So, in all this time I haven’t been posting, or even making much of an appearance anywhere on the web, I’ve been pretty busy, in a still-not-getting-anything-accomplished way.

Packing. Ugh. Hell. Packing. I am the world’s slowest and most impossible packer. For one, I like everything to be… perfect. I want all similar items together, and packed just so… but that’s difficult, because I don’t have similar items except for genres of books. All of my stuff is like, random junk. I have to do mental gymnastics to coordinate stuff together to stick it in a box, and even though the Olympics are going on as we speak, I am not an Olympian at this. Not even close.

I’ve packed 14 boxes of books. And several boxes of random stuff. And that’s where it ends. Hooboy. I have sooo much more to go, but mostly, I sit there and stare at my stuff and pace and wish I could just snap my fingers and it’d all be done for me, perfect and as I want it. Sooo not happening. It’d be nice if magic worked like that, wouldn’t it?

I’ve also been knitting, some, but not much. Why not much? Because I signed up for Ravlympics, and… then I was knitting on one of my socks, and then… the sock… it was too small after I got past the heel. Fuck. I knew it. I knew it two inches in, but I persevered, thinking I was just being overly paranoid, like I was about the last sock I thought would be too small. And now, I’m halfway through a sock that’s too small to wear. Too small for anyone I know to wear. I have the smallest feet ever, or close to it. Rrfg. So now I’m faced with the task of ripping it out, which has put me off knitting somewhat, and I haven’t felt like doing the lace project I signed up to do, so…

Well, there you go. So I’m knitting mittens for a swap. They’re super fast, and almost done. I’m just waiting on confirmation of the hand measurements before I top them off, because… well, the girl I’m knitting for said her hands were about ‘average’ length, except, she gave me a measurement that’s smaller than MY hands, and I have hands the size of your average eleven year old. Sooo not average. So either she made a typo or a measuring error… or she just doesn’t know what average hands are. Either way, I want to be sure before I finish them.

I’ve also been reading. A., (whose website went under when she forgot to pay for her domain), lent me the first two books of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. Not bad. Good reading, not spectacular, but fun. The main character sort of drives me insane, because she is soooo an average idiot teenager, and I am sooo past that. Also, oddly, between her two romantic choices, for once, I don’t like the vampire best. Interesting, that. A., who always likes the vampire best, agrees with me. Edward just sort of… doesn’t have it going on. I mean, in the first book, when you don’t really have Option Two in play much, he’s all right, but his faults really stack up in the second book, if you ask me. Ah well. As I said, the main character is an idiot teenager, so her undying love for him is not surprising.

I’ve also been watching the Olympics at work. Tonight is my last night of work at this job, ever, and I guess I will just… not see any more Olympics after this. (I don’t, for the confused, have TV. I have a television, but no… service. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.) Fft. I never get to see the Olympics…

By the way, am I the only one who sort of wishes they’d do the Olympics like they did in ancient times: a.k.a. in the nude. Now that would really be worth watching!

I thought I knew debt. I lied. I’m now in over a hundred grand…. but on the bright side, I’ve PURCHASED A CONDO!!!

Just thought I’d share.

So I went to Billings last week for 5 fun-filled nightmarish days. It was a disaster from one end to the other, the only bright side being that yes, come the end of the month, barring some wild and unsavory turn of events with the inspector, mortgage, and/or natural disaster, officially own my very own house, one nobody can just make me leave one day on a whim. Not that anyone ever *has* just kicked me out on a whim before; I’m just sayin’.

That’s the good news. I have a place to live when I move at the end of the month. Bad news? College is a bust. MSU College of Technology is a fucking bitch. They’ve lost my transcripts (more than once), they’ve failed to give me vital information, and now my classes are 100% full with a mile-long waiting list. Their fault, mostly, but I take some responsibility in not having been a little more on top of things and just trusting that everything would work itself out even if they were being incompetent asshats over there.

So, it’s on to a job hunt now. And a lot of therapy knitting. And steroids.

