The wicked wind to the west

A few nights ago, I took shelter as a first-ever February tornado made landfall about 45 miles away and blew its way into Wisconsin’s weather history. In a state where almost any weather can happen at any time — I have heard that July and August are the only two months which have never seen snow — it’s getting even more ecumenical here with regard to weather events.

That’s not snow in my back yard: it’s hail. I remember one July in Ohio when I was equally startled to see hail. (Is hail expected in any season?)

It felt like a long week full of stress building up to the day the tornadoes came. I helped to put together a campus forum, and I stayed a few extra minutes to make sure it got off to a safe start. Then it was time to head back to my department, lock up for the night, and head for home. As soon as I got out of town I could see the strong flashes of lightning to the west.

When I got home I was still thinking that I would head out again to a show to which I had a ticket. But it wasn’t long before I decided that it might be wiser to put the car in the driveway and hunker down with my boys. Eldest leashed up the dog and Youngest baked up some snacks that we took with us to the basement. Two rounds of hail pounded against the house before it was calm again and we felt it was safe to return to the ground floor.

When I wasn’t hiding from tornadoes, planning campus events, or setting up writing retreats this week, I was preparing to clean the next typewriter on my list: my mother’s 1966 Smith-Corona Galaxie II. I did get some of the dust blown out of it, but one of the critical screws — to the ribbon cover — wouldn’t budge. So I put almost everything back together. I’ll take the screw’s twin to the hardware store this week to see if I can buy a better screwdriver (and perhaps pick up some extra screws in case I destroy this one in order to save it).

After I get the cover off and have better access for cleaning the hammers, I can work on repeated gentle cleaning of the keys themselves. Mom wasn’t particularly rough on the typewriter, but time in storage did take its toll.

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Knitwise, the only thing I did with yarn this week was to completely frog a finished object (my apologies to the Noro triangle I knitted up a few years ago just to be making something). Oh, and move some project bags into a different space, and move some unallocated yarn to yet another different space.

Well, that’s not quite all. I did — finally — wash out the Leroy Cowl I made from Laurenspun and “block” it out to dry. This was one of the side effects of deciding to de-clutter my bedroom this afternoon instead of doing, well, just about anything else.

It will be resting and air-drying for about the next 24 hours, after which it may be cold enough again to give it a real-life test. Who knows? It’s frosty in the mornings, windy all day, and occasionally warm enough to spawn tornadoes.

While I was sorting through the boxes and bins of clutter in my bedroom, I found a steno pad (remember those?) in which I briefly started a journal in 1986. Those were college years for me, and I used it to take notes during campus visits by novelist Tom Wolfe, Poet Laureate Rita Dove, and legend Kurt Vonnegut. I also used it to write drafts of a fiction workshop response and an article for the honors program newsletter, and brainstorm directions for two fiction pieces I was working on at the time. One ultimately wound up in my creative writing portfolio, and I have no idea what became of the other one. But how glad I am to discover the thinking behind those two stories!

During the time I spent in the basement, though, I peeked into several boxes of old notebooks, journals, and folders; the answer to the background of the forgotten story might lie in one of those cardboard moving boxes.

Hard driving

Last week’s weather presented some challenging driving conditions. By the end of the week I was tempted to create a bingo card that included Construction, Earthquake, Terrible Flood, and Locusts.

Though we didn’t actually endure those particular events, we did have snow, sleet, freezing rain, regular rain, and dense fog. Many of us suffered from being on the road in the wrong order: timid drivers in front, driving no faster than 30 miles an hour and keeping their hazard lights on; sensible drivers in the middle, with headlights properly on, sure that they could stay on the road at a slightly swifter 40-45 miles an hour; aggressive Jeep owners in the rear, headlights off (unless they were tailgating, in which case they were using the high beams).

On the last day that I drove my loaner car, everything seemed to come unraveled. While Youngest and I were trying to get through town in the rain, one windshield wiper ripped the other one from its mounting. I stopped the car, retrieved the separated wiper, and drove to the nearest auto parts store (fortunately, it was just a quarter of a mile away) to have it replaced. We continued on until we were three miles from home, when a rather overstuffed raccoon was wandering across the road. One mile later we were almost struck by two large low-flying birds. I wasn’t sure that I would get home safely until I was in the driveway, putting the car in Park.

Bah! There’s not even any snow or ice!

