mental health
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Brioche Stitch: New Things Are Exhausting
Erica, FreeIt’s been a while since I’ve posted. That’s because I’ve been so exhausted that when I get home, all I have the energy to do is sit on the couch and watch TV until I fall asleep. I want to be knitting, but it’s hard to learn something new at the end of the day.
Honestly, it’s always been hard for me to learn new things. I’m not sure why. A lot of things come naturally to me and so I’m not used to it when things don’t. And when I say a lot of things come naturally, I mean at a surface level. I’m definitely a jack of all trades, master of none type of person. All that to say, the brioche stitch was a bit of a challenge.
The brioche stitch was a good place to start. It was something I’d never tried before, but always wanted to. And the instructions were nice and repetitive. Once I got the feel for it, it was smooth sailing. I really like how it turned out, and I’m excited to make some patterns that include this stitch in the figure.
The swatch has some mistakes, but I decided not to go back and redo it. I like the reminder that I was learning and wasn’t perfect. Plus, now I know what to look for in the future and can understand what happened and how to fix it. It’s a nice, low-stakes way to get used to imperfection.
-Erica
Ribbed Stitch: When You Can’t Follow Instructions
Erica, FreeThis is just a simple combination of stitches I already know. Why did I choose to knit a 2×2 ribbing in a cotton yarn that has very little flexibility? Because I wanted to start a new swatch but I didn’t want to follow instructions. The first two swatches were more like a warm up, a very basic reintroduction to knitting, which was nice. I feel ready to move on to something more advanced, something that keeps my hands busy while I watch TV, but I don’t have enough energy to read instructions.
Work has been such a drain on me lately. I had to deal with a particularly ornery customer today. They wanted an update on their order status, which I can understand, but we just didn’t have the items in stock. We should have had the items in stock and we should have notified the customer that the items were delayed. I also should have known the items were delayed as the person designated to answer customer calls. But no one tells me anything AND I’m not allowed to pass calls on to anyone who is actually responsible.
It’s worth clarifying, by the time someone calls, there’s nothing anyone can actually do unless we somehow have their items in the building to be screenprinted or embroidered. I can check to see if we have the items in the building, but chances are we have the base item for a different order. If we do have the items, I can find out where they are in the queue but I can’t change the queue. And I can’t do anything about who ordered them and why they were ordered so late because I don’t do the ordering, and I’m not allowed to forward calls to the person who does. I tried to put together a report showing the correlation between the orders we are getting complaints on and the time it took us to order for our supplier, but my boss does not care at all.
That’s why I come home from work and, instead of working on a new stitch, I am knitting a small sample swatch out of yarn that has no elasticity. It’s not really what I want to be doing, but it is what it is.
-Erica
Stockinette Stitch: I can’t job search right now
Erica, FreeMy last post made it abundantly clear that I’m unhappy. In a big way. And my job is driving me crazy. Which begs the question, why am I making time to practice knitting stitches I already know instead of job searching?
The short answer is because I don’t feel like myself right now and I don’t want to job search when I don’t feel like myself. The long answer is I’m afraid that if I job search when I can’t get excited about anything, much less feign excitement about a job I don’t want and my embellished accomplishments will just land me at another shitty job where I’m underpaid, overworked, and stuck doing emotional labor for an incompetent man child running an inherited business. That was a mouthful.
Normally, I get back to feeling like myself by doing a big creative project. But because of the vicious cycle of my job sucking all my energy, which keeps me from anything creative that might give me more energy, that’s just not going to happen. That’s why I’m spending a week knitting a tiny swatch of a stitch I learned 15 years ago. I’m not doing a lot, but at least I’m doing something.
And on the actual crafting front, I am relearning to manage my tension, keep my stitches even, and count rows. All useful skills for when I eventually work on a larger project.
-Erica
In Memoriam: The Plants We Lost Along the Way
Ella, FreeIt is that time of year to remember those that were lost in the creation of the garden. Starting from seeds always carries the risk of great losses, many through no fault of the seeds themselves.
After her middling success at gardening last year, Erica decided to expand her garden this year. She wanted to start plants from seeds to help defer the cost of expansion. This was a great idea. Seeds are cheap and starting them early helped her through the home stretch of late-winter depression.
The problem with using the tiny sprouts to help with her depression was twofold. Sprouts need consistent attention and when she was too depressed, she tended to forget them and when she started to emerge from her depression and be more active, she also tended to forget. The hardiest of plants survived this and made it out into the garden. For now, we must take a moment to remember those that did not.
Rainbow Carrots: She was so excited to have rainbow carrots this year. Erica is always looking to add variety to her diet, but rainbow carrots aren’t always available at her grocery store. These plucky seeds were some of the first to sprout, but unfortunately after thinning they were moved to the birdcage in the living room where they were forgotten
Swiss Chard: they were the very first seeds to sprout, and she was so looking forward to adding these to her greens rotation. Sadly, they also ended up in the birdcage, etiolated, then forgotten. The ones that did make it outside weren’t able to withstand the shock and the early spring rain.
Chamomile: these tiny seeds were planted last and sprouted almost immediately. So many sprouted. but almost none made it to thinning. Erica was just too busy with the plants that had already made it outside that they dried out in their little egg carton.
Luckily, Erica is not deterred. It’s still early in the season and she has started new chamomile and rainbow carrot seeds outside. Hopefully since they are in the same location as the rest of the plants, they stand a better chance of survival. Here’s hoping those early losses were not in vain.
-Ella
Hindsight is 20/20: Gardening Tips that aren’t useful anymore
Ella, FreeLast year, Erica started a garden by the driveway at her apartment. It was small and she didn’t end up getting a ton of food from it. Her most plentiful harvested were cherry tomatoes and herbs. Her potatoes and garlic turned out small. Her raspberry bush, blueberry bush, and strawberry plants didn’t provide any fruit at all. Still, she seemed to enjoy the experience.