Seriously. I’m on steroids. For hives, of course, because this nightmare involving mortgages and house hunting and college fuckwads kicked my stress (and therefore, my on-again-off-again hives) into overdrive. I just couldn’t take it anymore, and after I told my mother I’d MURDER to get rid of the hives, she and her friend Ella strongarmed me to the doctor for what I thought would be another ass-shot of steroids, but instead is a nice course of prednisone pills. That’ll look real great on any upcoming pre-employment drug tests, no doubt.

I have no idea why my camera decided that all 20+ pictures of this rainbow on July 4 needed to be set against a hellish sky, but I swear, it was a normal gray sky when I took them! Enjoy.

So actually, Summer of Socks 2008 began, um, June 21st. But I didn’t get a sock started for it until July 7th. I was too busy finishing up other things I needed to get done to start!

So here’s my first sock-in-progress for Summer of Socks 2008:

Cute, eh? I’m adoring the yarn so much I want like, 2-3 more balls of it, just to have on hand. This sock is being made with 56 stitches, but I’m not sure I like that. We’ll see after I get the heel done.

[Edit: The rainbow socks are made with the Baby Cable Rib patterned socks in Sensational Knitted Socks.]

Then, there’s this sock, which I was working on BEFORE SOS ‘08, which is Mom’s Eleanor socks. Got the first done and am two inches into the next, hoping to finish it off in a week.

Both socks (the two in progress) are moving fast, so hopefully… I’ll actually get to start another pair for SOS soon! :)

So, a couple years ago, I begged my parents to buy me a handheld GPS unit so I could start geocaching. They provided. And I stuffed it into a drawer, intimidated, and left it there.

Until this morning.

Geocaching, for the uninitiated, is sort of a global treasure hunt. People hide caches all over the world, and upload their exact coordinates to a site like Geocaching.com for others to find. You plug those coordinates into your GPS, and go hunting, using the device to find the cache. You might think this is rather strange - like, what’s the fun in finding something if you know where it is? But you don’t, really - it’s one thing to have some exact coordinates to go by - it’s another thing entirely to FIND that spot, even with a GPS. Then to find the cache - which is often hidden, in part for fun, in part to prevent ‘muggles’ from tampering with it, or even walking off with it. And of course, part of the fun is the view - a lot of caches are hidden in the wilderness, in national parks and along historical or just interesting places in cities. It’s a great way to explore the unknown, and to see things you might not have had a chance to see otherwise.

So today, I checked out the website, and found that there’s two caches in town here - not bad for a tiny place like this! One was at the Lion’s Park, only a block north of me. So I dug out that yellow GPS and at length, figured out how to plug in the coordinates (I must have the most unintuitive bastard out there!) and went hunting at just about six this morning. I took with me my camera (just in case), and a small bag with a few trinkets in it, a fresh little Moleskine notebook, softcover, to use as my personal log, and a pen. And a screwdriver. Sometimes, I hear, caches can be hard to open.

Eventually, I found the cache - hidden well and camouflaged, too, so it took me a bit to find it. It was a small container, a little bigger than my hand, and contained a few trinkets and a logbook to sign. I signed it and dated it, and added the cache to my own logbook, and exchanged a rubber bouncy ball for a tiny flashlight keychain, and replaced the cache where I found it.

Cache #1 complete.

And then it was on to cache #2. This was, I suspected, in the main city park. I was right - my coordinates and the clues on the website led me directly to it, to a little corner of garden in it. And then everything went wrong.

Like, my GPS unit went psychotic. It decided North was anything but North, and directed me 20 feet south, but when I began to move in that direction, it changed its mind and said I needed to go 40 feet north, or perhaps 28 feet west, or maybe 30 feet east, or maybe any or all of these.

I spent a long time searching, but without better coordinates than “in the garden area, somewhere”, I didn’t have much luck. So I left. Soon as I left the park, the GPS acted normal again. What, does this thing have PMS? Sheesh.

Anyway, I’m gonna go back when daylight hits again, if I have time, and see if I can’t find this sucker again.

Okay, so my big swaps for the summer are OVER. I have sent and received the Iced Tea Summer Solstice Swap (off Ravelry), and the Loopy Ewe Swap, also! I procrastinated waited for a bright, sunny day, and then went outside and took pictures of all my awesome swag.

