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Word of the day.

I have a new website, though it is currently in the very early stages of development and there is not much to it at the moment. As usual, I don’t really like the options available to me so am pondering building much of the design myself.

If you know my full name, it is www.firstname-lastname.com, yes that is with a hyphen.

Though there hasn’t been much activity here, I do not intend to stop posting. I’ve just been taking a very long break that has comprised of lots of knitting and fantasy/sci-fi reading.  I’ve been trying to motivate myself to post and take a more active interest in current events, but have been mostly unsuccessful so far.

Despite being excited about the new space, I am somewhat sad that this one, which has served me so well for so long, is no longer completely sufficient for all of the things I’d like to do.

I think that after years of making an effort to do so, I’ve finally taken up knitting seriously. My original and main intent is to try to purchase as little sweatshop made clothing as possible. It’s incredibly frustrating to me that my choices are so limited when it comes to considering the human rights of the person making a product. In the world I want to live in, it shouldn’t even be an issue.

Over the years I’ve also developed a contentious relationship with words and have found it difficult to convey what I want to get across. As someone who used to love what I could do with words and had a lot of confidence in my ability with them, it’s been distressing and I haven’t been able to work through it. I feel like I’m wrestling with them all the time. I can’t imagine a day when I’ll feel confident with them again.

Tonight I crafted a light and quick “About Me” (In Relation to Knitting!) for the knitting community I just joined, Ravelry, and felt it captured the easy way with words I used to have. I admit I’m sort of proud of it, and if I can’t showcase a way with words I want to recapture here, then where can I, right?? (And at the moment I’m not even supposed to be on the computer because carpal tunnel is kicking my ass!)

So here it is:

• I adore color. Love love love it. I think this is in part because I’ve done photography for many years in my spare time and capturing and photographing vivid color is one of my preoccupations.

• I can see this love of color aiding and abetting a development of a stash. In learning about and beginning to appreciate yarn over the past few months there have been many times when the color of something has made me go “I MUST have that now!” Luckily I’ve been able to consistently talk myself down from the edge.

• I am always cold. I daydream about the possibility of knitting up comfortable, incredibly warm garments (instead of the several ill fitting, uncomfortable layers that characterize my winter days now) and maybe a few light hoodies to deal with summer AC.

• I like fingerless gloves and find them useful to go about day to day business while never having to take them off. Every fall I buy a cheap, one size fits all pair of stretchy gloves and cut the fingers halfway. This has mostly worked fine for me besides the inevitable holes they suffer by the end, my always losing them, and the hints from people that I look homeless. I’m looking forward to the possibility of knitting up a number of quality, nice looking and warm pairs of fingerless gloves!!!

• I just got into graduate school and may join the ranks of commuting knitters.

• I guess another of my loves that resembles a knitter’s yarn stash is my book “stash”. I have hundreds of unread books and I’m trying to combine knitting and reading. My first try at reading from the screen while knitting was a dismal failure, but my second had limited success. Maybe one day I can graduate to books… lol. (I have a bias against audiobooks – not sure why.)

• I like to watch documentaries while I knit and call it “radical knits.” (That’s me making fun of myself about taking myself too seriously!)

• I am waiting impatiently for carpal tunnel symptoms to clear up so I can finish my first project for my beginner’s class and rush headlong into one I’ve chosen. Typing certainly isn’t helping.

Now back to regularly scheduled broadcast. (I think Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony are up next.)

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