So, today's knitting news: I sent Elsa a list of possible gloves last week and then she wrote back with, "Could we combine these three or is that just too hard?" For the record, they were (a) a pair of gloves with a Celtic-looking cable on the wrist, (b) mitten gloves (er, the sort where the mitten top comes off to reveal fingerless gloves, I don't know what one calls these officially), and (c) a pair of mittens with cat heads on the top. I think I could pull this off, but the last pattern is copyrighted, so I'm thinking if I make this thing up, I am going to have to do a different enough design so as not to be ripping it off too badly. I'm thinking something like a "Celtic cat theme" if I can pull it off... if there's some way to put a cat on the mittens and have the tail slink its way into a cable design... Er, this is gonna take awhile.

I also cast on the stitches for the Christmas hat (PDF link). Happily, it turns out that the lone set of giant double pointed needles I own works for the gauge, so that's nice. But weirdly enough, when you get to the point of starting the branches, it has you using a 16 inch circular needle (for non-knitters, this is about the size of a sleeve) and adding in a bunch of stitches. And I ended up thinking, "SIXTEEN INCHES, MY ASS," because there is no effing way you can add on so many stitches WITH EXTRA LARGE YARN (man, that is weird to knit with) and fit it all onto sixteen inches of cord. Nuh-UH. It's a good thing I have a convertible needle kit, because I ended up adding in two different lengths of cord to the circular needles just to fit them all in. Oy!

In non-knitting news, I was working at the Craft Center last night, and there is a lady who works there too who keeps asking me to do tarot readings for her (she's starting to learn about the same hippie interests that I have, so I get a lot of questions). Mostly about a pending harassment issue she's having go on-- happily, from the cards it looks like the bad guy will eventually get busted, even if his immediate supervisor hasn't had any interest in doing anything about it. But last night, she asked me about her job. Her current one runs out in June and she wanted to know if she'd be asked to stay on.

Now, whether or not you buy into tarot, I don't know. I don't really care much. Take it for what you will. Hell, one of my tarot books, as I vaguely recall, didn't claim it was anything psychic so much as psychological and interpret as you will. And god knows I don't tend to make automatic predictions very often.

But when the "future" card came up as the Devil, and the next reading after that (I think the question was something like, will she get canned?) came up with the Tower card in the present slot... Well, THAT'S NOT GOOD.

I won't get into all the details of the various 3-card readings I did for her when she was in a shocked panic after that. But what I interpreted it as was: she is going to lose this job, probably unexpectedly because something is going to blow up out of the blue. I suspect probably before June (hence the Tower card, it being an unexpected shock rather than just being let go in June when she knows it's going to happen). If I throw in astrology, April is going to be fucking crazy and I think that it's likely to go to shit then. I think she is going to be out of work for some period of time, but I think it'll be short rather than long (my guess is a couple of months? not too long, but a definite "break in service"), and it looks like she'll be offered another job and be okay in the end. Hell, she might have a choice of jobs. She does some kind of research and said that they told her she'd probably be offered another project after this one winds up anyway, so that sounds right.

Now, whether or not that's gonna happen for sure, of course I can't say. But I told her I'd try to save up as much money as I could ("so I shouldn't go buy any more yarn, huh?"), and maybe work at least some of those weekend shifts her boss wants her to work even though she really doesn't want to, just in case. Naturally, I didn't feel too warm and fuzzy about dropping that particular bomb on someone, especially a beginner. But... I don't think it's exactly doing anyone a favor to lie when you see trouble either, and it never hurts to plan ahead for disaster just in case, especially if you're already guaranteed to be unemployed in June.

On a message board I frequent (there's some professional tarot readers about), there have been discussions about what do you do when the cards are clearly saying bad things. It's a fun topic, obviously, and fortunately not one I've come across too much. I am reminded of the time when I did a blind (i.e. I didn't ask him what his question was/he didn't tell me) reading for a friend of mine and it looked like he was going to break up with his girlfriend. In his case, he wasn't too surprised. I don't know all the details, but he indicated that she'd laid down some kind of ultimatum on him. A couple of months later, it happened.

I have had some interesting experiences with doing readings. The first time I did a job reading for myself, I got a reading that boiled down to "you'll get the job, but late." I didn't get what that meant at the time, especially since I didn't get the job. But whoever the first choice was, they turned it down, I got the job, and they kept me on, so there ya go. My readings about driving certainly came out accurately--first time I wasn't going to pass, second time I did. There are some days where it feels like the cards are barfing at you-- I guess they don't know what's going on either those days when they don't come together into a coherent message. Almost every time I've done a reading for Merry in the last year they have come up "eh, it could go either way," which is extremely unhelpful for the life-altering "yes or no?" question she's been asking. I think the answer looks like a slam dunk to ME, but clearly the cards do not agree. Or the powers that be, or whoever operates the whole fate/free will thing behind the scenes.

But I related to this poor woman's fear last night. I have ah... seen something VERY interesting (and unlikely like you wouldn't believe) coming up in my future in a few years, but it will also require me to do something I absolutely do not want to do. And all the times I asked, "Do I have to?" have come out with adamant "YES, YOU DO" answers no matter what divination medium I have used. That's bloody terrifying. Merry has said to this, "That's such a long shot, don't worry about it until you actually get there and it happens," which is a good point. Hey, who knows what could be derailed somewhere down the line to get me out of that? But... yeah, that anticipatory fear is never fun. I am fairly sure at this point that I'm relatively secure at work these days, but to some degree I always live in fear about it. Especially since like this chick said, "I don't really do anything BUT this, what else can I do for a job?"

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