Rachael

I’m an okay knitter. I’m no Wendy, for gosh’s sake, but no one is (that’s why we worship her). But I’m all right. I can cable. I can do color work. I can do fancy cast-ons and bind-offs.

SO WHY THE HELL CAN’T I MAKE A DECENT I-CORD? They always suck. I know, this one’ll be felted, so I don’t care. But what’s my freaking problem? I alternate between pulling the first stitch taut and leaving it easy. No dice. Still freaky weird loops appear wherever they feel like it, taunting me.

Look:

Bah.

Here’s the Booga J bag, pre-felt: (I love it, you darlings: Rob and Greta!)

Now. Off to bed for a quick nap, then a drive down the coast with the top down (which sounds lovely, but will be more like a buggy race through garlic fields with dry heat in the triple digits), and to the conference tonight.

Enjoy your weekends, folks. Knit a lot. Love a lot, too. Uh huh.

This morning I left a copy of Native Speaker, by Chang Rae Lee, out on the sidewalk a house down from mine. I wrote a note and stuck it inside, telling the recipient, “Enjoy and Peace.” It made me happy to free a book so close to my home (although I talked to Mom, and she had an AMAZING idea – she was going to release a book in the local hospital waiting room – two years ago today while I waited for her to come out of recovery, I would have appreciated that. My mother is the coolest).

I have to admit, though, that I sat looking out my window after I put it on the sidewalk. I wanted a glimpse of the person who picked it up, even though I knew that probably wasn’t a good idea. I sat and sat and sat; no one walked by. This is strange, as my neighborhood is always full of people walking and riding bikes, and it was seven in the morning. Prime time in my hood.

Instead, I saw a green car pull up in front, and a brown-haired girl sat inside for a few minutes pulling kleenex from a box on her back seat. She sat for another minute, then got out her cell phone and dialed. A minute later, Doug from upstairs came running down to meet her. She got out of the car, came around to its front, looked up at him, and wrapped her arms around him. They stood like that, without saying anything for at least a minute. Maybe two. She gave him a tissue, he got in, and they drove away. Doug moved here from New York a year ago. I noticed he was wearing a NYFD tee shirt.

I decided then I didn’t need to know who picked up my silly book, and that I had already seen the day being honored. I went to bed.

**
This is NOT what I meant to write. Not even sure where that came from. What I meant to write is about how blocked I feel as a writer lately, but I don’t feel like talking about that now. I’m going to the writers’ conference with the little mama this weekend, and I’m going to use that to spur me onwards. AND, I get to have donuts at the beach and clam chowder in Pismo. I’m going to finish my booga noro bag (ooooh! Mom has hot water in her machine! I’ll felt!) It’ll be a good weekend.

I revamped my list of sites to the left – I’m leaving only a link to some of my favorite links, and one to Bethany’s page (she’s in Cody, Wyoming!). I have too many sites (and people) that I love and adore, and there are more everyday. Sometimes I just groan when I find more writing that I enjoy. I don’t NEED this many pages to hit. But I do. We do. It’s a grown-up version of pen-pals, this time with pictures! And knitting!

Today’s a day to love. Sending you all of mine. Enjoy each other.

This is a wonderful idea, cribbed from Go Fish, who cribbed it elsewhere.

On Sept. 11th, join a “poetical happening” and free a book!

Because a book is a symbol of freedom, sharing and tolerance…

On Sept. 11th, 2003, take a book which is important for you, a book that has changed your vision on the world, write in it a dedication, a few words, or a drawing, and free it!

Leave it on a roadside bench, a bus stop or in a cafe making it available for any unknown reader. In this way, Sept. 11th will be not only an anniversary of tragedy. Together, let us affect this global sorrow with creative and generous action.

A general mobilization from Bruxelles, Paris, Florence, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Whidbey Island and more. Almost all over the world, readers, artists, writers, poets, and publishers of vision and heart will free books that are important for them on Thursday, Sept. 11th, 2003.

Get involved and tell your friends. Readers, authors, publishers – free a book, because a book is a symbol of freedom, sharing and tolerance.

It’s just Bookcrossing, but without the ID numbers.

I dread the coming of September 11th, in part because I don’t know what I feel. Sad, yes. Of course. But I have more memories of the day than that. My mother went into hospital at noon that day and had surgery for colon cancer. I spent the afternoon in San Luis Obispo, walking around gift shops where stunned clerks listened to radios and watched TVs and seemed personally affronted that I wanted to buy my mother CDs and sweatshirts and robes and flowers. I went to give blood for my mother and found that the donation line was over six hours long. I thought about how 9/11 had always been Dispatcher Appreciation Day. Not that anyone knew it, but I thought, damn. Here goes our holiday. And behind that, always, the solid wall of grief.

When Mom woke up, we watched the news. We turned it off at night, briefly, so I could read Jan Karon’s Mitford books to her. Those, about the idyllic love story of a small town clergyman, were the opposite of the fear being broadcast. I never wanted the hospital TV to be switched back on. I only felt like it would hurt my mother. It was sure as hell hurting me and I wasn’t recovering from being split open. Well, not literally. But we had to watch, didn’t we?

