Sunday, July 06, 2008

Tendinitis, terrible thunder storms, road rage, ruined yarn and still mostly a nice day...

Can't remember if i wrote on here or not... I'm afflicted with tendinitis at the moment, due to too much knitting too fast. really, it was only one day of too much too fast, over a week ago, and still, can't tempt it apparently. It was feeling better, so I forgot to wear my brace when i went out today, drove all afternoon and so now it's back again. and the brace is making capitalizations and typing in general rather hit or miss. but it doesn't hurt to type, since typing wasn't what caused the injury, the muscles and tendons don't move in quite the same way. Driving didn't either, but it hurts after doing a lot of it because i guess i hold my wrist at an odd angle while driving.

it's been horribly stormy all day and into the night. the roads are wet and visibility is questionable sometimes. so i was driving home from the citrus park area, turning right onto a road where you can't turn right on red because visibility to the left is obscured by the odd angle of the intersection, even on a good and bright day, let alone a rainy, totally dark night and there are two signs that say so, plain as day, one hanging next to the traffic signal and one right next to where the cars stop in the turn lane. So I'm waiting... waiting... and waiting some more for the green light. A white truck pulls up behind me, starts honking his horn after i don't move (cuz... uh... waiting, like the sign says to), and then some more, and then he just leans on it. Then the cars behind him start up. i don't know, maybe they didn't care it was a no-right-turn-on-red stop either, or they couldn't see the sign from where they were or they were honking at the asshole to stop his whinging. *sighs* Well, i went because i could actually see well enough to tell that the road was clear, because the guy was being so damn insistent and as i was speeding up to the speed limit, the white truck guy sped around and past me, after getting up on my bumper, honking his horn and flipping me the bird, and i could see the profile of his face, he was yelling at me. i know he couldn't see me because of the dark and the angle of the street lights, but i flipped it right back at him and told him to go fuck himself. i was pissed. I don't get pissed often, but when i do, watch the fuck out. i tried to speed up and catch him, but maria, my friend who was in the passenger seat, told me not to and to let him go, so i did. i didn't want to, but i did. i was hoping for a red light ahead of us so i could pull up right behind him and lean on my horn, danger be damned. he needed to feel my wrath. but alas, no. he sped off into the night, at what had to be about 55 or 60 mph (in a 45 zone), judging by how fast he was accelerating compared to me, weaving in and out between other cars, at night, with rain coming down and the roads slick. Him = Not Too Smart! no one needs to go somewhere that much, i don't care what. so, I'm hoping and praying karma kitty catches up with him and he either gets a fat ticket or wraps his truck around a tree for his rude and reckless behavior. something tells me he needs to be told by the universe to slow the fuck down and maybe a nice little accident will knock his head loose from his ass. who knows? the rest of us might get that lucky...

*sighs* so I came home and, in my idle rage, I looked up some hoodoo curses. There's nothing i can possibly do that wouldn't possibly kill him, since I don't have anything personal of his to make him sick... Pretty my only curse option would be to bury an effigy meant to represent him in a graveyard, and if it worked, he'd die in a karmicly appropriate sort of way. and that, now that I've calmed down, seems a bit extreme. No joke...

... But! i did finally remember to link this HooDoo website I've found quite useful for answering questions about Supernatural in the right hand column. Fascinating stuff, that... I think it's very interesting that, unlike other similar belief systems where magic and spellwork is a major part of it, cursing with malicious intent seems to be a recognized and not-at-all-discouraged part of hoodoo... in fact, it seems to be a rather large component. And the negativity doesn't get reflected back onto the person who works such curses... The curses seem to be regarded as fully deserved by those who are cursed. Hoodoo seems rather unique in this respect. Perhaps the system works this way to give individuals that feel they've been wronged activities to perform in order to have their grievances redressed, to channel their rage constructively without resorting to actual violent action, but at the same time acknowedging that they have every right to be angry and want revenge... I don't know... random, spontaneous thoughts...

Also, at the moment I want to get some witch bottles for my windows, just because... I'm curious though if I'm supposed to put anything in them if i just put them in the windows. it only says what to put in them if they are to by buried under a threshold. i guess they're kinda like dream catchers, in that they capture non-corporeal things that might want to do harm, but they're glass and sparkly instead of made of string and pretty woven things...

