She was warned

Well, I didn't think I'd be posting again quite so soon.  And I'd intended my next post to be a round-up of recent knitting projects that I've completed, and a foretaste of things to come.  (True story: a package just came and I was so sure it was yarn for my next project - I bounded out the door, all excited...  And the nice man handed over a package of wine from a club we belong to.  My face fell.  I don't think that's the reaction he was expecting at all.)

But, time and tide - and crazy doings in the world of politics - wait for no woman.  So, I told you fair warning and here it is: linguistic analysis and feminism incoming...

Today's NYT coverage of the silencing of Elizabeth Warren on the floor of the Senate included, in the front page article blurb online, the following quote from Mitch McConnell*:

"She was warned.  Nevertheless, she persisted."

I have to be honest.  Reading that gave me cold chills.

The more complete quote was:
"She was warned.  She was given an explanation.  Nevertheless, she persisted."

This appears to me (and judging by the articles, tweets, email messages, and Facebook posts going around, I'm by no means alone here) to encompass the history of women in a nutshell, with only the consequences left unstated:  So we silenced her.

I've been mulling this over ever since (while simultaneously plotting with friends to make a t-shirt out of it; if that's your gig, stay tuned), and three things in particular strike me.  They are all linked to one another, and difficult to disentangle, but here goes.

First, and perhaps most simply, what I think resonates for so many women (and the reason why the trending hashtag here is #shepersisted) is that concept of persistence.  Persistence is what we do.  Think of the persistence it takes to do all the "women's work" that, changing times notwithstanding, is called that because it still typically does fall on women: diapers, dishes, laundry, changing sheets/towels/toilet paper, cleaning, child care, parent care - the list goes on and on.  Each of these tasks is one which must be done, but which doesn't stay done; if there's one thing we know, it's that clean dishes don't stay clean, and neither do diapers (alas). It takes a certain degree of dogged determination to hang on to the bigger picture and keep slogging through the daily round, sometimes. 

As knitters, we know this one particularly well.  Nothing but persistence lies between us and an FO we can use or gift, and be proud of.  It's persistence that makes us rip out that miscrossed cable (12 rows back) and fix it.  Persistence is what got countless pink pussyhats knitted in time for the Women's March in January (more discussion of this is bound to be forthcoming; I was fascinated). 

But that persistence can also encode something darker.  What is it that we are persistent in the face of?  Sometimes, as above, it's drudgery or repetitiveness.  But women deploy their persistence in other circumstances.  In the face of demeaning comments, or of being ignored; harrassment, assault, rape; a culture which attempts to deny women the right to determine what happens to their bodies in so many ways - and which calls it locker room talk, even when the talk becomes action.  Women persist as they earn less than men for doing the same work, and they persist in the face of men telling them that wage inequality just isn't a thing.  We persist patiently in the face of (sometimes endless) mansplaining.  (And, as a linguist, can I just tell you how much I love that word - talk about encoding a fabulous and real linguistic construct!)  When we are afraid, whether for our bodies or our sanity, we persist.  We persist in the face of warnings that our presence and behavior are unacceptable, and will have potentially very frightening consequences for us.

There is something even more insidious in those three little sentences, though, something that strikes me in particular as a linguist.  They are encoded in the same kind of language one might use to describe imposing a punishment or consequences for a naughty child.  "I warned her.  I explained why.  She didn't listen, so now she has to face the consequences."  In my gender and language class, I have my students read an article (West and Zimmerman 1983, for those who might be interested) that looks at interruptions - defined (simplifying here a little) as a turn in the conversation that is inserted into someone else's turn, and (this is important) which is disruptive to the conversation (by, for example, changing the subject, or taking the floor over before the first speaker is finished).  The authors first look at adult interruptions of children (contrary to popular belief, adults interrupt children far more often than children interrupt adults).  These interruptions most frequently take place at points in the conversation when children's behavior is deemed problematic by adults, and are used to try to redirect that behavior in order to bring it into line with expectations. 

