Craft or Bust weekly: the importance of stories

Today is World Storytelling Day. Since my Craft or Bust goal this year is about writing stories, you might have guessed storytelling is important to me.

When I was younger, I saw the stories in everything. Not only imagined stories based on "What if?" but also true stories that started with "I know why." Everything has a story — has multiple stories; every moment is part of a story.

Some people told me that to think this way is a sign that I couldn't distinguish between reality and fiction; I knew they were wrong, and that telling and listening to stories sharpened my ability to see both truth and fiction for what they are — including truths that people don't want to see and fictions that people believe are true.

But then I lost the thread of my own story because I started listening to the stories other people imagined for me. Little by little I forgot that a story doesn't have to make sense to anyone to be true; and I forgot that a story that convinces everyone is not necessarily a good story, especially for the characters. I forgot that stories speak most to those who need them most — that the goal is not to make sure all people understand, but to allow the right people to understand.

I am now, little by little, reawakening to my own story. This is part of why my goal for CoB this year is to write: I need back my ability to see stories, to feel them, to craft them — and to live my own story truthfully and centeredly and consciously.

It isn't easy to relearn something forgotten when one has also forgotten oneself. At least, it's not easy for me. Progress is still slow ... but progress is progress. And I wrote 482 words today. Still not above the "wimpy" threshold, but more than last week. So yes: it's still progress.

Oh, and happy equinox, too, whether yours is vernal or autumnal. I'd love to hear your stories, true or false, new or old, good or bad — so leave me a comment if you have something to say. :D

(This post is part of Craft or Bust, a weekly creative endurance challenge with a sense of compassion and fun. For more info, check the Craft or Bust tab at the top of the blog, or go here and do a little light reading.)

On the loss of self and emotion; or, how honesty, pain and creativity are intrinsically related

So what do you do when you're so angry you're almost physically incandescent? Or when you're so disappointed, so disgusted by someone's blindness or self-righteousness or selfishness, that you're surprised the feelings aren't transmuting magically into radioactive sludge and oozing out your pores?

Some people do their best to hide their feelings ... even from themselves. Some of them are visible to the naked eye as emotional wrecks and still hide their feelings from themselves — just not from anyone else who bothers paying a wee bit of attention. I've seen cases of this that make me wonder where the stick could be shoved in so far that I can't see it.

I am not a fan of the "hide your emotions because it's more seemly" approach.

I am a fan of honesty — with oneself, at the very minimum. Honesty that isn't just the flip side of self-indulgent, fear-driven silence. I'm fairly against people running rampant at every tiny insult, screaming at length about their enemies and their enemies' ancestors and their enemies' future progeny and the unavoidable end of the world if people like this continue to exist; and by "fairly against," I mean I'm as close to dead-set against that kind of behavior as I can get without becoming a mindless zombie slave to the opinion.

But I'm in favor of honesty with that same intensity. And the most important person to be honest with is yourself. That comes before everything. Because seriously. When people can't be honest with themselves about themselves, chances are good that they have a problem being honest with themselves about large chunks of the rest of reality. And I'm kinda sorta a gigantic fan of that whole "being able to deal with reality" thing. It helps with solving all kinds of problems. ;)

So what do I do when I'm so full of negative emotion that the energy is barely short of perceptible to human senses?

What I do these days is, to be honest (See? I'm being honest with me and you! ;)), pretty much completely crap for me. It is perilously, soul-endangeringly close to the opposite of what I should do. I don't actively try to hide emotions from myself, but frequently, I suppress expressing my emotions to avoid hurting someone by telling them what a completely hurtful git they're being. (Yes. I have people hurt me and then consciously avoid hurting them back even by being straightforwardly honest.) That's a pretty appalling thing to do to myself, and anyone who's known me for longer than five years or so should probably be about as appalled as I am.

Because one of the other things to which I am devoted almost to an obsessive level is truth. And one of the things I used to do was call people out as soon as I noticed their hurtful behavior, if I was face to face with them at the time. And "as soon as I noticed" was really really soon. Because I had a lot of practice paying attention and smacking. That. Crap. Down. Before it could get out of hand.

