... that you don't know what you've got till it's gone? True story. It's amazing how much comfort I find in routine and structure. And how much it can throw me off when several components of that structure are disrupted at the same time. And how I don't even realize that's why I was thrown off until the structure is reinstated. Why am I talking about this? Last week, several of my friends took off for vacation at the same time, my teaching schedule was different than usual, my steel drum practice was cancelled, and I had to tweak my running schedule. I know, none of that is a big deal, in theory. In practice, it threw me for a loop. I realized that I had started focusing on all of the things that felt out of place, all of the things that I thought I "should" be doing that I couldn't do. Because I was so busy with that, I completely lost track of the things that were going well, and I wasn't letting myself enjoy the new things I was getting the chance to do. For instance, lately I'm getting fewer tutoring hours than I'd like, but I've been using that extra time to do more yoga, which I really do enjoy. Today, I'd basically planned my day around doing laundry (how lame is that? Happy Easter to me!) but the machines were taken. So I had to scrap that plan. I now have no clean clothes, but I ended up going on an amazing hike in Tilden Park with a friend. And a few days ago, I had to push my normal afternoon run until later in the evening. As a result, I got to watch the sun set over the Pacific:
In knitting news: after a year off, it's been refreshing to come back to Ravelry and see so many great new patterns. Itching to cast on for my next lace project, I scoured the pattern list and found Filigrano. It was love at first sight. That perfect combination of geometrical structure and elegance. That rhythmic flow from linear body to flowery edging. It wasn't until I'd made it through most of the first chart (which took all of five days -- it's always a race to the edging) that I noticed that my version looks developmentally challenged compared to everyone else's. I squinted my eyes, tilted my head, thought maybe I was seeing things, hoped that it was fine after all, that it'd look just right once it had been blocked. But no. Turns out that I'd been doing my left-slant decreases completely WRONG! In my excitement to cast on and start a new project, I neglected to read the pattern closely enough to realize that the left-slants are skp's and NOT ssk's. Blah!
Most of us miss the things we get to do because we're focused on the things that aren't quite right—I love the Madeline reference. When you were a kid, we used to quote that line all the time. At least I did.
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