Look:

The above swag is, if it isn’t obvious, from the Iced Tea Swap. Awesome goods! And that yarn? Handspun merino/silk. Handspun. *drool*

The below swag is from The Loopy Ewe Swap, from the wonderful Marissa (HPMomma on Ravelry). She was an incredible swap partner.

All that? Wow. Two skeins of Smooshy (my first ever! Feels so… smooshy!) and a knit bag (perfect size for tarot cards! - which she also sent!) and a TON of other good things, which you can see for yourself! Wow. Incredible package!

Anyway. I didn’t take pictures of the good things I sent (late) to my partner. The only part of it I have pictures of is the knitting. And what delicious knitting it was! Here’s a couple shots of the Forest Canopy Shawl that I made my partner, meesh. More pictures on my Flickr. Here’s hoping she really liked it! I haven’t heard yet!

It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been, granted, pretty busy - working, mostly, extra shifts, extra hours… And on my days off, I’ve been busy, too. You see, we [meaning, my parents, really] have a buyer for our farm on the line, and he’s very interested. But he wants my house, too - and of course, if that’s what it takes to sell the farm, by god, we’re selling my house with it. The farm’s been on the market for 4 years and hasn’t sold yet. Now it’s very nearly a completed deal.

But. (There’s always a catch, isn’t there?) The deal hinges upon an appraisal meeting the value of the offer. This guy who wants it? He’s kind of… odd. Richer than sin, 65, wanted to farm all his life, already purchased a farm neighboring ours, just sold a 1.2 million dollar house… And he says if the appraisal doesn’t meet his offer, he’s walking away. No renegotiating, no lowering his offer. He’s just walking away.

Hello pins, hello needles, let’s sit down for a while.

My future rests largely on this sale - if we sell the farm, we can probably buy a place in Billings for me to live, and I may not have to take up begging for alms on the street corners and making friends with the local soup kitchens, you know? Because rent for a single person is expensive. And I’m looking at a thin budget. Too thin, with the price of food, gas, and energy these days. Much too thin. Having a rent-free place would do a lot for me - even with the super expensive utility bills a good sized house would bring, it still won’t cost as much as renting an apartment and paying utility bills. Besides, rentals have one other problem - my cats. I now have three of them, through no fault of my own (I’ll fess up, though, and admit that if I hadn’t inherited my Persian, I may well have picked up another cat somewhere anyway.), and you just can’t find rentals that allow three cats. I’m having trouble finding more than 2 or 3 places that allow ANY pets. And I’m of the belief that you don’t just discard your animals when it’s inconvenient - there are responsibilities that come with owning pets, and looking after them for life is one of them.

The chickens are another matter - they’re not pets, they’re not attached, hell, I’d like to eat some of them. Well, probably not. The ones I’d like to “eat” are the small ones that wouldn’t make for good eating, so nevermind. But livestock is different. Though I’d like to take a few chickens with me, too. Or at least continue to raise chickens. But that is likely not gonna be possible. Still, they might go with the farm, so that problem is taken care of, too! Evidently, the potential buyer’s wife likes chickens! At least, she likes them enough to have a chicken-themed kitchen. Who knows if she’d actually like the real monsters?

So. Anyway. The point of all this rambling is that I am Stressed Out. And if there was ever a time to need a little magic, to need a good energy push for things to end up in the right direction, now is it. I got the basics of the ritual from a book called Grimoire for the Green Witch by Ann Moura, which is one of my favorite references. It’s not Wiccan, exactly, but it’s Wiccan inspired - but I still like it. I like her style. I don’t remember which ritual inspired me, but it was one of the money spells. And of course, it involved a green candle.

