What's a fillyjonk?
(It's a made-up animal. Very feminine. Somewhat neurotic. A lot like me.)

Read Tove Jansson if you really want to know.
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I finished all the dang soil samples this morning. Now if I still want to go antiquing, I can. (I don't know; it's very nearly noon, it's hot, and I do have to find time to practice today).

I'm also feeling a little unhappy because there is an interpersonal thing - with which I am tangentially involved - that is probably going to boil over into something rather unpleasant in the coming week. (Just a warning. If I don't post for a couple days it will be because I am just too distraught. Or, on the other hand, if I go into 19-posts-a-day mode, it may also be because I am distraught.) I am very bad at interpersonal stuff when it's the sort of unreasonable stuff that I anticipate happening. (Sometimes I wonder if I am part Vulcan; I do not understand humans when they get irrationally angry about minor things. I have also had the odd situation of someone I know calling me up and leaving a rambling message where he apologized if he "hurt my feelings" because of something he had said at a meeting we were at several days previously...and I couldn't even remember the thing that he feared had hurt my feelings. I always thought I was kind of thin-skinned, but maybe I've outgrown that. It actually does take quite a lot to hurt my feelings, because I tend to tell myself, "You're being unreasonable" when I feel hurt over some stupid thing someone says. I also operate on the "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity" principle).

I am getting close to finishing the first of the pansy-print pillowcases; I finished all the green outline stitch of the leaves last night and only the little "fence" or "edging" or whatever it is along the bottom remains.

I also started cutting the pieces for the quilt using the Folklore fabrics I posted about early last month. I am having to alter the pattern slightly; off-center cutting (on the part of whoever it was who originally prepared the fat quarters when I bought them) meant that one or two didn't have a square, 18" by 18" section. So I'm going down to 17" by 17" inch squares, which will only reduce the quilt 3" in width and 4" in length - not enough to worry about. I also had to sub one fabric - I had a red small check (not shown in the photos) that turned out to be a long 1/4 yard piece I had already cut into - not leaving enough, even with piecing, to get a 17 by 17 square. The good news is I found a piece of "folkloric" looking fabric (a stripe with "naive" flowers and vines) in the same colors in my stash. (That, my friends, is why you have an extensive stash.) So the only one I will need to piece will be the chunk of fabric leftover from the childhood dress - which you better believe I would not leave out of the quilt if there was any way I could get it in.

I have most of the big squares cut - this is going to be a fast quilt. (I do still have to piece that one block).

I decided to do this next/along side of the current quilt, because the yellow fabric that I want to use as sashing is a big piece, and the rest of it may well become the binding on the quilt currently in the frame, which I am drawing ever nearer (but slowly) to finishing.

Labels: quilting, random

posted by fillyjonk at 11:47 AM

 
Thanks to a fairly interesting program on the decline of Rome on History International last night, I got a bunch more done on the second Cobblestone sleeve.

I'm at the point where I can once again visualize this being a finished sweater, which means I once again have enthusiasm for working on it.

I have a particular progression for projects...at the beginning, I am all excited about it. It will be the Best Sweatah Evah! It will be so flattering, and go with so many of my other clothes...and I get all excited about it.

Then it hits the midpoint. It will never be finished! It's so dull! It's not going to be as pretty as I thought! This is often the point where I put the project aside and start something else.

But because I am persistent - and because I cannot stand either to rip things out, or to have them sit unfinished forever, I keep working on it.

And eventually it reaches some tipping point where I complete enough of it that I can once again visualize it as a finished project, and my hopes about it rise again, and I think about how nice it will be to have it finished.

And I start thinking about the next project I will start. I'm thinking the next sweater will have to be one where I don't have to alternate balls of yarn to avoid pooling - that's one of the things that's really gotten me down about this project. I have yarn put aside for the Cambridge Jacket (a zip-front jacket sweater: Ravelry link, for people on Ravelry. I also have yarn for the Skye Tweed Vest (again, a Ravelry link for which you must be a member). I like that one - I may have to hunt around for the issue that it's in. I also was looking at the Basketweave Pullover.

