It's mid-January. The light, promised at Solstice, has finally started to creep back in. Days incrementally longer, and the deep freeze of last week has finally broken - today's high is 65F. About damn time, too, as I was getting tired of being cold. Our house is not well-insulated, and we spent all last week swaddled in layers of wool, polar fleece, and thermal underwear. Most, if not all of our freak 2 inch snow is finally gone.
I was so cold, from the deep freeze, that I actually finished a pair of knitted gloves, that had been on the needles for years - years! They worked out well, and I'm now over my glove-knitting hump. I will make more! The pattern is
Ringwood on Ravelry, and it's a free pattern. Yarn is my handspun, a Knitty n' Color superwash merino from stash. Now it's on to finish my Slytherin socks, and the Iba sweater, which would have also been most welcome in last week's 16-degree temperatures.
I'm thinking, seriously, this time, about taking a long break from social media. It occurred to me at church today, during a talk on The Transcendentalists, how much senseless noise I get in my life, from Facebook and to a somewhat lesser degree, Instagram. The Transcendentalists got inside their own heads by spending time in quiet, in the woods, in solitary industry, in reading, or in stimulating conversations with like-minded friends.
Epiphany!
Oh I love keeping up with my friends, but I'm sick of the rabbit holes, and am frankly stunned by the hours and energy whiled away online that I could be using to do something or nothing else. I'd kinda been planning a break at Lent, but am thinking to make it earlier. Trouble is, I do use social media to calendar things like our D&D games, and various pagan activities. So I can't get completely free of it, but I can damn sure reduce it. I logged out of both Fb and Instagram, and removed the apps from my phone as a start. I think the hard thing will be to break the habit of checking the feeds - gonna carry around some knitting with me for awhile, and just leave my phone on the charger at work, as I go to my classes, so I'm not automatically reaching for it. Yes, I text my spouse, sister, and friends at work, but it's not like I have to be available all the time for this activity. So, new venture, to try and make some space in my life.
Right now, it's time to prep some food for dinner and tomorrow's breakfast; Asian coleslaw, shoyu eggs, and prepack my lunch. Then a yoga video (kind reader are you familiar with
Adrienne?) and maybe a little bit of spinning.
