Subconscious Messages?

Look, I'm back from California, and already I'm back ensconced in my comfortable little nest on the couch with my laptop and a cup of coffee (which I totally need, having gotten no sleep on the flight. So this entry might be a little incoherent.)

The other night, I had an odd dream. It was sort of in character in Comet, that is, I'm pretty sure I was Dunyazade, but I was in a fancy modern mansion, which I think was my house. It was a party, I was shmoozing with a bunch of "important" people who were shallow and unpleasant and I didn't much like, but I was glittery and smiling and cheery. I had a drink in my hand - I got the feeling that I always had a drink in my hand, that it was part of my persona - and it was my task for the night to talk to all these unpleasant shallow people, and convince them to give me the things I needed. It was like a Hollywood cocktail party, as portrayed by bitter theater. And I clearly remember the mood of the dream: this is my life now. This is all I will ever be, until I die. It was a strange, resigned and tired feeling for a dream. (There was also a cameo appearance by tirinian in the dream, and he also had a drink in his hand, which he explained was some of the aged Bailey's that he kept in the basement by the furnace, where it would always be stored at a temperature above 80 degrees. At the time in the dream, this seems to have been a sensible thing to do, though now that I'm awake, I think storing a cream-based beverage at warm temperatures for years is not as good an idea...).

Anyway, when I woke up, it was a bit puzzling. The whole "is this all there is?" angst is something that I have pretty much avoided. Yes, this is all there is, I don't expect my life to suddenly get more exciting or more meaningful - but I'm happy with it. This is not my midlife crisis, and I think I have again been scheduled for the wrong sort of anxiety dream.

Of course, I can see why the Dream Powers That Be thought I needed this one. I've been looking after nieces for a week, and they're sentient enough to be interesting, and small enough to be cute and cuddly and of a size to be turned upside down, and generally utterly adorable. This is exactly when I should be thinking "I am missing out on the whole having kids thing!" and realizing that my biological clock is overdue, and so on. But... no. It's not that I don't appreciate what I'm missing. I do. (Well, at the moment, it's hard to imagine that any hypothetical kids I might have would be cuter than Amelia and Isabelle, but I think that's how it's supposed to work). There's more to do than can ever be done, and if this isn't one of the things I do, that's okay. Anyway... not my midlife crisis, but I am glad I have nieces. :)

Vintage socks done

I finished the Leafy Socks while I was out in California, voila!



I had originally been thinking that they are the highest ratio Art to Practical that I've done, but that's not really true. The lace tablecloths are pretty high Art/Practical, and the klein sock[*] for rifmeister was totally impractical. I'm impressed that the grapes don't expand the fabric - each grape reaches a width of seven stitches in the space where there had been just one. So it's definitely stretchy, as promised. I don't know if it's quite as extra-comfortable as promised; I find the "inverted wineglass" (the diagonal slanting around the heel) adds to the thin heel effect that you get with a short row heel, and my paired decreases at the center of the heel left the stitch between them a little enlarged and ugly. I tend to prefer the heel-flap-and-gusset type heel, though I haven't tried a lot of other variants. I probably encountered more new techniques with this project than anything I've made since I first started learning to knit; the weird little pick-up-and-bind-off to move the yarn around on the leaves, the split stitch embroidery (okay, not a knitting technique, but still new to me), the idea of a project in the round that temporarily goes to knitting back and forth to insert a hole... Not to mention, how to knit a leaf! I envision some sort of viny addition to a sweater someday in the future.


*: I had a picture of this once, but I accidentally named both it and the Klein Hat (which is wearable) "klein.jpg".