And here's where things get interesting.  Looking at adult same-sex and cross-sex dyadic (two-person) conversations, it is clear (and this, by the way, shows up in study after study after study) that men interrupt women far more than women interrupt men, or than men interrupt men, or than women interrupt women.  And, moreover, their patterns of interruptions are remarkably congruent with adult interruptions of children.  In other words, men interrupt women at points in the conversation when they deem women's actions or words or thoughts to be problematic, in order to redirect them to fit expectations more closely.  "She was given an explanation" fits right into this; it suggests a speaker with superior knowledge and understanding of how one should behave, someone with the authority and power to require conformity.  (It's also very patronizing.)  This is just one of the many ways in which women are (and have historically been) treated as less than full adults. 

To my mind, this is what those three sentences encode.  We gave her a chance to behave like an adult (as defined by us) and then we interrupted her to force her into line.  The "she was warned" is deeply troubling.  Women who have been "warned", historically, have paid serious and often lethal prices for continuing to persist after that warning.  (I also find the distancing created by the use of the passive voice disturbing - who's the agent here?)  Linguists talk about the concept of "intertextuality" - the idea that a given text is understood at least in part through its link to similar texts produced elsewhere and elsewhen.  This text ("we warned her") is understood, consciously or unconsciously, as located in the context of all those past threats and their consequences.  It means that even though no-one will be burning Warren at the stake (but all those chants, directed at Clinton, of "jail her" and their intertextual links to "burn her" last fall were unmistakable and also resonate here), the chilling warmth of those historical flames is present.

"She was warned.  She was given an explanation.  Nevertheless, she persisted."

Taken all together, the degree of misogyny encoded here is quite remarkable.

ETA:  Male Democratic Senators were allowed to read all or part (depending on the Senator) of Coretta Scott King's letter, including the part that Senator Warren was rebuked for (http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/318515-sanders-dems-read-coretta-scott-kings-letter-after-warren-silenced).  As I said, it's not about party - it's about gender.

*I am focusing here, as a feminist and a linguist, on this text as spoken by a man to a woman in this context.  I could, but won't, also go into why I think the rule that McConnell cited is inappropriately applied here: while the rule states that Senators should avoid accusing other Senators of behavior unbecoming to a Senator (an attempt, I assume, to help stop Senators from engaging in ad hominem attacks on one another instead of debating the merits of legislation; not a bad idea in that context), it seems to me that in this context, Mr. Sessions is being evaluated as a candidate for Attorney General, rather than as the proposer of a bill.  Regardless of political leaning, the misogyny in this message seems like something that should trouble women...

(tap tap) Is this thing still on?

It has been much longer than I intended, since I last posted.  Far too long, in fact.  So long, that I wonder if there's anyone still out there in the world of knitting blogs?  (hi!)

I have missed writing.  I have missed hearing from others who are out there, making things and writing as well. 

In fact, as I look back, I have come to realize just how limited my time and energy for creativity has been the last few years.  I was just sorting through my photos and putting them all into dated albums (something I usually do month by month, but I was a year or so behind), and for about four or five months last year, there were no photos at all.  Seriously?  No photos?  It's not like it's hard to haul out an iphone and take a picture, right?  Looking at Ravelry, there is a similar gap - until recently, my last posted project was from spring 2014.  ??  (I should say, it's not so much because I wasn't knitting, at least a little, in there - but I wasn't keeping track, and it hasn't - mostly - been anything too exciting.)

Basically, I fell off a bit of a creativity cliff in there.

It's not like life wasn't continuing.  I finished a four-year term as the chair of my department this past fall (2012-2016); I'm pretty sure that that's where the vast majority of my creativity went - into holding meetings and writing memos and staying on top of email and and and...  (My knitting time also went that way - when you're running a meeting, it's much harder to knit, I find!)  I learned a lot during those four years (I'm sure at some point I'll write about some of those lessons), but I'm glad it's over; I also lost a lot of things during that time (and I'm sure I'll write about that, too). 

