Knitting and Herding Bubbles

An episode in my new tender and tentative endeavor to write …

I spent nearly the whole day yesterday (4 days ago by the time this gets “published”) knitting a scarf. Despite using a technique to make the project lie flat, it still curled up till it was just a long tube. I read in my proudly purchased knitting book about steam-blocking, but the methods were different depending on whether the material was synthetic or natural. I didn’t know what this yarn was made from, since I had thrown away (or “stored” in a scary shoebox) the labels, but I guessed it was more fake than real since I never paid much for any of my yarn. So I went for the “lay-a-wet-towel-on-top-and-dry-iron-it-until-it-steams” method. And discovered 3 things.

           1.     It was real wool. I knew this because it smelled like the sheep barns at the state fair. Wet wool and sheep manure (droppings?) seem like a synonymous smell to me ~ not exactly unpleasant though. It smelled like a world I would gladly exchange for this one – a world, that is, where I envision myself living on acres of raw earth, living (is there a word that evokes a sense of living where every sense is absorbing life to a thrilling degree ... that differs from being merely alive in the medical sense?) … coming alive to life in direct proportion to my cultivation of earth, animals, and offspring. From a detached, journalistic perspective, I realize that this longing for a creative, self-made, natural life also flourishes in direct proportion to the number of moments I spend withering in a concrete, soulless chain-driven city-world. (I choose the word “chain” not only because it serves the purpose of sounding melodramatic, but also to describe the unnatural overtaking of chain restaurants, apartment complexes, theme parks, hospitals, and craft stores.)

     

      2.   (I had to go back and re-read this to remember that I had started listing some minutiae of day-to-day revelations.) The steam and weight of the iron had not only flattened the scarf, but also muted the design I had so laboriously created, using a chopstick as a makeshift cable needle. Discouraging much?

      3.     I have no idea what the third thing was going to be. When I start writing, the writing takes over and it’s all I can do to keep up with it, trying my best to herd coherent bubbles of thought onto the train of … well, point in case. Or case in point. Just in case.

What does “case” even mean??

quite a lovely saturday

so this morning i woke up early (well, before the tornado sirens went off at least), determined to add to my head covering collection. (as in, hats and head band scarf things ~ see pic ~ i don't know what they're called)

I laid out all the head-related things I still have (i wish I had taken pictures of the ones that I've already sold or given away!!). I'm hoping to get some time with my wonderful photographer (megan!) and some beautiful friends tomorrow to do a nice photo shoot of some of this so I can finally start listing things on my etsy site.

I had some coupons for Hobby Lobby and Michaels (both are right down the street) so I went out and bought some more yarn and some buttons and random scrapbooking stuff that was on clearance. I've pretty much made it a policy to only buy things at Hobby Lobby or Michael's if I can get it at least 35% off, and I've found out that if you go weekly, the sales rotate around enough so that you can buy everything at a very discounted rate! :) Here's the results of my shopping adventure today:

I branched out into a new brand of yarn today: Baby Bee Sweet Delight. I bought 6 different (mostly coordinating) colors and had a lot of fun making this hat. I love the multi-colored yarn, because it's like a mini-adventure making any project, discovering how the pattern turns out as you go. (lol, i guess that officially makes me a yarn geek??) I don't know if this will actually fit anyone ~ I just kept shaping it as I went according to some imaginary picture of a child's head ... I need to get some set of standards for head/hat dimensions so I don't have to keep playing this guessing game everytime. Is there somewhere I can buy a bunch of different sized styrofoam heads? That would pretty much be the coolest thing to line up against our patio window :). {Anyone up for a Paint the Foam Heads party?} For now, I'll have to try this hat out on a few of my friends' kids and make adjustments as needed to the pattern I made up for this hat.

