The Zen Leaf

Sunday Coffee – Settling In

Posted on November 13, 2016 by Thistle

It’s now been three weeks since we moved into our new house. We closed on our Texas house earlier this week (yay!) and soon we’ll close on this one. In the meantime, pretty much everything is unpacked, and we’re getting the house together how we like it.

There are so many things I love about this house. The living room is sunken, which is one of my favorite things in the world, and has a big bay window that could one day become a window seat. There are enough bedrooms for everyone to have their own, plus an office/guest room, and down in the basement, there’s easy setup for a rec room and a game room. Plus tons of storage. After a year of not having a bathtub, I think I’ve taken a bath nearly every day that I’ve been in this house.

(Bookshelves are up! Decorated for Halloween)

After only three weeks, it still feels like I’m living in someone else’s house, of course. That’s exacerbated by some of the furniture and such coming with the house. The previous owners, who haven’t lived here for a few years, left us with couch, loveseat, coffee table, entertainment center, dining room table, and a few other pieces. They didn’t need them and didn’t want to move them, and they are all high-end pieces in great condition. We’re not complaining, considering we had to leave a lot of our (crappy) furniture behind! There are still a few things we either need to get or have already bought, because the moving truck destroyed several of our things, grr, but for the most part, we’re in a good place to start. That does strengthen the feeling of living in someone else’s house, though, like we’re renting again.

(Gordo is hanging in the kitchen. He’s been in all our kitchens since 1999. It must be our house now.)

Is it weird that after a week here, I began to grieve for my old house? Not the one we just left behind, which caused too many problems to have positive associations, but the one we sold when we moved to Boston in 2014. We’d lived in that house for nearly nine years, longer than I’ve lived in any other house in my entire life. I loved that house more than I could say from the second I laid eyes on it. I didn’t care that it was small and had tons of little problems and a couple of big ones. I just loved that house, and I loved my life in that house. All the moving around of the last 2.5 years, living in four houses since that one, has been rough on me. I loved this house the second I walked into it as well, and I know that one day it has potential to be loved as much as the last, but it’s early days still, and there’s some grief involved.

Still. I can see the good. I love having a large living room to run in again, and having a place for my elliptical and boxing area and the weight bench the previous owners left us. I love my bathtub, and my cozy bedroom, and having an office instead of shoving the office area into the living room. I love our big lot with tons of room for the boys to play outside (which they’ve been doing constantly). I love that while the basement isn’t 100% finished, it’s 100% finishable, and I’m not afraid to go into any part of it the way I am with some basements. I love having a basement again, period.

(My big baby loves me again!)

We’re adjusting. There have been a great number of head colds because our bodies are not yet used to the weather, and we’re still gathering winter wardrobe. The boys love their schools, though, and we’re falling into a good daily routine. Plus – and this is a huge one for me – my Ash-kitty is finally coming out of his depression. Gavroche came into our lives just days after we moved to the last house, and Ash was angry and upset about that. He stopped sitting in my lap, stopped sitting in my chairs or sleeping on my bed, and he stopped purring altogether. Ash always saw me as his person, was constantly either in my lap or in one of my chairs (office chair, dining room chair, where I sat most often on the couch, etc). I didn’t hear him purr once the entire year we lived in our last house. Only after we moved to Wisconsin did he start to open up, spending hours in my lap and purring for me again. I’m taking this as a sign of good things to come!

Posted in Personal | Tagged house, Sunday Coffee | 9 Comments

The Motion of Puppets, by Keith Donohue (audio)

Posted on November 11, 2016 by Thistle

Theo and Kay Harper are newly married and spending the summer in Quebec when Kay goes missing. Theo frantically tries to find her, but Kay has been turned into a puppet, and while it’s possible for him to rescue her from that state, he would have to recognize and believe to do so.

This book is a conundrum for me. I honestly don’t know if I can say I liked or disliked it. The writing was fine, the premise was interesting, and I generally enjoy magical realism. Though my brain is not currently processing deeper layers of books, I could tell there were many currents here, symbols and metaphors and questions about existence. There was fascinating character development, the magic was worked in seamlessly, and the audio performance (Bronson Pinchot) was amazing.

At the same time, I spent the entire audiobook wanting to abandon the book without really knowing why. I kept thinking maybe it was just my reading mood, which has been turned toward far fluffier books, thrillers and romances and candy-books. There is too much real in my life right now to deal with, and reading is less about learning and growing these days than about escape. The Motion of Puppets was not an escape book. I kept wanting to abandon it, and at the same time knew that it was a good book that I should finish. Probably, I ought to have put it aside until my brain is in a different mental space. I would have done so, I think, if the audio had been just okay instead of great. Pinchot did a fantastic job of keeping me listening. Even after finishing – with a presently-unsatisfying ending because it wasn’t neat, tidy, or clear – I didn’t return the book to Audible. I have a feeling this is one I’ll want to go back to someday, the sort of book that nests in my brain and grows into something I love. A case of right book, wrong time.

