Thoughts and feelings

I haven't tagged blogposts in a long time (because I forget to) but maybe I need to revive the "random maunderings" tag for this one.

This was spurred by an ITFF discussion. One person linked to an article: What if All I want is a Mediocre Life?.

My first reactions to it were mostly positive: sort of a Heck Yes! Why should I be pushed to constantly do more, more, more? Why can't it just be accepted that what I'm doing is ENOUGH.

But then, I admit, I was somewhat uncomfortable:

1. With mediocre as a word used here. Frankly, the woman writing has a pretty good life - she's doing a lot (she has kids, for example, which I don't). I wish I could be happier being a "mediocre at best" pianist - I came to it too late in life, I don't have the sufficient time to practice as much as it would take to be really good, I lack the kind of confidence it probably requires - but I can't be happy saying, "I'm just mediocre at that." I want to be GOOD. And it frustrates me when I can't, and often it makes me less wanting to keep up with the thing.

2. She is in some ways luckier than I am: she has a loving spouse, she isn't totally dependent on the sweat of her own brow (figuratively speaking) to keep herself housed and fed. She probably has people who are happy to see her when she comes home*

(*This has once again become an issue for me. I'd get a dog, but based on how badly my allergies responded to paying the homebound visit to the couple with the dog - which didn't even get all that close to me - I don't think I can)

Also, on ITFF, a lot of people "unpacked" it more critically than I could - a lot excoriated her from coming from a place of "privilege" (married well-off woman in a culture that generally treats women well) or for the idea that she was setting herself up as some kind of self-help guru.

So I don't know.

I don't like the idea of "being happy with being mediocre" because that's something our culture has kind of turned into a pejorative. Mediocre MIGHT have once meant "average" or "median," now it's kind of gone the way of the "gentleman's C" - where it used to be OK for a student to earn Cs because that was an average grade, and frankly, more people are close to the average than above it. But now, a C is seen by some as a mortal assault. ("Why did you give me a C?" "I didn't give it to you, you earned it"). And while I don't want to dig into the sociological reasons behind C now being a "bad" grade....it's sort of related to the whole issue of expectations-inflation.

And why people like me, who objectively are doing very well, are sort of dissatisfied a lot of the time, because we're not doing MORE.

No, I don't mean it in a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses way, at least not materially speaking. I don't give a flip if one of my neighbors has a big-butt Cadillac SUV in their drive. I like my Ford Edge just fine; it gets me where I need to go, it doesn't need a lot of maintenance, it's easy to drive.

But in terms of CONTRIBUTION to the world....if my neighbors are, I don't know, digging wells for impoverished Central American towns, okay, then I feel a little bit like, "Wow, why am I not doing that....wow, I should be doing that or something like that."

And yeah yeah, I've harped several times these past weeks in Sunday school on the "works-vs.-faith" thing and it's NOT a "trying to buy myself a spot in Heaven" thing at all, it's more a....I guess it's more a "I want my life to have meant something" thing.

I don't know. The author of the piece I linked remarks:

What if I never build an orphanage in Africa but send bags of groceries to people here and there and support a couple of kids through sponsorship? What if I just offer the small gifts I have to the world and let that be enough?

And yes. Why can't I accept that giving money to Mercy Corps and Heifer Project and buying peanut butter and tuna and stuff for the local food banks is more than a lot of people do, and be happy that I'm doing that? Why do I look at my contributions and go "I should be doing more?"

I don't know. It's probably linked to the "I want my life to feel like it means something."

And also, the whole post-tenure review thing (and YES I am still salty about it, but): the feeling that nothing I do will ever quite be "enough" to get a "you're fine, keep on keepin' on," that there's always going to have to be some area in which I will be found lacking, because apparently that's how this process works and oh it seems so INSIDIOUS to me, that you can't ever just relax and say "This is good. What I did was good." but instead you must say "That could have been better, next time I will do it better by x,y,z..." or "Yes, that was good, but I could have done these three other things as well as that thing..." and it feels like endless escalation - kind of like that bit from Modern Times where the machinery keeps speeding up until the point where the Little Tramp can't physically keep up with it any more and winds up crushed between the cogs. (I may be misremembering  that part)

I don't know.

Someone else on ITFF brought up the point that you need to measure yourself by your own yardstick. And yes, yes, that's very nice - but again, that's a privilege that apparently the lesson-writer has that not all of us do. I mentioned post-tenure review? A very unlikely but not impossible outcome for someone who fails to conform to expectations is they get tenure revoked and are let go. Like I said, it's unlikely (especially given the budget constraints and how hard hiring a proper replacement would be), but it's possible, and that's enough to scare me.

And so I keep planning new research. Or keeping up with teaching. Or not saying things to students I might want to say and they might need to hear, but that would cause Upset and I don't want to risk upsetting the wrong person. Or taking on extra committee work and maybe dropping other "service" that I realized didn't count towards my post-tenure review. So not so much cutting my coat according to the cloth, but according to what the powers-that-be say should be the cut of the coat.

And it all makes me sad. Because again it does come down to "what the world values" and "what I value" (and by extension: what all my religious training taught me was valuable) being different things some of the time. And I can't just say "forget the world's yardstick" because I have to live in the world, and it's just me* between me and starvation, so I have to take note of it.

(*Well, not quite: if something went spectacularly wrong, at this point in time, my parents would take me back in. I don't know about the distant future when they're gone; possibly my brother and sister in law would help out, but then again, they face fiscal challenges of their own)

I don't know. I was thinking yesterday about how HAPPY I was those few hours over break that I was in my sewing room, and I think I realize why: that is one place where the only way I have to measure up is to my own requirements or interests. I don't have to make, for example, a quilt top big enough to cover a California King if all I really want to do is a lap robe. And I don't have anyone telling me that what I'm enjoying doing is unimportant and I really need to devote my energies to this thing over there that I don't want to do nearly so much.

I remarked later on ITFF that perhaps the ultimate marker of privilege in today's world is being able to 100% go by your own yardstick and be able to tell anyone else who's trying to make you measure up to some other scale to go pound sand. Maybe when I retire I will be able to do that, I don't know.

(Several women in my AAUW group retired last year. They flatly refused to take on any new responsibilities, on the grounds that they were told, "Don't take anything new on in the first year you retire" which seems odd advice to me and I can guar-an-damn-tee you that when I retire, "they" (whoever makes these guidelines) will have changed them, and it will be "The new retiree should carry ALL of the burdens" And yes, I do think retired people sometimes forget a bit about what it's like to work full-time. ESPECIALLY work full-time as a single person, where the laundry, marketing, bill-paying, life-maintenance stuff is 100% on you.... and that's why I'm exhausted so much of the time and feel like I'm grabbing at straws)

a new low

Had a student in class this morning pull out a compact and start applying mascara during a discussion of a Fairly Important Point That Will Be on the Upcoming Exam.

Stuff like that has a way of ruining my entire day. My too-active inner critic goes nuts over that kind of thing, takes it as proof that I'm boring and suck as a teacher and all of that.

I'm taking deep breaths and telling myself what I'd tell another person in a similar situation (that the other person's behavior tells you more about THEM than it does about YOU) but it's not entirely helping.

Dangit, it's only Wednesday. I knew there was a reason I didn't want to get out of bed this morning.

ETA: Actually, a couple more thoughts, now that it's the end of the teaching day (but not the end of the work day; I still have some research work and grading to do). Afternoon lab (with a different class) went better so I'm in a slightly better mood but:

I think this incident is why I'm so wary of the "COLLEGE FOR ALL!!!!" plans. Not everyone WANTS to go to college. Not everyone needs to go to college. And making it seem like college is the ONLY option for 18 to 22 year olds is a real disservice. (I think part of the problem is that a college diploma - a B.A. or B.S. or B.G.S. now signifies what a high school diploma once did. I think high school has been considerably watered down in the last I-don't-know-how-many years. My late aunt, who graduated in like 1936 or so, never went to college but knew Latin and a fair amount of fairly complex math...she knew stuff that I don't know, with all my degrees. I may have more specialized knowledge but I also know there are considerable lacunae* in my general knowledge.)

(*I used that specific word unintentionally, contemplated removing it as a "show offy" word, but then realized its origin and it made me smile, given the context of me talking about not knowing Latin, so I let it stand)

I have run up against people - some of quite them open about it - who went to college against their wills, because it was what their families wanted or expected them to do. And I do think a lot of people now do have the idea (and it's probably more true than not) that you can't get a decent job without a college degree. (I would argue that needs to change: increase the rigor and expectations in grade school and high school, maybe offer a college-prep sequence and a "terminal degree" sequence along with vocational and other sequences, and let people pick what they want)

I also find a certain number of college students don't know what they want to do. I don't mean they're not sure whether they are better off majoring in Chemistry or Biochemistry, I mean they don't KNOW, in the sense of, if I ask them - as is a typical break-the-ice question I use - "what would be your ideal job?" they can't give an answer. And while I think it's fine to try different things out when young...it's a little unsettling to have seniors telling you they don't know how they want to earn their bread yet.

So: not so down with the one-size-fits-all solution of we MUST send them ALL to college!

Another idea I've seen floated - that rather than going straight to college, we require a couple years either volunteer or military service of young people - I don't like that either. On one hand, I've had a lot of former military students, and they are by and large more mature and have a clearer sense of purpose than the average graduated-high-school-three-months-ago person. But on the other hand, making it a blanket requirement would be frustrating to those (like me) who were ready for college, had an idea of what they wanted to do with their lives and what they needed to do to get there.

I don't know. I do know that some of the 18 year olds these days are *awfully* young. And that my parents would have slapped me silly (and they didn't even DO corporal punishment) if they heard of me applying make-up while I was in class.

(And this is one of those "poor, pitiful me" moments: I was raised to be SUPER respectful of my elders and those in positions of authority. And then when I achieve that status, apparently it's no longer "done" to show that level of respect. I feel cheated, somehow...)

What I control.

(Gah, my blogiversary is sneaking up on me - I think it's tomorrow - and I am sufficiently bouleversée that a blogiversary is something hard to think about right now. Maybe I will have to postpone it and do a belated blogiversary)

I'm revisiting the thing I talked about the other day. ("comfort, clean laundry, and pie." Which I think I should write out on a little card and post up unobtrusively in my office).