Older Daughter went off to college on the East Coast. (She's actually in her sophomore year, which says something about how long it's been.)  She loves it (although she says her intention is to return to California after)(pleasepleaseplease). She even gets to ride for her school team.

Younger Daughter is a sophomore in high school. 

And, we added someone new to our family two years ago (say hi, Disco!):

I'm going to keep this first post brief - there will be more to come.  I've been thinking a lot about what I want to be writing right now.  I value and appreciate the chance to share and think about and challenge myself in my knitting - and for the feedback and friendships that have developed here around craft.  I also, though, have been engaged with and thinking much about the current political situation, and about some of the issues that have been called into the forefront of many people's thinking because of that political situation - some of them issues that I've thought about and discussed for a long time in my classrooms (I do teach gender and language, after all), and others that I am learning about as we go.  I'm guessing that some of that is going to appear here, too.  And, finally, I've been dealing with some changes (mental, emotional, and physical) that come with midlife - that's got me thinking as well!  I'll try to give a head's up when a post is going to veer more towards the political/personal, so that anyone who might be reading can give those a miss, if wanted.

Meanwhile, give a shout-out if you're still here!  If you're new, say hi, too.  And if you have a blog or website, or something to recommend, please share.  I'm starting to branch out from knitting and yarn crafts to other things (cooking!  maybe even politics!), so please feel free to share those, too.

I'll be back soon.

Trying to get back in gear

The latest update on the fires is that they are largely contained.  Campus will be re-opening tomorrow, after being closed since the evacuation; commencement has been rescheduled for next weekend (when I won't be able to make it, alas).  Older Daughter's prom has also been rescheduled for a few weeks from now.  So, for those of us whose homes and property managed to escape unscathed, life is starting to get back to normal. 

And I am trying to get my head around how to work posting here into my life in a realistic way.  Not yet sure how to do that (obviously), and I haven't taken any good pictures of knitted finished objects, even though I have been knitting.  The latest is a little sweater, short-sleeved, knitted out of some Blue Skies Silk Alpaca that I got when I was at WEBS in March (I could write a whole ode about how much I loved WEBS); the yarn is a lovely navy blue, and I think I'll wear this one a lot when it's done.

Other things have been happening around here that aren't knitting related.  Just to show a few:

(Photo removed for now)

That's Older Daughter.  With her license.  Who would have thought?  She's loving the independence (which is limited by the fact that we don't have three cars, and have no immediate plans for changing that situation).  And I am loving the fact that I have someone who is currently eager to run errands - I've been waiting for this day...  I'm also loving the days that I have managed to take the train into work so she can take the car to school and pick me up afterwards.  I always loved taking the train when we lived in the Bay Area, but with kid drop-off and pick-up, it hasn't made sense.  I'm hoping to work more of that into my schedule next year.

We also have a new family member:

A friend's son's cat had kittens; I wasn't in the market, exactly, but when she mentioned a gray polydactyl kitten in the litter (check out those extra toes!), I knew that it was fate.

 She likes Rick.

 And she and the big cat are working to reach detente.

 

She wants to be just like him when she grows up.

When she's not sleeping.

Her name is Bastet, and I think she's going to fit in just fine.

Overlong hiatus - drive-by update

It has been a ridiculously long time since I posted.  I keep trying to find a way to talk about everything that's going on without boring people to tears or sharing too much.  I will soon; and I also have much knitting to share when I do, including the Bohus (!!), which is done, and which I was able to wear on a trip to the East Coast when they still had snow and it was entirely appropriate.

That's for another time, though.  Meanwhile, this drive-by posting is to let people know that we're surviving the fires (thank you to those who have been checking in), and to ask if all of you in fire-danger areas are OK?