Obviously people who are determined to be gits really hate it when you do this. But people who don't devote themselves to being assholes (and that's often, though not always, their word for it) are often surprisingly grateful when they finally realize they really were being horribly disrespectful and that you stopped them. Even though I saw it many, many times, it was always a little bit surprising to have people tell me "You weren't rude. It was totally justified, and I'm glad you did it" when I was, uh, yeah, quite arguably being rude. Even if it was justified and for the honorable purpose of making someone stop hurting someone else.

The other thing I did when I encountered something that absolutely incensed me, or depressed me, or wounded me intensely in some way, was that I would write that crap out. If the person who did the dastardly deed was not immediately accessible for me to stop them, I'd open a fresh ClarisWorks (or AppleWorks, those being things that existed on Macs before Microsoft Word for Mac ;)) document and spit out a lightning-fast rant poem. Or an opinion essay. Or a fantasy story. Or a letter (never to be sent) to the person who was acting horrible. Or I would get out the sketchbook and draw pictures of huge, awesome dragons spitting fire at tiny silhouettes that I imagined were the people I hated.

Then the anger (or fear, or depression, or whatever) had a home. It had an expression that treated it with respect.

What the "smack down" approach and the "write/draw it out" approaches have in common is just that: They both treat emotions with respect and recognize them for what they are. What they are is reasonable reactions to reality, not made-up, invalid pieces of mental/emotional trash. By regularly acknowledging my emotions and handling them with respect, I had control over them, rather than them controlling me, or them doing things beyond my control. I could choose how to use them.

Whether or not you agree with how I use(d) my emotions, emotional self-honesty has the same potential for everyone. If you have control of how your emotional energy gets used, then you can have emotions (you know, like, you can be a whole human being), but have them affect you in ways that are in line with your values. If you ignore your emotions, they do things you can't see. If you suppress them, you risk them running around in your heart secretly doing things you don't agree with. Because pretending they aren't there doesn't actually make them go away. It just makes them go underground. Until they burst out like the man-eating scarabs in The Mummy and terrorize random people. ;)

An important thing to explain at this point is what I said earlier about my devotion to truth. I really, really care about the truth. More than I care about being right for my ego's sake. I want to be right so I can deal with the cards that are actually on the table — not to be right for the sake of feeling good or superior. I fully admit that when I first started my campaign to Know Truth, it was largely for the sake of preserving my ego. I hated being wrong. When I was like ten years old. By the time I was thirteen or so, I was pretty much over the ego-driven thing and into the idea that truth is useful because it's useful, not just because it keeps me from being embarrassed.

So by the time I was thirteen, I had spent significant time and energy on making sure I could distinguish truth from illusion. I felt (because I had tested this repeatedly) I could trust my emotions were based on things that really existed. If I thought someone sounded condescending, then I could say exactly why I thought that, which proved it was a sound decision, not a random one. (And I was, and still am, very open to changing my opinion based on new information.)

That doesn't mean my perceptions were always accurate reflections of what was actually going on, of course, and I knew that — but I could trust that I wasn't seeing things in order to feel what I felt. I wasn't feeling something first, then creating a reason out of thin air to justify the feeling. (We all know someone who alters their idea of reality to justify what they feel, and gets all self-righteous about it ... right? Yeah. I hate that. I've hated it since I was thirteen.)

I was very young when I started losing trust in emotion, but learning to trust my judgement and perceptions allowed me to trust my emotions again. (Emotions are part of Self, so really, I'd lost trust in me and then earned it back. Yay. ;)) Even if I mistakenly got upset over something that I didn't quite understand properly, I knew I wasn't merely emotional. I was emotional with reason. I also knew that if my perceptions and understanding were wrong, there was an easy way to stop me from being upset: Giving me information to change my understanding.

