hand eye crafts

If you've ever been to a Stitches event, you know how much fun it is, and also, how much walking you have to do.  Therefore, come prepared: That would be yours truly on the left, Mooflower on the left.  In the Market on Day One.  The last time we saw each other was also in Atlanta, about four years ago.  She is truly awesome, and it was great to see her again.  And to meet her friend, Jane. Day One shopping filled one of my Chico bags .  I'd written down amounts of yarn I needed for specific projects, and stuck to buying those.  For the most part. How cute is that little guy?  Shame I can't crochet --- Briton's girlfriend loves otters. Treated myself to room service the first night, having taken a long nap that afternoon and missed dinnertime. Fruit and cheese basket.  Followed the next morning by my standard hotel/room service Eggs Benedict breakfast.  With tiny bottles of Tabasco again. Bought fewer things on Day ...

This is my second trip to Stitches South;  Hannah and I came a couple of years ago.  The hotel has redecorated its rooms, going from warm woods with real character to black and white modular which is plain tacky. The market, which is all I came for, remains the same.  Lots of women wearing lots of handknits.  Mostly shawls.  Don't know how many were wearing handmade socks, but shawls have definitely been the project of choice for, I'd say, 85% of the attendees. Met up with friend Mooflower  once I arrived.  She and her friend Jane have been delightful company these couple of days, despite our difference in style: The market did have a surprise or two: This booth was empty yesterday, but there were men sitting and knitting today.   There was also a handsome man in a kilt strolling around.  Wanted to take a picture of him, but that would have been just creepy. Got my standard room service breakfast this morning: Lov...

Following the lead of my twinster  and knitting a Color Affection shawl.  I'm always late to the game on stuff like this Hot-Pattern-of-the-Moment.  But elann.com  is selling yarn packs for Color Affection, and I thought I'd dive in.  I went with Night Flower , if you're interested. Heading off to Stitches South tomorrow.  Can't leave until after 4, which will most likely put me 1) in Atlanta 5 o'clock traffic and 2) driving into some strong thunderstorms.  But once I'm there, I'm there, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday stretch out before me. It's possible I won't spend that much time at the actual Stitches events.  I couldn't sign up for any classes --- too expensive.  So the only place for me to go, really, is the marketplace.  Not that I'm complaining. Hopefully, these few days away will help me mentally.  My therapist called my trip to Folly Beach last year (last YEAR?) "as good as ElectroShock."  I am in desperate...

. . .is starting with a pulverizing headache. . . .is the week of Stitches South in Atlanta.  I'm going --- are any of you?  Is there anything any of you need me to pick up for you while I'm there? . . .while at Stitches, I may need to buy yarn in "my" color: . . .has me taking one new medicine and new dosages of two of my "regulars."  My doctor is seriously considering ElectroConvulsive Therapy.  I'm just stuck.  And still can't give you a good reason for me to go on. . . .will hopefully have Riley getting her feeding tube removed.  She is eating a good bit on her own.

I don't make New Year's Resolutions.  I've never had a life Plan, Five-Year or otherwise.  My life has always just sort of happened.  Not entirely, of course --- I did set my cap and my jaw for a few things along the way.  But mostly, I've just dealt with each day as best I could. Still, I find myself looking back over this month as it ends and being proud of keeping some promises I made to myself.  I continued with the Alphabetical Authors run, knocking out "R," "S," "T," and beginning "U." And, I took myself out of town.  For the last couple of years, I've been aching to travel.  Big, airplane-y, meet people I only know online travel.  But, still unemployed, Travel has to be smaller, smarter.  One place a month.  The bed and breakfast I began with was ideal, and a wondrous start that made me want to keep going all year.  In fact, my February destination may already be chosen. But that's for another month. ...

My self-promise to take myself on a trip each month has begun a scant 20 minutes from Athens, at a Bed and Breakfast. Only for two nights, but away, and comfortable, and, perhaps most indulgently: a noise machine that can make it sound like I'm by the ocean.  ABSOLUTE HEAVEN. This is the room I'm in: However, I'm the only guest in the house, so I've wandered around and looked at all the rooms.  Already picked out the one I want when/if I come back. The bed is so, so comfortable --- I've knit in the parlor and read on one of the porches --- I've taken as much advantage of being alone while meeting my three goals: napping, knitting, reading.  It's been a good couple of days.

