a weekend [mostly] alone

With friends and boyfriend away at Snow Camp it's been quiet. I have missed this quiet. And if I'm being perfectly honest I have missed being selfish with my time. I have done things I want to do. I have watched movies I wanted to watch. I have created things I want to create, first for others, and soon for myself.

I went to bed last night wishing I had more time like this. I thought about how nice it was to only ask myself what I felt like doing, how nice it was to only wonder what I was in the mood for for dinner that night, how nice to consider what movie I felt like watching. All this time alone seemed so rich...until Clint called today. And then I realized how much I missed him, how much I missed my friends, how much I missed spending Saturday afternoons with them.

It has been wonderful to create all on my own. To have time to spend all day knitting, run errands, come home and realize I want to spend all night knitting as well! I have loved having time to learn new knitting techniques and tricks [Intarsia and Fair Isle to start], to create things for friends and something for myself as soon as I post this.

I love this time to just do what I want. But life gets lonely when your friends are away. So come home soon. I miss you.

what happens next?

Words, emotions, dreams, memories flood my overtaxed mind.  This life I live is beautiful.  Is more, is better, is much different than the life I imagined living, is at a different part of the story than I expected.  I guess, in my haste to learn the ending, I must have skipped this part.  That was not my intention I assure you.  But, you see, this is my story.  I am eager to see what happens next.

waiting to be set free

All I want to do is knit.  That's all.  I don't want to come in to work.  I want to put on cozy socks and a warm hoodie, make myself a pot of french press, put on some music and knit for hours.  I want to finish my current knitting project (a pair of sleeves, the pattern is from a book on loan from dear Sarah SD).  I want to make fingerless gloves for my sister for her birthday.  I want to make more scarves for all the people whose lives inspire me to create patterns just for them.  I want to knit myself a hoodie.  I want to try new patterns and yarns and techniques.  I want to buy and borrow books with more and more elaborate patterns and projects.  I want to knit a bath mat for the bathroom that, one day, I won't have to share with two little girls (who I love dearly, just for the record).

I want to be creative.  I want to watch my creativity click and clack back and forth, row by row, in front of me the same way I watch these words appear on the screen as my thoughts transfer from neuron to neuron until they reach my fingertips.  I want to express myself in as many ways as possible.  Because I have thoughts and ideas and paintings and songs and stories and scarves inside my head just waiting to be set free!  

I just don't have the time.  Or rather I have not made the time.  So I will make time.  Because all these things waiting inside me are driving me crazy!  They beg, entreat, beseech and implore me to get up.  To do something about them–do something with them.  To stay up late or get up early and CREATE.  To acknowledge my Creator by creating, using the gifts He's given me.

And there are so many reasons not to.  There are so many excuses.  And they all are true-ish.  They are plausible arguments in favor of waiting to create.  Waiting until I have a place of my own where I can spread out and create spaces for each of my creative endeavors.  Waiting until the more pressing tasks and chores are completed.  Waiting until there is money to purchase books, yarn, patterns when I have so much left over yarn that it wouldn't be any sort of challenge to make something with what I have left over.

I am done waiting to be set free.  I am ready to create.  To give these ideas and projects places to live and room to breathe fresh, clean, ocean-infused air.

learning slowly

I'm in the office on a Friday morning.  A day I am not usually here.  Why?  Because I left the wire I need to reattach the tailpipe of my car on my desk when I left last night.  And to look up some phone numbers so I could cancel one and make another appointment.  Why?  Because my car doesn't feel like starting on a regular basis anymore.

On the upside I will get to sit inside and enjoy the amazing rainy weather today.  I will get to watch movies under a blanket and hopefully finish a knitting project that has been left unfinished for far too long.  I will also, at the end of the day, get to spend the evening devouring sushi with good friends, or rather my wonderful boyfriend and his good friends.

When things like cars, computers, cellphones and iPods refuse to start/crash/die/whatever my first reaction is alway annoyance.  My head is filled with screams of, "How dare this piece of technology be unable to serve me and make my life easier!" and, "Why today!?  Why today!?  Don't you understand how many things I have to do today!?" and of course at least a few choice cuss words cause I'm classy like that.  And then after the annoyance and fits of internal rage have calmed down I find myself taking a few deep breaths.  I mutter a prayer in a somewhat facetious tone which tends to progress into one that is scared but grateful.  I realize that if I don't make it to the west side to have coffee with my friend she will understand.  And in fact it worked out better for her this morning to not have coffee.  Imagine that.  Then I called my mechanics and rather than hearing that they were swamped with all their other customers they said they'd be able to get me in on Monday morning first thing, and get me the oil change I've needed for the past 1500 miles.  And then, just after canceling my counseling appointment, my aforementioned wonderful boyfriend called me, told me that canceling my appointment was silly, and he'd be here to pick me up and take me to breakfast and then to my appointment in 30 minutes.

Does my car work?  Not really.  Is everything going to be okay?  Yes.  You'd think I would remember that since I've got it tattooed on my arm.  I think sometimes I am a slow learner.