Oddly, all three of these are sweaters designed for men. I have sort of a loden-green yarn for the Cambridge jacket, a light baby-leaf green for the vest, and a lovely, bright, turquoise (it's called "Lake Blue") for the Basketweave sweater, so at least I will be doing a couple of those in somewhat feminine colors.

It's funny though - a lot of the Interweave Knits sweaters that grab my attention are the ones designed for men. I don't know if that's just I like the more rugged style, or if they tend to be simpler designs (I generally prefer the more simple designs to the more rococo stuff with colorwork and all that). Or if it's that it appeals to my vanity to be able to make a sweater in the smallest published size rather than one of the larger ones, as I generally have to with women's sweaters.

Or maybe it's that I never really had a "boyfriend" sweater, in the true sense of "you nicked it from your boyfriend and are wearing it now." (I never really had a boyfriend I felt free enough with to steal one of his sweaters...) I do have a sweater my dad stopped wearing and was going to send to Goodwill until I took it, but that's not the same thing by a long shot.

I probably need to go look at my Ravelry queue. I have a lot of sweaters on there and I might find one that would be the perfect "next" sweater. (Though right now I am leaning towards the Basketweave pullover, mainly because of the blue yarn.)
posted by fillyjonk at 7:09 AM

 
*I slept better last night. I think part of the key is not to watch medical dramas close to bed time. (I had watched an old re-run of "St. Elsewhere" the night before, and while I enjoy the show...now that I think about it, they were referring to one of the patients going into renal failure and listing the symptoms in the episode I saw).

I find especially when I'm distressed from the heat and am kind of tired and feel like I have to "run constantly just to stay in place" a la the Red Queen (which is what summer school is like), I'm more susceptible to forms of distress - I also can't watch too much news or what is going on in the world gets me down.

* I'm slowly working on the various ongoing projects and trying to convince myself that I must finish at least one thing before starting something new. I did a bit of handquilting last night and then switched over to knitting on the second sleeve of the Cobblestone pullover.

* I'm thinking I need to do something "fun" for the upcoming holiday weekend. I'm not sure there are any nearby fireworks celebrations (I could drive over to the casino parking lot and, I suppose, watch the one they are putting on which is intended to be for the benefit of their patrons).

I sort of miss "civic" fireworks displays. They don't do one in the town where I live - they used to do them out at the lake resort, but it got sold and is currently closed. When I was a kid growing up, in the town where my family lived, the fireworks were shot off from a location that we could see from my bedroom window. So we used to clear off the top of my dresser and sit on my dresser and watch the fireworks free of mosquitoes. (Then they moved the location and we had to go down to the town "green" to watch the fireworks, which was nice too).

I'm not really big on driving somewhere at night where there's going to be bad traffic. My night vision is not the best and I get frustrated when there's a traffic jam to leave somewhere like after a ball game or a fireworks display.

So I'm thinking maybe taking Friday afternoon (I have some research work to finish up Friday morning - I could have done some of it yesterday afternoon but I was just too bummed out) and going to Denison and going antiquing. I haven't done that in a while - just gone to the little antiques shops; it seems mostly my trips down there are a semi-frantic "Gotta get this item" or "need to stock up on groceries" trips lately.

* Speaking of fireworks, where I live, fireworks are legal (at least the small ones). Part of the reason I stay close to home on the 4th is that usually we're in a drought (as we are this year) and I worry about a stray bottle rocket landing on my roof or something. So I suppose I'll stay home with the hoses set up just in case.
Charlotte was speculating whether the down economy was going to lead to fewer people going out and buying fireworks to shoot off. So far, there have been none (save for one loud boom that might also have been someone slamming a car door) in my neighborhood; I'm going to listen Friday and Saturday night and see what it sounds like. Some years it's been like a war zone and with my poor tolerance for noise, it kind of made me shaky and unhappy. (And made me realize how grateful I was not to be an Iraqi civilian, or someone living in the crime-ridden sections of US cities, or in the Balkans, or in some parts of South America. (Or, I suppose, in some of the border cities of Mexico, now, seeing there is so much drug violence).
posted by fillyjonk at 7:27 AM

 
Thanks, anonymous yoga teacher. I've used that technique in the past and it has helped, I just kind of forget about it. I've slept well and free of bad dreams for eight months or so, so I forgot all of the old strategies I used.

