Isn’t it funny how the thought of the dentist’s chair can turn us into five-year-olds? I like my dentists, I really do. They are wonderful men and are very intent on me not being in any pain. But I still spent the entire day dreading this afternoon’s dentist appointment. I came through with no drilling, but until the dentist told me that he’d see me in six months, I didn’t believe it was going to happen. I do have two spots that we are “watching” because they’ve had a little erosion but not enough for fillings. I am okay with that. But the next time I go to the dentist’s office? I will dread it all over again. Bad dental experiences from childhood last a lifetime.
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Ah ha! I was adding photos to Flicker and found another FO from the year, and this one was so detailed and so special that I feel much better about my otherwise poor knitting showing for the year. (The pictures are not the greatest, so bear with me.
I got the idea to make Amelia a shawl for her high school graduation when I went to Stitches South in 2009. There was some orange Malabrigo sock yarn that just seemed to be begging to be made into something for her (her favorite color is orange), not too bright, and mixed in with some more earthy colors (it was the “Archangel” colorway, but your mileage may vary – some people tell me their skeins are more purple, I guess because of the dyeing technique). At any rate, I snapped up two skeins, and then promptly forgot about them until winter break last year. At that point, I thought, “If I don’t get this started, it will never be done by her graduation because I’ll have classes in the spring.” So I cast on for the Feathered Wings Shawl (sorry, Ravelry link!) on January 4, 2010, because I wanted to give her something that she could wrap herself up in when she was feeling homesick, kind of like a college kid security blanket. And I liked the symbolism of making wings for someone “leaving the nest.” And I was making pretty good progress on it until that snowboarding thing happened, sidelining my knitting for a good while.
But, I do have enough discipline that when Amelia’s graduation was looming, I jumped right back into it. Alas, I only had 880 yards of sock yarn (the pattern calls for 880 yards of laceweight, which is not the same), so I had to leave off some of the last repeat. I finished knitting it on June 8, and I believe she graduated on June 9, which didn’t give me enough time to block it. So, I wrapped it up and gave it to her unblocked so she knew what she was getting, and could see the whole before/after process with lace (below is what it looked like at that point, which was still very nice, but not finished).
Amelia left the next day for a last two week trip with her glee club, and I blocked it. Of course, while blocking it, I found out that somehow I had missed a stitch, or the little bastard has squirmed off the needle, or something. And that is when I figured nail polish was the best policy. I knotted it back into the pattern, more or less, and then put a couple of drops of clear nail polish on the knot to hold it in place. As the Persian rug makers say, “Only Allah is perfect.” And yes, I told Amelia about this when she got back and I gave it to her, blocked. She loved it anyway. Now, did we get any good pictures of it on her? No. So you are left with this horrible shot of it blocking to get an idea of how it turned out (but hey, I just realized Charlie is in this picture, so that’s a little bonus, he’s cute).
And here’s one so you can get a better sense of the feather detailing:
Sorry, it was dark by the time I did this, I slept on the couch that night.
Details:
Pattern: Feathered Wings Shawl by Asami Kawa
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock in Archanangel
Needles: US Size 6, 48″ circular Knitpicks Options
Would I make this again? Absolutely. I might even make it for Sage when she graduates in three years. I really did like working with the sock yarn on this, it made it very cuddly to knit, and I think it suits the sensibilities of a college student a little better – more sturdy, not as fancy as laceweight would have been. I would also totally make this for myself in some of the twenty pounds of laceweight I have in this house. Maybe over winter break.
I have been through several natural disasters in my life. For instance, I have a vivid memory of my mom herding a 7 year old me into our basement on this day, when tornadoes hit Western PA. The only damage we had was a tree getting knocked down, luckily away from our house, as it would have taken out my bedroom if it had fallen another way.
More often than not, I just miss the disaster in some way. When I was in college, an earthquake hit NW PA. I was taking a nap before dinner and totally missed it except to wake with the conviction that my friends had been shaking me to wake me up. Uh, no, that was the earthquake, dumbass. This summer, an earthquake hit Ottawa, supposedly shaking people up on the fourth floor of the building in which I work. I was outside on my lunchbreak, sitting on a bench, and didn’t feel a damned thing.
