Hippity hoppity

The Easter weekend was a busy one. Co-ordinating two families' worth of holiday time is challenge to begin with, which is further complicated by a) the fact that we live 3ish hours away from where our parents live, and b) our parents' families live between 1.5-3 hours away from our parents, in opposite directions. So this round, we had Friday dinner with Mat's parents, and a Sunday lunch with mine, and forewent the extended family. It was still quite busy, though, and not helped by the really gross head cold I came down with last week. I'm still not feeling great, but am vastly improved over Friday and Saturday.

We visited Burnett's and Struth, the kilt store, so Mat could try on jackets to go with his kilt. I was thoroughly unprepared for how dashing he would look. I'd seen him try on the kilt back in August when we bought it, but that was nothing compared to seeing him try it on with a tuxedo shirt and proper jacket. Oh my goodness, I am a lucky girl. His family thinks he's stupid for wearing a kilt when it's not his background, but it makes me really happy. (It makes my dad really happy too, though I think part of that can be attributed to the fact that my dad is no longer the only man in our family.)

I ordered my Flora Macdonald sash, and Mat picked out a sporran. We also checked out the kilt hose--they even have some handmade ones there, all knit in Scotland, with each label identifying the knitter and the place where they were knit. (Only $100 a pair, knit in worsted weight wool.) Still planning on making socks for Mat; still not fully reconciled to doing it in fingering weight. It will have to be sport or DK for sure. Summer knitting, here I come.

We also started our gift registry at Sears. Mat has a hard time with the registry: He thinks that we already have lots of stuff, and doesn't see the point in registring for more. I can understand his desire not to acquire more stuff (we do, after all, live in an 875 square foot house), but there are a couple of good reasons to do a registry. First, people are going to buy us presents regardless of whether we have a registry. Having one prevents us from receiving six blenders (at least in theory). Second, a lot of the stuff we do have is from when we were students, which means that it's old (a lot of my stuff was secondhand to begin with) and/or probably cheap (see: our microwave, which is decidedly wheezy and tempermental). As a result, I've been making a lot of the decisions on my own. It makes me a bit uncomfortable to do this--and it makes me feel a little bridezilla-y--but it's the only way it's going to get done.

I have devised a small game to amuse myself, in which I select totally inappropriate/silly things and tell Mat that I'm going to put them on the registry with the description of being "for him". So far the list consists of: the Koolatron Vending Machine Refrigerator, the Country Cats kitchen set, and the Koolatron Lunch Box Stove.

I don't think he thinks it's very funny, but I do. (And, it should be noted, I haven't actually registered for any of these things, nor will I.)

Living in the early to mid-90s dance party

I got to go out dancing this weekend for the first time in nearly a year. It was a marvellously good time: it was a dance for the local pride group. (Colloquially known as "the Big Gay Dance" to me and my sister.) The DJ was not quite to my taste, but she did track down the B52s' "Rock Lobster", leading to much hilarity as Mat took the dance floor. (Also: that song is much, much longer than I remember it being. And there's an alarm clock sound in it.)

There was also a drag show on Friday to raise money for the AIDS Committee, which was also a good time, but I am afraid that I must accept that I can no longer go out two nights in a row. (If, indeed, I ever could.)

I've lost that lovin' feeling

If you've seen my mojo, could you let me know where it is?

Yesterday started out quite well. I drove M to work, came home, scrubbed out the bathtub, cleaned up the counter, and reorganized the craft room. And then I was done--I didn't want to do any of the other twelve things that I could do, didn't want to do any of the dozens of things that I needed to do, and wound up just taking a nap on the couch while watching something idiotic on TV. It might even have been reality TV, that's how idiotic it was.

I frogged three projects that had been languishing for several months; I had finished a long time work in progress earlier in the week, and knitting it was such a dreadful experience that I think it might have killed knitting for me for a while. I've cast on about 6 other things over the last few days, only one of which has come to any kind of fruition (and this after I started with one set of needle, finished 3/4s of the hat, realized it would fit a beachball, and started over with a smaller needle, bringing me two full sizes below the recommended needle).

I hope I can get it figured out soon--I've got stuff to do. It's only been three months since Christmas, and I haven't even started my mom's sweater yet.

