I really don't understand where the past 2.5 weeks went. We kept busy enough, we were even social -- good grief, we attended seven separate social events, some of them involving more than one person! -- and yet I scarcely can account for the time without my datebook. Besides visits with friends and lunches, Spouse also played a lot of chess and saw the dentist twice. (I saw the dentist once, but that was Only Yesterday and the memories will surely linger.) I saw a friends' photo exhibit opening, saw "Wall-E" and visited Dave & Busters with another friend, saw the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and generally had a pretty good time (aside from seeing the dentist yesterday).
Food and wine have been a bit dull, as poor Spouse has been avoiding alcohol and chewy foods as part of his ongoing dental treatments. The prospect of a summer without corn on the cob depressed him, but I promised corn every other which way which cheered him. I have a dozen lovely ways of preparing fresh corn. I eagerly await the first full-sized ears at the Greenmarket.
Been knitting, of course, lots and lots of knitting, mostly baby stuff for my twin-laden friend. I have discovered I adore using sock yarn, but I am sooo not a sock knitter. Knitting socks is...well, at the end, I've got something to wear on my feet and frankly I'm really hard on my clothes and especially on socks, tending to shove them into boots and shoes with less delicacy than perhaps some people. My nice thick warm angora-wool blend socks from the Gap collect pills like mad. Lesser socks simply go holey. And as I really prefer very lightweight socks and stockings anyway -- the days New York goes utterly sub-arctic these days can be counted on the fingers and toes of one side -- and the socks are utterly hidden by my pants legs and shoes or boots, well what's the point in knitting them?? I know lots of people walk around their house in socking feet, but with cat fur and litter a constant threat I prefer slippers. So lovely handmade socks are not for me. Besides, I really hate knitting in the round at the diameter of a sock. The needles get in each others way. The yarn gets tangled. The circular needles method is too complicated for my poor aged brain. So no. It's cheaper and easier just to buy stuff!
But I did make a very happy discovery that avoided wasted knitting: in digging up my oldest yarn stash the other month, I unearthed a pair of ribbed pieces still on needles, made of Encore DK, that were an actual if reluctant attempt to create ribbed flat-knitted socks (to eventually end up in the round as the heel approached). This ridiculous project, entirely in the wrong yarn and gauge, sat unmolested and was about to be unravelled until I realized the width of each panel was perfect for infant hats! And so I only undid a couple of inches of each panel until the proper height (length?) remained, put the panel back on needles, did 4 rows of k2tog decreases, and viola! Near-instant snug little hats! By "near-instant" I mean "about twenty minutes" including unravel and final stitch-up.
Been writing my novel too, chugging along, weaving together sub-plots and finishing chapters and coming to blinding realizations such as one particular character holding the key to a more satisfactory conclusion if only I make him the son of X & Y instead of nobody in particular. Amazing. Working at novel length is entirely new for me, even after two and a half years of this project. My years of dedicated if misguided study of "how to write a novel"-sort of literature didn't really prepare me for the reality of characters who pop up out of nowhere, say Ahem and proceed to take over scene after scene in utterly ruthless fashion. Or for subplots that invade my weary head after I thought I was done for the night.
All my most satisfactory Trek-zine experience was humorous short stories. The one time I attempted to work at a bigger story, a three-part series, the results were...mixed. I had a tendency at that time in my late teens to zone and drift through life, sometimes for months on end. I wrote and we published part one, I worked diligently on part two, sent it to my zine team for the next issue...and um they had to break it to me gently that I'd already written part two and it was in the previous issue. The previous issue I'd also forgotten existed and added to the pile of stuff on my desk without a second thought. Huh? But dang, they were right. There was part two, following one, just like they said. Dang. And of course, the two versions of part two were entirely different! And the second one was a bit better. So with a few tweaks that became part three and all was once again well. And I woke up a bit. And I mourned that the only computers I had available were the highly-sought terminals at school. Re-writing all those pages would've been sooo much easier on a word processor...
No comments:
Post a Comment