Zazti

A Very, Very, VERY Lazy Day

In the past 24 hours, the following has happened:

my reiki therapist used four Tibetan bowls to do some seriously nifty harmonizing of the olde energy; I have cooked at high speed, and quite deftly, too, a Shabbat dinner for 6 new students at my program; stayed  up till 2:30am discussing the issue of why, exactly, it would be a bad idea to hook up with one of my best friends here; slept till 1pm; read Middlesex; finished a Newsboy Cap from SNBN; and contemplated doing a facemask but haven't quite worked up the energy to move off the couch.

Thank the Good Lord for Shabbat, that's all I have to say. It's wonderful, blissful, to get a day off every week where you really, really, can't do any work. (You also can't do some stuff that you might consider fun and relaxing during the other six days, but then I challenge anyone to turn off their computers for one 24-hour period a week. If you can't do it, you might want to think why not.) Normally, I'd either host a lunch or eat with friends, but I was so looking forward to not doing anything that today was truly a high point. I mean, I'm still in my pajamas. Really. I brushed my teeth around 2pm, put my hair in pigtails and heated up some challah to eat with butter and jam, but that's kind of the extent of it all. Given that I won't have this kind of leisure time again for another two weeks, I'm determined to make the most out of it. Therefore, the rest of the evening's plans revolve around working on the FLS (which has been put away for the better part of a week to work on the Newsboy hat and the other hat, which did, by the way, end up becoming potholders) and watching Season 2 of Lost on iTunes. And maybe a nice mud mask. If I ever get off the couch.

Two Days Down, Two Years Left

It's almost midnight here, and since tomorrow I have to be fresh as a daisy for a five-hour workshop on drama and Jewish education, this is short und sweet. And also? I forgot to close the latch on the washing machine when I went to felt my purled beret, so it's now stopped up and I have to call the installator, who will charge me a fortune and make me leave classes in order to let him in, and which is basically a giant PITA, and which is keeping me from having a FO to tell you about.

(I'm felting it because it's just thismuch too big. It's such a cute hat, and I wanted to make a version that sort of matched my leaf cravat, which I made from a thick/ thin ivory merino--which is not the kind of yarn called for, and of course I didn't do a swatch, just eyeballed the damn thing, and figured that by winter my hair would be so long and so flowy and thick and lush (ha-ha, because my hair is mousy and fine fine fine) that the extra girth of the hat would be just fine. La-di-da. And I didn't have the right size needles, so I basically crippled myself using size 8's on this superthick yarn, and all that together equalled a nice light felt to fuzz it up and shrink it down. Of course, now I'll probably have a baby hat at the end of this. I am smacking my forehead in advance.)

School is ridiculous. Reeedic-uuuu--lous. I have no perspective yet on it, or the people in the program, or the program itself. My brain literally aches with all the new information poured into it, and I need a few days--days that I don't have right now--to make like a Borg and assimilate it. Although I have to say that the handsomest man in Jerusalem is studying at Pardes for Elul. British, smart, tall--a heartbreaker, I tell you! Too bad that just the idea of talking to him makes me feel like an awkward 8th grader. I'm contenting myself with just staring at him, instead. Cause that's much less uncool, right?

fishtail lace visits the dead sea!

or rather, it will be visiting the dead sea, as i'm headed there tomorrow for one last 'shanti shanti' shabbat before school begins sunday. i'm bringing chocolate, coffee, a yoga mat, shabbat candlesticks, the fishtail lace scarf (FLS from now on, i'm getting carpal tunnel syndrome typing that out, although I realize I just made it worse by typing that out. Aaah! The cyclical nature of life bites me in the ass again!), some new and luscious Koigu socks--my first pair ever, and oh! the lusciousness! the color! the everything! They are intended for my mom for her yearly Hanukkah socks, but since she doesn't know I'm making them for her, she won't know that she didn't get them, right? Oh, and hiking shoes to stroll around the nature preserve that's next to the youth hostel, and a swimsuit for the Dead Sea, and every intention of relaxing, also.

Here are some pictures, via this helpful website. Ignore the bad English.

Not too shabby, huh? The Dead Sea is about 40 minutes outside of Jerusalem, in the Midbar Yehuda/ Judean Desert, and close to Qumran, Masada, and all sorts of interesting stuff. The waters and the mud are considered to be a great treatment for all sorts of skin disorders, and it's next to impossible to get a sunburn there, although for the sake of all your bits, you really don't want to stay in the water for too long. And don't even think about shaving down there. Just don't.

I'm really looking forward to it. Because of the war, I haven't left Jerusalem since I got back almost two months ago--no day trips to Tel Aviv's beaches, no relaxing nothing up North. (It's still hard, really hard, to picture what it must look like after all the rocket damage. The Jewish National Fund says it will take more than 60 years for the forests to recover.)

And just to throw some knitting in here, I ordered both Rusted Root and Green Gables from Zephyr Style today. I have stash yarn earmarked for both already; now I just need to wait for the Denises I bought off Ebay to get here. (Do not even get me started on the impossibility of finding needles here. You just can't. It is a total failure of the Zionist enterprise. (Just kidding, I love me that there Zionism!) ) I'm looking forward to both, since I've decided that this year is the Year of Lace and Non-Sock Items. Catchy title, no? That's why Hallmark wants me so damn bad, fer my rocking skill as a wordsmith.