This is not the same thing as telling me I'm wrong and expecting me to believe you. Presenting me with factual, reasonable information acknowledges that my initial perception deserves to be treated with respect, as if I might be (OMG! Noway!) a rational but non-omniscient human being with reasons for having emotions, but who merely doesn't have all the information. Basically it's the opposite approach from telling me "You're wrong, your emotions are pointless and if you don't take my word for it that makes you a selfish, irrational, overemotional freak." (What, I should believe you because you're just that much smarter and better than I am? Because you have no emotions and you're never wrong? I should just bow down to your battle aura because you're so cool you don't need to give evidence as to why you're right? Yeah, no.) That's the kind of thing that gets you targeted for a riled-up smackdown.

Soooooooooo. This has to do with crafting because, oddly enough, once I got broken a few years ago (I keep referencing this and not explaining it, don't I? ;)), I stopped being able to write and draw with any real inspiration or emotion. I'd spent so much energy on disrespecting my emotions, had suppressed them for so long, that I lost the heart to give creation life. Now, when I tried to write or draw or make any kind of art, what I created was a pallid glance at a badly-shot black and white photo of life. Technically, my slide out of true creative ability was a long, slow, painful process of losing pieces of myself and my passion, and I fought it as hard as I could...

...short of fixing the real problem. Which was that I was disrespecting my own emotions for the sake of not hurting other people. I was hurting myself to avoid hurting them. That's not only really, seriously unfair, it completely kills your ability to make art that means something to you.

Because art is emotion. Creation is emotion. Any emotion. Good ones, bad ones, whatever. Art and creation aren't about judging your emotions; they're about expressing your emotions, for better or for worse. The better you get at any art, the better you are at expressing what you really mean, what you really feel.

For more than a decade, yes, more than a decade, and that is more than a third of my entire life, I have been slowly destroying my own ability to create. By pretending that my emotions are not important and not valid, and that expressing them is bad.

I am going to stop.

If you are afraid of emotions, I apologize, and I expect you'll probably be leaving, and I wish you well. I also think you should consider exploring ways to stop being afraid of emotions, but really, that's not my business (unless you make it my business ;)). And everyone proceeds at their own pace, and I expect someday you'll understand where I'm coming from.

As for me, I have been the weight on my own wings that has kept me from flying far and fast as I once did. I really, really, really want to fly again, you guys. Not flying is killing me.

And while I used to write and draw out the pain to take that weight off, crafting (almost my sole creative expression for the past five to seven years) has never served that purpose for me. I can't remember ever letting myself "taint" crafting by expressing negative emotions with it. The closest I can remember coming is with sewing costumes; the idea of wearing a "negative" character's costume never bothered me. But most of my costuming happened before I got broken. So maybe there were other things I did back then, that came closer to using craft as emotional expression, but that was a long, long emotional way away, and I don't remember it.

With the crafts I've learned more recently than sewing — knitting, weaving, spinning — I've kept to this inane idea that crafting is sacredly connected to the ideas of hearth, of nourishment, that it should always be positive and wholesome. I've been consciously avoiding ever associating it with negativity, which is probably because when I first starting knitting, I was using it specifically to avoid thinking of the negative situation I was in. That was the first of the fiber arts, sewing aside, that I really learned. Weaving and spinning came after, like offshoots, and inherited the same imagined sacredness, the same rule that it was taboo to be negative through them.

Unconscious habits, anyone? Oy.

It's time to let that one go. It's bad for me. I don't know yet if that means I'm going to cut down on knitting (and maybe the other fiber arts — *cringe*), or if it means I'm going to have to experiment with transforming knitting and the other fibery things I do into an art form that's allowed to express negative feelings without being pathetically self-indulgent or tasteless (and the idea of creating evocative but beautiful fiber arts products has a lot of appeal — that's what I was going for to begin with, starting my little crafty business). What I do know is: Something's gotta give.

To answer my own question again: What do I do when I'm so angry I can almost breathe fire?

I take the clamp off my pointy dragon snout and I point the flames where they can do the most good.

By God, Goddess, the Tao, or Whatever you believe in — pick your Powers That Be — it feels good to be honest again. Even if it means 2,000+ words of blog post at once.

