if a blog really is just an online journal, that is.
My mom and I were talking yesterday about how we use our journals, not to document our daily lives, but to vent frustration and anger and to work through our less-than-friendly emotions. For instance, every marital upset over the past 6 years is written about at great length, disected, and peppered with insults and curses and every swear-word (and swear-word combination) I know...and then some. Why? Because it works for me. I spew it all out on paper and then move on, rationally, maturely. The trouble is that when I'm gone, the one thing that will remain of me is most certainly my journals. Are these cranky, nasty venting sessions really what I want to leave behind? I think not.
Option #1: write a disclaimer on the inside cover of every journal I begin.
Option #2: burn all of my journals up to this point, and begin again, fresh. Surely I could vent on looseleaf and then recycle it.
Burning it is - and I know a lighter that's recenly been put out of work. Not that you ever knew I smoked, but I QUIT! After 17 years, I figured it was probably time to stop. I don't know when smoking went from cool to disgusting, or when I lost that invincibility I had as a teenager. I would like to see Sadie grow up. I would like to be clean and shiny from the inside out. I would like to stop spending $320/month on a ridiculous habit that's going to kill me. It was kind of a no-brainer.
Shaking this old habit just happens to coincide with a new habit (just as ridiculous, but not deadly). I have been buying lace weight yarn. I like lace in little bits (a la Connie's Drawstring Chemise), or with heavier yarn in a new way (ie. Jared's Hemlock Ring Blanket), but the idea of knitting with tiny yarn on itty-bitty, slippery needles, my eyes glued to a chart,... it gives me a headache. So what to do with skeins and skeins of lace weight yarn? Crochet! I know how to do it (a fact I often forget) and I love the scarves that I've been seeing on Ravelry.
This is my No Smoking Scarf. Malabrigo Lace in colorway Stonechat, and a 3.75mm hook. It's obviously my recent experience that makes this colorway remind me of (don't read this if you're thinking how pretty the colors are) healthy blood and oxegyn filled tissue, turning into decayed and rotting lungs. It is serving not only to keep my hands busy every free moment, but also to remind me why I made the choice to quit. And at the end of it all, I'll have a pretty, pretty scarf. It's a win-win!
Oh, and that grey cropped jacket up there...that's an FO for the Ravelympics. Knit in Rowan Big Wool Fusion it might be a cheater project. It only took 4 days to design and knit, even with the finicky fisherman's rib and a teething Sadie (4 molars, all at the same time, thank you very much!) You know, it just wouldn't be a post without mention of my favorite person :)
