I think the definition inherent to a bucket list is coming up with things you want to do before you "kick the bucket," and I respect that. So maybe creating a Summer Bucket List doesn't seem that smart on the surface. Kind of like it's inviting trouble. But to me, it's more like things I want to do before summer kicks the bucket. Still, I think some would hesitate to turn it into something that looks like just another to-do list, but you know what? To-do lists are how I get my kicks. I love making them, using them, looking back at them ... and more often than not, they help me remember exactly what it is that makes me happy, what it is that makes me satisfied.

So, that being said! My Summer Bucket List: Knitting and Crocheting. This summer, my fibre adventures will include:

- participating in Ravelympics on behalf of Team TARDIS ~ we are in an unofficial-but-oh-so-fabulous contest with Team Sherlocked, to see who can make the most British-themed items, so it's the perfect excuse to whip all my Doctor Who projects out of my Ravelry queue and toss them into the ring!
- learning more about colourwork ~ this, too, stems from Ravelympics, as one of the projects on my list is a pair of Doctor Who mittens with colourwork galore to create different silhouettes of Daleks, K9s and TARDISes, oh my!
- getting, and staying, on top of my WIPs so I don't have a constant backlog when I want to make something new for myself or someone awesome
- picking a pattern for my first sweater, finding the wool, and getting it going, once and for all

How about you? Any knitting or crocheting related tasks on your Summer Bucket List?

My head knows that "series" is already plural, but whenever I talk about multiple series I always want to add something to the word: serieses! Or something.

Meep.

Anyways, I mentioned the other day that I wanted to make a Summer Bucket List. In the interests of being accountable, and also just because it's nice to have a place to share and keep track of these things [in spite of all the silly LJ spam, ugh], I've decided to share bits and pieces of it here. I'm still pulling the list together, but one thing that's for sure is this: this is definitely a summer for catching up on serieses!

These are the series books that I want to start/continue/finish this summer:

- Princess and the Bear (Mette Ivie Harrison)
- Shakespeare's Spy (Gary L. Blackwood)
- Ann Brashares' Sisterhood series, including Sisterhood Everlasting
- Debbie Macomber's Blossom Street series
- 1225 Christmas Tree Lane (Debbie Macomber)
- Dear Pen Pal (Heather Vogel Frederick)
- Stopping Time (Melissa Marr)
- The Sweet Far Thing (Libba Bray)
- Melting Stones (Tamora Pierce)
- Mastiff (see above)
- Tortall and Other Lands (see above)
- Ironside (Holly Black)
- Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman)
- The Red Queen (Philippa Gregory)
- The Lady of the Rivers (see above)
- The White Princess (see above)
- The Boleyn Inheritance (see above)
- The Last Days of Newgate (Andrew Pepper)
- Just One Taste (Louisa Edwards)
- Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
- the Amelia's Notebook series (Marissa Moss)
- the Rebel of Dark Creek series (Nikki Tate)

*looks at list*

*runs out door to skip in sunshine and start reading*

*not at the same time*

*probably*

So it took a few more days than I thought it would before I could get to the sewing - partly because I had a meltdown with the sewing machine, which I later discovered was due to me not threading it properly. Once the MumPilot helped me and the machine sort out our differences, we were off to the races! I hemmed a halter top I'd grabbed for free from the lobby, and took about eight or ten inches off a blue-and-white polka-dot-hearts skirt, so it just skims my knees.

I still have a bucketful of sewing projects languishing under my bed, but now that I have made friends with the sewing machine again, I think it'll be much easier to charge through those projects. More skirts to hem! More summer outfits to pull together! And it sounds like it's going to be a warm one, so I'm just in time ... yays!

I'm pondering making a summer bucket list - less of a list where I have to do EVERYTHING or else I will feel SO GUILTY, more of a list that reminds me on one of those hazy summer days when I have time off work, "Oh, hey, that's a cool idea!" Anyone up for making one with me?

ETA: just finished hemming and taking in the waist of a crinkly black skirt with a floral pattern - perfect summer length!

What I really want to be doing right now?

Setting up the sewing machine, piling the plethora of to-be-altered-or-mended clothes next to me and going to town whipping up a new/old wardrobe.

What I am doing?

Working.

Such is life. Le sigh.

But, says the optimist in me, the sooner work is done the sooner the sewing machine comes out of hibernation! Onwards!