But ten years of feelings takes a long time to write.

The Unguilted Crafter: fighting the urge to feel bad about old projects

Let's talk about abandoned project guilt, shall we? ;D

CJ asked me on a blog post in October if my UFOs (a.k.a. unfinished knitted objects) make me feel guilty. I answered, "They used to make me feel a bit guilty, though I tried to ignore it, because that wasn't really a useful kind of guilt." Then I explained: Now that I craft (including knitting) way more often, I've stopped feeling guilty about my UFOs, because I have reason to believe I'll get to them eventually.

But that doesn't mean unfinished stuff doesn't make me feel bad. What does weigh on me: The abandoned parts of my to-do list. That shadow part of the list that I keep ignoring (but that I refuse to take off the list) even though I rotate the active part. The things that have been sitting on the list so long that if they were knitting projects, they would be UFOs.


Photo © Koalazymonkey
You know ... things like Like reorganizing the craft room, or cleaning the papers from the Debacle, or sending e-mails I promised to send but that have been languishing in the back of my head instead. Those things, I feel bad about. I wouldn't call it guilt, but they do make me feel antsy, pressured, and unhappy about my slackerdom. (Maybe that is what you would call guilt, but I usually think of guilt as a more distinct feeling, full of actively negative reproach. ;))

Anyway, the other day, when I wasn't looking for it, I stumbled across a way to stop feeling as bad about the Shadow To-Do List. I was doing an exercise to rebuild my belief in myself, and the instructions were basically:

Make a list of everything you've been putting off doing. Everything. Don't leave anything off. Now choose seven of those things — things you CAN realistically do within the span of one day, and they don't have to be difficult things, or even important things — and assign them, one a day, to the next week of your life. On those days, DO THEM. Don't let anything stop you. Don't go to sleep that night not having done your daily task. It doesn't matter what you have to do to accomplish them — do them. Not because you "should," because this isn't a traditional to-do list. Do them because you are rebuilding your ability to DO.

As I made my list, I started to feel oddly better about the entire thing. My list was five typed pages long, but that was okay. Because I saw things on the list that I knew I could do. I could do some of them in five minutes. I could have chosen seven super-easy things — e-mail so-and-so back, put the books by the bed back on the shelf, dust off the tea cabinet — and done them, and it still would have gotten seven things off my back, seven weights off my conscience. Seven. Whole. Things! In a single week. This from a list full of things that have languished without progress for an indeterminate amount of time.

Looking at the list actually made me want to get started right away. But I didn't — because part of the point of the exercise was to do what I said I would do, and if I said I would do something on a specific day, I would do it that day, not a day early or a day late.

And I did it. :D I did one thing a day for seven days, on the days I said I would do them. At the end of it, I felt so encouraged about my ability to do things that I wanted to do it again. I mean — imagine if I did one item from that five-page list every day. I could burn through the entire list (which has been accumulating for years, even!) done in just about eight months. And every one of those days would be a relief.

But in reality, the exercise worked better than I'd hoped. :D Because I did more than seven things. I did the seven things I said I would do on the days I said I'd do them ... and I also snuck in some extra things that I hadn't said I would do. So I actually got eleven things done from the list in a week. If I kept doing that I could finish the entire list in less than six months.

Less than six months to catching up with my life! :D

Of course, the extra things every week would be optional, because adding too much pressure to myself is just transferring the Shadow To-Do List over to the daily to-do list, and that won't work. I've tried it. Doing it the way that works and waiting eight months until five pages of monkeys are off my back is perfectly fine with me.

And okay — I admit that's not exactly realistic, either. Some of the things on the Shadow To-Do List are multi-day tasks. Like reorganizing the craft room — that's not something I can do in one day. So I have to break it down into things I know I can do in one day. (Holy crappity, it's that old "break up larger projects into smaller chunks" thing I never had to consciously do before my productivity got all gunked up. ;))

But isn't it odd? Making a list that's basically a litany of my failures somehow freed me to be productive. I guess it's kind of like when they say the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have a problem. And being able to see my put-off stuff in list form makes it look tackle-able. Then I can see that the list has an end. It is finite.

