Vroom Vroom!

Holy Mother of Pearl (Pewter Pearl, actually) - I've gone and done it!

I am now officially the proud owner of Pewter Pearl Harley Davidson Sportster 1200 Custom motorcycle!!

This one actually:

I have to wait a bit to get my derriere in the seat (mostly because I still need to learn to ride it, and lessons don't start until next week - just a minor technicality!). I have a few modifications that are required as I am a bit too short to ride it as is. New curved handlebars, replacement back to whisper quiet stock pipes and removal of the unbelievably loud and illegal Python straight pipes (my ears still hurt!), engine or crash guards (depending on your point of view!), and a windshield will be added later this week. And saddlebags to follow, so I can carry my knitting, of course!

To say I am over the moon would be an understatement! I am delirious with happiness! I have just checked a big one off my bucket list!

Knit on!

Spring Cleaning...

Midst all of the goings on in our house, I decided that there was one job I could do in the way of spring cleaning inside our house that could be done in small increments while DD1 was resting or napping (she is progressing beautifully, by the way, despite lots of fatigue, and is offically dis-charged as a hospital patient and now continues to be monitored only once a week! She is amazing!).

When DD1 moved home two years ago after being diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, we hurriedly dis-mantled my craft room and packed up everything in clear bins and stored it on a large metal shelf in the corner of the master bedroom. It was the best we could do under the urgent circumstances at the time, and there it has been hulking in the corner ever since. Over time I grew frustrated with attempting to get at my yarn which involved asking for help from the G-man to lift and put back the bins and instead found myself far too often wandering my LYS's for yarn I knew I had at home, somewhere!

Since I was home for an extended period of time this spring, I decided that I would re-vamp the craft corner with IKEA bookcases that could easily be moved out to another room when the appropriate time came once again.

Behold - the before and the after:

I am thrilled with my spring clean-up (I still have to tag the boxes for color content) and have continued right on into my sewing supplies and my not-yet-too-out-of-control bedroom closet.

Knit on.....

A Rare Moment...

So last night I had a rare moment to knit a few stitches, having barely touched the needles at home this whole week, and I got to contemplating about what it was that I was working on and why it is that I was enjoying it so very much. It struck me as odd, sitting there all by myself in a rare moment of solitude these days, very, very late in the evening (the G-man having long gone to bed and DD1 still in hospital recovering from the nasty effects of her final round of chemo and her BMT - she is doing great, by the way - hoping to have her home for Easter!), that I was getting a ridiculous amount of pleasure from the simplest knitting of just plain 'ol mitered garter squares from leftover mediocre quality stash yarn.

I wondered why it was that working on my extremely expensive Alpaca cardi-wrap, while pleasingly repetitious enough and the end result will certainly be worth the effort, does not effectively sooth my mind and quiet my body in the same manner as does making a little garter stitich mitered square.

I am aware of the relationship that has been made between knitting and yoga, meditation or other Zen-like pastimes, but somehow it was even more than the peacefulness this little knitting brought, which was certainly present and most welcome. It was just that the simple feeling of real pleasure at the actions of my hands I was feeling that struck me as intensely out of proportion to the actual activity. After all, it was not a fancy square, not sumptuous yarn, not a particularly favorite color, not a special stitch - there was absolutely nothing special about it. And yet it pleased me immensely to work on it, row after row, square after square.

Perhaps it was exactly the absence of all of these exceptional things that allowed my mind to rest quietly a while (given the crazy state of our family, this resting thing has been seriously lacking of late), and perhaps it was in the resting of my thoughts that I found a perfect moment of pleasure that I was so obviously needing, once of course I had recognized what it was. Since this little blanket will be for charity, it is not just a little ironic that the old adage "It is more blessed to give than to receive" seems to have come to fruition here, as truly I felt very blessed indeed with this little gift of a moment of rare and simple pleasure.

Knit on.....