Knit on, dude!

Well, I've managed to catch a cold. I'm pretty sure I know exactly where I got it, too (a well-meaning student who came to class sick as a dog so he wouldn't miss anything; I'm sure that was it, since half that class was hacking up a lung on Monday). But I figure if the Olympic athletes can compete with broken thumbs and knee surgeries and bad backs, I can knit through a cold.

With that can-do attitude, I finished the back of the henley last night. Does that count as getting through a quarter-final, maybe? I even cast on for the front and knitted through the edging so I could switch to the larger needles and knit the set-up rows for the stitch pattern, figuring that once I had the front that far, I'm back to mindlessness for a few repeats before the shaping starts. So I'm doing fairly well here. Of course, there's no point in showing you any pictures, since for all intents and purposes* it still looks exactly like the last set of pictures.

Luckily, Chris has saved us all from boring, photoless posts -- thanks, Chris! She sent me a picture of her gorgeous oevre-in-progress:
As of Monday, she was eight inches into the body -- go, Chris, go! And is that scrumptious**, or what? A reminder: This is the lovely Flyingdales, knitted in Chris' very own Abundance. I love those colors, and it seems like they're definitely in that granite-y theme, along with mine, no?
Power neutrals. That's what these are, I think: power neutrals. I'm already excited to wear mine -- it's better than a medal -- and it totally matched the outfit I was wearing yesterday.

Of course, knitting is more like one of the distance sports, rather than being like, say, the combined moguls, where those skiers go all out for 43.786 seconds, and then bam! It's over. Not with knitting. Knitters, like marathoners, have to think stamina; we have to plan, know that if we make it to this landmark by a certain time, and that landmark within the next bit of time, we might have a shot at the gold. Chris says, "I have wound up 8 big cakes and I have figured that I need to knit a cake every two days. One down! Sadly as of 4:00 pm (right now [on Monday]) I am not through half of a cake for today. mmmm...........???? YIKES???" All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not the only one who a) does these kinds of calculations on my way to the finish, and b) doesn't always make it to my goal for the day. (BTW, you can see those cakes of yarn, all wound up and ready to go, on Chris' Rav page; you can also leave a note there to cheer her on, since athletes all need a cheering squad.)

So, that's my update. One back done for me; eight inches of body done for her. We're on our way to the podium!

*Note: The latest iteration of this phrase in many of my students' papers is: for all intensive purposes. You've got to love language change in progress!
**OK, here's the cool thing I just noticed. A student of mine asked in class the other day about the fact that when most people say "warmth", they're actually pronouncing it with a "p" ("warmpth"). He's absolutely right, and it's because it makes the articulation of that awkward combination of sounds (m + th) easier. This student, being one of those students that I love who takes the initiative, then appeared in my office hours to tell me that he'd done more research and discovered that this process of insertion is called epenthesis; he's absolutely right (and beat me to it; we're covering that in class next week). But what's even cooler is that I just noticed that the "p" in "scrumptious" probably comes from the same process, but since there's no word "scrum" (at least not with a related meaning), as there is with "warm" to keep people on the p-less straight and narrow, "scrumptuous" gets to have its "p" in the spelling, while poor "warmth" doesn't. I vote we all spell it "warmpth" from now on; Truth in Spelling!

For whom does the knitter root?

I have always been a weird fan, rooting for teams and people for reasons which rarely have anything to do with them being from my home country or city. The Olympics appear to be no exception. For example, I really wanted Jen Heil to get gold last night, because I figured it'd take so much pressure off of the rest of the Canadian teams to have that no-gold-on-home-ground bugaboo taken care of, and I sympathize with all of the Canadian athletes who are trying to break that curse. And I really wanted the Slovakian hockey team to score at least one goal; their goalie played one of the most valiant games I've seen in a long time, and it just seemed like she deserved it. See? Random, I know. Of course, I was delighted Apolo Ohno took silver -- I like him, heh.

