Such Sweet Hands

Sitting in my cozy new corner playing with my spirograph…

The spirograph soothes me. It’s a way of simply making appealing doodles and falling into mindless repetition and letting my brain work out anxious kinks.

A lot of my anxious kinks are tied to ideas. I get a vague inspiration and then it runs in ten directions at once and I can’t focus down on any one thing. It’s like craving chocolate ice cream and tacos and eight other contradictory flavors all at once. It’s easy to become exhausted and confused and never take the steps to realize any of these ideas. So doodling always helps calm my twitching thoughts…

I looked up from sprirograph and found a tray of yarn right in my eyeline. I felt a few more ideas come over me and started to get anxious. Then a little voice in my head told me, “You don’t have to try to make every idea…”

I obviously don’t make every idea into something, but it is very hard to let go. Once it’s been glimpsed in my mind at all it’s so easy to add it to a long list of ideas I get to flog myself for not bringing to completion. So this thought that an idea can be an idea and simply left alone … if I can embrace that, I’ll probably be a less anxious person.

I love my car. My Baby Car as I often call her. She’s a 1987 VW Cabriolet, white on white Wolfsburg edition. This was, is and always will be a sweetie pie of a car. In the 80’s, this car was Barbie’s Car. I have lovingly referred to this car as the “Cheerleader Bitch” car because it is so much a part of the movie Can’t Buy Me Love.

I got her the same month I turned 20. This car was a turning point in my life. At the time I was living in Nebraska and the winter of 1996 was one full of blizzards. I had had this California worthy car no less than two weeks when we drove home in a white out together. We spent that weekend, which included my 20th birthday, shrouded in snow and cold. I had planned a road trip that weekend simply for the sake of escaping Kearney and being on the road with my baby car. She sat in the garage, top down, ready for sun. Sweet Baby Car and I had a long talk and decided we wouldn’t be spending my 21st birthday the same way. Kearney was a lonely place for me and Baby Car became my friend and muse. We were getting each other out of there!

The first January day that warmed up to 40+ degrees saw me tooling around town with the top down. This car of mine and I were ready to live someplace warmer.

Before that fateful cold month I had been torn between moving to New York or Los Angeles to study acting. My car knew where we were meant to be. Even though I was secretive about my escape plan folks would see the car and ask if I was moving to California.

We’ve had our ups and downs. Mechanics seem to have forgotten how to deal with cars SOOOO OLD that they can’t be hooked up to a diagnostic computer. Some jerk hit her while she was parked one day, giving her a nasty fat lip and black eye. She is honestly waiting for me to get a hybrid so she can retire. She’s a bit pissy with me for getting into yarn instead of car detailing and restoration. I dream of fixing her up. I’m thinking old school mercedes metallic blue paint job, tan top, and freshen up the white interior…

So I wish my Sweet Baby Car a happy Labor Day. It was ten years ago this weekend that she brought me to Southern California, for that I will always be grateful.

This isn’t the scariest! Click on the pic to see the plentitude of crochet fright we found at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Lubbock. These are my roots ya’ll! Save me!

First of all, there is no option to change the length of the washing/ agitation cycle, this means that if it doesn’t felt in 10 minutes of agitating, tough luck. Wait out the next 20 minutes of the machine cycle, watch a ton of water get dumped out and pumped back in for the spin and rinse cycles and try not to feel guilty for wasting all that heat and water. Then feed another dollar and fifty cents into that machine and start all over. It’s simply impractical. As much as I can be fascinated by the effects of playing with wool to make felt, the practicalities of doing it aren’t any fun for me right now.

Obviously I just spent an hour in the laundry room…

When you live in a coin op world quarters are worth more than 25 cents, we go to a lot of trouble to herd enough quarters to keep us in clean clothes. To offset the guilt of wasting hot water and precious laundry quarters I threw two rugs in. I knew they were dirty and I was likely courting a mess of cat fur to mix into the felt swatches, but I took my chances… argh! The 10 minutes of agitation wasn’t long enough to finish the swatches to my liking AND they proved to be excellent cat fur magnets. So I have not-yet-fully-felted furballs.

With a neighbor who had absolutely no curiosity as to what I was doing hogging the washer as long as I was finished in the same amount of time a normal wash takes peeking in regularly to see if I was done yet, I resigned my post at the washing machine.

Sigh.

Now to find a pal who will let me loiter at their home and use their washing machine…

I’ve been overhauling the apartment. When all is sorted, sent to Goodwill or shelved where it belongs the place likely won’t look too different to any visitor. I do hope we’ll finally get around to hanging stuff on the walls, but for now the aim is getting rid of all the things we just don’t need.

I’ve been decluttering steadily for a few years. It started with the huge stock of costume stuff I had from my acting school days. It took 2 or 3 purges spaced about 6 months apart to really get rid of it all. It was that hard to let go of all those improvised, patched together renditions of everything from a dress fit for a minuet to a dress perfect for the Charleston. Most of those things were ratty, but I had put each one of them together myself for specific characters and letting them go was like throwing away the ties I had to the part of me that connected with each character.

With all of the character pieces gone, it is now time to move on and free the rest of the things I don’t need. Three trash bags of clothes went to Goodwill yesterday. These were either orphans from the “mend me” pile, or vestiges of the 90’s. I still hung on to several things that break the “if you haven’t worn it in 6 months rule”, but I freed up almost a full closet worth of hanging space… besides, given the work from home attire of drawstring pants from American Apparel and t-shirts, if I followed that 6 month rule I wouldn’t have anything that doesn’t look like sloppy pajamas to wear when it comes time for the next TNNA!

I’m also sending off a small pile of books. I don’t know if I’ve ever let go of books in my adult life. And then there’s sorting through all the crafty bits and bobs. Most of that stuff is staying for now, but I have started a box of things I won’t be keeping that might fit nicely in a gift package for a crafty person.

With clothes and crafty bits, I have a box for each of things I intend to fix, mend, use, etc. The deal I’ve made with myself is I review the boxes again soon and see if I’ve actually used any of them.

I’m starting to get a high from all this decluttering though! It feels so good to get rid of stuff and leave clean open space for my own thoughts and new ventures. The new room in my closet means I have storage for crafty stuff that just littered and cluttered my office. Now my office will have a nice little clean space where I can place some pillows to make a cozy place for eating cookies and playing with my old Spirograph.

I can make some pretty awesome chocolate chip cookies.  I follow the classic recipe with a few tiny tweaks and as long as I remember to take them out in time, they rock.  I’m not claiming to make the best cookies.  I’m simply saying they rock.

Tonight I decided to add M&Ms because I love M&Ms.  I need to experiment some more with the right chocolate chip - M&M - dough ratio.  I keep a stock of Ghirardelli chocolate pieces for making fudge or cookies (and the occasional monthly midnight “must have some/ any chocolate” desperate binge).  The bags of Semi Sweet pieces being barely used, I decided to mix them with the M&Ms, thinking the candies are sweet to start so the Semi Sweets would balance things out.   Nahhhhh!  I think Double Fudge is the better way to go here.  The Milk Chocolate pieces would be too sweet with M&Ms, but please!  Never again with the Semi Sweets!  What’s the purpose?  I’ll use them in fudge because they are melted down and mixed with a ton of sugar.  The cookies aren’t seeing any more Semi Sweet.  Life is just too short!

So I’m in Texas…

I come from a bunch of crafty folk, so this week has been filled with all sorts of fun crafty visits.

I’ve gotten my cousin Courtney working full tilt with a hook and yarn. She will be greeting her first days of middle school with a very cool bracelet bag. She had a bit of a rocky time keeping track of where she was in a row and kept skipping stitches. I encouraged her to be mindful of her work and keep a close eye on each stitch. She came over yesterday with her solution to the problem; a record of stitches she calls the “Counting Buddy”. She’s keeping track of every stitch in each row as she works. She’s learning how to recognize skipped stitches and what it looks like when she works too many stitches in a stitch. Her first crochet project is looking neat and nice thanks to her care and attention. Promise to show off the finished project as soon as she finishes!

Crocheting at the kitchen table with my Mom, Aunt, Grandmother, and Cousin while Sunday dinner smells waft around us… It was a lovely Sunday.