Despite staying awake the whole plane flight west, I still failed to finish my Sock Madness socks in time. Apparently having to kitchener like a bazillion of stitches at heel, toe, and cuff was just too much for me. The more frustrating part is that although the socks fit me (a common complaint was that they were too tight for many competitors), the seam on the bottom of the foot drives me nuts when I put them on, let alone actually stand up…

Alas!

Rudi and I will be hopping on a plane to Utah in just over 12 hours and will be away for a week. My internet connectivity will be spotty (as Rudi’s mom still believes we’re living in 1982), but since I will be doing office work a couple of days from someplace with wi-fi, I expect to continue posting regularly. I’m particularly hopeful that I might get caught back up with my book blogging, which seems to have derailed right around when I headed out to California last month. I figure that my mojo must be stuck out west someplace and perhaps we’ll reconnect in Salt Lake…

This post will have to be brief as I need to head to bed. Sock Madness is taking it all out of me and I find myself picking up stitches, knitting madly away and grafting even in my sleep. (Okay, that part’s not quite true. But it does feel a bit like that. The good news is that I have a heel and most of a cuff on sock one, but I still need to bind that off (using a new-to-me technique) and give it a toe. Sock #2’s body is done, but it’s lacking toe, heel, and cuff still. It will be down to the wire as we discover whether I can get this all done and posted properly (with photo) by the time the buzzer goes off at midnight Tuesday. The plane flight out to Utah Tuesday evening will give me plenty of time to knit, but any delays could sink my chances of getting the online component done. Here’s hoping (and knitting)…

Sarah and I had fun at the Homespun Yarn Party this afternoon and each came away with a few skeins of woolly goodness. I also came home with a used cookbook and a game that I played with Grey Kitten when I visited him last month. Rudi and I capped off the last of the nice weather by hanging out at Starbucks on their patio until we could barely see the text and stitches in front of our eyes.

The rain may move in tomorrow, but I definitely feel like I did my part in spending time outside this first spring weekend of 2010. I’m looking forward to many more!

Today, a gorgeous day pretty much up and down the East Coast, was spent at a picnic table with knitting, a book, and hummus. Totally a great way to mark the arrival of spring, even if I did fail to work in the garden the way I’d originally planned to.

Sarah and I will celebrate the first full day of the season Sunday by trekking northeast of the District to an indie yarn festival. I’m hopeful the car radio will work, but either way I’m optimistic we’ll have fun.

Yes, this is a day late, but that’s because yesterday’s workday extended well into the night and after eating a bowl of chili when I got home, I promptly fell into the sleep of the dead on the couch, not to be roused until the first of the early morning news shows was on. So I post belatedly. Three of the many beautiful things from last week:

1. I depart the office just before sunset. Looking west along I Street, I realize I have reached the clearing at precisely the magic moment of a sunset. You know, the one right before the one you usually catch when you think, “Pretty!” Instead I am struck silent by its utter, soul-cleaning magnificence.

2. I think that when I lived in areas where I was surrounded by lawns and green things that I didn’t notice how much growing plants do every night. But here, where we stuff trees into pocket parks and squeeze gardens into the the two feet between building sidewalk, I look with eager eyes. The first daffodil arrived just before the rains, a harbinger of its relations who took advantage of the pre-spring shower to burst forth en masse Monday morning. The next day it was the green shoots on bushes and a camellia flower. Then an early magnolia tree. And yesterday a tulip puckered up and started applying just the hit of bright pink lipstick. I bet it’s out fully this morning when I head to the metro.

3. My cell phone rings with an unrecognized number. When I tell the woman she’s dialed the wrong number, she replies, “Awww, I’m sorry, honey,” before we say goodbye.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

A blog is an interesting thing because it’s journal-like, but without the privacy and with input back in the form of comments. It starts out in the beginning as something for yourself, because no one knows you’re writing in a public place. But like many things, once you know you’re being watched (or read), you find that you adapt to it and (too often) write posts that you think your audience might like. Or you start to worry about the overlap between the personal and the private and end up not sharing important things for fear of revealing too much of yourself.

I’ll be honest: When that happens, it dilutes what you have to say.

Back in the fall, I went through a blogging crisis of faith. I simultaneously had nothing to say and too much to say. Those closest to me in real life will find that painfully familiar, as the same thing seems to have happened in my offline world. I was talking (or writing) a lot but not saying much. And suddenly it just seemed like too much and too little all at once.

Did I even want to keep writing? Did I actually have anything to say? Did I want to maintain an online presence if it was detracting from my offline relationships? What exactly was the point of this blog? And whom was I writing it for?

While I mulled over these questions in October, the blog, with the exception of weekly Three Beautiful Things posts, went dark. I just didn’t bother to write.

And at the end of the month, I realized I missed it. This is pretty much the only writing I do these days (whether that’s as it should be or not is a topic for another post on another day) and not doing it made me feel less than, like I was somehow cheating myself out of something important. And so I began anew.

Yes, writing is sometimes hard. And, no, more often than I’d like to admit I don’t have anything of import to say. And periodically it’s not obvious whether I’m writing a post for you or for me. But the satisfaction of a well-turned phrase or of saying something that matters (whether anyone but me recognizes it or not) can’t be beat. And I have to keep writing so I don’t lose what’s important to me.

However, although I have to keep writing, you don’t have to keep reading. Your lives are all busy, and you’ve got enough stuff to do without adding my blog to your list. So it really does mean a lot that you follow along with my random posts. And some of you even take the time to leave me comments. I don’t stop often enough to acknowledge how I appreciate your sharing little bits of yourselves with me in those notes, but I can say that they nearly always make my day so much brighter when you leave them.

So on this, the fifth anniversary of Sprite Writes, thank you, dear readers. I’m not sure which direction the road leads from here, but be sure I’ll be sending postcards and taking notes along the way. Here’s to the journey…