Champagne and Socks

This is a couple of things in one – multi list ticking!

I decided I wanted to have a knitting project to take on our honeymoon. Sometimes I feel very industrious on the plane. Sometimes I feel over tired and need something to keep me focused. And I also feel like, as well as the site seeing and the hanging out with C, I want to do a few things that just make me happy – after a whirlwind year (of awesome) in which I haven’t really felt like I’ve had a lot of time to do downtime things, like knitting.

Coupled with this, earlier this year I bought a copy of The Knitter’s Life List and had a skim read. Something I really was taken aback by was that I’ve been knitting for over 30 years and whilst I love what I have made, I’ve actually not been as adventurous a I might think I have in terms of my knitting. I taught myself to knit socks with double pointed needles. I’ve made some shawls. I’ve knit in the round and so on. But here’s this big book of things that actually I’ve not even thought about trying. And it encouraged me – yes via the favourite tool of a tick-off-able list – a whole bunch of new ideas of things to go out and look for and try. These include trying new patterns as well as different textiles.

I’ve been on the lookout for these so I can tick them off my list, trying them out first, of course! And I came across this little KAL (Knit A-Long) with a partnering with my favourite yarn dyers – Blue Moon Fiber Arts (ie discount voucher) – Sartorial Cowl. Basically, the idea is you get a clue – or part of the pattern – each week and you knit along and find out what you were knitting at the end. Sounds like heaps of fun. It usually takes so long for the yarn to reach me that mostly the KAL has finished by the time I can start. And so it has again this time. But that’s ok.

I don’t think this is a usual pattern for me. Firstly, it’s a different yarn from what I normally buy from Blue Moon – this is a superfine merino in a bulky weight. When I was browsing the site for colours I thought I might like, I came across this one, called The Kracken, and knew that was the one I had to have!

I’m not normally into cowls – I’ve not knit one before but they always struck me as well .. headbands for your neck or something. So… not something I’ve knit before and in a yarn I’ve not tried. Seems to tick some boxes. And then it seemed small enough a project for a short trip and then I could wear it on said trip too. Seemed like a win all round.

The yarn arrived today and I’m so tempted to knit it now. And I would have started tonight if I wasn’t still working on my first cardigan which I am hoping to have finished to take with me as well.

So, dear reader, I have a problem. I like to buy tea. Not drink tea, mind, just buy it. And this little oddity is fine when you live alone. You rarely have to even acknowledge it. A friend may come to visit and you can pull out All The Teas, and they can feel a little bit special as they get to select from The Range. And that’s the end of it.

But when you live with someone else, eventually they Notice. And then, once they’ve noticed, they start to take notes. And then, after a while, They Ask Questions. Questions like, “how on earth can you need MORE tea?” and “don’t you already have that kind?” and finally … “BUT YOU DON’T EVEN DRINK TEA!!!” this one is more a loud statement than a question and is usually made as said person is juggling packets and packets of tea as they tumble out of the pantry whilst he tries to put away your new acquisition.

Because. You see, dear reader, I would *like* to be the kind of person who drinks tea. There. I said it. That other version of me? The one who cooks delicious gourmet soufflés in her ramekins and always offers to bring a dish to dinner and never ever has a dirty cup waiting in the sink and always remembers her third cousin twice removed’s wedding anniversary and doesn’t need prompting for the 63rd item on her to do list to get done? She drinks tea. And has a perfect complexion and figure. And you like her more than me.

And it might be because she drinks tea.

Or it might be because she calmly sits on her window seat on a Sunday afternoon sipping said tea out of a fine bone china tea cup whilst thumbing through Vogue and glancing out to her perfectly manicured garden.

Sigh.

One of my 2013 New Year’s Resolutions is going to revolve around this issue. I think I should either rediscover my love for *drinking* tea, find a perfect way to store the 30 different boxes of tea I own or admit once and for all that I don’t actually drink tea, gift what I have and move on with my life. There. There it is, my first NYR for 2013.

You know, the reason I started a blog in the very first place was to make sure that I wrote *something* every day.

I really want to capture my thoughts and feelings as I enter this last month before I am a married woman. And yet, I can never get myself to sit down and think these things through to write a post or I feel like I don’t even know where I would start. And mostly, I actually just don’t seem to have any spare time these days.

But I am gearing up to make my new years resolutions list early this year. I kinda do have some goals I’d like to set myself for 2013 but I also am interested to see how I use the Getting Things Done framework to … get these things done.

Today is Black Friday in the US and it seems to have hit my pocket! So I am off the internet now to avoid any more tempting emailed newsletters!

As I was returning to my everyday life after the whirlwind WFC trip to Canada, I got news that C’s program had changed and that he was heading home much much sooner than planned. In fact, a whole month early. And I went to pick him up from the base on Sunday.

