Eccetera and Errata

[Sorcyress]

Knitting is going well! I am keeping it a Secret, which is...weird. I talked about it a little bit with my therapist last week and should probably make a point of talking about it more this week.

But I finished my scarf! Binding off is not difficult, and casting on is also not difficult (although for both I need to keep looking up how to in the book I've got --to be fair, I've done this twice each so far, not counting casting on in like 2005 or whatever.) I've decided that I'm gonna make a bunch of little swatches just to practice different skills. First one is complete! It was just knitting for 28 rows of 28 stitches, which turns out to be much more rectangular than expected. I suspect that's a function of yarn-slash-needle size.

Second swatch is me learning how to purl. And I can do it? That's wild! I have never purled before, not in the like eight feet of knitting my scarf originally. And now I have purled four rows (and knit four rows, swapping back and forth like you're supposed to).

The real true eventual hope is that maybe I can replace my need for mindless phone games with this instead. "oh it's not doing anything constructive with your brain" I assure you, the stupid games I am frequently playing are also not doing anything constructive with my brain. And this way, maybe eventually I get, like, socks?

(I have not yet squared "it would be nice to have this mindless hobby I can do instead of phone" with "I don't want to tell anyone that I am doing this hobby I want it to be a secret private thing possibly because I am somehow ashamed of it? I don't totally know what's going on here".)

Actually, here, let me do a little bit of babbling under a cut? Because I clearly am gonna work on it, but I'll spare yinz the exhausting circles.

► Show Spoiler

The most obvious problem is that I'm not good at it. For all the nice words I say about how it's totally cool to suck at things because that's how you get better at things, that is clearly something for other people and not for me. Yes, this is obviously bullshit, yes I know. I'm not sure how to work on this more except to keep doing things I suck at occasionally.

Touching on the above, I don't want to suck at things that other people around me are really really good at. SamSam makes these just incredible gloves, and every time I wear mine I feel happy about it --they also took a ton of measurements and have all this paperwork involved. I got to look over Crispin's shoulder at some of his Hat Spreadsheets. Veronica has a whole ravelry page of projects she's done. I'm just doing bog simple rectangles.

Related to that, I feel weird about dabbling in hobbies that people are VERY INTENSELY INTO. I get this with bells most of all right now --I think the amount of Bellringing I want in my life is "like once or twice a month or so" which is very much different from the "three times a week every week" I was doing through most of my peak learning bellringing time. But I don't want to disappoint anyone when they're all like "OH MY GOD YOU LIKE KNITTING NOW LET'S BE KNIT BUDDIES AND IT'S GONNA BE THE BEST EVER WHAT'S YOUR RAVELRY NAME LET ME GET YOU ALL THE PATTERNS DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE YARN STORE YET WANNA COMPARE STASHES?" and I'm like "hi I'm adhd and want something to do with my hands sometimes"

I also don't really know what I want to make. I like the idea of knitting > phone games in terms of "something kinda mindless to do when I need to mindless my brain because damn my job requires a lot of mind" but I don't actually need like...stuff. I think the eventual answer is twofold: learn how to make things that are generically useful and can go to various charity drives and so I don't have to keep them, AND keep my eyes open for projects that would actually benefit my life.

(Kilt hose. My goal is to learn how to knit kilt hose, so I can have some serious nice wool socks that actually fucking fit me properly and aren't handed down and so don't have holes in them.)

((I don't think I can make presents for people because I don't think there are any projects that would benefit other people in terms of not having too much stuff. Again, the gloves Sam made me are so good but I can't reciprocate because they have their own. I suppose if someone told me they needed a scarf or whatever?))

Also and this touches mostly on the first thing, it turns out that there is a very specific pang my heart gets about Being Bad At Being A Woman. At this point, I know what it feels like, and I have transitioned about it, and boy howdy, gender essentialism is a hell of a drug and I would really like my brain to not do it for funsies. I've stirred this particular shit, it, uh, didn't go well (I remembered the relevant livejournal post, I did not remember that it was one of the inciting events for "oh yeah, this internet friend is big transphobic and that got messy" which like......sorry y'all, I was a mess at 22, unlike 36 where I am perfect and good at all things.). ANYways.

A woman can be whoever they want to be, and also what a woman is is totally irrelevant to my life because I'm not one. I'm definitely not a "failed woman" I am a perfectly competent enby, whatever that means.

But my heart still notes when there are tasks or things to accomplish that are Real Women Are Good And Competent At This, and knitting keeps hitting it hard. Huzzah. Sigh.