Let me just say that I love candle magic. There is nothing more magical to me than candles, except perhaps a waterfall, or an ocean, or the moon. Okay, well, nature itself. But fire. Fire is magic to me. I chose a green candle - a slender chime candle, not a big green one like I pictured. I don’t have a big green one, even a green votive right now, or I would’ve used that. I anointed it in the Blue Moon Water I created last October. It’s the most powerful holy water I have, and I needed a good boost of power. I carved runes in it for prosperity and success. I mixed herbs together, herbs with the same properties - prosperity, success. I burned patchouli incense [as an aside, I didn’t know how much I liked that until I burned it!] for prosperity as well, and set my green candle in a small cauldron.

I lit the candles - my working altar candle, bit and white and fat and symbolizing the divine, and a couple small tea lights for illumination. I laid out a couple oracle cards indicating my intent - security and prosperity and business success. And I visualized what I wanted - the sale of the farm, the deal going through, the purchase of the properties we wanted to buy. When I could see exactly what I wanted, I lit the green candle, and watched it burn. I sprinkled the herbs into the cauldron with it, over the flame. A little reckless, but I liked seeing the sparks. [I didn’t like accidentally melting an herb to my thumb, which was sort of painful, and will be remembered in the future as something Not To Do.]

Then… I walked away. That’s the beauty of candle magic - once that image and intent and power is fused in the candle, your work is done. The candle does the rest. With chime candles, I just let it burn down to a stub. It took an hour, about, perhaps a little more or less. I went on with my morning (it was dawn by then), listened to good celtic music and danced off all the excess energy, and greeted the day. When the candle was just a stub, I blew it out - god forbid I catch all the herbs on fire, haha, wouldn’t that make for an exciting morning? - and let the remaining wax cool. To finish up, I took the wax and herbs and the remains of my incense outside and buried it in my garden.

It was a good ritual.

But I still had an emotional breakdown two days later, and tonight, if I can manage it, I’m going to do another ritual - one to let go of all these doubts and fears of mine so I can move on when the time comes. I’m not normally so terrified of change, but this is a big step, like selling off a piece of my childhood, a symbol of home and security. Who wouldn’t need a little grounding, a little healing, after that?

[As a side note: I got my blocking wires from KnitPicks, so I can block my Loopy Ewe swap partner’s gift at LAST and get pictures soon! And I finished R’s socks. And I’m making a dishcloth for a coworker! Yay, knitting!]

The Loopy Swap project is DONE. The only thing left is washing and blocking! Hurrah! I worked like mad tonight to finish it, and have just a tiny bit of yarn left - perhaps enough for a wee tiny sock or a miniature sweater. Maybe two wee tiny socks - one for pal, one for me?

We’ll see. At any rate, I’m quite happy to just have the swap project off the needles so I can work on something else!

All things evolve - landscapes, plants, animals, human emotions, and spiritualities. In the last four years, I’ve undergone tremendous changes across the board. From city to rural, from Christian to pagan, from doubt and depression to contentment and confidence, and from debt to comfort.

Four years ago, at the beginning of summer 2004, I sat alone in an expensive, soon-to-be-stifling-hot apartment, and searched endlessly for a job in an economy that had just flushed the toilet. I was miserable - hungry, depressed, alone, broke, and struggling with the faith I’d lost several years before. I had no support - my family was out of sight and out of mine, my best friend had moved away months before and refused to so much as drop a postcard with her phone number on it in the mail, my other closest friend was caught up deep in drama with new roommates, and though I lived in a decent sized city, I was too damned shy, miserable, and out of gas to meet anyone new.

My faith in the Christian God had long since abandoned me - or perhaps I had abandoned it. Truthfully, I could no longer reconcile the ‘truths’ of the Bible with either science or my own conscience. It had been a long dark path - five years or more - and it was long past time for God to shine some light on my struggles, to aid me, to guide me, but that light never came.

Four years ago, I was bitter at the world, and the people in it. Everything had changed in the years before. I had changed. My eyes had been opened to worlds and faiths and ideas and ideologies far removed from the safe, comfortable, conservative Christian upbringing I’d been raised in. I had attended one of the most liberal, hippie colleges in the United States - and what an education. My entire world was changed as I met person upon person who didn’t follow the ‘traditional’ path through life.