I will say, I think I WILL sleep better tonight - receiving an unexpected "hey, just wanted to say hi" phone call that verified for me that not only was the loved one I had the nightmare about alive, but also very very well, so that's one concern off my mind.

(I probably should have just wimped out and called them myself on the pretext of "*I* just wanted to say hi" earlier in the day, but I try to keep myself from doing that. One time when I had a bad dream about my dad dying, I wound up sitting up by the phone for the rest of the night just waiting for it to be an acceptable hour to call him and verify that my bad dream was really just a dream. I think I made it until 7:30 am, but as that was back when he was still teaching, he was already up and had eaten breakfast and was ready to go to work...)

I'm kind of irked that the minor anxiety issues are coming back; I thought I had banished them. I tell myself that the anxiety is nothing "real," that it is something that is just a stupid biochemical legacy - like our cravings for sugar and fat are the ghost of optimal foraging past - because when Og the nervous caveman was scanning the horizon all the time for predators, he didn't get eaten, while maybe the more mellow cavemen didn't see the predator coming...so Og lived and (apparently) overcame his anxiety long enough to reproduce with some cavewoman, and passed his anxious genes on down to the next generation, and so it goes...being hypervigilant is a good thing when you're a hunter-gatherer, not so much in modern day North America where food comes from the grocery store and the most likely "predator" is that SUV being driven by someone who is distracted by their cell-phone call.

I TELL myself it's nothing "real," but I can't quite bring myself to believe it.

(And it's not caffeine consumption - I haven't even drunk tea in the past three weeks. Nor is it excessive sugar; I'm actually eating less sugar than I often do. So I can't peg it on anything biochemical that I can easily alter by altering my diet. I'm guessing it's the heat and humidity; they affect my asthma and make my chest feel tight, and I think the rest of my body interprets that as anxiety and makes the appropriate (inappropriate?) neurotransmitters.)
posted by fillyjonk at 5:39 PM

 
Not sure what to try differently this afternoon/evening to try to avoid a repeat of last night. (One thing I did do was wean myself off the allergy meds I was taking for the poison ivy; perhaps the bad dreams were partly related to a "rebound" from having done that).

Also I was buttonholed by a person yesterday with a big need to "share" lots of sad detail about a bad medical procedure; that may have contributed to the bad-kidney dream.

I don't know whether cutting quilt pieces or watching cartoons and starting a new pair of socks is more likely to help me sleep more soundly. (Though if it's the heat - well, I'll just have to wait until October. *whimper*)

I do get kind of gun-shy about sleeping after having a night of bad dreams. But I can't not sleep; tomorrow is my long day also involving fieldwork out in the hot sun.
posted by fillyjonk at 2:51 PM

 
I hate my brain sometimes.

Last night, I had a dream that someone I cared a whole lot about was dying, and there was nothing I could do - all I could do was wait for the final bad news.

Which resulted in my lying in bed at 3:30 in the morning (once I woke up) and wondering if it was worth it to try to go back to sleep for the remaining hour and a half, or if I should just say "bag it" and get up and do my exercise extra early for today.

(Ultimately, I tried to sleep again. Which resulted in my dreaming that my brother's kidneys were failing, and I was rushing to the hospital to see if I was a donor match, and feeling very sad and conflicted - on one hand, I couldn't NOT save my brother's life; on the other, the thought of the surgery terrified me. Which really did not help my mood today).