I’m not diminishing the day, and its horrific losses. I couldn’t. It took me a long time to even start getting over it. But listen: I’m going to a writing conference with Mom this weekend. With my mother!

That’s something worth celebrating.

So in honor of the day, and in honor of the best reader I know – I’ll be freeing a couple of books. Wanna join me?

P.S. – Thanks for all the ant tips. They actually got scared by the collective wisdom I was garnering and fled before I had to try ANY of them. At the first rain they’ll be back, though. But what they don’t know is: Now I’m armed! You TRY it! I’m almost looking forward to it. Wait…. Nah.

P.P.S – Bethany’s on the move again!

You’ll notice that I actually named no names when I posted that picture of the melted keyboard. I happened to be NEARBY when it was boiled. I take great comfort in the fact that I didn’t do the actual scalding of said keys. Of course, I’ll admit that in the back of my head, I was thinking, “that’s terrific! What a good idea! I’m going to do that when I get home!” And when they came out all twizzlered like that, I was the first to make fun (and the first to grab the camera). But I admit, I did think it was pretty smart there fer a minute. Hee.

Here are the toe-up socks I finally finished.

I used the marvelous Wendy’s pattern, and I love the short-row shaping of it, but I think I’m going to modify it a little. I CAN’T USE SIZE ZERO (US) NEEDLES EVER AGAIN. I kept accidentally using them to pick my teeth. Or shishkebob. Hey! How’d that piece of cubed beef get on the end of my needle? I was fearful for my eyes, they were so small and sharp (the needles, not my eyes). I think next time I’ll take some of the stitches out and use perhaps a size two. Maybe even three. It just took toooooo long, even though I do love the weft of them.

Last night I dreamed I couldn’t find a friend after an evening of exquisitely unexpected and entirely unavoidable closeness – we were at an amusement park with differently themed rooms. I left clues, my jacket on a post, and saw his clues, his hat on a fake tree, but we were both too busy and too smart to look in the right places. That was the worst part – the knowing he was somewhere, just around the corner…..

Aargh.

I do love the FEEL of life, though, don’t you? The quiet joy of any expressed emotion. It makes it all worth it.

Avoid the skewer bamboo needles. I’m convinced they’re more dangerous than we know. And don’t boil your keyboard.

This is why you don’t snap the keys off the keyboard and boil them to make them cleaner. Sounded like a good idea at the time, huh? The space bar, curved like an S, is currently being used as a plant hanger.

It’s Monday. That doesn’t quite mean for me what it does for the rest of the world. It’s still my weekend, and I’m still cruising along in low gear. I’ve had a whirlwind of one so far, so it’s nice to just sit and stare into the computer’s glow.

Stitch’n’Bitch at the bar was good, although anticlimactic. Only four people total, and only about an hour, it was the last one I’ll hold there for at least six months while I’m on my new shift at work. I’m glad, though. I don’t like being the One In Charge Of The Group. I like to GO to functions, not throw them. I’m looking forward to having nights off and being able to go to the Crafty Bitches’ Wednesday night group at the Lex. Or Tuesdays at my LYS. Or Mondays at Barnes and Noble (I know, but it’s run by a very sweet woman who spells her name, Rachael, correctly).

Bleah. Stilted and slow this morning. Have been trying to wake up for an hour now. It would really help if I went in the kitchen and made myself an espresso, but the countertop is black with ants, and I can’t bear to deal with them.

I HATE ants. They take my apartment hostage every fall, and I fight and fight and fight and eventually I capitulate and do the horrid bombing that’s the only thing that really works. I hate ant spray, I hate poison of any type, so it makes me CRAZY. I’ve tried the home remedies, the cucumber rind, the boric acid, (fill in the blank). Do you have a miracle cure that doesn’t involve substances that can kill small animals and cause visitors entering the room to twitch jerkily? (Wait, that might not be the ant spray….)

So, if I walk into the kitchen, I’ll have to do something about the ants. As long as I can avoid that room, I’m all right. I think I’ll just sit on the couch and eat the fudge my sister Christy just brought for me instead. Sisters are good things, yeah? Bethany’s in Montana now, at a friend’s house. Lynn’s actually an ex of mine, one of those people I’m glad to have been able to keep as a friend. A year she got fed up with rat-race that is corporate life in the Bay Area, sold her Oakland loft, and moved to the wilds of Livingston, MT. She has two dogs and a cat and an old Victorian in a train town. She’s friends with the mayor. She attends charity auctions. She rides horses. From everything I hear from her, I’m not sure that her life has really slowed down in any way, but the timbre of it has changed. It’s nice to watch. And I’m glad Beth is under her kind wing for a few days. It sounds like Beth’s been running a little fast (carnies and the Wal*Mart parking lot), and it’ll be nice for her to slow down some.

Oh – here’s a picture of the Ethiopian flag cake – no, I didn’t make it (are you kidding? You know what my kitchen is like right now. A coworker of mine is brilliant at cakes; not only do they look good, but they taste GREAT. I think I had two pieces. Maybe three).

The party went off smashingly – who knew Jenn had so many friends? A going-away party for someone moving to Africa for a year: It was like a wedding without a groom, or a funeral without a body. Everyone from all parts of her life were there, and it was sweet as heck.