Bother

So remember that time a few months ago when I wrote this post and was all like, "Blogging is AWSUM and I will never give it up!"?

[...]

I may have spoken too soon on that front.

I think I might be done with this blog.

The Mysteries of Simple Cat

Very recently, the little cat taught me how to play fetch with him. Middle Sister had left a couple of sparkle balls (think pompoms with tinsel) , and little Hob is quite taken with them. One day, I was in the kitchen when he came in with a ball in his mouth, and he dropped it at my feet. I picked it up and tossed it into the dining room, thinking that it would get Hob out of my way. (He gets stepped on in the kitchen at least once a week.)

He tore off after it, and then, to my surprise, he brought it back to me and deposited it at my feet. I threw it again and the same thing happened. And thus, a monster was born--I have to hide the sparkle balls at night or he would want to keep playing. It's ridiculously cute, especially since every once in a while, he will bring the ball to me, and realize as he drops it that it's a sparkle ball and sparkle balls are the most fun ever and then there's five minutes of batting around the ball and chasing it before he finally brings it back to me to throw.

The most interesting thing about the sparkle ball, to me, is that it's made me re-conceptualize how I think about my cat's intelligence. Hob has developed a reputation as "The Simple Cat", largely because he spends a lot of time doing this:

Or getting swallowed by the couch like this:

Here's the thing, though--he's not simple. Our adventures with the sparkle ball have demonstrated a much greater capacity for reason and logic than I would have thought possible. He brought the ball up on to the bed one night (it was about this time that I realized I would need to hide them at night) and accidentally knocked it down the side of the bed, where it fell underneath. He looked at where it had fallen for a few minutes, jumped down, and fished it out from under the bed. A few days later, he knocked it under the stove in the kitchen. Unfortunately, it's too far back for me to fish it out without moving the stove, but every time I go in to the kitchen now, Hob tries to herd me over to the stove, and he shows me how to get the toy out. It never occurred to me that he had that kind of capacity for memory.

He has also taken to putting the sparkle balls in his water dish when I won't or don't play with him. This is fascinating to me because the only other fetching cat I've ever known also did this, although her toy of choice was hair elastics.

The hands I love

This, believe it or not, is the man I fell in love with:

We met in the spring of 2004, on the steps of the only original 19th century building at The Historic Site Which Shall Not Be Named's Sister Site (a 19th century British naval and military base, in case you're wondering). A mutual friend introduced us. We were fast friends. I had actually been dating someone else for almost two years when we met, and that relationship was in the process of dying.¹ My near-instant feelings for Mat complicated things enormously.

(Small "awwww!" and/or nausea-inducing sidebar: A few weeks after we met, we went out for coffee with the friend who introduced us and his girlfriend. After dropping me off at home that night, Mat went back to his house and told his mom he was going to marry me.)

A trip to PEI with my family in 2005. It's amazing we stayed together, especially considering that a) his hair looked that stupid for the whole summer, and b) he had *no idea* who Anne of Green Gables was.

This first year of marriage has been surprising. I had no huge drive to get married--I certainly wasn't against it, but if Mat hadn't been so gung ho on it, it wouldn't have bothered me to stay common-law. That said, I love *being* married; it has brought me an inner peace that I didn't realize I was missing.



Our relationship isn't perfect; we fight, we squabble, we hog the bedclothes, we nitpick at each other. But we are still invested in and committed to each other, and I hope that we can maintain that commitment as we go forth from here.

Happy anniversary, love.

=====
¹ For a variety of reasons, including the fact that my ex thought grad school was a dumb idea and that I shouldn't go.

A Weekend Away

The weekend's wedding festivities were lovely, and the trip to Sudbury was exactly what I needed. In addition to getting to see my husband in his kilt (and with his new muttonchops), I got to have dinner with my in-laws, to share drinks with good friends, and to dance to some awesome music. (The DJ played the B52s' "Rock Lobster" without us requesting it. Awesome.)