A lot has been made of the "new domesticity" - I remember it beginning with the upsurge in knitting, and it's just continued on through with things like the craft blogs and the books (some books better than others) that came out of the craft blogs. And the "slow foods" movement. And cocooning, which I think has been going on for at least 20 years now? I think that's when Faith Popcorn first mentioned it?

And a lot of people seemed kind of...puzzled?... by the concept of New Domesticity. I remember reading some people's interpretation, and it seemed almost a bit hysterical* - implying that women were being dragged by their hair back into the kitchen, and presumably the unshoddening and impregnation would come shortly after.

(*yes, I am using that word here ENTIRELY intentionally).

And I admit a certain puzzlement at THAT reaction. I tend to be of the "if you're not hurting anyone or doing anything immoral, I don't really care what you do" school of thought. Sure, some people would rather remove their own wisdom teeth** than bake a cake, but fine, whatever, that's them. People should be permitted to do what makes them happy (given the two caveats above). And for me, and for many other people, what makes them happy is knitting. Or quilting. And for others it's baking bread. Or building dulcimers. Or trying to recreate foods like Pop-Tarts in a healthier and home-made form. Or painting. Or making their kid's room "just so." Or whatever.

(** I actually knew a person (now deceased) who claimed to have done that when he was in the army in Korea. Apparently dentistry was not high on the agenda at that point in time, and the teeth were really bothering him. I am not sure whether to believe that or not. And as I said, he's now gone, so I can't press for more information)

I think actually part of the reason for the "new domesticity" is a desire to have control over a little corner of the world - and regardless of what some claim, much if not all of it did NOT start in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks; the resurgence of knitting was already well underway. (I know. I took knitting back up again around 1997 and already there was lots of stuff on the internet - dear old Woolworks, for example, was there, with its index of free patterns. And there were sites you could order yarn from. And there were some other pattern sites, and there was the Free Patterns Knitting Ring.)

I suspect that part of the desire to take crafts - or things like baking - or things like making a nice home - or even things like housework*** is related to two desires: first, to have a sense of control in this crazy world, and second, and relatedly, to feel a sense of mastery or skill.

(***I have a large, and rather persnickety, book called "Home Comforts" that is essentially the care and feeding of a house and its furnishings. Fascinating stuff, but I twitch at the advice about doing things like changing pillowcases daily.)

I think a lot of people in this world do kind of grasp at an idea of having control. The world can be a scary and unpredictable place, and so being able to do things like make sure the laundry is clean and there is a comfortable place to sit in the living room and that there is pie when someone's birthday rolls around - well, that's bringing a bit of order to an uncertain world.

And also, I think a lot of people do so much "virtual" work, where there's nothing to be able to point to at the end of the day and say "I made that" (and that's part of my periodical career frustration, I am sure. I need tangibility) that people want to do stuff like play instruments, or write poetry, or, heck, write blogs...so that the time they passed becomes visible, or at least can be experienced for a time (as with music, but then the tangible part is the learning, the improvement). And so they feel some sense of control in the world: putting THIS precise word exactly HERE. Building a dollhouse to your own exact architectural specifications. Going old-school photography and using film and a darkroom. We are made to use tools, and I think maybe we get a little sad when we feel too cut off from tools.

And likewise, the question of mastery: developing a skill. Being able to sort of quietly admit to yourself that you're good at something. (And sometimes, the pleasure is actually in being SECRETLY good at something; being good at something outside of your work or the other things you "must" do.) And there is also a degree of control in the mastery, too: being able to make the piano make sounds that are concordant and that (at least somewhat) match what the composer wrote out, being able to take a few yards of cloth and make a blouse, being able to take a mile or so of yarn and convert it into a sweater or a shawl. It makes you feel (well, it makes ME feel) that the world is a little less random and disturbing, and that's something I need right now.

Because. Because I got a phone call from my parents yesterday. On top of all the other stuff going on, a family friend is in the hospital with leukemia. Apparently the chemotherapy wasn't enough and they are prepping for a bone marrow transplant. And while a person can pray, that's ALL a person can do in this case. (And, well, I suppose, get on the bone-marrow registry. Though this person already has a good-match donor)

I got this news about an hour before my piano lesson. While I was perhaps a bit distracted, still, it was strangely a bit of a relief to sit down and play. Because it was all I had to think about at that moment. And I had some measure of control over it. (Though still, when I'm tired or upset about something and trying to play, sometimes my fingers will do random unwanted things, like my pinky finger losing tone and hitting a key I don't want it to hit).

And I came home and read journal articles. And you know, it really was pleasant. I just sat down and read, read about a floodplain forest in Arkansas and some of the upland forests in Georgia that are a little bit like our upland forests and I found some articles cited in those that I want to look for, and I can see that people are still using the same field techniques I learned back in the day, and the analyses makes sense and use the same techniques I plan on using.

And I was learning stuff. Learning about how the composition of southeastern forests is somewhat different from that of midwest forests (I'm primarily a prairie girl and have done comparatively little intensive study of forests). I learned that winged elm is sometimes called "wahoo" as a common name. And it made me happy, because even when data are a little bit messy and hard to interpret, still, there's something, I don't know, kind of predictable about them. Or, the fact that you don't control them doesn't matter as much...I've often said that one reason I like ecology is that getting an unexpected result, one that disproves your hypothesis, is often more interesting than actually supporting it. And leads to new studies.

And I sat and knitted on a simple pair of socks while I read, and I played some music.

I think I need to get back to listening to music more again. It's one of those small comforts of life that makes things so much better. Yes, I can make music now, but it's also nice to be able to listen to other people make it.

I pulled out one of my sets of CDs. (Yes, I still use CDs. I know lots of people who have gone entirely digital with their music files, but I still like having the physical CD. That may be partly because my old laptop suffered through two fairly catastrophic failures, including one that required "cloning" the hard drive, wiping it clean, and then getting (most) of the stuff (I lost some data from my dissertation, luckily I had other copes) back on the cleaned and fixed drive. And if I do get an e-reader - and I'm seriously considering the cheapest of the Kindle models, now that I read they've improved their interface for .pdf files - I will still keep my book-books. And certainly continue to buy book-books even as I buy or download (the older ones, for free) e-books.)

But I also like having the physical object, just because the object qua**** object can be pleasing sometimes.

(**** I once SWORE I would never use that term, because it sounds so pretentious to me, but it actually kind of works here.)

I decided I wanted to hear some Mendelssohn. I have a three-disk set of his symphonies. I bought it a while back (well over a year) from either Amazon or ArkivMusik. I had wanted a version of his Restoration Symphony and also his Scottish Symphony. What I finally chose was a Chandos set - a boxed set.

And I have to admit, I was very pleased with it when it came. Not just for the music, but for how it was packaged - a square, shiny black box made of very heavy glazed cardboard. And inside, there was the obligatory explicative booklet, and the three CDs. Each of them in its own little paper sleeve.

You have to understand. I grew up in what was still the vinyl era. Yes, my family had an 8-track player and a few tapes, and when the Walkman came out, I got (a knock-off brand of) one. But my earliest memories of recorded music - and really, my main memories of classical music and of the soundtracks/operettas my parents listened to involved records. (I remember, for example, either having my mom help me put on - or when I got older, putting on myself - the record that had the soundtrack to Sound of Music and dancing and twirling around the living room, and acting out some of the scenes from the movie. Yeah. I was kind of a weird little kid.)

So the little paper sleeves put me in mind of the records my parents had - especially the SRS BZNESS classical multi-sets, like of the Beethoven symphonies, all in their individual sleeves in the box or folder. And it made me smile, because I could see in my mind's eye where we used to keep the records (even though my parents have not lived in that house for 20 years) and how it felt to pick them up, and how there was that sort of tense moment, as a kid, when I soooooo carefully put the needle down, terrified of scratching it.

And I do think there's a pleasure - and a comfort, too - in nicely presented objects, in things that are neat and precise and maybe designed to remind you a bit of their historical antecedents (I kind of love Deutsche Grammophon's CDs, because many of them are actually printed to resemble a very small replica of a vinyl record).

And so, I will try, in these coming days and weeks, to remember that there are some things I have control over. Some things I can make comfortable and nice. And to be grateful for those things and celebrate them. And to try to let the things I don't have control over go. (I'm a lot better about doing that for things OTHER THAN THOSE which involve my work, sigh.)

oh look, it's the random maunderings tag again....

I had to take my car in for new tires yesterday. (I noticed they felt bald - nearly hydroplaned a few times - in the last bad rainstorm, then did the "penny test" and concluded that it was time).

It's always a bit of a production getting anything done with the car. Because I live in a fairly small town, none of the places (as far as I can tell) have twigged to the idea of giving out loaner cars while yours is being worked on. (I think the expectation is that every adult is paired off, like on Noah's Ark, and OF COURSE there is a spouse with a car who can come get them and take them back. But anyway. I have to wait there).

So I waited. I had a book with me (didn't have time to run home and get a project) but it was hard to read. I've said before that I find auto-place waiting rooms just slightly less depressing than waiting at the hospital when someone you love has been admitted? I stand by that.

There were a couple other people in the waiting area apparently engaged in what was on the television or I would have looked for the remote and shut it off. It was one of the news channels. They were running a show where the MO was apparently to find two people with THE most diametrically opposed opinions on a topic possible, and put them together in a room. And bonus points if one of the people will stoop to ad hominem attacks.

So that was what was going on over my head as I was trying to read a book about C4 and CAM photosynthesis. And I could feel my blood pressure rising - not out of anger, because I actually felt somewhat detached from the issues being discussed, but out of stressed sadness.

I fear sometimes, when I hear people arguing and talking over each other like they were on this show, that we may be headed for some kind of a civil war in this country. Perhaps not a "hot" civil war in the sense of people firing guns at each other, but a war of sorts nonetheless. And it seems so stupid. I'd rather see two people with somewhat different points of view present those points of view, try to find points of agreement, try to discuss the sticking points without attacking each other, and maybe generate a little LIGHT on a subject, rather than just generating HEAT. But I guess I expect too much.

And I'm reminded of why I strictly limit my exposure to news channels.