But in the end, it's really the Olympics that I love. Even the weird sports like the nordic combined competition (whose idea was that, anyway?). I've been thinking all weekend how much I enjoyed the opening ceremonies (the part I managed to stay up for; I finally abandoned at 11:00, and they still hadn't lit the torch!). I was particularly moved and impressed by the up-front inclusion of First Nations peoples. This is something that I've noticed in other places (for example when I visited New Zealand) that I think is still a shameful lack here in the United States. Until we come to terms with our history -- all of it, not just the pretty stuff -- it's hard to imagine how we can move forward with any kind of integrity. Including First Nations people in things like the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games doesn't mean everything is perfect or better, nor does it make up for past history (which can't be made up for in any case), but it is an important part of acknowledging one's history and heritage and of making steps towards moving forward with true integrity, and it was pretty thrilling to see it.

It was also funny to hear the commentators talking about how impressive it was that the folks out there on the stage were dancing all the way through the parade of atheletes. Having attended parts of four-day ceremonies, during which the dancers dance for hours at a time for the entire four days, with little to no sleep, I was impressed but by no means surprised. I did love seeing the hoop dancer, though -- hoop dancing is very cool.

I'm going to try to post more frequent updates during the Olympics, just to keep on top of the knitting that I'm doing. I have knitted through the shaping on the back of the henley, and have about another two and a half inches to go before I start the armhole shaping. Not too bad, eh? (That's about 12 inches there.)
Of course, I'll be slowing down considerably during the week. Tomorrow's my long day at work (classes until 8:15 at night), with very little knitting time to speak of, and I won't be able to knit during at least one of my big meetings on Tuesday, alas. So we'll see if I can maintain my speed.
I don't know if you can see the shaping running through the middle there, where the motifs merge and then separate again, but I'm quite liking the effect. This whole thing is reminding me more and more of oak woods. I still haven't captured the true depth of the colors of this yarn, but I'll keep working on it.

Aside from knitting for the U.S., I've had a pretty busy weekend. Among other things, I went to a wonderful class on spinning cotton on a takhli yesterday. I've really been wanting to work on my long draw in spinning, and it seemed like working with cotton on a supported spindle might be the way to do it. It took some effort, but I finally got to the place where I was actually spinning cotton, really and for true, and understanding that teachers do not say "hold the fiber like a baby bird" simply to torment their students. Done right, that actually works. (Just for scale, the whorl on that spindle is about the size of a U.S. quarter.)
See that bit of yarn coming off of the spindle? I spun that. (Actually, I spun all of the yarn on the spindle, but some of the stuff towards the middle isn't nearly so nice.) And when it goes well, it's more fun than a basket full of kittens. I had some trouble convincing myself to knit last night instead of playing with my spinning. I had to be disciplined. Just like an Olympic athlete. (Yes, you may laugh now.) The teacher also gave us some seeds for green cotton, which I am going to attempt to grow. Rick snorted, but when I pointed out that it's better than sheep or goats (from his perspective, that is; I fail to see the problem with adding livestock to our menagerie, but he remains unconvinced even when I point out we'd never have to mow the lawn again), he subsided. The girls are saving me space in the herb garden they're in the process of planning.

I hope everyone else who's knitting through the Olympics is feeling good, getting their second wind, and knitting injury-free. Go, knitters, go!

On your mark...

Tonight's the night! The opening ceremonies for the Games start here at 6:30 pm; we'll probably be a bit late with the start, but we'll be watching them, and I'll be casting on. I've been clearing the decks this week, in a lot of ways, getting things off of my various to-do lists. The chapter that's been hanging over my head is due on Monday, and although I'm still 800 words over the target word count, I think I'm going to call it good for this first round; bibliographies and abstracts don't count, right? (The real answer is: yes, they do, especially bibliographies, but I don't want to hear it.) I keep thinking that I could ask for a two-day extension and finish it up during my furlough next Wednesday (shhh, don't tell the state), but the fact of the matter is that it's really close to being done, and I have three more deadlines coming right up after this one, so I really should just send that off so I can work on other things on my furlough day (shhh, don't tell the state). Or maybe take a nap. We'll see.

