Olive Knitting

So, I’ve been feeling guilty all week since I invited you all to come to my blog and I have been, well, in a word, lazy about writing regularly. In an effort to procrastinate more, um, I mean, find inspiration I went to some of my favorite knitting blogs*. It turns out that the Mason Dixon Knitting gals haven’t written since the 17th and they are famous (ya know, famous for us knitters). This made me feel better until it dawned on me that they have been on tour for their book. And I have been, well…I haven’t been on tour. Instead…I have been home alone on the side of a mountain with no real obligations of any kind. In fact, in the past week I can’t think of one excuse for not writing.

So, what have I been doing if not writing? Well, remember how I tried to fix the water heater last time David was out of town? This time, I decided to fix the clothes dryer. And I actually fixed it!

Before you get too impressed, let me show you a picture of said dryer:

Yes, it’s a clothes line. It wasn’t working properly because previously there was not a flat bit of land underneath it. We would risk life and limb to hang out our undies. Take a wrong step and you end up sliding down the mountain (in case of this accident, we would have clean underwear but they would be in our hands – you can’t have everything.). I decided to rectify this situation while David is gone.




I began digging into the earth under the line and found, amidst the many, multiple-legged critters that live in the earth, an endless supply of bottles, layers of fiberglass, 1 bike (in parts) and 4 pairs of shoes. Beautiful. We have put our clothes line up over the Maberga 29 dump.

I know the story about the previous owners of the house. The husband (deceased, therefore the sale of the house) used to come up here everyday from Taggia (the nearest town)…ON FOOT!. I’ve done this walk before. Going down it takes about an hour to get into town. Coming up, about 2 and a half hours or more(depending on the weather). This house was his sanctuary and he did these walks every day.

So, given this, I understand (I don’t condone, but I understand) him digging his own garbage pit, you know, so he didn’t have to carry it all out …all those bottles after emptied, the old fiberglass that he doesn’t need any more, that bike that doesn’t work anymore.

But I’m really puzzled by the shoes.

Did he walk up here, knowing that the shoes were making their last journey, carrying another pair so he could bury the old and still walk back down the hill shoed? Did he have a blow out on a trip up (four times!), cut his losses by burying them up here and then go back down barefoot? Did the neighbors bring him shoes as offerings, which he accepted graciously and then buried because they weren’t his style? Or perhaps he brought old shoes from town up here, thinking that if he planted them they would sprout into shoe trees? I’m puzzled.

So, the real (weak) excuse for not writing is that my mind has been too preoccupied with buried shoes. Hmm, go figure.

*I read these fairly regularly – Yarn Harlot, Panopticon, Mason-Dixon Knitting, Queer Joe, and Eunny Knits.