Captain's Log: Random Thoughts Edition

- I've started knitting my first sweater and boy howdy, I have signed up for a process. I'm knitting a  fingering weight sweater (read: skinny-ass yarn) in an oversized style and because of the way the gauge is working out, I'm going up two full sizes. At one point, there will be over 500 stitches in a row. I'm excited and nervous: this is by far the largest knitting project I've undertaken and I usually go for fast, complicated projects (socks!) rather than lonnnnng ones.

- Okay, but seriously, why isn't Hermione in Ravenclaw?

- This summer has been the living end for sunsets in Sauble Beach, and I wish someone could invent a camera that really captures what it looks like, because everything I take a picture of ends up looking yellow, instead of the deeply vibrant orange/pink/red/purple we've been actually seeing

- I am feeling rather bored with my kitchen right now, and I'm hoping for some inspiration. I've been doing another deep dive on Six Seasons, which I use mostly for food-porn reasons and less as an actual cookery text, but its autumn section does have some intriguing recipes, and I should just commit to it. Most of my fun food energy goes into preserves, so I need some weeknight dinner slam-dunks. (Oh my god, I sounds like a parody of a middle-aged white woman, but f'real, y'all.)

- Last fall around this time, I started dreading the winter so hard it was almost palpable. I'm really trying to pay attention to myself in this regard again this year, because last winter was one of the hardest things I had to get through and doing another stint sounds like a goddamn nightmare. However, reassuringly (?), I do not currently find myself at that level of anxiety. I have this dream of booking a last-minute getaway to somewhere hot and safe and easy, and even though I have no real way of manifesting that without doubling my non-zero credit card debt, I just have this sense that somehow, for no good reason, this winter will pass a little easier.

- Okay, but seriously, is Ron Weasley even a very good wizard? Like, I know Harry Potter is a bit of a chode, but he is remarkably talented and can somehow hold his own against Voldemort while still a teenager, and clearly Hermione is even more talented than Harry, but what does old Roonil Wazlib bring to the table? Snide commentary?  Is he literally just there for friendship reasons? Please explain.

- In a few weeks, I'm going for my first haircut in over a year, and I'm at a loss as to what I want her to do. Is "fix my whole messy life" too much of an ask?

- I have some real garden goals for next summer, but I have no real garden experience. I want a garden yoda to help me grow food for myself! I have visions of hyper-local food sovereignty.

- I feel very creatively juicy right now, and even though my cooking and knitting both feel like chores at this moment, I know I'll get back into it. In the meantime, I'm daydreaming about my next-next knitting projects, and learning (teaching myself?) how to screenprint, and maybe some one-page fiction challenges, and sewing! Oh, sewing. And hanging art and then designing a little she-shed for myself, and creating a personal sigil and a family tree and a map of my own personal hotspots. I love creative projects, and one of the things I like best is daydreaming and percolating over them for months, sometimes years, before I really launch myself into them. I like really sitting with an idea for a long time, because then it's just like, boom, execution, done.

- Okay, but seriously, can we agree that Dumbledore is, in fact, the very worst character in all the books? Fuck that guy times a million for letting Harry stay with and get abused by the Dursleys, and even though JKR ret-conned a reason into the fifth or sixth book, it's not fucking good enough.

- Three is a tough age for both the three-year-old and the person spending time with the three-year-old, and I will leave it at that, but I do feel like the people who complain about the terrible twos have standards that are too high, and also maybe three is just sort of a bullshit time. Thank god for preschool is what I'm saying.

- I love my kid though. And I love my family, and Celebration cookies, and my new bed, and the yarn I have coming to me, and the dates I have planned for my husband, and I love peeking at the cute guys at the coffee shop, and meeting new mom-friends and friend-friends, and getting invited to people's weddings and baby showers, and the sunlight over a field of brown-and-orange soybeans, and dark fall skies, and slowly, slowly, feeling like maybe the ground beneath my feet might be okay, even just for today.