(Why is it okay to talk about it here? Enclosed internet system that mostly doesn't touch my other spaces, I guess? I may or may not be casting a Harena summoning spell, I suppose, but Harpants is also safe even though she's really good at knitting? Probably?)

((I will talk to my therapist about this more on Thursday, but right now I need to get the fuck out of the house because I am running late. Which is why this might feel unfinished.))

--Sor

[Sorcyress]

Blugh.

Yesterday was Not Good and then last night was really Not Good and I'm behind on everything and very stressed about it and kinda heading for a breakdown. Maybe I can postpone that to this weekend, if I'm lucky.

--Sor

[Sorcyress]

One of the things that I was behind on has been fixed.

I finished my second swatch, so now I have a rectangle with both knitting and purling on it. Time to make like four hundred more of those with slightly different variations to learn some stuff.

Still extremely behind on everything.

Happy Trans Day of Remembrance.

[Sorcyress]

I have infinite grading, but I am catching up on other things. It's after December 2nd, so maybe now I can stop being fucking depressed all the time.

December 8th is apparently our earliest sunset this year, and then it starts getting later again. 4:13 in the afternoon the sun will go down, which I am not Homestuck enough to be distracted by the fact that jegus fuck I want the sun back.

(I should look up when earliest sunrise is to go with it)

---

Tuesday and I decided to be engaged, and we'll get married eventually! This is pretty much exactly what was already going to happen, but now we have a name for it and when we tell other people they get Very Excited which is...good, I guess? But also a little Much? Being asked "oh my god, what was the story?!" about the proposal when it was pretty much "crying a lot about being queer in 2025 and discussing what we want our long-term futures to look like" is not actually a story I want to casually share.

---

I would like to be back on normal internet rotations and not Too Much Phone.

[erikakaiser]

Congratulations!!

[Sorcyress]

Weekend was busy-but-good. Didn't do nearly enough grading, and progress reports are due Wednesday morning, so that's today's hell

(I am in fact awake at 6am because I got up very early to try and go to school and do grading. I haven't left yet and should do so shortly, but it was nice for enough breakfast time to actually catch up on all my comics and here and stuff.)

Haven't been sleeping enough, have been knitting a lot (have decided that I can actually tell people about this, except Veronica, since I want to surprise her with like I dunno a scarf as a chrimbo present (where the real present is "hey guess what I learned you'll like this"). Probably haven't been cleaning room enough, because it's a disaster with Too Many Things in it. I am trying to slowly get rid of some Things, but that's hard. And I have no time to do that because I am busy with everything else in life and also with playing many thousands of hours of stupid phone games.

[Sorcyress]

SamSam visited --I told them about knitting, which means I could ask them questions and we could go to the nice yarn store together. Nice yarn store is $$$ but a) feels like a good community resource and b) has a 15% discount on all cloth and yarn for teachers, which is very kind of them.

I am very done with the concept of work, but unfortunately there are still four and a half more school days before I get to get on a train. 1.5 of them are next week! No one likes this.

[Sorcyress]

My use of the solstice has been to fuck up my sleep schedule, except if we're being completely accurate, that's just like...what I'm doing with my life in general. So it wasn't really the solstice per se. Anyways, sleep is for never, apparently. There are no flaws with this plan.

It is not very much longer in Boston. Given that it's 5am just now, it's probably time to think about what I'm doing today, and then figure out what I'm doing moving forward. Packing. Cleaning my room anymore? It's actually halfway decent, I won't be horrifically upset if I don't get more done between now and leaving. I probably need to prep some lessons for today at some point. Blah.

Happy sun-come-back times.

[Sorcyress]

Successfully packed and made it onto a train, where I remain to this day. It was two hours late leaving Boston, and has lost an additional 15-30 minutes between there and Bal'more. @_@.

Life is otherwise pretty good. Very excited it's winter break and I don't have work for a bunch of days.

[Sorcyress]

I went to Maryland!

Chrimbo was mostly good. Reacting to what Fetian's been saying about the complications of celebrating/not christmas, I have been calling it various other things that show its roots but aren't actually christmas, and I think I like that. (It's been Chrimbo a bunch the last couple years, but also Crimmus and there was a year where Shannon was exclusively calling it Pissmas which was funny so I did it too)

My dad sucks at getting [me] presents. Like two years in a row of being just bad at it. He got me some gift cards too, which is nice in concept, but like, my list explicitly asked for cards to the local craft store which he ignored in favour of REI and Steam. So Fetian gets more video games from my dad, probably, and eventually I need to go to an REI and do a bunch of buying-stuff. Maybe I should find out if the big one with bike-repair folk are able to do the derusting and metal repair on my cargo bike to make it actually safe to ride, that's a genuinely important thing.

