Category Archives: Knitting

2016 Recap

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I admit to being a terrible blogger…when the semester hits the fan I am nowhere to be found, it would appear.  But looking back…it would also appear that when the summer hits the fan I am nowhere to be found, either!  I am going to forgive myself and simply inform any readers that my blog-absence is my way of demonstrating my human failing so that YOU can do the same in some other way and we can still love and respect one another.

My blog absence had NOTHING to do with BIG things happening in my life (which makes the fact that I did not document them even more absurd).  I traveled to Bali, Indonesia with my gamelan troop and performed at the Bali Arts Festival. I said goodbye to my “surrogate” mother who died on Mother’s Day (of all things!) and was memorialized in August in a beautiful service. We acquired new family members, Luke and Lorelai, the parakeets.  I got half a new knee (the surgery from which I am still recuperating).  I read 21 books (actually I listened to 21 books).  I knitted a bunch of lovely things.  Friends got hitched (shout out to Tom and Stuart, Shannon and Jonathan).  An election shit show was endured.  We (collectively) lost Carrie Fischer, Glenn Frey, Leonard Cohen, Mohammed Ali, Richard Adams, and many other pivotal public figures.  And a bunch of my beloved undergraduate students got themselves graduated!

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On this the eve of 2017 I hope/intend/promise myself to do the following next year:

  • Listen to or read 25 books
  • Avoid purchasing any new yarn (there are a few exceptions to this resolution)
  • meditate 20 minutes four times per week
  • go to the gym four times per week
  • Work on my scholarship for at least half an hour four times per week
  • Post on this blog twice a month (at least)!

Unraveling

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I stumbled upon two online essays/articles today devoted to unraveling: a haunting and lovely essay by new author Stephanie Danler (for mature audiences only) and a Wall Street Journal article featuring folk who like to untangle crazy messes of yarn (I admit to being one of those folk).  I might have been attracted to the pieces because of:

Unraveled

As I’ve posted elsewhere I am starting the new year off by clearing the deck and starting on a stash-busting extravaganza of epic proportions!  Hyperbole be damned!  I vow not to purchase any new yarn this year (possible exceptions might be made for Brooks Farm at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and some Plucky that I might not be able to resist).  As I inch toward the starting line I decided I needed to make decisions about projects that had been unfinished for sometime and really needed to be unraveled.

One, the brownish/bluish underneath everything was yarn given to me by a person suffering grave, un-medicated mental illness.  Her dual diagnoses would make any trained person shudder and she has made many in my circle vulnerable at their places of employment because of her harrassment.  I realized that I really, really, REALLY dislike this yarn.  But someone else might love it so I’ve unraveled the pair of socks it was once going to become and will lovingly hand it over to another person with no experience of the kharma it carries.

The light green (a Brooks Farm exemplar) was once going to be a baby sweater for the baby I hope to one day have in my life (not from me…that ship has sailed).  I have a sweater phobia (seaming the sleeves seems to be the “issue”) and I thought that making a wee version would help me overcome this affliction.  It did not.  RRRRRRIP!

And the persimmon…such a lovely yarn from Anzula that I purchased on a trip to Fresno, CA last summer.  It simply did not look good when knitted into a banana leaf scarf.  Ghastly, actually.  There is another purpose for this delight.

As a child I loved to unknot necklace chains.  One had to be very Zen and focused to make it work.  Because I do not feel very “Zen and focused” in most of my life I find it a delight when I need to turn that on to untangle yarn.

And ready, set, go…as soon as I finish Shannon’s socks (we’re at the toe of both now) and complete the seaming of my log cabin afghan (I’m more than 50% done)!

10 on Tuesday

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Carole over at Caroleknits.net posts a regular column every Tuesday where she enlists people to blog about 10 things.  I’m new to her blog so I am not sure how it is organized but today’s list is: 10 Things I Did in 2015 That Made Me Feel Proud.  So here goes…

