The Aviary

Things:

- The darning loom I ordered arrived last night, so I immediately used it to mend the sock that I've been meaning to darn for about a month. The loom works really well! It makes the process of darning much easier, and the patches look much neater - I'm very pleased with it. Alas, I don't know how much longer these socks are going to hold up in general. They're knit from the very first handspun yarn I ever made which was...not great - there are a lot of thin patches that don't stand up well to wear, so it's not really suitable for socks. But I love them anyway and now I have at least extended their life a little.

- Really, I just need to be better about reinforcing all my socks when I knit them. I always develop holes in the same place - under the ball of the foot - so it's not like the need for reinforcement isn't predictable. Sock patterns always assume you want to reinforce the heels, but I rarely if ever get holes there.

- I also mended my favorite red cardigan, again. I love this sweater, but either it is surprisingly fragile or I am extremely hard on it. In the past two years, I have a) added leather patches to the elbows, because both of them developed holes, b) darned it in several miscellaneous places, and c) darned the underside of the left sleeve between the elbow and wrist six separate times. It sprung a new hole in that same area recently, so I decided to just say "fuck it" and patch the thing instead. So now it has a nice new knitted patch under all that darning and hopefully won't develop any new problems for a while.

- I have to write my yearly self-appraisal today and I hate it and it's dumb but it has to be done so I've decided to give myself a prize for completing this anxiety-producing task on time. I'm not sure what the prize is going to be yet. Probably some sort of fancy food item I normally wouldn't buy.

- I've been kinda mildly depressed for past couple weeks, which sucks, but I'm coping. Mostly, I'm coping by obsessively thinking about/playing my current solo D&D game. Solo rpgs usually help my mood a lot - that kind of creative play is restful for me, and they make me think about stuff that isn't awful or exhausting. It's good.

Things:

- I have started this year's gift knitting! (Yes, I am starting very early, I know.) I made a schedule for the whole year and arranged things so that I always have more than one project at the same time, because being able to switch to different knitting when I get bored or frustrated with a project is important. Currently, I am working on a lacy table runner for my sister and a shawl for my mom. And also socks for me.

- Not the two-at-a-time socks, because I finished those! They were the fastest socks I've ever knit in my life. It's still not going to be my go-to sock knitting method but I'm definitely going to keep it in my back pocket for projects I want to zip through.

- I am in the process of reading Riddley Walker right now which is, as ever, slow going both because of the nature of the writing and because I always want to read that book out loud. There was a moment this weekend when I thought about trying to get an audiobook version, because hearing someone else read it would be interesting, but I ended up deciding against it. I think actually getting to see Riddley's spelling is an important part of the experience, really.

- Also, apparently the audiobook is not available in the States, so...

- I wish I had recorded all the titles of all the post-nuclear post-apocalyptica I read in college. I went through a period where I was reading a lot of that particular subgenre, including a lot of short stories, but now I don't remember most of the titles, other than the ones that I purchased. Looking at lists of post-apocalyptica on the internet today gets you a huge glut of zombies and climate-fiction* before you get to the mid-century nuclear anxiety stuff I'm actually interested in, and it's exhausting to dig through. This is why I now track the books I read.

- I would really prefer to be at home reading and/or knitting but instead I am at work. Alas.





*I realize that the cli-fi is coming from a similar place as the nuclear anxiety books - "this is the way we are currently in danger of destroying the world, let's talk about the effects of that" - and much of it may be excellent but I don't have the emotional remove to enjoy cli-fi on basically any level and I don't read fiction I don't enjoy. It's going to be a while before I can read disease-based apocalyptica again as well.

Things:

- This whole week, I've been putting off finishing my current book because if I finished it, I would have to start a new book, and that would make my reading tracker spreadsheet messy. (This is ridiculous.) But now I absolutely have to finish the current book today.

- I finished knitting a pair of socks yesterday, which is good, because many of older socks are on the point of wearing out. (I mend my socks, but there comes a point when it's not worth it anymore.) I am vaguely planning to try to knit a bunch of socks in 2022, along with all the Christmas knitting. I am also planning to not buy any more sock yarn, as I have an absurd amount waiting to become socks.

- Because of that, I also cast on a new pair yesterday. I say "pair" because I am experimenting with two-at-a-time socks. I'm doing the "two socks on a single very long circular needle" method - it's fiddly, but I think it's going well. It's a little slower, in that I did only just finish the toes yesterday, but simultaneously quicker, because there are two toes. It's probably not going to become my default way of doing socks, but it's an interesting change.