Reflections on the State of Poetry

We devoted the first six weeks of Intro to English Studies II to the study of poetry, and rounded out our consideration with a look at two Canadian poets and poems, both of which examine the role of poetry in the twentieth century. (The poems in question are A.M. Klein's "Portrait of the Poet as Landscape" and Irving Layton's "Whatever Else Poetry is Freedom".) Both seek to examine the state of poetry, particularly in Canada, with very different results. Klein rages against the obsolescence of poetry, which he describes as being like the fletcher's craft, where Layton paints the poet as a fool or buffoon.

For our last seminar, we asked the students to respond to Layton and Klein, to reflect on what they thought the state of poetry was, and on the role that poetry should play in English Studies at both the secondary and post-secondary levels. My students don't know what to make of poetry. They don't think it's dead, per se, but they don't know what to do with it. An educated person should know poetry, they agree. And music is poetry, but only sometimes. Only if it is real, or genuine, or has meaning behind it. They're reluctant to tell me how meaning is created--they just know. If meaning is conflated with authenticity, I ask, does that mean that Real Poetry must also be authentic to be meaningful? They're not sure, but a few of them wonder if that's why they don't like some of what we've studied. It doesn't mean anything to them.

They stare at me blankly when I tell them that I like poetry, that I even own books (plural!) of it. I hope that some of them leave this year with an understanding that poetry does something. That it makes you feel. Just like music can, only you have to work harder for ir.

I read a piece that a fourth year student submitted to our Creative Writing Exhibition. It was actually a prose piece, but it spoke of finding TS Eliot, and finding friends. One of the things that I miss most about undergrad si discovering poetry for the first time. I don't remember starting university with any particular love for poetry, but I do remember what it felt like to read some of those poems for the first time, the tiny frisson of excitement in my abdomen.

The poem I remember most from my first year of university is Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird." I know that we read other things--"Goblin Market", some Atwood, some Auden--but it is Stevens that sticks in my mind, it is Stevens who made me think This Is Poetry for the first time. The poem does everything that it does so simply, but so well, while so actively defying linear interpretation. It was unlike anything I'd ever read before.

The next year was the British Literature survey year, which brought even more poetry: "Dover Beach," "The Waste Land," "Dulce Et Decorum Est", "The Pomegranate."

And into third year: "Sed Non Satiata," "The Lady's Dressing Room," "Brebeuf and his Brethren". Oh, and Prufrock.

Prufrock.

In a lot of ways, Prufrock is why I'm in English Studies. I'm not an Eliot scholar, nor even a poetry specialist, but Prufrock was a revelation to me. When I read it for the first time, it was the apex of everything that I was learning to love about poetry; for me, it manages to be both alpha and omega. Every time I write, I am not as good as Prufrock, but every time I write I have that summit to strive for.

As a teacher, I want to be the person who introduces someone to his or her Prufrock. I want to see someone realize that poetry is not in fact dead, or archaic; I want to see someone realize that poetry has both meaning and life, that there is somewhere to go from here.

Whatever else, poetry is freedom. (Words Layton's, but the comma is mine.) Writing poetry is freedom, but so is reading it.

Knitting history

While visiting my parents this past weekend, I recovered a piece of my family's knitting history: the duck vest. This was made for me by my mother or one of my grandmothers. (Mum isn't sure which; she thinks that it was her, or she thinks that she has the pattern for it somewhere.) It's made in a dreadful acrylic, of course (it was the 80s) but is really quite sweet otherwise (in a hideous 80s sort of way). There was an elephant vest to match, which featured an i-cord trunk on the front and a tail on the back.

Awesome.

Confessions of a Sleep Deprived Mind

To begin, I have to confess that I love awards shows. Yes, I know they are terrible and boring and generic and never as good as they were in the past. I know all these things to be true, but I still like to watch them. As I grow older, I find myself having to admit to more than a passing interest in fashion (which is something I would never have expected of myself, as I tend to dress like a bag lady who was given a shopping spree at Old Navy), so the costume aspect of it plays into my interest. I like the speeches, too. I used to love the musical segment of the Oscars--I still have fond memories of seeing Elliott Smith perform--and was quite disappointed to see that go by the wayside, even though we apparently still had time for James Taylor to wheeze his way through a Beatles song in spectacular MOR fashion.

