Just Keep Going

There's no surprise that this post is late. You know, holidays and the recovering from holidays. Germs and the recovering from germs. Usually all at once.

I'm going to start off by saying the big, sad thing that's taking over most of my thoughts right now. My uncle had a heart attack and died yesterday. He was only about fifty years old. Just gone. I haven't had to deal with death much in my life, been fairly sheltered from it beyond losing pets. And this is some weird, surreal stuff. I can't say he and I were real close, but we talked at the family gatherings, got along, and he's always been there, trying to convince my cousins to go to college or just being there, helping out, trying to be the voice of reason which is hard when you have four sassy older sisters.

So, yeah, my head's a little scrambled right now, but pushing forward anyway to do the things I say I want to do and try to make a job of some sorts out of that. Last night I was in the mind frame of "Why bother? What's the point?", knowing I hadn't made a blog post for last week yet and was certain that if I didn't I would keep putting it off until it never happens. Husband told me I should keep up with it. So here I am.

Let's see . . .

This Friday through Sunday I'll be doing this craft show:

I'm in booth D34 or something like that. Same spot as last year, a few rows down and to the right as you come in the doors, sort of near the food stand.

In preparation for the show, I set up my tiny drum carder and blended up some batts (for spinning into yarn) over a couple days. I have learned that musty alpaca fiber and breathing do not go together. Add that to already coming down with a cold, not a good idea, so I put the carder away after the first day of blending all the fibers.

Three batts made for the show. And then a few days later I realized I had nothing fun to spin during the craft show. My colorful supplies were running very low but I had enough clean wool to blend with dyed silks and sparkles to crank out three more batts for me. And since I used clean stuff and stayed away from the alpaca, I felt just fine, could breathe and everything! A lesson was learned. I will try to avoid alpaca and uncleaned fibers in the future.

For that dyeing day, whenever it comes, I shoved a bag of poorly cleaned wool into a tub of water outside to leave to soak for a week or so. I had bought and sort of cleaned this raw wool a couple years ago before I knew the secret to washing wool easily and thoroughly: leave it to stew in its own filth, in a tub of water, for several days. The bodily yuck will clean itself off if you leave it to soak in its own juices. (Ew!) I've tried this once and it worked really well. The water made me want to throw up, but you don't keep the water. You get to keep the pretty, white fluffiness that results from the filth bath. Some day after all the craft show and holiday madness, I'll pull out all my wool and dye the heck out of everything and then I'll have lots of colors and fluff to make awesome yarns with.

This week my friend and I are having our final discussion with Big Magic, the Elizabeth Gilbert book. I haven't done the reading yet but plan to later today. There have been a few quotes that I have liked. This one stood out to me from the section on Persistence (pg 167): "I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat pretending to be elegant when actually it's just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more than a deep existential angst that says, again and again, 'I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.'" I like the sassiness and know looooots of people like this, myself included at times. I've been trying to let stuff go and say "good enough" when I have done the best I can and then move on to the next thing. 'Im hoping to keep this in mind especially whenever I get around to editing my novel. Someday.

And, finally, my Angel of Courage, from the Spirit Wings e-course. I have yet to do last week's closing lesson but I'll get to it soon and then start on the written exercises for December's angel.