Funeral for a Friend

This was a rather draining week for me, and it would be easy to say that it was spent preparing for, attending, and contemplating the funeral of my friend Marsha. She was beloved by many, many people, and of everyone present at the farewell I may have had the shortest and slightest relationship with her. I’m grateful to have had even a brief acquaintance with such a lovely person, and one of my long-term projects will be to learn to play a song that she and I shared a love for. Marsha, this one’s for you — at least, it will be after I learn a few guitar chords.

The projects are starting to pile up again. In my daily freewriting sessions I have begun to refer to the two writing projects as the Primary Projects. Other interests, and their reference materials, are forming higher and higher stacks on the coffee table in the library. And just when I had finally knocked the old stacks down to a manageable level. But I’m gratified that these reference materials are ones that I already own. Over the years I have bought many books that caught my eye even though I wouldn’t actively use them at the time. “Someday,” I told myself, “these books will come in handy.” And now, some of them have shown themselves to be relevant — and connected to each other in ways I could not have even imagined at the time.

Regarding my typewriter collection, I’m going to plead the Fifth Amendment this week. (That will give me time to find the serial numbers and take some pictures. And to sneak the machines into the house when Eldest isn’t looking.)

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Knitwise, I’m thinking of starting another, slightly more colorful project. Spring is springing upon us rather violently at the moment, swinging between cold and gutsy to hot and humid and gusty. We’re almost able to keep a window cracked so we have a better chance of hearing the tornado siren (whether it’s a test or an actual emergency). So it might be nice to have a current project in a color other than grey, and whose progress is a bit easier to see.

Last weekend I found these materials already set up in a project bag while I was working on a different project of reorganizing my CD collection. I’m thinking of using the solid color yarn (“Robin Egg”) for the body of the shawl and using the variegated yarn (“Surf and Turf”) for the edging. It would be less risky to do things the other way around, of course, but I think this way will look better. And if it doesn’t look better, of course I can frog the whole project and knit it all over again in a different way. Doesn’t that sound great?

I know this is all very exciting, but my writing time has run out for the evening. I must excuse myself to do some reading that will restore my soul and, possibly, ready me for the week-to-come.