I had managed to forget that the Sudbury International Film Festival (which goes by Cinefest and not by SIFF, which is probably good) was happening, despite the fact that I have friends on the festival circuit. Once Mat discovered that it was happening, we decided to take in a film the next day. The only one that really worked for our timeline was Billy Bishop Goes to War, a film version of the play, written by Eric Peterson and John Gray. Eric is probably most famous for his roll as Oscar Leroy on Corner Gas.



Billy Bishop Goes to War is one of the most performed plays in North America, but neither Mat nor I had seen it before. The film version is very interesting; it clearly emphasizes the staged-ness of its own performance (it's performed on a very small stage surrounded by a sea of empty seats) at the same time that it uses huge, sweeping shots to emphasized its filmed-ness. Both actors are incredible; Peterson plays 18 different characters, shifting from person to person with only the use of a hat or an accent.

The best part is that Peterson was actually at the screening to do a Q & A session afterwards. It was very interesting to hear him talk about his experiences with the play. He and Gray wrote Billy Bishop when they were in their early 30s; Peterson will turn 65 later this week. He played Bishop extensively in his 30s, revisited him in his 50s, and has now made this film in his 60s, when he is older than Billy Bishop lived to be. What an interesting and unusual experience for an actor to have. The film is profoundly affective and effective--well worth watching.

It was a lovely weekend away with my husband. It's so easy to fall into the same old traps here of always doing the same things, and it's sad to have to go away in order to spend that time with one another, free from the distractions of our lives.

On the back burner

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately.

Mostly about my future.

When I finished my M.A. year, I was burnt out. Personal and academic stress wore me out that summer. I earned my B.Ed. to please my parents and because I didn't know what else to do with myself. I taught high school after that because I needed a job and I didn't know what else to do with myself. I was then both burnt out and miserable. Somehow, through a series of coincidences and some incredible luck, I came to apply for the job that I have now. This is my fifth year at this job.

Over the years, I've had a lot of questions about my plans for school and when I would be going back to do my Ph.D. For a long time, I couldn't face the idea of returning to school, but eventually I began to soften as I realized that I miss my intellectual pursuits. When I got this job, I thought to myself, "This is the universe speaking. You are meant to go back to school." Some of my friends and colleagues put forth compelling arguments about the experience of graduate school. It all seems so exciting.

But I can't do it.

I love the idea of pursuing a PhD, but I can't commit to the reality of it.

A PhD gets me nothing but the glory of the intellectual pursuit. In my current job, where I am hired at the Instructor level, I don't need a PhD. If I got one, it would make no difference to my employment situation: no raise, no change in responsibilities. If I wanted to pursue a job with a higher status, I would have to give up what I have now--and what I have now is pretty good. I make more than most adjuncts do, with pension and benefits to boot, and I have a decent amount of job security. I've gotten used to making money, to paying back my student loans, to eating decent food, to owning a house. I also have other things to think about: the possibility of having children, for one; travelling, for another.

I would love to do it some day, for its own sake. In the meantime, I have a life to live.

Contagion

We went to see Steven Soderbergh's Contagion on Monday night. In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit up front that I was fully prepared to enjoy this movie: the genre of virus films is something that I find eminently satisfying, and this one has a director and cast superior to most.

I like Soderbergh's visual style a lot, and he puts it to good use in this film, conveying both the germ-fueled claustrophobia of the individual characters as well as the vastness of the epidemic itself, particularly as society goes in to decline. The acting is not quite as impressive as you would imagine, given the cast, but those limitations are the result of an unclear plot and lazy storytelling rather than the actors themselves.

The biggest problem with Contagion is that it wants to be several different movies; there are very distinct narrative threads that (I think) are intended to wind together to create a cohesive whole, but the whole falls short of the mark. Characters are dropped from the narrative without explanation as the story progresses; obviously, some have to die from the virus, but others are simply gone. It makes me wonder if some of the story has been lost in editing, particularly with the final scene with Matt Damon's character and his daughter: I understand that it's meant to have an emotional impact, but I don't get why it's supposed to--why does this particular thing matter to his daughter? (I also don't understand why Damon's narrative unfolds the way it does; there is simply no way that the only guy in the world who has demonstrated an immunity to the virus is allowed to go on his merry way by the government.)

