Rabbitch

Seemingly I have become a food-hoarding loon.

Now, my being a hoarder will not be news to most of you (although when it comes to yarn I prefer to think of myself as a collector rather than a hoarder. It's perfectly normal. Shut up.) however at some point in the last few years I seem to have been unable to remember how much of anything I have in my pantry.

I don't shop like most North American folks that I know do. I don't do one big shopping trip and fill up the freezer once every month or two and then thaw stuff and cook it. I shop almost every day. I don't ever freeze meat; I buy what we're going to use that day and then use it and then the next day buy what we need. I'll buy enough lunch meat for my husband to take to work for two or three days. I seldom freeze bread unless we get a deal on a huge bag of buns or something; I buy what we need for a couple of days and then we use it and then I buy fresh again. Same with fruit and vegetables; the only frozen veg. I will buy is peas. Because despite my commitment to fresh food, I love frozen peas. (Cooked, of course. I'm not that mental. Yet.)

A couple of years back, I ran out of Bisto gravy powder. I don't think you can get it in the US, or if you can it's not as common as it is here. It's just basically powder that you use to add to stock to make gravy. My daughter loves gravy on mashed potatoes (and who wouldn't be? Ermagherd, you'd be a fool not to) and so I always keep some on hand.

Always. Except for That One Day. So I had to run out at something stupid like 11pm to get some so that my kid could have mashed potatoes and gravy in the middle of the night. Don't all families eat that in the middle of the night? Don't all mothers do that for their kids? If not, then they should. It's the Right Thing To Do.

Apparently it scarred me and I got it in my head that we had NO BISTO IN THE HOUSE and I bought some every time I went grocery shopping. Twice a week. For a couple of months. It wasn't quite that bad but I ended up with something like eight or ten boxes of it before I realized I'd gone overboard.

So then I stopped. Well, actually I only stopped when Mr. Assmuppet went shopping with me one night and I went to put a box of Bisto in my basket and he said "Um, honey? Don't we have quite a lot of that? Put it back. BACK AWAY FROM THE BISTO!" or something of the sort and I realized that I might have gone a little overboard.

Yeah. It costs about $6 a box and we were completely broke and I was trying to figure out how to feed us for the week ... with $60 worth of gravy powder in the pantry. Go, me.

And then a few weeks later I realized we were out of butter one day and well ... yeah. We ended up with six pounds of it in the fridge. Or maybe eight.

And then there was the terrifying potato debacle. I think we managed to eat them all before they sprouted. We are very fond of those little tiny white-skinned nugget potatoes. For a few weeks we were very, very fond of them. VERY.

And now, this month my problem is carrots. I realized when I got home after work last night that we have six bags of carrots in the fridge. Two bags of field carrots, two bags of organic baby carrots and two bags of regular baby carrots.

There are also about five bags of coffee beans in the fridge and in the freezer.

I may be a lunatic, but if anyone shows up and wants potatoes and gravy (yes, I've sort of stocked up on both again) and a cup of coffee and a bowl of carrots in the middle of the night; I'm set.

And there's enough yarn for everyone. C'mon over.

I Like It On The Back Of The Couch.

I'm Going to Las Vegas For Eight Months.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and there have been a ton of memes on Facebook in the last couple of weeks. All I have to say in response is: No, you're not. No, you don't. And no, you aren't.

I understand that these are all done in the spirit of goodwill, and there is no harm intended, but I wish people would just stop it right the fuck now.

It's not cute. It's not funny. We are all aware of breast cancer and some of these are actually hurtful. I've had breast cancer twice (if you want the details, search my archives for "breast badger") and I'm one of the lucky ones who got away with nothing more than a mangled boob.

The one that is the most hurtful is the one that I used as the title of this post. Many of my sisters have not been as lucky as I was, and have had to go through chemo. Chemo usually robs you of your fertility.

So yeah. Not very supportive. Stop it, now.

Please.

Please.

Oh bless you. The ten of you who are still reading. You've been reading and hoping, just waiting for this post, haven't you?