That didn’t go quite as planned. C told me that I my name was on the list for permission to head onto the island and that he was arrived at 2pm. So I headed over at 1.30pm so that I could be standing on the wharf and watch the ship come in. Except, when I got to the security checkpoint, I was not on the list. Nope. Not. There. And the only way to get entry was to get someone to call from the ship. I hung around DM Tweeting C and also calling and messaging his phone but I knew there wasn’t much point by the time it was 1.45pm as he would have been on deck in formation for arrival. So I went back to my car and tried to cry in a way that the security guard wouldn’t see. And cars and cars of families and significant others drove past and through. They were on the list. And maybe I cried a bit more. And then at about 1.55pm, I think, the guard came out and said that a Petty Officer on the ship had sponsored me to come on base. Just like that. I don’t even know how he knew that there were people who should have been on the list but weren’t (there were more than just me, apparently) or how he managed to contact them. But suddenly I was through!

And then it was quite a drive to the wharf, and I didn’t really know the way, and by the time I parked and headed to the right wharf, the ship was in and they were setting up the gangplank. And then there was C waving at me and smiling and I thought, “phew, I made it!” And the officers came off first and there he was. In living colour.

And now he is home! For like, a while. For various reasons. And …  after having gotten used to living by myself, and creating my own routine and ways to cope and get everything done, suddenly I have my partner back. It’s an adjustment. It really is. It’s weird. I’d been handling myself to cope with the whole lead up to the wedding by myself. And now I don’t have to. I’d been saying it was all fine and I was ok, because with a month left to go, you can’t lose it. But Friday night, I watched my (now routine) rom com and I cried over how lonely I was and how much I missed C. Because I knew he was coming home on Sunday

It’s weird getting used to having someone else to share the chores with again. And also, you settle into things being the way you want them to, with no need to have to compromise with anyone else. And then suddenly someone else is around who has *opinions* and *possessions*. And now … just like that, he’s here for the foreseeable future, like that whole living apart thing was just a dream.

Really weird.

But really really awesome.

Not only for the current obvious reason, am I very interested in following what’s been going on lately in publishing.

As we hit the ground in Canada, the merger between Penguin and Random House was being announced and it was certainly a topic of conversation for the week long we were there. For small press publishing, I could sit down and look at how this is probably a good thing, in the short term. But in general, I feel quite depressed about the state of publishing – things are grim right now, there’s no pretending they aren’t.

Why the merger and what does it mean? Here is the final wrap up from Seattle Pi in their article A Merger in Publishing – and then there were five:

In the end, what does this merger mean for writers (and readers)? Will the Bertelsmann Foundation’s sink-or-swim economic stance bleed over into the realm of literature? Will Random House/Penguin, now in control of more than a quarter of the entire book market, stick to a bottom line that reduces the supply of ideas while increasing its intellectual price? Will Random House/Penguin, increasingly free from serious competition, no longer feel a need to invest in writers with new ideas, new concepts, new ways of interpreting the world?

Like all things involving dead trees, the new chapter has been prompted in large part by the march of the digital giants, including Amazon, Apple and Google. The print publishers hope their merging of resources will leave them better placed to cope with the onset of the ebook era.

‘In the short term, I don’t see much changing for readers. The battle between retailers and publishers is always about price – the former want lower and the latter want higher. Choice might be affected adversely as there will be fewer publishers to fight over new writers and subsequently fewer risks might be taken by the publisher.

‘However, the book industry is fundamentally healthy in that people want to read and for the right handful of books they will read in big numbers.

This blog crossposts to my old Livejournal account. Livejournal seems to be under spamming attack and it’s kinda annoying. I’ve had to switch to allowing only comments from friends on my Livejournal account.

But commenting to my WordPress account is still open to anyone – so please feel free to do so over here.

I intended to post about my trip daily. You know, like, as it happened. For like, documentational purposes. And since you’re reading this, you know I failed dismally. Mostly because I was either stupidly busy (having fun or working, in equal parts) or asleep. And a lot of stuff that I thought I would post about, still requires further and more processing. Maybe later.

I made a couple of big life decisions in the last two weeks, cause you know, wasn’t doing enough of that this year. So it’s all weird and in process.

But. Thought to reduce the lack of blogging due to paralysis by analysis, I’d post snippets.

I watched a looooot of television on the planes. I had packed all kinds of entertainment, in the fear I might get bored or overtired. Trust me, me overtired and then bored? Very not pretty. On the flight to Toronto, I had a bunch of work to do, which I did. The future that brings wifi on a plane meant I even got to email versions of it to Helen and get her edits back and do that a couple of times in 13.5 hours. I worked on a website upgrade and a few of other things.

But other than that, I watched Seasons of TV. Seasons. More than one. In one go. Cause it takes nine years to get to Canada and back again. I caught up on Nurse Jackie S4, Episodes S2 and tried out Veep (meh) on the way there.

On the way home, I watched Seasons 1 and 2 of Downton Abbey (well, came two eps short of the end of Season 2.) And so. It turns out that “costume drama” is not totally yawn boooooring if the era of the clothes is one you love. This was new to me. And omg how gorgeous are the clothes and jewellery? That necklace that Mary wears to dinner, I covet muchly. Anyway, Season 2 is just a crying fest, no? It’s so tragic and heartbroken. And filled with despair. I’m sure every time Jonathan looked over at me I was sniffling into my tissues. Anyway, it’s filled with WWI stuff and I’m watching this and crying over the horror of war etc and thinking about how I hate war. I’m a pacifist. But aside from that, I can’t stand anything to do with war – fiction or non fiction. I’m not into it. At all.

And I’m marrying into the military.

And that, my friends, sums me up.