And because, while listing, I knew the next step was choosing easily-doable items to definitely do, I had no psychological urge to pressure myself into working on the list.

So, all around, making a list that highlights my slackerdom actually worked out to be a positive thing in the end, because I followed it up with definite and doable action.

It also not only gets stuff done so I can stop feeling bad about it, but it also helps me trust myself more. Because, like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, when I know that I can trust myself to eventually finish a project, I don't have to feel overly bad about putting that project on pause.

Craft or Bust has worked for me on that principle, and making this Shadow To-Do List has worked (so far) for the non-crafty stuff.

So, fellow crafters, maybe the list will work for you, too. Even if all you list is crafty stuff, and you promise to work just a little bit on one crafty project a day — or a week? Like in Craft or Bust? ;) — as long as you make absolutely sure you follow through, I bet it will help get those guilt-monkeys off your back, too. :D

Or maybe not! Everyone is different. And maybe you've tried something like this already? Maybe you've found your own way to refuse to feel bad about your unfinished projects and Shadow To-Do List?

Saturday market shawlette, fin!

Sat market shawlette crop.jpg, originally uploaded by JeweledClaws.

I look like a freak in this shot (this equals photos at three a.m. plus sleeplessness while watching boyfriend play video games), but this is my latest finished object: the Sunday Market Shawl, which I think is just lovely. I'm going to make another for my mom. :D

I've also been playing on Ravelry a lot lately, and worrying about a potential new job. Almost done with Sahara, although not close enough for me to be in the gung-ho must-finish-now-come-hell-or-high-water stage.

Financial troubles hopefully at an end soon. If I get my security clearance for this copy editor job, I should be in the clear for a while yet. Whew. Poor Brian really needs the help right now, but once he's at leisure to look for a new job instead of just grabbing the first (crappy, but less crappy than his current) one he finds, he should be more at ease and more capable of finding something that doesn't need me to help for him to pay all his bills. ;) (Our bills, maybe, but I didn't have to acquire them ... so they're kinda still his. ;D)

I made a belt!

I finally dug out the straw weaver I picked up out of curiosity, and made myself a belt! Woo! Now I can give Brian's back to him and still have something handwoven to keep my slippery silk robe shut. :D The belt is worsted weight cotton for the wrapping yarn, and doubled strands of the same cotton (in a different color) for the filler cord. I ought to have made the thing a teense longer -- I knew I was going to do that ;) -- but it functions, or at least ties around my waist. I have yet to test it on the actual robe it was meant for.

The entire thing took me about two hours. Whew. The next one will be quicker (assuming I manage to convince myself to make a next one; my track record of repeating fairly easy tasks isn't good ;)), probably; and I can think of a lot of neat things I could do to make future belts fancier...

Break time!

Oops. Forgot to charge the camera batteries last night, so still no photo or listing for the necklace I made for Week One of SpoC 2007. Oh, well. I did at least attempt to take a picture before the camera batteries died again. ;)

I also finally chose a wristwarmer pattern for my delayed trade with someone on Swap-bot: the Cider Moon "April May" lace wristwarmers. I have no clue whether I have the correct size needles to get that gauge, but I'll deal with that later today, or maybe over the weekend. Here's hoping I get them knit faster than I get the pattern chosen. ;)

And I started on plying a yarn for the also-delayed Orphan Handspun Swap (I suck! I suck! But I'm so going to send the package, so I'm not re-orphaning my partner -- just slacking, is all ;)). It's a fairly fine yarn (maybe sport weight?) and I'm using one ply of Columbia and one of Jacob, and the Columbia's been sitting for a little, while I just dyed the Jacob an interesting purple last night. As my brain seems to be on standby today, I'm not processing what that means for the active vs. passive statuses of the twist in each ply, but anyway, plying is, er, interesting. At least the yarn isn't misbehaving before I get it plied this time, as singles on the way to the two-ply, like Anne's yarn, but I'm a little paranoid about how much twist I'm putting in to keep the plies together at all, and how kinked up the resulting yarn is. The kinks aren't very determined, though, so I figure I'll ply it and wash it and see how it turns out, and I can always go back and add more twist or take twist out, or something, if I decide to. Or I can go, "Well, it's a crazyfunky yarn and you can do something with it that will look interesting with an inherent bias." After all, there is stuff out there that looks cool with a slanty fabric. ;)

