Nothing gold can stay.

So I've been away for a while. I cannot think of a way to sum up everything that has happened, nor can I come up with an entirely valid excuse as to why I've been away so long. All I can do to explain my absence is tell you that life seldom works out like you've planned it. One day you're traveling the world and experiencing a thrilling life, and then next day you come home to find that things aren't quite how you left them. It's no one's fault that things are different, it's the nature of the world for things to change, but in order for life to continue moving in a fluid way, you have to be willing to change too. I hate to say it my lovelies, but I am sometimes not so good at change.

So when I got back from abroad and the world was different from what I remembered, I did not handle it well. I am ashamed to admit that I ran away and hid. I isolated myself from the people I love, I didn't communicate my fear or pain, and worst of all, I let my inspiration and passion wilt. There was a time that I didn't knit anything for about six months. That may sound trivial and unimportant but knitting is something that I love dearly and to walk away from it was heartbreaking for me. To stare at a basket of yarn and not get a single idea, to pick up my needles and have them feel wrong in my hands, to drive by a yarn store and not even have the slightest interest in stopping by. It's like a part of me was broken, it's like I knew that knitting made me happy and I felt like I didn't deserve to be happy anymore.

Over the last handful of months I've been trying to get better. I've been trying to communicate more and I've been trying to be okay with being happy again. I started knitting again and at first it was just a few rows here and there but last week I finished a pair of socks.

    
It's nothing fancy but the point is that I started and finished. It felt really good to finish something that I had set out to do. It made me proud of myself and that's something I don't feel very often. It's not that I don't have reasons to be proud of my life, I'm just not a prideful person so when I feel that emotion it's a rarity.

So I'm starting to get better and little by little I'm finding myself again. I can't promise you that I'm going to be the perfect blogger, and I can't promise you that I'm going to be back for good, but I can promise you that I will keep trying.

Thank you to everyone who has been supportive and patient with me in this difficult time, it's more love and dedication than I ever expected and I feel truly honored to have so many wonderful people in my life.

Standby for more blog posts, hopefully the ones in the future will be a little more funny and a little less depressing.

-Alexis

Making amends and catching up.

Well blog, it has been quite a while. I mostly got caught up in the frenzy of moving home again and celebrating my 21st birthday, and then Christmas with my family, but it's no excuse and I apologize for my lack of blogging. Lack of blogging, however, does not mean that there has been a lack of knitting. Since there would be too much to shove into one blog post, I'll just give you the cliff notes version.

Since you last heard from me:

We left Timor. Said goodbye to Angela, our wonderful mana/housekeeper/fixer of broken things and then jumped on a plane to Bali. I'd post pictures of that, but I didn't take any.

From there we jumped to Singapore. Now that I have pictures of.

On our first day there we rode the Singapore Flyer; the world's largest Ferris Wheel.

 I knit while admiring the view, and Carrick ventured bravely forward, even though he wasn't thrilled by the prospect of being so high off the ground.

Later we went to the Singapore Zoo and saw phenomenal things.

It started raining (and by that I mean dumping all the water in the atmosphere onto our heads), but we got ponchos and stuck it out.

After that we rode a train 9 hours to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We saw the sights and made a Canadian friend called Tom (he's the blonde one)!

We didn't stay in Malaysia long though, because the next stop on our trip had all of us excited (even Tom, he came along with us!) Bangkok, Thailand!

We went to the Great King's palace and got caught in another storm (no ponchos this time).

We watched the River Goddess festival from a bridge.

We saw some beautiful things in Bangkok. And then the boys had to be boys by eating scorpions.

Then we ended the trip abroad with a 15 hour (yes, fifteen hour) train ride North West to Chiang Mai, Thailand where we:

Rode in rickshaws,

posed like supermodels with out comically tiny coffee,

and all the other low-key, touristy things.

And after our adventure was over, we came home to celebrate birthdays and Christmas with our loved ones. I'd get into all the knitting I did while I was away and for Christmas 2012, but that would make this less of a post and more of a novel. I'll catch you up soon, I promise.

Alexis for the win!

So a few weeks ago the package from home with all of my yarn in it finally made its way to Timor. Since then I have been a knitting fiend. In about a week and a half I knit a sweater. A cute little spring cardi with three-quarter length sleeves. Now I'm starting on the next one and have almost finished the back panel. I'm not going to tell you what the latter one is, just in case I don't finish it and then I'll forever be hounded with questions like: "What about that one sweater you said you were knitting that one time?" So instead it will be a surprise. As for the one that I already made? Well here you go.

This is Miette.

 I used Kashmira Sensations 100% Wool in Color #57. Not the best name for a color, I admit, but the yarn worked up nicely. The only little thing was that I had to be careful while blocking not to agitate it too much because this stuff is super felt-able. That's something I'll have to keep an eye on whenever I'm washing this sucker.

Please ignore the messy ponytail and the bare feet. I woke up about five minutes before these were taken and I was running late for a Skype chat with my mom. Pay attention only to the sweater.

This was an attempt to capture the eyelet pattern that highlights the neck, sleeves, and bottom edging.

Connor told me to "do the model hip-sticky-outie thingy" and I did my best to comply without laughing in his face.

So that's my latest conquest. Stay tuned for the next installment of "Neat crap Alexis has knitted with limited resources".

P.S. Many thanks to Connor for sucking it up when I threw the camera at him this morning and said: "I've got three minutes before my Skype date, take pictures of me in the sweater, hurry, hurry! The lighting is best in the hallway, come on, hurry up. No, no, not yet, I have to button it!" You are the best my love. Thank you for putting up with me and helping spread my crazy to others.