I also began three other things but they all were being a little bit too much uncooperative and frustrating, so I changed gears and decided to write this blog post. I know that at some point here I'll have to pick a few items that people like and just make tons of those, but I haven't quite transitioned into the business mindset yet. At this point, everything I make is still a unique idea (or based on a pattern, but with the goal of learning the basics so I can venture forth into uncharted copyright-free territory). I've come up with a few things that I really like based on requests from friends and family ~ I'm always honored when someone asks me to make something, like an elephant or a baby boy bear hat, b/c it gives me that giddy feeling of theythingiknowwhati'mdoing!!! anyhow, somewhere in the process of manning up to the challenges and being too embarrased to admit that I really am not as talented as they think, I discover how to create amazing things that I never would have attempted on my own accord. So a big shout-out to everybody who has faith in me: Thank you! :D

and one last note and pictures for this post, before I turn back to the rebellious piles of unravelled yarn and half-begun projects behind me. ...

sock yarn!

 I've been tempted to buy sock yarn every time I go to a craft store, but I've held back so far ... well, until my friend took a trip to Portland, OR and discovered an epic yarn store and brought me back the neatest sock yarn I've ever seen. So today I broke down and bought some more to add to the collection and picked up a few patterns and knitting needles. :) that will be another story, I'm sure.



fanatical, fantastical, financial figures

$11/ hour. That’s how much I make teaching 8^th grade math in Oklahoma.

I’m so glad I didn’t calculate that until now, but now that I have enlightened myself on the futility of money-making in this particular line of stress-intensive (insert-descriptions-here) work, it does make facing the final 9 weeks a bit of a daunting and discouraging task. How can America at large expect teachers to produce an intelligent-and-competitive-in-a-global-economy generation of young people when They (the Great and Unknown entity of They-ness) pay teachers $11/hour?? Oy. But that’s another story for another book. (coming soon to your local trash can)

So in a moment of transcendent inspiration, following months of considering this idea of taking the crafty crafting world by storm, I decided that I could earn myself $11 an hour crocheting and skip the stress of daily teaching drama (left purposely ambiguous in this rendition of the story).

Since $11 is my “real” money after all the taxes and insurance and retirement and feed-the-hungry-millionaires percentages are cut out, I did the math (trust me ~ I’m a math teacher) and figured that if I made $140 dollars worth of products, five days a week every week, I could make up for all taxes, insurance, cost of materials, etc. and still come out ahead of my teaching salary. If I throw 5 hours of math tutoring a week into that, I’m down to about $100/day. That’s 3 hats. One bird mobile. Or 2.43 frog-and-turtle duos. (I just made that up. … but it sounds cute. I think I’ll try it.) Of course I still need to build in time for Research and Development (aka, designing the frog-and-turtle duo, since it inevitably won’t be quite right the first time), blogging, posting to etsy, facebook, twitter, etc.

Number theories make me giddy. Within minutes of this fanatical and fantastical epiphany I was sky-high in my dreams of living the high life in the delicate balance between creativity and insanity. Talking it over with my ever-faithful-and-pragmatic business partner, my husband, brought me quickly back down to earth. It’s too dangerous to take this leap of faith when we’re $100,000 in debt from college loans and trying to start a family in the reasonably near future. Etc. He was very loving and gentle in his reasonings. I was equally thankless and harrumphed in my murmurings against his reasonable reasonings.  But of course it was what I would have told myself if I didn’t have him there to tell me.

But still… $11/hour??? I don’t want to go back to school tomorrow… I think that’s what this all comes down to … (apologies all around if any of my students ever end up reading this ~ I heart u all!)

So I’m signing off a bit discouraged … I have so many dreams of projects I want to do and so many leads to follow through on (see future posts) and not nearly enough time. I’m afraid that these dreams will shrivel up and die and my potential customers will forget about me if I don’t follow through soon. And strong. And my present career path is draining me of everything. That’s seriously another book though.

Closing quote from my dearest “hubband:” Honey, I think you’re wonderful.

Me: well, I know that, but I just want to be more wonderful.

Vote of confidence: 1

Vote of discouraged-i-just-want-to-hide-in-a-hole-and-not-go-to-school-tomorrow: 1

Score tied. Overtime play-by-play to be continued.

in the meantime, here's a picture of a knit headband i made today :)