Actually, the whole show was disappointing. Whither Chris Rock?

The morning after

I've borrowed the image above from BradCran.com because it is awesome. The IOC has such a weird relationship with women's sports and women in sports, and I think that they need to think very carefully about how they intend to handle that.

all the love that I've found

So far all of my prevaricating about how I feel about the Olympics, I have watched a lot of them these last few days. I've also enjoyed watching them, which has caught me off guard. I'm largely uninterested in sports at the best of times (with a few exceptions--baseball and curling), and we don't actually even have any sports channels in our satellite package, but it has been really exciting to watch a lot of the events. The highlight for me so far has been Joannie Rochette's figure skating. While she is obviously not in the same league as Yu Na Kim, she skated tremendously well, and did so under enormous emotional strain. (Her mother flew out from Quebec last week to see Joannie skate, and died of a heart attack a few days later.)

The Ravelympics haven't been so good to me. I finally figured out a pattern that I've been wanting to design for years now, but it hasn't come out as well as I'd hoped. I've got the first mitt blocking right now, and I'm hoping that will sort out some of my problems with my colourwork gauge.

I'm spending my Friday night putting the finishing touches on a paper proposal for an interdisciplinary conference on Eros. (Luce Irigaray is the keynote speaker. ZOMG.) We had a guest lecturer at the school yesterday afternoon lecturing on the cultural politics of the zombie narrative. Prior to the lecture, we watched David Cronenberg's Rabid (which is called Rage elsewhere), and now I have all of these ideas about motherhood, fertility, and the monstrous feminine in horror movies floating around in my head. (To say nothing of the geopolitical implications of what happens in Rabid...there's a whole paper on the FLQ crisis and French-English relations in Quebec in my head right now.) It figures that I am getting my academic mojo back shortly after having decided that a PhD is not in the foreseeable future.

If I could just find a good pattern for a hat in worsted weight yarn, I'd be away to the races.

come in from the cold

It has been a very interesting day around these parts. We were woken up this morning by the loud and incessant cawing of a murder of crows. There were about thirty of them in the tree on our front lawn, on the wires and the rooftops. If it weren't so cold out, I'd even go so far as to say that the darn things were having a hootenanny. What could possibly have so many birds all riled up at 6:30 in the morning? I asked myself. Then I slid my fingers through the slats in the Venetian blinds, and looked out at the yard.

This is what I saw:



The racket went on for a good hour or so until the owl took off, and all the crows just exploded behind him. It made me feel as though I was in a Hitchcock movie.

For this week's foray into new food territory, I decided to make some gyoza. The university held a food fest a few weeks ago, and I had some there that were just ridiculously good. They didn't seem as though they would be excessively difficult to make, so I snooped around to find a good recipe and wound up settling on an Anna Olson recipe. I only changed two things: first, I used lean ground pork instead of regular (it was all they had at the store), and second, I only put in about 125 grams of cabbage instead of a pound. I honestly don't know how they'd be with a full pound of cabbage in there. The little bit that I had was more than enough. It wound up making about 75 little dumplings, which are very tasty. (The other thing that I changed is that I've just been steaming them, not frying then steaming then frying.)

Not much progress to report on my Ravelympics knitting except that I've ripped out and started over again (so that I could go up a needle size). I'm pretty sure the third time's the charm, though; this gauge seems much more workable.

drink up, baby, and stay up all night

I've been visiting my mother for the last few days, and it has been absolutely wonderful. After spending an afternoon with a few friends and my mother, I departed for one of the girls' house armed with my knitting and a bottle of red wine. We wound up watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Women's Moguls on the Olympics, and the bottle of red wine was consumed entirely by me. It was interesting to revisit 2001, as it has been several years since I'd watched it last. I was quite surprised to learn that it is actually only 2h25 long, as I would have bet good money on it being more in the four hour range. It turns out that it only feels four hours long. My main memory from the last time I watched it was that I'd spent most of the film reflecting on how much George Lucas had cribbed visually from the set design of the spaceships. My main memory from this time will probably be that the ending is pretty incomprehensible when 3/4 of a bottle of red wine is inside you.

