Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick….

Wait, that sounds like a bomb. I was going for timer. (But, you know, not the timer on a bomb. The regular kind.)

Last night, Charlene was in the basement weighing wool in front of the TV, which means Fiber School preparations are officially underway! September is when I abandon the grand and never-realized plans of my summer projects and buckle down and  TCB. I’m working on menus, supplies, boring boring admin, and also continuing what was supposed to be last month’s wondrous spurt of amazing productivity and clutter clearing, which turned out be more more like: meh.

September is also birthday season for me & Twyla. Mine was last week (So. Old.) and Twyla will be two on Saturday! We had a little family party for her last week because Ron will be away for her actual birthday. She is totally a little person now, talking up a storm in her semi-decipherable way and getting into all kinds of trouble and being alternately charming and dreadful. Mostly charming. Her tantrums are frequent but short, and she reserves most of them for me, which saves me embarrassment, but involves me feeling like a total killjoy asshole a lot of the time. Killjoy Asshole is kinda my specialty, alas.

So part of the reason August wasn’t my SUPERPRODUCTIVE DECLUTTERPALOOZA was because I was busy designing patterns for this year’s Central Kansas Yarn Hop. Yarn Hop participants get a free mini-skein at each shop on the route, and the Hop supplies new patterns to use up all the little bits & bobs. The patterns are free for Hop participants, and will be for sale in my ravelry shop afterwards. They’re designed to use up odds & ends of assorted weight and fiber content, but will also work up nicely with a skein or two of any bulky yarn at gauge, if you’re one of those rare knitters who doesn’t hoard her leftovers.

The knit pattern is a slouchy beret with a big fat pompom, inspired by all the big slouchy berets (and in particular, one with a big fat pompom) I saw all over Santiago on our vacation in July.

SANTIAGO BERET

And the crochet pattern is Mary Jane slippers with a self-button. They’re fast and easy and fun to adjust for a custom fit.

SHOP HOPPERS

I intend to finish mine with a leather sole both so I can wear them outside of the building and so they won’t act as a wearable swiffer for cat hair and spinning fiber a problem I have with all socks and slippers all winter. I love the look of hard floors but hate that there is always errant cat hair and spinning fiber whirling about, hoping for a sticky sock or slipper or sweater to cling to. Carpet acts like a massive lint brush, keeping all the furry bits where they land until you vacuum them up.

Having an adorable 2-year-old tugging on your skirt all day also limits your productivity, though I can’t really complain, because she’s mostly a delight, and an excuse to take a breath and pay attention to my surroundings instead of whizzing around like a maniac. Whizzing Maniac is my second-biggest occupation, after Killjoy Asshole. (#3 is Neurotic Freak.)

We’ve been having a lot of Future-related stress lately, and it’s still not resolved. I’m happy that it, for the most part, has helped cement the team (aka, our family, aka The Tigers!) instead of rending it apart. It’s still unresolved, and though we’ve had a few disappointments, I think we may be on the track to some excitement. Or a totally different direction (not for me; for Ron), who knows. Tumult always seems to appear when Ron and I are at our busiest–or maybe it’s that we’re just never not really fucking busy.

A few nights ago at 3am, laying in bed wide awake, my head spinning with second-guessing and fretting, I realized that Disgruntled Housewife used to be my big therapeutic anxiety-relief valve, and that the occasional angsty tweet doesn’t really serve my mental health as well. But when I moved to a tiny town in Kansas, suddenly the intimate exposure of Disgruntled Housewife was just way too intimate. In a city, you can somehow tell everyone who will listen your life story and still have a cozy wall of privacy. There’s sort of a friendly layer of fuck-off that’s understood. Nobody gives a shit, unless they have an actual relationship with you. But in a small town, it’s different. Or maybe it just seems that way if you’re not accustomed to it. You feel like something of a spectacle, under constant scrutiny, like everything you say or do is public property. And in a way, it is. Since there are few people, everyone has a greater stake in what everyone else does.  You can’t be invisible like you can in a city. I’m not capturing it exactly.  But when I moved here, I quickly found myself  self-censoring. You still risk gossip if you shut the fuck up, but there’s comfort in knowing at least you’re not fueling it.

But anyway, with that decision comes the consequence that I keep all my neurosis in my head, maybe discussing it a bit with Ron or the handful of real-life friends I occasionally see, and occasionally whining a bit here, but mostly just keeping it in my poor, over-taxed brain. My brain, of course, revolts by making me a leeeetle bit crazier with every new layer of repressed neurosis, until it starts to crusts over with the delicate, crinkly strata of cuckoo. And the strain of keeping it from crumbling keeps me up sometimes.

This is also probably why my memory is so shitty.

Anyway, I was lamenting losing that steam vent when I realized: oh, right. I can still write. It doesn’t have to be for public consumption to serve its purpose. So I wrote and I edited (editing is for rethinking and refining your own ideas as much as polishing your work, so it’s just as valuable for journaling as publishing).

And then I slept like a baby. Ta da!

Note the ridiculous frilly vintage hostess apron! Part of a cache of fracking adorable vintage baby duds we got a few weeks ago.

Cooler weather. Today we relieved our little tree of its apples. Quite a few, even minus the many we’ve been nibbling the last couple of weeks. I figured I’d better grab them all before the bugs hit them or the sheep or chickens figure out how to get at them. They’re tart and crunchy, yum!

Georgie, too, is enjoying the cool weather.

And the hens are much calmer and laying beautifully since Francis the jerk rooster left for Freezer Camp (though I did feel sad for poor, bewildered Francis for about a day, until I realized how much more pleasant outdoor life is without him).