Finally they had the tires all on. The one bit of good news is that it cost less than what they originally quoted to me; apparently there was some promotion going on for tires (Or perhaps they knocked a few bucks off because the tires hadn't come in on the day they PROMISED me they'd be in and I had driven out there for nothing).

I guess my other frustration with the whole news-channel-people-talking-past-each-other (because that's really what it is; people are talking PAST each other, with no attempt to listen to what the other has to say other than to maybe hunt for errors or statements that could be twisted around) is that in my opinion, arguing is not very productive, especially when there is stuff a person can be DOING. I would rather go out and pick up trash off the roadside than sit in a meeting for a couple hours and try to suss out WHY people litter and HOW to persuade them to stop - because I have no good answers for that. Or I'd rather go cook at a soup kitchen than sit in a debate about the root causes of poverty. It's just who I am. I'd rather shut up and DO something, even something very small, EVEN something that really doesn't attack "root causes," because doing something makes me feel better, makes me feel useful, and hearing problems that really have no good solutions argued just makes me feel worse.

It was a good day. A day that I needed. It reminded me that taking time for myself is important, and taking a big chunk of time (not some 15 minutes pencilled in here and there) is sometimes the only thing that fixes things.

(I'll post pictures of the yarn later, for those who aren't too repulsed by enhancement of an already-bloated stash. I will say that the yarn is all project-designated, so it's not like I'm randomly buying up stuff 'cos I like it...

...that's what quilt fabric is for....)

Anyway. It actually FELT like fall today, which was nice - it was cool (I actually wore a sweater vest) and overcast. Unlike some people, I'm really not depressed by gray overcast weather. It's interesting. It's atmospheric. It suits my sensitive eyes better than bright sun does.

The drive down was uneventful. I really don't mind driving long distances provided that there is not heavy traffic. I saw a few weird "oversized load" things, including some stuff that I'm not at all sure what it was (one of them looked like a giant bathysphere but it was wrapped in tarps so I really can't be sure).

I went to Barron's first. I really do wish we had one of these close to me. It's a combination bookstore (though the books do seem to be being squeezed out by other stuff, I note with some annoyance), fancy-home shop, nice restaurant, and place where you can get your Brighton fix.

(I am not sure I understand the popularity. Perhaps you have to be a Southerner to, or a native of Texas/Oklahoma. I am fairly sure Brighton was not a popular property in the upper Midwest where I used to live...it is fairly nice budget-priced jewelry (not quite costume jewelry but not quite "serious" jewelry), and shoes, and handbags. I guess I don't get it because I tend not to be much of a bag or shoe person, and most of the jewelry I like is either antique or one-off stuff that someone I know made. It's a very recognizable style. And that's fine, it just happens not to be my style.)

I picked out a couple of books (while waiting for the cafe to open) and left them at the cash register. (One of the nice things about these small shops is you can DO that; the people working there don't look at you like you're weird when you ask).

I've said before I like the restaurant there because they don't treat single diners like a pox. (And there are some restaurants - and not just upper-end ones - that do. There are a few chain places in which I will never eat again based on how I was treated on a couple exploratory visits).

Based on the server's recommendation, I got a cup of their black-bean soup. And on my own decision, the crab cakes.

The crab cakes were good, but the soup was better. It was a different recipe than I make - sort of a tomato base (I think it was pureed tomatoes and chicken broth, maybe in a 2:1 ratio) and it had, in addition to the beans, corn and fresh cilantro. Both of which were good additions. Corn is always good paired with black beans; the slight sweetness brings out the smoky savory taste of the beans. And the cilantro was surprisingly right. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of fresh cilantro; it seems that cooks that use it tend to OVERuse it and then all you taste is that sharp green off-mint taste that cilantro has. But the cook (chef, I guess you'd properly say) here hadn't used too much - he (I know it was a he; I saw him) used just the right amount.

So it's something I want to try to replicate in my own kitchen if I can.

I also had a big cup of hot spiced chai (the cup it was in is about twice the size of the mugs I usually use for tea. It was sort of an Alice in Wonderland cup, both because of the size and because it was broad and shallow. It felt almost like a little kid playing tea party. It was an oddly pleasant sensation to be drinking from such a large heavy cup).

I also got a slice of chocolate cake but left some of it because I decided I was just too full and reached a point where I wasn't really enjoying it.

Two things I got at Barron's - first, I finally found a suitable replacement for the Dopp kit/toiletries kit that was falling apart (the one I had been using was a freebee from Clinique). This one is sturdier. And it's big enough. One of the sort-of distressing things about being a woman Approaching A Certain Age is that you find you have a lot more impedimentia when you travel. For example, now I drag along two moisturizers (one for at night and one with SPF to go under the foundation by day). And I have my allergy meds and my Excedrin Migraine and some kind of antacid. And I have more cosmetics now. And some months back, I began taking a B-vitamin after having some symptoms that suggested I wasn't absorbing some of them well.* And recently, started taking Calcium with vitamin D - great big honking horse pills, twice a day. (I have pretty bad history of osteoporosis in the family, so I figured it was time)

So I need a big kit for all that - plus all the tooth stuff, plus things like bandaids and nail clippers and all the stuff that you MIGHT need and would rather not be without if you do.

(*Another thing about the B vitamins...I realize just now that I have not had one of those horrible nights where I do not sleep since I started taking them. I still have the occasional bad dream (but less often) and I sometimes wake up too early...but I don't have those nights any more (knock wood) where I lie there and can't shut my brain off. I know that the B vitamins can affect serotonin metabolism, and serotonin can affect mood and alertness....so maybe there's something to that.)

Anyway. So now I have a nice new thing (and probably - hopefully - a sturdier thing that will not need replacing soon) to carry all my junk in.

Next was the yarn shop. It is always lovely to go to a yarn shop. I have never been in one that had the fabled crabby owner or snobbish owner - the only ones I've been to have had enthusiastic owners who are interested in hearing about what you plan to make, and who will proudly show off the newest lines the shop carries.

One nice change, this year? Instead of the big paper sacks they used to use, they give you a cloth bag that is silk-screened with the name and address of the shop. (I suppose the idea is then you can bring it back and they will re-use it for your next purchase. And it's cheap advertising for them when you carry the bag around. And most knitters can use another cloth bag, as many of us store our partly-done projects in cloth bags). Maybe the bag is only if you buy a certain amount, I don't know. It would seem a bit churlish to go in there and buy a $4 reel of crochet cotton and expect one of the cloth sacks. (But I didn't do that, as you'll see in the next post).

The owners of this store are very sweet people. The lady who was there today (I think it was Frances Hughes) commented on the vest I was wearing (well, it was one I had knit) and we discussed the projects I had planned for the yarn.

And it was good. I do wish I were closer to the shop; it would be nice to get there more often than once a year.

I did also get to Michael's and replenished some of the cheap-yarn stash (so I can now do Captain Capacitor, and maybe, Resisty, except I didn't find the right blue for Resisty so I'll either have to dig in the stash or look up other resistor color combinations and see what I can put together. And yes, using the correct color combination for some kind of existing resistor is important to me.)

Again: I wish there were a Michael's closer to me. (I think the closest one is in McKinney). It has much better quality yarn than Hobby Lobby; it concentrates less on the weird hairy plasticky novelty yarn.

And I got a couple of 14" pillow forms. One will be used in a Most Amusing to Me finished-object that I will probably post in a couple of days (it just lacks a bit of sewing); the other will be used in a planned companion piece.

I also hit the Books a Million. The one in Longview is about twice as large as the one in Sherman. And I don't know how much autonomy the buyers for individual stores have, but the Longview store has a FAR better History section than the one in Sherman (that may just be a function of the size difference, though). I wound up buying four books, all history:

One on the battle of Thermopylae (I do not know why but I am fascinated by the ancient Greeks)
One on the "Pirate Wars" which is a segment of marginally-related-to-American-History-history I know next to nothing about.
One on the leper colony at Molokai
and one (a Barbara Tuchman) about the state of the world before the first World War

So: Spartans, pirates, lepers, and (I guess) robber barons.

Interesting. The only thread that connects them is that they are all parts of history that seem interesting to me but about which I don't know a lot.

(Titles and authors? I guess I should supply those in case anyone cares:
"Thermopylae: the battle that changed the world" - Paul Cartledge. "Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army (and on and on...)" - Stephan Talty. "The Colony: The harrowing true story of the exiles of Molokai" - John Tayman. And "The Proud Tower: a portrait of the world before the war, 1890-1914." - Barbara Tuchman).

Okay; I see another thread that connects these: they are all titled in the format of:

Short grabby word: much longer description of what the book is actually about. (The "Pirate Wars" one almost slips into self-parody with the length of its title.)

Of course, I'm currently reading "Euclid in the Rainforest" (about logic...and how a lot of geometric proofs and such were independently figured out by many different people...you almost might say (if you are an Elizabeth Zimmerman fan) that they were "unvented"). And "The Pickwick Papers," which is so entertaining that I'm kind of sad I didn't think to read it before.

So it may be a while before I get to these four new ones. (But as I said before - book SABLE. Or maybe that should be BABLE - Books Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. Or maybe BABEL - Books Acquired Beyond Expectation of Life, to make it a cute allusion. Though I only can read English and French, and perhaps some German, if it's something simple like a yarn label or a menu).

The memorial service is Friday. I volunteered to either cook for or help at the Bereavement Dinner, I feel like it's the least I can do.

I do feel some better about it. I've come to the conclusion that if, in fact, she would not have been able to live on her own again, it was better that she went fast than that she spent months and months in the nursing home, in pain and (probably, if her back was broken) immobile. I know if it was me, and I was offered the chance to either drop dead of a heart attack while fixing my porch roof at 85, or make it to 87 but spend those last two years in a nursing home, I'd take the porch roof.

Also, it DOES seem like I've had a lot of losses lately - but then again, I went along for years without any, really. It sort of comforts me to think that...in an odd way it makes it better to realize that this is really just the normal stuff that happens to everyone but that for me it may be in a slightly more compressed time frame. (That said: I'm ready to be done again for a while, thanks so much.)

