E is for Elephant

No, really, E is for Elephant! You may think that this is just a picture of a drawing of an elephant. But no -- it is the elephant that began a revolution of sorts.

You see, I don't go in for the "domestic arts," even though you might think I do, because of all the knitting. However, I don't give a fig for housekeeping. I cook infrequently, and then it's because I have to, and not because I found a great new recipe to try. (For me, cooking is what other people do in exchange for my willingness to wash the dishes afterward.) Home is where I keep my stuff, and where the beer is already paid for and I don't have to leave a tip for the person who pops the cap. Home is also where the YARN is! (Well, the yarn I legally own; there is of course all the yarn out there that is also mine, but I haven't really paid for and thus bringing it home with me would constitute "theft.")

And yet here I have spent countless nights in these past few weeks, browsing online for fabric to make a SHOWER CURTAIN! How does the anti-domestic goddess become a person who wants to stitch up her own bath accessories because the ones at Target (let alone what she already has and uses) aren't quite "right"? I blame the elephant. (And, as always, I blame the patriarchy.)

A couple years ago I met the elephant in question. He came attached to the front of a packet of chai mix. It's beginning to make sense now, I hope. See? There's even a dude drinking tea while riding on the elephant's back. Instead of throwing away the elephant/dude picture, I saved it and (of all things) stuck it to my bathroom door. And so every day I would see it, and smile, because it's goofy and there's an elephant on the door, in reference to NOTHING! Nothing! And slowly it dawned on me: I loved the elephant because of the colors in the picture. I loved the rich grass green, the vibrant yellow, and of course the scarlet red. And I decided that to honor this revelation, I would "redo" my bedroom in those colors so that I may be surrounded by them and thus be pleased and content at all times.

The problem is, redecoration costs money. My home decor scheme up to this point has always been "what's free," which is why I have a cast-off couch, a paint-and-burnmark scarred easy chair, and my grandmother's shower curtain. Ditto for the bathmat, my kitchen table, and all manner of "home entertainment system" items, including the TV. My grand gesture towards "theme" has been to buy nothing but bright red items for my kitchen. (I finally bought the red toaster! The day after I bought it I saw a customer walking through my store with one under her arm, and I told her that I hoped her toaster made her as happy as mine did me. I'm such a dork!) (I've been wanting this red toaster for over a year.) (Its "low" setting is just short of "charred." Ha ha, joke's on me.)

I found a red bedspread online for cheap that was actually part of an Indian-themed bedroom set, and it really has changed the look of my bedroom. I can't really do anything with curtains: for one reason, my windows are a really weird size. (Six feet wide, three feet high. WEIRD!) Also, there is a streetlight right outside my window, with absolutely nothing blocking its light. (The tree between me and the light was taken down in an ice storm right before I moved in.) Because of this I have had to put up "room-darkening" curtains, which are rubber coated and thus block light pretty well but are not decorative or drapey in any sense. (But I do sleep, which is better than what I had before the curtains. BTW, my mum stitched me the curtains in a marathon feat of courage and tenacity: she bought the fabric, did the measurements and cutting, and all the sewing, in a single morning. I wasn't even out of bed yet and they were DONE. What a lady! She justs wants her baby to sleep through the night.)

To all of you who are the youngest child: does your mom still introduce you to people as her baby? As I get older I am less embarassed and more pleased by this moniker. I wouldn't mind joining my mother in the delusion that it's still 1979! We were all so young and pretty then...

If (when) I move from this noisy apartment, I hope to score a bedroom where I can have "normal" curtains, and then maybe I can resume the "india-fication" of the room. And I must admit, one of the things that pushes me towards "decorating" my room is the magazine-perfect state of the average knitblogger's bedroom. The fluffy white duvet pulled neatly across the bed, the lilies on the bedstand (and nothing else! no hand cream, no books, no tissues!). No piles of clothes on the chair, no hairbands tossed on the floor, and if there are photographs -- they are enlarged, tastefully framed, and look as though they were taken by a pro. How can I compete with this, me and my silly red bedspread? (Insouciant readers will have already seen it, behind me in my artful "dresser mirror" self-portraits.)

Which leads me to my current conundrum: why do I feel the sudden urge to redo my bathroom? Buying a new soap dispenser won't cut it: I want a color scheme, I want something unique, and I want (who knows why) to make a STATEMENT. Perhaps it is because I know that in a room that small, you can go crazy and it won't be too much. In a bathroom half the size of a HoJo bathroom, a loud shower curtain really only amounts to a whisper. It really doesn't help that the fixtures, walls, and floor are dead white. They are practically begging me to inject some color into the situation.

OMG why am I craving goat cheese right now? I don't even really like goat cheese. I promise real knitting content, real soon. The felted yoga-mat bag has been retooled, the new yoga-mat bag is most finished. The Jaywalkers are also mostly done, so I've started my Pseudo-Psockpal Psocks already. Couldn't wait. Additionally, there will be pics of the Asheville trip and maybe some details about my exciting new jobby job.