Post-red wine, my mum and I took a trip down to Toronto to visit her parents. My grandfather hasn't been well lately, so I was excited but apprehensive about seeing him. (He's 86, and has a number of health issues related to age, in addition to a recent diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis.) He had a really good day, though. He was chipper and full of jokes, and even agreed to come out of the house to visit a farming store. He doesn't remember my name, but he does remember who I am. (I blame my mother for giving me such an outlandish name.) ;) My gramma was in good spirits as well. She's not much younger than Grampa, but is in much better health. The responsibility of taking care of Grampa falls on her, and I imagine that can be very trying sometimes. They have been married for almost 60 years.

On the knitting front, I've been working on a pair of mittens for the Ravelympics. I don't want to post pictures until I've managed to knit a little more of them, so that the pattern is more visible. I've had to rip them out entirely once already due to gauge issues, but I think the end result will be worth it.

The best thing that I have done so far on reading week, aside from consuming a large amount of delicious sushi, is write a short story. It's the first thing I've written in almost six years, aside from a few snatches of very bad poetry. It's not any good, but it makes me so unbelievably happy to have written something again. Let's hope there is more to come.

Gearing up for the Ravelympics

Every competitor needs some swanky new clothing for competition. Sadly, the Ravelympics are not sponsored by HBC (and after this post, I can't really blame them for that.) Thus, I have taken it upon myself to create a new avatar for the next two weeks:



Let the games begin!

DVR Clearout I

My taping appetite has apparently exceeded my capacity to watch the things that I record, so today I decided to buckle down and watch a bunch of the stuff that I've been avoiding for a while. The Olympics are coming (perhaps you've heard?) and I anticipate that there will probably be a few events that I'll need to tape, so I want to make sure that I have room.

Part of the problem is that the kind of movie that I like (and like to tape, evidently) is the kind of movie that requires a certain frame of mind to watch: the PVR is currently full of Very Serious Films, that cannot simply be watched while I'm puttering around with other things. They need (and, arguably, deserve) my full attention. Anything that's a bit more fluffy gets watched quite quickly.

Thus far I've been successful in clearing out some CSI, Criminal Minds, and Star Trek: Voyager, but I also managed to watch The Pelican Brief, starring Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts, based on the Grisham novel of the same name. I'd watched and read The Pelican Brief years ago when they first came out (and yes, that would put me at about 11 or 12; my parents never restricted me as a reader). It was an interesting film to revisit. So much of the plot depends on conventions of film writing that are now dated and nearly obsolete. Cell phones, in particular, completely eliminate the "but how will I get ahold of you?" tension in the plot; Julia Roberts's character would have a much harder time going off the grid if the movie were written today. The ways in which the various characters are restricted (in terms of movement) by the need stay in contact with others is fascinating. In these days of email and instant communication, the idea of the hard copy of the actual Pelican Brief being passed around is also quite fascinating, as is the card catalogue/filing cabinet style research that Roberts and Washington do.

I'm not a huge Grisham fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I do find some of his work entertaining. It makes me kind of sad that what is actually a decent legal thriller is now more curious for its antique qualities than its plot.

the only thing that helps me pass the time away

It's the sixth week of the term, which puts us at the official halfway point for the year. On one hand, this is awesome, because it means that next week is the Spring Study Break, but on the other hand, I have come to the realization that I have only graded 10% of the work my students will submit to me this term, which means that the remaining 90% is still to come. Yikes.

I am making an effort to focus on the positive this term, which means that I am actually going to give myself a proper Spring Break. I had to grade my exams over the winter holidays, resulting in only 3 actual days off for me in the 2.5 weeks I had "off" work, and I am determined that I need a real break this time. This can only happy if I get a goodly chunk of work done before the break begins, of course. My plans are not especially grandiose: I am going home to see my mother, who is home alone currently, having been abandoned by my father (golfing in the States) and Youngest Sister (adventuring in New Zealand). She is talking about going to see my grandparents, maybe, and possibly doing some house painting. It will be nice to have a couple of truly relaxing, vegetative days in the middle of all of this craziness. (Once I finish grading my 125 essays, I have about 100 midterms to grade as well, with more on the way.)