Tess and I were on campus yesterday when the San Marcos fire started.  Within about five minutes, the view from my office window went from a small plume of smoke to this:

At which point, I told the folks in my department to get the heck off campus, and started banging on doors.  Note: no fire alarms went off in the buildings, and the alert system which calls for things like evacuations can only be heard outside.  Note:  it's finals, so a lot of people were in classrooms, with phones off, getting no notice that they needed to be getting off campus.  

It took more than 20 minutes to get out of the first floor of the parking garage, and another 40+ to get off campus.  We clearly need a better (read: actual) evacuation plan.  As we sat stuck in traffic, this was our view:

We did finally make it out (my contingency plan was to abandon the car and head for the dirt parking lot), and home.  It's quiet here, and there don't seem to be any new fires in the area (fingers crossed).  The girls' schools are closed through the weekend, and prom is postponed for my older daughter.  My campus is closed and all commencements are cancelled.  The fire seems to have kicked up over there again:

So we're keeping the pets indoors, and a weather eye on the smoke.  It's 100+ out there, and the humidity is under 10% - I can't believe there are people fighting fires in that heat, but I am so grateful that they are.  Stay safe if you're in the midst of any of this!

Welcome, new year!

Like everyone does at this time of year (I assume - maybe I'm overgeneralizing), I have been contemplating The New Year Post.  Somehow it seems like, when posting at this time of year, one is meant to look over the last year, contemplating resolutions kept, and resolutions not-so-much kept (and why is it that that list always seems so much more front-and-center than the other?). 

You know:
Did not lose weight
Did not Achieve Enlightenment

Oops.

To be fair, I did some things this year that weren't so much resolution-oriented, as finally doing or trying things that have always been on the back burner.  I started horseback riding, racewalking, went to Turkey, was promoted to Full Professor, established an inconsistent but real sitting meditation practice, established a more-consistent home yoga practice.  All of those are desires that have been kicking around in the back of my head for a long time - some (like horseback riding) since childhood. 

Mostly, I tried to focus on the word I chose as a touchstone last year, instead of establishing resolutions: mindfulness.  That's been a word I've chosen a few times now, as something to keep me on track, and this year I feel like I made some pretty significant breakthroughs in finding that place of mindfulness more often.  Sometimes, it means being mindful of sad feelings like those I wrote about last time; sometimes, it means being open to being happy; sometimes, it means just sitting with the squirrel that apparently resides in my brain, flitting its tail and chittering at every insult.  It's a busy busy squirrel.

So instead of that list of future resolutions, I've been trying to decide whether I want to re-up on the mindfulness, or add something else.  In the end, mindfulness is the key to focusing on any concept that I'd like to bring into my life, so I decided to throw caution to the wind.

Abundance.

That's my word for the year.  Not seeking abundance, but seeing it where I already have it, which is in so very many places in my life.  Feeling a lack of abundance is something that drives me to grab opportunities when they come up, out of the fear that nothing like that will ever come again (not always a bad thing, but not good when I am overcommitted; this is something I have been working on), to buy things that I don't need, out of the fear that I'll never get the chance again (I have this SO much more under control than I have in the past; it is one of the reasons why I have passed up several interesting yarn and fiber clubs over the last few years, for example - I already have a STABLE stash), to eat things that I don't need or want, because I feel a need to reward myself, and fear that I won't have opportunities to "treat" myself in the future.  That one's a kicker for me.

I can't be the only one who feels that way about food, right?  There are so many times when so much of my life is utterly overwhelming, and I feel that I "deserve" some kind of treat, or reward for surviving.  And so many treats and rewards require time or money, and I don't feel like I have time or money (to get a massage, take a riding lesson, sit quietly and knit, read a book).  In the end, I have to eat anyway, right?  It's not like I'm not spending time and money on food in any case (my little squirrel brain says), so I may as well just indulge a little...

Is it just me?

So, abundance.  A good focus, and one which I think will remind me to be mindful of the things in my life that I have already: daughters, husband, friends, activities I love, opportunities that fulfill me instead of leaving me drained.