On Friday morning I was at last able to pick up my new used car, the 2011 Subaru Forester that my mechanic has been rebuilding for me sine sometime in November. I seemed to spend all of Friday figuring out how to drive it — I accidentally put it into a “sport” mode that depended upon me to do the shifts, then eventually figured out how to put it in full automatic mode again — but at last I was home with my “new” car and new license plates.

Eldest and I spent much of Saturday vacuuming the upholstery and detailing the interior in mid-30s weather, since it wasn’t raining, or hailing, or snowing at the time. We found some items that the previous owners had left behind: five pennies, two stainless steel coffee mugs, and a fork. (I cleaned them up and will return them via my mechanic.) I flipped through the owner’s manual and put Post-It flags on the pages where information was particularly important to learn in a hurry. Illumination Brightness Controls? Now I get it!

Here’s Kinga. Kinga Forester. Get it?

She’s so much fun to drive, and she seems to enjoy k.d. lang albums as much as I do.

Typewriter Time

I’m getting ready to give a cleaning to another typewriter in my collection. It will be my mother’s 1966 Smith-Corona Galaxie II, which she gave me at Thanksgiving. I remember this machine as the one she used when she went back to college in the early 80s to earn a Master’s degree in Education from THE Ohio State University. (There’s a tiny splotch of Wite-Out on the ribbon cover; I’m thinking of leaving it there to honor all the pages she typed — and retyped — on it while sitting at the end of the dining room table.)

Eldest and I took a careful look at it this afternoon, flipping it over to see how we might get it out of its shell, but I don’t want to barge in without looking at the repairs manuals, and maybe a few YouTube videos, first. So the real work probably won’t start until next weekend.

Impossible Read checkpoint: The Once and Future King, Book One, Chapter 17. I have been doing a little reading because I so desperately want to do any reading at all. I am not caught up on my notes.

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Knitwise, I gifted the Thrift Stripe Cowl to its new owner. I also completely frogged the shawl I was making with that soft and beautiful lavender yarn (Järbo Garn Duo in purple/grey) and wound it up again to prepare for a fresh start. I have 200 g (312 m) of it; what could I make? I’m leaning towards something stole-ish in a simple stitch pattern.

The Stripe Scarf is still waiting for a perfect box, which I might have in my office at work.

So much yarn in the stash, but nothing is calling out to me right now. Eldest is requesting one of the dickeys from Elizabeth Zimmerman’s wonderful book Knitting Around, so I will try to get started on that. Casting on with some Shetland wool might be just the thing to ensure that the cold weather will fade away until next winter.

The Write Type

It’s been a long week of bearing the bitter cold and snow, checking various tasks off my list, and finding peace and relaxation where I can. The spring semester begins tomorrow and I may not be able to take a deep breath until Friday afternoon.

This weekend I finished reading Uncommon Type, a collection of short stories written by Tom Hanks. Yes, that Tom Hanks. Each story refers to or features a typewriter in some way, but other than that the stories are quite diverse. They’re all very well done. I’d be proud of myself had I written any one of them.

Hanks’s work gives me encouragement to allow myself to work on a variety of writing projects. My head is full of story ideas, but sometimes I limit myself by worrying about what kind of stories I “ought” to be writing. (Finished ones, self. Finished stories are what you should write.)

I have book after book after book about how other writers write: what their libraries and writing areas look like, which computer or typewriter or fountain pen they use, when they sit down to write and when they rise up. I suspect that my attraction to these books was the hope that whatever routine and process worked so well for, say, Ursula LeGuin, would be the process that worked for me — if only I could copy it.

Of course, I am not Ursula LeGuin. I have led a different life and have a different mind and very different circumstances and resources. The lesson that I wish I had absorbed decades ago was to keep writing, try everything, and keep doing the things that work for me. So I guess I’ll have to take it to heart now, start writing, try everything, and find out what works.

Impossible Read checkpoint: The Once and Future King, Book 1, Chapter 16 of 24.

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Knitwise, I have found a recipient for the finished Thrift Stripe Scarf. Eldest told me to take it to work and find out who it belonged to, so I did.

MUSIC: SAX SOLO

I was alone in my office that day. The ownerless scarf was draped over a chair. That’s when SHE walked in — the dame who needed a scarf.

MUSIC: FADES OUT

Anyway, they’re such a good match for each other. I’m now in the process of using the rest of the yarn to create a coordinating cowl for her.

In person, it doesn’t actually look like a terrified Muppet.

The Stripe Scarf is waiting, with a few other items, for the Perfect Shipping Box to come along so that it can be sent to its recipient.