ETA from Aug 2018: I was wrong. The further I got from this book, the less I liked it. In the end, I did return the audiobook about six months later, and I remember this as a well-written book where nothing happens, a book which was totally unsatisfying in every way.

Posted in 2016, Adult, Prose | Tagged atmospheric, audio, circus horror, speculative | 2 Comments

Wellness Wednesday #34 – When the World Crumbles

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Thistle

Originally I had another post drafted for today, but I’ve pushed it forward to next week. This morning, I need to express my utter despair. I don’t talk politics often here, and I’ve mostly tried to stay out of the political arena everywhere in my life over the last year. Last night just killed me, though. I’ve spent the last two days in a state of heightened anxiety, on the verge of panic attacks, because I knew this was going to happen. It didn’t matter what the projections and polls were saying. Our country is in love with reality TV and talk shows and the general nastiness that Trump embodies, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that he won.

Still, there was a part of me that hoped, a part of me that did my part at the polls and slowly died last night as the results came in. I finally went to bed around 11pm central because I couldn’t keep watching the nightmare unfold. I spent a restless night tossing and turning, dreaming about election stuff, fruitlessly hoping that I’d wake up to find that the winds had changed and Clinton pulled off a last second win. I knew it wouldn’t happen, but there was some part of me that believed we couldn’t really elect someone as dangerous as Trump.

I’m a fairly liberal person, but I’m not anti-republican. I’ve liked republicans in the past, and respected some of their candidates even if I didn’t vote for them. I even voted in the republican primary this year because I knew that race was going to be more important than the democractic one. I wanted two decent candidates this November. I wanted a choice I could live with no matter which side won. Now, I just feel vulnerable and in danger, because my family and I embody so many of the things Trump says he’ll destroy. Too many of my friends and family members are gay, trans, non-binary, non-white, not-Christian, and/or female. It’s not okay that we are all unsafe now.

Also not okay: the electoral college. For the second time since I became eligible to vote – and I’ve only been eligible for five presidential elections now – the electoral college has gone one way while the popular vote has gone the other. (At least as of 8am central – results not entirely final yet.) The system is outdated, and it’s not helping voters to feel like their votes matter. Not okay.

Alright. Rant over. I’m out.

Note that I do not publish or keep argumentative or degrading comments. This is my space and I will express myself how I wish. If you disagree, feel free to express that in your own space, not mine.

Posted in Personal | Tagged Wellness Wednesday | 4 Comments

A Table Set for Five

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Thistle

Sometimes I kinda go crazy when yarn goes on sale. When Lily Sugar’n Cream cotton skeins went on sale for a dollar each, I bought around 30 of them, all in different colors. A week later, we decided to move across the country, and you know how that progress of that journey progressed! I began making place-mats with my cotton before we left, and had gotten several done before the move. Now, I’ve gotten them all made! We have a table set for five.

I know it’s traditional to have all your place-mats match. I don’t much care, though. I let everyone in the family pick out the design they liked best and the colors they liked best, and then I got to work.

Ambrose’s place-mat was the first I worked on. There was no pattern for this. Instead, we’d seen something similar on image searches for crocheted table settings, and it looked easy enough to replicate. Ambrose loves lots of color, so he chose his colors and the order they would go in, and I got to work. It only took a few hours to piece together, and came out very nice once blocked!

My place mat was the second done. I heavily-modified a potholder pattern from Ravelry. My cotton yarn is size 4 and this pattern called for size 1, but I decided that the size 4 would work for my mat if I added a few more flowers to the longer section. I then changed up the pattern to let me use two colors of yarn for the background. And while the project turned out beautifully, I will never use this pattern again. Nope, nope, nope. There is FAR too much embroidery involved. Those flowers took me several days to put together and I hated every minute of it. I love crochet. I hate sewing. Good to know.

Up next was Laurence’s design (mostly because he kept saying “When will you make mine? Have you started mine?”). I found the design for this on Pinterest, which led me to a page that supposedly links out to the original source, except the original source has gone missing. In other words, no pattern. This looked easy enough to replicate, slightly modified to fit Laurence’s colors and design choices, and it came out quite nice! He loved it, too, and was sad it immediately got packed away before he could actually use it. Ha!