I met a lovely lesbian Wiccan who worshipped Hera - oh, the shock! Did she really worship some ancient Greek goddess? - and an atheist who “loved Christians” because they were generous at their campus meetings with ice cream and pot lucks. I met women who didn’t shave their legs - or their pits! - and men who wore dresses. I met vegans and vegetarians and people who thought McDonalds was Seriously Evil. I met protesters and Bush-Haters and gay rights activists and feminazis who thought men were Serious Evil. I met artists and writers and singers and poets.

My worldview was forever changed. My world was forever changed just for being there. I never graduated, and I wasn’t the best student by far - but the education I got about life was worth every penny I paid (and every penny I’m still paying).

But four years ago, I was still in the midst of all this change - I was still reeling from it, still fitting the pieces I’d gathered together, still struggling to decide who I was, and what I wanted to become, and what it all meant. What was life about? What was the point of it all? What did I believe, and who the hell should I vote for come November, anyway?

Four years ago, I started proceedings for a divorce. Not a marital divorce, but a spiritual one. Slowly, I was cutting myself away from the trappings of my old beliefs and habits and anxieties, shedding my old skin to make room for new. It started with intolerance, and the accepting of a new code of ethics that begins with: If it harms none, do what you will. This is, granted, a rather Wiccan statement, but it’s a central truth, the core of my beliefs. If it hurts no one, it’s okay. As for the rest - things that may cause harm, things that could hurt - there are other rules, other shades of circumstance and morality to weigh before you make decisions about them. But if it hurts no one, why get worked up? If it hurts no one, it should be free and unrestricted.

With that new code in place, and other personal ethics becoming clearer every day the more I read and thought and interacted with people, the closer I came to understanding myself. And the closer I came to understanding who I was, the more I understood where I wanted to go, and what I wanted to do, and what my life - what life in general - was about. And the more I understood that, the more comfortable I became. Depression and angst began to fall away. Self-reliance and confidence rose. I began to live and let live. I stopped trying to change the people around me - and started to just live life… for me. Not for them. Not because of them. But for and because of me.

In four years, I’ve learned to take just about everything with a sprinkling or more of salt. I’ve learned to be a skeptic, to be critical, to be choosy about the things I let into my life. I’ve matured and learned so much… and yet, I’m still a babe in the cradle in this ancient universe. I’ve changed in almost every way, and I still have a long way to go.

In four years, I’ll be 30 years old. In four years, I’ll have evolved all over again - maybe into just an older and wiser version of the woman I am today, my ideas refined, my beliefs strengthened, my path in life clearer… or maybe I’ll have evolved into someone I wouldn’t recognize if I passed her on the street today. Who knows?

But it’ll be a fascinating journey, nonetheless.

I’ve been working for a month now (on and off) on a very special item (yes, a knitted one) for my Loopy Ewe Swap partner, and the end is at last in sight. To be honest, I haven’t heard from her in a while, and it worries me a bit - especially since she doesn’t have a blog and is only somewhat active on Ravelry. Hopefully, she’s doing fine! And hopefully, she loves her gift when she gets it! I know I love it!

Also, coming up on halfway through a Very Long Week at work. I’ve worked three 12-hour shifts in a row, and have two more to go before I go back to working regular 8-hour days. Yes, that’s right. Five 12-hour shifts in a row, and then I don’t even get any days off for another two days. And all this after getting only one day off before it began . That’s the day in which I spent doing laundry like mad, and making The Most Horrible Swedish Meatballs Ever, otherwise known as Swedish Allspice Balls, because that’s what they tasted like. Allspice - and lots of it. Gah. (It wasn’t my fault, to be fair - the recipe demanded that much allspice, and like an imbecile, I just didn’t question it.) So instead of eating tons of yummy meatballs all week while I have no time to cook, I’m eating Hamburger Freaking Helper, greasy potato chips, and bar pizza. Urgh. Not exactly food to fuel you for a week of hellish hours.

Luckily, all the tons of overtime should make up for it. Here’s hoping.

In the meantime, to kill sometime at work, when the hours get really really long, I’ve been hunting down podcasts and listening to them. So far, Faerie Knitting is my favorite. Go have yourself a little fairy tale now. Enjoy.