How to not to do

I am totally, totally, totally uninterested in writing. This includes the article that I need to get done by Tuesday so that I can send it to the interviewee as promised (I already know that was a bad move, but I promised) and finish it and turn it in after Thanksgiving.

I have finished all the pieces for this baby sweater I'm knitting for my friend C. I designed it, and I'm pleased it's turned out well so far. Except I started matching pieces up and discovered that one of the sleeves is slightly but noticeably yellower than the rest of the sweater. I was pretty sure I got all the same dye lot, but apparently I was wrong--or deceived.

I have done about a third, maybe two-fifths, of the quilting for James's quilt. This quilt totally rocks. I'm still considering keeping it and making him a lesser one. (Actually I'm not, but it amuses me to say that. And I'm very, very pleased with how it's turned out. I can already see where I should have improved things, but that's all right.)

I have discovered I don't really like spinning silk because its staple is so long. I have some silk-camel that I'm planning to make into some decadent handwarmers for me and the spinning isn't bad, but it's not as fun as pure wool is, or even the Shetland/angora mix I was working with previously.

I have that historical sewing seminar tomorrow from noon to 5. I'd completely forgotten about it when drawing up my plans for the weekend. So I've got writing and quilting and all my garden clean-up and canning apple pie filling scheduled. This is unfortunate.

At present I'm planning on doing garden clean-up as soon as I get up in the morning, since I can't wait until after I get home because it'll be dark; and working on the article and quilting afterward, and maybe putting off the canning, depending. The quilting has to be done by the end of Monday at least so I can use Tuesday for attaching the binding, which I can then finish on the plane and at Mom and Dad's house and leave the quilt there--though first I've got to check what airline we're flying and whether it would be cheaper to mail it, depending on how much we're packing. Fiction writing doesn't technically have to be done; article writing does. Sleep does. Off I go to do it.

On knitting and juggling

I have, at last, deployed the ice cream yarn. This is some dark green wool/silk/something-else fiber I picked up at the Spinner's Flock Fleece Fair last February. (Or the one before? I forget.) I spun it up into a thick, fluffy, three-ply yarn that seemed to incorporate as much air as yarn, thus the name ice cream yarn. I knit it into a clever hat, with intertwining cables, with exactly no yarn left over. Unfortunately the hat made me look stupid. The hat itself looked nice, but my head looked like a bowling ball with an IQ of 34. (I suppose that would make it an unusually intelligent bowling ball. Unless the IQ was based on the bowling ball population rather than the human population.) So I unraveled it and knit a Calorimetry, which forced me to bind off about six rows before the end, but luckily it's knit such that that really didn't matter. I'm pleased.

We had a Cheap Candy Day (aka Bring Your Own Excuse) party yesterday, because we felt like having a party, and it went very well. My father-in-law complimented my cooking and seemed overall more pleased with me than he has in the past, which was nice. My mother-in-law got het up about an incipient political discussion (there were several of us in the room when somebody said "Nobody here is a Palin supporter" and apparently she is) and left in a hurry, but otherwise everything went very well. Eric did mention his Klein bottle hat at some point. I knit this for him in 2004, long before the Knitty pattern came out. "Oh, yeah, I've got one, Jenny made it for me years ago," he assured one of our friends who mentioned it. The thing is, I also unraveled it about a year ago, because he never wore it because it didn't fit properly. I'm wondering if I shouldn't start working on that again.

I have the picture part of James's quilt top almost finished. It's gorgeous. I'm loving it. The plan is to finish the entire quilt top by the end of this week, then baste and quilt next week, and have plenty of time to bind by the time we leave for Thanksgiving. We'll see how that goes, of course. I've got part of Dad's first sock to finish; after that two more socks, one of Mom's and one of Dad's. Plus a baby sweater. Plus maybe another quilt. Plus a hat for me. Plus curtains and baby stuff and whatever else comes up. Plus I signed up for a dance class (cha cha, swing, and rhumba) on Mondays.