Morrigan’s place-mat is a slightly-adapted version of this pattern from Moogly. This was one of my favorite mats to make – simple and easy and pretty. It was actually my third time making one of these, as I used the non-adapted version of the pattern to make coordinating mats and coasters for my sister and her husband for their wedding in August.

Jason’s place-mat had to wait until after we finished moving to Wisconsin, and even then it took a long time. Finally, though, right after we moved into our own house, I got this one done. The pattern is from Red Heart, with a bit less edging on it or it would have been massive compared to the others. It came out beautifully!

A lot of good stuff came from this project. I learned how to block properly – crucial with cotton projects – and it turned out that our new dining room table was real wood and needs place-mats and coasters if we don’t want to damage it. This came just at the right time!

Posted in Crochet | Tagged I made a thing., Yarn Art | 6 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Goodbye October, Hello November!

Posted on November 6, 2016 by Thistle

October was a pretty crazy month. There are some things going on that are behind the scenes, so to speak, and can’t be spoken about here on the blog. Those are causing (lots and lots of) stress. Additionally, we spent most of the month looking for a new house, setting up the closing of our old Texas house (should be this upcoming week!), then moving into our new house (which should close either late this month or early next). Plus there was both Morrigan’s birthday and Halloween. The whole month went by in a blip because of all this, which is probably good because otherwise I would have been far more conscious of all those awful Trump things going on that make me angry every time I see them. I’m glad Other Things have been at the forefront of my brain.

(scenes from October)

In books, I had a fairly good month, reading nine altogether, five on audio, six for RIP. I did read a lot of fluff in there, and had some disappointments, but I also had some really good reads and rereads, so it all balances out. Considering my head wasn’t really in my books either, I’m happy with the way the month went. It’s hard to pick a favorite, though I’ve given that label to The Girl with All the Gifts, which completely surprised me given that I hadn’t originally wanted to read it. Just goes to show, right? I’m glad I gave it a chance.

I’m glad to be starting November. Sadly, I can’t participate in NaNoWriMo this year, for the first time since 2009. There’s been too much happening over the last six months to have allowed any time to consider writing, and I didn’t want to throw myself into a last-second manuscript and not give it the justice it deserves. I’m a huge NaNo planner, down to the chapter-by-chapter details, and it wasn’t going to happen this year. So I told myself no, that I’ll try again next year, and in the meantime, will work on getting myself a routine and an exercise regimen started again. After six months of constant stress, I need to spend a little time on my health again! That’s where my November will be dedicated.

That’s about all for me. How was your October? Any exciting November plans? I promise I’ll be back to regular commenting and visiting blogs soon. Moving is hard!

Posted in Book Talk, Personal, Writing | Tagged Sunday Coffee | 7 Comments

A Torch Against the Night, by Sabaa Tahir

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Thistle

Because this is a second book in a series, I’m not going to talk about the story itself. I don’t want to give away book or series spoilers. Instead, this’ll just be a mini-review of my experience of the book.

First, I enjoyed reading this one. The first half was a bit slower, so it took awhile to get into. After a certain event about halfway through, things picked up a lot. I thought many of the twists were obvious from the beginning, except it turned out that either I was wrong, or I wasn’t right enough in my predictions. There were also a couple twists I didn’t see coming at all. I’m glad we got to learn a little more of the jinn elements of the story, and I’m fascinated to see where Elias’s story in particular goes. Also to note: Tahir is not afraid to kill off characters when necessary, and I highly respect that. On the downside, there has been nothing in the first two books that have made me need to read the next two. By the time they come out, I’m not sure my interest will be high enough to keep reading. At the moment, I plan to, but without a compelling need, I don’t know how I’ll feel by the time the rest are published.

Posted in 2016, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged mini-review, RIP-worthy, speculative | Leave a comment

Wellness Wednesday #33 – Paralysis

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Thistle

I currently stand on the edge of something. I’m in my own house now, and can control many things I couldn’t before: when/where to exercise. What to buy and eat. My daily schedules and routines. Etc. This is an exciting place, but also a terrifying one. I have a rough road ahead, and as I stand here, so many things paralyze me.

1. Injury: 15 months after I sprained my ankle, it still hasn’t fully healed. I’ve undergone physical therapy twice; worked with chiropractors and massage therapists and an athletic trainer; iced and foam-rolled and stretched and heated and rested and everything else thrown at me to try to make this better. Sometimes there’s no pain, and sometimes I wake up unable to walk without limping. I’m in the process of getting to a specialist for imagine to determine if there are any tears in the tendons or ligaments. Sigh.