In knitting news, I finished the babushka (don't blame me, I didn't name it) during a budget forum yesterday, and promptly put it on (it was chilly in that room). I've been wearing it non-stop ever since, and the way I'm going, I doubt I'll ever block it, since I don't want to take it off. I'll get some good shots of it someday, but for the moment, these will give you an idea of what I'm talking about.
This is a fabulous little scarf, because it's so light, but the seed stitch makes it very insulative. It feels like wearing luxury waffle weave. It's a very long half-oval, which is a shape that I am more and more taken with. It can be worn like a scarf, because it's long enough to do the multiple-wrap thing, but it can also be spread out across the shoulders like a shawl. It's a scawl. Or a shawrf. Either way, I like it. I might even consider knitting another one of these, seed stitch notwithstanding. And in spite of the second-to-last row, which took me (I am not exaggerating here) three hours of meetings, and two hours of knit night to finish. One row.
To recap, this is the Silk Alpaca Babushka (Rav link), knitted out of Jade Sapphire Silk/Cashmere 2-ply on size 5 needles. I used about a skein and a half of the yarn, and am contemplating what I might do with the rest. I wonder whether I'd have enough to hold it double to knit myself a small pair of mitts? That's what I'd like to do, so we'll see.

Meanwhile, tonight I'm casting on for the Knitting Olympics. I'm even officially signed up, if you can believe. Four years ago, when Stephanie last did this, I was barely a knitter. It would never have occurred to me to think I could knit anything in two weeks (I was just out of my "three years per project" stage). And now I'm taking on a challenge. I'm going to knit Anne's henley (it's the purple one in the bottom left corner of that top shot), in the Grandma's Blessing yarn that I was showing off the other week. I'm not promising I can get it done (I just realized that I'm going to be out of town for the entire last weekend of the Olympics, oops), but I am going to give it my very best shot. I've swatched already (the rule count swatching as "training").
And I am thrilled to pieces with the combination of colors and stitch pattern. I am going to get a good shot of this if it kills me, sometime during these next couple of weeks. It reminds me of granite (I should mention here, lest this be misinterpreted, that I adore granite -- the rough, mountainous kind, not the polished kitchen kind -- and that is exactly what this is like).
I really love it. So, the project is Anne's henley, knitted in Chris' Grandma's Blessing, which I think we all know is just about my favorite yarn ever. You can do anything with this yarn (and I pretty much have): socks, sweaters, shawls. Lace and cables. Talk about a workhorse of a yarn. And Chris dyed this up to give me for the Olympics, which makes it that much more special. She's taking on a challenge herself during these next two weeks, and is going to knit Flyingdales from A Fine Fleece, out of Abundance; we both promised we'd do something with cables together, and I think we've got some fun patterns chosen. She's promised to share pictures, so with luck I can share that, too.

So that's it in knitting news. We just took the kids to see The Lightning Thief, which they absolutely adored. I thought it was fun, although (natch) not as good as the book, and I was a bit disappointed with the sword fighting. I do love me a good sword fight scene (perhaps a legacy of that short stint on the college fencing team?), and these were a bit stiff; everyone was telegraphing every move they made and watching anything but each other. Ah, well. You can't have everything, and the hydra made up for a lot, not to mention Uma Thurman as Medusa. Very nice casting.

So now we're heading out to have an early family Valentine's Day dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, and then it's off to the races.

Spoilt and some progress

Even though we have not yet celebrated my birthday here Chez KL, I am still feeling quite spoilt this week. I've gotten some really fun and unexpected packages in the mail, which I always enjoy; there's something to be said for surprises, I think.

Rachel sent me some books, which is always fun for me; I love to read, and I love to see what other people find interesting and worth passing on in their reading. I'm almost all the way through the book that made her start her book-sending spree, and I have to agree with her that it is a wonderful book, very hard to put down. I've already recommended it to another friend who is in a book club that focuses on books not written in English (it's translated from Afrikaans). It's about a part of the world, and a time in history, that I know very little about, with characters who become more interesting and rich as the book goes on. It's also about many of the topics I care about: the environment, labor, the relationship between mankind and other animals, stewardship.
Really good. Really, really good. Also, apparently, out of print and therefore not that easily gotten. I'm so glad Rachel found it for me, though! The other two books look equally intriguing, and I'll be sure to report on them as I get to them, one by one, to make them last.