The fiction writing is still going well, remarkably; but the nonfiction stuff not so much. Jen's post on the same subject got me thinking about all my activities and interests, and how life used to be much simpler back when I was in grad school but I definitely get more done now. Also Dad sent me some job listings for right near his work, and one of them is really intriguing, even though it's in research rather than writing and I had said I wanted to pursue the writing, so I'm thinking about how determined I need to be to stick to one course, or if it's okay to deviate from my plans as much as I often deviate. I'm feeling like I can juggle all the different activities I've got, but that means that something is always out of my hands. I think that's okay, but I'll have to wait and watch and see.

Hobbies, happiness, and me

A friend of mine at work, who's getting married the weekend after we are, mentioned that she and her fiance are getting premarital counseling from their minister. "He asked us a bunch of getting-to-know-you questions," she said, "Only he asked me the ones about R, and vice versa. Then he asked us to name one thing about the other that we'd change if we could. I couldn't think of anything for R, except that I wish he'd take the trash out more often. Then R thought that meant I wished he'd do more around the house, but actually I'm happy with it, I just don't like the trash."

I asked Eric this question a few days ago and he thought of two things: to make me happier, and to make it so that I didn't have so many hobbies. "You're not as deep into gardening," he said when I asked if there was any in particular he wished I'd drop. "But then again fresh veggies are good. I don't know."

(I'm not so sure I'm not in deep with gardening. I have dozens of little plants on my windowsill and under my SAD light, and I'm wearing a path between the back porch and the garden by checking on it so often. I suspect I'm going to end up simply making it a path and maybe lining the garage side with mulch and bushes to make it look better.)

We've been talking about working on having a baby once we get married, and I've been hesitating about it--which is unusual, since we've both been baby-crazy for quite a while now. My hesitation about it is the only reason not to: we'll have a home, good jobs, reasonable financial stability, strong relationship, the desire for it, etc. But I'm not sure I have enough--am enough--to offer a baby. I'm content in my current job, but I don't want to be this way forever. Possibly having a kid would help me feel more fulfilled, but that's a rotten reason to have one. I may have written about this before, I can't remember; I've been thinking about it lots.

I want to know what sort of mother I'm going to be--as a person, not a parent. (I think, I hope, I'm going to be okay as a parent. I'm going to try, anyway.) I was thinking, I know some things I would like to do. So why aren't I doing them? And the answer is because it's easier; because my time is filled up; because I'm occupied, reasonably contented, and in a position where I don't have to do anything different. And tonight I wondered if this would be different if I didn't have so many hobbies.

Right now, I've got the wedding to plan, of course; that'll be done in a month. I've also got a quilt to finish before the wedding (so we can sleep under it on the new bed we need to get so we have a spare bed to offer Mom and Dad when they stay here), and another one for a baby shower in late June; I've got yarn to spin for a present; I've got a Christmas tree skirt E wants me to piece together (even though she got a better sewing machine than mine for Christmas); I want to spin yarn for and then knit Christmas stockings; I was thinking about making shawls of some sort for my bridesmaids and me--it's too late to knit them, but I could sew simple ones. I always have projects. I got my spinning wheel the other day, and tonight, in between making summer curtains for the kitchen, I practiced on it. I love it. I enjoyed the curtains too, simple and repetitive as they are. But I could be spending my energy on other things. Harder things. I can see where Eric's coming from, wishing I had fewer hobbies (though it's not like I don't waste plenty of time in the computer room with him...but then, you know, I talk to him about them). I'm wondering if I have a better reason for wishing it myself.

(But I don't think I'll be giving up the spinning. This wheel is the awesomest thing ever. Plus I got lots of freebies and Michelle wants to use it to make a Mother's Day present for her mom. How cute is that? I could give up the quilting, I think, after the baby shower quilt, at least for a time--though I had wanted to start submitting patterns to magazines. But I never seem to have the time to sit down and write them out. Yeah, freeing up my time would be a good idea.)