Thanks Everyone

Thanks for all your comments, tweets and texts. It's been an odd week but friends and family have made it easier and so I'm still in one piece. I met with Pooch on Thursday to discuss what had happened and we agree 100% on what the problems are, but are fairly clueless about the solution. We have been to Relate twice before and it was very helpful but we both feel we've gone as far as we can with that. Not got any plans for what happens yet except that we're both agreed we shouldn't rush to decide anything. It is all very amicable which is good.

I have been pretty restless this week and not sleeping as much as usual (I'm a 9 hours kindagal) both of which have affected my concentration. So I was pretty surprised to finish my second pair of jaywalkers, using some lovely sock yarn my Secret Pal sent me from Norway. On Ravelry here.

I also cast on another pair using some of the sock yarn I got in Istanbul. It is quite a heavy 4-ply so they are knitting up pretty cosy on 2.5mm but that's fine. I had expected it to be self-striping/fairisle type thing like classic regia, but it's actually much shorter colour lengths than that. Having noticed this with the ribbing I decided on the Estonian Button Stitch socks that I have made before (Rav link).

It was supposed to be sunny and 22 degrees today, but instead it is literally this gloomy outside.

Perhaps fortunately I had a well needed night out last night and so felt rather reticent to venture out today as had previously planned so I don;t really mind. Plus it means I have started the embroidered grid that I've seen on a number of blogs and on Flickr recently. I've only done two squares but I really like them.

The other grids I've seen were 1" squares but that seemed a bit small for my bodgy embroidery skills so I've gone with about 1.75" which is coincidentally the width of the ruler I used to draw the grid. Brains, I gottem.

I've decided to fill the squares with things that are currently relevant to me. When I woke up this morning I felt rather unwell and pretzels have been a lifeline.

I don't know how far I'll get with it before I lose interest (realistic - I got it) but I do love the 3D aspect to it.

My Director was asking me at work yesterday what I was doing this weekend and to advising me to make sure I wasn't going to be alone. She meant it kindly but I did boggle at this a bit since I really like being alone and am quite happy entertaining myself. Then one of the people I was out with last night said something that made me laugh. "I know you'll be alright cause you've got your knitting and that. I know you told me you liked that stuff but it wasn't til I saw a tweet about yarn that I realised you were serious." But it's true - I have got my yarn, and my box of embroidery threads which makes me happy just looking at it. Life may suck, but at least there is still yarn.

New Endings

I grew up with divorced parents. They split when I was 4 and so I don't have many memories of them being together. Divorce in the early 80s (at least where I grew up) was still pretty rare so I was the only one in my year at primary school with divorced parents and there weren't many more of us at secondary/sixth form or Uni. I have horrified various friends and ex-boyfriends over the years with my voicing the opinion that when I got married I would also get divorced at some point after that. I expected my marriage to last about 10 years. I thought this was the only practical way to be and would help manage everyone's expectations. What I never expected was that it would end after just over 3 years. Yes, Pooch and I have separated. It's a trial separation so you never know but neither of us is that hopeful we can pull it around.

I hesitated for a few days about blogging about this. It is very personal and although this blog always used to be more like a diary than a craft blog, I'd deliberately shifted it to be less personal since I got married. I figured it was all private after that as it was no longer just about me - it was about 'us'. Now though it looks like it is going to be all 'me' again and hell, Crazy Aunt Purl got a two book deal out of it so why not. Besides, even post-therapy I still hate talking about emotional things and find it much easier to find release through writing about it instead. When I have to talk about stuff I get this tension across the tops of my cheeks - the muscles you tense when something smells bad or you're doing a rabbit impression.

Hate it. 

I'm meeting up with Pooch on Thursday to talk about things. I made a decision to move out at the weekend to give us both some space so am effectively flat-sitting for a friend who is away for a month. It means I've got a nice little one-bed flat near Elephant & Castle with a balcony and Sky but no toaster. Being able to move here for a month is a real life saver. But I still constantly have to fight the urge to call Pooch or go back to our lovely flat where we would hug and it would all be ok. Sometimes, life utterly sucks. I'm trying to put a brave face on it but inside I am broken. 

Living in a boy's flat (he owns it and lives by himself) is quite interesting in itself because there are no feminine touches anywhere. There is nothing to hang washing on for instance - because he just hangs it over chairs or on the back of doors. There are also no cushions. Not one. He's told me to do whatever I want to make myself comfortable but there's only one thing I've done so far. The doormat looked like roadkill so I have bought him a red and white polka dot one, which looks nothing like this picture.

I'm not sure what he'll make of it when he comes back but I'll be gone by then (where to I have no idea) and in the meantime it makes coming back to the empty, unfamiliar flat a bit easier.

All this means that I may be blogging regularly, if the cathartic spleen thing works out, or maybe not at all for a long time. But I'll probably carry on tweeting about random things that come to my attention (today there's been the nobel prize for physics, derivative creativity, trade union ballots and which pantomime an imaginary miner should be in) so you can follow me on there if you want to. Link is top left.