Ceonothus and hiking: A photoessay

The ceonothus is in bloom. It's a short window each year, when the hillsides around here are covered in flowering purple bushes; some folks call it wild lilac, which it technically isn't, but it most definitely is beautiful. So on Sunday we went out on a three-hour hike and picnic to enjoy the ceonothus (and the cool weather!) while we could.
See all those lighter patches? Purple ceonothus.
They were swarming with bees; you could hear the buzzing from feet away around each bush.
Of course, this rare moment of green and bloom comes with its darker side.
Yes, that would be our friend the poison oak. It was everywhere.
My three girls.
We stopped to admire flowers along the way.
Including these wild sweet peas. And some monkeyflowers.
We finally found a perfect spot for a picnic (rock to sit on = no poison oak, and no ticks).
Tilly thought it was about time.
After a lovely lunch, we headed home. There were more flowers.
More ceonothus.
A lot more poison oak.
And, of course, my favorite: live oaks.
I think we all would gladly have kept going.
So there you go, a little green for St. Patrick's Day. And a little Irish dance to go with it.

Playing catch-up

Where does the time go? I thought after last Thursday was over that I'd be able to finally start getting back into a regular routine. Up to and including a regular schedule of posting to the blog (not to mention reading everyone else's blogs; I think I'm doing a bit better with that than with posting to my own). It didn't seem to work out that way. We went away last weekend to Los Angeles to celebrate my mom's birthday with my folks, and I spent some time trying to catch up on some things at work, and I kept composing blog posts in my head about all of the other things that are going on in my life: this rally and how hopeful it made me, the hate speech incident that happened on campus and how unhopeful that made me, the horrific news about Chelsea King and all of the thoughts I've been having about the culture of fear and raising daughters and and and...

And I finally decided that if I wait to post until I have all of those thoughts in order, I'll never get there. I will post about some of those things, as they've been the impetus for a lot of rearranging of the mental furniture, but I want to get that house a bit more in order before the tour. So, instead, a few pictures from L.A. (from my phone, alas, I forgot the camera). And next time, a review of all of the knitting projects that I've started since completing my Olympic debut.

Oh, and I should also report that the teach-in and rally were, by the standards of our small campus, extremely successful. We had 500 people at the rally, all of them riled up in exactly the right kinds of ways. I really wish that radio stations like KPBS and newspaper outlets would realize that there's another CSU here in San Diego county, and that we're doing some interesting stuff, too, but that's one of those rants that can wait for another day. Meanwhile, a few pictures:
And one of my favorite signs:
Students and faculty from our art department made black paper shadows to represent the 437 students who were qualified to come to our university last fall, but who couldn't be admitted due to lack of funding. It was a pretty visceral reminder of what we're losing when we don't have room for our young people in our institutions of learning.

Our weekend in Los Angeles came as a truly wonderful escape from the chaos of the last month. We headed up on Friday (both girls had half-days, and I had a -- deliberately scheduled on this day -- furlough), and met up with my folks downtown before walking to an absolutely fabulous restaurant for mom's big birthday dinner. Dad had done his research and done it well, and the food was spectacularly good. Rick and dad indulged in raw oysters, and Older Daughter even bravely tried one herself. I don't think she'll do that again for a while (heh), but it's always good to be adventurous, right?

On Saturday, we headed to Pasadena, where we took the girls on a brief driving tour (in the pouring rain) of Occidental, where Rick and I both went to college (in fact, where we met), lo these many years ago. (In fact, we both came to the realization that we started dating there 21 years ago next month. Who knew?) Then we went to the Gamble House for a wonderful tour; both of the girls were very impressed, and Younger Daughter has spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time since talking about the design features of the house, and about how much she likes the aesthetic of showing the way that things are put together. Rick and I, both being huge fans of the Arts and Crafts movement, can't help but agree with her. After that, we headed to the Norton Simon Museum, where I spent many happy (and cheap) hours as a college student.

Then it was back to the hotel for a quick refresher before heading out to another absolutely fabulous meal at a Japanese place (can you say crab? mmm...), and then to a concert at Disney Hall. I don't think I can possibly convey adequately how utterly in awe I was of the acoustics in that hall. I have never heard anything so absolutely clear and precise and warm. The orchestra was, of course, excellent, and the hall took the music to another level entirely. It is also just lovely, full of warm woods and colors, and it was a pleasure to spend two hours sitting and listening to Prokofiev in those surroundings. But it was the music that made the experience so perfect; I'm already wondering how to get myself back up there to hear something else in that hall. Magnificent. Truly magnificent.

And then on Sunday, we went to the Griffith Observatory, to which I've never (if you can believe) been before, and went to my first planetarium show. I loved it. And not only is the observatory wonderful from a planetary physics perspective, the architecture is beautifully Art Deco.
Such nice details.
(Ignore the thumb, please, silly camera phone.)

