Stuff

I love this time of year.  I'm always so glad to get back into the routine of school with the boys and while Christmas is always enjoyable, it seems like life slows down to a much nicer pace when it's all over.

All the Christmas decorations have been put away and now is the time of year that I begin the big purge.  I've been going through closets and putting stuff aside for Goodwill.  I'm always amazed and somewhat horrified by how much we accumulate around here.  The good thing with a small house is that one notices right away when stuff starts to become a bit much.  I'm not a clean freak but I do like an organized house and I don't like a lot of stuff around me.  It makes it hard for me to breathe.  I would like to be remembered for being frugal (not cheap though) and thrifty.

My Oma was frugal and she was ahead of her time.  She was a recycler, re-use and reducer before there was even the catch phrase.  She and my Opa immigrated to Canada after WWI with literally nothing but their clothes.  They took a homestead in Manitoba and worked hard every single day of their lives.  I grew up watching Oma wash out the bags the milk came in, cut the tops off and use them to freeze fruit and vegetables.  She reused aluminum foil and cartons from cream. She turned flour sacks into pillowcases with beautiful crocheted lace edging.  She baked her own bread once a week, grew all their veggies and most of the fruit they ate.  I don't think she ever would have bought a jar of jam and I have very fond memories of watching her "setting up" for winter.  She was always pickling, canning or blanching something.  I love that and I know she did it with love and concern for her family.  I always think of her cringing up in heaven, actually she'd be shaking her head and clicking her tongue in dismay, at the amount of wanton waste that goes on around here.

2012 will be a year of less "stuff" around here.  As a family, we're going to consume less, waste less, and spend more time doing things ourselves, like eating at home, canning and preserving, etc.  We will not be bringing anything into the house without something going out.  I will be on a yarn diet (not fast) and I will not be adding to the stash unless I have a specific project in mind and am ready to cast it on.  We will be joining the community garden and putting in a veggie garden and shopping the farmer's market for produce to preserve.  All in all I hope it will be a simpler, less stressful life.  It takes a lot of energy to manage a lot of stuff!

I think George Carlin's take on "Stuff" sums it up best.

You know what really hurts? Sitting on a size 3.25 Signature Needle Arts dpn. I did this so I know ... it really hurts. It would have hurt even more if I'd bent the needle or if I hadn't pulled it out quickly. Apparently if you're stabbed with something and you don't pull it out right away, the muscles around the object seize up. I knew this because a friend sat on an Addi Turbo needle and had to have it surgically removed from her buttock. I knew all this and was worried about the surgeons ruining my needle, so I quickly pulled it out. It hurt.

I did all this while I was saying to my husband, who was complaining about shopping for Christmas, "stop complaining, you only have me to shop for. I've been to so many malls and stores this season, I'd rather poke my eyes out with my knitting needles than go to another mall." As I said this, I sat on my needle. God has a funny sense of humour, doesn't he?

It was the summer of the frog. I started and frogged so many projects. Why? I would start a project and get well into it and realize that it was not a colour I would EVER wear. I completed nothing.

I did, however, build up my stash to a respectable size. Can a stash ever be too big? I don't think so. I was on a mad spending spree of purchasing pish.

I have been organizing and fondling my stash and am struck by the astounding amount of pish in it. This will be the year of knitting all things grey. I don't think it's a reflection of my mood. It's actually that I came to the conclusion that, although I'm drawn to brightly coloured yarn, I would never actually wear anything done in a bright colour. There are a few exceptions of course (anything orange). On the whole, I wear a lot of pish. What is pish you may be wondering?

My mom coined the word "pishy." She uses it to describe anything black, grey, off-white, taupe, muted, even colours like dark plum, navy, burgundy or forest green. You see my mom likes colours like magenta, fuschia, emerald... you get the picture I'm sure. I am not fond of these colours. Although I do like emeralds in jewelry, I tend to wear more conservative colours - pish.

So this will be the year of knitting pish. I have a beautiful cashmere that used to be greens and pinks (ugh) and Mizzbananie dyed it to a beautiful shade of pish. There are lovely subtle colour changes in it. This is beautiful pish. I have a gorgeous cashmere that was a gift from Blacksheep1 that is the perfect pishy colour. It will make a lovely pishy Heartland shawl. I love pish. Now if only I could get excited about knitting with it.

