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.

So I was going to put up a whole ton of photos here today (yesterday? It’s 5:22 a.m. - officially not the same today it was when I woke up, I suppose…) but guess who just didn’t have the motivation to do all that camera-work? Yup, that’s me.

So instead, you get to hear about the other things I’m up to in my life.

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far away… Wait, wrong script.

A long long time ago, like, say, four years ago, I used to have this awesome hobby of penpalling and swapping (things, in the mail) and postcard trading and other things. Then A came to town, and suddenly, I had a REAL LIVE FRIEND IN THE FLESH and I eventually abandoned all that other stuff. Well, that, and I got a full time job, working nights, and life just changed in general.

But I’ve done penpalling on and off for years… many years, and I missed it. So finally, I’m getting back into the swing of things. I posted a little ad on Ravelry (knitting forums, for those uncool people not in the know), and whammo, 5-6 people contacted me within two days. I rock, man. And so do they. :) So not only am I getting penpals? I’m getting KNITTING penpals. That is totally freaking awesome.

Still, I think penpalling with people you’ve met and converse with on the internet is going to be an interesting experience. A) everyone has blogs, and b) email and instant messaging and private messaging is quick and… instant. But there’s something about a handwritten letter on paper (or heck, even a typewritten letter on paper) sent through the mail that makes all the extra time and expense and wait worthwhile. It’ll be nice to expect things in the mail once in a while that aren’t bills, magazines, or packages I ordered myself.

Haven’t done one of these in a while, so… here I go. This week’s Friday’s Feast.

Appetizer
If you could be any current celebrity for one whole week, who would you want to be?

Celebs? Gosh, I don’t know. I have a vague phobia of the entire celeb ‘class’ in general and like to scoff at anyone like that… but I do think that being The Yarn Harlot would be kind of fun. Celeb status in a certain circle, but not too celeb for my tastes!

Soup
On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being highest), how much do you enjoy talking on the phone?

Five, maybe six. I don’t really like to talk on the phone - it just happens to be the only way I can actually have conversations with certain people that isn’t either a) on the internet, or b) without major interruptions from other people.

Salad
Name a charitable organization to which you have donated (or would like to).

This winter I donated (not much, granted) to Feed the Children, but have swiftly been irritated by their continual harassment for more and more money… and their religious slant.

Main Course
What is a food you like so much you could eat it every single day for a month?

Cheese. And I DO eat it every day. Seriously. Or potatoes. In any form. Both together? Even better.

Dessert
Have you or anyone in your family had the flu this year?

Nope! Not yet, anyway. Sinus problems, allergies, maybe a cold - yes. But the flu? No. And no flu shot, either.

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? This week’s FF wasn’t really that inspiring to me, so let’s talk about something else. Like the fact that I’ve embroidered my first tea towel ever! And actually, it went faster than expected. (Certainly faster than my socks are going, though at least I got the first one done and have finished the ribbing on the second!)

I’ve been going through old Workbasket magazines, finding ancient history (Okay, since 1964 anyway… ancient enough, well before I was born, anyway) embroidery transfers (so cute!) and the ugliest knitted and crocheted and otherwise crafted things EVER. Fun to look through! And gah, the hairstyles! And, as A. would say, THE TEETH! (She’s a bit of a teeth fanatic, to be honest, and those unperfect, unstraightened, non-bleached teeth shocked her a bit, I guess.)

I’ve been sorting out the ones with transfers, wondering whether to use them (and risk destroying them, maybe? I don’t know…) or do some copying of them with tracing paper and a transfer pen before I touch them. Hard to say. But I’m anxious to start embroidering something else! Heck, this is an even more portable project than knitting - it doesn’t require me to carry around magazines, books, or copied sheets of patterns!

In other news, I’ve finally finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Great book, truly great, and it would’ve been finished ages ago if I could’ve put down the knitting long enough to read it. Erm. You might say I have a bit of a problem, yes? Anyway, though the author is definitely passionate about her family’s food choices (all local food, with few exceptions, for a full year) the book is really just the story of one family’s year of “living on the farm” with a little political and environmental data thrown in. It reminded me oh so strongly of the Little House series - one family’s living with nature, for better or for worse, part story, part inspiration, part instruction manual, part values. The best part? It describes the sort of life I want to live perfectly.

