The state of, um, stuff.

I disappeared for five months. Well, not really, just from the blog, I wasn't really invisible or anything. For the first couple months I was licking my figurative wounds. Then I was soldiering through a bunch of death anniversaries. Now, I think I'm finally digging out of the Pit of Despair.

For me, joking about depression is like spitting in the eye of a bully. I'm sort of on a crusade to de-stigmatize several things, depression included. (Also chronic illness, RANT FOR ANOTHER DAY.) No, it's not to be ignored. Yes, it should be talked about openly. Yes, a lot of people need whopped in the head about the idea that a brain chemistry fuckup needs treatment as much as a broken arm would. Many people have names for their depression, I've heard some refer to it in variations of a black dog. For me, it's the Pit of Despair because it reminds me of that bridge scene in "Holy Grail" and anything that's even mildly amusing is a win.

So there.

ANYWAY. What I've been doing. Sadly, we're lacking photo documentation of the summer; I dropped my phone right before Samhain and Broke It Good. All data lost. Bugger. Doesn't matter much, all I really did was sit on the back porch, spin, and watch movies on my net book.

At the Goober's school, they do 'dress up like a book character' instead of full on Halloween. Which they call a harvest festival. The Goob and I got together and dressed her up as Agatha Heterodyne.

I made the skirt, we cobbled together the rest. Yes, she's wearing a trilobite pin at her throat, and those are goggles on her head.

Nobody at the school knew who she was. I mean, okay, not EVERYBODY reads web comics, but in a whole school full of adults who are hopefully at least a bit computer literate, NOBODY?? Seriously. I let the Goob take one of the on-paper books of Girl Genius with her. It didn't help much. She came home disgusted.

Next year, she wants to be Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls. I can work this.

Then came Thanksgiving, and having to make the kid a pilgrim outfit. I sewed the hat and apron, the rest is just black clothes. This led to something of a rant, in which I called the pilgrims a bunch of fascist zealots, which sadly, the Goob did not repeat at school. (I continue to be horrified by the misinformation these kids are getting as "history".)

One of the Thanksgiving assignments was to disguise a turkey. I don't even know. The kid wanted Iron Man, so I hit the scrapbooking store (congratulate me on not spending a thousand dollars), got the papers we needed, and this happened:

Please note the drawn-in goatee and speck of blue foil for the arc reactor.

Honu's doing well. Getting the hang of the lap cat thing.

Although, unfortunately, she seems to have that catly thing for yarn and string, which can be something of a problem:

She also bats at the cursor on my computer screen when it moves, and goes after the stylus when I'm using the tablet. Hoo boy.

My local yarn store, Natural Stitches, started selling gradient fiber for spinning. Unfortunately I lost all the pictures I took while spinning it, but I still have the scarf.

Fiber is "Flame" gradient in BFL from Frabjous Fibers, the pattern is "Volna" from Grumperina, with the fiddly bits on the side left off. I have another gradient in bright rainbow unicorn fart colors I intend to do this same exact thing with.

A couple years ago, my physical therapist told me to start wearing scarves to keep my neck warm. It makes sense, all the pissed off nerves from the RSD run down my neck and into my arm. This winter I started taking it seriously, and you know, I think it works. Not like a morphine lollipop works, but on the other hand, the only side effect is looking dashing.

With that in mind, I lost my head on the scarves knitting, and started Lucy Neatby's "Bubbles" scarf.

Unfortunately I got the flu at Christmas (a tradition I am seriously unamused by) and when the 102 fever hit, I thought probably working on double knitting with an improvised pattern might be inadvisable. I knit a Batkus instead, with Socks That Rock "Holiday Hen". Natural Stitches started stocking StR and I'm gonna go broke now.

Really all I've done is huddle in and knit. I spent a lot of time thinking, both of what to do with the blog, and what to do in general. One of the reasons I haven't blogged is, I feel like I've said everything already. I've joked about getting a tee shirt that says "I wrote a blog post about that". But then I read all my usual geeky stuff and want to post about El Dorado (since we don't know their true name), or political history, or different fibers, and I guess there's still more to say.

If not I can babble something or other.

That's about it from here. The current spin is taking forever:

Mostly because I want lots of yardage and so am spinning it very fine. I'll love it when it's done, but at the moment I'm two thirds of the way through and really kinda bored.

For Christmas, the husbeast got me a beer stein I haven't even been able to use because I've been on antibiotics forever:

He has a keggerator in his man cave. It's quite the sight - the tap is a mermaid (I keep meaning to sneak down there and paint her hair brown like mine), and above it is a picture of the first ship he served on. Very Sailor On Dry Land. I made a joke last autumn that I should have a beer stein since we had a keg, and at Christmas, this happened. Isn't it pretty? It's apparently Art Deco, which amuses me all to hell. Stoneware, salt glaze, tin lid. NEEDS BEER.

New goals? Well, during my 'dig in and knit' brooding, I realized most of my regrets in life are about missed opportunities. I need to take advantage of them more, and I'm working toward that. Short term, I'd be really happy to finish this spin and have some beer in my Art Deco steinie.