I would gladly watch any of the separate narratives as movies: Jude Law's conspiracy theorist blogger, Laurence Fishburne's CDC doctor, Marion Cotillard's WHO doctor, even Matt Damon's heartbroken-but-immune father, but together they don't quite add up.

Bottom Line: Contagion is well worth seeing, just don't expect everything to add up entirely at the end.

School Is In Session

I am currently on the hunt for a new knitting project.

I spent most of last week working on three shawls. Mat's childhood best friend¹ is getting married next weekend, and I had offered to make his fiancée a wedding shawl. She was so excited about the idea she asked me to make two more shawls for her flower girls.² After a false start on a Swallowtail Shawl, which has gone into the gift basket, I figured out that Annis was a much better choice for this task: it was faster, since it has both short rows and stockingette, and it also has a mini-size, which is perfect for tiny toddler flower girls. Thanks to this flash of knitting genius (with thanks to paperbirch and grrly), I was able to crank out 1 full sized shawl and 2 mini shawlettes in 7 days. Huzzah. Special thanks to Dorian for his help and supervision.

The little one is quite sweet, actually, and might be just the thing for that skein of cashmere silk I've got hanging around...in several months, anyway, when I'm not completely sick of the pattern.

Since finishing the shawls, I've started a test knit of a pair of intricately cabled socks. This pattern is probably one of the hardest things I've ever tried to knit. (Not in a bad, frustrating way, more in a challenging, read-closely-and-pay-attention-to-detail way.) The frequent cables, thin yarn, and tiny needles are also giving my left wrist fits, so I need to find something more relaxing to knit. Big yarn and big needles, and maybe a project that will work up quickly. I'd hoped to start on the first of my fall sweaters, but after careful perusal of both the pattern and my substantially increased waistline, I've come to realize that I will need to go up a size from where I thought I was when I bought the yarn eighteen months ago. Naturally, it's a yarn I purchased at the Knitters' Frolic, so getting more involves finding somewhere to order it from...

The new school year starts today for me, since I don't teach on Mondays this year, and I definitely want to have a project on the go at work.

=====

¹ James used to work in the restaurant at THSWSNBN, so I have actually known him longer than I've known Mat.

² Yes, this conversation happened about a year ago, so obviously I waited until six weeks before the wedding to start working on the shawls. Sigh.

A Pair of Ragged Claws

When I was about 11, I was at a Toronto Blue Jays game with my dad and my grandmother, and noticed a weird set of bubbles under the skin of my hands. Over the next few days, I noticed that the tiny blisters would swell whenever I washed my hands with warm water, and that when I showered, they would often burst, leaving me with scaly hands afterwards.

When I showed them to my mother, she promised to ask around at work for me.¹ One of the doctors told her that it was an eczema commonly caused by too-frequent hand washing of dishes. "Don't worry, though," she told me sarcastically. "I told him that wasn't possible for you." Our family doctor proscribed a cortisone cream for me, which never made a difference to the eczema, which would appear, burst open, and slowly heal off and on.

Many years later, the internet was kind enough to give me a real name for it: Dyshidrotic Eczema, so called because it was once thought to be associated with excess sweat. I learned that cortisone treatments were largely useless for this, and that not much could be done for it other than to care for the scaly skin after. I learned that mine is atypical, because mine is worse in the winter² than in the summer, and I also learned that mine is relatively mild compared to what some other people have.³

Over the last month, I have had two or three large flare ups of my dyshidrosis,⁴ which is unusual for me because it's usually much calmer in the summer. Today I woke up with blisters across the tips of a few of my fingers, as the blisters had spread up from the sides of my fingers. A few rounds of dishes and the cracks began to show.

