hate is a welcomed distraction...

(half of the photos from this post disappeared for some odd reason, so i had to re-upload them.)

it is roughly six-thirty in the morning, and i am beginning the day with the odd combination of a cup of coffee and a bowl of corn. this is the contents of a can of Green Giant Niblets, to be precise. i mention this only as this is the sole exception i make to my strict rule of only ever eating  fresh corn (i.e., before it is dried and turned into popcorn or cornmeal/flour) as Nature intended it... right off the cob, and only during the month or two when it is in peak season.

i blame the existence of this rule entirely on my mom's sister, who is fond of turning up at family gatherings with mountains of previously-frozen cobs of corn. i made the immense mistake of giving it a try once, which led to me politely passing on all such future offerings. i love my aunt, but those mushy kernels are a crime against humanity. then i discovered Niblets, so now i can satisfy my longing for corn-season by opening a can every couple-few months. no, it really does not take much to keep me satisfied.

oh, and i should add a special note regarding creamed corn. just... NO! should anyone ever offer you some of that stuff, start running like your very existence depends on it, because it just might.

it is shaping up to be a potentially sunny day here in Montreal, although that is subject to change with very little notice. we actually had snow... yes snow... one day last week, so i hesitate to get too excited as to how this day might play out. as for the day itself, i am fairly certain that it is Easter, but i really cannot be bothered to take two or three seconds to verify said fact. we are not religious, and we have no children for whom we need to maintain the facade of holiday cheer, so these days tend to be spent like all others. it is a Sunday (i think), and we are healthy and alive, which seems like more than enough to be cheerful about at this point.

i had lofty plans to spend some of this social-distancing time doing a bit of the long-overdue reorganizing we keep talking about, but that was quickly abandoned for what i like to think of as 'tag-team distraction'. basically, i start one activity, and continue with it for as long as it manages to keep my thoughts from wandering into frightening places. once a given distraction starts to fall apart, i abandon it for some other thing, then rinse-and-repeat as many times as is necessary during the course of a day.

that is where you will find me most days, in the midst of about a dozen incomplete things, while desperately seeking even-greater levels of distraction.

i took my spinning wheel down from its usual storage spot atop the chest of drawers that is referred to by members of our household—all both of us—simply as the unit. that is a story unto itself... which i will get around to telling one of these days.

this is the start of turning that charcoal-grey merino wool from last year's Twist Fibre Festival into yarn that will (hopefully) be soft enough to be worn by an allergic-to-all-the-things snowflake like me.

and i am housing the waiting-to-be-spun bundles of wool in the lovely bag i also purchased at said festival. however, i have to keep the bag stashed atop my crafting bookcase when not in use, as my littlest kitty is far too eager to destroy the thing.

while i absolutely love my spinning wheel and all the distraction it has afforded me over the years, i have to admit that my eyes keep wandering to the Schacht Matchless. one of these days!

so i toiled away at my spinning, until that too started to wane in its ability to distract me, so i had to call in the big guns. turns out that doing something you really despise can be a highly effective way of keeping your head (and hands) occupied.

that is correct... i knit a pair of socks for a certain animator. they are seen here, draped across the storage bag that was intended to contain his new hand saw, but i have claimed said vessel for my own use. he and his saw will get over it.

my regular readers—all both of you—might recall me mentioning that making such things usually qualifies as torture in my universe. however, this seemed like a good time to try something new. spoiler alert: i still hate knitting socks, but that hate is a welcomed distraction at the moment.

these socks began life as a hundred-gram ball of self-striping yarn i purchased from the yarn store around the corner (which seems to have shut abruptly, long before the apocalypse hit). i wound it into two fifty-gram balls, then i started knitting the socks from wherever each ball was within the stripe sequence.

him: i didn't know you could do something like that. how are you going to cope with the unevenness?
me: the world is in complete chaos, so this seems like a good time to forget about OCD.

so i made (non-matching) socks...

then i grabbed some of my own precious hand-dyed yarn, and cast on for another pair. i call this colorway 'koi pond'. pretty, no?

i was afraid that the pretty cable pattern would be lost in all that color, but it seems to be working out just fine. not gonna lie... i was a little tempted at this point to add a thumb and turn them into pretty mittens for myself, but i promised him koi pond socks, so koi pond socks he will get.

him: it takes a pandemic for you to finally knit socks?
me: apparently.

then i proceeded to hurt my wrist from a combination of how tightly a loose knitter like me has to hold the needles to achieve such tiny stitches, and all the extra tension i have been experiencing of late. so i had to abandon all knitting for a while and turn my attention elsewhere in the unending search from sanity-saving distraction.

what could possibly go wrong... right?