I also realized something about myself. In sad or bad situations I can be OK if I have something to do. I always assumed - when I was younger - that if something bad happened I'd probably fall apart and not be able to do anything. But in the situations where I have something to do, I've learned that I can manage to buck up and not cry...I knew I had to arrange for someone to give my exam, I had to call the other AAUW members to be sure they knew, I had to call the people on my branch of the Prayer Chain...and then call and volunteer my services for Bereavement Dinner.

It was only when I called my mom to let her know (she had known Dorothy slightly) that I actually gave in to crying.

I guess, had I been a young woman in London in 1941, I probably would have been one of the people rolling bandages or brewing tea in the blitz shelters. (In an odd way, it's kind of empowering to realize that the key to getting through a crisis for me is to keep moving and to do what I can to help people.)

****

Next week is my mid-fall break. I have gone through a whole series of thoughts about what to do during this time.

Back in July, when I was dealing with a difficult class, lonely and sort of sad (because nothing else was in operation BUT the classes), I felt like I wanted to go to Siloam Springs, or to somewhere in East Texas....get in the car, drive, find a hotel to stay in, just go away somewhere new and interesting for a few days.

Then, later on, when I started to get snowed under by this fall's work, I thought, "Maybe it would be better just to stay home...clean the house, get caught up on some of the projects I've been neglecting."

Then, when the "OH NOES THE ECONOMY IS IMPLODING" news came out, I started to twitch and think maybe it was better for me to stay home altogether, not spend any money, not burn any gas, gear myself up for triple-digit inflation. Or that maybe credit cards were going away (I don't like to drive any distance very much without a working credit card: what if the car breaks down? What if I need to unexpectedly buy gas?)

And then, still later, I got irritated and almost said, "I'm going to stay home, pull the shades, and unplug the phone for three days" because, unbeknownst to me, I got "volunteered" to do some rather unpleasant volunteer task, because "Oh, she's always willing to work." (Grr. Please at least have the courtesy to freakin' ASK first.). Then the day of the task got moved to (whee!) the day of the campus Homecoming, which means I have a built-in excuse.

So I briefly thought again of running off to somewhere like Hot Springs for a couple days.

But you know? I've changed my mind again. And I think I've settled it this time.

I'm going to do what I usually do. I'm going to go to Longview, go to Stitches N Stuff, go to Barron's (have to check to be sure they're still in business; they have a "our website will be back soon" notice up which could mean they're revamping it or it could mean something bad), go to the Michael's, go to the Books-a-Million. (I know, to people who live in more populous areas, this sounds very mundane. But I've not had time to even get to Sherman very often this fall so I'm sort of starved for a day when I can just go and be away from town). Maybe go to some clothing stores; I need to replace a couple of my long sleeved blouses that suffered various misadventures, from Death By Yellow Chalk Stains to Tragic Spill of Vital Stain.

Realistically, the only thing I could justify NEEDING are the new blouses, but I kind of NEED - in a psychological sense - a day away, a day to do what I please, a day when I'm basically unreachable by the people who "need" me.

And I also need that sense of tradition - yes, a lot of the things I do tend to be a little wheel turning in a little rut - but I tend to get so freaked out by the big bad things that happen in the world (and the more localized bad things that happen around me), that there's something deeply comforting about going back to a place I've been before, seeing that it hasn't changed all that much, doing things that still have the power to delight me. The mental image of myself driving down the highway in the bright October sunshine, headed for a day of roaming bookstores and oohing and ahhing over yarn and looking for little Christmas gifts and eating an indulgent lunch is one of the things keeping me going right now.

Thanks guys.

On the ravelry "spam posts" issue...yeah, I kind of suspected she was off base. It seems that there are a certain proportion of the people on there who have the attitude that when a bulb in an overhead light fixture burns out, all they must to do change it is stand underneath the fixture, holding a new bulb aloft.

(...I hope I'm not being too oblique there).

The thing is, I have enough of a people-pleaser personality that if I see someone complaining about something that I tend to do - even if they are not complaining directly about me (the person in question is NOT one of my "friends" on Ravelry), I begin to wonder if what I'm doing is a problem.

I don't know if this is genetic or learned. I do know in my early childhood I had a couple of slightly dysfunctional friendships where my friend would say things like, "If you want to stay my friend, we'll only play Barbies for the next month." And I hated playing Barbies. But I wasn't mature enough or independent enough to say, "Forget it; I hate Barbie. I'm going home." Just one of the legacies of perceiving oneself as an "unpopular" kid - you take the friendships you can get.

(I say "perceiving" because more and more, as an adult, when I talk with my friends about early childhood stuff, it seems like EVERYONE was an unpopular kid. I don't know if popularity was a sham, something everyone was on the outside looking in on, or if all the "popular" kids are now business owners or politicians, and therefore unlikely to be in my circle of friends.)

I suppose different people have different modes of posting, and it's just something we learn to accept. I admit I get annoyed when some blogger that I enjoy and think writes well only posts once a month or so. (Though I recognize it is likely because he or she is far busier than I am). Also lifestyle differences affect it. I am required to hold 10 hours of office hours a week. Some of those are as long blocks of time where no students are coming in...and while I DO work much of that time, my mode of working tends to be "half hour on intensely working followed by needing a break"

So the Internet is my coffee break. (I don't tolerate caffeine at all well, and besides, if I TOOK coffee breaks, I would probably become the de facto coffee-maker cleaner for the department...)

Anyway.

The skin is clearing up too thank you. I think it was a combination of allergic overload (it is really a very bad pollen season here) and dry skin. (I have horrible, terrible dry skin in the winter. It abates some in the summer and in fact if I used too much goo, I get break-outs). I took (at the urging of my mother) a bath in water to which baking soda had been added (I didn't believe it would work but she claimed it does) and I've also gone back to the lotion. ("It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hives again"?)

I did go out to the Walgreens and buy some new Burt's Bees stuff to replace what I had used up. I know, it's not "medicated" or anything but I tend to feel that when my skin's really flaring up, using something with as many "natural" ingredients (provided none of those are chamomile or echinacea...two things I know set me off) and as few "synthetics" as possible seems to help.

The one I got seems to have both coconut and something mint in it so I smell a bit like a pina colada mashed up with a mojito, but at least I don't itch any more.

Part of it may be that I've been pushing pretty hard for pretty long - trying to get several research projects finished up, doing lots of new prep for a course - and I haven't had that much time to breathe. I do think one's state of mind can affect things like allergies; sometimes I wonder if histamine is released as a stress-response in some people.

(Edited to add: yes, it apparently does So what I'd suspected for years is supported by research.

("Yes, yarn counts as a medical expense. Knitting helps my allergies by reducing stress"? And I guess I could also count apples as a medical expense because apples are high in quercetin, and another anti-allergy site suggested that can help. Good, because I like apples.)

****

At least today is Mid Semester Assessment Testing, a/k/a I Have No Commitments Until 1 pm Day. (And I chose one of the more "fun" labs to do today with my class). And tomorrow I give an exam in my only class.

****

I think I need some "quality time" winding yarn using the swift and ball winder. When I'm in a stuck place, that usually helps. (Besides, I have to wind off the rest of the Araucania for the Cobblestone sweater some time; I only did the first two skeins because I was eager to begin.)

****

When I get a bit farther on the sweater I'll photograph it. (I may do as Lydia is doing and show you how far I can get with one of the 220 meter balls of Araucania).

I do like the Araucania. It's a nice "natural" feeling yarn, you can feel the sheep (it's a tiny bit rough) and you can smell the (idealized) sheep (the lanolin is left in but the wool is very clean...so it smells like you'd want a sheep to smell and not how sheep most likely actually do smell). I tend to prefer yarns that remind me that they once grew on a living thing; I don't like stuff that's processed to death.

There is a happy medium though, I also don't care for wool that's like steel wool and still has most of the barnyard attached to it; I washed the Kureyon socks in "Soak" and a vinegar rinse and they are still a bit more scratchy than what I'd like for socks.

I got to thinking (for some reason) about stores I remembered as a kid.

It turns out that the "BEST" warehouse-showroom stores (where a lot of the family appliances came from in the 70s and early 80s, and which I remember best for those weird lady in the rain lamps) are gone now - according to Wikipedia, they went bankrupt.

But Acme is still there. And yes, it's THAT Acme, not the one based in Philadelphia. (I grew up in Summit County, Ohio). Acme #4 was within walking distance of my house.

I always thought, when I was a kid, that it was funny "our" grocery store was named Acme - because of the Acme Corporation in the Roadrunner cartoons. (It turns out - live and learn - that Acme wasn't just a funny name; in Wile E. Coyote Universe it apparently stood for A Company that Makes Everything. Heh.)

(Of course, "Acme" also means the same thing as "zenith" or "the best," which is probably why so many real companies adopted it as their name).

Other stores gone? Woolworth, TG & Y, Handy Andy (a Home Depot type place with a sort-of Village-People-esque mascot), probably others that weren't big chains or haven't entered the hive-mind of Wikipedia yet. (I think the Noble Roman's pizza chain is gone. And Little Caesar's is very nearly gone, at least in my part of the country. And I think Burger Chef - which was a McDonald's-esque chain that I just barely remember - is gone too).

Polsky's (which I think was just an Akron-area department store) closed when I was a kid. My dad bought lots of stuff at their liquidation sale; for years I had a massive wood desk (with a typewriter drawer on the right-hand side) in my bedroom that came from them.

And Halle's is gone, but they were moribund before I was even in high school.

(I wonder if O'Neil's, the other big Akron-area department chain, still lives?

Oh, no, it's gone. Bought out by blasted Macy's. I'm kind of coming to hate Macy's; they seem to buy up a lot of the small regional chains, claim they won't change a thing, and then a few months later erase any kind of individuality and put their name on the store. Sad. O'Neil's was the default "good-clothes-shopping" place, and also, the big old downtown one was where they did Breakfast with Santa.

I wonder how many kids now have the experience of going to a big fancy "downtown" department store - not one part of a mall - and shopping there and then eating lunch in the tearoom or the coffee shop. It seems like such a 1950s thing now, but I did it with my mom and dad when I was a kid.

Wow, and Lazarus - the big Columbus version of O'Neils - is gone too. Yes, another meal for Macy's. [there is something a wee bit ironic about a store named Lazarus being a goner...])