Well, I tried to put it out of my mind - if everything we dreamed actually happened this would be a mighty strange world indeed. But during class, I began thinking about it again. And began feeling very, I don't know, premonition-y? Like, "I'm going to go back to my office and there is going to be a Very Bad News phone call or e-mail waiting for me). It was almost unbearable finishing class. (Stupid brain).

So I rushed back here - no phone messages. It took some gutting up to check my e-mail (which is how I'd likely get the bad news in this case).

But I did. The only new e-mail was a spammy advertisement from Land's End.

Stupid brain. Why do you do this to me? Why can't I have dreams like normal people? About puppies or vacations or "dating" George Clooney (to keep it G rated here). What is it with all the armageddoney stuff all of a sudden? If you keep doing this to me, I WILL sit up all night watching television just to spite you.
posted by fillyjonk at 10:53 AM

 
I picked up the pillowcases I am embroidering and worked on them again. I have most of the outlining done on the first one, but I still have most of the second one to do (including some of the cross-stitching).

I like doing embroidery because, like hand-quilting, it requires a lot of focus. Make one stitch. Then make the next one right next to it. Stay in line. Stick to the pattern and you will have good results. It may not be "creative" in the sense that you are following an established pattern, but it does require a certain level of technical skill and attention to do it well - for example, I try to make all the backstitches for the outline the same length, so they look good.

But of course, I follow the pattern. I was thinking the other day, "You know, if I just said "forget color matching" and went and used whatever floss I wanted, or went and got one of those skeins of multicolored floss and did the pillowcases in that, the picture would be a big mess and look like nothing, but I bet it would get put up on Craft Blog or one of those sites, as this example of wonderful subversive art where someone takes a "corporate" kit and "subverts" it by not following the directions." Because "edgy" is the new pretty, apparently.

I don't know. I like the pillowcases. They are pretty. Working on them relaxes me. And I guess that's good enough. But I will say it makes me sad when people who make stuff like, say, the "bacon wrap" (a crocheted shawl made to look like a giant bacon slice) get all talked up on some of the DIY blogs, and the people out there doing incredibly complex and (to me at least) beautiful traditional lace shawls are all but ignored. (I wonder if it's a subtle ageism: most people over 30 or so wouldn't wear a "bacon wrap," but you can wear a lace shawl any time and most any place. And I wonder if it isn't partly the "not your grandma's..." attitude that's crept in places. Sometime I would like to see a little celebration of our individual or collective grandma's crafts...because if they didn't continue to do them, there would be no antique quilts to inspire quilters today. Or there would be no filet crochet designs to make people think of doing new designs. Or no one would remember how to turn a sock heel. It makes me sad when I feel like the people who came before us in the craft are being swept under the rug in favor of what is "edgy" and "new" and "hip." Because, not only is it right to honor our elders or foremothers/forefathers, but also there are an awful lot of us out here who are not edgy and hip - who want to do more traditional style craft - and it's frustrating to have to hunt for information on that whereas there are many websites out there detailing what the "rockers" of the craft world are doing.

And yeah, I admit, it's a little bit of sour grapes, from someone who has never been a Popular, and who often looked at the Populars and said to herself, "They're not so great.")
posted by fillyjonk at 7:02 AM

 
I worked on different stuff this weekend. Did some research stuff, some teaching-stuff (grading). I also worked a bit on the current "simple" socks (which are getting close to done) and the quilt in the frame.

And I got alllllllll the 2 1/2" segments of the strips cut for the four patches on the new quilt top, and sewed up most of them before running out of steam. (I still have a stack of them, pinned, sitting on my sewing machine but I think I'm done sewing for today. Sometimes I just kind of hit a wall on a project and have to stop for a while).

Here are some of the patches, to give you an idea of the range of colors:



Several (Four, maybe?) of the fabrics in there are Mary Engelbreit prints (the little circle-flower ones). And there are three of the "Dimples" line, and then a couple others that matched and worked with these but were one-offs or were from different fabric collections.

The light colored "plain" fabric has tiny starbursts on it, you can't really see them in the photo.