Rick and the kids chose planetary orbits for themselves.
And the views of the snow-capped mountains were quite lovely.
The girls were also charmed to pieces to actually see the Hollywood sign for the first time in their lives, and even more charmed when the movie we watched last night turned out to have a scene filmed on the very road that we drove up to Griffith. Their first experience of real-world/movie intersection.

And that's it for my travels. Next time, the four knitting projects upon which I am currently embarked. Meanwhile, we're off to a piano recital!

The other thing I've been trying to get done

Is happening today. I don't know if any of you have been tracking the series of events happening at college campuses across the nation today to remind people of the importance of publicly-funded higher education, but we're having a teach-in and rally here on my campus, and I've been part of the (very small but tremendously efficient) organizing committee. We talked about it and figured that we're teachers, and what we do best isn't carrying placards (although that has its place) or shouting slogans (although that, too, has its place) but rather teaching, so we have four faculty members on a panel talking about the California Master Plan, the politics of funding higher education, and the directions that our new models are taking us (a hint: they're not good). Then we'll be taking lots of questions.

The really cool (and terrifying) bit is that we're streaming this puppy live. Today, from 10:30-11:45. And we'll archive it, too. We're also going to be reading email questions to the panelists during the question and answer period. So, should you happen to see this, and should you happen to be interested, here's the url with the link to the teach-in (I checked, and my co-organizers said I could share):

http://www2.csusm.edu/cfa/

I don't usually advertise things like this, but this issue of publicly-funded higher education is an important one (I admit, I'm biased), and I think it's all too often swept under the rug or misunderstood. I hope with all of my heart that today's events -- not just here, but everywhere -- will change that just a little bit.

I'm wearing my new sweater for luck, and I'll be reading out those email questions, so let's hope I don't say something silly or misread something crucial. And once this is done, I'll be past my last big hurdle for a while.

Sticking the landing

Olympic Gold.

I did it. I finished this baby last night, in time to wear to Younger Daughter's school open house.
I think that one is closest of all to the color of this gorgeous yarn.

Project details: This is Anne's henley; the pattern isn't released yet, but I'll be sure to let you know when it is. It's knitted out of the absolutely gorgeous Grandma's Blessing that Chris sent to me; I love this color more every time I look at it. It's exactly the complex set of shades in the bark of a live oak tree. It's knitted on size four lace Addis, except the edging, which was knitted on size two Addis.

And here's the kicker. I cast on during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, February 12, and sewed on the last button yesterday afternoon at 4:30, February 26. By my count, that's fourteen days. To knit an entire sweater. With lace. And cables. Craziness.
I think I really nailed the fit on this one. See that shoulder seam? It's sitting exactly where it ought to. (And as an aside, I think my seaming skills are getting better; not perfect, but definitely better enough that I'm willing to post a picture which focuses on a seam.)
Yup, just right. And it's tremendously comfortable. I'm wearing it over a t-shirt in these pictures, and have been all day; the yarn is soft enough that it's not been a problem at all. And the lace/cable combination is forgiving enough to have a lot of room for movement, so it's not at all tight, even though it's very fitted. I haven't blocked it yet (let's be honest, I haven't really taken it off except to sleep), but I think that I'd like to, as it'd help the button band to lie more nicely.

Things I've learned from taking on this crazy Olympic knitting insanity in the middle of a month full of deadlines at work:

1. It's a really really good thing that I can knit 2x2 cables without a cable needle, because this sweater has 2x2 cables every eight rows, and I never would have been able to finish this in time if I'd been mucking about with a cable needle.

2. When living cheek by jowl with a single knitting project every spare minute of every crammed-full day for two weeks, it really helps to absolutely madly adore the yarn and the pattern. I did, and so I still do. (Note: I have not declared that I can't bear to look at this thing again now that it's finished. I'm wearing it now, and have already begun to devise a way to wear it every day this week without looking like someone who's finally gone around the bend.)

3. My family is tremendously patient with my weird knitting obsession, and is willing to pick up a lot of extra slack around the house so I can knit madly whilst muttering to myself in a corner, so long as they know it's only for two weeks. (Note the second: We are all supportive of one another's obsessions; today we went to the beach with Rick so we could watch the tsunami come in. It was not particularly observable, involving less than a foot of amplitude difference, but the rain and wind certainly were observable. And wet. Nevertheless, it was exactly the kind of thing that charms the heck out of a hydrologist.)

