Quarantine Hair

Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in your mind. --David G. Allen

Seymour and I seem to be afflicted with a bad case of quarantine hair. He's got an unruly moustache which just refuses to be tamed, no matter how we smooth it down or try to trim it. He doesn't seem to be bothered too much by it, but we'll see how he copes if it turns into a proper handlebar 'stache.

My bad hair is just a confirmation that I really need to ditch my hairdresser and find someone else because it's growing out into a horrible, uneven mess. I've been pretty unsatisfied with it for a while, but now that I'm forced to live with the poor workmanship I have decided just to let it grow out until it's long enough to start over again. And I've also decided that, now that my grey hairs are really starting to come in, I'm not going to try to hide them. I refuse to live under the tyranny of scheduled root-dyeing sessions. The hair is grey. We all get them. That is life.

Meanwhile, since the weather has been pleasant here on Vancouver Island, we have tried to get outside (away from people) to enjoy the fresh air. We found a park we'd never been to before and Seymour practiced his social distancing with the ducks in the pond:

You'd never know we were in the grip of a pandemic from the sight of the woodland flowers in bloom:

Meanwhile, I have completed my shrug experiment. It turned out much better than I expected:

And also waaaaay longer than I anticipated. I am normally tugging on my sweaters because I make them way too short. Turns out I overshot this one big time. I was originally aiming for something that grazed the tops of my thighs... not that I mind. I am quite pleased to have something long to wear on cooler spring/autumn evenings:

I intended to take a photo of this before I seamed it up to show how this thing is constructed, but it was enough of a marathon-knit that I forgot to get the camera out before I sewed it up. It's really just a long rectangle which curved under and sewn to make armholes. Here's what it looked like a couple of weeks ago. The grey band at the top is the collar, which folds over into a shawl collar. The bottom edge is the part which reaches mid-back, and the grey sides meet mid-buttock and are sewn together:

And here's a view of the back which kind of shows how I sewed it up:

I'm really pleased with the sleeve length as well. I was worried they'd be super short and end up being cap sleeves, but they are long enough to look good with a long-sleeved t-shirt underneath:

I just wish I liked my hair more:

Anyway, it feels good to finish this thing, even though it has become so warm here on the Island that I don't think I'll be getting much wear out of it until the autumn. I guess that means there's something to look forward to, which is a rare and precious thing to have these days...

I also look forward to having a decent haircut. Someday, grasshopper. Someday.

I think we're all getting tired of hiding away and being at home, but I feel grateful to have friends that insist on reaching out to me to make sure I don't feel too alone. It's been hard. On top of everything else, I miss my dad so much. I've found myself randomly bursting into tears during the quiet times. Most times, I find things to do: books and online courses and bouts of cleaning. And dog walking. And sofa cuddling, even when it means that my knitting gets commandeered from time to time:

And yeah, there's the yarn to keep me going. I think that the years of knitting and crochet have really helped me to be patient with slow things. You can really only ever work one stitch at a time, and after hundreds of thousands of "one stitch at a time," I know that the result always ends up being worthwhile. And so will this. We'll take it one day at a time, and I have faith that the culmination of all of those days will have changed us all for the better. We'll think differently, act differently, be thoughtful of the elderly and vulnerable, buy what we need and leave enough for others, wash our hands properly. We'll get there.

I'm gonna go brush my hair. Have a good week.