It's been a busy year!

Well, that turned into a much longer hiatus than I intended. Sorry about that. Let me catch you up on what's been going on in my life.

My sweetie and I found a charming house to rent, so I'm finally back to being a Vermonter.

It feels good to have those green license plates on my car again. It's also nice to have a 45-minute commute to work instead of the 2-hour one I had when I was living in Connecticut.

And then, last month, we did this:



Yep, I'm a married lady now. The wedding was lovely! I made all the garb, my husband made most of the food, dear friends were officiants for our two ceremonies (because one is, apparently, not enough for us), and our guests said it was the sweetest, most relaxing wedding they'd ever been to. (Send a message if you'd like a link to the online photo album!)

So now that I'm not going crazy with wedding prep, I'm back to knitting, spinning, and sewing as much as I can. I've finished a few projects and have a few more in the works (as always), and I'll try to get them photographed soon. I'll be shopping at Rhinebeck both days, and demoing at the Fiber Festival of New England at least one day with at least one of my wheels, so stop by and say hi!

One Of The Ways I Remember...

Happy birthday, Dad. You would have been 76 today. Your favorite thing about birthdays was the excuse to go out to dinner, but since my schedule doesn't really allow for dinner these days, I'm going to pick up some BBQ for lunch in your memory.

I will get back to posting about knitting soon, I promise. I just need some time to mourn before returning to lighter topics. Thank you all for your patience.

Dear Dad,

I didn't expect to miss you this much. I didn't expect to be so angry at a doctor who failed to diagnose the thing that took you away from us a decade or two before it should have. I didn't expect to cry every day, to have to avoid certain music on my playlist, or to have to take the process of sorting through your things very slowly so as not to collapse in a puddle of tears every few minutes.

I didn't expect that I'd be fine for the month from the cremation to the service, get through the service just fine, and then start feeling this ache, this void in my life.

I didn't speak at the service because our relationship was complicated, and I didn't think it appropriate to give your friends a more balanced view of who you were, which is the only way I could have truly expressed how I felt about your passing. It wouldn't have been right to tell your friends what you did to me as a child, how the years I've spent in therapy have largely been to compensate for your "parenting," or how I very nearly disowned you... even though it would have made the fact that I ended up loving you and missing you to the point of despair all the more meaningful.

I'm sorry that it ended this way. I'm sorry that we didn't push harder for a diagnosis, or insist on lower doses of certain medications. I'm sorry that I didn't have a home to bring you to so you wouldn't have to die in that facility. I'm sorry this all happened the way it did, and that you won't be able to walk me down the aisle like you wanted to.

I'm sorry I didn't realize sooner how hard it would be to live without you.

I love you, Dad.