Knitting for Breakfast

Panera is the perfect spot to meet, since neither of us have to clean up the house.

Frieda is about to go on vacation to St. Maarten in the Caribbean, lucky duck, and needed to get a project ready to take along. The sweater was started last year, and she finally has the time to attend to finishing it. All she has left are the sleeves, which can be tricky, since they involve short row caps, with wrap and turns, plus a center decrease all the way down. I was employed to show her the techniques, since I have made this sweater in four variations (three in green?? and one in white). FYI it is the San Francisco Shirttail from www.justonemorerow.com. Her yarn is Koigu and it is so wonderful. I want this sweater so much. She will let me borrow it when she is finished.

I arrived at 8 as we planned, and Frieda arrived at 8:30 as she planned. Nevermind, I was happy to be getting my caffeine fix. The booth we take is so worn out already, with the upholstery splitting, that we really need to consider sitting someplace else, but really, this is our booth! We are miffed if it is taken when we arrive.

I bring my laptop, digital camera and show and tell hats, Frieda brings a basket of yarn and needles, and the Crate and Barrel Christmas catalog, and we get right to work on the laptop looking at my snow slides, my fabulous almost finished new website, her dog George pictures, and taking pictures of ourselves knitting. We are both professionals at this style of fooling around. We even get the man in the next booth to take our photos.

Eventually we get to the knitting and accomplish that almost as easily as it says in the directions. Frieda decides that since we are there for over two hours, she really should buy something else to drink so she orders a cappuchino and let's me have a few sips, informing me that it is made with espresso.

Boing Boing Boing. I am instantly wired. (This is a great way to diet, since you are so stimulated that eating seems irrelevant.)

We leave Panera at 11am and I must go home and pay bills, since it is December already. I am so agitated and happy, and full of energy to work on the additions to my website...and then it starts to wear off and I fall in a deep dark hole.
This funk coincides with accumulating the pictures for the gallery pages of the new site. I look at my portfolio of work and it all looks so hopeless and mundane. How can I call myself an artist? This is all drek. What happened to my promise? Whine whine whine. Woe is me. Move over Eyeore.

I wade through the muck of my accumulated works and make choices and send them onto David Walker, and decide to jump off a pier in the near future, ala Monologuist Spalding Gray.

Dave comes home soon and I must cook for him. What is there to eat? Tamales! Hurray, something delicious that is already made. I pour a glass of vino, open a can of refried beans, steam the last of the Thanksgiving tamales and we eat. Instantly the world looks rosey again.
Sigh. Ain't Mexican food great?