This year, I wanted to help her make her garden more prosperous. I had her institute a few simple changes to help offset the costs and hopefully lead to a more prosperous garden.
- Planning ahead: at the end of last year, Erica took all her strawberries out of their containers, planted them in the ground, and covered them with leaf litter. They survived the winter along with some garlic bulbs from last year!
- Lessons learned: last year, Erica planted root vegetables in the ground and everything else in containers. Harvesting her root veggies from the clay soil was extremely taxing. This year she will do the opposite
- Starting with seeds: this takes the most work, but hopefully will pay off. By starting with seeds, Erica can grow a wider variety of veggies, especially greens.
- Choosing new plants: Erica thought a lot about what kinds of vegetables and herbs she actually wants to eat/use. New additions are coneflower and chamomile for homemade herbal tea.
Hopefully these changes will help Erica’s garden thrive this year. As always, I will be here to help her out whenever it gets to be too much for her.
-Ella
Starting Simple with the Garter Stitch
Erica, FreeSometimes it’s good to start out with something familiar. I began this project to learn new stitches, but I also haven’t knitted for a long time. Beginning with a stitch I already know, the most basic knitting stitch, helped me regain the feeling of the needles in my hands, the yarn tension, and the feeling of relaxation knitting brings me.
I originally assumed I could make one swatch per night, but it ended up taking me a couple days to finish this one and that’s okay. I remind myself that I’m also trying to take better care of myself too. Sometimes it’s all I can do when I get home from work to eat dinner and go to bed.
Things have been especially crazy lately. We took on a contract for a large company and we are not able to fulfill the orders as they come in. My boss has put it on me to assuage all the customer complaints even though I don’t have the power to move their orders through faster or give them a discount or anything. And my boss has instituted an inbox zero policy for customer service complaints, which means I have to answer every single complaint email and voicemail by the end of the day.
All I want to do at the end of the day is sit catatonically on the couch with tv playing in the background, but then work wins, right? So instead, I’m sitting catatonically on the couch knitting like a zombie while the tv plays in the background. Progress.
-Erica
When the most difficult spells are the most important
Ella, PatreonYour First Stalker: The Unexpected costs of a single incident
Erica, FreeOne of the incidents that took me away from this blog last year was my very first stalker. While the incident in question was brief and quickly resolved, the stress and trauma lingered. Before I begin, I would like to clarify that this is for illustrative purposes only and is based solely on one young woman’s experience with a creepy neighbor leaving a weird note on her car. This is absolutely not meant to judge anyone else’s reaction to a similar situation. We all do what we must do you feel safe. This is also not meant as an invitation for advice or consolation. I have already received plenty. Anymore, especially from strangers on the Internet, would be unwelcome and extremely overwhelming.
The cost in time:
- One hour spent frantically calling your parents asking what they would do. A note on your car is just over the line enough that you are spiraling into terrifying and dangerous possibilities. You can hear the fear in their voices too. They are 1200 miles away and cannot protect you as they feel compelled to do.
- One night spent quietly alone in your apartment not lost but exchanged for a night of getting drunk with the friends who were kind enough to let you stay over on such short notice.
- One morning lost to the hangover.
- One hour of working on your ongoing issues in therapy lost to this new and terrifying situation. And asking a mental health professional how to deal with a crazy person (crazy person is not the word you use. In therapy you say “potentially dangerous” and “unstable”)
- One hour of your afternoon of your Saturday afternoon lost to filing the police report. Crying in the police station because you did not expect the officer to be so understanding.
- Two hours on a weekday evening pricing out doorbell cameras home alarm systems and privacy film for the windows.
- Half an hour installing doorbell cam
- Two hours installing alarm system
- Four hours installing window films on all windows
Monetary cost
- $200 doorbell cameras for front and back doors
- $250 (on a 30% off promotion) for home security system
- $30 a month optional monitoring for security system. Who knows how many months you will feel this is necessary?
- $150 for privacy window film. Most important for windows the directly face your neighbor’s apartment. You want nice ones that you will enjoy looking at. You don’t want your house to feel like a prison. You’ve done nothing wrong, after all.
So there you have it. Six hundred dollars up-front and an ongoing cost of $30 a month and over 24 hours of my precious time lost to some piece of shit who at best thinks he is entitled to my attention and at worst has taken the first step down a path to putting me in physical danger.
I have not had any issues with my neighbor since the incident, but I think it is important to talk about these kinds of things so that people know they are not alone and should never be made to feel unsafe.
-Erica
View From Outside: Life As A Supporting Character
Ella, FreeLast year was not a good year for Erica. I’m not going to detail what happened. That’s her story to tell. I will offer some insight on how I did my best to support her.
When we started, I was helping Erica learn to use her powers in alignment with her talents. This past year, I did my best to help her stay above water. Between her increasing workload and some particularly stressful events, her mental health took a nosedive.
I used my powers to remove as many of the obstacles as I could, but often the scars of what had already happened remained. It didn’t help that she chose to move right before everything got to be too much.
That doesn’t mean the entire year was terrible. Erica started a garden at her new apartment. I helped her with that. It was small, but the food was good. She did some sewing, some crocheting, and started a new project with her old origami.
She didn’t feel like writing though, and I didn’t want to push it. She didn’t need another obligation on top of everything else. That was my main job over the past year. Letting her enjoy what she could without any sense of obligation. I’m sorry for the hiatus, but hopefully this explanation helps. If Erica felt like she needed a break, we all did.
-Ella