I’ve always been attracted to stories like Little House on the Prairie - stories about independence, a connection to the land, making do with what you have, creating something from nothing, survival, sacrifice, and warm, happy home with good, fresh food. Stories like that have always tugged at my soul - and in the past few years, the idea of living as independently as I can - growing food, raising animals, owning not just a house, but a home. I want that for myself. I want that life; I want those stories to be mine.

But how do I get there from here?

So, I’ve been thinking about math lately. This is weird, I know. Who thinks about math? Math teachers, I suppose. Mathematicians. And… geeks. I guess. Like me. *shamed*

Anyway, I got to thinking about this because, say, my fourth grade math teacher actually reads and comments occasionally on my blog. Wow. Who knew math teachers knit? ;-) I don’t remember much about 4th grade math class, granted, except one thing: Mad Minutes. This is where you have a sheet filled with math problems (easy stuff, it’s gradeschool, come on…) and you have to do as many as humanly possible in one minute.

I don’t know if anyone else in the world ever did these, or if this was just our thing, but these suckers implanted themselves in my brain, and to this day, I do very little of anything repetitive (say, knitting…) without looking at the clock, and then trying to do as much as I can in one minute, I kid you not. Then, worse, I try to beat my “score” every time. I tell you, I can trace it all back to math class…

Along those lines, BrainAge, for Nintendo DS, has this “cute” (harhar) little game where you do tons of little math problems as quickly as possible, JUST LIKE THE MAD MINUTES. And why is it that I can never remember, no matter how many times I try, whether 8×7 is 54 or 56? Likewise, 9×6 always messes me up too… *shakes head* Brain Age also has a lot of much more evil minigames, like the “count how many people are remaining in the house as they fly in and out super fast” game. I really suck that one up, I’ll tell you….

Also, math in general is on my mind, because gosh, come August, when I go back to school, I’m gonna have to see how much algebra I actually remember. And then… probably take classes, because really, about the only algebra I really remember is *really* basic algebra. You know, “70% of X = 120″ type stuff, which, I confess, I use all the time. But college level algebra? Never needed it. Don’t use it. Don’t remember it. Gah, taking lots of math classes….

But maybe I’ll do a good search online for some sort of remedial algebra sites or something and see if I can dust off my brain and brush up and maybe pass the placement exams and survive without having to pay lots of money. There’s an idea! If only I hadn’t sold my math textbook back to the college way back when…

Envious of those able to be green, that is. I like “being green”. You know, environmentally conscious? But has anyone noticed that it’s a lot easier to be green in a city? Ironic, isn’t it, how the further removed from nature you get by moving to a concrete city that the easier it is to be green in your choices? I live in the middle of nature here, but it’s awfully hard to be green when there’s no mass transportation (and it’s too frickin’ cold to walk - hello, the wind chill is -48 right now… what in mother earth’s ass am I doing walking even two blocks to work? I’m gonna freeze my skin black walking back home in the morning if this wind doesn’t die down!), no recycling whatsoever (even for newspapers or cans), no organic anything, the “farmer’s market” is mostly a joke, (and only open for about 2 hours, one day a week, for 2 months, usually while I’m sleeping, thank you very much for this job), and you have to travel 60-90 miles ONE WAY to buy essential supplies like… underwear. Everything is shipped in from billions of miles away. Buying ‘local’ is a joke on most things. I consider “made in Montana” about as local as I can get, and frankly, there just isn’t a whole lot that’s locally available.

My house is not really my own - I rent it from my parents. I can’t make changes to it to greenify it for two reasons: a) uh, it’s not mine, hello, and b) I am just not that rich. It’s all electric everything, meaning, it’s an electricity HOG. It’s poorly insulated. The toilet-that-ran-for-months was finally fixed after my mother gasped at the $80 water bill - something I’d asked my father to do many times (it’s not exactly a normal floating ball toilet, okay? It’s weird. I didn’t know how to do it.)

I’m trying to greenify my life a little, nonetheless. My car gets good gas mileage, and I don’t go very many places, really. I fill up maybe twice a month on average. I’ve purchased a couple canvas bags and use them not only for groceries at the local store, but to tote things around in everywhere. I just purchased a $20 aluminum water bottle to spare me from constantly buying single-use beverages to pack to work, where the water is pretty well undrinkable. That’ll save money and reduce garbage.

