it’s sunday morning. there are no cars rushing down my street. the dogs are outside doing whatever it is dogs do. birds are making those little chirping noises they make. there are no people talking. in other words, it is blissfully quiet.
im a bit on edge. i noticed it just now when i opened my work email and yelled at a stupid question. work email on a sunday bad idea for a start. so i put an Out of Office message on. i got an email last week from HR to please take some leave as i have 37 days accrued. i laughed. when do i have time to take leave?! but i did add some at the beginning and end of the canada/US trip, and i’ve taken tomorrow so i can clean out the shed, and then booked another couple of days for that last week in may just before i go away.
i had a quiet easter, i tried not to do any work (which i now regret as i have 60 assignments to mark in a week, but i really needed some rest). i made nigella’s hot cross buns
(definitely the best recipe so far) and we had beautiful summer weather, so there were long walks on the beach (the water is still warm)
and barking at the waves (she’s so pretty)
and swimming out to say hello to random men with nice tattoos.
hello.
there was packing too. it’s going ok. there are boxes everywhere and it feels a bit weird and suddenly very real. the other day Troy the Teenage Real Estate Agent rang and asked if the new owners could come over and have another look though. i really felt like telling him and them to go take a running leap off a cliff, but despite the fact that i scored 52 out of 63 on that Facebook ‘How much of a people hater are you?’ quiz, i am actually a nice person so told him to give them my number. i met them and took them through the house, showing them a few little things that i’m sure they didnt know about before. they were really grateful and really nice about it. they also apologised for all the pressure to move out in 30 days. they said their solicitor did that without asking them, and as people just coming out of renting themselves, they were angry with him and insisted i be given as much time as i need.
i cant even bear to think about the whole renting/buying thing. the more they beat up the market, the more terrified people become of missing out, and the more everyone rushes in to buy, totally over heating the market. if we had some actual sensible investment/rental rules in this country it would make life a lot easier for everyone. i said to someone yesterday i think if i had to choose between travel and buying a house, it will be travel for a few years yet. also partly because i think when i do buy, it wont be here. maybe not even in this country.
anyway, i found more photos in the packing, a whole box of stuff from my film school days, including the sound tapes, script, production schedule and storyboard for my second year film called ‘sinking’.
we went up to catherine hill bay to shoot it but i never got to edit it together (shame because it looked great)
i ended up quitting film school, i wasnt cut out for that world. i only ever wrote sad stories that no one quite understood, and i wasnt a good director (thats me above with my hands over my face).
its interesting to see all this stuff, how much i’ve done with my life, all the different places and things and people i’ve seen. i never thought really i would be where i am now. it makes me realise how little control we really have over how our lives pan out… its like one of those books with the different endings, how it ends up relies entirely on the choices you make at certain moments, and then there’s no going back (not in real life anyway).
i certainly have a strong feeling that things are about to take another couple of uncontrolled turns. i’ve been experimenting with ‘meeting people’ (see previous reference to secret squirrel business in last post). despite an initial hiccup i did get to have lunch with someone on friday.
it was really nice. grown up, even. i have mixed feelings about that whole thing. i’m happy on my own. i like who i am now, im not second guessing myself all the time. i like the freedom, the autonomy. its powerful and liberating. but it might not be how i want to spend the whole rest of my life. i don’t know, and there’s only one way to tell. we will see.
it’s a pretty stressful thing to do, i think, go and meet up with almost complete strangers and put yourselves on the table, with no idea what the other party is thinking. and there are some real freaks out there in the world, let me tell you, and at those times i think my people hating score was WAY TOO LOW. so im not rushing into anything.
it was nice to come home to no one and pick up the knitting again, at which point i made a decision to ‘fix’ some lace knitting that wasnt working. i had started the beautiful nancy bush pattern ‘stones and stripes’ in the madelinetosh lace i got last time in NYC, but i put it down for a few weeks. when i came back to start the second edge, i forgot it was garter stitch, so i knit most of the second edge in stocking stich. sigh.
i thought about leaving it and knitting the whole rest of it that way, but its garter for a reason. so i was going to tink it back but i had no lifeline (yes i know dont start) so i ended up doing this instead
this decision was not helped by a conversation with missfee about what we did or didnt like in woolpeople 7 (seriously, there is very little in any of these collections that i dont like), and i was drawn immediately to nimbus. it really is my kind of lace – a simple border, made modern with the knit lengthwise garter strip. i thought about waiting and buying more ‘loft’ in NYC again, but then i remembered i had a whole stack of shibui stacatto
so i wound it all up
and cast on.
you knit the whole side edge border first (starting with the short row corner) then you come back and pick up along that slipped stitch edge and do the centre panel which includes knitting on the top and bottom edge at the same time as the long garter stripes. i think this will make good travelling knitting thats not just boring stocking stitch.
speaking of which, the cardigan. i had to go to canberra on thursday to film three interviews for a nursing leadership project i’m working on. it was a great day, i got some amazing footage. and even though it was a 15 hour day the best part was not having to drive, because adam my camera guy insisted on driving (men!) and so i got to knit.
so the cardigan is making quite good progress, i’ve divided for the sleeves and am now travelling down the body
including having cast on the extra stitches for the flowing overlapping panels at the front (oh, the pattern is hannah fettig’s brise, by the way).
and of course these photos don’t do justice to the amazing red that is madelinetosh merino light in ‘tart’. it is not even remotely pink in real life.
that’s pretty much my life right now, trying not to think about all the things i should be doing, and getting through what’s in front of me, one step at a time. trying not to engage with fools, trying to keep calm, saying no to things, thinking about being on a plane in 26 days.
and knitting on edges.
k xx
