Sure fire way to get yourself out of a funk: crochet a pair of yarn pants.
It’s the end of winter here. The irises and crocuses and cherry blossoms are just as confused as the rest of us.
So, to put all fears to rest: I am not suicidal. Not sending my personal belongings off to friends and family via UPS. Not writing my own eulogy (I do that about once a day during the non-funk times.) Not toying with methodology (I hate swallowing even a Tic-Tac accidentally, guns scare the hell out of me, and before I could actually slice my wrists, I’d pass out from the thought of the blood loss).
I was just having a little mid-January crisis. It happens. Twenty clients, two weeks vacation in Brazil when I should have been making file folders and archiving stuff, and a deadline of January 31st to get everything done was taking a toll. Spending eight hours a day serving others gives you reason to think: What am I doing this for, again? Spending TWELVE hours a day for two weeks straight serving others makes you wonder what the hell you were put on this earth to do. Spending the other 12 hours in a day fitfully dreaming of the IRS coming to haul you away... well, that’s enough to send you to the loonie bin... or else call into question your existence and then write a very dramatic blog about it. Either one, really.
So, in between filing a million and one forms with the IRS for twenty different companies, sleeping, and eating dinner standing up in front of the kitchen sink, I wiled away the hours crocheting a pair of yarn pants. The story is this: I had nine hours to kill on the plane ride to Brazil back in November. I’m compulsive about keeping my brain and hands busy, so I brought with me a pound of yellow yarn and a pattern for a baby blanket. By the time the vacation was over, our hotel room was strewn with hundreds of strands of yellow yarn.
Here’s the thing about the yarn: it used to be a wig. Last summer, a friend did this swim... swam from Canada to the US via some waterway about 2 km... and I decided that she should be welcomed ashore at the finish line by three beautiful mermaids. I was one of them. The other two other mermaids were men. Technicalities. Anywho, I crafted up for the three of us some shiny mermaid bras, some seaweed drapings, and bright yellow long wigs made out of said yarn.
After the swim, the wigs hung out in a bag with the rest of my yarn projects. Then the friend’s baby happened, and I wanted to make something for her... and I needed something to do on the plane, so I tied about 300 twenty inch long pieces together, end to end, and started on the blanket. Alright, to be fair: my best friend sat next to me on the plane and tied the pieces together. I crocheted them into the blanket.
But, I had to start over several times because I couldn’t get the pattern down, and I had a few “starts” started and stashed in different places in the hotel room. So, between the plethora of mini-blankets, and the yarn sticking to people’s clothing and shoes, the crap was all over the hotel room at the end of two weeks.
Which brings us to how the yarn pants got started.
My traveling friend, not sharing the same sort of mind/hand busy-ness compulsion, nor the desire to do anything as tedious and repetitive as crocheting (for God’s sake), could not believe that, in the middle of a Brazilian summer, at 80 degrees outside, and with beautiful men, women and scenery to gawk at, I was holed up in my spare time crocheting a hot, scratchy blanket. I mean what was I thinking? You’re young and hip, for chrissake! I mean, are you going to be one of those women crocheting holiday sweaters in their old age, or (gasp), worse, a BODY SUIT? Some kind of UNITARD made out of canary yellow yarn, not unlike the yarn I was crocheting with RIGHT NOW?
Well, that’s all the motivation I needed, really. Suggest something ridiculous and something ridiculous I will produce.
Friend got a little canary something for his birthday. 