And on Thursday, I came home to find a truly unexpected package from New Zealand. When I opened it up, lo and behold, inside was the first installment of the Vintage Purls summer sock club, sent to me courtesy of my friend Stella, who truly spoils me sometimes. Its arrival was nothing short of serendipitous. I'd been dithering over my decision not to join the Rockin' Sock Club this year, wondering whether I shouldn't after all, as I do like getting packages of yarn in the mail; I'd also just spent an entire evening at my LYS really wanting to find something purple to knit -- I'm rather craving purple for reasons which are not entirely clear to me -- and not feeling inspired. And then this came in the mail.
Look at that. It's a sock club, and that yarn (it's hard to see, because it's very gray here today and the light isn't good) is the most gorgeous shade of pale grey/lavender you ever did see. And those socks have beads knitted into them (and we all know how I've been feeling about beads lately). And it came with chocolate (mmm...) and really fun post-it notes (thus fulfilling my love of office supplies). Everything I could ever want, in one small package. I'm dying to cast on.

But I'm also trying to get a few things off the needles. I've reached a good resting place with the babushka, having finished the main body and the first skein of yarn simultaneously.
All that's left now is to pick up umpteen billion stitches along the bottom edge, and then to knit the little lace ruffle edging. I'm still not sure how I feel about the construction of this one, but I do know that I'm going to love wearing it; with the seed stitch, this feels like a particularly luxurious sort of silk/cashmere thermal underwear, you know? I'm wishing it were done so I could wear it now, as it's gotten chilly and wet again, but I think I'll set it aside for a moment. I'd like to finish the unbloggable project (close, so close), and then swatch for the sweater I'm knitting during the Olympics, and I really want to knit those socks up there; I miss having socks OTN, it seems like it's past time. So the ruffle may wait a little bit, we'll see.

I've also made progress on the paper I'm struggling with. After working on it all day yesterday, I managed to go from 9,000 words to 9,600 words. Not progress, alas, in the direction of the desired 8,000 words. After a walk with Rick, though (I find that walking really seems to get the blood moving in the right direction), during which I blathered about the paper and he listened, it suddenly occurred to me that I might be able to make my argument quite nicely (and more neatly) if I delete one of the sections. Now I'm down to 7600 words, which should leave me plenty of room to neaten up the transitions and overarching lines of argument and to finish the references. I hope. We'll see...

In the meantime, I've had a lovely Saturday. Two friends took me out for brunch and a pedicure today for my birthday, which was exactly what I needed. This afternoon, in fact very soon now, we're going to hear Older Daughter play violin in a school concert, and then home for a birthday dinner and chocolate cake and, I hope, some knitting. This seems like the right way to spend a weekend.

It's Imbolc

And that means it's my birthday.

I have decided over the years that I far and away prefer associating my birthday with Imbolc than with Groundhog's Day (although they are not unconnected themselves, actually); this may have to do with memories of being made to crawl out from under my desk in grade school to see if I could see my shadow. I don't know where grade school teachers get ideas like that, nor why they think that such a thing would a) lead to positive memories and/or b) not lead to major teasing throughout my remaining school years, but the upshot is that my general feelings vis-a-vis Groundhog's day are not the most positive.

Imbolc, though, that's another story. Here we are, at the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The sun is truly starting to come back. It's no longer dark when the girls and I leave piano lessons at 5:30, and I'm beginning to have faith again that the day will come when it's no longer pitch black when I leave campus on Mondays at 8:15. That's a good thing to remember when there are still fewer hours of light in a day than there are hours of dark. The wheel is turning, and will continue to turn, so I'll enjoy the light as it comes and remember that next year, I will once again be eager at winter solstice for a time of dark in which to rest.

Meanwhile, today's a furlough day, which means I got to start my day with a lovely walk with a friend, followed by some quiet time spent knitting and reading (knitting on the project that I cannot share right now, alas, but good knitting nonetheless). Then Rick took me out to lunch at Q'ero, which I do believe I've mentioned (whilst drooling on the keyboard) in the past. Love that place. Love love love it. It's been a peaceful day, rare and wonderful, and especially nice after a late-working Monday.

(Fair warning: Some of you expressed interest in the field methods class. This may have been politeness on your part, which I very much appreciate. The reward for your civility is more information than you could possibly want about the class. I'm sorry. This is what happens when someone makes the mistake of showing any kind of interest in one of my passions. Please feel free to skip this bit.) Last night we had our second field methods class, which went really well. Two teams of students were in charge of the elicitations, and they'd met with me last week to plan them all out. This isn't easy, as they've never had to develop questions about the inner workings of a language before, let alone follow those questions up with an actual plan as to what they want to ask a speaker in order to investigate those questions. It's the scientific method in action, but not everyone is comfortable with the idea that one must be simultaneously rigorous and completely open to changing direction based on new evidence when necessary, often on the fly.