Aside from those smaller things, though, I also really learned a lot about my own process when I have a lot to get done. These kinds of realizations, it seems to me, are some of the best things about getting older. I've read in many places that it takes at least ten years to truly master something, to really understand it, and to begin to make significant contributions to whatever field of knowledge it is that you've mastered. And given that none of us comes with an instruction book, or a preexisting academic literature, or a master from whom to learn, it seems to me that it's reasonable to expect that it'll take a bit longer than ten years for me to really start to be a mistress of the knowledge of myself. Maybe this is why women often say that they finally feel like they start to come into their own when they turn 40. Maybe it takes a good 15-20 years of adulthood to learn oneself. Or at least to start to know where the dark corners are, and to develop the clarity of sight that allows one to penetrate the gloom. Maybe it's just me.

Either way, my experiences of this past month reinforced something that I've long suspected about myself. I really can't be incredibly self-disciplined in more than two areas of my life at a time. And I appear to have a four-week limit on serious self-discipline if it's happening in two areas at once. By self-discipline, I don't mean getting to the usual day-to-day stuff, or even a big project or two; I mean the kind of thing where I have to do lots and lots of things that are hard for me, that I have to work to make myself do, that require effort for me to plan for and execute. But in this past month, I've had to prep two classes, help develop the fall schedule for linguistics, write an 8,000-word chapter, prepare and give a presentation, write a performance review letter, write three or four letters of recommendation for students, write a grant application, write a peer-review for a journal paper, help write and present a huge committee report, prepare a proposal for a special edition of a journal that I'm co-editing, and help plan for a huge teach-in and rally that we're hosting on campus next week. Not to mention the usual rote stuff: teaching and grading and dealing with student and colleague emails, and taking notes at meetings and preparing minutes, etc etc. Getting all of that done has meant that when I sit down at my desk in the morning, there has quite literally not been time to indulge in a little blog reading, or a little Dilbert laughter, or a little checking with the International Herald Tribune to see what's going on in the world. This whole month I've known that if I didn't get through the day's tasks before it was time to do the next day's tasks, the entire house of cards was going to come crashing down around my ears.

And on top of that, I knitted a sweater.

First of all, I realize that I said yes to all of these things myself. (Although I would note that it's not my fault that every single academic anybody seems to think that February is a great month for things to be due in -- everything from letters of recommendation to review committees to the fall schedule to book chapters all seem to come due in February; I'm not the only one who's noticed this, either, it's been a major topic of conversation in my hallway lately.) But the point I'm trying to make isn't that I need pity or anything, just that I can do all of that in a month. I totally can. I know, because I did.

But what I can't do, is do all of that and, for example, stick to, oh say, a diet (to pick something at random). I can eat well, but I can't lose weight during a time like that. Nope. Nor, apparently, can I lift weights. Because those things, for me, take effort to make myself do. And what I'm realizing is that I only have so much effort of that kind available to me. And now I'm kind of done for a while. I guess what I'm saying is that I need balance, and I am finding out how long I can be out of balance in one direction before I need to swing back, and how long that swing needs to be before the pendulum comes back to rest in the center.

Tonight, I'm going to celebrate the fact that I'm almost through with all of these deadlines, the fact that I have finally learned to schedule a break for myself after four weeks of being on top of everything, and the fact that I have a fabulous sweater to wear next week. I'm a little surprised I manged it, but very happy.
Now, where's my gold medal?

Hat trick

So I've learned a new phrase during these Olympics: hat trick*. And, now that I know what it means, I think that I can safely say that as of Sunday night, I'd completed my very own hat trick. One sweater back, one sweater front, and one sleeve. Three goals in one game! (Right?) It helps to think of these things as small discrete finish lines, you know?

And I'm on my way to the fourth finish line. Once again, PhotoBooth to the rescue, since I knitted all of this last night after dark, but at least there's evidence of progress. I have realized that the color in my last PhotoBooth shot (in the last post) is probably the closest I've come to capturing what it really looks like. And Alwen is absolutely right: it looks like the bark of an oak tree, all browns and greens and gnarled and lovely.
I'm about halfway through the increases for this sleeve, which means maybe a third of the way through the total knitting for the sleeve, since the rows get longer as I go. I cast on for this on Sunday night, as soon as I cast off for the first sleeve. If there's one thing I've learned from knitting, it's that it helps to get the starting bit over with right away. Once the set-up is done, it's much easier to be disciplined about picking things up to continue. I've been applying this lesson to my many work deadlines this month, as well, by making a point of getting the start to a new task done before I finish work for the day. It's somehow much easier to pick up the next day knowing that the first little bit's done. (This doesn't work with everything, but with some things it makes all the difference!) I've been doing that with socks for ages -- in fact, I don't cast off on a sock unless I have time to cast on for the second one -- and it's really helped with that SSS that haunts so many of us.

