The Importance of Imperfection

It's much harder to find blog fodder when you don't leave the house all day, at some point later this month I'm sure I'll be reduced to conning the cats into doing something cute.

But if I'm not leaving the house, the odds are good that I am getting some schoolwork done. I submitted my last assignment for Art History and got the "A" that I was expecting. (See progress bar for that at 95%!) So tomorrow I'll be making some flashcards out of all the assignments and quizzes. Then I'll spend the next couple weeks memorizing them and take the final exam - hopefully just before Thanksgiving.

And in a day of not leaving the house, knitting also gets done. I finished the blue hat:



Awwww...itdn' it cute? Doncha just wanna take it home and cuddle it? Yeah, whatever - ixnay on the illinesssay - I got the message. But seriously, as much as I like this hat, and it's predecessor, I really wish I had done about an inch more stockinette after the rib, and before decreasing for the crown. Right now it sort of sits on top of my head, very bowler-ish, which is fine but I think that extra inch might give me a better fit. And of course, the joy of knitting for perfectionists is that if something is not exactly right, you can just pull it apart, rip back to where it went wrong, and re-do it. So I could do that, and it really wouldn't be much to fix. But I'm finding myself reluctant to do so.

Oddly enough, when I think about it, I'd almost rather just knit another one from scratch. Call me crazy if you want (I do mean that, crazy and me are old friends, it won't hurt us to get re-acquainted from time to time) but I like knitting these hats up, they work up fairly quickly, until they hit the dpns in the final stretch they are quite portable, and thankfully - there is no sudden world shortage of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride worsted. (You'd tell me if heard a nasty rumor like that? Right? You wouldn't just buy it all up and hog it in your own stash, would you?) So really, why not just knit another one, and if it fits better, give this one away to someone else with a small head?

The other thing that ocurred to me is that, well...I'm actually a Perfectionist in Recovery. (Hi, my name is Kath and I'm a Perfectionist.) I've long since admitted to having a problem, being powerless, and spent quality time 12-steppin' my way to where I am now. Do I really want to risk a slip? It's hard to give up trying to be perfect all the time and it's even harder sometimes for people around you to accept. I tell people, "I used to be Perfect, and now I just settle for Damn Good." And learning to let go of something, and just let it be imperfect, is a big part of the process.

So this little blue hat isn't perfect. Maybe it's just fine as it is. Maybe it's a good hat, but it's just meant for someone else? Maybe it's better to just accept imperfections, and instead of seeing them as flaws, just look at them as the special qualities that make up a unique individual.

Three Good Things

I was working on a little home repair project today and it wasn't going as I expected so I was in a bit of a funk. I headed down to the hardware store for advice and supplies and as I walked past a row of display windows, one caught my eye:



Something about a little flash of pale pink in the corner seemed oddly familiar:



1) Yup! The baby blanket I knitted for the annual pre-school auction was included in the display advertising the event. And whoever put together the window was even thoughtful enough to drape the blanket so the little tag with my name on it was showing. How sweet!

2) I got an email from Stella, telling me that her random number generator had selected me as the winner of some yummy looking yarn. It's going to be a challenge deciding what to make with it, but I'm certainly not going to let it disappear into the depths of the stash. This will have to go to something good.

3) A friend called me this evening and asked me to dinner. Instead of nuking something out the freezer and fending off the cat while I ate it, I had a decent glass of wine, tasty food, and good company. Dinner was followed by a brrrrrisk walk, so I'll be ready to turn in early tonight.

Bird Buffet

This lovely harvest-themed display brought to you by one of our local business owners:



Very nice hay bale, punkins, assorted colorful squash and ears of corn. (Corn! Did you say corn?!?) While I appreciate the efforts of our local merchants to provide attractive seasonal decor, perhaps some thought might have gone towards creating something that would not attract the flying rats we call pigeons? Such as, oh I don't know, not including bird food? (A.K.A. corn) There were a few of these displays scattered around a small marketplace area, and from what I could see, all but one was just covered in fat, hungry pigeons, going to town on the sudden buffet.

The one that the dratted birds were ignoring? Welllll.....not too long ago two people were taking a dog for a walk one night. And, you know.....perhaps these two people were so busy talking, that maybe, just maybe, they weren't giving the dog their complete undivided attention. So, it's not completely out of the realm of possibility that the aforementioned dog might have done something unfortunate in (or perhaps to?) an unfortunate place.

Which now might be considered a public service.
Who knew?

Between midnight and dawn

Phone calls between midnight and dawn are bad. This is a generally accepted premise. Whether the call is an over-liquored ex with an axe to grind, or the local P.D. with an update on the whereabouts of your child, or any one of a dozen or more possible scenarios, usually nothing good comes from a phone call at that time.

So the other night (morning?) when I woke to a ringing phone, I came completely awake. Wide awake and peering at the clock on the night table to see the time is 4:10am. The answering machine clicked on and I lay in bed, dread mounting as it cycled through my outgoing message and finally, an unfamiliar male voice spoke,

"Hi, just wanted to let you know that I love you, goodbye."

I lay awake for a while afterwards - wondering about the sequence of events that led to a most unusual misdial. The likelihood of someone scrambling a phone number so badly as to call into the wrong time zone. Or the possibility that someone in my immediate area was supposed to get that message at such an odd hour, and what reception if would get.

I woke up the next morning and any possibility of it being a dream was washed away by the evidence on my answering machine. As a matter of fact, it's still there now. But before anyone else called me on that line, I did have the presence of mind to try the *69 feature, the one that's supposed to ring back whoever called you last. Because - I thought this person needed to know that their sentiments had gone astray. But it wouldn't go through. Why? A blocked number? A payphone? I don't know.