I suggested that they start with something simple, and try to figure out whether and how nouns are marked for singular and/or plural, and whether those markings change depending on the role of the noun in the sentence. To that end, the first group developed a set of sentences around intransitive verbs (e.g. The wind blows; The airplane flies; The cat sleeps), and then played with the number of the nouns in the subject (e.g. Airplanes fly; Some cats eat; Cats eat; etc)(those, by the way, are some of the actual sentences that they used). They also elicited subject pronouns (e.g. I sing, you (sg) sing, she/he/it sings, etc), and found (to my delight and their consternation) that second person subject pronouns (you and y'all) distinguish between the very casual (to people younger than oneself and those with whom one is very close), the "regular" (used when talking to people who are one's peers), and the formal (used with those older than oneself, strangers, social superiors). My friend, the speaker of Bengali for this class, is a fabulous consultant, and is very aware of some of these kinds of forms in her language, which means she's good at providing the information the students need; it's a real treat to work with someone like that, and after last night, I think the students really realized how it makes their job easier.

The second group looked at the same kinds of issues for noun phrases which are direct objects, in sentences like, The boy hugs the girl; Some girls hug some boys; Girls hug boys, etc. We're already getting all kinds of neat information (like, plurality is only marked once; if the word "some" is in the sentence, the noun doesn't get the -ra plural ending). By the end of class, the next two groups of students already had some sense of what questions came directly from these data, whose answers should be investigated next week (for example, prounouns for object noun phrases), and some ideas for new areas of investigation (kinship terminology). It's a pretty exciting thing, even if we're all just wiped out by the end. The part that makes it the most unpredictable of any class I teach is that there's no way to tell from week to week what we'll find, and therefore what we'll need to cover the next week. One week's results lead to the next week's questions, in a way that's very organic, and which requires a certain willingness to be comfortable with log-rolling -- always trying to keep up with the bit of log that's under one's feet from moment to moment.

Which is probably a useful lesson for life in general, right? With that, I think I'll go knit a little bit more before getting the girls from school. Soon I'll be swatching for my knitting olympics project, and there will be some knitting that I can actually show off. In the meantime, happy Imbolc.

Overshooting the mark

So, I do believe I've mentioned that I have a lot of deadlines. A lot of them. I have a list. Actually, I have a lot of lists. There are the lists that I write on each day's calendar entry, of the things that ought to get done that day (the ones that don't get done have to get rewritten on more realistic dates), and then there are the lists that I put on a little post-it note that I move from day to day because I know darned well they're not actually doing to get done when I think they will, and then there's the list of big ongoing projects about which I should be (and am) feeling a constant state of low-level panic all the time.

Am I the only one who does this?

When my week started, my daily lists had tons and tons of little things (go to this meeting, type up those minutes, prep for that class, etc); my move-as-necessary list had a smaller number of medium-sized projects (write a letter of recommendation and take to class to give to student; put together independent study contracts, get them signed by the department chair, and take to class to give to students; etc); and my big-project list had a number of items with associated drop-dead dates (write grant proposal by 2/2; peer review article by 2/15; write 8,000-word chapter by 2/15).

Did you note that last one? That's the kicker. I've been putting it off. I got just about every single other thing on my list done, plus a few that weren't on the list (like cleaning out my desk trays and putting away all of my knitwear neatly on my closet shelves). I've been getting to the point where all that's left is to either floss the cat or write the dratted chapter. So I blocked out today, and the next two weeks' Thursdays and Fridays for it. In preparation for today, I put together all of my notes from the original presentation, which amounted to a scant 4,235 words (but who was counting), found all the articles I'd used as references when preparing the presentation, plus all of the other things I've written of relevance. I went swimming this morning, and then I sat down, bound and determined to have something that could reasonably be called a "draft" by the end of today, howsoever holey and drafty it might be.

I typed and I wrote and I contemplated and I said BLEH at the computer screen and I cut and I pasted and I sighed and I moaned. (Ask Rick.)

And now I have 9,300 words. Poop.