. . .  Every Bag I Saw at TJMaxx That Would Have Made a Great Knitting Bag: Why were you all $129.99?  I mean, every single one  of you. . . . Little Knits :  Even though I don't have a cool new bag to put any of it in, thank you for all the great yarn in my latest shipment.  I'm already working with the organic wool: . . . Stitches South , I made my reservation for you today.  My plan for this year is to take myself on a little "vacation" each month.  Stitches fits that bill for April.  AND I get to see some friends! . . .   Hugh Laurie, I still love you.  This was a wonderful book, and it looks like you've helped make it a wonderful movie. . . .  Girls who were in Barnes and Noble studying for a French test: the terms are not "bone-a-partay" and "coop duh tatt."  Neither of you, I suspect, has a prayer on the exam.  And I would love to know who asked whom to help her study.

In Tennessee, have made one trip to the house, loaded up quite a bit of stuff --- mostly pictures and things, and see quite clearly most things, even the wanted and cherished things, will have to be left. Went to the graves and cried and asked for forgiveness.  There is no way to describe how bad I feel.

My parents' house sold this weekend.  I'm refusing to the play the could-we-have-gotten-more game because I am so drained by everything that has happened in the last year, I've got very little fight left in me. I got money out of a bank account I swore I'd never touch to pay for a hotel room for a couple of days, and am leaving tomorrow.  Hopefully, all the papers will be signed and notarized by Friday morning, because that's when I'm leaving to be back for Briton's birthday. I'll go through the house, and the cabinets, and the drawers, and the closets, and the attic one more time.  Because even though the buyer has given me 10 days after closing to remove any and all things I want, I just don't think I could go up there again.  This has got to be my goodbye trip. If it won't fit in the car, I have to let it go.  I've asked and asked and asked Briton and Hannah what they want from the house, they haven't given many answers, s...

I do not like to shop.  Even online I'm usually not that caught up in it.  Except for one thing. Cowboy boots. Could look at them all day.  I openly gasp at some.  I emit "will-die-a-little-if-these-don't-become-mine" noises often. Last week, I was down.  Hell, I've been down all year, but last week was particularly vicious and personal.  So I took some of what rather small amount of disposable income I have, and bought myself some boots.  These boots to be specific: Right away, the photo does them no justice at all.  The leather is buttery soft and the embroidery is impeccable, and, yes, I might have rubbed them against my face. These boots positively take my breath away.  And they're going with me to Nashville to give me something pretty to look at and contemplate on when everything else threatens to overwhelm me.

I've suddenly found myself with a little bubble of time to get to Nashville this weekend, and I am already panicked through and through.  The thought of going in, even more of staying in, that house just sends me around the bend.  Why, oh why can't there be a way to finish all this up without me having to set foot in there again? The answer, of course, is that when I was there sorting things out for the estate sale, the plan for Hannah to move up was still in place.  That's gone now, although it has been replaced with a strapping and mostly unyielding opposition to me selling the house.  Briton has come to understand the emotional and financial strain keeping it put on me.  Hannah may be there, too, but just won't admit it. At any rate, I'm going up late, late, late tomorrow night and getting out as fast as I can Sunday.  (We thought we had Briton and Hannah's schedules lined up so that he could get her to and from each day, but that blew up about 45...

Don't know who's luckier --- them or her.

Business.  That's how I have to think of this trip to Tennessee.  Get things rolling for the estate sale, and get out of town.  Quickly and efficiently. Except we all know that anything having to do with our parents, our hometown, our family's "stuff" defies being dealt with non-emotionally.  The voice I hear screaming  in my ear's is my mother's.  She was intensely, actually, pathologically, private.  When her health began to decline, I begged her to get someone to come in once a week and run the vacuum, dust a little, wash the dishes.  She flatly, righteously refused because she didn't "want people nosing around where they don't belong --- looking in my drawers and opening my cabinets."  And now, here I am, having an estate sale, where a team  of people is going to be going through almost every corner of the house.  It's like killing her twice.  And I just can't get out from under that. My therapist asked me to try s...