Since becoming a knitter, I've become extra aware of my hands and how I treat them. Rough, cracked skin can snag delicate yarn as it slips through my fingers. Conversely, minimally treated yarns often retain their own lanolin, which gives moisture back to my hands. I've been knitting primarily with fine yarns (fingering/sock weight) for the last few months, and I'm yearning to move up to a worsted or aran yarn now that the weather is cooling off.

How do you take care of your hands?

===

¹ One side effect of having a mother who was a nurse in one of Ontario's vastly overused hospital emergency rooms during the 1990s is that you are totally paranoid about seeking medical attention because you continually suspect that you are "not sick enough" to warrant taking up time and space at the ER.

² Likely because it's so flippin' dry up here in NBRC.

³ Seriously. Check out the pics at the link above--knowing how painful mine can be for how minor it is, I can only imagine how these people feel.

⁴ Yep, mine is stress-related.

Sister, Sister

Yesterday I helped to pack Middle Sister's life up into our parents' van and sent her away. She is headed back to school next week, pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in Toronto. Her program is interesting (it's a Scholar Practitioner program for people who already have undergraduate degrees) that focuses on placement hours. Her placements are with Toronto Public Health, which is perfect for her and will hopefully allow her to continue the kinds of work she's been doing here with safe needle exchange.

It's such a fantastic opportunity for her I almost don't feel sad that she's leaving me. Almost.

Jack Layton

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.
--Jack Layton, from his "Letter to Canadians"

Jack Layton's funeral isn't until tomorrow, but as I won't be in Toronto, I thought I would take a few moments today to remember one of the greatest leaders our country never had.

Jack Layton took charge of the NDP in 2002 at a time when its stock was pretty much at its lowest, with only 14 seats in Parliament. This was not a kind time for the NDP: the West was a lost cause, Ontario was gun shy after its provincial experiment with leftism resulted in Rae Days, and even the East had brought diminishing returns for the party. There did not appear to be much hope that the Canadian public would turn away from the Liberals and the Conservatives, but that didn't matter to Jack. In both 2004 and 2006, he fought the good fight for his party; even when his horse was lame, he was still there, smiling, slugging it out. And then things began to change. Earlier this year, the NDP made considerable gains in Quebec, resulting in a record number of seats in Parliament and the mantle of Official Opposition. These gains were very much because of Jack's quiet charisma.

I didn't necessarily agree with Jack Layton politically; he was often more left than my generally centrist beliefs. However, I admired him enormously: He had compassion, conviction, and commitment in a way that no other leader has had (at least in my voting lifetime). He was personable, charismatic, and...well, normal. His commitment to our country was incredibly; no matter how bad the NDP's fortunes seemed, he was always working, always committed to his vision of his party and our country.

It's heartbreaking to know that he lost his battle with cancer so soon after the greatest victories of his political career, to know that he'll never get the chance to explore his new position to its fullest.

On Why Knitting Is Bad Ass

I usually don't respond to inflammatory things on the internet, mostly because I doubt that I have anything relevant to add to the discussion, and also because I don't believe in baiting trolls. Peg Aloi, over at the Huffington Post, writes one of the most condescending and insulting articles on feminism that I've ever read: it's irritating enough to bring me out of my self-imposed blog hiatus. The article laments the rise of a performatively 'femme' feminism coupled with a return to the domestic. I knew the article was going to be bad from the fourth sentence, which reads, "Even BUST magazine is sponsoring a craft fair in NYC." I'm not entirely sure why this is news, since BUST's E-i-C is Debbie Stoller of Stitch'n'Bitch fame, and Stitch'n'Bitch happened nearly ten years ago, but apparently putting some effort into researching her topic wasn't something Aloi wanted to do.

Aloi's central point seems to be that being interested in anything feminine or girly makes one unable to be a "badass, strong, tough woman." Cupcakes are out, as are heirloom tomatoes and Hello Kitty; these are seen as signs of complacency. Being interested in these things apparently means that we have given up the fight, and that when the revolution comes, we'll be lolling around eating bonbons in our high heeled shoes. Our time would be better spent "learning how to shoot a gun, hot-wire a car, and manipulate our way into a bomb shelter." My first question there is why those particular skills would be useful (in fact, I'm pretty sure basic survival skills, like gathering, shelter building, and fire starting would probably be more useful, come the apocalypse), but I'm also not sure how knowing how to knit impedes my ability to do *any* of those things.

