I'm trying to be a good participator-type person, but it is ending badly all over the place.
The Ravellenics are a time when ambitious knitters band together into bloodthirsty teams to watch the Olympics and do ridiculous things like knit estonian lace in 2 weeks. Or amigurumi Avengers. Or dozens of willy-warmers.
I am on team Bok Bok Motherfucker, and I decided to knit a cabled sweater. On size 4 needles. In 2 weeks. Oh, and I could only really work on it during my lunch breaks.
I got this far before realizing I was stupid.
So I grabbed my bag of hibernating projects, and decided to finish the Rockaway hoodie. I finished 1/4 a sleeve before realizing that I don't actually like watching sports. I am a fan of internet videos, with highlights and injuries.
The inside of this sleeve is terrible.
I just... no. I just can't.
So I am totally losing this competition which I am in no way obligated to participate in.
The pattern is one-size, relying on ribbing to keep them form-fitting with no decreases. So they are tubes, and the ankles are the same size as the calves.
NO.
The ribbing fit my not-quite-4-year-old.
When I squeezed them on, my legs looked like spiral hams.
Also in FAIL, I hauled the shmoopy shcarf out from under my desk and bound it off. The last month was all contented grey, and it was really boring to work on, even at 2 rows a day. Instead of a snapshot of a year, it is a snapshot of a breakup, over a period of about 7 months.
It's an interesting visual study. And I kind of hate it.
SO ANYWAY
The kids have been building skateboards through a program with the school. For $25, they get the forms, glue the layers, sand them down, paint them, put on the hardware, and leave with a contraption with which to break their faces.
Gavin has more sci-fi nerdliness than athletic grace, and covered his board in spacecraft, robots, and aliens. It's pretty fantastic.
We went to a kiddie party yesterday evening, and I realized again how completely crap I am at talking to people without a desk between us. In the midst of guitar music and clinking beers, I feel like a boring, mushy, dull thing. The young farmers laughed and talked about clearing land, breeding goats, making kava, cooking with edible flowers, and I just had the ERMAGERD CLERP CLERPS horse in my head, not helping at all. Bounced on the trampoline and laid on lounge chairs, instead. Leif found an enormous ball, and we pelted each other in the head for the better part of an hour, until the herd of children roared through, got in a dog pile on the trampoline, gave someone a bloody nose, and buffalo-stampeded back toward the food table. I was fine until they relocated to the barn for party games, where the bigger kids started riding bikes through the crowd and mowing down the littles. After a bit of ineffectual flailing, I went outside to wait in the dark with the barn cat, who had similar feelings about the mob scene inside. Despite my personal fail, it was a really lovely evening with ridiculously lovely people. And chicken wings. Lovely, lovely chicken wings.
Working with the public gives me a wide slice of humanity. I don't have to chase people down, clean up expired shut-ins, or pull guns on assholes like other branches of public employees, but I do talk down drug addicts, investigate trash-can-poopers, and listen to a stream of scandal and grief. One of our teens was killed in a terrible accident, and the neighbors who dragged him from the wreckage are still processing their horror. One of our missing patrons is rumored to have been involved in a shoot-out with police and has been on the run with a new haircut and a stolen car. Someone has been ordering fraudulent credit cards in their ex's name. One of our mentally ill patrons has just figured out he can get free movies due to his disability, and has been proselytizing to all his friends, so that we have had a lurching, clot-dropping stream of Walking Dead library visitors all week.
Sorry, no, 'Tin Tin' has already been checked out.
I realize this analogy seems harsh, but none of the normal hobos will go near these guys. Not sure where he found them.
My co-worker went to get the mail and stopped someone who was beating up a homeless guy on the street corner. She got in his face, told him off, got the cops, and called his mom. It was beautiful.
Meanwhile, the kid I pulled out of a pool in 9th grade is running for Senate. And his new album won a bunch of local awards. I am insufferably smug about how he's turned out - as if I'd done any work at all since whacking his head off the pool deck in 1993.
Also, my pen is poised over my time-travel to-do list, just in case he turns out to be an evil overlord, after all.
Yesterday, a teen fell off this bridge and died while trying to take a picture over the guardrail:
We have to drive through herds of tourists clogging the bridges every time we go to Costco. Seriously, visitors, they are fucking huge cliffs with raging waterfalls and rivers under them. There is mud, and slippery moss, and crumbling rocks, and one-lane roads where drivers will zoom around and scare you into losing footing. One of our patrons pulled this kid out of the water, our emergency guys brought him in, and my doctor declared him dead. Hopefully not on the same table I have to have my lady-business exam on. DO NOT PRANCE AROUND WITH CAMERAS ON THE EDGES OF CLIFFS, FFS.
Home, to my knitting and children and dinner. I like a calm and quiet life, because damn.
