Investing In Myself

This will be a painfully picture-bereft post; it is far too early to be snapping pictures, and I cannot wait because, while there is no sleep the day before chemo there is plenty of sleep afterwards.

I don't know if it's the blooming of spring outside my little house, or if it is the fact that I am on the downhill slope of these damn chemo treatments, but I have been on an improvement kick. I was exhausted tonight, but I drove to pick up the HusBoy from work because I NEEDED us to have matching silverware in the worst way (Swirl Sand from Target, hoping the reviews are wrong). I then wandered into the lamp area and insisted that the Husboy choose a smaller lamp and shade to replace his ugly unstable nightstand light. I also picked up a lampshade for my bed lamp, which is both stable and beautiful as well as rewired by your's truly, but was cursed by a poor choice of shade made while I was trying to be a funky college student. The new shade is beautiful and dark enough to limit the golden light to my side of the bed so I can read or knit comfortably when insomnia only hits my side of the mattress.

I also went to my LYS's Tax Relief sale and did a bit to replace the stash yarns that I've been donating to the Knit-Tit-Along (BTW - Congrats to Peanuts Mommy for winning a leetle prize for posting the first completed boob). I seem to be craving deep, fun reds lately, so I picked up a skein gorgeous red Jitterbug as well as an armful of 50% off PaintBox in Tourmaline for some sort of future felting. (Don't you wish I'd taken some damn pictures?) The woman ahead of me in line make a crack about how she needs to take in a few knitters to make a dent in her stash. I made a crack about how I was buying more yarn to dare myself to outlive my stash. Thankfully they took it in the dark-humor spirit it was intended and I did not rain on their fiber-parade.

As of late I've been bemoaning my lack of a proper dedicated knitting bag; my other bags are more suitable for large projects as they have no pockets and tend to become a catch-all as I take my knitting all over the damn place. A few days ago I noticed that The Loopy Ewe finally had the chocolate Namaste Messenger Bag in stock (already gone again, suckers!), so I grabbed one of those along with two skeins of Panda Cotton to (also finally) make my Hawaiian grandmother some socks and push me over the free shipping threshold.

A few days before that, I decided after much deliberation to join The Knitting Guild Association (at least for the year) and attempt the first level of the Hand Knitting Master's Program. Do I think I'll actually complete it? Who knows, but the burning urge to do things better, including my knitting, seems to require a little investment in myself.

After spending so much of my time eye-to-eye with Death, the mismatched silverware and yarns, clumsy lampshades and stitches that I've lived with for years and years are simply not acceptable anymore. It is not "good enough isn't" so much as that I have spent so much of my life denying myself the better thing; giving my little brother the bigger pork chop, dropping out of college to care for sick relatives, offering my coworker the last parking spot in the management parking lot. If this program pushes me to learn how to do things "properly", then I'm all for it, but until I take a good look at it, I'm not sure if I'm going to push myself to finish; it might just be a nice tool for me. In any case, it will make me a happy knitter and I's worth it. If I'm going to be around long enough to knit up my stash I may as well do it right, yeah?