It’s been twelve days since I last posted. Here we are, almost to the end of January. The swift passage of time seems impossible and unbelievable.
Where have I been? What have I been doing? My friend, who is the Jazzman’s closest cousin’s wife (did you follow that?), is running for the Ohio State House of Representatives in District 58, and she asked me to be her campaign treasurer. I’ve been very busy with those duties. Then, coincidentally, she needed her website built. That’s one of the hats I wear in my other life—website administration. My son agreed to take care of the build for her, and I’ve been very busy loading pages and tweaking the look.
I don’t even want to think about the number of projects that are sitting and waiting in the basement. They’ll just have to wait. In the past week I’ve had an in-person job interview with one company and a phone interview with another company. I think a lot about my cyber-fiber-friend Shams, who recently started working at Google. She’s having difficulty finding time to sew, as her commute has lengthened, and the stress of a new job with lots to learn has been challenging for her. Now, there’s no company in Youngstown with the oom-pah-pah of Google, but working full-time again would certainly change the layout of my days and weeks. So I’m pondering that—what to give up, what to clear out, how to restructure life.
This is the first interview I’ve had in three years, despite the dozens of applications I’ve completed and résumés I’ve distributed. So that feels good. Maybe it’s time to completely clean out the basement sewing room, keeping only the bare minimum of supplies. Then, in several years, when I really decide to retire (rather than being forced into it by the economy), I can start over with things I really want to have around me.
The Jazzman and I talk about moving from this beautiful old 2+ story house into a rancher, where our aching, arthritic knees wouldn’t have to maneuver stairs several times each day. If we are able to find exactly what we want and figure out what to do with this house, at least a concerted effort to unclutter and purge now would make the process of packing and moving then much easier.
So, anyway, that’s what’s running through my mind. And now a long-overdue post.
While on vacation in Maine, I stopped in at Halcyon Yarn in Bath. Oh my gosh, if I owned a yarn store, this is what I would want it to look like, and the people who work there and helped me with my purchases would be just the sort of people I’d want working with me. While there, I was looking not only for a simple knitting project for the last few days of vacation, but I was thinking about my friend-of-many-years, PianoLady, who was preparing for her daughter’s wedding. Each time PianoLady shopped for MOTB dresses, she’d send me pictures. We thought long and hard long-distance together—as good friends of 35 years do—until she found the perfect dress. At Nordstrom, of course.
The wedding was being held aboard a cruise ship in Florida just prior to taking off for a cruise around the Caribbean. And air conditioning being what it is, there was the chance she would need a light and elegant wrap to assure her comfort. When my hands touched Halcyon’s “Signature Collection Victorian Bouclé“, I swooned. It’s the stuff you dream of when clouds are involved. Then I looked at the sample stole hanging in front of the display, I couldn’t stop petting it.
I had the nice ladies at Halcyon send a skein of the bouclé to PianoLady, and bought the pattern from them. Then piano lady changed color choices on her dress, and Halcyon’s color 101 wasn’t going to work. But by then I was dreaming of tossing this scarf around my own shoulders!
So I ordered two more skeins, had PianoLady send me her skein, and packed the yarn, needles, and pattern into my carry-on for my November trip to Europe. It was the perfect travel project. No-thinking-required garter stitch – knit every row. When I got close to the end of the third skein, I decided I wanted a more generous size, so ordered a fourth skein. I finished the stole during our Christmas concerts, and then started to think what I might wear it with. Nothing! Nothing in my wardrobe called out for this stole. So guess where it lives now—on the back of the couch in front of the TV. Anytime I’m a little chilly, down it comes. I feel a touch of old-world elegance when I’m wrapped in this beautiful froth of chocolate brown wool.
This yarn and pattern is one of those vacation purchases that I’m very glad I made.