- While knitting recently, I have once again picked up the Great Gundam Project - it's a good knitting podcast, because it's interesting but if I stop paying attention because I dropped a stitch, it fundamentally doesn't matter. I have listened to over a hundred episodes of this show and have yet to watch more than the first episode of 0079 in terms of Gundam but, on the hosts' recommendation, I did watch the first three episodes of Armor Trooper Votoms last night. I'm enjoying it so far. For no reason I can really put my finger on - the tone? the aesthetics? the fact that it's scifi made in the early 80's before cyberpunk became a thing? - it reminds me a lot of Blakes 7. But, so far, with a lot more motorcycle chases and mechs fighting corrupt cops.

Last night, I finished the last of my Christmas knitting for this year*.

This morning, I drew up an elaborate document for next year's Christmas knitting, with links to patterns and yarns and a schedule of what I'm knitting when based on rough estimates of how long each project is going to take. I have five gifts to knit - two large, two medium, and one small. So I'm dividing next year in two, which each half getting one large and one medium project, and putting the small one in the first half (because it has colorwork and I'm not great at that, so doing it early means I have time to redo it if it turns out too lumpy.) My plan is to be done by March or April with the first half, then do projects for me till July, when I'll knit the other half and hopefully be done by October.

Having the whole year to get ready means I get to knit more interesting things - one of my sisters has been talking about wanting a lace table runner for a while now and the pattern I found looks really pretty and complex enough to be really interesting. And I found a shawl for my sibling-in-law that I'm jealous of before even starting, so if the actual process of knitting it doesn't suck, I may have to make a second one for me.

Plus now I get to feel all virtuous about being Organized and Having a Plan. Bonus!






*I still have to weave in ends on most of my gifts, but that doesn't count.

Nothing quite like getting 90% finished with a knitted sock and then deciding that, actually, you hate everything about the way it looks, and ripping the whole damn thing out to start again.

Things:

- So, turns out my manager was serious about me running Honey Heist at our All Staff Day this year, so now I get to get paid for planning an rpg oneshot. Plus, a couple of my coworkers have already told me they're excited about it. Yay!

- The rest of our branch-specific Staff Day time is listed on our agenda as "Maker Lab - skill sharing while test new branch equipment" but is actually "bring whatever crafts you want to work on, maybe Sara will give us a quick knitting lesson, and we'll all learn how to use the Cricut machine". Considering that the whole-system part of the day will be entirely over Zoom and no one will be able to see us, I am planning to basically knit all day. My manager and I are considering it mild revenge for the thing where the Powers That Be banned hand crafts from All Staff Day 10 years ago.

- Yes, we are still bitter about it. (Especially for the past two in-person years, when all the table had complimentary fidget toys. But only approved non-productive fidgets are acceptable, apparently!)

- I now have a new tablet. Yay! My hold on She Who Became the Sun did indeed come in before it arrived, but I suspended the hold, so I'll get it again in a couple weeks. Which will give me time to finish the book I'm currently reading and have been waiting to continue on my tablet.

- After zooming through Children of Time and half of Children of Ruin on audiobook, my brain suddenly decided this week that I am no longer allowed to consume narrative via audio media. Podcasts aren't working either. It is very frustrating and I hope it clears up soon.

Today it is grey, and cooler than it's been, so I started knitting a new sweater. I had bought a bunch of yarn a while ago to make a big cabled fisherman's sweater, but I had abandoned it, because it turned out that I hated knitting it. (The front and back were knit flat and then seamed and it was just too much purling.) But I still like the yarn a lot - it's a light, undyed grey, and I like the colors that sheep naturally come in* - so I still wanted to use it for a sweater.

So I decided to knit another of these sweaters. This will be my third one, though the first I'm knitting in worsted weight. I've made a few alterations to the pattern - I've added a cable panel down the front, and I'm replacing the garter panel on the sleeves with a braid - and the original comes in so many sizes that the pattern gets hard to read, so I spent the morning rewriting it for my own use.

I haven't knit with yarn thicker than fingering weight in forever. Worsted weight knits up so fast! Now I just have to try to be a little focused, and I'll definitely have the sweater done by the time it's sweater weather.



*Grey wool is my favorite, but I am greatly tempted to also do a similar sweater in an undyed brown.

Things:

- It is extremely very hot today and going to be even hotter tomorrow. I am very lucky in that our house has air conditioning and my library has air conditioning, so I'm basically okay but still. I would like to write a stern note of complaint to the management.

- Because it is and has been so hot lately, I have been doing a lot of spinning. (Spinning is my less-warm yarn craft hobby, because it doesn't result in a bunch of wool sitting in my lap for long periods.) I haven't done any spinning in a while, but this week I've made some good progress on a few larger projects and I'm very pleased with it.