The dog bite is still an extremely painful nuisance.  I'm draining pus out of it regularly, but it feels feverish and hurts to bend.  Still, reading The Gun Seller  and watching "The West Wing" are helping out a lot. A blogging friend whom I did not know long enough, Paula Kilgallon , died a few days ago, after battling Multiple Myeloma for, I think, three years.  She was remarkably good-humored and positive about her situation, and I have been so very saddened at her loss.  Dear God, let someone somewhere see the light and stop focusing on how to give men erections and turn their efforts to killing this monster cancer. I'll be going to Nashville next week, to meet with an estate sale dealer.  It would destroy Mama, as intensely , almost pathologically, private as she was, to know that strangers were roaming through her house, but I simply cannot do it by myself.  An estate sale clears the house out of all but the necessities, and prepares it fo...

When you're driving at 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, Otis Redding and Bill Withers are excellent company.

Today, people were supposed to come and take my mother's car away;  I decided donating it to charity was much easier than trying to get it running and licensed here or towing it to Athens and getting it running and licensed there. Funny thing, though --- the garage doors won't open.  Because there's no electricity in about half of the house.  So I've been sitting here, trapped (can't get my car out, either), waiting for an electrician to just work me into his schedule today.  And I've done all the sorting I can do because there honestly isn't anywhere else to put the bags and boxes.  I was going to make a Goodwill run today and empty out the library (not without a car. . .)  The Got Junk? folks are supposed to be here tomorrow to empty out the garage, where I've stacked as many bags of trash as I can.  See, the plan was to have Mama's car out of the way so they'd have lots more room to work.  But unless I can get the doors open, I'll hav...

Is it still Tuesday?  I got up at 3 AM, drove to Nashville, walked into my parents' house, and discovered mice.   Everywhere.   So I had to call an exterminator.  Before I even set in on cleaning up and out a little.  Which I've done on and off all day --- I've just about run out of places to put the trash.  And you can't tell I've even been in any of these rooms. I think this may be a job too big for me.  So, then  what do I do?

By all rights, I should be in Atlanta right now, knitting and shopping my way through Stitches South .  Instead, I am home sick with some sort of beastly sinus/flu thing .  Sore and clogged throat, stopped-up nose, headache, fever, arms that feel like dead weight. . . I blame my son for getting me sick and his girlfriend for getting him sick. Fin.  ('Cause my arms are tired from typing just this much.)

It is almost beyond my own ability to comprehend that I cannot seem to get to Nashville.  There is no job keeping me here.  The only thing I have on my calendar is therapy one day a week.  And yet, every single time I think a chance has opened up, something else arises that means I either can't go at all, or could speed up and stay for maybe 2 days before I'd need to get back here.  Briton has a show opening.  Hannah wants to come home.  Hannah has to come home for a doctor's appointment.  Briton can't look after the animals because of work and rehearsal schedules. I am looking at the last week of April right now.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that will turn into the week that Hannah finishes school and will need help moving back. I know, I know, all I need to do is put my foot down and say, "I'm going.  Work out your stuff on your own." But it's hard to say that when you're a mom. And when the thought of going back to that house ties ...

Got out and ran errands early this morning so that I could get back and watch The Masters coverage.  I drove through Augusta on my way to Folly Beach;  a beautiful place.  I think I went through when all the flowers and shrubbery were at their blooming peak, as it has been so warm around here.  It certainly looks more green than accented with bright colors on TV. (Some golfers appeal more than others.) Now knitting on 5 different things, as I have been assured a spot in a local artists' market in May.  My request went in months  ago, and I pretty much thought they'd decided against me when I never got a response back. Then, all of a sudden, I get an e-mail this week asking if I still wanted them to hold a place for me.  Gotta get busy. Wrapped up A Prayer for Owen Meany  a couple of days ago.  Tearful ending, but a bit of a slog to get there.  "J" is Mister Pip  by Lloyd Jones.  I can already tell it's going to fly by compar...