2. Insomnia: If I don’t sleep, everything else in my world falls apart. Insomnia has been a problem my whole life, getting worse in my adolescence and then growing extremely severe about five years ago. I rely on a lot of factors to get as much sleep as possible, but I often feel I’m fighting an uphill battle. The issues is so enormous, though, that at this point Jason and I have gone to the extreme of having separate bedrooms in order to not wake each other up multiple times nightly!

3. Addiction: Sugar is bad for me. Not just the typical cookies-and-ice-cream variety, but the general proliferation of bread, pasta, and cereals that basically just turn into sugar the second they hit my tongue. I’m particularly sensitive to carbs of any sort because of PCOS and insulin-resistance, and yet I keep eating them. Addiction.

4. Self-sabotage: This is an odd combination of things. I have a lot of work to do to get healthy, but I keep putting obstacles in my path. I binge eat or drink, punishing myself with food, forcing myself to not be healthy. I’m afraid to try, so I keep making myself fail. I’m afraid that if I do try, I won’t succeed, or that if I do succeed, something bad will happen. (Sorry to be vague on that last point. Can’t talk about it more, but last time I succeeded and felt good about myself for the first time in years, something really bad happened to me and there’s a part of me that’s terrified the same will happen again if I succeed again.) So I’m scared to try, scared to fail, and scared to succeed. How’s that for an impossible knot?

5. Shame: After regaining so much, I feel like a failure. I don’t want people to look at me. I don’t want to exercise where anyone can see. I don’t want to choose healthier foods for fear someone might sneer at me. I want to wear baggy clothes to hide myself away, and not see anyone I know. I’m living in an isolated bubble with no desire to leave. I’ve lost a lot of the confidence I once had, and shame causes me to beat myself up constantly.

6. Anxiety, Depression, Hopelessness, Intimidation: All these things. I’m overwhelmed. I worry about everything. I worry about making extra work for others if I need to count calories or modify my meals. I worry about the difficulty of losing weight again, and feel depressed to once again be in this position. I’m angry at myself for letting this happen, and worry that it was a fluke that I ever succeeded in the first place. I don’t know which path I should take up this mountain of health/fitness/weight-loss, and the sheer volume of work to be done is intimidating and overwhelming.

I can’t move forward until I can address these things. I’m doing my best: setting up doctor and therapy appointments, making schedules and food/exercise plans, working on sleep issues, and trying to remember that I just need to take this one day at a time instead of looking at how far I’ll eventually need to go. But it’s just hard, and I feel paralyzed.

Posted in Wellness | Tagged body image, health, psychology, Wellness Wednesday | 2 Comments

Top Ten Series Starters

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Thistle

Today’s topic is a fun one: top ten books to read if your book club likes ___. I chose “series” to fill in the blank, mostly because the last book club I was in prohibited any series starters as book choices, heh. So here are some really great series starters that would make for lots of fun reading for many books to come!

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
In the Woods by Tana French
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
The Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling

Which are some of your favorite series starters?

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged lists | 10 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Wrapping Up RIP XI

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Thistle

I didn’t have much of a plan for RIP this year. I knew things would be chaotic and sporadic since we were in the process of moving. When I made up my original list of RIP-possibilities, I had no idea which, if any, of those titles I would get my hands on. Two months later, there are a couple I’m still waiting on at the library (The Motion of Puppets, Nevernight), a couple I read (below), and one that I decided I wasn’t interested in (The Swan Riders). I made a reread list on my initial post as well, because I was kinda in a reread mood. Ironically, while I did have a few rereads, only one came from that list. My RIP reads with brief thoughts, in order of when I read them:

The Accidental Alchemist by Gigi Pandian (audio) – a random audio pick on Audible that turned out to be a cute cozy mystery with lots of spooky atmosphere.
Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris (audio) – It’s become a tradition to re-listen to this one yearly.
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (audio) – another reread, one that caused me to like the series better than after my initial read
The Creeping Shadow by Jonathan Stroud (audio) – I’d been waiting for this one for so long and I loved every second of the twice I listened to it.
Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo (audio) – Ironically, I liked this one less on audio than I probably would have in print…still, enjoyed it overall.
Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (audio) – another reread that was perfect for the season!
The Trespasser by Tana French (audio) – ditto everything I said on The Creeping Shadow
No One Knows by JT Ellison (audio) – my first disappointment of the RIP season
The Masquerading Magician by Gigi Pandian (audio) – not quite as good as the first, but still fun for RIP!
The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey (audio) – totally blown away by this one!
A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir – assuming I finish by end of day tomorrow!