And Montgomery Ward, affectionately known as "Monkey Ward."

Oh, and Gold Circle. I always liked the toy department at Gold Circle when I was a kid. They were kind of like Target is today, but maybe not quite as fancy as Target is.

Oh, and Eagle Food Centers, which was the preferred grocery once my family had moved to Illinois...a former employee of the chain said, regretfully, "they were too generous with their employees" and she believed that was part of the reason.


I have to admit some sadness (especially at all the smallish, regional chains being subsumed into the Macy's monster). All of these things I knew from my childhood, all these things I remember as being a part of the Akron area, gone. But I suppose that's how it is, isn't it? Nothing stays the same; few retail outlets seem to hang on for terribly long unchanged.

People around here talk about stores (like a Penney's!) that used to exist downtown before the malls opened and everyone had a car, and driving to Sherman became a sort of everyday thing. (Perhaps one tiny silver lining with high gas prices? Maybe more stores will return to smaller towns, and actually be viable, because it's cheaper to buy locally than to drive to the mall some distance away.)

And I guess now that Macy's has bought so many of the chains, it's better they have their name on it rather than have some kind of strange zombie O'Neils with all Macy's products, or some weird undead Famous-Barr with the Famous-Barr skin stretched over what was really a Macy's. (another one gone - but since they were St. Louis-based, I didn't really have a chance to form an attachment before they disappeared)

Thank goodness it's Friday.

I give two exams today - my only two classes today. I brought the Bird's Nest shawl to work on, as I don't like to mark papers while proctoring a test, and I don't have any other "not very high attention" requiring thing to work on.

There have been several discussions going on at Ravelry - some in the "general topics" thread ("Remnants" is I guess what it's called), some in the Science Knitters thread, some in Ivory Tower Fiber Freaks about where it is and is not appropriate to knit.

(The latest thread - in ITFF - was about knitting while proctoring. The general consensus was that it was OK, and in fact, perhaps better than some other things you could do.)

Anyway, one thing that strikes me is how people tend to define what is and is not rude.

For example: I never knit in meetings (unless there are other knitters there and they plan on knitting) because I recognize that some people might perceive it as rude ("She cares so little about our meeting that she's doing something else!") or dismissive or some other bad thing. I guess I tend to see it as "rudeness is in the eye of the beholder."

There are other people on Ravelry who are adamant - and I mean ADAMANT - that it is always OK to bring knitting to meetings and knit. "Educating the muggles" was the general attitude those individuals took.

And you know? Knitting in the meeting is not the same as taking on a person for telling racist jokes. It's not the same as fighting the "women can't do math" attitude (there was a funny xkcd strip a couple months ago about that).

I prefer to choose my battles. If the people around me think it might be rude of me to knit in a meeting, it's not my place to disabuse them of that notion.

The other thing is, I guess I was raised too much with the Golden Rule. (Or maybe some other folks weren't raised enough with it, I don't know). I tend to look at it like this: if a student pulled out their day-planner in my class, and during the middle of a class discussion started to work on their next month's schedule of things to do, even if they looked up occasionally, I'd be somewhat irritated. I'd feel like they weren't participating.

There's currently a debate on in academe about "should we allow students to bring laptops in to class and work on them in class?" The people arguing against it point out that when they wander to the back of the classroom, a certain percentage of the people are surfing Facebook or are watching YouTube videos with the sound turned way down, or are shopping online, or something.

And I don't know. Part of me wants to call it an "it's YOUR funeral" situation - as in, if you bring the laptop to class, and instead of paying attention and taking notes and participating, you update your "Friends" page, it's your funeral when you fail class.

But then again - with assessment being an angry god that must be appeased regularly, it does hurt the department (and the professor) a little if you have a number of people "checking out" like that.

(And please don't give me the old "If YOU were more interesting..." argument. I've used that to beat myself up so many times I'm almost immune to it now. I seriously think I could start handing out random $20 bills to people who could answer questions about class material, and still some people wouldn't figure it was worth paying attention. And I DO try to make it interesting - bringing in issues that are in the news, using local examples, etc. You can lead a horse to water but you can't push its head under the surface and scream at it to drink.)

At any rate- back to knitting and etiquette. I prefer not to do things that make myself stand out in a crowd too much (I mean, stand out in a bad way). Because it seems that bad things can happen to people who make themselves disagreeable in some way to their fellows. (And yes, I know, "disagreeable" is a strong word, but it covers the whole range of behaviors from talking to your neighbor while in class or at a meeting to being "that guy" or "that woman" who has their own special hobby-horse issue that has to be raised and ranted on at every meeting, regardless of whether it fits in with the meeting topic or not.)

So I don't knit in public a whole lot. The other thing is - at meetings where you know most of the people (like church meetings), if I show up early, I almost feel like pulling out my knitting would send an "I don't want to talk to you all" signal. And I don't want to inadvertently hurt people's feelings.

(And one thing I have learned? There are some people in this world whose feelings are reeeeeeeaaaaalllly eeeeeeeaaaaaaaaasily hurt. I thought I was sensitive but I'm like Rock-Woman compared to some of the people I know.)

So I don't know. I guess I'm a little baffled when people say, "I don't care if it makes other people think I'm rude, it's not rude, and so I'm going to do it" and then they get upset when other people continue to react to them as if they are being rude.

But I have my knitting for while proctoring exams. As most of the other faculty read journals while they invigilate (another, and I think cooler, word for proctoring), I don't see that any of the students would be offended by my knitting.

Well, unless they were trying to cheat, that is, because I'm going to be watching them the whole time.

Well, it looks like my community dodged a bullet.

At about 3:45 this morning, I was awakened by HUGE thunderstorms and the weather-radio alarm going off. (I got up and checked it - even though it's a very broad sweep and I get alerts for places 50+ miles away, still, it could have been something for me). We were having severe thunderstorms, it said. (No foolin'?)

I think I heard some hail but I can't be sure - the way the windows in my bedroom are situated, sometimes very heavy rain sounds a bit like hail.

I peeked out the front door a few minutes ago and it's calm now, and it doesn't look like any branches are down off the pecan tree, and my street looks OK.

But around me, they're saying a lot of roads are closed in outlying areas either because of downed branches or, worse, power lines.

(I'm at home right now - my first class is at 9:30 so I'm going to wait until a bit after 7, when the sun's up, to go over to school just in case there are hazards in the road somewhere.)

I don't like thunderstorms but they're kind of a fact of life in the spring around here.

****

I do still knit. Last night, after Youth Group, while watching the Emergency! Weather! Reports! I knit some on the Kureyon socks and although I'm still doubting how well they'll hold up (single ply yarn, overspun in some places, very loosely spun in others), the colors are really interesting. And perhaps since I'm knitting to such a tight gauge (9-10 sts per inch) it will be OK. (I'm also trying to twist the underspun parts as I knit, to try to tighten them up a little).

But you know? That's something that frustrates me a bit about the Noro yarns. Not enough to reject them outright, but it's one of those "...if they can put a man on the moon" issues. By that, I mean "If they can do these wonderful sophisticated color palettes, why can't they pay more attention to being sure the yarn is evenly spun?"

Or maybe the funky spin of the yarn is a byproduct of the extensive colormixing, I don't know.

I also worked some on the second Snicket sock, from the now-defunct MagKnits.

Yes, now-defunct. If you don't read Ravelry or haven't checked for MagKnits in the past few days, you might not know that it is gone.

I'm trying my best not to judge in this situation as I don't know or follow all of the information, but apparently one of the other businesses the owner of MagKnits was involved in was having some problems, the owner was having some personal problems, people on Ravelry began to criticize (possibly with justification) the business end of the situation, and so she decided to end MagKnits faster than the planned end.

The biggest problem, I think? Designers (who retain copyright) were given extremely short notice to grab their pattern code before the site disappeared. By "extremely short notice" I mean that if you weren't right at the computer when the notice went out, by the time you got it, it was probably too late.

There has been a lot of back-and-forth recrimination on Ravelry, a lot of debate, a little nastiness (I guess you can't have an internet forum discussing a sensitive topic without at least a little nastiness, sigh).

One good thing has come out of all of it - a lot of the designers have noted that they will post their patterns on their websites or as a Ravelry download. (I don't think all the designers have; heck, they probably aren't all on Ravelry). Some designers may choose to sell their patterns as a .pdf instead. (And as I said in a comment on Ravelry, I'm fine with that. Yes, they were free on MagKnits but MagKnits was advertising-supported. If a designer has his or her own website, they generally pay for bandwidth...and if they get a lot of hits, that cost goes up. So I have no problem with shooting $5 or so to someone for a .pdf download of their pattern that I can use).

However, this does (help to) lay to rest one of my ongoing issues - the "they don't appreciate me here" bit. Because, as much as I do enjoy teaching and research and working with my colleagues most of the time, there are times (like the week before Spring Break, that was one) where I'm very pressed for time and then someone plops some other request on my desk with the assumption that OF COURSE I can do it without it seriously impacting other areas of my life. And then I get feeling taken-for-granted, and exploited, and that morphs into a feeling of being unloved. And I find myself thinking, "If I only had a bit more talent for designing, or a bit more originality, I could make up my own pattern website and sell patterns or make toys and crafts and sell them, like through Etsy, and everything would be wonderful and happy because everyone loves people who make and sell crafts!"

And apparently, there are a lot of unanticipated things that happen. And if you get sick, just like (or perhaps even moreso) than in academia, you have to keep going, or else you don't eat. And people can criticize for petty things - apparently there were people complaining about the new MagKnits layout and that was one of the factors playing in to the closure of the magazine.

So I guess (and I realize I am quite obtuse, or maybe willing myself to be romantic about other fields), criticism is rampant everywhere. And you don't get the sort of supportive praise in the crafts business that you think you might.

I don't know. The whole thing is kind of a big sad mess and one of those things where I find myself thinking that I'm glad I don't have more contact with "the public" than I do.

And, yet, on the other hand - living somewhere where often excuses from people contracted to do a job for you tend to be a frustrating way of life (We dealt with that just last night at Board Meeting - we are trying to get some repairs done to the organ, and you wouldn't believe the list of excuses the one firm in the area that's equipped to do them have given us), it IS frustrating when you're a customer and your package is seemingly-endlessly delayed because of personal reasons on the part of the person who's supposed to send it, or when you're a contract employee of sorts and your payment is delayed because the person paying you has bad stuff going on in their life.

