Waiter, Another Weekend Please

Still completely zonked. It's sad. I spent yesterday morning trying to get the online shoo back up but it was definitely a trial. There's still a ton of new stuff to add in, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it yesterday. I did get some work done on TeddyLion: he now has a neck and arm holes. And Tina's cowl and my first Ainara glove got finished at the fest. The second glove is probably a third done. And I cast on my sister's Christmasy cowl.  So pretty productive. But the end result is that I'm still pooped. I didn't get to make my pies either, though hopefully I'll get to put those together this evening.

I also went to the chiropractor for the first time ever. I'm pretty sure it'll be the last too. I was super sore all day yesterday and I feel the same as I did before I went to see him today. So that's it for that, methinks. Stupid Groupon.

I know this isn't the happy festival recap update I promised. It will come, probably this evening or tomorrow. I'm just in a cranky mood today and I want to be able to put some joy into it. Part of the crankiness comes from being tired and this being pseudo-Monday, and part from some irritating friends who were gungho about a little road trip planned months ago for this coming weekend but who are now ignoring my messages and dodging my calls. And part is from a little self-loathing. I really really need to get a better grip om both my finances and my diet. I sound like a broken record, even to myself, I just can't figure out how to make a change that will stick. With finances I just really need to cut down on my spending because particularly after this weekend's minispree. No more eating out or getting delivery, no more etsy purchases except for Christmas gifts, less swapping to cut down on postage.... that's easy enough. And it does play right into the diet thing. I need to get to the gym at least three times a week and stop eating irresponsibly. These are things I've said and started and tried and failed at a dozen times in the past few months. This time it just needs to stick. Needs to. I need to conquer this desire to do nothing but sit around and knit and nap and eat. Pure willpower. That's what needs to happen. Hopefully writing about it will help, and maybe I'll start up on Weight Watchers again. We'll see. But for now... pure willpower. =]

Now if only I weren't so tired...

Exhaustastic

I am exhaustastic. Which is exhausted but fantastic. The past weekend was a blur. I hope to write more in depth about the festival, but I don't think I'm clear enough to do so now. I went out with my last helper, my dear friend Alexis, for a cupcake at Crumbs, then drove her to her opera rehearsal. Drove home. Boyfriend & his friend came home with Indian food. Watched some Frozen Planet (which is awesome and worth your time, by the way). Updated my Rav stash. Again. And now I'm just kind of staring into space in a yarn-induced stupor. It's definitely not helped by the fact that Boyfriend & his friend are sitting around creating Pathfinder (read: Dungeons & Dragons) characters and debating which kind of dinosaur their character should ride. Which is confusing and surreal and as my mind is tired & in a suggestible state I'll probably be romping around on a dino in my dreams later. While knitting. And wearing a squid hat. ...it's been an eventful weekend lol. I'm eternally grateful to have tomorrow off. I'm going to go get lost in Rav pattern searches now, so that I may figure out what to do with my skein of mink yarn. Because I now own mink yarn. As Alexis would say, "Cray cray!"

My Point Of View

I wasn't really planning on posting anything today because, let's be real, I'm EXHAUSTED lol. Towards the end of the festival today I was finally succumbing to what I believe to be a hardcore allergy attack. Headache, nausea... It may also have been a migrane, because the blinkiness of the sun between the trees on the drive home made me want to die. After some restorative English Afternoon tea & Digestives (God, but I love the Brits) I was recovered sufficiently to peruse my purchases and update my rav stash. I was more relaxed than I have been in... a while. I put on some music, Boyfriend was working (read: playing a game on the computer), and Bosco was observing me from the top of the couch where he likes to perch...

Bosco did come to investigate for a time, but as he has yet to get over his crippling fear of yarn, he did not make it very far before retreating to the couch again.

When I finished taking my pictures in the terrible, terrible overhead light of my apartment, I slid myself carefully up onto the couch and used Bosco as a pillow. He's very skittish and nervous about a lot of physical contact with us, but for some reason he doesn't mind it when I do this. I love it because it does show a certain level of... trust? Not sure what the best word would be. He can just be so terrified of us sometimes for no apparent reason, and as he is a rescue with a history unknown to use I imagine that's his right. Which is why it kind of means something to me that he lets me cuddle up to him that way. I was in such a relaxed, magnificently peaceful place, and then a new song came on.