I did basically all the cooking, while everyone else hung out and played games. Family this year: Mum and Da, me and Alys and her fiancee Charlie, adoptive older brother Little Gay Jonny!!!!! (who I met in high school and when mom moved back to MD, they re-met in the Washington Gay Man's Choir[1] and have been hanging out all the time and Jonny!!!!!'s regular parents suck ass and his cool grandma died this past year so COME TO OUR CHRIMBO IT IS) and then for dinner we added mom's bestie Barb and Tom[2]. So I was in charge of kitchen and had good whiteboard spreadsheet for tracking things, and did all the cooking for three hours and honestly it was pretty good until people started thanking me, which was a little fraught, and then partway through dinner everyone did a round of applause and I wanted to either kill everyone or burst into tears forever.

I did neither, but I'm looking forward to therapy on Tuesday since, uh. We should. Talk about that maybe. And figure out what's wrong.

Post Chrimbo, Alys went home before her and I got real snippy with each other, which is good --we don't always time that right, and inevitably we will cycle through "lovely seesters -> horrible hellbeasts -> lovely seesters" if we're in too much proximity for too long. Then Wicked Auntie Robin arrived, which was nice because she could give me some knitting help (both solicited and not) and there were lots of games to play.

I stayed through New Years, including Tuesday arriving the night of the 30th and dragging her home. There were Many Games throughout New Years --lots of Moonshine, a couple rounds of Space Base (I won my first-ever game of it, and felt very good about that!), Agricola and Kingsburg, Pit, Hot Streak, Pounce/Nerts, mom and I played Wicked Cribbage, maybe some other stuff? Felt good!

New Years Party was quite good --when I attended two years ago, I really gave myself permission to not interact with moms-friends-I-don't-actually-like and I have carried that into this year where it serves me well. I spent the bulk of the party hanging with Vicki and Eric and Becky (all high school friends) and Tuesday and Cameron(Tues's sib) and Jake (Cam's fiancee)[3], and it felt good to hang with "the teens", especially since they were all friendly quickly and it's nice when your friends can be cool with each other.

In between it all, mom and I dealt with eleven boxes from The Shed Full Of Her Dead Parents' Stuff, and did one dump run, and a little bit of other house organizing and the like?

That's many things! Tuesday and I rode the train home yesterday and it was perfectly on time (and in fact, slightly early to Boston) and we got seats together right away which was very good.

I didn't quite finish the scarf I'm making for Veronica before leaving, but I'm in the home stretch now, and I have put "mail it to her" on my todo list. If I do enough grading (sigh) in the next few days, then I can reward myself with a trip to make-and-mend now that I'm not on buying-knitting-supplies moratorium (it is a bad look to put things on your wantlist and then immediately buy those things for yourself, although as noted, most of my fambly ignored the part where I was like "yeah, I think I'm really into knitting now" except Alys and Charlie who got me a neat book and big thick yarn that I'm gonna try and make into hats, and Wicked Auntie Robin, who gave me some needle-protectors after I kept stealing hers, and later handed me "here, these are the ones I don't want" of her stitch markers.). I gotta buy a tapestry needle to weave in ends (mom offered me one of hers since I was borrowing them in MD, but I probably will want multiple in the long run) and also I want to look at the yarn and see if they have any really interesting scraps to use for Alys since she loved my chaos-scarf and wants one of her own.

That's a lot of things! WOO!

-Sor

[1] Gay Men's Chorus = "Tenor1, Tenor2, Baritone, Bass" instead of SATB, but they don't care about your gender or sexuality beyond that. Mom has a pin attached to her nametag that reads "Dyke Division" which, like, my mother is maybe the clearest example I've ever personally met of the difference between "queer as sexuality" (they're ambiguously gendered but female-assigned and very much into men) and "queer as culture" (my hairy-legged, overall-wearing, goofy, fun, not-too-serious mother absolutely belongs to the label dyke, yeah.)

[2] Also mom's friend, Barb's husband, dad's DM in the DnD game they play

[3] This makes them, as Cameron and I determined, my "future-future-sibling-in-law-in-law". It's a race to see which of us two couples will get married first! And also Alys and Charlie! If you asked me to put actual money down, I think it would honestly be on the dark horse of "yeah, Shannon and Lexi are going to sign some paperwork and not bother with any kind of party and they'll accidentally tell us like four years later".