After this week, I'm pretty burnt out on doing things for other people. Maybe it doesn't seem like I did that much (or does it? Like I said, my brain is on standby), but it feels like I've thought about other people and their projects a lot this week. It's time for me to put some energy into doing something for myself. I may attempt to re-swatch for Sahara, or to weave the side squares for that tote for me. Ponder.

Mood paintings

There's a page where you can create a digital "painting" based on your current mood and personality. Here's mine:



Can you guess my current mood? ;) (Apparently this is influenced by my being sad at the moment. Hmm.)

Motivating me/Breaking out of the creative obligation cycle

Some mornings I really don't want to start creating. It can be pretty grumpy-making to know that I'm behind on a couple of things that might not get appreciated no matter what I do, just because I'm a few days late (thank you, Swap-bot); and it's also grumpy-making to wake up to the knowledge that I have a bunch of obligations to fulfill before I can start doing something I really ought to be doing, that I only just decided/found out I should be doing.

Not that I'm just whinging. ;) There are solutions to this sort of thing: First, I should do less frivolous swapping as a habit, and next, I should clear my space of current obligations so I can do what I Need to do sooner.

The problem then becomes obviously circular, 'cause it's more difficult to create when I'm grumpy, and I can't move on if I can't create well and be satisfied with the results. Creating stuff for people isn't like being in school, or at a job you hate, where you can -- or at least I can -- just do what you have to do without your heart being in it, and still do quite well by the standards they're using. My heart has to be in what I create, or it's that much more difficult to actually finish and send my things out into the world.

So I propose an Obligation Diet, a.k.a. a UFO Diet! It's like that yarn diet that's so popular with bloggers, including me, except that this one is about myself and my achievements -- it's about destashing my obligations and my unfinished projects and my creative albatrosses, to steal someone else's word for it. ;) The parameters of the Obligation Diet, I hereby set forth thusly:

For a period of however long it takes:

1. I will work only on old projects and obligations, a.k.a. UFOs, or Unfinished Objects (or Objectives ;));
2. The exception to #1 being if I need to create something on a deadline based on a previous promise, whether that be to myself or to someone else (e.g., if a friend's birthday is coming up, I have a previous unspoken promise to give said person a gift, and I may choose to create one rather than purchase one, since I am Poor ;)).
3. I will work on at least one UFO per day, for one hour per day.
4. When I don't feel like creating for someone else, I will work on a project, or do a non-UFO-related cheerful thing, for me, because slogging through a creative project without my heart in it will do no one good. (See the List of Ideas for Cheering Myself.) This does not count toward the required daily hour of UFO progress.
5. Also, regardless of whether I feel grumpy, I will do at least one thing for myself every day, if possible. ("If possible," because some days it's difficult to do something easy for myself that actually makes me happy, and it's better not to do something just to pretend it makes me happy. ;))
6. Projects which interest me but don't fall into the allowed New Projects category will be added to the list of things I'd like to do, and will be dealt with once the Obligation Diet has fulfilled its purpose, that is...

...until I have no more than, say, two or three running creative obligations, or however many I am capable of sustaining without feeling stressed and without being unable to comfortably and easily add more obligations in should they come up unexpectedly.

I used to say I was happiest when doing the impossible, which is true, except that right now I'm not doing the impossible, I'm maundering through the unlikely and not intrinsically flattering. ;)

I shall now print out the guidelines for the UFO diet, and keep them in my pocket at all times, so I can't forget. Good luck to me. ;D (UFO Diet ... GO!)