Last night, I knew there were thunderstorm warnings as I went into class, and shortly into it, the sky got very dark and rain started sheeting against the building. Between that and the thunder, we all had to raise our voices to be heard, but aside from the lights flickering for a second, we were all too intent on our discussion of the economic development policy in Vietnam in the 50s to really pay much attention to it (I know, it’s amazing how good this class is). Jordana called me during class, but my phone was on silent, so it wasn’t until I got out that I got her message: “Are you okay, did the tornado get your house?” Come again, WHAT???
Apparently while we were debating about whether militarization in Vietnam was inevitable, the storm that was hitting us was wreaking havoc in Park Slope, just the other side of the hill from where I live. The National Weather Service is still looking into whether or not it was a tornado, but from these videos, it sure as hell looks like one (note: the second video is NSFW because of all the cursing, but it’s vastly entertaining).
Meanwhile, when I finally made it home after delays on the part of the MTA and a longer walk than usual, everything was fine at our place. Power had never even gone out, no trees down, and the only indication that anything was amiss was the large numbers of helicopters flying over and the Manhattan-bound Prospect Expressway being shut down for a while. Another missed disaster to add to my life list. I had a glass of wine and thought “Hmm, maybe Mother Nature is trying to tell us something.”
I took up snowboarding two winters ago, if you can count “took snowboarding lessons once and liked it, then inherited Sage’s outgrown snowboard” as “took up.” Last winter, I again went out for a day of lessons, and after two of them, I was actually getting to the point where I was making it work, and I was madly excited about it. I was also in a lot of pain, because the process of getting to that point involved so. much. falling. down. I fell on my knees, I fell on my butt, and at one point I tried to catch myself and ended up hyper extending my right thumb, but I kept going, dammit, because I was getting it!
I would now like to blame Shaun White and the Winter Olympics for my stupidity. Damn you, with your making it look effortless and fun! (I am shaking my fist at them right now.)
Yeah, so the thumb hyper extension was bad enough that I spent a lot of time writing with my hand wrapped in an ace bandage, and my knitting (it was also the Knitting Olympics, after all) was completely de-railed. So the purple socks I started on February 13 for Rick’s mom’s birthday were stopped almost at inception because snowboard day was February 14.
But finally, this weekend when I was procrastinating, I finished them, making them my sole FO for 2010 so far. That statement there is pathetic and almost reduced me to tears yesterday when I realized it was true.
And here they are. The light was crap in the apartment, so they’re somewhere between the two in color – purple with a really intense violet blue. These are the Yarn Harlot’s Plain Vanilla Socks in Socks That Rock Lightweight, “The Incredible Shrinking Violet” colorway, which was a Club color a while back, 2.25 mm needles.
And now that I have finally, finally completed them, Rick’s ma has decided she is moving into a nursing home. In Florida. Where she will never ever need wool socks. I would keep them, but I know she likes the socks I knit for her, so instead I will laugh at the irony. Or cry. I haven’t decided yet.
No, that is not the arbitrary ruling for how long something stays okay to eat after it hits the floor. That’s 30 seconds, and if you didn’t know that, I hereby revoke your citizenship.
The Five Minute Rule is something I’m trying to institute this semester because at the end of last year, while I had a 4.0 GPA, I also had the feeling that I’d let some things slip. Like, I dunno, my social life, crafting, blogging, and probably several more things that contributed to this summer’s wild binge of fiction reading. (Seriously, I was like a castaway at an all-you-can-eat buffet. I read about 30 books this summer, all of which qualified as braincandy, including the entire Sookie Stackhouse series in the two weeks before school started.) Binging, as all experts will tell you, isn’t healthy, even when it’s reading. My mind was mush when I started reading for the semester and the first reading assignments for classes were just torture.
So, new policy. I will make time, even if it’s limited, for all the things I missed last year. Crafting, for instance. I can weave for five minutes here and five minutes there and still get a fair amount done. (Oh, wait, you didn’t realize I’d gone over to that craft, too? Yeah, bought a rigid-heddle loom to celebrate the school year being over in May and have taught myself how to weave in a very half-assed manner.) I can also, if I am strict with myself, knit on a plain vanilla sock for five minutes here and there. The Yarn Harlot does it all the time. I can blog in five minutes, I’ve been proving that for a week now. Other things can also be fit into my schedule, although they’ll take longer than five minutes, like a girls’ night with Jordana (scheduled for Friday night). However “five hour rule” does not have as good a ring to it. I just have to be organized and overcome my natural tendency toward procrastination, something I worked at last year with my homework and papers. And really, if you could see the five million Getting Things Done apps I have on the Droid, it’s not that far-fetched.
