Friday, September 21, 2007

Quick update

The Kauni colors are finally starting to separate again; watching this has been like watching a photo finish in the Tour de France -- will they come apart, will they stay together until the end, what will happen next?! However, we have finally achieved separation (I'm clearly anticipating the trip to Houston I have to make next month), and all is well again. I'm still a little peeved by the section where the pattern doesn't really show, but I'm telling myself it's subtle. Yeah, subtle (and no, I do not need my bubble burst, thank you very much).
I am quite enamoured of the inside, as well. I think that the tension is looking pretty good (especially considering that my previous stranded colorwork experience has consisted of knitting exactly 3/4 of one mitten). I think I can tolerate bubble-bursting here, if anyone has comments or suggestions.
I haven't touched the Boudica socks lately, since I've been waiting with bated breath to see what this sweater was going to do, and finishing washcloths (which will, universe willing, be mailed to Janice today). I think I'm going to go by my LYS this afternoon to get yarn for me and Tess to knit Red Scarves. It's hard to imagine leaving Kauni for the time necessary to knit a scarf, but I'll just have to manage. At least I have a 2 1/2 hour meeting this afternoon that is knitting-compatible. Woot!

I'd planned a longer post today, about privilege and having to see oneself through others' eyes. I'm not sure I'm up to writing it quite yet (and that pile of grading is not getting any smaller). The short of it is that one of the people I do fieldwork with is bringing 11 dancers down here to dance on our campus next Friday night for California Indian Day. This is extremely exciting (although I'm already lying awake in bed at night, trying to figure out how I'm going to introduce them, what I'm going to feed them, what I'll do with them between the airport and the performance, ad nauseum). They'll probably stay in my house Friday night, and that's where the privilege comes in, because the fact is that, by the standards of most folks living on a reservation, I am extremely privileged. I know this. Feeling grateful for what I have gets me through a lot of things in life. But it is a strange thing to see my life through the eyes of others. I have visited some of these dancers in their homes, and stayed with one of them several times, and I want very much to reciprocate that hospitality. This is not a bad situation, just a bit strange; it's a mirror thing, you know? Like the time I was working with a speaker and her granddaughter started reading my fieldnotes about going to a ceremony, and I was watching her, as she, essentially, watched me through my notes, watching the event. It's a part of being an anthropologist that I think is more honest than the distanced observer, but it's always an exposed feeling. Of course, it's only fair to disrupt the studier/studied position as often and as explicitly as possible, but that doesn't make it less strange.

1 comment:

Rabbitch said...

Why did I not know you were an anthropologist? Clearly I'm insane. My husband's working on his degree in anthropology and just took a class with Birute Galdikas.