And it's not going to be nearly as titillating as you'd like.

I guess about five years ago -- whenever the first Sock Summit was -- I decided that I'd be all brave and do the cross-border vending thingie. Being a vendor in general is hard. Doing shows, standing on concrete and dealing with people for ten hours in a row? It's utter hell. But I love it, even if I have to take ibuprofen and ice my bad knee for hours afterwards.

My friend Barb Brown from Wild Geese Fibres and I decided to do this together. My car was dead at the time, so my father picked me up and drove me out to Abbotsford at half-past-sparrowfart where I met up with Barb. We loaded my crap into her car and drove and drove and drove for fucking ever and finally got to Portland. We booked into a pretty nice place, I think it was called La Quinta or something. Anyhow, we settled in and then the next day we did setup which in itself is hellish.

The next day we vended like hell all day. It was my first time out in public after having had my major crash and burn and I had cut off all of my hair, was skinnier than hell and was seriously shaky about being out but I just did it. It was horrifying being out in public. I was so glad I did it, though. I'm known for being a bit of a pottymouth, and there was this older lady who came up to my booth. She was using a walker and was in a nice pink suit. She told me that she was a widow, and she read my blog all the time and she'd come to the show specifically hoping to meet me. I apologized for being a pottymouth and she said no, that's why she liked reading my blog; because I just sang out whatever I needed to say. It made my day. It truly made my life. I needed to hear that sort of thing, so hard.

By the end of the day we were both completely punchy. Most vendors, unless they are sane, work their booths alone and are lucky if they get time for a bathroom break. We don't usually eat much. We need keepers. Alas, keepers cost money and these things don't usually make us enough money to hire a keeper, so unless we remember to bring a granola bar or two, we end the day in total exhaustion. We went back to the hotel room and I said ok, I'm in Portland and my favourite brewery in the world is here. I adore Widmer's and I refuse to leave Portland without getting some Hefewiezen. So we linked arms and marched down the street singing. Yes, singing. I was singing "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK, I drink all night and I knit all day. I put on ladies clothing, suspenders and a bra, and then put on mittens, made out of alpaCAH!"

It was sort of mad. People gave us a wide berth.

We finally got back to the hotel, with the beer, and we realized that we had to eat or die, so we went to Denny's. We were reading the menu, which isn't like the Denny's here. Everything had the option to have grits on the side. Being Canadian, we had never had grits. We asked the server what grits were like and how one ate them, and the server said "I will bring you a sample". So we got a bowl of grits. We tried it with salt and it was DISGUSTING. And then we tried it with pepper and it was DISGUSTING. And then we tried it with butter. Still DISGUSTING. Then I think we tried it with cheese and likely with honey and jam and ketchup and who knows what the hell. It was all disgusting. But before we knew it we'd eaten the entire thing. We likely would have eaten the tablecloth at that point, had there been one. Fortunately our food that we had ordered showed up at about that point.

Barb said "what a nice young man." I said "what young man?" She said "our waiter, he's lovely, he looks a lot like my nephew." I said "Um. Our waiter has breasts and he is named Beth, according to his name tag." She was sort of gobsmacked.

And then there was much hilarity and eating of food.

When we went back to our hotel we went out to have a smoke and the nice young couple from Ontario who had come all that way with their yarn (and I wish I could remember the name of their company because their stuff is good and I'd like to link them but I'll do it later) were sitting by the pool. I announced to them that I had just lost my grits virginity. The husband of that duo said "but there are so many to lose, there will be more" and I said that no. That was my one last one to lose, and I had been saving it for a special occasion. I was just sorry it had been so awful, and that it had been at Denny's.

There. And now you know.

I used to have cats. I love cats. They are mysterious, affectionate, impenetrable, indispensable.

But of late, I have been reading on Facebook about all of these things that people's cats have been doing to them and they're trying to figure out why. I am now here to assist you.

It is because your cat is an asshole.

You're welcome.

I have had many cats in my life and all of them were assholes. It is the nature of the beast. Not that I object to assholes; I have been married to one for many many years (a person, not a cat) but there comes a time when one must call a spade a spade and not just another pretty shovel.

