Well, I started the first sleeve for the Hourglass Pullover last night.

Sometimes just a big expanse of stockinette - with a little shaping here and there - is what a person needs.

I also cleaned house yesterday afternoon while waiting on workmen who wound up not being able to come. (I don't have a problem with that; they had a big emergency. And my job is not an emergency).

One thing I find is that when I look at the outside world and see it as being crazy nuts out-of-control, it helps a lot to deal with things I CAN control. Like the order of the soup cans in my pantry. (Somehow, that sounds very Kanga-counting-mood to me, but there you are.)

I wanted to share a couple photos today, but the disk apparently got corrupted. Maybe over the weekend. (I hope it's not that my CAMERA is corrupting disks, that would be sad.)

*****

I remembered a saying this morning. A saying probably most knitters know:

"Knit on, with hope and confidence, through all crises"

That, of course, comes from the illustrious Elizabeth Zimmerman. (My understanding is she coined it during Watergate...not sure which side of the fence she was on but I can hazard a guess.). But I think it is applicable in these times.

Bess asserts that there really IS enough love to go around. I guess I believe that in my heart (or my soul, or my brain-heart, or whatever you want to call it) but in the cynical, self-protective overlayer I've developed over the years to keep myself from getting hurt, I find myself having a hard time believing it...if that makes sense.

I've been kicking around a few ideas over the past couple days.

One is to try and plan out a pair of samplers, somehow. Now, I don't needlepoint and I actively loathe doing counted cross-stitch, so I guess they'd have to be sort-of freehand embroidery or perhaps crewel. But I find I have a deep want for a pair of framed samplers in my house, each one bearing a quotation:

"Every act of love adds to the balance of love in the universe" - Therese of Lisieux

"We can not do great things; we can only do little things with great love" - Mother Teresa

(Okay, so they're at best, "attributed to," quotes. Let me at least have that.)

I don't know though; at the rate which I embroider it would be about 20 years before they were done. Maybe I'd be better off hiring a calligrapher to write them up nicely for me, and then frame them.

I'm also thinking about creating some sock patterns again. I feel the push to design - I feel like I SHOULD be designing - like everyone and their cat is designing patterns, or getting book contracts, or being interviewed on tv shows, and I'm just here, being a nothing.

I still have the idea for a book of "prairie socks" (socks inspired by qualities of, and creatures inhabiting, the prairie) but I don't know when I'd ever have time to actually knit up the socks I have in mind. I could write up the patterns - chart things out, suggest ideas - but I'd have no idea if they'd work short of making them up. And since the book would at best be a little handprinted thing mailed out to people in return for their making contributions to the Nature Conservancy or something, I don't see being able to hire knitters (or even give people free yarn in return for knitting) to make up my ideas.

I also have an idea for a pair of ancient Greece/Rome inspired socks, thanks to a new stitch pattern book I got recently. That's probably next on the list, and if I get them done and they're pleasing to me, I'll share the pattern.

There is never enough time.

I don't know. I'm sure part of this is simply that it's the black dog time of year for me - it's those slack days before classes start, where I have a mix of excitement (new students! doing something purposeful again!) and dread (am I really good enough? am I up to the challenge?) of a new school year. And of course, the heat contributes to things. I am fully convinced that although we are a generation that spends the week-end in town astride an air conditioner, the fact that it is in excess of 100 degrees outside has both physiological and psychological ramifications, perhaps too far beneath the surface to really be consciously detected.