And I realize single-person businesses are DIFFICULT, but you know? I've dealt with so many excuses from so many people - ranging from workmen I had appointments with to come out and fix something on my house to students coming in and "needing" an extension on a paper they've had a month to do - that I kind of lose a little sympathy on that front. Yes, life is hard. We all have difficulties. I have relatives whose funerals I have not gone to because they were far away and traveling would have meant me abandoning my duties for nearly a week. I have gone to work sick and gone to work with borderline migraines. I've gone to work when all kinds of bad stuff was blowing up in the lives of people around me (there's been a lot this spring that I've not talked about on here because I feel it's dishonorable to air other's dirty laundry) and all I wanted to do was either curl up on the sofa and cry because I loved those people and felt sad over what they were going through, or stay home and watch old movies all day as an escape. But I didn't. And I really don't think I'm that strong or that tough.

So I guess I get a little tired of the "poor me, my life is so horrible, so I can't possibly fulfill my duties right now" comments - which is apparently one factor that contributed to some of the business problems (and also with a couple other small businesses).

And I don't know. Maybe that's uncharitable on my part. But I do think if you're running a business and people have sent you money, if you have difficulties, you need to contact the people immediately and either offer an immediate refund or explain and give a firm ETA for the package and stick to it.

But anyway - as I said the whole situation is just kind of sad. Everyone loses. Probably people on both sides are acting badly. So I guess I'll just keep teaching college and occasionally making up a little pattern here or there and offering it for free, and doing what craft work I do either for myself or as gifts for people I know will appreciate it...and try to live with the fact that part of being an adult is sometimes feeling like you're not appreciated and are overworked a little, and also realize that although I believe part of being an adult is sucking it up and fulfilling your responsibilities even when you don't feel like it, maybe some people just can't do that, or have just too many things hitting them at once.

And in a week, I will be leaving for my Thanksgiving vacation!

I am now glad I decided to travel rather than making my family travel. I am looking forward to getting to see people I haven't seen in five months (or more; some of my friends up there I didn't get to see on my last trip). I am looking forward to my mom's cooking. I am looking forward to some unfettered knitting time. And I am looking forward to being able to get a "guest password" at my old university's library and spend a day getting journal articles that are hard to get here.

I'm already contemplating what books and projects to bring. I think the only "big" thing I'm going to take is the Landscape Shawl (which I do want to finish but which never seems to demand my time when I'm at home).

And I'm taking the Lady Detective Hat, if it's not completed yet. (I'm not loving the twisted-stitch pattern that you make the crown out of. Oh, I like it architecturally - it looks good and it does what it needs to (making a firm and not floppy fabric so the crown keeps its shape). But it's so dang TIGHT to knit, and the needles I have don't like doing that k2tog after the p2tog - I keep dropping the working yarn. So I'll be glad when this one is done.)

If the Miranda and Snicket socks are not done yet, they are coming too. And I'll probably take more sockyarn, maybe wind off some blue Schaefer Anne I have (Color "Peter." I don't know if that's an allusion to the jacket Peter Rabbit wore [it's a similar color] or if it's an allusion to the UK kids' program [which I have never seen but have heard of].) I've been looking at the Vintage Knitting Socks book again and decided I want to make that sock with the diaper and citron pattern, but I want a solid (or nearly-solid) for it. Stash to the rescue, again.

And I also have a complex colorworked sock pattern - I think I originally bought it from Lisa Souza's site but I don't see the pattern there any more - it's based on some different tile patterns from places in Asia Minor; I'm going to do the one called "Thessalonika" and I have some deep-blue and sort-of-mulberry yarn (from her Sock! line) to make it out of. I want to wind those off and start THAT sometime - another stash project.

(I love my stash. I know a lot of people have really conflicted feelings about what yarn they have on hand - either because they want a more mobile lifestyle (or are planning to move sometime soon), or it's all tied up with their concerns about consumption and about how much of the Earth's resources they use. Or something.

And I have to admit, I do sometimes feel a bit guilty on that last point. (But then again - wool is a renewable resource, at least).

But I do love my stash. It makes me happy to go and look at it, to plot and plan what I'm going to make out of the yarn I have stored there. Or to find a yarn I bought for one thing and realize it's actually perfect for another thing that I've decided I want more.

It brings me a sense of security - they were making vague noises about "recession" on the news this morning and it strikes me that if the economy really tanks and I need to pull back on spending (because my retirement dollars are going poof and I need to start chunking stuff into the savings account, which at least has the virtue of being SAFE even if it earns next-to-no interest), I've got my stash to rely on.

Or if the bird flu strikes and we all have to hole up in our own little houses, I will be occupied and happy, working down my stash.

And you know? Since joining Ravelry and making my queue and spending more time LOOKING at the stash, I've been less tempted to buy yarn or even look at on-line yarn purveyors - I'm far more prone to "shop the stash" for what I need. Which is good.

This morning, I walked into my room and saw the bag from the trip I made to Longview still sitting there (it still has the Araucania and the fluffy mohair stuff and the yarn for the Koolhaas hat and the unicorn yarn, plus a couple other things I dug out of the stash and stuck in there instead of putting them back). And I kind of smiled, and I said, "Y'arr! 'Tis me booty!"

Yes, I do feel kind of like a pirate with treasure when it comes to my yarn. Or like Smaug the dragon (only not, you know, evil) with his gold and jewels...if I WERE a dragon, I'd probably pile all the yarn up and lie on it like he did with his gold. That's how much I love having it and love having it available to knit with. )

Another thing I like about Ravelry:

It gives one the chance to have the self-soothing properties of online shopping without actually, you know, SHOPPING. I've been spending moments here and there browsing free-pattern sites, or browsing Ravelry for patterns in books I already own and adding all the ones I love and would like to make to my queue. So now I have an immense queue and I may never (realistically speaking) finish everything on it, but it makes me happy to browse through patterns and "buy" (add to my queue) and then look at a "virtual stash" of projects I want to make.

And I'm doing self-soothing behavior today because I'm grading a couple of exams that...well, I can't think of anything polite enough to say, other than that I'm getting frustrated because I sit here in this office for 12 hours a week and no one ever comes by...and then on the exam certain individuals leave whole great swathes blank (and I know it isn't the exam or me, because other people answered the questions just right). And I'm bracing for a lot of frustration from those people when the exams get handed back. And I don't know what to do - obviously I'm not a HORRIBLE teacher or everyone would be failing. And the certain individuals do seem to be people prone to skip class, or to do the assignments (which feed into the exam) with a lick and a promise at best...so adding to my queue makes me feel better. And I don't have to "hurt" my credit cards in order to do it.

Oh, dear.

I think I'm going to have to make some kind of Rule of Ravelry - like, it's for weekends only, or something like that. Because today - which is a day I have no classes and really technically don't have to be here, but which I use as a catch-up and get-ahead day, has been spent like this:

check Ravelry to see if anyone "friended" me

grade a few papers

add another project to Ravelry

grade a few more papers

add some of the books I have

prep a little for teaching tomorrow

check again to see if anyone "friended" me or if there's anyone I "know" that I can add to my list

prep some more

add to the queue

grade a few papers.

Oh, I suppose the madness will die down once I get my backlog of projects loaded in. But I will say it's good for the ego to load up a couple of my recent favorite socks and realize they're both ones I "designed," inasmuch as plugging a stitch pattern into a fairly standard 64 or 72 stitch sock is designing.

I will say - I will not abandon the blog in favor of Ravelry. As much as I like it thus far, there's really not a place to write long, thoughtful, pondering posts about STUFF like I am often given to here.

And you know? Being able to write about just STUFF is important to me. So even though I commented months ago that I feared Ravelry was going to kill the blogging star (in a fit of tweeness; I was alluding to that old "Video killed the radio star" song which was supposedly the FIRST video ever played on MTV), I don't think that will happen to bloggers who like to write, or like to include other glimpses of their lives.

I know a few days (maybe as much as a week ago) someone on KR asked about "what should I post on a blog" and someone else smacked down with "I don't like blogs that have life-stuff on them; a GOOD blog (or at least that was what was implied) is all knitting"

Um...actually, my favorite blogs AREN'T all knitting - they are places where the blogger talks about her research, or her teaching, or her work at the library, or her garden, or Classics, or cats, or cooking....I like more of a well-rounded picture of a person than just "here is this thing I made" and "here is this other thing I made."

Ravelry is a wonderful adjunct to the blog (I will just have to be sure not to let myself get sucked down the rabbit-hole of writing up every project I've ever knit and crocheted on it, or at least only do it at times that I'm otherwise unoccupied), but I don't think for those of us who like to write rambling, speculative posts it will take the place of the blog.

or at least I hope not. I hate thinking about a society where pretty pictures and short, "soundbite" statements have entirely edged out the carefully crafted paragraph and essay.

Rabbitch did a post on something I've been thinking about (yes, AGAIN.)

Part of it's been brought on by reading too much "Craftzine," part of it by reading the blogs of full-time artists, and part of it, just the whole messy discussion of "online cliques."

I read the posts and the entries and I look at what people have made. And when I'm in a generally happy and secure mode, I can go, wow, that's really awesome, she (or he) has a real talent. But when I'm not so happy and secure - when I'm overtired, and I feel like I've been putting out far more psychic energy than I get back, and when just the general state of the world and the stabbiness that seems to pass for "discourse" these days gets to me, I look at these blogs and just want to give up.

I'm not that creative. I'm not that talented. How do people get their ideas? How do they get brave enough to make stuff that might not work out - spending days and days of precious free time on something they might just dump in the trash?

Part of it, I realize, is that I just have to calm down and remind myself that I'm employed full-time (more than full-time, some weeks) at my main "gig" - being a professor and researcher. And I have a lot of "sub-gigs" like the Youth Group thing.* But you know? A lot of the time, to be honest, it's a pretty lonely gig - you don't get a lot of feedback and when you do get feedback, it's often negative.