This past week has been one of quiet crafting and contemplation, which I think is exactly what I needed to come to the realization that I have this habit of living in a state of persistent fear of scarcity, even when surrounded by abundance.  It was good to give time over to being quietly creative.

I spun.

That's FiberOptics gradient, in the Midnight colorway.  I spun this one woolen, and chain-plied it, for a lovely round plump three-ply yarn.  I wasn't able to get the whole thing onto one bobbin, alas - which tells me just how much loft is added in the woolen spinning, compared to the worsted.  The last braid of FiberOptics gradient I spun, I spun worsted, and it all fit (barely) onto one bobbin, both the singles and the three-ply. 

The colors are a little darker and more saturated than you can see here, but this is close.  This is destined to become a Spectral cowl, which I saw and immediately fell in love with.  I started to go down the rabbithole of needing the yarn that it was knitted in, and then remembered that I already had this beautiful stuff in stash, and went this route instead.  I am glad that I did.

On New Year's eve, just before the ball went down at midnight New York time (as late as we manage to stay up these days), I finished a project that has long been hanging out in the WIP pile:

This is the second of the Bias Before-and-After scarves (Churchmouse Yarns pattern), which I started an appallingly long time ago.  But they're both done now, and I am looking forward to wearing them separately (I wear the purple one all the time) and together.

When I went out to photograph, I noticed an unexpected color theme here.

(The color of the second scarf is closer to the middle picture - you can see the similarity.)

I have also been plugging away at Green Wood, and I not only made it through the yoke, but the short rows as well.  I have set the sleeve stitches aside, and am now entering into the long slow stretch of the body.

This is very tiny yarn, knitted on size 1 needles (size 0 for the yoke; I could have knit the body on 0, and I think that that makes a nice fabric, too - but this is probably slightly more wearable here in San Diego).

Just in time for all of the meetings that I will be attending next week.  With luck, this will help me keep some of the happy break time glow, even in the face of politics and meanness.  I really appreciated all the words of support and wisdom that everyone shared in the wake of my (admittedly, not very happy) last post.  Thank you for the additional reminder of the abundance in my life.

Happy new year!

A funny thing happened on the way to writing this post...

So, I was driving along to an appointment for my daughter, mulling over the blog post that I was planning to write while waiting for her (this post, in point of fact).  In the course of turning things over in my head, I was finally getting to what felt like an accurate and blog-appropriate description of what's been going on for me these last few weeks when I drove by the billboard of a local drinking water company.  They always put funny or thoughtful little sayings on their billboard (like "Education bridges the gap between your ears", and "Boycott shampoo, demand real poo"), and I read it by force of habit, as I did this time.  And what it said this time, rather freakily, resonated almost exactly with what I'd been thinking.

Lemme 'splain (to quote a famous movie character).

As I mentioned in my last post, during November, I got hit by a big ol' load of Overwhelmed, which came at the end of what has been, for me, in many ways a very difficult year or so.  I thought for sure that if I could just get through the end of November, the Overwhelmed would end, and things would get better.  But they didn't.  Instead, the overwhelm continued, and I also got slammed with a whack of Sad.

Part of my mulling (and part of the reason why I haven't posted lately) has been over why it is that I've been so sad, and once recognized, whether it's something that I can write about.  I try here on the blog to find that balance of sharing what I'm comfortable sharing about myself, without including things about other people that either aren't my business to write about, or that they might not be comfortable having out here in an open forum not of their choosing.  (As an aside, during this last year, I have had several friends who have suggested that I might want to try to write about some of the more personal challenges I've been dealing with, and all I can wonder is how autobiographers do it?  It's one thing to write about oneself, but one's life is inextricably bound up in other peoples' lives, and many of the difficult and challenging and compelling things that we survive happen with and because of other people, right?  So how to write about those other people?  Do authors get permission?  Figure that forgiveness is easier to ask for than permission?  Lose friends?  Does anyone else ever wonder about that?)

