and autumnal blues that I had completely forgotten I had bought (hooray again for forgetfulness!).  I don’t wear much brown and I don’t usually like browns and blues together, but this yarn kinda tempted me, nudging me with a raised eyebrow and saying “what are ya, chicken?”.  Then when I rediscovered it the other day, I decided that an out-of-the-ordinary-for-me yarn really deserved a pattern that challenged me, or sparked me, or was just somehow different and quirky.  Behold: Skew.  (Second link there for those of you who didn’t bother clicking the first time.)  I offer a tentative thank you to designer Lana Holden — tentative because (a) I haven’t gotten any further than the sixth round or so, so there’s still a lot of room for disaster to strike; and (b) I’d quite like to know how she read my mind and the contents of the yarn basket to such a perfect degree, and until she explains herself, she only gets a tentative thank you.  Ya hear me, Holden?  Tentative.  (But thanks nonetheless.)

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2010 02 16 bethini knitting Comments (0) Permalink

Awashed away

This morning, when I got up, it was too early.  I was tired and slept unevenly — not badly, some of it was quite nice, like waking up and hearing all the rain whooshing and frogs going beserk with glee.  And I spent some of it trying to invent a new word to adequately capture the sound a car makes as it accelerates off along a street covered in ten centimetres of water (swluische was the closest I got before I gave up).  I love the rain, and it shits me beyond belief when I hear people bitching about it.  I don’t mean to say I’ve never thought “damn, I was going to go for a walk, but now it’s raining” and I’ve had my share of picnics cancelled due to weather, but I don’t buy the whole sunlight=good, rain=bad dichotomy that the weather reporters on TV subscribe to.  I mean, honestly, people: we get an annual rainfall in this area of around zero-point-bugger-all, and so on the few days of the year the rain decides to grace us with its sprinkly presence, it takes preference over your kids’ footy games.  Anyway, got up. Early. Sat for a few moments in the dim living room, prior to doing a little Sunday yoga and tried to think calming, relaxed thoughts.  Something must’ve got dislodged in my brain overnight, though, because calm and relaxed wasn’t for me.  I felt kinda crummy.  All I could think was “I don’t want to do it today”, and I don’t even know what ‘it’ was in reference to.  Certainly not yoga: I’m completely stupidly in love with yoga, even when crankypants, so I charged ahead and did that.  I think ‘it’ just meant the day in general, although if you substitute that in, “I don’t want to do the day in general today”, the grammar gets a bit wobbly.

It’s been a brain-dead day.  I’m going to say it’s because it’s been so blissfully rainy: part of me is responding instinctively to the relaxing rain swooshing around.  Which is fine.  Except insofar as it relates to knitting.

So I cast on Intolerable Cruelty on Friday night.  Successfully completed the cast on, the nine rounds of st st, purled the turning round, then another couple of rounds of st st before I realised my gauge was off.  I cursed a little, but since I hadn’t taken the time to do a gauge swatch anyhow, I knew I only had myself to blame, so rallied, unraveled, re-cast on. I got gauge with the second needle, spot on.  Proceeded merrily along, congratulating myself on my maturity at identifying and correcting the problem so early on, and then wondered why I kept getting the yarn tangled around the needle.  I was about halfway through the morning, just past that purled turning round, when I realised it was because…I’m embarrassed to even type this…I twisted the cast-on.  Oy, rank beginner mistake: you have reminded me that none may escape Knitter’s Hubris. Unraveled Part 2.  Then I cast on again (third time, but who’s counting?) and counted the stitches.  I had too many stitches, so I slid the extras off the tip of the needle…but from the wrong end. I slid off the starting slipknot and the first dozen stitches or so.  Without the slipknot, the rest of the cast on is pretty compromised, so…yeah. Unraveled Part 3.  Then I decided to take a little break, have some lunch, listen to the rain some more…cast on again.  Fourth cast on.  So far, so good, but it does mean I’ve been knitting on this skirt all weekend and have very little to show for it.

Mind you, this skirt is mostly stockinette.  I’m not so skilled a photographer that I know how to make this interesting. Imagine a circular needle, with maybe eight rounds of stockinette on it.  Yup, that’s it. That’s my knitting progress for this rainy weekend. (Try and make it exciting, too, while you’re imagining it.  I’d appreciate it.)

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2010 02 15 bethini etc.
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I guess I’m back

I put off unpacking my suitcase as long as I could.  It’s as though, in the dim, kindergarten parts of my brain, I felt like unpacking would be the step that prevented me from going overseas again. Not the necessity of going back to my day job, not the lack of funds, no sir: washing my grubby, hiked-in clothes would be the sword that sliced the thread back to New Zealand.

Dudes, New Zealand is an incredible place. M and I spent January there, and we saw a lot. The biggest highlight was Fiordland, the World Heritage area on the south-west of the South Island.  It’s the most beautiful, dramatic, glorious place I’ve ever seen.

(Beth in NZ) Fiordland

Look at it!  Man, isn’t that incredible?  Sweet Jesus, what a fantastic sight. I’m getting all wistful now.

Anyway, you’ve got to go.  New Zealand is incredible.  It was a wonderful trip: eye-opening, exciting, and demanding.  We walked as much as we could, all over the cities and all over the short tracks in Fiordland — hours every day. I thought a lot about travel and why I love it, and I thought a lot about how much stuff I did without and didn’t miss at all while we were travelling — which lead to a whole lot of thinking about what’s necessary and needful in my life, about where my priorities are, and all that kind of stuff. Interesting, if only to me!  The bring-home message is that I’d like to live on less: I kept wondering why there were so many things I did while at home that I saw no need to do when I was travelling.  If I can do without them while travelling, why can’t I do without them at home?  There’s so much excess and too many things to attend to in my stumpy little life sometimes, and I’m going to practice putting some of them aside in favour of quieter and richer things.

Getting home was a bump, as it always is: I was ready to come home by the end of the trip, but I brought a new perspective home with me and that has made me more critical of some parts of my life.  (On the flipside, it’s made me less critical of others, so that I’m hopefully maintaining a steady average of criticalness.) Plus, it’s always tricky to readjust to the realisation that you simply cannot spend every day eating delicious toasted muesli in cafes, bushwalking through alpine national parks and enjoying New Zealand pinot noir. That’s a rude shock.

But anyway, I’m back.  And it’s nice to be home, where my bed is, and touch base with my friends and family.  But if the offer came up, I’d bolt again in a heartbeat.  Dudes, you’ve got to go.  NZ is heaven.

2010 02 13 bethini chatter
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