(*I think part of the frustration and down-ness I am feeling at the moment is due to the fact that unbeknownst to me, a couple of the boys had a grape-fight in the boy's bathroom while they were waiting for dinner - walked right into the kitchen and took some of the grapes that had been washed and set out to be eaten later, and they messed up the bathroom. Of course, I heard about it, the implication being that it was somehow my fault, that even though I was cooking dinner and was in the church alone with no help, I was supposed to be watching a couple of 13 year old kids for every moment.)

Another thing I'm not good at is filtering (I've described it as "I need to be less permeable." I'm a biology geek through and through). I was reading an interview (in the NYT) of Ray Bradbury and he says at the end: “I don’t need to be vindicated, and I don’t want attention,” he said. “I never question. I never ask anyone else’s opinion. They don’t count.”

Wow. I mean, wow. Oh, I realize, I'm not Ray Bradbury, I never will be, I'm nobody - but how do you get to the point where you can tell yourself the opinion of someone else doesn't count? Sometimes I think that's the Holy Grail of happiness and self-security - being able to tell yourself that the naysayers don't matter, that the people who tell you what you're doing is crud aren't worth bothering with.

But I don't know how to get to that point. And I don't know if that point is even justified - I mean, how do you tell when someone is telling you the stuff you're doing is crummy is saying it to be mean-spirited, or to discourage you, or because they're insecure THEMSELVES and trying to make themselves feel better....and when is it that what you're doing really IS crummy and needs to be trashcanned?

I guess I spent too many years in school with some awfully harsh critics; if someone so much as breathes a word that something I've done is less than perfect, I'm ready to rip it up and never try whatever-it-was again.

(I used to play the clarinet. Used to enjoy it, even. Until an orchestra teacher basically insinuated I was wasting his time and mine because I would never be good enough to perform in a symphony orchestra. The clarinet still sits in the bottom of my closet at my parents' house. I really should give it away to someone who can use it, even though it's just a cheap student model.)

One of my quilting magazines came this afternoon. And I read it, and felt the joy drain out of me - all of those quilts are SO perfect. Most of them are designed totally out of the person's head, without any reference to existing patterns. Nothing I ever could do - even at my very best - even approaches what's in that magazine.

And I get the old feeling of "Why bother?" Why bother to make quilts, or knit, or sew, or anything - I'm not an artist. I'm mostly what is frequently derided as a "follower" of patterns by those souls who always make up their own.

So I don't know. I suppose I need to sit down and read some Susan Gordon Lydon again, or that book on knitting and spirituality that I've never yet finished, to remind myself that "why bother" isn't really a valid question even, when you're doing something like this. But right now I'm suffering from allergies and the humidity and tiredness and feeling like I'm not communicating right with anyone, and so it doesn't help for me to see all these beautiful things that people are making and that I tell myself I could make if only I had better talent or a better eye or were more of an artist or hadn't been told "not good enough" by most every Art teacher I ever had or if I weren't so scared of "wasting" my precious tiny bit of crafting time on a failed experiment...

I guess right now I'm feeling the reverse of Rabbitch's validation. I've never been good at standing up and saying "Damn, I'm good" (or even, "dang, I'm okay"). But sometimes it's worse than others. I've learned I just need to soldier on through those times, but sometimes, it's hard, when you feel like everyone around you is doing all this great stuff that's rightfully winning them praise. (And that's another thing, Mr. Bradbury: how do you grow out of the need for attention, the need to be noticed? I think that would be another Holy Grail of happiness). And you're not doing much of anything, you're just kind of going through the days praying for that moment when you can come home and take off your shoes "for good" for the evening...and you don't have a lot of YOU left at the end of the day.

(Sometimes I think that's it, with teaching - I expend enough of myself in a day in my daily dealings with students and others, that when I come home, doing something that involves "putting myself out there" a little - like trying something that might not succeed or be well-received - just doesn't appeal. It's like I need to draw inward and try to recharge for the next day)

(This is Friday's post, just a bit early, because I'm at home and it's quiet and tomorrow is going to be a hectic research-day).

One of the things I've been thinking about over the past few days is how we view things, and how we view our connectedness to other people.

TChem linked this essay on her blog. There's one thing I disagree with (or rather, that I think the essayist didn't consider). I tried commenting about it on her blog, but I didn't do a really good job of it, partly because when the whole voluntary-simplicity movement comes up, I get all hung up in guilt feelings about how much I DO consume, and how much I like antiquing and shopping for books and things like that, and I spend a lot of time trying to justify that I'm not so bad by listing how many (or rather how few) pairs of shoes I own, and stuff like that.

And I do have to admit - I have certain "stuff" I like, and I feel a certain pain if that "stuff" breaks or wears out.

But whatever. I'm not perfect. But I guess I'm at least thinking about these things.

Anyway.

I think one thing the essayist didn't consider was that, although we probably do value "stuff" too highly in some ways (the news stories of kids shot for their athletic shoes; the stories of people killed because they don't give up their cars right away when a carjacker appears), we also - because stuff is so cheap - tend to UNDERvalue it in some ways.

A couple of examples.

In my neighborhood, there are a few families with kids. These kids seem to have a lot of toys. And a lot of the toys seem to get left out in the street, or left out in the rain (when they're not the rain-resistant kinds of toys like the Little Tykes houses). And neither the kids nor the parents seem too bugged by toys getting broken or destroyed - they just go out and buy new ones.

And when I was a first-year college student, there was a girl on my hall who was taking all of her winter clothes (when spring had finally come) to the trash bins on the hall. When we asked her about it, she said she didn't want to pack them up to take back home with her, and they were "out of date" anyway. (These were mostly things she had bought over the course of the school year). (One of the other girls on my hall and I arranged a guerilla raid on the trashcan and took all the stuff to a local thrift shop - we couldn't bear to think of clothes that had that much use left in them going to a landfill).

I think in both of those cases, people are valuing stuff too little - or rather, they are valuing the resources and the labor that went into that stuff too little.

True, cotton and wool and wood and things like that are 'renewable,' but it takes energy to process them. And energy to make new stuff. And energy to carry it to the store. It seems wrong to me to just blithely throw away - or fail to take care of in the first place - things that are perfectly good, and expect that you will be able to get new ones, simply because you're "tired" of the old ones.

I'm also thinking about this in light of the news - the six miners trapped by the cave-in. How many of us have EVER thought, when we flip a light switch or turn on the television, of the people who man the generators or mine the coal (and, like it or not, the majority of electricity in the US is still produced by burning coal.)

Perhaps we'd be quicker to turn off the light when we left a room, if we thought of the men who went under the ground at 5 am, 6 days a week, to get the coal to make the electricity? (I mean, if we're not already turning it off quickly because we're thinking of the light bill).

I don't know. I know I'm guilty of being unconscious of these things - when I blow out the seat of my field jeans and I need to get a new pair, I don't think of the lady in Bangladesh (or where-ever) who sewed them; after I've tried on 15 pairs and failed to find a pair that simultaneously fits in the hips AND the waist, all I can think of is, "Why don't they design the damn jeans to fit women who have waists smaller than their hips?"

And I do think we'd fall into a sort of paralysis if we thought about how our every action impacted others or impacted the environment.

But - perhaps it's a good idea to think sometimes of the people and the resources involved when we're making choices.

There's a Buddhist proverb that goes something like, "It takes 99 people to supply your food," meaning that there are all these behind-the-scenes things we don't think about - from the people who cultivate the fields to the ones who breed the plants to the ones who harvest and the ones who truck it to the stores - that are responsible for the whole world working.

I tried to find the exact quotation of that - I thought I had it in a little book of ecumenical table-graces that I own, but I couldn't find it in the book. However, I found a Scots grace that expresses a very similar sentiment:

"No ordinary meal - a sacrament awaits us.
On our tables daily spread.
For men are risking lives on sea and land
That we may dwell in safety and be fed."

I think, perhaps, the cheapness, the wide availability - the, if I may, PLETHORA* of stuff - sort of deadens us to it. We get a feeling of entitlement - "of COURSE I need more stuff; I DESERVE it."

And one thing I've noticed is that a sense of entitlement often seems to drive out a sense of gratitude. (And it's probably the same way with food. From watching the kids at Youth Group - and I'm not talking about kids with food allergies or medical problems - but the way some of them reject food they're served, just because it's not the preferred brand or because we don't happen to have ranch dressing that night...well, these are kids who really haven't known hunger.)

So, I think in addition to not valuing stuff too highly - in the sense of making our stuff little idols, or putting its importance over people or peace or space - we also need to not value it too LITTLE, and let it become just part of the landscape, something we expect, something we're "supposed" to have, something that's made for us by "people who aren't us" in some country far away where they're "happy" to work for scut wages.

I think perhaps people who "make stuff" - whatever that stuff may be - may have a little bit of an inoculation against this attitude. If you've ever baked bread, if you've ever sewn so much as a t-shirt, you are kind of aware of the labor involved. And I have to admit I'm kind of amazed and dismayed when I read about how many copies of a t-shirt - or whatever - a person working in one of those factories has to make in a day to earn their bread.

So, maybe sometimes it's good to stop and think, if not about the THING, about the resources and the labor that went into it. And then think twice about what you're going to do with the thing when you're "tired" of it, or if you can't use it any more. It seems an awful waste to send useful things to a landfill if there's even a chance that someone out there would want to use it...

(*"Plethora" always makes me think of "The Three Amigos," where El Guapo is having his birthday and he remarks on the "plethora" of pinatas)

An interesting essay that I originally saw linked on My little mochi.

I don't know so much about companies ripping off crafters' designs - though I have heard of such things happening - but I do kind of agree with the writer's assessment that the Outside World sometimes has some odd ideas about crafters - that they're "potty" or worse. And the nay-sayers, the people who roll their eyes and mutter, "Yes, but you could buy FIVE sweaters at the Wal-mart for what you paid for the yarn for one..." (but of course, those sweaters are probably made by child-labor in China). Or the people who kind of verbally pat us on the head, and say "isn't that cute" like we're five years old or in the "Home." Because, of course, Craft is not Art, and if you're not making big bucks off of it, you must be sort of crazy to do it.

She comments that one reason why crafters "lock themselves away" to create is to avoid the influences of those very people.

