Friday, January 14, 2005

Catharsis on Frog Peninsula

Before:


After:
Ahh. What a relief.
This was going to be a sweater that I've been battling with in my head for a few months now; I oscillated between "I love it" and "I hate it". It's yarn I bought as a souvenir a year and a half ago and thought I'd make it into this.
However, I hate it. (The combination, not the pattern.) But I didn't want to rip it out unless I had some idea what I'd rather do with it because what if I oscillated back to "I love it" after it was gone? That would suck. Today I decided that I could make a great short shawl with it, and if I put beads on the fringe, it'll be spectacular. Nancy (one of my Knitty friends) has a few shawls that she wears with great panache and I'm inspired to believe that I can pull it off, too. Now I have a project to be excited about with it (I just have to decide on a stitch pattern) and so I visited the Frog Peninsula and experienced catharsis. (We have Sleeve Island, shouldn't there be a Frog Peninsula?)

In the week preceeding Christmas I really worked my voice very hard, and it hasn't really healed yet. It gets tired after about 5 minutes of talking, which isn't much. My voice lessons have become diagnostic/herbal recommendation sessions. My voice teacher suggested some tea I could get at Whole Foods, and while I was there, I checked out the cough drop selection and found these:


Isn't that hilarious? It looks like something Pavarotti's Grandma would have had in her purse, but apparently it's "new". I love the picture on the back. Yes, that's exactly how I look when I sing - I always wear my special "opera bonnet". The last sentence of the first section is "Nothing is better for singers, especially opera singers." I was suckered in. $2.50 for a little 2"x2" box of wierd little powdery things that taste like herbal tea. The tea also has slippery elm in it, and apparently that will be my salvation. It'll be all-slippery-elm-all-the-time for me for a bit. My teacher strongly encouraged me to drink the tea while I'm teaching the knitting class, and so I will. I was very excited to see that the tea bags were individually packaged, which will make it easy for me to carry some with me in my purse.

The color poll is still up - don't forget to scroll down a day and vote! Please!

1 comments:

jenifleur said...

Wow I didn't know Thayer's had a tangerine flavor! I like the brand because it's one of the (very) few throat soothing products that doesn't contain mint or menthol, both of which send me into asthmatic paroxysms within seconds of tongue contact.

I think that yarn will be lovely as a shawl and I've always thought that singers in particular look elegant in shawls!