- Bought the house next door in June, hoping that one day it can be a studio/gallery and in the mean time, pay for itself as rental property. Renovation is turning out to be MUCH more complicated than initially estimated so that project has absorbed every waking moment of free time and creative energy. I get a headache every time my builder asks for another decision. White. The walls will be white. Everything will be white, except for the pink kitchen sink, the purple bathtub (existing, and cast iron; builder refuses to remove). How did I become someone who owns three pink sinks and what am I going to do with them? Some kind of vernacular-mosaic fountain comes to mind. But when? And will it use the “This Old House” copper plumbing lines we took out of the house? Unlikely that PEX tubing will ever be reclaimed for art. I hope that is not a choice that comes to me. (I mean, once we get this house back together, having taken it apart down to the dirt, I don’t ever want to see under those floorboards again.) More decisions. Another headache.
- I chased a black snake out of that house yesterday.
- Hurricane Ernesto passed us by, but took out power and flooded NC 70 in Goldsboro.
- I woke up at 3:30 this morning, thinking about the house next door and all the work that remains to be done before I run out of coverage on the homeowner’s policy (they don’t like to insure vacant homes and I’ve already had two extensions). Could have expected this to start sooner or later–that early morning insomnia that won’t let you get back to sleep. Too early to do anything that requires movement, so I sat and wrote and tried to “make art” through words, which is somewhat less than useful. I’m playing with new-to-me knitting that has been inspired by the trip to Endless Possibilities described back in June. Make something, even if I don’t exactly know what it is that I want to be making. Look at books, try not to spend too much money buying equipment (needles and cutters, in this case) until I know that I’m going to stick with the medium.
- Three trips through the craft shelves at local bookstores suggest strongly that I own almost all the books there are in the field; there’s not a whole lot that’s truly new in knitting. Rather, one or two inventive ideas per book, but nothing I need to spend $40 an idea on. And Barbara Walker documented pretty much all the stitch patterns a long time ago; presenting them in current colors doesn’t change the core information any.
- I could knit this…. or that… or this other thing… I could knit 15′ of tube and make a … I could do baskets… or giant clothing, or Barbie patterns (very different outcome at a gauge of 2 stitches = 1″).
- Where do I start and how many sets of needles do I need and plastic cables don’t work need birch dpns instead. Ginghers can’t keep up with cutting the fabric and machines exist to cut wool into strips for hooked rugs (another option, to be explored if and when backing fabric appears at the thrift shop). Who’da thought? But those cutters are $200 and only go up to 1/4″ strips; I need 3/4″ and I don’t have $200 to spend on what is still an experiment.
- and so my mind goes remember to buy more dog cookies put a buck back to cover incense (my pay-as-I-go program; works great for tires = the cost of a gallon of gas per tank yes it gets a little busy in here.
- This is all before sunrise, too.
- I hurt. My body hurts, pretty much constantly. Meniscus repair is supposed to fix it but I kicked that into January when I discovered how much attention the new house was absorbing, and then extended the prescription for a pretty strong NSAID that’s making it ok to be in my body. The meds work, except they take enough ache out of the picture that I don’t NEED to do my own little yoga-lite routine as often as I did when I still thought I could stretch the pain away. So after two hours of trying to write my way into better art, I stopped and paid attention to my achiness and thought it would be good to do a little yoga in the quiet of pre-dawn and laid out the mat.
- Two steps into the routine, it hit me: the usefulness of a good routine, a form, a familiar pattern. I wouldn’t be getting the same relief if I didn’t already have a routine I know, however far it is from anything Erich Schiffer would recognize.
- Which is what I need to be doing with the knitting for a while. I have a few forms in my mind. Play with them. I don’t know–20 each? Make something. See what I learn in the making thereof. Then make something else. Penguins carried me into chainsaw skill, and now I’m much freer to play (although I haven’t pulled a starter cord all summer, pending this house…). Cast off what I’ve started; it’ll be there to come back to if I decide that’s the right answer. And make some forms and see what happens.