But what I do know is that someone, somewhere out there, loves you. And last night he called to tell you so.

The sky's the limit

I don't know what's up with me and the sudden "joining" impulses, I don't think I'm usually such a joiner but last week I signed up for:



It seemed like a fun thing to do, and we really do have some spectacular skies sometimes, I thought it would be fun to share them with people who live in other parts of the world, and probably have very different looking skies on the same day. So this morning I got up remembering that I needed to get a good sky photo.

Unfortunately, while very pleasant temperature-wise, today was one of those hazy days where the sky is really nothing to write home about, nothing special, and certainly nowhere near the spectacular display of fluffy cottonball clouds we had a week ago, when I was motivated to jump on this particular bandwagon. It's actually so hazy that not only can you not see the mainland at all, but at certain points in the day you couldn't even see the horizon. Big whoop-di-doo for my first official Saturday Sky pic, right?

But then it ocurred to me, that what I take for granted, might actually be interesting to someone else. That if you don't live in a place where you can see the ocean meet the sky, it might never occur to you that they could completely blend until there was no line between. So here it is:



And truly, there is ocean on the bottom edge of that photo. I went back outside later in the day and took a different shot. In this one you can see the shading in the water.



Lest you think I joined the Saturday Sky ring just to improve my chances of making it through NaBloPoMo (will somebody puh-leeze tell me how to pronounce that so it doesn't sound dirty?), I will swear on the FSM's noodly appendage that I signed up for the ring last weekend. And I just heard of NaBloPoMo on November 1st in David's post on the Sweater Project.

But here's a piece of that fabulous inspirational sky from last weekend, and a funky plant my friend showed me the night before:



Now that's worth sharing!

Knitting news and nattering

In knitting news, I've started another hat:



I'm using the same pattern as the yellow hat(which I happen to be wearing right now - very fetching with my striped jammies) but I think before I start the ribbing I might try decreasing by a few more stitches than last time, just to make it a little more snug on my pointy little head.

It looks like my pattern for this hat might be going into a book someone is putting together right now. Which means that I have to come up with a name for it, something a tad more interesting than The-Perfect-Roll-Brim-Hat-To-Fit-My-Pointy-Little-Head. I've got one in mind that'll do, but it ain't fabulous so I'm open to suggestions. Anyone???

I also have to come up with some sort of little bio and intro/funny anecdote for this pattern and that has me really perplexed. I think if I just sit down and focus I can come up with the bio, but the rest? I'm stumped. Open to suggestions on that too!

The scarf I started to match the yellow hat is coming along nicely - I work on it periodically when it just happens to be closer to hand, or when the hat of the moment has transitioned to dpn's, because I'm still not adept at those to stuff them in my back pack and take 'em to go. And I am not foolish enough to leave the house without knitting.

I was reading the Yarn Harlot's post today and when someone asked how she was able to get so much knitting done she mentioned that she knits while she walks. Which is an interesting idea - and I'm wondering how many other people do that? And how? It just seems a tad tricky to me. I have knit while standing in line at the bank - but you couldn't really compare that to walking, as there really wasn't any forward movement. (I do mean that.) I've been thinking about how to get more knitting done, but I'm not sure that's the answer for me.

I have no issues whatsoever about knitting in public - anytime, anywhere. I have noticed that people with me occasionally have issues. I had one friend who started to flip out the first time I turned up to meet her at a local bar and had my knitting with me (she recognized the bag I often use). She said, "you can't knit in a BAR!" To which I calmly replied, "why not?" I also pointed out that knitting has the ability to both entertain and calm me (although not always at the same time) and that as a smoker she periodically had to step outside to indulge in the habit that calms her, leaving me to entertain myself! She eventually got over it, got used to it, and even the bartender would occasionally check to see what I was working on. (Side note here: this all took place during the ever so memorable Knitting Olympics and nuthin' stopped me from knitting in those weeks. And yes, I took a gold medal.)

Last summer I was listening to a band on the outside patio of a local restaurant with a group of friends. I was not knitting, (only because I was trying to eat nachos), but a friend saw the knitting in my open backpack and commented err...rather negatively. Like that she was afraid I was about to take it out of my backpack where people would see it. It actually made me wonder if perhaps she would be embarassed? Now this same friend has sat with me on the boat coming back to the island and of course I knit pretty much non-stop from the time we push back until we dock in Avalon. She didn't seem to have any "issues" then so now I have to ask? Is it a matter of location?

I mean, to a knitter the places and times that could not be improved by knitting are few and far between. But for a non-knitter? Does it seem somehow - inappropriate? rude? embarassing? What is it, I really want to know.

As for the friend from last summer - obviously she requires a little education so I will be (ahem) "whipping it out" in her presence at every available opportunity. We'll see if that makes a difference or not.

As for my goal of getting more knitting done - I think ending this post here and logging off the computer would be a good start!

Masochists R Us

What's NaBloPoMo you ask? The love child of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is National Blog Posting Month. The idea is simple, instead of writing an entire freaking novel (!!!!), you just have to post to your blog every day for thirty days, the entire month of November. Yes, I did say every day. This includes Saturday and Sunday (workplace bloggers, I'm talkin' to you here) and the content doesn't have to be worthy of a Pulitzer, it just has to be a post. (Yes! More excuses to blather on about knitting or my cats!)

This is only November 1st and I truly have no idea if I can keep this up. But what the hell? It's worth a shot, right?