a hopeful attempt at belaying melancholy



(shot of my coffee table top this evening. Yes, it is usually that cluttered with stuff).

Yes, I gave in and started something new. It's the Dolman Updated from the Fall '03 Interweave. I don't think the symbolism of why I chose it is quite so bald as the fact that it is blue in color. I think it's more, I'm longing for fall and winter again, and this is the most fallish of the projects I have lined up right now.

Also, it's dead simple, at least until you get to the shoulder shaping, which is good when I'm tired and sad and not feeling up to wrestling with what feels like a million tiny lace stitches, and yarn overs needing to go in the right place, and fiddly decreases on the Kat shawl. And I don't feel up to the jolly back-and-forth cabling of the DNA scarf. And even the "That 70s Sock" socks feel too bright and loud to me right now.

I don't know what brings this on, but it happens to me about this time every year. I do not think this is merely the aftereffect of the dream I had last night, although I admit that sleep and dreams do not seem the entertaining sanctuary tonight that they usually do.

More likely, it's that we've entered Thunderstorm Season, which means that the pressure will change rapidly and unpredictably, as will the humidity. And as I am one of those blessed cursed with sensitive, barometer-like sinuses, I can tell when a big storm is due. Which one is, this evening or tomorrow.

It's also Pollen Season, which is a bad time of year for me. I think I said before that my worst allergy symptoms are not sneezing or coughing or a sort throat or scratchy eyes. All that physical stuff, I can deal with. I can live with it. No, I get a case of the blahs. Not really depression, at least not from the people I've talked to who truly battle depression, but more of a dysphoria. Sort of a feeling like there's a haze over everything, the sort of greasy scum like sometimes develops on a windshield and the only way to get it off is by scrubbing it at the car wash or doing something more intense than just using the wipers and fluid. It's just something, I've learned, that is to be lived through, eventually I equilibrate and can tolerate the summer - or the pollen goes away - or I dial down a few stops and go through summer in sort of an aestivating phase, to reawaken when the first cool breeze blows in fall.

And I think that's why I chose the Dolman now. It looks very much like a fall sweater, a Football-Saturday sweater, a throw-it-on-before-you-head-out-to-go-antiquing-and-to-the-Farmer's-Market sort of sweater. And I missed all that last fall, what with all the worrying about tenure, I couldn't enjoy the fall as I normally do.