I realized that a lot of this bout of Sad has to do, frankly, with how very mean people are to one another sometimes, and how much of that meanness comes not out of a particular vicious desire to specifically hurt some other person, but out of the hurter's own pain - his or her deeply felt sense that they have been hurt, and maybe even that the world therefore owes them something.  And deeper than that, it's about fear - people respond to their fears and act on those fears, to protect themselves, or get other people before those people get them, or because they're so caught up in their fears that they can't even see that they're doing damage to the people around them - often people whom they love very much.  I think we've all been there - in that place where we're driven to act, beyond thought or reason, entirely in the grips of emotion.  And worse, have been in that space, being absolutely sure that, in fact, we're driven by reason.  Or is it just me?

Anyway, there's been a lot of that this year, and even more than usual in November and December, just people around me hurting other people around me, and I was just feeling very sad about it.  (It's worth saying here that I'm not saying this in a sympathy-needing kind of way - sometimes sad is an appropriate reaction, and it's OK to be sad.)  And as I was driving along, realizing that that's where the sad has been coming from, the billboard flashed by at 80 miles per hour, and it said, "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears."

Well, okey-dokey, then.

There are a couple of funny things about this, aside from having it appear right then (no sudden shining light or anything, thank goodness, or I would have wondered if Insanity was following hard on the heels of Overwhelmed and Sad; not unlike the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future - maybe these things come in threes?).  The first is that I actually agree with the sentiment, pretty strongly.  I am not always able to act on it, and I hadn't quite put it in those words, but it is a fairly clear summary of something that I think is really worth doing, and that I do try to achieve.  Alas, it is often called "idealism" by people who aren't happy about that kind of thing.  I think of it, instead, as a heartfelt attempt to grow into integrity (from the root "integrate") - a place where what I think and feel on my insides match what I do on my outsides.  And my insides have hopes.  They also have deep fears that when I act on my hopes, I open myself up to being hurt.

Because, let's be honest, that is what happens.  Sometimes the world responds beyond all expectation: when we offer our best selves, our hopes - the world comes to meet us in that place.  And sometimes, it smacks us right upside the head, in exactly the way that we feared it would, and the almost overwhelming urge is to say, Well - we're not doing THAT again!  That definitely happened to me over this last year.  I took a big step in my personal life, offered my truest self to some people about whom I care very deeply, and stated what that self needed.  The results were not what I had hoped.  There has been some reeling.  But in amongst the reeling, I have also been glad that my choice reflected my hopes.  Because it's a funny thing, when you think about it: people know us through our actions.  If our actions only ever reflect our fears, what a funny picture we send out into the world, and what a lopsided one, right?

I still believe, somewhere fundamental, that that kind of bad experience isn't always how it is, and maybe even that that isn't mostly how it is, and that we have to be open to the places where it's not, instead of curling up into our snail-shell selves.  I took other chances this year, on friendships, and trying new things, and being a more real me, and they were received with what I can only call grace.  Even my sad was received by my closest friends with love; they have responded with texts, shopping trips and lunches out, hugs, company on a 5k.

Our riding trainer gifted me with an opportunity to spend a couple of weeks caring for someone who needed it even more than I did:

That's Dubai.  He's a nine-year-old Arabian, whose owner was boarding him while she was pregnant with (and having) twins.  She went to check on him after a year and found him, shall we say, woefully neglected, probably a couple hundred pounds underweight, and very much in need of a new place to be.  Our trainer has ended up housing him for the last two weeks, and I have spent time with him every day; the girls have gone with me on the days they're out of school.  It's all we can talk about, actually (to what I am sure is the sorrow of the people around us) - we have learned a lot, and fallen a wee bit in love with this boy.  I wish he were a horse that we would be able to ride and learn on, but he isn't, so his owner is working to find him a new place.  But in the meantime, it's been a lovely way to spend several hours each day totally outside of myself.