Ever have one of those moments when you're just kind of in the zone? No zone in particular, just a zone, and the perfect song comes on to capture the moment? It might not even be a song you would have picked to encapsulate this little picture frame in time, but when you hear the lyrics, and I mean really hear them in that moment, it's like the hand of fate reached out and altered the shuffle on your music player of choice to provide you with the icing on the gooey brownie of that moment. I had that. And it was perfect.

I feel better when I paint my days
With purple seas and left-out greys
Strange is just a different point of view

Life moved and I stopped to taste it
I drank it up 'til it left me wasted
But my rains have bled a softer red
Oh, you should see
The world inside my head
                                   --"World Inside My Head", Sister Hazel, Before the Amplifiers

Day 1 of NJFAF: Complete

Stupendous day today! I had such fun and met so many excellent people! It's just so much fun, not to mention relaxing, to be around so many people who GET my fiber obsession and yet who are different enough from myself and each other that lively and engaging conversations are to be had everywhere. From the tiny little boy with the shock of blonde hair and blue eyes that came right up to me and said, "This is a LOT of YARN!" to the elderly woman with the walker & dual hearing aides who, in between lamenting that she didn't do more knitting, writing, and reading when she could still see well enough was raving about her Nook and excited about cowls, everyone was awesome! I mean that truly; I do a lot of craft shows and most of the time attendees are politely disinterested at best. And I understand that a lot of that probably comes from the nature of what I sell. If you don't know anything about fiber arts, the yarn & roving is fun to touch at best and utterly baffling to most. And since everything I make isn't made of Red Heart Super Saver (no offense intended, it definitely has its place) and I can't sell scarves for $5, everyone who's just looking for a cheap Christmas gift for dad walks away too. And at your average show, that's 95% of people who come by. It's not their fault, and I've learned to pick and choose my shows carefully in recent years to minimize the perplexed looks. But this... This crowd, the attendees, the fellow vendors, the coordinators... It's only the end of Day 1 and I've already had a stupendous time. I'm SO PSYCHED for tomorrow.

I did manage to keep my spending under control (mostly) today. My neighbors have tried to sell me another spindle, but I'm going to try and gracefully give it back tomorrow as $50 on yet another spindle is really not in the budget. Especially when there's YAK to be had. I mean, come on. Srsly.

I'll try and post pictures on Monday, mayhaps. I'm really tired and tomorrow is another longish day, so I should get my little buttski to bed. I also need to give my darling Bosco some attention, as he's feeling miffed at being left alone all day. He's scared of yarn, so he just doesn't get it. He's super cute though. =D

Exhausted...

Given my long, sordid, and oftentimes ooky medical history, you'd think that a little blood draw would be nothing to me. But as the lucky genetic recipient of my grandfather's deep-set blood vessels, it's something I avoid if at all possible. No one has ever, ever gotten in on a first try: the number is usually more like four or five when all is said and done. Even talented and experienced flebotamists are stymied by my arms. And while I have no real fear of needles, my body freaks out every time they sit me down with the intention of sticking me with one. I've always had extremely acute physical reactions to stress; regardless of how zen or unstressed my mind might be, tears, panic attacks, spikes in blood pressure, and fainting are all possibilities in Angelaland. I don't even get upset, my body just goes haywire. I've even developed an allergy about stress: prolonged periods of stress will cause me to start breaking out into hives.

So, needless to say, my two-hour sojourn to the doctor yesterday was not pleasant. I remain anemic and exhausted and have a giant "bruise" in the crook of my elbow that still hurts, but hopefully this is almost at an end. Boyfriend was sympathetic last night and took me to our local bbq place. A full rack of ribs, veggies, coleslaw, and soda for less than $30. Can't argue with that. Especially when it's followed by Dairy Queen. I then finished tagging and labeling everything for this weekend and relaxed with the Azapa cowl before passing out.

I feel ready for the fiber fest. Mostly. The bulk of the anxiety is gone, now I'm just ready for it to start. Today is mandatory relaxation day. I have an appointment with my wonderful eyebrow lady and then to get my hair chopped off. If they have time I'm going to splurge for a mani-pedi too. If not, I'll just paint my toesies when I get home. Then it's catch up on tv and work on cowl/teddy lion time, and early to bed. That's the plan, anyways. This all assumes that I survive this day in the office.  Everyone seems to have lost their mind. Something is afoot, but I don't know what and if I don't need to find out that's a-okay. I'm just going to keep my head down and try not to take an anemia-induced nap. =)

Fiber Fest... She Comes...