Anyways--how about a competition? I'll send a postcard from Israel--funny, pretty, cheesy, whatever--to the first (non-spam) commenter on the blog. C'mon! Be the envy of all your friends! Make it look like you traveled the world when really you just surfed the Internet in your cubicle!

Shalom, Y'all--

Jessie

i am losing my mind.

I think I'm going insane. Either that, or my mind has figured out a way to deal with the monotony and relative clumsiness of purl rows: for the past three rows, I have literally not remembered purling them, and yet there they are! It's like purl-crazy fairies are visiting my apartment and frolicking in my knitting.

Dudes, frolic away. I'm at that stretch of scarf knitting where the love is wearing off--about 1/2 done, with yet another 20 hours of work ahead of me before I hit FOLand. (Yeah, I'm not the fastest knitter. But you know what they say about boats and the motion of the ocean.) Plus, I like my scarves really long, so that means I've got a little bit over an obscene amount of knit to go. I would show you pictures, but apparently between moving to Israel and then moving from one apartment to another, I've lost the CDROM for installing the camera. I've got the cords, though, so maybe it will still work? I'd love to show pictures of my city. And the three pashminas I bought in the Old City today for 90 shekel.

(That'st a little bit over 20 bucks, by the way. And they're gaw-jus.)

L'hitraot,

J

Up Till the Wee Hours

"We live on the edge of the miraculous every minute of our lives. The miracle is in us, and it blossoms forth the moment we lay ourselves open to it. The miracle of miracles is the stubbornness with which men refuse to open themselves up. Our whole life seems to be nothing more but a frantic effort to evade that which is constantly in our grasp." ~Henry Miller

(via the very amazing wish jar journal)

My chevruta (study partner) from last year is leaving tonight, and we are having separation issues. I spent last night having a prolonged flashback to my senior year of college--i.e, staying up too late drinking cheap red wine, smoking too much and looking at other people's music while trying to one-up each other on what live shows we've seen. I am tired and sore and a little sad--actually, a lot sad. He and I had an amazing partnership together; I learned more than I thought possible because of him, and he also happens to be a very cool, hyper-smart guy. He tells me I'll learn to learn with another, but I don't really believe him.

Knitting content? Well, the fishtail lace scarf is in my bag, which is hanging on the back of the chair in the cafe in Katamon where I am currently scamming free internet. It's happy and doing well, and I'm already planning my next lace fix: meet Ella, although imagine her in the more traditional triangle. I'm going to be knitting her in a yarn that verges on "what was I thinking?" territory; I originally bought it to knit my roomate a shawl for her wedding last spring, but soon realized that was way too ambitious and bought her some candlesticks instead, and therefore leaving me with two skeins of turquoise-y/ teal-y variegated stuff from Knitpicks. I'm going to use it, since it's all I really have here, and finding laceweight wool in this country is about as likely as getting your ass pinched in Mea Sharim.

Off to the Old City today for last-minute souvenir shopping with the chevruta, and then, miracle of miracles, I get a shidduch. Just kidding, but almost as good: I'm finally getting wi-fi in my apartment. Whee-ha!!!

Shalom, y'all--

J

how i got here and where i went

(i just want you all to know that i did have a really nice, poetic, pithy little first entry written yesterday, but because i am a dork who has forgotten everything i ever knew about blogging, i previewed it but forgot to save it. what follows is a mere shadow of the genius that was.)

so, a million trillion years ago, i had a blog called PurlJew. Apparently, I still do, and this here blog is its red-headed stepchild. I lived in a small town, had a terrible job, and no friends, and needed my knitting in the same way that I needed red blood cells or lip gloss. (I still do, but now I have friends...granted, friends who can't understand the compulsion to drag a wad of alpaca out of my bag at every moment and make them appreciate my fishtail lace.) I knitted, and I discovered knitblogs, and I wanted one of my own. And so I had me one, and there was love.

And then I moved across the ocean, to a small, crazy city in a small, crazy country, to study Torah for a year. And I knitted, but I was too busy learning Gemara, making a new community, figuring out how to cook kugel for 20, volunteering, and basically building a new and really satisfying life for myself here.

And then: and then I decided to stay for another two years, having applied to and gotten accepted to a master's program in education at the school I'm still at. Ulpan (one of my friends, a stand-up comic here, says that he always thought that there was no word for 'hell' in Hebrew, and then he moved to Israel and discovered that there was one: ulpan.) made for a lot of knitting time (total items knitted: one sock for me, a pair of baby socks, two Mason-Dixon warshrags, one sock for another baby, a Teva Durham leaf cravat, and a fishtail lace scarf), as did a total lack of TV (my friends and I download BSG, but that is sacred and not at all knitting time).

So: Zazti. A weak attempt to garner support for my gauge-less creations, or another aspect of community building? Both, I say! And while I can promise you that non-knitting stuff will creep in (I live in Jerusalem, after all, and crazyfunnysweetamazing things happen here all the time), I can also tell you that without knitblogs, my knitting would never have become as bold and skilled (or however bold and skilled it can claim to be at any given moment, whatevs, you know what I meant). So I add Zazti to the mix, and hope it flies with y'all.

Shalom,

Jessie