I wrote a long rant about why and how your cat is an asshole and I may well expand on this tomorrow, however I have been up dyeing stuff and I'm tired and must go to bed.

But, as I go to bed, if a person treated you like your cat does ... if a person peed in your shoes, sicked up on your carpet, shredded your toilet paper and gave birth in your closet ... what would you call them?

Exactly. I rest my case.

(This is all meant in jest. If you feel the need to rip me a new one in the comments please do.)

Yeah, me and the Dixie Chicks.

We've both been a long time gone, but I suspect that more people have been awaiting their return than the number who have been awaiting mine.

But I'm back.

I haven't blogged for about a year. I've been lying low and making all sorts of excuses for everything for far longer than that. The fact that I was ill doesn't negate the fact that I've done wrong by a bunch of people, but I'm back again and trying to make things right.

So ... here's the deal. I owe either money or yarn or roving to at least half a dozen people; maybe more. And now that I'm sane again I'm going to do everything I can to do to fix it. It won't be all fixed this week but I'll get 'er done.

If you're mad at me and would like to take a swipe at me in public, please feel free to post a comment. My comments are moderated but I'll take it on the chin and publish them all. I moderate the comments merely to avoid spam. If you'd like to settle the issue in private then my email is teh.bunnei@gmail.com. The deal I'm offering is, if I owe you some product then you have a choice. I will either a) give you your money back, or b) give you the yarn you ordered AND give you your money back or c) send you what you ordered and then give you another skein for free. Lemme know what you want. I'm sane again and want to make this right for all of us.

Yeah, it's sort of painful to admit in public that I've fucked up. But I did. I have lost most of the emails from when I was selling yarn long ago. My husband has them on hard drives from old computers upstairs but I'm going to get that data back just about the time he actually cleans the bathroom. Which is never. So I'm doing the best that I can here.

Public flagellation time is over. I just thought this would be the best way to get this out there.

And now I'm going to sleep. I'll actually blog about something other than how awful I am tomorrow, once I wake up.

Stay tuned. We may discuss why "traffic calming" leads to rage, at least when most of the drivers are geriatric.

I've been struggling with a lot of things of late. Well, let's be honest; for years.

And tonight someone said something about how I "should" do something with regard to knitting and it just set me off. It was said with no malice aforethought and with the kindest of intentions, but I went off in my head, and rather than trash someone I like, I thought I'd do a little out-loud therapy, which is what I started this blog for in the first place. I'm so very glad that I still have readers -- all three of you -- however I started this blog because I needed to speak.

I need to speak; I don't need to be heard. If nobody at all was reading this, I would still speak. And if something I say resonates with someone else, then that's all for the good.

But tonight, I need to speak. This is for me.

There are two words that are very triggering for me. Those words are "should" and "better".

I grew up knowing that I was good, sometimes even fantastic; but not good enough. Everything I did, it was good, but even if what I did made me happy, there was a "better" way to do it. I was never good enough. It was never right, or sufficient.

Or I was good, but not good enough to make a living at it, so I should learn to type and work in an office, even though the thought made me vomit.

And so I bowed, I folded. I gave up my dreams. I learned to type (90wpm with a 1% error rate, thank you very much) and I was a secretary, an "assistant" an "Office Administrator" and all of that crap for 26 years or more.

And then I sort of said "fuck it all" and cashed in a bunch of retirement funds and tried to do the yarn thing full time. Unfortunately that happened right about the time menopause hit me.

Nobody ever tells you how totally FUCKED IN THE HEAD you get during menopause. I wish women would talk about this more. I wish doctors would tell you. I wish mothers would tell their daughters. For the couple of years when you're perimenopausal you are MENTAL. Half the time you're horny as hell and the rest of the time you want to kill anyone who looks at you sideways.