Related lists to make: the UFO list, the Cheerful Things to Do For Me list

Stash ... building?

I may acquire, as she puts it, the albatross of someone's yarn stash, if someone else hasn't already claimed it off the Cash for Your Stash blog. Oopsie. Well, I think it's hand-dyed, it's sock-weight yarn (I think), which I don't have a lot of, and it's blue. And it's cheap. I want to rescue it; I have a thing for albatrosses. ;)

I also just consciously realized that my stash is bigger than I thought: I have a bunch of thrifted sweaters waiting to be frogged. I may have to dive into the frogging sweaters for yarn for the Lotus Smock, and if I give in and buy the pattern for Sahara that I've been staring at, which is also (inconveniently for my temptation ;)) the Sexy Knitters Club KAL pattern, the frogging sweater stash may also come to the rescue. Whew. Here I was thinking I might be forced to waver on the yarn exercise program and buy some yarn.

Yay for "invisible" stash. ;)

(The way I'm leaning recently, though, I may be in danger of needing a knitting pattern exercise program next...)

The length of the UFO list is annoying me today, for some reason. Possibly that's related to the fact that I found a random, inexplicable hole knit into the Microspun portion of the Colorful Trade Shawl last night (this after having to untangle three balls of the same Microspun that had decided to make friends), and will have to wield the Crochet Hook of Knitsurgery on it to fix it. I wanted to do it last night, but it would have required a trip to the car to get said crochet hook, and it was late, so I didn't do it. Phooey on me, because now I don't feel like it this morning.

And there are two parties tonight, a cast party for the local FLaRF crew, and one of Christophe's couple of big annual themed parties, for which I was explicitly hunted down and invited, so I can't really bow out on either of them. I'm supposed to bring something foodlike to the first one, too, and I don't know the theme for the second, and goshdarnit, I just want to sit around and be lazy tonight, not go party-hopping. I'm so antisocial. ;)

I'll just have to get over it, won't I. ;D If only I had something awesomely sexy to wear, that I'd knit myself, it might be some consolation. Le sigh. This is why I should do more selfish knitting! ;D

Stoles I would like to make

For me, not because they necessarily look fun to make. ;) Lace and I don't always get along, but sometimes it's too pretty for me to pass up. Stoles!

The Gerda stole
The Print O' the Wave stole

There's one I linked to in my Livejournal, like seventeen years ago when I first started writing there, but I'm faaaar too lazy to go back and find it at the moment. Someday I will ... someday.

Also: finished Mystery Skein Swap item 2 Friday evening before we left for our last weekend of Faire. Woo! Tails shall be woven in this week, and objects shall be sent, and there shall be much rejoicing. Hopefully. ;)

Brainfogged

Again! I made two bookmarks, scanned those and the purple postcards, stuffed a couple envelopes for the I (heart) books swap, and wrote the survey-letter for a getting to know you letter swap on Swapbot, and now I'm a little brainfogged and would like to take a break from slogging through the list of things to do for other people and potentially do something for myself.

Last week (was it last week?) I worked on my experimental knitted, felted tricorn. I felted something on purpose for the first time a couple of days ago, first attempting to do it by hand, but that was too slow, so I finished it in Brian's washing machine, which worked quite nicely, except that the dish soap I was instructed to use didn't seem to want to go away in the rinse cycle. ;) I like felting, so now I have something to do with scritchy wool that I don't want to wear on my skin. Yay. So that was my thing to do for myself the last time I had this question.

Today I still ought to package up my Old Box ATCs for that swap. It isn't required for the swap that I embellish them any further than they are embellished by their own surface design, so I refuse to allow myself to feel pressured into embellishment. If it occurs to me while putting contact info stickers on the back that I should embellish them somehow, then cheers. But if I just put them into envelopes the way they are, then that's fine, too, because it explicitly gives me that permission in the swap info.

Time for self

I've packaged up four swaps with notes today ... Now it's time to do something for me for a bit, before I work on creating some more swaps for others.

But the question is ... what to do for me? Eek.