If you’ve been around me at all in the past few years, you’ve probably heard me say “weird is the new normal” so many times that by now that notion of the New Normal is pretty Old News. (In a related story, I’ve been hearing rumors to the effect that pink is no longer the new black. Sic transit.)

So in the aftermath of death, with the Old Normal long gone but by no means forgotten, we are all trying to get our bearings and figure out just what the New Normal is; not surprisingly the clues seem to be few and far between. (This is as good an opportunity as any, though, to thank you, both on Lauren’s behalf and on my own, for all the kind thoughts and wishes. I don’t claim to know how or why that helps; it does, though, and that’s what’s important.) I don’t really expect a clear resolution on that question any time soon; it’s probably enough to identify the elements as they come along, to welcome the good ones and deal with the rest as reasonably as is, well, reasonable under the circumstances. Whatever that turns out to mean.

Here, then, in no particular order, are some of those elements, at least the ones floating nearest the surface of Tsarskoe Tsocko.

• The New Normal will include… Any Minute Now… a new Club Tsock that is ANYTHING BUT NORMAL. Mind you, this is not to suggest that previous tsocks have been particularly run of the mill, but if I do say so myself (and I do) I rather think that I’ve gone farther over the top this time than ever before. Not for nothing was Jennifer heard to remark to someone, at MAS&W, “she’s so far outside the box, I don’t think there even IS a box.”

  As regards the Any-Minute-Now aspect of that - I’m out of Pattern Purdah and am just awaiting the all-clear from the shipping front before I blog it. This year we actually have an Official Internal Schedule, and we’ve been pretty much meeting it. And even though I effectively lost a week of work to the business of the funeral, I managed (thanks in no small part to the great good-will and adaptability of my dear Test Knitter) to make up for lost time to such good effect that I only missed my part of the deadline for Tsock #3 by a few hours. But - aha! you knew there had to be a BUT, didn’t you - fat lot of good that did, given that during that same time of craziness I, um, neglected to order toner for the printer. So there I was, panting at the finish line, with the pattern all dressed up and nowhere to go. Apparently the New Normal includes a healthy admixture of irony. (Fair enough - so did the Old Normal. Irony - oh yeah, I know how to do irony, all right.)

  Fortunately, and largely thanks to presence of mind on the part of The Tserf, that crisis passed fairly quickly. She is off to her well-deserved vacation, and Any Minute Now… I’ll get to unveil what I’m tempted to think of as The New Abnormal.

• The New Normal, as you may recall, includes kittens. That may in fact be one of the best things about the New Normal to date. I’ll give you the full run-down on these two one of these days soon; for now here are a few more pictures. I’m afraid they’re over a week old (the pictures, that is, not the kittens - the kitten are about eight weeks old). I tried to take some new ones today but ended up with one blur after another - these two move FAST.

  

  That’s Fosdick (as in Fearless Fosdick), reaching down to beat up his little sister Annabel (as in… Annabel; it’s just her name).

  

  Fosdick almost always sticks out his tongue. He’s going to be long and lean and lithe - at eight weeks he already is. And he is bold and fearless and impudent. I think he’s going to give Ptolemy a run for his money.

  

  Annabel is Fosdick’s littermate and his temperament’s polar opposite. He is a thoroughly boyish little boy, and she is the girliest of little girls. She’s soft and cuddly and confidingly affectionate.

  They’re settling in brilliantly, eating voraciously, growing like the proverbial weeds. The New Normal has its silver linings - or at any rate its fuzzy black and grey and white ones.

• The New Normal is going to include a lot of spinning and knitting. (Just as well, what with this being that sort of blog, don’t you know.) Just at the moment spinning is uppermost, because I get a few days’ break before I leap back into the Pattern Purdah backlog, and during that break the Tour de Fleece begins.

  This year I actually have my own team: Team Russian Underpants. It’s fielded jointly by two Ravelry groups, both of which I moderate; Antique Spinning Wheels and CPW Lovers. The team name is based on some of the deeply bizarre stuff we’ve seen eBay sellers do to wheels by way of adding value, including transforming them into lamps with outlandish shades that look like a cross between the Winter Palace and Great-Great-Grandma’s bloomers.

  Our team badge, courtesy of the lovely and gifted Blogless Fran:

  

  As you can see, we take ourselves and our spinning VERY seriously.

  I am also spinning again for Abby Franquemont’s Team Suck Less, and this year I’ve also joined the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Group Group’s Team Bacon Cakewaffle.

  The serious. I am all about it.

• Incidentally, I can also foreseee that the New Normal is going to include frequent repetitions of the catch-phrase - or rather the catch-up-phrase - “oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about that yet, have you.” For instance, I was about to start telling you about the warm-ups I’m doing for the Tour, and I realized that they all require referring to backstories that I’ve never gotten around to blogging. If I have anything to say about it the New Normal is going to feature reasonably frequent blog entries (hey, I’ve done it before; I can do it again), and for a while they are going to be studded with that phrase until… it stops being true.

  To wit: As part of my warm-ups I’ve plied up all the Teeswater singles (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Teeswater yet, have you) and finished the yarn; it’s drying now and will be skeined and tagged and photographed tomorrow. There’s still about another bobbin’s worth of Teeswater left to spin (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Teeswater yet, have you), and I’ll probably do that during the Tour itself. I’ve also started a timed trial with the Cheviot (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Cheviot yet, have you), so I can estimate speed and grist both for the Suck Less mile-in-a-day challenge and for the 18-ply (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the 18-ply yet, have you) that I’m doing as part of the Russian Underpants challenge (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Russian Underpants challenge yet, have you). This time I’m spinning it, not from the lock as I did for the Infamous 8-ply (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Infamous 8-ply yet, have you), but from hand-combed top (oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the combs yet, have you), so I figure a trial run is in order to see whether I think I have a prayer of getting it all done in time and of squeezing the resulting yarn through the tiny orifice of an antique wheel.

  Note to self: Blog the Teeswater, the Teeswater, the Cheviot, the 18-ply, the Russian Underpants challenge, the Infamous 8-ply, and the combs.

Hrmph - the New Normal is starting to look like a lot of work.

Good thing it has kittens, is all I can say.