Aloi's arguments bother me in general because they're built on lazy generalizations and pat explanations, and they also bother me in particular because my idea of myself as a feminist (and, accordingly, the way that I negotiate the world as a white, middle class feminist) is so central to my identity. (In fact, one of my student evals from last year took issue with my "feminist viewpoint".) Despite the fact that I have completed16 different knitting projects this year, I am not complacent about the obstacles that women face in society. I'm a young woman with a sizable chest who teaches at a university; I've had men say to me, "Oh, if my college professors had looked like you, I'd have paid more attention." I have to work hard to be taken seriously. Being a feminist is important to me; I believe that I have an obligation to interrogate the world as I find it and to work towards a society that is both more equal and more just. And I'm one of the lucky ones--I come from a position of privilege, and I know it.

Where does knitting fit into this? A better question to ask might be, Why is knitting an UNfeminist thing to do? Because it's "old"? Because it's domestic? Because it privileges the home? For my part, I've actually learned more about women's bodies from being a knitter. I've also learned a lot about discourses of power through the various groups that I'm involved in on Ravelry. Knitting isn't an inherently feminist act by any means, but I choose it as one. A big part of feminism for me is defying people's expectations of who and what I should be: a knitter who is a gamer who is a writer who likes to cook who used to blacksmith who would like to take up archery...you get the picture.

If it's not her kind of feminism, that's fine. What's not fine is this reductive feminism (descended, perhaps, from the second wavers?) that wants to limit the value of women to certain occupations and hobbies that are deemed "worthy" of our time and attention purely because they are masculine and therefore "bad ass".

Here are 5 knitting projects that I think are quite bad ass (some NSFW):

• Seamless Willie Warmer
• Know Your Mushrooms Blanket
• Fornicating Reindeer Chart
• Skull Isle Hat
• Dark Mark Illusion Scarf
  

heartsick

I feel physically and psychically ill from the last two weeks.

I'm probably going to lay low for a while until I can figure out where I'm going.

Passing

Well, my grandfather died within a half hour of my last post.

I am mostly relieved that his suffering is ended.

I won't be around online for a few days while we travel to the funeral and spend time with family.

As I approach my 30th birthday in the next few months, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what it means to get older. I never felt my age until a few years ago: in adolescence, I always felt older than (read: superior to) everyone else; in my twenties, I often felt very young (I'm the youngest person in my department by a good 15 years). Now I feel 29, whatever that means.

My grandfather is dying.

He has been really sick for about 18 months now. Things took a sharp turn for the worse about two weeks ago. Grandpa had been falling a lot, and one morning he was found on the floor of his bathroom in his nursing home. At the hospital, they determined that he'd been having a series of strokes, and that he'd sustained a number of lumbar compression fractures. After about a week or so, it became apparent that the waiting game had begun. We are now at the point of days, maybe hours.

My mother, grandmother, and the sister-aunts met yesterday to start to put together plans for how we could proceed when he finally passes. My mom has asked me to do a reading at the not-funeral (my grandparents had a very bad falling out with their church in the late 70s, so there won't be a formal church funeral service), and to think of stories to tell afterwards, when we go to my grandparents' farm for drinks.

Nothing has ever made me feel as old as this.

Trip to Stratford

I had high hopes for August. The rest of the summer has had some pretty memorable lows for me, and I'd hoped that this month would turn things around as I head back to work into a new academic year. Unfortunately, four days in, August is mostly like a kick in the teeth.

Rather than focus on the various pieces of friends and family drama that are going on around me, though, I wanted to share a much more cheerful story.

First, I must confess to a small shame: I had never been to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, ON. It probably sounds like it isn't really a big deal to you, but when you are a bibliophile like me and you teach university English courses, this is tantamount to being a Beatles fan who has never listened to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It's just silly.