In the end, I read 11 books, including 3 rereads, and enjoyed all but one of them. And nearly everything on my RIP list this year was on audio – all but the last! It was a spooky listening year, I suppose!

Thanks again Carl for hosting!

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged lists, RIP-worthy, Sunday Coffee | 4 Comments

Winter Wear: Scarf Edition

Posted on October 28, 2016 by Thistle

I’ve moved to northern Wisconsin, and I have way too much yarn. It only makes sense that I create tons and tons of winter accessories to wear! Today’s post features scarves, shawls, and cowls that I’ve crocheted over the last few months.

The first scarf I crocheted was extraordinarily simple, just one stitch all the way through. However, the scarf looks amazing because of the yarn I used. This is Lion Brand Scarfie Yarn in charcoal/magenta, and the pattern just came straight from the skein. It was tons of yarn (over 300 yards) and the entire skein was used. The transition from charcoal to purple and back again is perfect, and the yarn is lovely-soft. Despite how simple this is, I know it’s going to be one of my most-used scarves this winter.

I loved that Scarfie yarn so much that I bought a second skein of it, this time in forest/black. I found a cute chevron scarf pattern at Grow Creative, and got to work! This was the super-satisfactory result!

What would moving to Wisconsin be without a fun autumn rainbow scarf for my niece? Pattern from One Skein Wonders, yarn is Red Heart in Earthy.

This twisting infinity cowl is a pattern of my own design! Mostly I just had a bunch of chunky yarn lying around, the dregs from other projects, and decided to play. I’m really super happy with the results. The cowl is comfortable, reversible, versatile, and in colors that both feel like fall and remind me of my mother’s favorite flower (Indian Blankets), which is perfect when I’m so far away from home. [Yarn: Lion Brand Woolspun in Cranberry, Pumpkin, and Oxford Grey]

This was another dregs project: the leftovers of many skeins of yarn that I wanted to use up and a pattern for a “Mulberry Shawl” I bought awhile back from The Hook Nook. The pattern was fairly simple, basically a triangle granny square with a scallop edge that I ended up nixing in favor of a picot edge anyway. It turned out really cute with all my dregs, though! Nice and soft, too. [Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in Woodland (Camo), Woodland Heather, Peacock Feather (Paints), and Dark Country Blue]

One Skein Wonders had a bulky-yarn pattern for a mobius cowl. Unfortunately, other than the little twist in the infinity cowl, the pattern was kinda boring. So I played. I got a super-bulky yarn that was this beautiful gradient of greys and pink, plus a 10-mm hook, and I modified the pattern a bit. It’s still a simple concept, but I like it much better than what the original calls for. Plus, this was my first time using such a large hook as well as super-bulky yarn. It was a fun experiment! The whole thing took maybe an hour to work up, which was nice! [Yarn: Lion Brand Hometown USA in Salem Creek]

Both shawls I’ve made over the last couple months have been triangular and didn’t give me enough arm coverage, so I decided to make a very large rectangular shawl/wrap. I chose the Hoover Dam Shawl from Expression Fiber Arts, which took a bit over 1000 yards of yarn to crochet. I’m in two minds about the end results. On one hand, I love the pattern and the end-product. On the other, I was very disappointed with the yarn itself. This is my fourth or fifth time trying out Yarn Bee skeins and each of them have been frustrating in some way. This particular yarn had at least 1-2 knotted breaks in each skein. Beyond that, it didn’t work up very well. I could block the entire thing to make it neater, but it’s over six feet long, and considering the yarn is acrylic, I’m just not sure blocking would make much of a difference. So the shawl doesn’t look nearly as professional or smooth as it would with a higher quality yarn, but it’s warm and comfy, so I love it anyway. I just don’t think I’ll pick up Yarn Bee again. [Yarn: Yarn Bee Soft & Sleek in Blushy]

Lastly, I decided to make myself one more twisting infinity cowl/scarf. I’ve long loved the rainbow Landscapes yarn from Lion Brand, but I thought it would be too bright on its own, so I mixed it with some leftover brown yarn for a more muted effect. I absolutely love the way it came out, and the double strand made the scarf thick and super warm. As you can see from the photo, I can wear it as a single loop or doubled, and it appears darker or brighter depending on the light. [Yarn: Lion Brand Landscapes in Mountain Range, Lion Brand Heartland in Sequoia]

I have a lot more of this kind of thing that I’d like to make in the future, but I’m set for the upcoming winter season, and so will turn my brain and fingers to a different kind of project now!

Posted in Crochet | Tagged I made a thing., Yarn Art | 2 Comments