 

Not feeling very wordy today.

So I'm just going to show you some pictures.

I've been busy. And yes, that was a Hufflepuff sock.

Tragedy

Sometimes things happen that you just can’t control. It’s no one’s fault, there is no one to blame, and there is no place to justifiably direct your rage. It’s just life, and bad things can happen to the best of people. Anyone who has lived more than a handful of years on this planet and isn’t totally self absorbed knows this. But how do you deal with it? How do you handle the tragedy? How can you move past it and grieve when there is no one to blame?

Some people blame anyone they can. They get angry and try to tear down the world for not being angry with them. Some people curl up and cry until everything is out and then there’s no hurt left. Some people have a drink, have a smoke, pop a pill until they’re numb enough not to care.

Do you know what I do? I knit. When the world is deconstructing itself around me, I construct an object of love. Because that’s what knitting is, love. It must be if you can spend sixteen hours winding string around sticks until you have socks. When I’m so upset that my hands are shaking, and I feel like I want to scream at the sky until it falls down on me, I pick up my needles and I make something beautiful. Even when all I want to do is lie on the couch and watch as the moving sun changes the shadows around me. I do it because knitting makes my grief more manageable.

I’ve done it ever since I started knitting. When my high school boyfriend cheated on me, I made a scarf. When I didn’t get accepted to a four-year University straight out of high school, I made a pair of socks. When all but three of my friends forgot my 20^th birthday, I made a kick-ass winter hat with ear flaps.

And now tragedy is rearing its ugly head again. The beast hasn’t bitten yet, but it’s in the process of deciding if it’s going to. I find that the threat of loss is almost as bad as loss itself. You know that something really bad could happen, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. It’s like I’m sitting on a hillside, watching as a wildfire creeps from the forest, closer and closer to the city. I know that I can only watch in horror and pray that it’s either put out, or that everyone makes it out alive.

So while I’m waiting on the outcome, I knit a scarf for someone I love. It’s almost winter back in Oregon, and I intend to be home by Christmas. With every stitch, every row, I am one step closer to sanity, one step closer to getting my emotions reeled back in. It won’t help me to be sad now, I can only be positive and wait for the beast to either bite or go back to sleep.

My grief is productive. My grief becomes love. That’s about as good as I could hope for. 

Remember the good ol' days?

I was puttering around the house today feeling kind of blue, missing my family, when I perked myself up with the thought of: "Well don't worry, you'll be home in time for Christmas!" which got me all happy for the next thirty seconds until my brain caught up and I went: "Oh no. Christmas. Oh crap, I haven't knit anything for Christmas!" Remember that whole Christmas 2012 thing? Well I sure didn't. I haven't made one gorram thing for my fantastic list of Christmas buddies, and that is a bad, bad thing.
For those of you who don't know, Knitters are notoriously terrible planners. If you read this blog then you'll know that I've been thinking about this years Christmas since January. Now it's September and I haven't gotten one single thing done. Normally that wouldn't be too much of a problem, I would just swing by my LYS (Local Yarn Store for those not in the know) and pick up some fun yarn. But I can't do that. Know why? Because the nearest yarn store is over 600 miles away. Yeah, I googled it.
My mom did send me a care package a few months ago (it only arrived last week) and it had some tasty bits of yarn in it, but I need a lot more. She sent another one that hasn't quite made its way here yet, and that one is supposed to be mostly yarn. I might still be able to Jerry-rig some semblance of a knitting Christmas together. Wish me luck lovelies.

P.S. Another shining example of how bad I am at remembering stuff? September 5th was me and Connor's two year anniversary. Guess who forgot? Well... We both did actually. Good thing neither one of us assigns any ridiculous importance to anniversaries. It's cool, it's a good mile-marker, we still adore each other, but if one of us forgets, that's okay too. We're going on a date to celebrate this Sunday. I wonder if he'll let me bring my Christmas knitting?

I feel like little Miss Muppet meets Jack Sparrow.

I know I haven't done an honest to goodness knitting blog in a while, but...

I'm back in black baby.

This is my tough "back in black" face. I should probably work on it.

This right here is the Neon Ski Bonnet by Lacey Volk and it can be found here:

 http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/neon-ski-bonnet

This is the fun, funky little project I mentioned in my last blog but wanted to keep secret.

I don't ski and mine isn't neon, but it was a hoot and a half to make. You just take some fun cabling, a simple rib stitch with some twists, a giant pompom, and voila!

 The picture doesn't do it justice, there's a bunch of cabling going on around the base. I even knit this one to pattern without taking any liberties (which, if you know me and my knitting tendencies, is rare). Well, I did take one tiny liberty in that I didn't do the hat band in the round, but that's only because I didn't have enough yarn to do so. On this tiny island, where sheep don't really exist, you have to save yarn where ever you can. So instead of doing a double band, I just did a one layer thing on straight needles.

All in all, I'd say it turned out pretty well. Perfect for a crisp Fall day in Oregon. You know the only problem with that? We're not in Oregon anymore Toto. This type of adorable bonnet doesn't have a place here. A place where it's 85 degrees out and you think: "Ooh, it's getting a little chilly". A place where if the cerulean waves get more than half a metre high, then it's a "crazy storm". This place was not meant for wool bonnets. Into my suitcase it goes. Believe you me, this sucker will be out of my luggage and atop my head the second we land in Portland come November. I'm counting the days.