I feel like I haven't fully come awake yet. Even though my extra large coffee from QuickChek is long gone and I've been out of been out of bed for over six hours now, it's so grey and wet and yucky out that I just can seem to shake my desire to curl back up in bed with my book and cat and read until I lapse into an awesome afternoon nap. Holy wow that's a long sentence. Anyway, it's making it very difficult to wake all the way up.

Not that I would actually curl up in bed if I got to go home. With the fiber festival less than three days away, I'd get back to prepping. Reskeining dyed hanks, probably. I'm heading over to my parents' after work where the bulk of my stock lives and taking an inventory of everything and hopefully getting the car packed up. This does mean I'll be driving around with my entire business crammed into my car for a few days, but it's better than having to get up even earlier on Friday to do it without my father's help. He's a packing genius and it'll be so much easier to just have him do it in one fell swoop. Sighhhhhh.

Current WIP Roundup
Teddy Lion: I really have to get back to this. Really really. It's just something I have to actively pay attention to. But the baby shower approacheth quickly! Damn. I've still got just the head done. This is my number one priority starting Monday.

Tina's Cowl: Frogged the slip stitch pattern because it just wasn't working out. The mock cables are going quickly and I'm thinking this will make a good project to work on at the Fest.

Azapa Crosshatch Lace Cowl: Threw this on the needles because I was in dire need of a quick fix project. This yarn is AMWRAZING. I'm definitely going to use this to start my first sweater. Got to get collecting! This is the perfect yarn for a cowl, though - lightweight but super soft and warm, just the slightest bit fuzzy. Once I finish Tina's cowl this weekend I'll knock the rest of this out.

Ainara Whirlpool Fingerless Gloves: I totally forgot about these. These too will come this weekend - what better place to work with my own dye job than where I'm selling it?

Homespun Tree Skirt: Ugh. I'll get back to this once everything else is finished.

That teddy lion is killing me. I have the day off on Monday (thank goodness, after the insane weekend I'll be having) and I'll just make myself work on it. Maybe put on some How I Met Your Mother reruns on Netflix or something. If I thought I could bribe someone to do it I would do it and happily, especially since it occurs to me that I have NO clue how I'm going to attach the ruff that will take it from bear to lion. Crochet, I guess. At the very least the pattern I'm using (Vera) is knit in one piece, so the "assembly" is really just weaving in ends, stuffing, and adding eyes and the ruff. No sewing on of limbs or heads or ears. Seamless. It's a beautiful thing. ...I hope.

Grumble grumble. I should go eat my apple. And make a price list for this weekend. And get my donation to the raffle ready. And probably a dozen other things. Fiber fest, though art both temptress and slave driver at once.

Freedom of the Blog

I swear I say this every time I "start" a blog, but I have confidence this time... Confidence and (I hope) fewer illusions about blogging grandeur. It may possibly also be that my persistent case of apathy towards pop culture is kicking in, though it's always hard to tell. I was in the thick of it during the height of Xanga madness but that was a personal journal kind of thing, a means of teenagers to connect and express themselves (at least in theory). The commercialism of it all has always both intrigued and annoyed me; people just get so <I>snotty</I> about their damn blogs sometimes! Maybe that's me being snotty though. After all, to doubt the veracity and worth of a work just because it may have been written from a smartphone makes me a hypocrite, n'est pas?

Because what I started to say was this: every time I start a blog or journal or chronicle of any kind, I always, <I>always</I>, be it a diary from the third grade or LiveJournal from college, promise myself I'm going to write faithfully. There were good chunks of time where I did, too. And I'm certain that, were I to go back through those volumes, most of the initial entries would read just like this one. Often, they were if not the last entry then one of only a handful before the inevitable end.

There's not really any obvious difference this time around. Just hope. And a feeling. The convergence of a few key factors. Work has slowed considerably since the madness and crushing insanity that is the summer at my office. There's finally "an app for that", one that actually seems to work. And... a feeling. It's probably about time. And so, here it is. My blog. Hopefully it'll mostly be about yarn and fibery pursuits (much like my hopes for life at the moment) but I'm not limiting myself to that. I find that I am much like a third grader not only in that I think farts are hilarious, but also that if I tell myself that I CANNOT do something, it makes it far more likely that either I'll do it anyway and feel bad after or that I'll just stop the activity altogether. So whatever. Yarn journal, vanity project, place to rant... I've given myself freedom to blog as the spirit moves me. Here's to hoping that it just keeps moving at all.  =)