My recently completed Equinox is a beautiful shade of pishy grey with bright colours inter-mingled. It is the best blend of my world and my mom's world. It's pishy enough to be worn but has enough colour in it to make it a fun knit. It was the one thing that I started this summer and didn't frog - yay!

This is a picture of my latest project. I'm calling it Sacajawea's Sweater (it's actually Buttercup by Heidi Kirrmaier). I started it while driving along Lewis' & Clark's route through Montana, Idaho and Oregon with my family in our RV. I'm knitting it in Blue Sky Alpaca's Alpaca and it's beautiful. After driving that route in an RV with 4 males I decided to call it Sacajawea's sweater because if she were still alive I'd give it to her. Any woman that can take 2 men across country deserves a 100% Alpaca sweater! She's the real hero in that story. I sat in front of the campfire one night, knitting on the sweater and wondering if Lewis & Clark sat around the fire at night, passing gas in various ways and laughing their heads off. Honestly, my boys (all four of them) don't usually behave like that. It must have something to do with being in the woods. I really think that deep down every man has the sense of humour of a 12 year old boy. It was a great vacation but two weeks was plenty for me thanks.

So here's to you, Sacajawea. You're a better woman than I!

The Fine Art of Procrastination

I signed on to do the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics. I committed to doing the Vancouver 2010 Dale of Norway sweater for Connor (my 12 year old). I cast on when the torch was lit, I worked on the ribbing until I could knit no more that night. Saturday morning I got up nice and early to work on the piece a bit before heading out to the barn for the delivery of a new horse we're trying out for Riley (my 14 year old). And that's when the wheels came off of the knitting wagon.

So far I'm only 6 inches into the project. I see endless rows before me and I'm feeling my Olympic dreams slipping away! Perhaps I should follow in the footsteps of the Joyless Knitter and put myself on a schedule? Not only will I not accomplish finishing the Olympic sweater, at this rate I won't even win a medal for the messiest house.

I find myself cleaning rather than knitting. I feel like I'm back in University cleaning out closets and cupboards rather than writing that stinkin' English paper. My house was never so organized and tidy.

Here's what I've learned in this process. Never buy a horse when you've committed to knitting your twelve year old a sweater before the torch goes out on the Olympics. Committing to such a thing will mean that my house will be the cleanest it's ever been (is it a bad sign that I'd rather clean out my pantry and begin patching walls rather than knit?) and my family will be eating a home-cooked meal every single night. At least until the sweater's finished. I'm not sure what this says about me but it can't be good.

knitting vs. texting

Tonight I took my knitting to a hockey clinic that my son was in.  A clinic mind you, not a game.  I pulled my knitting out and was happily knitting away on a mindless piece - not lace!  The woman beside me spent the first 20 minutes of the clinic texting away on her phone, while I happily knit along.  She put her phone away and looked at me and said, in a smarmy kind of way, "I don't know how you can knit and watch your son play.  I would think that knitting would be too distracting.  I would miss too much."  Really?!  Really?!   More distracting than having your face glued to your phone while you're texting away?  Really?!  Do you think that texting requires LESS attention than knitting in a garter stitch for endless rows?  Do you really think while you've been reading your text messages and giggling to yourself I've missed more of my future NHLer's (LOL) performance than you have of yours?  This was of course not my response to her.  After all, I'd been happily knitting and relaxing.  So I simply smiled at her and said, "No it's fine.  I walk and chew gum all the time."

Patience is a virtue

What's the definition of frustrating?  Knitting lace only to lay it out and discover that there's a mistake somewhere and it's gone all wonky.  So you rip back 30 rows, knit another ten and lay it out again only to discover that you haven't ripped back far enough!  Not that I'm saying that's what I did or anything.  But wouldn't that make you want to lay your knitting down and have an    f-fest over it?  Not that I'm saying that's what I did or anything.

By the way, the Heartland shawl is coming along nicely although I've hit a bit of a bump in the road.  I'll pick it up again soon.