- I'm not allowed to buy more spinning wool till I finish my current projects, I've decided. I keep finding fiber that I forgot I had, which means that I have too much. And also that I really do need to catalogue my stash.

- The one real problem with spinning is that, if I'm watching something while I spin, it absolutely has to be something that I don't have to look at the screen very much. I can glance at the screen from time to time, but not in long stretches. Most shows in English are fine - you can get most of what you need from dialogue - and Critical Role (or podcasts) is great, since that's basically entirely dialogue. But most of what I've been watching lately has been cdramas or anime and that's just entirely unworkable.

- This morning, I figured out how to get around a block I've been having with one of my solo rpgs, which has resulted in me not playing that game. (Which is a shame, as it's the extremely rules-light equipment-light one that I can play in the background of boring mindless tasks like dishes or shelving.) Basically, I'd gotten bored with an aspect of the current adventure, but had baked it in so much to previous story that it was difficult to wholly discard and playing through that part of the adventure had to happen before getting to the next bit. This morning, it occurred to me that a) it is a solo rpg and I don't have to do anything in the game that I don't want to and b) Ironsworn/Starforged (for example) explicitly have moves that let you resolve bits you're not excited about in one dice roll so you can move on and I can do that in my game too. So I figured out two things I wanted to resolve from the boring aspect of the adventure, rolled for those, and now I am excited about what comes next again!

Things:

- I'm having a bad week. Nothing is really happening to cause it, I suppose - it's either continuing stress and depression from All of the Everything, or it's the beginning of my normal yearly summer depression - but it sucks. Mostly, I am tired and irritable and everything seems like much more of a hassle than it needs to be, especially talking to other people.

- Also, the chronically dry skin on my hands which I've had problems with since February and which had been improving somewhat, has now started cracking badly in several places, so on top of everything, my hands hurt all the time again.

- In less depressing new, remember how I ordered some yarn recently? Well, I had waited on it for a long time without it moving on the USPS tracking site, so I emailed the yarn company to ask what was up. They told me that my package had been lost and that they'd send me a replacement via UPS. Which arrived on Monday and turned out to be two identical packages containing the same yarn. So now I have 10 extra balls of yarn that I have to figure out something to do with.

- The only media thing that has been holding my interest lately has been Critical Role, and watching that has filled me with a desire to play D&D specifically, as opposed to any of my other games. Since playing with other people in general feels like a stressful nightmare right now, I have started a new solo game. To streamline things a little, I've set up the game in a private Discord server, using the Avrae bot, which is a new-to-me solo gaming experience. I'm enjoying it so far. I played for about three hours last night and it went pretty well - I do still have to do some outside prep, but it's nice not having to look up spells or monster stats because the bot will do that for me. Fortunately, solo rpgs seem to be turning out to be like Stardew Valley, in that they are things I can still do and enjoy, even when I'm depressed.

In which I make a poor decision:

So, tonight, I am binding off the shawl I've been working on for the past few weeks. (I'm quite pleased with it.) Obviously, that means it's time to think about my next shawl project, which I'd tentatively planned on being this, because it looks like a big staring eyeball and that's extremely rad. On a whim, I decided to look at the designer's other patterns and found that she also has this one, which I also love very much.

So I maybe bought yarn for both of them.

I have finished spinning and plying my 12 Days of Yule yarn!

( Here it is! )

Now I just have to spin 10 oz of the companion fiber to have enough to knit a new sweater!

Things:

- I am so on top of holiday shopping this year - I'm done except for buying a few candy things* the next time I go to the grocery store. I do have the added problem this year of having to put my presents in the actual mail, but that is a problem for Future Sara.

- Today, I am doing a bread experiment wherein, instead of making a loaf of bread for sandwiches this week, I am making the same bread but shaping it into rolls. Which will hopefully not suck, since I will be stuck with them for two weeks if they do.**

- Also, yesterday I made miso chocolate chip cookies and they are great.

- My mom and I both want to knit hats together, so we ordered hat yarn yesterday. Today, I am deeply saddened that my yarn is not already here.





*My sister is dealing with her grief about not being able to spend the holidays with family by pretending that the day is not Christmas but is instead a holiday she made up called St Hammington's Day. (She and her spouse are making a ham.) Therefore, I have bought pig stickers to put all over their presents and am including a marzipan pig each.

**When I make bread, I put half of it in the freezer. Half a loaf is enough for me to make 5 sandwiches - one for each work day - and that way the other half doesn't go bad before I can eat it, so one loaf lasts for two weeks. This is a great time saver, but does mean that, if I'm not crazy about the bread, I still have to eat it for two whole weeks.