Rachael

Cracking open the Sofia Coppola Blanc de Blancs sparkling wine (let’s just call it champagne, shall we? Flout the Treaty of Versailles). It comes with its own straw! Champers in a can! Just the thing to celebrate, don’t you think?

I just typed The End.

For the first time, I typed The End.

It’s not really the end, it’s the beginning of revisions. But I did it.

I am so happy. I have a completed novel. My tongue is tingling. I might have breathe into a paper bag or something. I did it.

 

So my friend Emily, designer of many beautiful patterns, including Coachella, left me a comment saying she wasn’t THAT interested in Ravelry, since she knit her own designs. I hear that, oh, yes.

But out of the spirit of fun, I went to Ravelry, and looked up Coachella, and told her just how many of them were in progress among the 8000+ users, and how many times it had been queued, all that fun stuff.

I looked through the user photos.

And suddenly, a pattern that I’d had NO interest in making, because it looks so great on small-framed marathoner Emily and therefore probably not so much on me, suddenly jumped not only into my queue, but out of my stash onto my needles because boy HOWDY did it look good on the girls of a bigger size. Honey, we can carry this off, and you should make one, too!

Took only 5 TV nights to make, seriously great pattern. I went with Cotton Fleece, 2.1 skeins used, in alpine lilac. I went with the 29" bust even though I wear a 38" bra — the pattern says the 29 would fit up to a 36, and I wanted negative ease and I didn’t want it to fit too loosely. My racerback jogbra fits just right underneath, and I LOVE THIS.

Wearing it right now, in front of the fan.

 

PS – I made the skirt up there, too, I just realized. Pockets! Yay!

Confession: I have recently started a writing blog. It’s HERE, and it’s based on the Treadmill Journal idea I stole from PoMo Golightly (through the writing group in Ravelry! Yay!). It’s boring, mostly, and only documents my own writing angst, but the writers among you might like to read it, or try something similar. It’s certainly kick-started my writing again, in a big way. And I just wrote this, and I’m stealing it from myself, so you don’t even have to go over there, but this made me feel good:

I realized something yesterday, something huge. This novel I’ve been working on, it’s a genre romance. There. I said it. I’m writing it for a target audience, and I have writer’s guidelines in mind. I will say, right now, that having read romances for years and years as a teenager and into my early twenties, I knew there were a lot of bad ones out there. But I kept reading them because some of them were good. Well written. Engaging. Romantic. That’s what I’ve been going for. I can write literary fiction and Be Serious; I can and have pulled that off. But it’s been a much more fun ride, this silly romance. Really, really fun.

And perhaps that’s how I got this far, and reached this realization: I’M ALMOST DONE. No, really. Yesterday, I realized that I only had one more big scene in mind, and that it was the denouement. But that couldn’t be! I was only up to 66,000 words!

Then I checked the guidelines, and ahem, that’s above the upper limit for the slim-sided imprint I chose to target.

In eloquent literary terms: Dude. That means I get to write a few more scenes, and I’ll be DONE. Which means I will type the words The End. That, of course, won’t mean the end of work, lots of editing, and apparently, paring down to meet to word count, but that’s a good thing — there are several scenes in the book that strike me as background rather than essential.

But it’s there! The end is coming! It’s reachable! I could hardly sleep last night. Look at me, wasting all this time here. Need to be moving into writing.

Ha! I didn’t mean to post that sweater picture today — I had preblogged it while I was recovering, and I must have put it on the wrong day. What I’m going to post today is this:

**Hours before:

Now this is something I’ve never done. I’m lying on my stomach on Pompono Beach, just south of Half Moon Bay. This is just what I needed.

I spent the early morning driving Lala around, as she was leaving on her tour. And then, unreasonably irritated at having to fight traffic after going back for forgotten and necessary glasses, I decided to just keep driving. Counterintuitive, yes. But I got on 880 and headed south, intending to head for Half Moon Bay but not really remembering which bridge to cross the bay to get there.

I ended up going over the wrong bridge, but turned myself around, and found Half Moon Bay. I spent a few hours wandering, writing at a cafe, fondling yarn at Fengari (got away with only sock yarn and the new Vogue), and book browsing,. Then I headed south on Highway 1, enroute to Pescadero and that ollalieberry pie at Duarte’s I always rave about. 

On the way, I pulled over at Pompono Beach, grabbed my bag and the sheet out of the back of that station wagon, and here I am.

It’s gorgeous. I’m propped up on my elbows, facing the water. I’m typing lying on my belly, just like Carrie always did in Sex and the City, and really, it’s not as comfortable as she made it look. But it’s working.

Just a little cloudy, but with enough sun that I was too warm in my light sweater and I took it off to use it for a pillow later. Cool breeze on my arms, but my legs are warm from sun. The waves breaking at the shoreline are the exact color of the most common green of sea glass, with a deeper azure out toward the horizon. It’s bright enough that I can’t see the screen at all — I’m typing blindly and will fix typos later. The ocean is roaring.

There are a few families on the beach, some of them looking like they planned to be here, beach chairs, coolers. Some of the kids are in swim suits, which in northern California is just plain nuts. But they’re far away — it’s as if they got out of their cars, got on to the sand, and plopped down, not able or willing to walk for two more minutes to be away from the voices of others. The only thing that reaches me from the groups is the slight whiff of cigarette smoke, and it smells so good. I love that smell.

The surfers here aren’t that great, but they’re funny. They’re trying to ride, but the break is so close to the shore that few are getting up, and when they do they have to pump their boards hard with their feet just to stay on top for a few seconds.

OHMYGOD, a huge flock of seagulls is getting closer. Hate seagulls.

I can’t remember the last time I was on my stomach on the beach, playing idly with sand in front of my face, napping a little, waking and thinking a little. Pie soon. Yes.

**I wrote the above, then I took a little nap, and then I watched the clouds overhead. More like a very light, broken fog. It looked like, and I can’t help it, white cashmere fiber. Clouds of cashmere, all short fibers, poofing out above me. 

I can’t tell you how relaxing, how unexpected the day was.

I had a crab sandwich and a pint of beer and my pie, and I read my new Vogue Knitting at the counter at Duarte’s. The waitress liked me. I went a little farther south and explored the Pigeon Point Lighthouse (which is also a hostel and has a hot tub on the cliff edge — hello, private room!). (My cell phone was dead, so no photos, I’m so sorry. I would have loved to have shown you my day.)

I stopped and bought apricots and beets from a roadside vendor. I drove home singing.

And a bonus! Picture of a baby kitty! Smallest, wee-est, seven-week old baby too young to really be separated from his mother, but she was feral, and took off, leaving him behind:
Guess who?

My Digit! 11 years ago.  He’s doing so well…. his balance is still strangely off, but we’re watching him closely. He’s all healed, and he is NOT going out of the house. Nope. And that is all. Me, I’m recovering well but I’m tired from my long day. Still can’t talk for that long without throat pain, but the rest of me feels great! Hooray! 

Got tired of hairclip, and I like this way of closing it. What do you think?

(I think this is my last preblog. Hopefully I’ll be back among you real-time-bloggers soon.)