Charlotte and Caretaking

Two things seem to have happened, two corners turned: One is that I actually started to feel the way you have to spin using a drop spindle, spun about eighteen inches of yarn, then put it away while I was ahead, figuring that a bit of practice each day will add up faster to expertise than one massive effort now and then.

This in fact was great advice given years and years ago by my first recorder teacher, the late beloved Jenny Lehmann, who said to us beginners "Play for no more than ten minutes each day, and you'll see. But don't wait till the night before class then play for two hours, it won't work!" so true.

So I'm applying this wisdom to my spinning life, and it really was nice there for a minute or two, actually not panicking over where the spindle was going or what was happening, and starting to feel the stuff in my hands with a life of its own.

The same idea, that you can do a heck of a lot in a few minutes also applies to jobs you don't like, such as organizing the medicine cabinet, or wiping the counters or other menial tasks that always seem to fall to you, sigh.

Anyway, the diagonal scarf picture, ha, gotcha, is NOT my product, at least I didn't spin it -- just my ambition! it's a scarf I made from many chunks of yarn left over from other projects, and done in very few minutes at a time. Still on hold is the lambswool yarn I harvested from thrift store sweaters, which is still waiting for its eventual destination. As I pointed out to a friend asking about this recently, I have been a bit busy for the last few months. And there's always the ambition to knit a nice little animal from my homespun, like the ones in the other picture.

Which brings me to the other corner: I finally managed to get transportation in a wheelchair van service arranged for HP so that when he eventually needs to get to a doctor's office, we can do it. Huge relief. Big piece in place. It's not urgent, but there's nothing quite so awful as knowing you simply can't do a thing to make it feel very urgent.

But that corner turned, a lot of other things are starting to feel a bit better. The workload is still huge, but I'm getting some help organized bit by bit. The agency finally managed to round up a very nice aide who came for a shift on Friday and damn nearly died of her allergies to our kitties. Nobody had mentioned them to her, evidently, though I'm always careful to make sure people who come know about them. So the agency has to go back to square one, and we loved her, too bad, but they can not rustle up another aide in time for Monday, are hoping for Tuesday....we'll see.

Just knowing that some help, though it's very expensive, is on the way, is good.

And finally cheerfulness is breaking through! not an easy life, but I've learned such a lot in the last month, not quite as frantic an amateur as I was, and we're just seeing the beginnings of how to live this way. So this is good.

One not so good thing though: please send powerful get well vibes to the friend who lent me the shore house, thereby saving my sanity a few weeks ago, and is now quite under the weather and in a specialized hospital, which we fervently hope will fix her right up and get her home quickly. What little I can do I'm doing, but anyway, vibes, please!!

Oh, the reference up there to Charlotte? Why, it's Charlotte the spider from Charlotte's Web, who, as the writer truly said was not only a good spinner, well, in fact writer, but I added in the spinning part, but also a good friend. A nice goal to aim for,I'd say!