  1.  I survived rejection…LOTS of rejection.  One paper submitted for review was rejected three times and another twice.  I learned a lot from the experience and will attempt to reconcile all the constructive feedback (and ignore the ridiculous).
  2. I lost 30 pounds.  Actually I lost more but the holidays have enabled a few of the shed pounds to reappear.  I’m in it for the long haul, however, and am motivated by health so I feel secure that I will continue on this VERY SLOW PATH.
  3. Although the semester was a bear and I never really felt like I caught up with myself I had some pretty splendid teaching moments this time ’round.  One particular highlight was the very successful Genealogy project my History and Systems in Psychology students completed.  In small groups they interviewed every faculty member in my department and traced their academic lineage back to the “fathers” of modern psychology (either Wilhelm Wundt or William James).  Along the way they met reference librarians (THE MOST important people to make friends with while in college) who fought one another over who got to help with the project.
  4. I discovered a new musical enchantment: Balinese Gamelan!  My friends Janelle and Dan play in an orchestra at my local college and I attended two concerts.  I was so taken that I begged to be permitted to join the group.  I start rehearsing with them in January and hope to journey with the orchestra to Bali next summer for a festival!
  5. Listened to some fairly remarkable audiobooks on the 2015 commute.  Notable among them are: Station Eleven, (Emily St. John Mandel), Being Mortal (Atul Gawande), and a re-listen to The Wee Free Men (the late Sir Terry Pratchett).
  6. I exercised with great regularity, despite a bum knee (that is currently in real need of a cortisone shot).
  7. Oh…and I started this blog.  I’m not a frequent post-er and my content spans both my professional life as well as my personal life, but I am pretty satisfied with it overall.
  8. I cleaned out the linen closet (which had been on my to-do list for more years than I am willing to reveal).
  9. I knit just about every day and twice a month with some of the best darned knitting friends a person can hope to have!
  10. Kept up with social media: got an Instagram account
  11. Whoops…I just remembered!  After a very splendid trip to the Shenandoah Fiber Festival with Janelle (with a meet up with Laura and Janet) I hatched a plan to make a real effort at reducing my stash yarn.  I pulled an assortment from my many bins, paired them with patterns, and had my husband put them in paper bags and staple them.  As soon as I clear the 2015 deck (I have one pair of socks to finish and a log cabin afghan to seam) I will plow into the project bags!

Self-Control as a Limited Resource

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Over a hundred publications have found support for the notion that self-control is a limited resource (Association for Psychological Science).  I think my behavior today is a poster-child demonstration of that idea:

After PROMISING myself I would not purchase more yarn until I finished the dozen or so stash/pattern paired projects I have waiting for me, I walked out of The Mannings (my local yarn shop) with 19 skeins of yarn.  Oh the shame.

In my defense (watch me rationalize here) The Mannings IS closing at the end of the month (sob) and the yarn WAS 40% off.

And I know this bad behavior on my part is fueled, at least a little bit, by the approximately 7,000 papers and exams I still have to grade.  And the two empirical papers I have to rewrite and resubmit for possible publication over the break.

I think I need a doughnut.

On the Needles

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I have a mere three projects left to finish before I can dive into my stash-busting extravaganza: 1) Shannon’s socks, 2) my log cabin blanket, 3) finger-less mittens for Kerry.  Just the other day I finally blocked and wove in the ends of a Clapotis scarf.

Shannon socklog cabin blanket unseamed Kerry's fingerless mitts My Clapoti 1

Stashbusting

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Midterm grades were due yesterday so I plowed through the pain and got all caught up with my grading so I could post progress reports for all my classes.  As a result, I am taking a “sloth day”! Three thirty in the afternoon and I am still in my bathrobe and pajamas (I did brush my teeth, however).

While visiting the Shenandoah Fiber Festival last month my friend Janelle (TT 820) and I started hatching plans to use up the “stash” yarn we have hibernating.  Mine is stored in large plastic tubs in the basement and I am a little ashamed to admit that I don’t frequently look at what I have.  I have seriously curtailed buying more yarn in recent years, but my stash hasn’t shrunk much.

So we decided to create some projects, pairing stashed yarn with patterns, hide them away in paper bags (so we can’t see what is inside), and work on them during the following year.

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Here we have a photo of 10 project piles and next we have a photo of 10 paper bags filled with said projects:

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I even made my poor husband do the sorting and stapling…I really don’t want to know which project I’ll pick when I get around to needing a new one.  Kinda like Christmas every other month or so!

On the Needles

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The tagline for this blog claims I will make “occasional forays into knitting”.  That might end up a dramatic underestimation…my identity as a knitter is as important to me as my identity as a social psychologist.  I chronicle all my knitting projects elsewhere (Ravelry: kme124) but sometimes I want to show off in more than one venue.  Today’s project was finished mere days before the recipient leaves for an extended trip to Southeast Asia…where she’ll no doubt be happy that she has a nice pair of wool socks!

Skipperdoodles

 

Although I knit many things, knitting socks is a favorite.  My muse, Janelle (TT 820), got me started and I couldn’t stop.  Socks are a fairly perfect project: small (so one can easily take a project to dentist appointments, the department of motor vehicles, FACULTY MEETINGS…)!  The next pair will be for my surrogate daughter, Stephie, using this lovely confection:

Supersocke