Straight Lines**

(Hard week – I do love this Song **Silverchair’s straight lines). Go ahead. Watch it and come back. I’ll wait.

“Straight Lines” is generally a positive and upbeat song. The song is about feeling alone in the world, but making it through tough times and overcoming them. This is illustrated in the lyrics such as “Lately I’m a desperate believer, but I’m walking in a straight line” and “There’s no changing yesterday…everything will be fine”. The song’s meaning appears to be a biographical comment from lead singer Daniel Johns who fought anorexia, clinical depression and reactive arthritis in the late nineties and early millennium, and was able to beat them. It also appears to be about being content with your place in life, thus walking in a straight line. (ref Wikipedia)

I finished my final piece for the exhibition last night. I exhaled mightily as I made a straight line to the self imposed quota of things I wanted to exhibit/sell. But am so pleased with the results. If anything, weaving quite a few pieces has really helped me to experiment and find what I enjoy. I just LOVE weaving. It’s everything in my power not to go and purchase a huge floor loom – but then again the immediacy of the Knitting Loom and the ability to start and finish projects at a nice pace really helps. Photos to follow.

I spent some of the money of possible future sales (ahem), today, at the wonderful South Seas Knitting Site. Made a bee line to the Habu stuff. SOMEBODY STOP ME! I know I should be saving up for Bendy – but couldn’t resist.

Whilst weaving, I had such a good conversation with Steve. He’s always been one of those people that has the TV on even if he is out mowing the lawn. Last night, after a very hectic week for him, he came home, and sat and had dinner (again – another plus point for the loom – it’s small and compact) – with no TV. We talked about his work, my work, about friends, about blogs, the internet, friends on the internet, words on blogs…it was really really interesting.

Whilst he knows the enjoyment I derive from blogging, he doesn’t get it. To him, if he gets a phonecall from someone asking why he didn’t reply to their urgent email, he simply asks why didn’t they call him if it was urgent in the first place. And points out that he doesn’t get to read all his emails immediately. It’s a good point. For business transactions.
For me, blogging is about me expressing what is going on in my head at the time.

As convoluted and twisted as my brain is, such is my blog. With one exception. I try and keep it nice. If I’m thinking something bad, I don’t blog it. That’s my choice though right? My grandmother always said “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”. It’s a reasonable maxim to live/blog by I think. But to Steve, he doesn’t see my blogging friends as ‘real’ friends. Because I don’t see them face to face.

When I challenged him on this, and believe me my blogging friends, I challenged him, stating that I valued my blogging friendships just as much in context and asked him what the difference was. He said that real friends pick up the phone to talk – and I just laughed at him. Don’t you think that’s funny? I would have thought that he would say that you meet your real friends in person….but given the ‘urgent email’ conversation, I understand. It’s just different for him. And that’s what makes the world go around, non?

I always had a dream to write a book, and when I mentioned this to Steve last night, stating that it’s one of the reasons I blog at all, he laughed.

‘But Don”, he said, “you are such a BAD project finisher”.

And in some ways he is right. But that’s why the blog works for me. It’s like the loom. It’s an immediate thing. A quick fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants blog post. If someone took me up on the offer to write a book I think it would take on the same weight as when someone asks you to knit something for them. You say yes and then do everything in your power to not knit it. (Or is that just me?).