So when i got home (and part of why by the time i got on the computer i was still pissed enough to look up curses), i found all my good yarn that had been in closed bags on what i thought was (and up til now had proven to be) an inaccessible shelf pulled down and ripped apart and wound all around the living room by the cats. I'm mean, really, this had all been up there for an entire year and none of the cats even attempted to get to the shelf before because it's at a very odd angle from all the places they could jump. But tonight, at least one of them got adventurous. Probably Amaya. :/ Not cool, man! So I had to clean all that up. The good news is that only two balls are now ruined to the point where i can't use them for what they had been intended. unfortunately they were two that i really needed and will be rather costly to replace (well, really any of them would be somewhat costly to replace). so I'm thinking of not replacing them and using/doing something else. i was lucky that the two balls of Kidsilk Haze survived, as well as the one Cotton Wool and one Felted Tweed were mostly undamaged. even so, the Calmer, which was intended for Susan's Christmas present, and the Summer Tweed, which had been intended to finish Zinzi's long over-due Dashing mitts, are broken up with huge sections shredded or the fibers are so weakened by cat teeth that they just can't be used. *sighs* so frustrating. so i don't know what I'll do about the calmer yet, but i came across an interesting pattern last week that i think i might be able to do for zinzi's mitts and they'll work out even better than the previous idea. Maybe with Andean Silk, Main Line, or Shine Worsted. I'm leaning more toward the Shine Worsted because it's a cotton-blend... because I'm afraid of triggering an allergic reactions for her with some of the animal-derived fibers (it's why i picked the summer tweed, which is cotton-silk, in the first place). Just in case. Obviously, I've been thinking about this... So perhaps the incident with the cats was a fortunate accident. So, Miss Zinzi, if you're reading this, what colors would you prefer? Purples still your cup o' tea? If so, then perhaps the Crocus, Wisteria or Bachelor Buttons of the Shine Worsted yarn? If not, then please, what colors are you feeling for your mitts?

Overall, however, today was a good day. Went out with Maria and Laura for pizza, then to the bookstore for studying for GRE/GKT/State Department tests respectively... got some of that done (*shifty eyes*), checked out magazines, and then got more pizza at Mellow Mushroom for dinner... Today was a pizza kind of day. Veggie pizza. *nods sagely*

10 comments:

RaeS said...

Hit the wrong button. *headdesk* Ilana said:

:( That sounds like a truly super-sucky day. Is the rain the result of the hurricane that's gathering strength, or is it just normal thunderstorm activity?
That happens A LOT here. The risk of being shot by angry drivers might be marginally less, but when school is in session, there are lots of people in a rush to get somewhere. They can't ALL be budding brain surgeons... right?
I'll say nothing about curses, 'cause hoodoo isn't my purview.
The witch bottles sound neat, though. Are they like the glass witchballs people hang in their windows? I'll have to google this now, you know. :P

I'm so sorry about the yarn disaster! I would seriously be screaming like a beansidhe if Camille got into my stash and ate/otherwise destroyed my Malabrigo or MoFly.

Just out of curiosity.. do you have a knitting bag? *looks sneaky* I think I saw mention made of baskets, but I can't remember if you've ever said anything about a BAG.

RaeS said...

The end of it sure was. Up til then it had been lovely...

The rain is just the usual rain we get this time of year. It does seem a heavier than it usually is, but pretty much all of July and most of August we get rain almost every afternoon for at least several hours. It's the monsoon season. ;D Nope, we aren't getting any rain from the hurricane as far as I know.

One would think, no. LOL! Around the time that school gets out, that driver would have never gotten away with driving that way because that whole area is usually crawling bumper-to-bumper and to be completely avoided unless absolutely necessary that time of day. No, it was at about 9:30pm that this happened.

Hoodoo isn't really mine either except that I've done some research to find out about some of the things used on Supernatural.

Yeah, I think they are pretty much exactly like those witchballs except that they're bottles with corks in them, now that you mention it. I had forgotten all about those. They're pretty! Yeah, I think they're very like that. The info I found about witch bottles and their uses in hoodoo is here: http://www.luckymojo.com/bottlespells.html

Yeah, I was really pissed. But what can ya do, you know? They're cats, and they like yarn. I should have had them sealed up in my stash, instead of on a shelf, even a difficult-to-access shelf. *sighs*

No, I don't have a knitting bag, per se... *shifty eyes* LOL! I do have several bags that I use to stuff knitting projects into so I can carry them around places, but I don't have a bag that is specifically or specially designed for that purpose.

La Duchesse said...

*rubs her hands together and looks super-sneaky* Ideas, ideas, and more ideas!

Oooh.. will have to go check that site. *scampers* The one I went to had something about herbal witch bottles, which I thought appealing, but more information is always good. :)

RaeS said...

LOL! So glad I could provide you with some ideas...