(In case you don't know, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is kind of a big deal: Tyrone Guthrie was the first Artistic Director and Sir Alec Guinness starred in Richard III that first season; more recent actors include Christopher Plummer, Colm Feore, William Shatner, and Brian Dennehy. In addition to being the premiere locale for classical theatre in Canada, Stratford is also the hometown of Justin Bieber.)

When I had the opportunity to snap up some tickets to this year's production of Titus Andronicus for a paltry $10 apiece, I jumped on it, and Youngest Sister, our friend Ryan, and myself headed down to Stratford. We had a delightful picnic on the banks of the river Avon, which afforded me the opportunity to take approximately one hundred pictures of various swans, ducks, and geese, and then headed up to the theatre.

The production was excellent. I've only seen one other Shakespearean play performed (a version of Much Ado that had it transplanted to Mussolini's Italy) and I'd never imagined that Titus was one of the plays that I would get to see. The theatre uses a thrust stage, and the production did not shy away from the violence of the play. Watching the actress who played Lavinia was heart wrenching. Aaron the Moor stole the show, though: he was very athletic and evil in his movements around the stage.

On the way into Stratford, we'd passed a pub called The Boar's Head, which seemed like an optimal place to go for dinner after the show. As we were walking up towards the restaurant, I noticed a head that looked vaguely familiar...and then realized that the head was not just familiar, it actually belonged to my friend Greg. Greg, whom I'd actually seen in Ottawa just a few short weeks ago, was down in London visiting his parents with his wife, and had come up to see a high school friend of his perform the role of Chiron (one of Tamora's sons) in Titus. They had come up to The Boar's Head for dinner as well, and they invited us to join them. It was a lovely serendipitous moment, and it was unbelievably cool to have dinner with one of the actors from our play.

This might be the only good thing for a while, so I'm going to hold on to it with all I've got.

Unheimliche

It's been just over ten years since I moved out of my parents' house to attend school, and just over four years since I stopped coming back over the summer breaks to work at the historic site.

Every time I come home, it seems like something changes a little bit more, and it becomes less and less home and more and more my parents' house.

Over the last two years, my parents have replaced all of the windows and doors. The new door in the front hall has a much bigger pane of glass in it; it lets in so much more light now that, for the first few times I was home, I kept going into the hallway to close the door because I thought it was open. We also used to have an old church pew as a bench in the hallway, but it's gone now.

The living room has had its carpet torn out and replaced by a beautiful auburn hardwood floor. Less than a year ago, my parents finally threw out the camel brown velour couch they bought shortly after they were married (in 1977) and replaced it as well. Now there's a new couch and a fancy La-Z-Boy that's more comfortable than most beds I've slept in; there's a vintage crystal chandelier and beautifully framed art prints.

The biggest change is the kitchen, which my dad gutted completely. Gone are the cheap cupboards and drawers of my childhood. Now I have no idea where anything is (to be fair, the redesigned kitchen is sufficiently awesome that the increase in storage space means that no one knows where anything is anymore). The appliances are fancy (the convection oven in particular) and the granite countertop is a thing of dreams. Our big kitchen table (scarred by years of less than careful activity) is long gone; there is a tiny table with two chairs just for my parents.

One of the hardest things about growing old for me is not that I don't need my parents, but that they don't need me.

Don't get me wrong: I don't begrudge them this beautiful space that they're building together. My parents have been together for 40 years this year (married for 34 of them) and I'm old enough now to see that their life together hasn't always been easy or simple. It's more just that every change makes this place more unheimliche (unhomely), familiar but also strange. And eventually it isn't going to be my home any more, for real.

Though I have to admit that on these 30+ degree days, I am grateful that they broke down and put in central air conditioning when they replaced the furnace.

Hiatused

June and July have not been kind months around these parts, and I've been struggling to find things to write about.

