Blog? What Blog?: Part 2

Is anybody still listening? .......  No? Ok, I don't blame you. A bare start on a blog followed by a year and a half of silence might not merit a spot on your Google Reader or a stop on your morning pajamas-and-coffee Internet surfing routine. I probably wouldn't be listening either.

Since my last post, my life has undergone a lot of change. It'd probably be easier to count the things that have remained the same than to enumerate all the changes. In fact, I suppose the former list would have just one item, since the only thing constant is change, or so they say, and so I'm starting to believe. But here goes a whirlwind tour of the past year, in rough chronological order: I left the Ph.D. program I'd been in for two years, and became unemployed. I broke up with my boyfriend of two and a half years. I stopped teaching chemistry. I threw myself into studying Arabic. I got a roommate. I got in a relationship. I got out of that relationship. I applied to grad school, again. I started learning Hebrew. I started teaching English as a second language. I stopped drinking. I got a tattoo. I went from being a couch potato to running 20 miles a week. I joined a steel drum band. I started doing yoga. I completely changed social circles. My roommate moved out. I've gone from being a perfectionist to a stop-thinking-about-the-damn-thing-and-just-do-it-ist. And somehow, through all this, California has finally begun to feel like home. I've stopped feeling restless here and started feeling settled. I love my neighborhood. The cashier at the grocery store down the hill tells me "good to see you again." The employees at the coffee shops I frequent start pouring my coffee before I even walk up to the register. I even know the local homeless people's names, and they know mine. Oh, and did I mention I'm about to move out of this neighborhood that so much feels like home now, out of this apartment that I love, that I've lived in for three years? And I'm preparing to spend the summer in the Middle East? Ah! So much for stability!

Since this is, at least nominally, a knitting blog, I guess the relevant change is that I stopped knitting. About a month ago, I was having tea at a friend's house, a friend who happens to be a phenomenal lace knitter and had been nagging encouraging me for weeks to start knitting again. At first, I stubbornly resisted. Unrelenting, she'd show me gorgeous scarves she'd made. She'd pull out dozens of knitting books. She'd go on and on about her stash, accumulated over decades. So I began to contemplate. I logged into Ravelry, for the first time in months. As I perused patterns, the siren call became louder. Then, over a cup of chamomile and some ginger cookies, she brought out a box of Kinair by Filatura Di Crosa, an irresistible laceweight blend of goat hair and nylon, in brown, so soft you'd have to touch it to believe it, and, chances are, you still wouldn't believe it. A spiritual awakening. In a matter of minutes, I had needles in my hand and a print o' the wave pattern on my lap. The result is currently in my spare room on a towel, blocking. (Eek! Horrendous iphone picture. Remember the perfectionist thing? Yeah, remember that? But, better pictures to come once the blocking is done, inshallah.)

Also in the spare room, this, in KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud, Iris:

Now, off to yoga! Have a lovely Saturday afternoon!