Unfinished Busyness

I finally finished knitting a super cute Eastern Market Bag. With scant yarn left, I made the strap two-toned. I ran out of yarn altogether before I completed the bottom, so I substituted a muti-colored cotton, which I think “makes” the bag. I rarely exactly follow a pattern. Now I’ll have to figure out how to carry the bag upside-down.

In my June, July, October, and November 2020 journal entries, I mentioned needing to finish knitting this bag.

In my mid-March 2021 journal entry, I mentioned needing to finish it and three other projects before starting the “red hearts scarf” or the “selkie wrap.”

How many unfinished knitting projects do I have, anyway, I wondered? Also, how boring is my journal?

My Year in Numbers

or

What the Hell Did I Do with Myself in a New Town During a Second Quarantine Year?

Most Memorable Kiss (sorry, MIM)

0 covid contracted (introverts are the new normal)

0 acceptances for publications, grants, contests, grad school (their loss)

0 poems written (I’m not that despairing yet)

0 falls, trips, tumbles, spills, skids, unintentional splits

0 ER visits

0 paramedic visits

0 9-1-1 calls

0 juvenile court visits

The Celebratory Undead

Last night I ushered for our community theater’s performance of Dracula. My job: check every patron’s vaccination card to verify they’d been fully inoculated against Covid-19 before they were allowed entrance to the theater. (They could also show proof of a negative Covid-19 test result, issued by a government entity or health provider, within the last 72 hours.) They should also be masked and would remain masked for the entire show. The theater’s entire last season had been cancelled because of the pandemic, so this was the compromise in order to have any season at all. Patrons were notified of the requirements when they purchased their tickets and had been sent a reminder email before the show. The restrictions were on the website. In other words, there should be no surprises.

Covid Crochet

I decided to learn to crochet during the Covid-19 pandemic not because of boredom after months of quarantine, but because of this:

Fruit Garden CAL by Jane Crowfoot

I saw no fruit in the so-called Fruit Garden CAL Blanket and didn’t know what CAL meant, but, I HAVE TO MAKE THAT, I thought-yelled when it crossed my screen during my rabbit-hole internet searches for macramé wall-art patterns.

The Serial Killer Suitcase

Me (in pearl earrings) with Gacy clown, H.W. Mullins deer, Damien Echols handprint.

In 1998, when new friends found a cache of memorabilia collected by a fan of serial killers, they thought of me. They dragged a couple of garbage bags and a suitcase of the soggy collectibles over to our house in the Irish Channel of New Orleans.

Gee, thanks?

Yarn Counts!

An Annual Reckoning with a Late-in-Life Obsession

If it’s organized, it’s not hoarding

0             Amount of yarn I vowed to acquire in 2020

64           Numbers of skeins I acquired (plus uncounted bags of raw fleece and roving, which don’t count)

The Jazz Hat

[A blog post that took me two years to finish, hence the outdated reference to a class crammed into a tiny room: remember those days?]

The Jazz Hat takes itself for a walk to the Farmers Market, aka Selfie Snafu

I signed up for a color-knitting class, failing to realize that color-knitting was the same topic as the disastrous first knitting workshop I took three months after first taking up needles.

You might be thinking, “Isn’t all knitting color-knitting?” Unless your yarn is, um, white?

Accidental Luddite Life While on Lockdown

Teddy Bear the Talking Porcupine: why the internet exists (c) Zooniversity

With our recent move out of the Land Of Microsoft and Amazon and into a small town and a house built in 1900, I’ve backslid–coincidentally with a pandemic–into the distant past, like as far back as the 80s, even. At this rate, I’ll be grateful to have zippers by year’s end. Not that I can zip any of my pants, anyway.

Covid Cowl

©DROPS Design Lovely Feathers Neck Warmer

The “Lovely Feathers Neck Warmer” comes nowhere near the neck, and it doesn’t look like any feather I’m familiar with, not even a flamingo’s. Obviously I agree it’s lovely or I wouldn’t have chosen the knitting pattern.

I never knit patterns with the colors specified by the designer. My motto is, “Why knit something that looks like you could buy it in a store?” So far I’ve reached my aspirations in spades. The motto might be, “Why knit an accessory that makes you look sane when you could look eccentric instead?”

March of the Penguin Sweaters

On knitting a garment I hope will never be worn.

Ill-fitting

I’ve come to understand one of the primary reasons I’m passionate about knitting: As I knit, I visualize the person the garment is intended for. If it’s the holiday season, I visualize friends, family, and a flock of juvenile-service professionals who will get to choose from a knitted pile of accessories.

This is a relief after a quarter century of writing: nobody wants a draft of a bad poem in their holiday stocking—although the Man I Married might have preferred a slim sheet of paper over the seven-foot-long scarf I knitted him as my first ever knitted project.