Petunia rambles on and on….

A while back, I told the sad tale of the demise of my niddy noddy. It wasn’t the finest available; actually it was rather on the cheapie side. It came free with my first spinning wheel, which was bought used. Mom always said, You get what you pay for.  She was almost always right. It’s demise wasn’t that great a loss, but  would have been easier to deal with emotionally if it hadn’t had 400+ yards of fine merino 2-ply on it still untied, when one of its crossbars snapped, it collapsed and died right there in my arms.

It’s been replaced.

Today, I finally remembered that the yarn I was working on has been soaked, washed, rinsed, thwacked soundly and been hanging from the shower head of the other bathroom for how long now?  I’ve been putting off the next stage because my swift is unhappy. It was quite comfortable, it and the ball winder, clamped to the old crappy table, those two swifting and winding together.  But I finally broke down and got a new table and chairs and don’t want to be C-clamping stuff to the beautiful new finish.

I rigged a lousy set-up back here where all the craft/knitting/yarn/fiber/sewing/embroidery/computer stuff is, but it was poorly done and will need more thought. But I got the job done.

The color is showing true on my monitor, a deep sapphire blue. I ordered it from an Etsy shop and it was called Amethyst. I was expecting it to be deep purple, and thought to make a shawl out of it for daughter. It is not purple!

Do I need to re-ply this, to add a bit more twist? Looks like some sections are plied more than others.  Damn.

But I needed milk, and that French Vanilla stuff for the coffee and rice, so I went to Sam’s Club.  And I tried really hard to stay in the grocery part. I did try, really.  I stayed away from all the Christmas stuff. It’s not that I don’t like Christmas.  It’s just that I’ve been buying that stuff for 40 years now, am way past “full up” on it, it’s become a storage problem most of the year and I should be giving away or tossing out the stuff I already have, not buying more!

But I had to go down the CD/DVD aisle to get to the potatoes (nobody’s believing that?) and this leaped into the cart, like a hyperactive ferret, just bopped and danced its way and hid under the rice.

Yeah.

I am not capable of walking away more than twice. I haven’t seen them in concert in, what, Jim, three years? I guess the last time is when we all saw them in Camden, with Def Leppard??  Right? And before that at Wicomico? And before that at Wolf Trap? And before that at Kahunaville? Been too long. This will have to do.

Still haven’t seen it – waiting for Himself to be out of the house so I can put it on the big system and crank those Bose speakers. Heh!

It’s calming.  There’s something about being near the water that is soothing to one’s soul – or at least, it does it for me.  Always lived near water, lived at the Jersey shore when I was young, spent almost 10 years a mile from the ocean in South Florida, even spent 3 years on the Pacific coast of Panama, and now, I can be in the ocean in less than an hour. Straight shot down – and I often go. By myself. ‘Cause I need the water and what it does for me.

Sometimes, when there just isn’t time to go all the way down to the beaches from here, I go to the bay. Not quite the same, I know it’s not the ocean, but if it stretches out to what looks like endless water, I can be fooled. I allow myself to be fooled. I can’t see the other side from here. I can walk and think, worry, obsess, yell, shed a few tears, cope, remember, accept.

But for a while, for a short time, the smell of the clean air, the salt air, the smell of rotting horseshoe crabs and seaweed, the sound of the water coming in, wave after wave, as it’s always done, before my troubles and after them, eases me.  It is a constant. Problems and worries,  memories and regrets are not.

I’ve been out there many times – but on this day, the conditions were odd. Late afternoon of a bright, cloudless day – if it hadn’t been so nice out, I wouldn’t have gone out there at all. But when I got down to the water, there were clouds out over the bay, low clouds. And it looks as though there was no horizon, that the water and sky had  just blended together into an endless soothing blue world.

See – Sunlight when you look south down the coast. No clouds. But the horizon disappeared when I looked east out over the water.

Ain’t much out there to see but miles and miles of cattails, and in the summer, 42 bazillion mosquitoes per cubic foot.

Still, I always find something that catches my eye. The road down there is pretty washed out, sand where it ought not to be, and when two vehicles pass in opposite directions, each must pull off to the side a bit. Makes me a tad nervous always going out there alone, even with 4WD. I’ve got it, I know how to use it, but really would rather not. (The only time I miss a standard transmission is when you’re stuck. So much easier to rock it out!) From the ruts in the sand, I’d say that someone had been out there earlier in the day stuck damn deep practicing his 4-wheeling techniques.

I came back into town feeling better.