I have also been knitting.  As one does this time of year.  First, birthday mitts for a dear friend:

These are Churchmouse Yarns' Welted Fingerless Gloves (my Rav project page), knitted out of Lotus Mimi mink yarn (yes mink, and no, not dead mink, hooray!).  It's a much lighter-weight yarn than called for in the pattern, so there were some adjustments, and I added a few welts to ensure wrist warmth.  The buttons came from Grandmom's button box.  My friend seemed delighted, and she appears to be wearing them a lot, so I think they are a success.  (And, selfishly, it is additionally delightful that half the yarn was left, so I might end up with a pair of these for myself!!)

I also knitted socks for Rick for Christmas (while I don't generally do scads of holiday knitting, I do try to end up giving something to Rick and each of the girls, which I managed to do this year).

It was time and past time for him to get a new pair of socks, so I dug up some Vintage Purls sock yarn from a sock club kit I hadn't knitted, modified Cookie A's Cauchy pattern for toe-up knitting (so I could use as much of the yarn as possible), and ended up with these.  The heel is my reverse heel flap heel (so that the flap goes on the bottom of the foot, which, when knitted in eye-of-partridge, means a nice durable cushy heel).

They fit beautifully, so I'm happy with those.

Younger Daughter also got socks.

Given that mismatched socks are her idiom (she deliberately mismatches them, even when she actually has mates), Noro socks work out perfectly.  These are basic toe-up socks, with Cat Bordhi's sweet tomato heel.

And finally, the piece de resistance (if I do say so myself), for Older Daughter (and at her request), the TARDIS mitts I mentioned in an earlier post:

I'm calling them Bigger on the Inside Mitts, and I'm planning to write this pattern up.  My knitting and racewalking and research buddy (yes, just one person - so many roles!) also wants a pair, so I'm giving her the rest of the white yarn, and a pattern to test knit, and then we'll see where we're at.  It needs to be written first, but they're not hard, so I'm hoping it won't take long.  Older Daughter hasn't taken them off since filching them from me as soon as the ends were woven in, so they haven't been blocked.  If they were, you might find it easier to see that the backs read "POLICE BOX" across the top, and the fronts, "RUN!"

I'd demand them for blocking, but she seems so happy, it's hard to remove them from her.

And last, for you, our new favorite salad, which I made up on the fly a few months ago, and which the girls have demanded weekly since.

For the salad:
On top of a bed of lettuce, put 1 roughly chopped Asian pear, the seeds from 1 pomegranate*, crumbled blue cheese, and chopped toasted walnuts.

For the dressing:
Dice a couple of tablespoons of shallots**, and mix with equal parts olive oil and red wine vinegar (adjust the acidity balance to taste), along with a dash of balsamic vinegar, some dijon mustard, and sea salt.  Whisk or shake well, and toss with the salad.

* Re pomegranates.  I have read about many ways to get the seeds out, and until now, was a fan of the underwater school of seed removal.  But then the pomegranate man at the farmer's market (he's the avocado man in the summer) told me his way, and I'm a convert.  Core out the blossom end of the pomegranate (you don't have to cut into where the seeds are).  Then score along the ridges around the pomegranate from top to bottom (there are about six).  Pull the pomegranate apart like you're pulling apart the sections of an orange.  The seeds will come out easily.

** We usually serve this with a popover and wild mushrooms sauteed in butter with shallots and parsley, so I use some of those.

The solstice has passed, so, before we usher the old year out and the new year in, I will say that I hope that you are all feeling that turn to the light - brighter days are assuredly coming, as they always do.