Things have been much better in the last week, though: we took a trip to Ottawa for an early anniversary celebration. I think of myself as a small town girl most of the time (Guelph, with its scant 114 000 people, is the largest place I'd ever lived) but there's something about Ottawa that makes me so happy whenever I go there.

This time, I got to realize a dream that I've had for nearly ten years: I got to visit the Diefenbunker. The Diefenbunker is the Canadian Cold War Museum, housed in a nuclear fallout shelter spanning 100 000 sq. ft. over four underground stories. It was built by the Canadian military during the reign of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker so that the government had a place to retreat to in the event of a nuclear attack. It was awesome. (There's a set of photos here if you're interested--lots of early 60s technology.)

The main purpose of the trip was to see The Lion King in its musical form at the National Arts Centre. (The background to this is that everyone else in my family got to see it when it first passed in Toronto except me, owing to work and school.) Now, The Lion King has been my favourite Disney movie since the first time I saw it in theatres when I was 12, so I might be a bit biased, but the theatre production was truly stunning. Julie Taymor has such a bizarre, over-the-top style to her productions (see also: Across the Universe) and it works surprisingly well for The Lion King, which winds up being rather Dali-esque.

I also snuck in a quick trip to Knit Knackers, which is a pretty fab yarn store--it has its own angora rabbits. I didn't buy much (a skein of laceweight and a needle gauge) but I did eye up some very pretty spinning wheels.

A pictoral explanation of the cats' relationship

Why bother?

As always, Karie over at Fourth Edition shares some interesting thoughts about why she blogs, which naturally makes me think about why I blog.

When I started blogging, I was in my final year of high school. I wrote a lot in high school. There were literal boxes full of things I'd written in my parents' basement until recently, notebooks upon notebooks of poetry, short stories, screenplays, etc. I wrote letters to friends. I wrote mini-essays when I was bored in class. I had a direction and a discipline at that time that seems breathtaking in retrospect.

I wrote a lot in university as well: essays, mostly, although I still made an effort to write creatively when I could. In the summertime, when I would work at THSWSNBN, I would carry a notebook and pen in my costume's pouch so that I could write in idle moments, or at least jot down any interesting ideas I had. Working there was very good for me in so many ways, not least of which was the sheer number of creative people that I worked with: there was always something to inspire me.

Now that I'm a grown up, though, I don't have the same drive to write that I did when I was younger. Writing takes both time and discipline, neither of which are abundant in my life. It also takes drive, and I think that is the bigger issue here. I actually blame my job for this: I spend so much time reading bad writing that it has affected my ability to be objective about my own writing, and it has lead to a terrifying fear that my writing might actually be terrible and no one has ever told me. Everything that I write sounds hackneyed and cliched at worst; at best, it sounds profoundly uninteresting.

So I write here because it keeps me writing--no matter how bad I am afraid that I am, I still can't quite bring myself to give it up. I've made a concerted effort to refocus my energy into this blog in the last year and a half, and I think it's been (mostly) working. One of the things that I preach at my students is that practice makes perfect (or at least better) for writing, so I'd best follow my own advice.

I'm unlikely to be a blogger who acquires Fame and Fortune through what I write here. (Heck, I'm unlikely to be a blogger who amasses more than thirty regular followers.) But I am a blogger who has found a voice that allows her to write as often as she chooses, about the things that she chooses, and who is able to use that to push her writing forward. I don't post everything I write, and I don't write in as much details as I sometimes think I might. So why bother? I bother because it keeps me writing. As long as I'm writing, I haven't given up hope.

Silverskin Adventures

I spent a goodly portion of the weekend doing Fancy Lady-type things. The most significant of these things was the time spent creating a dress form to use for sewing.



Essentially, you get duct taped over a spare shirt, which is then cut up the back, reassembled, and stuffed. (I used a whole pillow, a bag of fibrefill, and the filling from another pillow.)



The advantage of this is that you now have a double of your body to work with for pinning/adjusting patterns. I'm pretty happy with how mine came out, except for the bust, which isn't quite as prominent as it ought to be. I'm brainstorming ways to fix this...