I use cloth pads. When I started this cloth pad venture a couple years back, I never thought I’d like them as much as I do. I can’t imagine going back to spending $10-$15 a month on bleached, chemical-drenched feminine hygiene products when cloth is cheaper, reusable, and far, far more comfortable. I just need to make more of them. My stash is a bit small. *lol*

I’ve been freezing more of my leftovers for later, instead of just throwing them out. Reducing waste there, and in buying more things in bulk, and things with less packaging (read: fresh food, not processed food) helps considerably - and I eat better, too.

I use paper towels only for messy jobs - cat vomit, for instance - and for cleaning up kitchen spills. Never for wiping my hands after I’ve washed them. (I’ve yet to break friends of this habit, despite the ever-present hanging towels and reminders.) I intend to buy a few packs of cloth napkins to cut down on paper towel usage there, too, but I’m afraid I’d need quite a few of them.

I’ve been slowly transferring my cleaning to natural products. I like (and use) Method’s products, which are nice, but expensive, and available only at ONE store, in a city I rarely get to… so I do plenty of cleaning with baking soda and vinegar - this, by the way, makes a nice, nontoxic toilet cleaner, but does use QUITE a lot of vinegar.

I’d like to do a bit more of that this year. I’d love to start a compost pile - especially with the chickens - but I don’t have the resources right now, and more, I may be moving into an apartment in late August (in a city, heh) and may not have any good use for compost anyway. Hmm. With any luck, I’ll find a way to get a house, rather than an apartment, though!

And moving, you ask? Why yes. This year, with my credit card debt 100% eliminated, and my car very nearly paid off, I’m headed back to school. And that’s another thing the city has that this beautiful little rural, close-to-nature town just doesn’t: opportunity.

How in the world did I manage to spot this series countless times on the bookstores’ shelves, pick it up with interest, then set it back down without purchasing it? How?!?! I finally got around, well over two months ago, to checking out The Golden Compass, the first book in the trilogy, and then promptly read the first paragraph and carried around uselessly for a while, then looked at it with vague interest as it sat quietly on my dining table, and never freaking read anything more until tonight.

It’s 7:30 a.m., and I’ve read it start to finish, and am cursing myself for not having read it sooner. Like… years sooner. Anxiously, I checked my library’s website, and they seem to have the full compendium, His Dark Materials, checked in at the moment. That’s a relief, because two months ago, they didn’t have anything but the first book period. Maybe the newly released movie had something to do with getting the full thing? (Or maybe their website just sucks and it’s awful hard to find anything…)

Anyway, I anxiously await Monday. It can’t possibly come soon enough. Here’s hoping the library opens for business on the 24th. If not… doom, I tell you.

Doom.

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder Treason and Plot
I see no reason that Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

It’s November again, and the 5th, no less. A toast to Guy Fawkes today, please. I see no reason for the spirit he showed to be forgotten either. We live in a mad world these days, and sometimes, I think a plot to blow up parliament (or congress, as it may be here in the states) is a marvelous idea.

But I’m a bit radically leftist, I suppose. Or would that be rightist? Or perhaps I’m just a bit of an all around anarchist at heart.

Speaking of rebellion and the like, I rebelled against my own promise not to buy yarn until the socks and the shawl were both done, and in fact, I failed to complete either before I broke down and went insane enrolled myself in Sundara’s Season’s Yarn Club, which is way too friggin expensive for my budget, and way too pretty and mysterious and lovely to pass up. I chose winter for my season, and every month for the next six months, I’ll be getting gorgeous hand dyed yarn from Sundara herself in a wintery theme. This includes 3 skeins of sock yarn, one skein of silk lace (*droooooool*) and a couple other yarns, too. So yay. Yay for the yarn stash, anyway. Big fat nay for the wallet, which is curled up sobbing in the corner of my purse right now.

I may or may not have mentioned before that I have no money. Now I have even less. Congratulations, Katia, welcome to welfare!

Moving on, moving on…. You want to know about the socks. Right? Well, here they are.

