Minus and plus
Some stupid smoker set fire to my best friend's house Saturday night! WHEN will people figure out that tossing a smouldering thing onto dry stuff is likely to start a fire? That cigarette butts are not only litter, they are smouldering, stinking litter? That it's dangerous and stupid to toss these things away without bothering to put them out? The fire didn't do structural damage, but dang it! Mess and smoke and panic, because someone was too dumb to think. The fire department got an anonymous call and put the fire out but I still want to slap the moron that started it.
A minor annoyance by comparison, I was all set on Saturday morning, got my new knitter started nicely, did the first row of the pattern on the Eternal Sweater, and found eight gaping holes in where I did the increases. I thought I'd be smart and do them the way the pattern says, instead of the way Mum taught me, and it left eight gaping holes! The pattern lied to me, telling me the wrong way to increase. I ripped out the pattern row, and the increase row, and another row of ribbing, and I'm going to do it right this time! Twice in the last two months now I've had to rip something out. Even though it's the right thing to do I hate doing it.
Now on the plus side, I taught Jenny L how to knit. Hubby and I went apple picking at Eckert's afterwards with friends and came home with a huge bag destined to be baked in crumbles and pies and smothered with Bird's Custard. Wore out the cat playing with the wire toy again. Found out there's another new yarn store in town I didn't know about, and they do felting classes! I'm forbidden from felting in my beloved front-loader so there may be a trip to the Laundromat in store. A felted bag would be great!
Friday night we got to listen to the first episode of the Tertiary Phase of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which you can listen to at the BBC Radio Four Hitchhiker's website until episode two comes out. Wonderful to hear Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect again, most of the original voices are back, hilariously funny script. As soon as it comes out on CD, it will join the Primary and Secondary phases on the CD rack. The last three books of the trilogy are being turned into radio series. New episodes out on Tuesdays!
Another plus: William Zinsser, my favourite writer who writes about writing, has published a new book about writing memoirs and it's excellent. I sat on the floor in Barnes & Nodule last night and chewed through the first four chapters. This quote from the last chapter really got to me:
It's a privilege to write for one other person. Do it with gratitude and with pleasure.
William Zinsser, "Writing about your life: A journey into the past"
So I'm going to write the memoir, life story, or whatever it is, and worry about the final format later. I'll start by collecting all the fragments I've written into one place. I need a monster document in chronological order, with each piece on a new page. Write it, get it out of my system, then figure out what to do with it. And there's that novel too... I could write them both for Hubby, my audience of one.