I've said many times on here that I'm happier working with "stuff" a lot of the time than working with "people." Oh, don't get me wrong - I like people. But people have the funny habit of not always behaving in predictable ways. There is all this stuff going on under the surface that other people aren't always privy to, and sometimes that stuff comes bubbling out, and just like a pot of chili boiling over on the stove, bystanders get smacked with hot bubbles of tomato sauce...

And it's then that I long for the quiet of my craft room, and my fabric, or my yarn, or something that is predictable and that won't talk back.

I also think - just as Anne at the now-defunct Creating Text(iles) once said that people in academia need "3-D hobbies where we make stuff - I think that people, especially introverted people, who work with people a lot, need time where they can work with stuff that doesn't talk back, that doesn't have its own counter-agenda.

I mean - yeah, I can look at yarn and imagine "this is what it WANTS to be" but I've never really had a yarn or a fabric "fight" what I want to do with it, to the extent that I've had people fight and talk back about Helpful Suggestions I've made.

I also think for me it's a welcome break to be able to be non-verbal. I mean, I like writing (duh, obviously I'd not have had this blog for 5+ years), I like teaching, but there are kind of times when I run out of words. (I've been accused of being a "poor conversationalist" some evenings - when what's really true is that I've just already spoken my alloted quota of words for the day, and I just feel like I have no more. Or that I'm tired of talking. Or whatever.) I have a colleague who writes poetry and fiction and I once commented to him that I couldn't do that on my time off, that I needed to be non-verbal. I don't know that he understood what I meant, but I do think that's true...it's a different way of expressing yourself.

And on some days when my words don't seem to work - and I think everyone's had days where it seemed like everything you said was misinterpreted, or you couldn't say anything very well, and it's kind of a relief to come home and sew or knit and find that at least ONE channel of communication seems to be open.

She also talks in her essay about the "need" to craft - the need to create. That it's something we can't not do. And I also think that's true. The one time of my life when I wasn't really actively crafting - I was an undergraduate in college, I was living in a small apartment in not-the-safest area of town (so going out after dark wasn't much of an option.) And I'd get done with my homework and reading for the next day, and it'd be like 8 p.m., "too early" to go to bed (hah. Not "too early" some of THESE days). And I'd be there, all at loose ends. I'd feel like, there's something I'd usually be doing now, and I wouldn't quite know what...it was like something was missing.

I finally figured it out - my mom sent me some embroidery stuff and I started doing embroidery again. And that made all the difference. And then I started crocheting again after I found the little yarn shop in the town. (And to think...they had knitting lessons I could have taken, but I "wasn't interested" in that at the time).
When I started grad school I had already learned the lesson: no sewing and no crafting make Erica something something. So I took up quilting (because I was in a larger space, and I had room for a frame) and later took up knitting.

And I've never looked back. I think everyone has something they do that helps keep them sane. In my case it's the knitting and the sewing and the critters and the quilting. Don't get me wrong - I love reading, reading is a big part of my life. But it's still VERBAL. It's still dealing with human communication and miscommunication, misunderstanding can be a part of it. When I'm really sort of frozen and when everyone around me seems mired in miscommunication (or are deliberately pretending they don't understand, I've seen that too), what I need is just some color - some quilting cotton or embroidery floss or some bright yarn.

Another thing I've learned is that for every interest that some people have passionately, there is a group of people who either knows nothing or cares nothing for that interest. (Some knitters call non-knitters "muggles." I don't know about that; it sounds a wee bit derisive to me. Because I recognized this summer...when I was at the Sugar Creek Arts Festival watching the clogdancers, that there's like this whole world of clogdancing out there that I know NOTHING about...but they have meetings and conferences and competitions and they trade music and dances back and forth and people do research and history on it....and you know, it makes me happy to think that there are people out there who are passionately interested in something I know NOTHING about, that there's this whole secret unseen world of clog dancing. And crafting is kind of like that.

I mean, I could do without the detractors, the people who think of people who make stuff as one step removed from the Crazy Cat Lady. But I don't mind that there are people who don't totally understand why I knit, because I realize there's stuff they do I don't totally understand.)

One of the things I notice is that I alternate widely between wanting to work on long-term projects, and wanting to work on things that are quick, that get done fast.

Not exactly instant gratification, because almost nothing you can make is truly instant gratification in the sense that our culture's developed it (you can now order pizza online. I suppose the idea is you do it as you're gearing up to leave the office for the day so that, barring any kind of traffic jams, you will arrive home at the very minute the delivery person does).

But I find I have a need for small but tangible successes. And sometimes, being able to say, "I'm up to the armhole decreases on the sweater front" just isn't enough.

I think that's partly why I like making toys, or socks - they are comparatively fast. (Except right now three of the four pairs of socks I am working on are lace socks on either size 1 or size 0 needles - not so fast. And the current toy is the crocheted Totoro...and when I was looking online for some pointers, I found that one blogger had listed it as a "project obituary" because they couldn't take all the single crochet. [compared to some of the other crochet critters I've done, the Totoro is going to be HUGE. It's already got more stitches per row than any of the other patterns I've used, and I'm not yet half done with the body])

I especially notice when I'm going through difficulties with research that I need the quick-gratification projects - again, I think it's that need to feel "competent" at something. (I tend to get too involved with my work. Somehow I need to teach myself that my research papers are not who I am, or at least not exclusively who I am.)

I guess it's a personality thing - I think about all of the researchers (and not just the big names like Darwin or Einstein) who worked on a single idea for years, slowly building up data to support it, and then finally published it. Did they have other projects going on at the same time? Did they immerse themselves in family when the equations just wouldn't work out or the words wouldn't come? (Well, Darwin, I suppose - he seemed to have been fairly close to his wife and kids. Einstein, from what I've read, not so much). Or are there people who are just able to work on something for years and believe in it so much that they know it will work out, and not entertain any doubt of having "wasted" that time on a wrong idea?

For me, it kills me to feel like I've wasted time on something that doesn't work, something that's not publishable, etc.

Which is also probably why I don't do so much designing. With socks, I understand the basic anatomy and it's comparatively simple to plug in stitch patterns and get something that works. But I'd hate to spend months (which is what it takes for me) fiddling with a sweater design and then find it didn't fit, or it looked ugly, or something.

I don't know whether it's more a playing-it-safe or a recognition of the potential psychological cost (and yes, there'd be a cost) of all that "wasted" time.

So I work with established patterns most of the time, making a few small modifications here and there, or I use a different yarn than recommended (And I'm frankly amazed that a yarn shop would do what Diann experienced: treat her like some kind of a heretic for wanting to substitute yarn).

And I tell myself that I should feel that creating something beautiful and useful should be enough, that I should just ignore the people (which I occasionally see on KR and in other places) who sort of roll their eyes when they hear someone's using, gasp, a pattern they didn't write themselves.

But you know? There's a big legacy in my life of people telling me all the "great" things I would do. I was a good student growing up. I was more creative as a kid and teenager than I am now. People always told me how I would go far. (In the joke "most likely" awards senior year of high school, I was one of two people voted most likely to discover a cure for AIDS. Joking, yes, but that still tells me a bit of what people thought of me.)

And so sometimes I look at my life and I go: why am I not doing more? Why haven't I published more papers, tried more grant proposals? Why haven't I designed all kinds of cool stuff?

I mean, I guess I'm doing OKAY, when I look back at my c.v., for example. But it's still hard to live up to it when all of your growing-up years were spent being told how far you'd go, how smart you were, etc., etc. (On the other hand: I suppose that's a lot better than being told that you'll never amount to anything).

And then again: all of us who are leading hardworking lawabiding lives do have a "horrible warning" (as opposed to a "good example" - the old saying, "If you can't be a good example, be a horrible warning"?) of a certain individual who was just released from prison back into the flashbulb world of the paparazzi. Maybe it's a horrible thing to do, but I look at the papers I HAVE published and go, well, that's one useful thing SHE hasn't done.

(Yes. I am using both Einstein and P. Hilton as comparison points. I need to find some more realistic comparison points).

So I don't know. Sometimes the blessing of a longer-term project is being able to lose oneself in it. Now that I have the data I need, I can go back to working on that paper. It will take a while - there's a fair amount to be done - but at least I know for part of it what I need to do. And I need to give myself permission to take some time to work on this.

I also went back to the Landscape Shawl last night (that's the picture at the top of this essay). I'm up to the third pattern (reverse stockinette), just barely. I think I'm going to need to try to find a 60", size-six circular somewhere because the shawl's fast growing to the point where I can't stretch it out nicely while I'm working on it.

When I can slip into the mode of being able to work on a longer-term project, without needing something to be done NOW NOW NOW, it is pleasant. It's nice to feel the wool between my fingers, to watch the way the colors stripe or pool (and you know, it's slightly different in each stitch section? The seed stitch looks different from the garter stitch and I'm guessing the reverse stockinette will look different too)

(I also have to admit I wonder if my shift to needing things done NOW NOW NOW is part of the quality of blogging - and especially, blogging now that I have a flickr account. I want to have stuff to show people. And I'm not crazy about showing in-progress shots of stuff; you've seen one half-finished sweater back, you've seen them all, I tend to feel.)

Then again - my feeling a need to get things finished may just be the result of what my life - what so many of our lives - has become: a juggling act. Where one of the greatest desires is to be able to put one of the balls DOWN. I like being able to mentally pin a "finished" label on things (which is why loose ends - I don't mean loose ends in knitting, I mean figurative loose ends, like when you need someone to return a call so you can finish something up, and they don't - bug me so much). I've even been guilty a few times of prematurely pinning that "finished" label on, and not totally completing something. (Which is also a problem with some of the papers I write: it's a real effort, a real forcing, to make myself go through ONE LAST TIME and proofread, really closely proofread, the darn thing, and also check for stuff like that everything in the Literature Cited is actually cited somewhere in the text).

So I don't know. I guess the answer is to keep a balance of things (Isn't that always the answer?). Have a few projects close enough to completion to keep me happy, but also to not give in so much to that demon of needing it "done" and to permit myself to work on the longer-term projects - the quilt in the frame, the shawls, the sweaters.

Does anyone else feel like this? Like, if you don't have ANYTHING close to being finished, if everything's midstream with a minimum of weeks to go on it, you sort of lose interest and just want something to be DONE?