Lovely, ne? I agree. I liked them so much that I broke my promise a second time in the same freaking week and bought this:

Yes, oh yes, that is more sock yarn. Where did I buy this? Pam’s Knit and Stitch, in Great Falls, where I shopped myself down to the pennies a couple days ago with Mom, who was also inspired to take up cross-stitching again while we were there. (This shop, fyi, has the most awesome ever cross stitch patterns and kits.) So, I had Mom pick out some sock yarn (the dark Regia Galaxy yarn there - surprise! I never would’ve picked that out for her in a billion years!) and I picked out some for myself (The Tofutsies, which is gorgeous and soft - SOFT, I tell you) and picked up the Interweave Crochet Summer 2006 issue, which has that Babette blanket in it that I so badly want to learn to crochet in it. Grand total? Too. Much. Money.

But that’s life as a knitter, I suppose.

The shawl is also moving along. I am midway through the 4th of 5 repeats and going strong. Good news: it will be finished before my first shipment from Sundara ever arrives, which makes me warm and fuzzy inside, like I almost-maybe-kinda didn’t break my promise after all, except for that blasted sock yarn splurge at Pam’s Knit and Stitch. Rawr. Anyway, I’d take a picture of that (the shawl) but it really doesn’t look any different than it used to, except bigger, so what’s the point? See this if you’d like a reminder shot.

Also? I’ve begun a Christmasy dishcloth for my neighbor, Barb, who deserves some knitted goodness after all the help she’s been. But gods, I hate this yarn. It’s gorgeous, but it’s got this silvery strand of something EVIL in it, and it makes my fingers raw.

I’m using the DW Dishcloth pattern, by Rhonda White, which is gorgeous, easy, and perfect for yarn like this. What yarn is it? Lily’s Sugar and Cream Christmas something or other. I don’t have the ballband anymore.

I needed something simple and easy to knit tonight. So that was it.

My list of things to finish by Christmas:

So there you are. Christmas gifts and Christmas stuff to be done. Also, need to get a gift list together and start on that - will probably do baked goods/gifts in jars for most people again. Huzzah.

Halloween came upon me too quickly this year. I vow not to let Christmas do the same!

That’s my knitted and beaded swatch for the Mystery Stole 3! Lovely ain’t she? I used two beads in this swatch - the top and bottom ‘rows’ are done in the crystal silver-lined beads, and the middle beads are done in the grey rainbow ones. They don’t stand out near as much, except in certain lighting. I mean, they’re gorgeous, but the way the sun sparkles on the silver ones… Yeah.

Slow progress on the Lacy Kerchief Scarf. I’ve bee feeling more like reading than knitting. Because yeah, I got some books to read, and so… fft. There you go. Right now, I’m delving into Wicked, which is fun and fascinating, even though I hated Wizard of Oz as a child (it scard me… don’t /ask/… I don’t know…), and I’m totally having to force myself to put it aside just to knit, which doesn’t make the knitting much fun, and thus, it’s going slow. I should just finish the damned book and then knit. But oh well.

I drug A out of bed this morning to hill potatoes. That was torture. Not really. Evidently, my morning chores, little as I thought they’ve been, have indeed given me a bit more stamina. I really wish I was one of those people who /liked/ physical work, but I’m really not. I swear I was some highbrow noblewoman in another life or something. Or maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I was a peasant taking care of pigs or cows or something, and now I’m rebelling. I have no idea.

A thirteen year old boy died on Friday night about 50 miles south of town here. He’d stolen a car, and some gas, and shot at the police offers who tried to stop him. One of my officers was in the midst of it, but he missed the shooting by a few minutes. And they didn’t know the kid was only 13 at the time - in the dark, in all the chaos, and even after, they still believed he was in his 20s.

Not that that would make it better. Death is death, and this one was completely unnecessary. But somehow, that he was only 13, makes it worse.

Been thinking a lot about violence lately - the VT shootings, this… We live in a frightening world. A world full of angry and depressed and desperate people, and a world where the media makes stars out of those who commit heinous crimes. A lot of people blame guns. I blame society in general.

What’s wrong with us, that our children are so desperate and angry that they want to kill people - or themselves? What’s wrong with us, that we sensationalize crime and gore, that there’s never any good news on the front page of the morning paper? What’s wrong with us that we try to pass laws to ‘fix’ things, instead of getting to the root of the problem?

I don’t know. I don’t see us changing anytime soon. I don’t see it getting better anytime soon. I hope the families of this boy and the officers involved, and of course, the families of every victim of violence, find some peace and hope. I hope that boy has finally found some peace for whatever war must’ve been going on in his head and heart.

I hope we all do.