Will hopefully update later with sewing success stories (knock on wood).

"What words of support + encouragement can you share with other writers?

I'd say just one thing: remember that writing isn't worth anything without a life behind it. Life itself is the secret: the earthy passion & riotous dancing, the wines tasted, the trace of smoky perfume, the lingering glances & the dreams of what may be. That's where the real writing happens. It's in the center of a life lived full out, loving it all. Loving the people & animals & trees & rain & sunshine & and then putting it down in a way that you & everyone else never forgets. I wish you all good things in the living that is yours (& it's all good things ...)"

~ Brian Andreas, in response to SARK in Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper

Going through bookmarks (in your web browser) that have been collected and organized and reorganized over the course of six or seven years seems a thankless task. That is, until you come across those random little gems that you know darn well weren't easy to find and still give you pleasure or tweak a spark of interest. Those bookmarks are the reason I don't just go all Dalek on them, squawking "EXTERMINATE" as I do a mass delete of every single one.

For me, it's definitely worth taking the time to go through and pare them down until the only ones I have left are the ones that:

a) still give me pleasure
b) relate to something current in my life

In some cases - and I especially found this with my writing bookmarks - I would get down to two or even three bookmarks from different sources but that all provided essentially the same information. What's a girl to do?

Pick the prettiest one, of course!

Seriously, when it gets down to a situation like that, you've got to have criteria to help you narrow it down, and if I can get the same information from a page that is visually appealing and maybe even fun to look at rather than one that's hard on my eyes or kind of, well, boring ... Easiest. Choice. Ever.

In other news, I nearly finished knitting the second glove of a pair but had to frog it back to the beginning because, for some reason still unknown to me, it had my wrist - to say nothing of my hand - in a grip worthy of a boa constrictor; I've read 1 out of 45 books from a self-made list supplemental to my everyday reading, for a project I'm working on - this one was SARK's Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper; and dancing even remotely like the dancers in this video still gives me happy tingles, over two years later.

I have an almost-sorta-not-really cold right now, and I'm using it as an excuse to linger over my morning coffee and browse Pinterest, poke around on Ravelry and reflect on how things have been the last few weeks. One of the things that is tickling me the most right now ~ and bear with me on this ~ is that I have stopped biting my nails. It's a habit that developed for reasons too embarassing to admit, and I am ecstatic to break it.

Okay, I will admit it: I knew someone else who, at the time, was close to me and had been biting their nails forEVER, and I decided to take it upon myself to start biting my nails and then, you know, stop. To show them that, um, yeah, totally possible to stop!

The joke was on me. That habit plagued me for ten years.

(And by the way, I'm not in touch with that person any more, for reasons unrelated to nailbiting, so I can't sashay up to them and say, "SEE? I told you it was possible!!!")

But anyway, I'm not telling you this to gross you out. I wanted to talk about why I stopped. I mean, yeah, there are good and legitimate reasons like it's unhygenic and affects the integrity of your nails over the course of time. And I am grateful for those reasons. But when you're sitting there, staring at your hands, feeling the urge to nibble away just one more time ... those relatively far-off consequences don't do much to curb your enthusiasm.

Here's the kicker: I do a lot with my hands. I write. Knit. Bake. Cook. Dance. Crochet. Read. The activities I do with my hands mean a lot to me, and yet I've gotten incredibly adapt over the years at hiding. When I take someone's hand to dance with them, I cringe as their finger accidentally brushes over a ragged cuticle. When I show someone my latest pair of fingerless gloves, I nonchalantly curl my fingers under. And when I offer a plate of baked goods, I hope they're staring at the jam oozing from between the cookie layers rather than at ... you guessed it! My hands.

Now, a lot of this was probably me being overzealous but, in any case, I was tired of hiding. My hands do good work, and this is how I repay them? By being ashamed of them?

So ... I stopped.

I'm on day four of Rescue Mission: Victoria's Nails, and I can't help smiling every time I look down at my hands. They're not pristine, they're still a little funky, but they're getting better, and you know what? To me, they're beautiful. And that makes this so, so worth it.

