That Time I Nearly Stopped Whining

July 19, 2020

That Time I Nearly Stopped Whining

Neurosis is just a high-class word for whining. --Albert Ellis

This weekend has been the weekend where we finally did something about the stuff that I've been whining about for the last year. I would like to believe that I am not a whiner, that I am patient and logical and wise, but I think I've finally succumbed to the fact that when things are not going my way, my reasonable requests turn into full-blown whine-o-ramas. This might be why I get along with dogs so well... but I digress...

When we moved here to this house a couple of years ago, I brought along a few of the strawberry plants that we had planted in some of the beds at the previous house because I was tired of establishing fruiting plants and then moving away from them. I stuck them into a box planter I found in the yard here and they have been slowly multiplying to fill up a couple more little box planters over the past couple of years. This year, they are overwhelming the smaller box planters and I knew that they needed a bigger space to grow. I was thinking about moving them into a big trough planter, but I discovered that those things are wildly expensive. I thought about buying more box planters, but it turns out that, with everyone staying home these days, the garden centres have been overwhelmed and you can't get a box planter to save your life. So, I've been whining about it for the past month or so until we finally went out yesterday to do something about it and came home with this. It's a wine barrel that's been cut in half to be used as a planter:

Can you believe it? A wine barrel for a whiner. Heh.

Driving home with this thing was an interesting experience because it's still a fresh enough barrel that the car smelled strongly of red wine the whole way home. I'm just glad we didn't get pulled over. I thought it was going to be far too big, but it just about fits the strawberries from the smaller box planters I had out in the yard. We filled the bottom half of it with leaves and sawdust from cutting firewood and then topped it off with compost fresh from our tumble composter. The hubby thinks we should get a couple more of them. I am undecided, but I will admit that it's a nice looking addition to the yard and has solved our overcrowded strawberry problem in the short term at least.

Another thing I've been whining about is getting a new couch. While this blog is named after my couch, and while the current couch has been a comfortable haven for me all this time, the fact is that it's starting to sag and squish up in places and the fabric is becoming more and more threadbare. We were thinking about getting a new one a couple of years ago, but then our landlords decided to sell our previous house and we ended up diverting the funds to the purchase of this place. Still... I whined about it. I wanted one. But then I didn't want one. I thought we could make do, but then I changed my mind again. I think the hubby was so tired of me changing my mind that he must have been quite relieved when I demanded we finally go to the furniture store. And yes, we have a new couch and loveseat on order. And while we were there, I got myself this. It's my new knitting/spinning/videochatting chair:

And you know what's the best part about it? I get to make new cushions! If that is not proof of yarngeekery, I don't know what is.

I'm afraid that the whining will not be completely over for a while yet because I am STILL working on this annoying crochet square blanket project. I did manage to knock out a few more centre parts and will finish them up as the week progresses, but never did I imagine that it would take me this long. I am finding myself experimenting with using up scraps where I can, especially when I run out of colours like in the bottom two motifs:

I keep thinking that I must have a million squares by now, but when I stack them up, the pile still looks woefully small. I added a Seymour for scale:

And while my brain feels like I am really close to finishing up all the yarn in the yarn pack I am using, I look down and realize that I still have at least a third of it left. Never has my project monogamy been this tested: