A Bucolic Life, Complete With Crimefighting

I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about. --Oscar Wilde

One of the greatest fallacies about keeping a blog, and especially a blog about my creative pursuits, is the idea that I have to have a finished project to show for every single post. It's a good thing and a bad thing. It's enough to motivate me to knit like mad to try to have something to write about here. In reality, I don't finish things as quickly as I used to, and really, there a plenty of interesting things that happen during my days to share.

For example: yesterday, we brought the car in for a scheduled service at the dealership. Each time we go, I'm hopeful I'll meet the corporate dog: Missy the Shih Tzu. I was lucky this time. She was there, lazing about in her bed when we got there. She loves meeting people:

And she loves belly rubs:

She really, really loves belly rubs:

It made me miss my Rascal... but I enjoyed the visit while it lasted.

What else... well, each evening, I unroll my yoga mat and sit cross-legged for a while to stretch my hips and breathe a bit before I do my yoga practice. I usually sit there with a tablet or magazine for a bit to relax, but recently, I've been thumbing through this book:

I picked it up at a used bookshop during the summer. As soon as I saw it, I had a strange deja vu experience... I've seen this book before, but I have no idea where or when I saw it, but I knew it well enough to recognize the drawing on the front... and I have a vivid memory of sitting down with a pencil and sketchbook and trying to copy the drawing. I have no idea why. I have no idea when. But I remember it. And it was enough for me to pull it off the shelf and sit down in a nearby easy chair and read through it.

It's full of anecdotes from an English travel writer about her home in England, complete with her husband, housekeeper and gardner. And it's arranged month-by-month, where she describes her  her house chores and what she's up to in her garden, and, most mouth-wateringly, what she's up to in her kitchen with the spoils from her garden. It's where I found out that you can cook cucumbers (though, I haven't tried it yet). And it's written in a syntax that delights me in a way I can't explain. I will never be such a gardener (I think I'm too lazy for it, honestly), but I can't help but be inspired by it. In October, she writes:

It is storing month -- for everyone. Reg once moved a cupboard in the garage  and found concealed behind it a pyramid of apples so well-built you couldn't knock it down. A rat had built it. What extraordinary skill! And what a labour, to bring each one quite a distance, and place it so carefully. It seemed a shame to demolish it.

I never really liked rats until I saw a white a brown Norwegian one... it was somebody's pet... and it was actually quite sweet. And knowing that they can be such architects was made me smile in quiet delight.

And of course, there's the knitting... always the knitting. My alpaca stole has grown large enough to cover my lap while I knit. With the cool evenings, it's quite comforting. I'm still enjoying the yarn, but it's getting to the point where I'm impatient to see it finished, both because I want to see it finished, and also because I've got a sudden urge to do a crochet project. No, I don't know which yet, but I just feel like I need for a switch.

A hankering for hooking. What a sentence.

So, yeah... that's all I've got. I'm just waiting for the chicken and dumplings to finish on the stove before we devour that, and then I'm going to sit down on the couch and knit a while longer while we catch up on an episode of Blue Bloods, and then maybe some Criminal Minds. It seems strange to mix all the blood and gore of crime shows with such a bucolic post, but I can't help it if I was brought up on Law and Order and Columbo and Matlock. Maybe it's the problem-solver in me, I dunno.

Or maybe I'm secretly made for the life of a crimefighter. I handle needles and steel hooks on a regular basis, so why not?

Ehm... maybe I better work on that idea. Maybe after dinner.