on again, off again

I had three self-imposed projects that I started hmmm over the last few months that I have dropped nearly completely. I am not reading Shakespeare in the way I had thought I would. I do still carry around my copy of Romeo and Juliet, though, just in case and last night after the kids went to sleep I started reading it again just enough to get me to go to sleep. Ahem. I have not started any more home projects and have certainly not finished up home project #4- couch! I know this because we still have no couch. Whenever I think about this I hear the song "Yes, we have no bananas," in my head which should say something about the lack of bitterness involved. And, I have not been knitting one new project and then finishing up one old project each month for about 2 months now. I mean, I suppose I could hurry up this month and fit something in {maybe} and let go of only February. It turns out there is a reason so many of my old projects are sitting around. They make for dull company and I have half a mind to rip them all out. In fact, I am still stuck on the most {possibly} boring knitting project ever- putting in a pocket- into the sweater that I have taken so many pains to modify before the weather got too warm to wear it. Again, ahem. I had such high hopes for putting a zipper on that sweater as well and darn it if I didn't buy the wrong sized zipper that last time I went to Joanne's in search of a zipper. How on Earth I bought one that was 5 inches too small I don't understand. Now I have it straight. All this of course means that I have to motivate myself to drive over to Joanne's again and get another zipper and until I do that, there the sweater shall sit. Nothing quite like almost-finished-knitting-sitting or even this-knitting-was-once-finished-and-is-now-sitting-again. Still, I have very little bitterness, more like complete non-interest. I mean, don't get me wrong, it will be a shame {sort of} if I don't wear this sweater again until next fall. Then again, I think my neglect has more to do with some of the details not working out in quite the way I had envisioned them. The whole point of modifying this sweater was to make it better than it was. It is better, I will give it that. But will I actually wear it {still}? That is the question. Have the modifications done enough so that I will put it on and wear it out there- even if only to the dog park? Or for a walk in the woods? Who can say until it is done. And what then, if I won't wear it? More modifications? To what end?

This, I must say, is the good and the bad of knitting. On the one hand, knitting does give you, as I have written before, an opportunity to fine tune the endless possibilities inherent in an unused skein of yarn. On the other hand, what about finally finishing something already? Surely, while the process is amazing, there is also something to be said for a product as well {at least eventually}? I don't know. I am torn. Obviously.

These questions, I can find them anywhere and everywhere I look. To what end? I think, as with everything else, it must be both. It must be the joy in the process and the thrill of the product. Without both we are left with a lot of lifeless stuff taking up space {too much focus on product} or naked and hungry in the snow {too much focus on process}. It's good to have both.

And what does that mean for my sweater-in-the-fixing? I've really no idea. At least not now. I can fix it up, put in the zipper and the little embroidered flowers I have planned, wear it to the park, marvel that I made it, bemoan the smaller pockets each time I put my hands inside- modify those? Or I can put it back on the shelf until next year, forestalling the product a little while longer in favor of a longer process. Wherever the sweater takes me. Or something like that.

home project 2- battery charger

At long last I have a new battery charger! That's three home projects down in just over two months. I'm looking around my house right now and the obvious choice for home project 4 is of course a couch. Let the project begin!



Of course just because I have the charger does not mean I have charged any batteries. Imagine my surprise when I saw the kids had found another use for the charger!

fortunately

I've been thoroughly enjoying the spring weather and all that it brings. Pink tree blossoms, daffodils, the azaleas are starting, witch hazel bushes, even a few rhododendron bushes are bursting with color. I would normally be filling these blog pages with photo after photo of the flowers surrounding me. Eva's hair in pigtails! Guinea pigs feasting on dandelion greens. Jack laying in the sunshine while I finally get to meditate outside again.

Unfortunately, we are still having battery issues and this means there are fewer than usual pictures to upload. Fortunately, I have been spending just as much time enjoying spring's bounty without the camera. Unfortunately, I have not fixed the battery issue with home improvement project #2. Fortunately, there really is no deadline and I have plenty of time to deal with batteries. Unfortunately, my kids remind me nearly every day to fix the battery situation. Fortunately, my kids remind me nearly every day to fix the battery situation. Get the idea? Thanks to my friend Erik for the fortunately game. I just can't get enough of things just being these days.

It seems one thing I continue to struggle with- unfortunately? fortunately?- is being with not-knowing. Or not-knowing just being? Not-knowing, in particular, seems to feel more on the unfortunately side than not. After thinking things through just now, it seems like it might have to do at least a little bit with logistics- if I can just move through some part of a not-knowing, then I will be done with it and on to what I want to be doing instead. Being in the moment and not-knowing feels more than a little bit like chaos to me {sometimes} and flowing chaos takes presence. Maybe that is it. Is it easier to be unconscious and pushing to know than to be conscious and present and not-knowing? Fortunately, I know that isn't so. It's all in the remembering. And the trusting. There's that trust thing again...

Home Project 3- guinea pig fleece!

Terrence sitting on the new fleece-y goodness we got for the guinea pigs' cage. This was Home Project #3 and really came together when I was at the fabric store buying liner fabric for the knit bag I just finished. Synchronicity guiding the way...

We bought a few inexpensive towels today to go underneath the fleece and set it all up for the piggies. When we put them in their cage with the new bedding set up they blipped around happily for quite a while. The bedding for their cage had gotten to be both incredibly messy (it got everywhere!) and cost prohibitive (wow- it cost so much to be able to change their bedding as often as I wanted). I'm glad to have found a solution that works for both me and the pigs. It is also incredibly cute to think about them appreciating the softness of the fleece on their little feet.

curtains, revisited

On Saturday, I thought my post would read, "The house is clean (Amna came and cleaned, yay Amna!), the refrigerator is full (we went and bought groceries on Friday, yay groceries!), and the curtains are hung (Ellen and Evan came over to give me a hand with Home Project 1- curtains, yay Evan!)." And yet, no. The house was cleaned, the groceries were bought, the curtains were hung. And then I noticed that the curtains I had bought the day before were slightly different lengths even though they all said the same length on their packages. Evan did a super-bangup-precision-filled job hanging up the curtain rods but the curtains themselves were not up to the task of hanging evenly.