I’m thinking of frogging the very narrow shawl — or whatever I had named it — made from the wonderfully soft lavender yarn I found at a thrift store. I now think that a traditional prayer shawl or wrap shape would suit the yarn (and me) better. If the events of the coming week make me want to tear something apart, I’ll do the frogging then to settle my mind.

And then I’ll be thinking about casting on for a new project: whatever works.

Hip checked

I’ve made it through a week filled with hip pain. If you’re the praying type, could you pray that my doctor’s office would return my phone call regarding my physical therapist’s request for me to start a new PT series that will fix the issues I’m dealing with? Apparently I didn’t use the correct key words that would have let them know how much pain I am in. Thank you.

I don’t want to be an old grouchy lady. But I certainly feel like one at the moment. (After this paragraph, I will try not to be one.) But holy carp, it’s tough to not be able to sit for very long or to stand for very long. Alternating the two troublesome activities doesn’t work as well as I had thought that it would. One thing that would help is if I had less clutter in my house and therefore had fewer objects around which I needed to navigate. But bending over, crouching, and lifting things just got terribly painful, so it hurts to make things less painful for myself. Add to that a dog who prefers to stand just in front of me (alternatively, to lie down right next to me), and I feel as if my passage is blocked before I even try to start to move.

Enough with the old grouchy lady. I’ve been spending the first part of December trying to catching up on my reading journal for 2023. In a few cases (well, seven) this means writing up a reflection on a book I finished reading earlier in the year. I also need to do the layout for any books I started to read in December (there is one so far, which I will discuss later), and I would like to create lists for the books I purchased this year and the books I thought I would read but never actually started. And then there are a few books (well, fourteen) I did start but haven’t finished yet.

Today is December 10? Plenty of time! In another universe…

The book I started reading today, Writers Workshop in a Book: The Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction (2007), is one of a few books on writing I found at recently acquired from Half Price Books. I’ve been thinking lately about writing and blockages and getting unblocked, and it’s probably time for me to plan another Long Weekend Writing Retreat for myself in late December or early January. Maybe I’ll even limit myself to longhand and typewriter composition. Leave a comment if you’d like to see the slide deck that I create for it.

The other books were Time Travel: A Writer’s Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel, by Paul Nahin, and Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories, by Loren Niemi and Elizabeth Ellis. That’s a lot to read and digest, so we’ll see how it goes.

I haven’t added any more typewriters to my collection since last week, but I did create some really cute luggage-tag cards that I’m going to use to identify each typewriter while it’s resting in each case. (I made them for the caseless ones, too, because I just couldn’t help myself.)

Test print on regular copy paper.

Design credit for this two-sided card goes to the creative folks at Avery Labels, who actually offer a free template containing an image of a manual typewriter as well as a typewriter-y font. This saved me SO much time. And I just ordered the luggage tags online, so this project should be wrapped up by sometime next week.

I also filled myself with lovely music over the weekend by attending a local concert that included Peter Mulvey, Katie Dahl, and two new performers, the stunningly talented Carissa I-Don’t-Know-Her-Last-Name and Matthew Sanborn. All I can say is Patreon, folks. Patreon. Set up an account and keep the local live music flowing. Then show up at the local concert, enjoy, and buy the CDs and the merch!

Pre-show, with great anticipation.

At this show I sat in the same row as a lovely lady who told me that she didn’t have a way to listen to the music that was offered at the merch table. WHAT? Honey. Go buy a nice turntable or hie thee to Goodwill and pick up a CD player and speakers for a few bucks. The musicians need you!

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Knitwise, I cranked out a few more inches on the Thrifted Stripe Scarf or whatever I’m calling it this week.

Then I weighed the remainder of the yarn, as well as the project itself (trying to keep the circs themselves off the scale, as I didn’t know their weight), to help me figure out whether or not I had enough yarn to finish the scarf at a proper length. Well, if I did my math properly, I have enough yarn to create an uncomfortably long scarf. So I did more math to estimate how much yarn (well, how many pattern repeats) would be needed to finish a Scarf of a Proper Length. I might have enough left over for a matching hat or a similarly patterned cowl.

Clear as mud? (Lori, check my math.)

The other Striped Scarf is at a standstill because I can’t find a yarn store that sells Plymouth Encore, which I used to be able to find seemingly everywhere. I even went to an LYS I hadn’t visited in years to try to find this yarn, and they were amazingly unhelpful. I will blame the change in ownership. But if this yarn simply doesn’t exist anymore, please drop me a line and let me know.

That’s all, folks. I’m tired and this rabbit needs to go to bed early tonight.