Oooohhhh!!! :D Do share the site you found as well... I have lots of herbs around here.

Herbs make me think of yummy smelling things. And the subject of these comments over all + yummy smelling things has made me think of something else entirely, which you might find interesting. My friend Phaedra, whose rarely updated blog is linked in the right hand column as "Stitching Witch," made up some incense for a friend who was writing fan fiction and needed something for a spell that could actually be based in reality, with the purposes of the components correct, etc. etc. She made it, burned it and said it smelled amazing, and nothing like each component smells when burned by itself. This is her recipe:

* One-quarter tsp. Dragon’s blood powdered resin
* One-half tsp. Vervain, crushed
* One-third tsp. Myrrh ground to fine powder

Then you grind it all up with a mortar and pestle and then burn it with palm leaves.

The purpose of the incense was to magnify, solidify and seal a particular spell, for which the palm leaves were particularly significant, so that component could be changed and possibly omitted altogether, I'm sure...

La Duchesse said...

This is it: http://www.ecauldron.com/witchbottle.php

I'm sure the herbs could be changed to suit different purposes--I'm in favor of multipurpose objects, personally, so I'd be likely to try to adapt the witch bottle to other uses.. but that's just me.

I'll definitely have to look into this, because I'm very fond of the idea of the scent of Dragon's Blood. Since I can't actually smell, I have to go by other people's reactions to scents, but I've been toold Dragon's Blood has a really nice, spicy smell. Will also definitely look at your friend's blog! :)

RaeS said...

That's a seriously awesome and detailed site! Wow! Thanks!

Yeah, it seems like bottle spells are pretty flexible. More flexible than I would have thought, in fact, and in so many traditions.

I've never smelled Dragon's Blood myself, but I've heard pretty much what you've heard too. :D You can't smell? I didn't know that...

Yeah, Phaedra's cool. She's teaching herself how to knit and she does all kinds of other crafty things too.

La Duchesse said...

The short version is that I had my nose fractured by a respirator when I was born. I can taste, but no, I can't smell. Wish I could, though!

I saw her cross-stitch stuff and all I can say is "WOW". That takes an insane amount of time and patience.

I make soap with pomegranate juice in the springtime, and it's scented with Dragon's Blood fragrance oil (probably a synth, but it seems to work okay). I might make a batch sometime soon; will send you a chunk or two after it cures.

RaeS said...

Oh, my goodness! How awful...

It really does! I do some cross-stitch, but not much. I made a bookmark for a friend for Christmas once and gave it to her a year and a half after I had intended to! I was able to get the one other gift I stitched done on time though. I made a Tempest In A Teacup for another friend of mine who had a tendency at the time to be a tempest in a teacup and knew it. She thought it was clever and funny. She also had blond curly hair at the time, just like the dragon in the design seems to.

Ooohhhh!! That sounds wonderfully yummy!! Yes, please do send me some if you make any. I'm missing handmade soap. I've used up all I had for now... I really do hope to make some myself after we get back from Virginia.

Oh! That reminds me! The cabin is finally done! We're leaving Monday and we won't be back until at least August 1st, possibly later. I should have internet access by the end of the first week, so I can post pictures to share. :D

amanuensis said...

That's such a gorgeous pattern! I never did anything that detailed... it would have taken me MONTHS to do even a small part of something like that.
Ooooh! Yes! Pictures, please! :)
Tomorrow is soap day, after I go through my stock of oils and figure out what I need and what I've got. I should be able to do a couple batches in the next week, and I'll definitely, definitely make sure to save you some. :)

RaeS said...

Yes, lots of pictures, for sure!!

Thank you!! I really enjoyed stitching it. It didn't take all that long, maybe two months, because it's not as big as it looks. It was maybe the size of a small greeting card when it was done over two threads on 18 count linen. I've also done that designer's "Stretch the Magic Dragon," but it's not totally done as I'm beading it and it's only about 1/5 beaded and I haven't worked on it in years because I need to get a new stand to hold it (the cheap one I had totally crapped out on me). But, boy, when it's done it's going to look like one of those mythical dragons whose skin is encrusted with the treasure it sleeps on... I want to do her other two free dragon designs (because I like them even better than the dragon her designs that are for purchase) "Futurecast" and "Dragon Rampant", but I haven't gotten back to stitching in forever. It has a tendency to irritate my wrist much worse than knitting, so I can't do it as long and it isn't as fast in producing results.

Wonderful!!! Thanks!! I look forward to hearing about your soaping adventures and, of course, getting to sample your results. *cheers*