The book that currently has me staying up so late that I wake up bleary is Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life. Each chapter, or vignette, is rarely more than a few pages long, not including the recipe(s) that end each section, and so I find myself saying, “Just one more ...” And then there’s the fact that I always want to EAT after reading A Homemade Life, even if I’m not hungry. Molly is wacky and witty, and wowzer, does she ever have a knack for talking about food! Take, for example, this depiction of her father’s stewed prunes:

“[T]he prunes hardly counted as dried fruits anymore; they were now soft, silky pockets of juice. When you scooped one up, it would slump wearily on the spoon, as though it had been woken up too early. Its skin would yield to the tooth with a gentle, dainty pop, and underneath, the flesh was lip-lickingly sweet, winey, and complex.” (A Homemade Life, trade paperback, page 48)

If you need more convincing, go and investigate Molly’s blog Orangette. Otherwise, go find that book! If you are a lover of food or memoirs or Paris, you won’t regret it.

But, fun as it is to chat up books of awesomeness, that’s not all I wanted to say today. What I did want to talk about is this.

You know those moments when you read a book, be it fiction or non-fiction, and you say, “Yes! I understand their sentiments exactly! I could have written this bit!” Yeah. I’ve had a few of those moments with A Homemade Life, but few more keen than this:

“I have this funny thing about recipes. When I find one that I like, I have a hard time trying others. ... I’m loyal and sentimental and possibly even boring. When something clicks with me, I want to keep it around.” (page 171)

Yes! Me! Oh, oh, pick me!

There are several recipes that fall into this category for me. One in particular stands out, and that is the "short" scones I’ve been making ever since reading Judith Ryan Hendricks’ Bread Alone in my mid-teens. The first time I made them, likely at midnight, likely when I was stressed beyond belief about something I can’t remember anymore, I knew we were soulmates. Cutting the butter in by hand, feeling the dough come together until I felt the powdery, pea-sized lumps under my fingers, kneading in the citrus-soaked cranberries, and then keeping a careful eye on the array of misshapen triangles in the depths of the oven ... they had my full attention.

Not gonna lie, the scones were delicious. But by the time they came out of the oven, they had done the work I needed them to. The tension had drained out of my body and I was just about ready for bed.

For days afterwards, the supply of scones on the counter slowly diminished until, at long last, they were gone. And I think I made another batch. Not because I needed to but because I wanted to. Remember the conversation we had the other day about product versus process? These scones are (almost) all about the process for me. They are my Holy Grail of baked goods. So even though I make other scones, from other recipes, and maybe even tinker with those recipes a little, this one ain’t gonna change. It has soothed me through too many midnight/2 AM/3 PM baking sessions for that.

As of this morning, I read the final pages of A Homemade Life, and feel like I have just finished an extremely satisfying meal of everything I love to eat with a few pleasant surprises thrown in. And, yes, it's made me rather hungry! Time to rummage in the kitchen ... I think there are some caramelized onions and feta just begging to be thrown into an omelette.

What's your bosom buddy, forever friends recipe? Do you dare tweak it or do you keep it just as it is?

One of the questions that comes up from time to time among knitters - and, come to think of it, anyone who creates something - is whether you're about the process or the product. Is it the zen of the yarn slipping from finger to needle that gives you pleasure, or is it just a means to a cozy end? I've been wondering about this lately, especially as I went on a knitting/crocheting binge in December and early January, only to come to a screeching halt.

When I write, I find a happy medium. I think I have to, to stick with it. Going on adventures with my characters, putting them through dire straits and seeing exactly how banged up they are upon emerging, and getting them out of messes when they've suffered enough ... that's what keeps me up into the wee hours of the morning, tapping away on the keyboard until my eyes are like saucers. But when it's not going so well, when the words just don't want to come, it's the thought of reaching the finish line that makes me sit down and eke out just enough to keep myself in the writerly loop.

When I knit, though, (or crochet, but let's keep things simple) much as I think the act of knitting is pretty cool, I don't feel that kind of meditative feeling. Having something to do while I watch TV or chat with friends is awesome, but it's because I like productivity. It's when I sew in the last end on a finished project, or pick it up gingerly after blocking it and letting it dry, that a warm, tingly sense of satisfaction crawls down my spine.

Beginning of February, and I'm picking up the needles again. Maybe someday, I'll discover that feeling that goes with the act of knitting itself, but for now, seeing the look on someone's face when I hand them something they've been craving or something I just knew would suit them - owl mittens, or a Jayne hat, or a felted turquoise purse - that's enough to keep me knitting for a long, long time to come.


(Knitting in Public, December 2011)

What about you, knitters, writers and crafters? Are you about the process, the product or both?