Into the abyss

So... I've been sick. Remember a couple weeks ago when I said I was sort of sick? Yeah, well, it got worse.

I ended up in the doctor's office and she gave me some antibiotics for a sinus infection and bronchitis and some antiviral cream for an ugly sore on my nose.

(Lately the skin on my nose gets very upset when I have to blow more than a couple of times. It responds to lots of blowing by getting all oozy and hurty and infected. I need to find a better way to deal with nose-blowing.)

So I have spent a lot of time at home alone in the last couple of weeks. I have been:

• Taking naps. 
• Washing my hands.
• Disinfecting things.
• Contemplating the universe.
• Perusing facebook.
• Wishing that I got beautiful and tragic when I get sick instead of drippy and crusty and ugly.
• Thinking about my wish to do a "no-spend" month and deciding that it best wait until after Christmas.
• Looking around at all the things I have to work on and do and create already in my possession.
• Sorting through some of my craft supplies.
• Deciding that I don't have to wait for an official no-spend month to stop spending on craft/project materials.
• Getting busy on finishing up some unfinished projects.

I started the project which you get a glimpse of in the photo a few years ago. Bernat (the yarn company) had a "crochet along" project on their blog wherein you (or I, actually) and anyone else who wanted to join in online would check in every week for a clue (the pattern) for that week and make it. The end result would be an afghan but you wouldn't know what it looked like until you had created all the squares and saw the last clue which was going to be the directions on how to put it all together. I dutifully made all the squares each week, learning how to do new crochet stitches and how to block crocheted items, but still growing more and more worried that I wouldn't like my end result, and sure enough - when I saw the final week's instructions and how the finished project was supposed to look I was sad and unhappy and not impressed at all. So I put the whole thing  away and felt bad and guilty for wasting money on the yarn, and disappointed about all the time and anticipation and hope and dreams for a project I would never love. And I never finished it.

I got it all out and looked at it again while I was sick. I put aside my least favorite squares. I took the squares that I like and lined them up into an afghan configuration. I left it there on the floor for a while while I went to do something else and then came back to get my "first impression". I did this a few times before I came up with something I truly liked. It turned out that to get an afghan that was a good size I needed to crochet a few more squares of the patterns that I liked the most so I did that. And now I am connecting them all together to create an afghan that I will be satisfied with. I found an awesome way to do that that is less time consuming and more attractive (to me, at least) here, since sewing it together (for any knitted or crocheted project) is my least favorite part of yarn projects.

I think it will be pretty. I think it will be a gift. I'm not sure who will get it. I get a lot of gift-giving anxiety when I give something handmade because not everyone likes stuff like that and I don't want other people to have to watch their own homes become cluttered up with crap I made because they can't get rid of it because I made it. At the same time, my own house is already filled up with crap I made so it has to go somewhere. I have considered that I could stop making the crap, but I do enjoy doing crafts and it fills my time. It keeps me both off the streets and away from the slothfulness and consumerism generated by daytime TV, you know?

Speaking of filling my time, I did a real job this week. Where I got dressed up in a skirt and some real shoes which were not flip flops and went and talked to complete strangers for hours and hours, and will be paid by a real company for doing this. I was filling in for a friend of mine whose job this is while she was on vacation, and may never have or take the opportunity to do it again. But it was interesting and boring at the same time, just like a lot of my own "work", and I learned that while I don't totally suck at it I don't really want to do it all the time either. I am infinitely grateful that I don't have to, and also grateful that I know I can do it if I need to.