The four-patches then get put in a set with alternating big squares of the colorful fabric and they are turned so that the light colored background fabric forms sort of a diamond design.

This is a nice quilt pattern (it's from a book I have called "Bundles of Fun" which has many patterns designed for fat quarters, most of them pretty straightforward so you don't have to spend hours and hours cutting, or do lots of agonizing over matching points and such.

I could see making this quilt again, in different colors - maybe the late-1800s reproduction prints, with dark prints (the red and green and brown background ones) as the colorful fabrics, and "shirting" prints (light background with small designs, often geometric, in either navy blue, black, dark red, or dark green). Or doing it of 30s fabrics with that "30s green" in a solid color as the background fabric. Or Christmas fabrics with either a solid red or gold or green as the background. It seems like a really versatile pattern and although there are an awful lot of four-patches to sew together, it goes comparatively fast.
posted by fillyjonk at 4:55 PM

 
This is the kind of thing that makes me all stabby, first thing on a Saturday morning: a company that is selling "corrupted" files students can buy, then e-mail to their profs, and then student innocently goes, "What? You mean the file wouldn't open?" and (so the student thinks) buys himself/herself some extra time to write the assignment they slacked off on.

That is so full of wrongness....

first of all, I can tell, I would say, 80%-90% of the time, when a paper was written at the very last minute - which is what any student taking advantage of that site is going to be doing. Last-minute papers just have a certain "smell" to them.

second, it assumes profs are sufficiently clueless (or overworked) that we are not going to clue into the situation - I bet some profs receive three or four of these for a single assignment, they're going to figure something's up.

third, how hard would it be for someone to do this on their own? I'm no computer whiz but I suspect it's not that hard to do. (For that matter: find someone who has WordPerfect or some archaic word processing software and do it in that, chances are prof won't be able to open the file, or you can make off that it's a software mismatch).

fourth, it's CHEATING.

fifth, if a student has a major real problem, most profs are amenable to extensions. I know I am. I've even given an occasional extension for the "I really don't have a big life issue going on, but I'm just underwater in terms of all the work I have to do for all my classes." I'd rather grant an honest extension than have someone dishonestly e-mail me a fake file.

sixth, it is not a "good excuse." It is enabling people to procrastinate.

seventh, the assumption that profs don't talk to one another, that word of this thing won't get out, and that people won't be busted.

I don't accept e-mailed papers, except in dire circumstances (like, the person is trapped at home by bad weather). And then, if I can't open the file, they don't get credit. Simple as that. And now I have a good reason to put in my syllabi why I don't accept e-mailed papers. Or at the very least, to put in, "If I can't open the file, your grade drops by five points for every fifteen minutes that elapse between my e-mailing you "I CAN'T OPEN THE FILE" and your sending me one that WILL open")

And yes, on the rare occasions that a student e-mails me an assignment, I try opening it immediately. If it won't, I e-mail them right back and say, "The file did not work" and let them know they need to fix it, stat, if they want credit.

I HATE how we have this arms-race going with the cheaters. Many profs (I know, because I'm in this boat and many of my colleagues I've talked to this about are too) never cheated in school, and so some of the more esoteric cheating methods are ones we'd never even think of. It's infuriating how much time it can take - googling "key phrases" in papers to see if they're plagiarized off the internet, cross-checking all student papers (which is a challenge in big classes) to be sure there isn't a "Hey, you do the work and we'll all copy off of you" ring going on, dealing with cell phones and text devices on exam days (rule: they stay off and in the person's bag. If I see one, it needs to be surrendered to me for the rest of the exam time).

I don't buy the originator's claim that professors find it "funny" and let the students get away with it. I wouldn't. And I bet most employers, if they needed a White Paper or a spreadsheet or a TPS report or something by a certain time, would only find it funny in the sense that they get to laugh while they fire the person, if the person sent them a corrupted file instead.

I wonder how long before someone develops a company that will embed a hard-drive-destroying virus in a fake file, so students can "fry" the computers of profs who don't have up to date virus software? 'Cos I could totally see someone thinking that was a good idea.