After all, if there’s anything The Shining taught us, it’s that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Well, that and never ever believe your husband when he tells you that spending the winter by yourselves as caretakers at a hotel in Colorado is a good idea.
Despite Grace’s magnificent explanation of how the solar year (and thus time) progresses this morning via email, I would still like to know how my oldest child turned 18 today, thus making her a legal adult. I have made peace with her going to college, I am thrilled that she can now vote, but her Facebook status message this morning, “i’m an adult,” (her capitalization, of course) threw me. I mean, yes, in my head somewhere I realized that 18 equals legal adult in the United States, but still, it doesn’t seem possible that so much time has passed since I met her.
In the absence of a better explanation, I am totally going with “time warp.”
Because I am boring and feel compelled to keep returning to my to-do list for the weekend…
- PC Scrubbed? Yes. Unfortunately, I have to take it to Goodwill for recycling, so it is sitting on the floor of my office until I can get Rick to drive me over there. I am not hauling a hard drive on the subway.
- Bookshelf picked up, hall looking semi-clean? Check. Didn’t vacuum, though, because I lacked enthusiasm for that project.
- Laundry done? Check. Rick took pity on me and went to the laundromat yesterday. He washed, dried, and folded everything, so all I had to do was put it away when he brought it home. I actually did that instead of staring at it in the laundry bag for a week, wondering where the magical laundry elves had disappeared to.
- Homework done? Uh….yeah, that’s where I hit a roadblock. 9/11 always throws me for a loop, so I spent that day avoiding homework, instead reading Tim Gunn’s new book. Don’t judge, Tim Gunn heals me. I did pick back up on the homework last night, and am positive I will be done with the reading by the time it’s due – this book reads much more quickly than the last.
Now, what else did I get done that wasn’t on the list?
- Total rearrange of office space, including decorations? Check.
- Finding new way of listening to Steelers games so even when the stupid Giants or Jets are on at the same time, I can listen to my boys? Check.
- Finishing of the pair of socks I started for Rick’s Ma in February, the ones that were sidetracked by my snowboarding injury? Check. Also, washing and blocking of said socks? Check.
- Appreciating the irony of finishing a pair of wool socks for a woman who is moving to Florida? Check.
- Weekly letter to Amelia written? Check.
- Quality time spent with Rick? Check.
- Sunday dinner cooked for the first time since probably May? Check. It’s been too fucking hot to cook all summer, so last night I went all out and made fresh sauce, pasta (not fresh, Buitoni), cauliflower, and brownies. And then I made rice for today’s lunch, which was leftover veggie curry from Friday.
So, not exactly what I had planned, but on the whole, I was pretty damned productive. Now I just need to add one more thing to the list.
- Total glossing over of the fact that I didn’t get my homework done this weekend? Check.
My to-do list for the weekend had four things on it. Let’s examine it and see how much progress I’ve made at 10:15 on Saturday morning.
- Scrub PC hard drive – In progress as we speak. Or, as I type, because you and I aren’t really speaking in the physical sense, are we? It’s more…yeah, it’s too early for philosophical ramblings. Let’s just say that I’m wiping the drive. At least, I think I am. I have downloaded KillDisk, I have made a CD of it, I have booted my computer up from said CD, told it I want to kill this drive, and now there’s a progress bar happening. It is going faster than I was told it would, so I have some doubts, but at this point I’m going with the flow.
- Have Jordana get the bookshelf – She did last night! Which would explain why last night not a whole hell of a lot got done except drinking wine and making some sort of vegetarian curry that we improvised using the curry sauce I bought at Super H Mart in Atlanta this summer with Regan. Riiight, that happened when I wasn’t blogging. Hi! I went to Atlanta and saw Regan while I was there. Surprise! Anyway, bookshelf is out of the hall, now I just need to vacuum it and redistribute the stuff that’s out there. Which reminds me, anyone want a Roomba? I bought one from Woot and it just doesn’t seem to like life in my house. I only used it once, and it had a run in with a radiator, so it looks a little worse for wear, but it works! And I would let it go for mad cheap. Make me an offer, kids.
- Clean the apartment – I actually vacuumed, swept, and mopped the entire place last night before J came over. Today I just need to clean the kitchen table and the counters, which got a little the worse for wear during last night’s curry improv, and put away last weekend’s laundry so I can go and do laundry today.
