Antidote

This Holiday season has really taken the snot out of me. I’ve been trying not to complain, since I think personal whining on a blog is annoying and unflattering unless done really, really well….but dudes, it’s been surreal. First Ali’s sister died, then I took a really terrible fall down the basement stairs (I am still spectacularly bruised) then, when Joe and I were moving a piece of furniture I managed to get my head caught between the stair rail and the furniture (don’t ask. It was as humiliating as it was painful.) and all of that while I was busting on a writing deadline that alone would be enough to make me a twitchy mess, and dumped on top of it was trying to get a Christmas together for three teenagers with their own agendas….which I can only tell you is about as easy as trying to sculpt tomato aspic into the leaning tower of Pisa or train a cat to get you your mail.

Still, I was holding up. I was crying in public a little, but I think during that time of year lots of people are strung sort of tight, and I can’t be the only one who feels distraught within 25 metres of a mall that time of year. I kept taking deep breaths and going to whatever the next event was and turning out all of my work and presents and Christmas cookies and I even wrapped things with really beautiful ribbon this year. It was all working out and it was crazy bad hard, but every time I started thinking that this Christmas was kicking my arse something fun or beautiful or good happened and I would forget and just keep going. Then I got the flu….or the plague or whatever the hell the monstrosity that felled me on the 26th was.

I kept calling it a “cold” because I didn’t want it to have power over me, but the truth was that the thing was a virus of absolutely foul proportion. By the morning of the 27th I was so sick that…and I can’t stress this enough…

I did not knit.

Not a single stitch, not for a whole day. I’d get up and write the blog or go to the loo or make a cup of tea and that would exhaust me so much that I’d go back to sleep again for hours. The 28th was only marginally better, and the 29th I went to my mum’s Christmas party like I always do only I don’t think I remember it right because I took those Benylin-all-in-one capsules and I was so high that I… You know what? Never mind. Let’s just leave it at me being sort of “absent” at my Mum’s party even though I was there. The next day I was so tired I just couldn’t move, and that feeling has persisted.

I keep getting up the energy to do one small thing and that empties me so completely that I’m a mess again. This morning I tried to get through a yoga class and between the bruises from the accidents and the exhaustion from the flu and the fact that I fell on the ice last night and gave myself another good whacking (which didn’t hurt last night at all because I had been outside for a while and it was -25 or something ridiculous and when it’s that cold you can’t really feel your body)….. I couldn’t really do it. Everything hurt. No matter what pose I tried to get into I was on a bruise or a sore spot and in that moment… I had the most perfect thought I’ve had in a while.

I quit.

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Screw. It. What sort of a moron has this sort of a couple of weeks and then just keeps getting back up like the energizer bunny? I’m a twit. I’ve been overworked, I’ve hurt myself, I’ve had the flu…. I have no idea why I kept trying to work or catch up or clean up or do stuff. The way I keep falling asleep at my desk (and the stove and on the bus and at the store) is a sign. I’m taking this beautiful knitting I’m showing you to the chesterfield, I’m getting a blankie and a cup of tea and I’m giving up.

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It’s the perfect thing to be doing, and if this yarn can’t restore a soul battered by a bad couple of weeks, then nothing can. This yarn is the most beautiful yarn in the world, and I don’t say that lightly.

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It is That Laurie’s hand dyed, handspun, one of a kind you-can’t-buy-it sock yarn (three plies of perfection) and it is one of the most fantastical knitting experiences of my life. (Other times I have had some of her handspun have been close, but this time she’s outdone herself.) It isn’t just that the colours are so beautiful (but they are) and it isn’t just that she spins like a dream (but she does) or that she started with some of the nicest fleece ever (which she did.)

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It’s that the whole time I’m knitting it I’m aware that this is a gift of hours and hours and hours of her life….

and it’s just the perfect antidote to the crappy shortage of time over the last few weeks. I can’t put it down.

I just love Laurie (Yeah. That Laurie.)