playing with string

stitching, rocks and glass, seashells and pearls, pretty things

[stringsandshinythings]

I have decided to think about the PWHL expansion like I am in the summer before 5th grade and waiting for classroom assignments to come out in the newspaper. I can't expect that all my best friends will be in my class. I can hope that the person in my 4th grade class who threatened to beat me up if I didn't let her copy my work until I gave up on talking completely for a while will be in a different classroom. I know everything will be different from last year and I know that sometimes I have a surprising amount of fun with new classmates or people I haven't been in class with for a few years. And I won't see my best friends as much but I can still find them on the playground.

(Yes I am old enough, and from a small enough town, that classroom assignments were published in the newspaper every summer.)

Although really I don't even go to this school, so the comparison does fall apart a bit. But this is helping me not get too caught up in all the CHAAAAAAANGES and just remember that the future holds lots of hockey, and also new notebooks probably. And my shoulder getting better. So when summer is over I can COMBINE watching hockey and playing with string and be very content. I hope.

[stringsandshinythings]

If this hire is for real, it is very important to me that Pascal Rheaume be referred to as "brother of Detroit GM Manon Rheaume" for the duration of his tenure in Toronto or at least until the Sceptres win Walter.

[pwhl-mybeloved]

I really think that press after an elimination loss should be next day. You just had your worst day at work all year and now you’re going to have it picked apart. For TV. nightmare scenario

[stringsandshinythings]

I feel this so strongly for ALL sports. Send the coaches, the GM, the owners out there, fine. But it is absolutely inhumane to ask someone to put it all out there, push to the absolute limits of what they are physically capable of, have that be not enough, have to watch the celebration of the other team, AND THEN expect them to lock all that in an emotional basement and chat with the press about how it feels to fall just short of something that their year, career, maybe life has been building up to.

Look. You lose the Superbowl or the World Series or the gold medal game or the Walter Cup, whatever it is, and I am not gonna hold it against you (high-level athlete who will never actually read this) if you want to stay in your locker room with your team or sit in a hallway by yourself or really anything that isn't outright harmful. Whether you're getting a PWHL paycheck or a Tom Brady NFL paycheck. If you are up for spouting sports cliches to the press after a championship loss, go for it. If you're not, I don't WANT you to force it. It's uncomfortable for me but seems cruel to you.

[stringsandshinythings]

Watching the post-game celebration with the championship trophy on the ice is always so beautiful but seriously I have to ask is it a deliberate design decision to make trophies difficult to drink beer out of

It's so beautiful

Messy

Messy beautiful

[hockey-ducks]

Gardiner Hatty + OT winning goal :)

[stringsandshinythings]

Me leaving the house to go with my daughter to the ballet: "okay, it's 2-0, that's fine"

Me checking the score after finding our seats at the ballet: "2-1. Getting interesting but it'll be fine."

Me checking the final score at the intermission of Giselle: "WHAT IN TARNATION HAPPENED HERE"

[stringsandshinythings]

Hanging out last night with my guys, who were watching GI Joe fanvids while I watched Torrent/Goldeneyes on my phone (I was never allowed to watch that show so no knowledge base) (which is OK there are so many shows) and at the end of a video it automatically starts the game on the big TV

Non-Resident Guy: "Who are you cheering for?"

Me, obligatorily: "I just want both teams to have fun."

N-RG: "I think only one of these teams is having fun right now."

Vancouver: *scores two goals in very rapid succession*

[stringsandshinythings]

My brain just, out of nowhere, decided that Hayden Pike (Heated Rivalry) is somehow related to Mallory Pike (The Baby-Sitters Club)

On the one hand, noooooo

On the other hand, it's not completely impossible

[thoughtportal]

numb hands

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

The fact that one of these moves is significantly more difficult for me than the other two at least tells me which nerve is probably the most fucked up

[stringsandshinythings]

I dream of not tingling

At least it's only my right arm

[stringsandshinythings]

Quick one as a donation for an art pull next month - started it yesterday afternoon, finished it tonight. Not elaborate but satisfying.

[stringsandshinythings]

So the younger kid, in school at the start of the year, had an assignment to make a goal for the year. And she, being her, was like "I'm going to make 26 goals because it's 2026!" and then ran out of space on her paper

So I was like "hey maybe I could do 26 finishes in 2026" because the kid inspires me

This is #3

So, maybe

(Ink Circles "Bite Me: Feathers")

Now I get to mount and frame the three of them

Or, as autocorrect suggested, now I get to doubt

j/k that's all the time

[bigmackwhopper]

I’d like to thank heated rivalry for getting me into PWHL 😋

[stringsandshinythings]

same, honestly stopped speaking to the NHL after the last lockout, moved out of an AHL town a dozen years ago, haven't played in longer than that, and realized just how badly I miss it

something in me is healing

[stringsandshinythings]

I don't hate this or anything, I like a number of things about it, but I also keep reminding myself that it's an experiment and about all of my grad school training that says that what makes an experiment successful isn't necessarily getting the outcome you wanted but getting ideas for what to try next

[stringsandshinythings]

It's entirely possible that some days I just twist up a bunch of pearls and wires because it's both soothing and shiny. Eventually I find something to wrap them around.

[crazy-brazilian]

[stringsandshinythings]

Going strong near my back door: a double hibiscus my grandmother, who's been gone more than 15 years, propagated from a cutting surreptitiously taken from a botanical garden. The best kind of heist.

[peakotp]

adding college friends to the Heated Rivalry chat one by one until my soul gets it right

[stringsandshinythings]

Okay but can I crash reunion and we can rewatch in sci 277

[stringsandshinythings]

But really. It's finished. Ends and everything. Hanging in a gift bag waiting for me to acquire more tissue paper. A week to spare before the baby shower. It's going to fit just fine in a wildflower-themed nursery. I have an entire grocery bag of leftover yarn and whatever the 9-year-old doesn't use in her attempts to learn crochet by making tiny jellyfish will turn into more blanket squares when I don't know what I feel like doing, and eventually that blanket will get given away.

It's cozy.

I'm back to gingko leaves again.

("Vivid" by TinCanKnits)

[stringsandshinythings]

my joy at finishing that baby blanket with more than a week to go before the baby shower was muted by the realization that...

OK, so I haven't seen the last two episodes of Heated Rivalry yet, but the REASON that I haven't seen the last two episodes yet is because I'm watching it with my best friend, a person with whom I've been secretly, mutually in love (and also lust when the opportunity arises) for almost seven years and we weren't able to get time together for a few weeks due to Other Things Getting In The Way

so I can not WAIT for Tuesday when we will get to finish the show

be real, this isn't going to hit me in the feels at ALL