In any case, if I can finish this second sleeve by tomorrow night, then I can seam the sweater on Friday night, and take it along with me for all of the driving and dancing on Saturday morning to knit the collar and button bands. Since both of those are in garter stitch, that should be good travel knitting (which is why I'm pushing to seam at home on Friday; seaming is most definitely NOT good travel knitting!). If all of that holds together, I may actually nail this thing.

Chris is working away on her sweater, too. I got an email from her earlier saying that she was struggling with the first set-up row for Flyingdales. So I went and got my copy of the pattern, and dang, that has got to be THE most confusing set-up row I've ever seen in my entire life. I think if I tried to knit something like that right now, as tired as I am, I'd burst into tears and burn the book. This is why I admire Chris, though; she perseveres. And boy howdy, did she ever persevere on this one. Look! She not only made it through that set-up row in the end, but is now working her way up the body of the sweater.
It's a gorgeous pattern, truly it is, it's just that every row involves partial repeats of pattern sections, melding into seed stitch, plus cables. Insanity. It looks good, though, doesn't it? And do you see what's behind that sweater? Roving. Yummy soft delectable gorgeous roving. Can you tell I'm missing my spinning wheels a little bit here in all this Knitting Olympics insanity? Heh.

So there it is, the latest Olympic update. Knit on!

* You can imagine that I needed to know where the heck the phrase "hat trick" came from, me being me and all, so I went searching. Wickipedia was singularly unhelpful in this regard. Oh, it gave all kinds of history of which sport first used the phrase "hat trick" and to which sporting feat it referred (for the record: in cricket, "when a bowler dismisses three batsmen with consecutive deliveries", that's a hat trick; I'm assuming that makes more sense to those of you from places with a cricket tradition -- I have tried and tried to understand cricket and haven't quite gotten there yet). But what it didn't tell me was, why "hat"? Why why why? So I finally went to my favorite source of all time (the OED, of course) and got this definition: "Cricket. The feat of a bowler who takes three wickets by three successive balls: orig. considered to entitle him to be presented by his club with a new hat or some equivalent" (first cited in 1886). Now the term has been extended to mean "a threefold feat in sports or other activities"; hence my very own hat trick.

Time trials

I'm plugging away. Knowing that next weekend will have very little time for knitting, I've had big goals for this weekend. I might even achieve them. But I feel a little like Apolo Ohno on that short-track, trying to pass two Canadians and two Koreans in a lap and a half.

Yesterday was a pretty successful day. I split the front of the henley on Friday night while watching It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World with Rick and the girls. (I'd decided that I needed some comedy. I realized afterward that while I adore slapstick, I tend to prefer slapstick that happens unexpectedly in the middle of something else to the constant, unrelenting sort of chaos in a film like that. Which isn't to say that I didn't laugh out loud many many times during the movie, just that I'm refining what it is that I find truly hilarious.) On Saturday morning, I finished the right front before lunch, and then I finished the left front during the afternoon before dinner. I even managed to make that dinner, a big pot of vegetarian black bean chili with butternut squash and bell peppers and black beans. Mmm... And then last night I cast on for the first sleeve and pounded away on that for a while as I watched the Olympics (staying up until after 11:00 to watch the aforementioned Apolo Ohno).

That makes one back, one front, and the better part of a sleeve to date. Not bad, but not a gold medal, yet.

This morning I woke up early and got straight to work. My goal is to finish this sleeve today if it kills me. Which it might. There's a lot of sitting still happening here. We did, however, take quite a long break in order to go mattress shopping, which was very successful, and high time. It was, as my mother would say, a good job done. We also got new sheets for the bed that's going into Older Daughter's room, as well as some nice outfits for her for some events that are coming up in the next couple of weeks.

That's all very well and good, but it's not knitting, and I've got a gold medal to win, so I'd better get a move on here, eh? If I get the sleeve done today and cast on for the second one, I figure I might just have a shot at finishing by Sunday. Maybe. It's a crazy-busy week, with not much in the way of daytime knitting time (mostly because of all of the other work deadlines that I am dealing with; I figure neither my chair nor the Dean is going to be particularly understanding if I call in and say that I can't work this week because I'm knitting for the States, eh?), and then we're going to be up and out very early on Saturday to drive up to Thousand Oaks for Younger Daughter's feis. All I can say is that this is going to be a photo finish, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I'd wanted to get some pictures today of the progress, but it's gray and drizzly, so here's a quick PhotoBooth shot, just to prove that I'm not talking out my ear.
Oddly enough, that top bit's about as close as I've come yet to capturing the glory that is the color of this yarn. I'm still charmed to pieces by it, which is a very good thing in this kind of knitting project. Chris, too, is chugging along, and I'll post updates of her sweater as they come through. Go, team, go!

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!