What I've done

Other than posting on the blog, because clearly that hasn't been on the Giant List o' Things To Do Yesterday (or, Preferably, Last Week).  During this past semester, I have:

- Prepped a completely new class, entirely out of my area of expertise (it's a class about public education, and I am, as noted previously, a linguist), as a hybrid course (meaning I can't BS my way through class when I haven't prepped ahead of time half of it is taught online)
- Written two letters of support for faculty sabbaticals
- Reviewed one tenure file and written a letter in support of that
- Written one letter nominating a faculty member for an award
  (it's worth mentioning that doing those letters takes WAY more time than you might think)
- Written student letters of recommendation
- Written (and I SO wish I were kidding about this) 2500+ email messages
- Finished the endless rounds of editing on a peer-reviewed article
- Prepared a conference presentation (I kind of overworked that one, and wrote 15 single-spaced pages for a 15-minute presentation - oops)
- Edited a conference presentation into something that could be done in 15 minutes
- Prepared comments as a discussant on a conference panel
- Written my last (!!) program chair report for my annual conference
ETA:  And I forgot the 10-year plan for my department, and the five-page single-spaced hiring memo I had to write.  Man, I have written more memos this semester than you can shake a stick at!

And none of that includes the usual round of grading, meeting with students, going to meetings (endless, endless meetings), running meetings (which I don't get to knit during - bitter, bitter, bitter).  Etc.  Etc.

Et - frickin' - cetera. *

Note that on that list one does not see, oh, you know: knitting or spinning or weaving.  I have, to my great pleasure, mostly managed to keep up my workouts, which now include regular yoga and meditation.  And I've shaved a minute off my best mile time, so that's also good.

But honestly.

I have managed to squeeze some knitting in - my conference in Chicago, long and exhausting (and cold!!) as it was, did give me some solid knitting time for once.  So while I don't have a lot to show, I do have a couple of FOs to present.  First, Song of the Sea (the long version):

This is a lovely cowl, which I knitted out of SeaSilk (which I adore).  I think that, in wearing, the pattern might show more clearly in something that slouches less, but I do love the weight of it around my neck.

The colors here aren't showing too well, so I'll try to get some pictures of this being used around my neck, in better light.  It's a beautiful sea-grey, which we all know is one of my favorite all-time colors.

The other thing I finished (largely because of the aforementioned conference knitting time) is Viajante, which I started way back in May.  It's (as a local knitting friend commented) a lot of stockinette.  But in laceweight, that makes it excellent travel knitting, and now that it's done, I think I"ll wear this a LOT.  It's knitted out of Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace Multi, in a colorway that I like to think of as "Kestrel" - some of you may remember my ongoing fascination with those lovely little birds of prey - and stretched out to block, it really kind of does look like a bird's wing:

You can see the colors much more accurately here:

This is a fun little pattern (for those of you who haven't jumped on board with it yet) that can be worn both as a shawl:

And as a poncho.

They are equally delightful and cozy - hence the predicted wearability of this one.

And that's about it.  My Green Wood sweater languishes in the basket next to the couch, because I haven't had the brain space for colorwork.  The TARDIS mitts, ditto.  I have cast on for a pair of socks for Rick; I have some small hope of finishing those before Christmas, we'll see.  As usual, I do not have major holiday-knitting ambitions: the socks for Rick, the TARDIS mitts for Older Daughter (I think if I can get the stitch count right, they'll go quickly), and socks for Younger Daughter.  That's it.

But classes are over.  I have three more piles of grading to get through in the next week and a half.  I am NOT prepping a brand-new class for spring.  So, while I'm afraid to say this out loud: maybe, just maybe, I'll get a break during this holiday break.

Meanwhile, by way of a peace offering, this is a virtual ensemble, created by 31 musicians around the world, playing separately, and then having their music aggregated into one lovely piece.  Older Daughter is one of those musicians (as is her fiddle teacher Diane) - you can see her early on in the video, under her real name, Tess.  I think she's pretty neat.

* This is an example of the only infix in English.  We have plenty of suffixes and prefixes, no circumfixes (affixes with two pieces which go on either side of the root), but just the one infix (an affix which goes into the middle of the root), and that's the f-word (although in British English, "bloody" and its euphemisms can also be used in this way).  In other languages with infixes, they are just normal parts of the grammar, not naughty words.  But we're special.  So now you know that you're doing cool morphological stuff when you stick the f-word into the middle of another word.  You're welcome.