Rick cackled. I'm calling it a draft and making lists for the next stage, which is going to be quite involved, as I've not said what I need to say to make it clear why I'm saying all of the things that I did say. And it will take more words to do that, which means I need to make some of the words I already have go away. Do you think insect repellent might work?

In the meantime, an absolutely lovely box arrived for me the other day, just when I needed it most (I was still hip-deep in lists, instead of being chin-deep in one big project). It was from Chris, and while there were many things in it that I will be sharing over the next week or so, you have got to see this today.
That, my dears, is two skeins of the most absolutely gorgeous Grandma's Blessing you ever did see, given to me by my dear friend Chris, so that I can knit something along with her for the Knitting Olympics. I just can't get the colors right. That brown is more chocolatey than that.
That's not quite it, either. It's much less ashy than that, and much richer. I'll work on it. In the meantime, go see the yarn she sent Anne; they're variations on a theme, and quite stunning. I think there are a few more variants out there; maybe I can get some pictures to share. And if you're in the mood for luxury, Chris has some of the most gorgeous handpainted cashmere you ever did see. Man, mmm....

So that's where I am. Either too many words or too few, but the yarn? It's just right.

Sticking my head up

So, I've now taught one week of classes and survived. I'm glad to have gotten through the first Monday of the semester, as that's my long day. I get to campus around 8:00 in the morning, and don't leave again until about 8:30 at night. The big stretch is my two afternoon classes, when I basically teach straight through from 4:00 until 8:30. But it went well (although I was definitely hungry by the time I finished and got home!), and my field methods class was as much fun as I'd hoped it would be. It's always hard to tell how it'll go that first night. Basically, the point of the class is to get a person who speaks a language other than English (and preferably a language to which neither I nor my students have been exposed) to come every week to class so that the students can elicit linguistic data from her and then analyze it to learn how the language works.

This semester, a friend of mine who speaks Bengali is the consultant, and she's clearly going to be fabulous. The students are always completely terrified beforehand, because they just don't understand anything about what's going on, or what this kind of thing looks like, or how it feels to have to write down everything someone says and then analyze it. So the first week, I give them about twenty minutes to get basic course business done, and then I get the consultant into the classroom and we do our first elicitation, and the only one that I will run (after this, the students decide what to ask her, and they do the asking and the writing; my job is to help guide them in their planning ahead of time and their analysis afterwards). By the end of the class, half of them still looked scared (normal), and the other half was running high, talking about how much fun that was, and they'd had no idea that it would be so much fun, and they couldn't wait for their turn to do the elicitation. Heh. Gotcha.

All the prep for that, plus the many other things on my plate right now (I'm simultaneously longing for the end of February, and terrified by how quickly it's coming), means that I haven't been doing too much knitting. I took the girls with me up to Tehachapi on Sunday to do fieldwork; they played outside in the snow:
while I worked inside and knitted away on the Babushka (which is very good meeting knitting, it turns out). I'm making progress, but it looks exactly the same as it has for quite a while now (in that way that shawls have, midway through), so I won't share any pictures right now.

I did, however, finally get the second set of beads I've been waiting on for the Tibetan Clouds Stole, and I'm really glad I did, because I think we've got a winner. See what you think.
(I think you can click to embiggen.) I am leaning strongly towards the one on the left, which is a silver-lined amber bead, as opposed to the one on the right, which is a copper-lined clear bead. The darker one (on the left) seems subtler to me, while having what looks to me like a richer fire. Opinions? Thoughts? I'm dying to get started on this, but want to finish the Babushka first, as I have both Older Daughter's sweater and a secret project on the needles right now. I'd be feeling bad about the distraction of the secret project, but Younger Daughter will benefit from it (and heck, I wanted to knit it), so at least I'm making good on my promise to each of the girls to produce something for them in the near future.

Meanwhile, the clouds are back, and we're in for some more weather. I don't think it'll be as wild as it was last week, though, when we got so much hail that it actually sat on the lawn for several hours before finally disappearing.
It's just a little surreal, especially with all that green sitting incongruously in the background.
Weird, huh? I'm hoping it doesn't do that again tomorrow, as it's a swim morning for me, and swimming in the hail and sleet isn't as much fun as it sounds (yes, it is an outdoor pool, and yes, it is heated; I'm not even close to crazy enough to swim in an unheated pool)(although I am apparently crazy enough to swim in the sleet; I don't know what that says about me).