Labels: gripes

posted by fillyjonk at 7:48 AM

 
Yesterday was, I think, one of the more surreal news days in recent memory.

It starts off with yet another politician being unfaithful to their spouse. Now, granted, I realize the "real" problem here was that he left his post to fly off to Argentina, but I do have to say I always feel a little - disappointment, maybe? - when I hear of this.

I don't know, I realize this is very much outside looking in, but I feel like - if I had someone who loved me (I presume the man's wife loved him?) and had spent whatever portion of my life with me, I'd not want to hurt them in that way.

I don't know. I realize life is complex and everyone carries a heavy burden of their own, but when I look at people doing this kind of thing, I feel kind of like when I was a little kid and a friend of mine had some REALLY COOL THING that I didn't have and he or she broke it, or left it out in the rain, or somehow didn't take care of it.

And then the two celebrity deaths. I admit, I had kind of "forgotten" about Farrah Fawcett until I saw news of her death. I didn't really follow her career all that much - I may have seen a few episodes of "Charlie's Angels" in re-runs (though during its first run, there were other things I would have been interested in on the television). But she seemed like she was a nice lady, and she was certainly beautiful (but not beautiful in that "I'm better than you because I'm prettier" sense that some attractive women have). And she had been sick. And in a way, you almost feel a little relief on behalf of the person: well, at least they're not in pain any more.

And then the real surreal news of the day. I'm not going to comment on Jackson's life, on what happened in the 90s and the 00s, the trial, any of that. For one thing, I don't understand it. For another, I was sort of raised that you didn't spit on a person's grave.

I remember Jackson best from the mid-80s - before everything started to go kind of pear-shaped for him. When he was really popular - crazy popular. People who weren't born yet probably don't realize the level of popularity. EVERYONE knew who he was. EVERYONE. And, though I admit I was a music snob in those days (more than I am now; it was part and parcel as trying to define myself as "different" and "special" in high school to insist that I only EVER listened to "serious" music), his music was catchy and fun. "Billie Jean" probably was my favorite.

(And even before that, his Motown work: some of it really beautiful - I do love "I'll be there" - and some of it irresistibly catchy and enough to make me get up and dance (well, at least, if I'm alone in the room when it comes on).

But yeah, later on he was pretty much the definition of "a cry for help." What happened to him made me more sad than anything: again, here was someone with real talent (again, something I don't have) and who was adored by millions. And whatever demons he had, whatever temptations he faced - they pretty much ruined his life. And yeah, yeah, all the classic explanations: he was probably abused as a child, fame corrupts, all of that. But still, up until yesterday, whenever I heard his name in the news, I admit I cringed a little bit in preparation for what I might hear.

I will say that while I feel kind of sad about his death - and really, more sad about all the stuff that came out in the news about him over the past 15 years or so, I expect this will lead to another Princess-Diana type situation for a lot of people. And perhaps it's an emotional failing in me, a way that I'm a little bit cold, but I don't quite get the extended mourning over someone you did not know. My reaction to the death was to go, "Wow, that's sad - and unexpected" and then move on. I don't quite get the extended tears and sadness for someone you never knew. I had enough losses of people (and one cat) that I knew well and cared a lot about in the past year to not feel like shedding any tears for someone I never knew, someone who was at the most on the edges of my consciousness. But to each his own, I guess: maybe some people need that.

(And now I feel kind of bad to realize that I felt worse about the death of my parents' cat than I did about another human being, but well - those you know well are closest to you, I guess)

Oh, and in other, very personal news:

The Oklahoma Blood Institute will not accept your blood if you have an active poison ivy infection. I walked in, explained to the phlebotomist, showed her my arms, and she shook her head sadly. I presume it's because there are antibodies or something in your blood that make it unsafe for a person in weakened health to accept. Oh well. Perhaps there will be another drive here in town in another couple weeks when it's cleared up.
posted by fillyjonk at 6:32 AM