I always knew when I ovulated. Some women don't feel it, but I could always feel my ovary pop and I knew that I had three days within which to get pregnant. But during perimenopause you are MENTAL. I would feel the "pop" and so I'd be getting on the bus and my body would scream "OMG, you have almost no time left, this might be the LAST VIABLE EGG, you must jump the bus driver now!!" and then the other part of my brain that was even MORE mental would yell "BUT HE IS A BASTARD AND THE CAUSE OF ALL OF YOUR DESPAIR, KILL HIM NOW!"

I think it's understandable that I wasn't functioning well at the time. I'm just glad I never jumped nor killed the bus driver.

And I'm rambling, but this is my blog and therefore I can do so.

Anyhow, back to the original topic ... should and must are terribly triggering words for me. And I had someone say to me that I "should" do something.

And I thought about it for a bit. And the thing that I should do is something that would make me unhappy.

So I ain't gonna.

This is a long rambling post written while in a state of drunkenness, and I'll likely edit it or delete it or something later. But I think the point is ... should? Why SHOULD I do something to change what I love, just because someone thinks it's BETTER? I've been told I'm not quite good enough all of my life and I have had so many things that I love taken away from me or polluted by the will of others.

My knitting, my art, is mine, and I shall do it my way.

I'm good. I'm just fine. The way I knit is perfect for me. If you like knitting socks on circs, then go, you bad thing. I knit them on DPNs because it brings me joy. I won't change how I do things because someone else wants me to come to Jesus and realize that circs are the ONLY way to knit socks. I knit with cotton, with acrylic and with cashmere. I use what I feel is the right yarn for the project. Imma keep using what I want to keep myself happy. You? Go do the same, but pleas stop trying to get all up in my grill and change how I make myself happy.

So there.

I was reading a book tonight, and one of the characters said "this is a play that would be best presented in the dark. And in pantomime."

This reminded me of one of my favourite reviews, which started with something like "Leaving an impression as lasting as that of Whistler's Father ..."

This makes me snort every time I think of it. I may be a bitch. I should also never be allowed to review anything.

The first paragraph of this post was referring to a community production of The Sound of Music, which is a movie I hate with every fibre of my soul, having been forced to watch it about 40 times as a child. I always want to yell to the Nazis that the family is hiding behind the cart ... but if they were even slightly competent, they would have found them anyhow. I mean, there were what, seven people standing behind some sort of cart and nobody looked? As if.

Yes, this makes me hideous and mean-spirited, but whatever. If I can live with it, you can too.

But it made me think about how artists are so concerned about public opinion. And me ... I guess I'm not. When I make something, when I dye something, it takes effort and it takes emotional connection. However when it's done, for me, that's it. If someone buys the things I dye and wants to knit washcloths, willie warmers or just landfill it, it makes absolutely no difference to me. The joy is in the making.

Once I've done it and you've bought it, I never think of it again.

I've had my yarn reviewed a few places. I have never read the reviews. I've never asked anyone to send me pictures of completed items. I guess I'm cold as ice or something.

But you see, for me, the reward is the making of the yarnz. Once it leaves here and belongs to someone else, I really couldn't care less if someone lets their chihuahua eat it (don't let your chihuahua eat it, it will tangle up inside them and they will die -- it's not a good idea).

I was happy to hear once that a friend was knitting in public with my yarn and she was asked what colourway of Wollmeise she was knitting, and she said "no, it's not Wollmeise, it's Rabbitworks" but really, that's about as far as my ego extends.

I'm really happy that the things I dye, that make me happy while dyeing them, make other people happy to own them, but once it leaves my house, it no longer belongs to me. And so it's yours, and you may do with it as you wish.

Am I alone amongst artists that I feel no connection to the things that I create once they leave my hands? I don't think so.

But maybe it's just me.

And to those of you who have bought my yarnz or my fibre; I'm delighted that you love them. I won't be able to dye much of anything for the next year or so, as we are moving to a smaller place and it likely won't have a space for me to work. I'll start up again next summer when we buy a house (at LAST ... I can't take this moving all the time shit; I need a nest). In the meantime ... the stuff I've made; it's yours, not mine. Just don't feed it to your chihuahua.