And so I went round and round with myself about whether I wanted to find other curtains, whether it was worth it, whether I should be happy to just have them up, whether I was being too fussy caring about those couple inches that didn't line up, wondering which curtains were actually 84 inches and which were either three inches more or less, depending, all the while holding myself back from actually measuring all of the curtains. Suffice it to say that I thought a lot about perfectionism- again wondering whether it is always bad to want things just so? I had gone to the trouble to enlist Evan and Ellen to help me hang them up and there were still issues with the curtains. When I told my mom about the curtains she said, Oh that's how it always is with curtains. Another piece of wisdom they would have done well to give me back in school. {Oh, by the way, when you are an adult and go out and buy curtains, don't bother trying to get them to line up evenly, they never will...} I kept wondering where I would draw the line with the curtains. What I kept coming back to, again and again, is that once again it has to do with freedom and knowing that at any given moment I am free to keep the curtains just as they are and at the same time, I am free to try and even them up. Again and again it comes back to freedom. Without it, there is much hair pulling and shoulding and generally driving myself crazy. That is what I kept in mind when I decided to move forward with project even-things-up.

So yesterday I went back to the store and bought another set of curtains in the hopes that they would be the same length (I need two pair for the large picture window in the living room and we {meaning Eva} are set on one of the pairs but not the other. The pair we are set on they are unfortunately out of more sets so we are trying to mix and match sets for a certain "look". Um. Yes, I understand that if I am not actually buying the same curtains there is a chance they will not be the same length and yet it still seems plausible that because they were made by the same company and sold in the same section and hung up as samples together and the fact that they all said 84 inches on the package, that there was a chance that they would be the same length.) And yet- no. I bought another pair of curtains and those were also a few inches shorter- possibly more- than the main set, the set we are set on, so to speak.

The good news is that I actually like the second (wait, third) pair of curtains better and may end up just going with them instead of continuing on my quest for matching lengths. Today I thought about going to another store to see if they had two more curtain panels to match the two we want to keep but I found that I was just not up to the task and neither were the kids. If I had been very inspired I could have pushed through and checked out the curtain section lickety split but an uninspired me plus two reluctant kids equals trouble at Target so I wisely stayed away. I wish I could say that the curtain project has ended, that I am happy with the results and ready to move on. I am not quite there yes, also I feel myself approaching, albeit slowly. I am definitely ready, however, to move on to Home Project 2- battery charger. In retrospect it seems as though I might have done better starting with that one. How can you go wrong replacing a battery charger? Wait. Don't answer that.

home project 1- curtains

Normally, or at least normally for the last several years, I have gone around the house on New Year's Eve and done various home fix-its for the New Year. These fix-its include things like replacing light bulbs that have been burnt out for months, oiling the sliding glass door or hinges that squeak in the night. One year I painted the front door. I gather up old catalogs to recycle. Take back library books. Toss all old lists. New lists. Any lists.

Tossing all lists has gone so well over the last couple of years that this year when I looked around for lists to rip up I found none! My lists- of books to read, things to do, things to take care of, things to buy, places to go, groceries, even, have apparently dwindled over the years to the point where I don't have a lot of list-ing hanging over my head, which was exactly the point of the exercise in the first place. Don't get me wrong- I still make lists. The difference now is that I seem to actually take care of the lists or at least let them go when I am done with them whereas before I might have left them to linger around for months- either not getting to them or realizing I didn't want to get to them. Outdated lists can get in the way of moving onto something else entirely.

I didn't do as many home fix-its this year on New Years, though I did put in a few light bulbs because the front room had grown dark. I do, however, have some plans for more extensive fix-its that I am planning to spread out over the course of the next several weeks. All of them will no doubt increase the livability of our space. All of them I have been meaning to get to. Some are half done, some just a suggestion. Basically, I am going to make one big list and use the momentum of the New Year to fix a few things up around here, starting with the living room curtains.

We haven't had curtains for the window in the living room since we have lived here, mainly because we had so many plants- roses, a large laurel, a Japanese Maple- that blocked the view for the most part from the street. I also like how light and open it feels without the curtains. All of that changed, however, when our landlord had many of the plants in our yard dramatically cut back. Our front window is no longer partially obscured by the rose bushes and the laurel was cut way back as well. We are a little too light and open now for my taste.

I attempted to buy curtains a few months ago when this first happened but the curtains I bought ended up being too narrow for the window. I really dislike hanging curtains and left the project half finished so that right now most of the window is blocked by the curtains, but not all. I also chose the wrong color entirely- white- can you believe it? I won't go into too many details about what the bottom of the curtains look like now but suffice it to say I am going to go with a darker color next time. My foray into decorating with white has come to an end. My goal now is to get curtains that fit, hang them, and move on.

I know, I know. Why don't I just make curtains? There is a fabric store nearby. I have a sewing machine set up. I have made curtains before. Sort of. I am opting to buy the curtains because part of my mission for these home fix-it projects is to get the projects up and running with minimal hair pulling. My experience with making curtains last time was more about maximal hair pulling. So that's it. Inexpensive, easy, descent curtains with minimal hair pulling (because believe me- just hanging up the curtains will most likely involve at least some hair pulling already). No fuss. No muss.