- Homework – yeah…I need to get on this. Instead of blogging. I think I’ll take it with me when I do laundry. There’s a reason why it’s last on this list and was first on the original list, because I’ve made absolutely no progress on it.
Over all, not doing too bad for this early in the weekend. Maybe I can talk Rick into doing the counters and the table, since he was out golfing last night while I cleaned. Or not, because he’s Rick, and he will tell me I already did the part he “likes,” the vacuuming. Which is why he stuck around to help with that part last night. See a trend?
If I post this, it will be three posts in one week, which is the most I’ve posted…well, probably since I started this degree. Awesome, I’m on a roll! A roll that is entirely due to Rosh Hashanah and the fact that we have no classes during it. Hi, we’re in New York, Jewish holidays get figured into daily life here like they never did in Western PA.
At any rate, classes. Yeah. I’ve had two meetings of one class (a colloquium in Vietnam) and one class in Black American history because classes started on a Thursday this year and Black America meets on Wednesdays. In fact, I started classes earlier than Amelia or Sage this year, which was interesting. Amelia started a week after me, and Sage goes back on Monday, because her school figured there was no point in going back on Tuesday just to take off for Rosh Hashanah. As I said, New York City, we are in it. Sage has taken an unholy amount of glee in this, although I’m not sure she’ll feel the same when Amelia and I both have our month off in January and she’s still stuck in school. Ditto when we finish up in May and she doesn’t.
Riiiight, classes. The colloquium is demanding, as colloquiums are wont to be. We read a book a week (ranging from 200-600 pages), then come to class and have hardcore discussions with assigned roles to make sure that the discussion is lively. I prepped more for that second class than I ever have for a graduate class, just because I had a role to play, so I guess it works. We’ve got a 15-20 page research paper due at the end of the semester (topic is of our own choosing, I will touch on my proposed topic another time), and we hand in a draft of it in November. We also have to do a 4-7 page lit review of the existing works on our topic, which will incorporate into our main paper. Time consuming, yes, but I’ve done all of this before. It’s the reading which is going to be the kicker here.
The Black America course, from the one class I’ve taken, seems like it will balance out okay. Readings seem to hover at around 100 pages a week, which I can knock out on a Saturday morning, leaving the rest of the week for Vietnam readings. Because there are 25 of us in it (more than I’ve ever had in a grad class), the prof is going to do more lecture with student participation rather than student-led discussion. I am fine with this. And while we have two 5 page essays and one 15-20 page essay (due at the end of the semester) throughout our time, none of it is from outside research. It is all based on classroom readings, which is a lot like my essays for Chinese history courses were. In other words, I’m saying “I think I can” a lot. Since it’s supposed to be a “fun” degree, I could theoretically drop out at any time, but what kind of message would that send to Amelia and Sage? I’m sticking to it.
But I’m really hoping that next semester I finally get to study colonial or New York City history, which were two of the reasons I started taking this program in the first place.
Rick just gave me a precious gift. He said we don’t have to go to Pittsfield this weekend. Now, I love Pittsfield, don’t get me wrong. It’s gorgeous, it’s more relaxed, there’s good food there, and many more things, but for the past two weekends, it’s been trying to kill me. Apparently my ragweed allergy is much more pronounced in the Berkshires than it is in the concrete jungles of Brooklyn. Go figure.
Other reasons why this is a precious gift, other than the fact that I won’t have to run through an entire box of Kleenex in two days:
- I will be around to do things. Like homework. Because even when I take my homework to Pittsfield, I end up ignoring it, which is bad.
- I can clean my apartment, which gets covered in fur when we’re gone. Just because we’re taking some time off doesn’t mean the cats are, apparently.
- Also, maybe Jordana can come over and get the bookshelf that has been sitting in our hall for Samang all summer. Our schedules have not meshed enough to do that in the past three months. My hallway looks like the garbage dump right now as a result, because stuff in our house tends to migrate to the designated messy spot, and right now that’s the hall. (Does this happen in anyone else’s house, or is it just me?)
- I can also scrub my hard drive and put the damned PC that hasn’t worked right since it caught a virus that time and I had to reinstall everything out on the curb. I have a MacBook Pro that I use all the time, I don’t need the PC gathering dust in the corner and setting off my allergies more.
Of course, now that I’ve posted all of this? I’ve pretty much guaranteed that none of it will get done. Except the homework, that has to be done. I have class next week, after all.