On the knitting and wedding front, I just finished my wedding shawl. The pattern is called Feather Duster, and it is lovely, using ostrich lace for the repeats. The yarn is also lovely: I used a 2 ply fingering weight yarn in natural ivory from Misty Haven Alpacas, which is right outside of town. I picked it because I like the heft of fingering weight yarns in comparison with laceweights, and because the 2 ply fingering is made from Misty Haven's own alpaca herd. (Most of the yarns they carry are from an alpaca co-op, where all the members contribute fiber and then receive a proportionate amount of yarn.) Although it is a millspun yarn, it feels very much like a handspun, as the thickness varied from part to part. The fabric is likely the softest thing I've ever knit, and feels unbelievably luxurious. I cannot wait for my wedding dress to come in so that I can see the two of them together. The best part is that I made the whole shawl out of one skein--less than 400 yards. I'm ever so pleased with myself.

I've got socks on the needles right now, and I think I may actually have broken through my sock rut--I finished the first sock in three days, and am up to the gusset increases on the second already.

For this week's cooking challenge, I made Chicken Saltimbocca for supper. It actually came out really well--I even found a Marsala wine to make the sauce. The sauce, on its own, didn't taste especially good, but once it was on the chicken, it mellowed out the saltiness of the proscuitto and was generally quite tasty. I would definitely make it again.

Cowichan sweaters, HBC, and what I'm not knitting for Ravelympics

Regular commenter Castor Rouge has contributed the above photograph, taken at Ottawa's Winterlude festivities three years ago. It makes a good segue to the subject of today's blog, which manages to address a bunch of stuff that I've been pondering off and on for the last few months.

During the last [summer] Olympic games, Ravelry hosted the Ravelympics, in which various teams competed in different knitting related categories. Everyone cast on their projects during the opening ceremonies, and the first person finished in each category would "win". It's happening again this year, which is pretty cool. I'm competing on Team Three Irish Girls (for the yarn club I belong to). We have our own colourway, Sheepnuts, so called because...well...


(thanks to Kregarious for photo under Creative Commons license)

Anyhow. I was thinking about potential projects for Ravelympics, and I hit upon the idea of making a Cowichan-style sweater. In many ways, it would be the perfect project for the Vancouver Olympics: it would be uniquely Canadian; I could make it out of a heritage yarn, like Briggs and Little; it would be challenging but not intimidating; it would pay homage to the aboriginal people of British Columbia.

Unfortunately, when you're a critical theory person, these things are never so simple as that. At what point does pay homage become cultural appropriation? As a white person of British descent, would I simply be perpetuate the cycle of colonization? It doesn't help that these sweaters are already fraught with controversy in relation to this Olympic games. The Hudson's Bay Company (yes, the same company that used to trade blankets for beaver pelts) is the official clothing company for the Olympic games. As part of their collection for the Olympics, they have a sweater that they swear is *not* a Cowichan sweater. Local aboriginal groups are upset because HBC opted to contract out the sweater making rather than having aboriginal knitters make them, claiming that the Cowichans wouldn't be able to produce sweaters to HBC's strict standards. HBC also claims that their design isn't Cowichan:



I'll leave you to be the judge of that. I especially enjoyed the statement that HBC released:

It is a contemporary design inspired by a great fashion icon that is recognized as a knit sweater all across the country.

If you can tell me what "recognized as a knit sweater" means, exactly, I'd really like to hear it.

All of this is a longwinded way of saying that I'm probably just going to make a scarf rather than a sweater during the Olympics. Is there a way to mitigate that uncomfortable feeling of cultural appropriation?

Knitting, Cooking, Cleaning: The Life Domestic

It has been a busy few days here; when I haven't been thinking about the politics of knitting, I've been actually knitting. (Scary.) There's also been a lot of cooking and cleaning happening over here. Friends of ours are due to welcome a baby girl into the world in a few short days, so I've been working on a wee feather-and-fan sweater for her, and Mat and I are making up some food to take over. We've realized that we've been in a rut lately, so we're trying to be proactive in making changes in our lives.

I frequently try to tell my students that life is a learning process and that university is not necessarily about learning to identify the parts of sentences, but I tend to forget that myself. Living with my partner has meant a lot of learning for me. We have very different temperaments: he will brood where I will attack; he sleeps more than I do; he is much neater than I am. One of the things that I have learned about myself since we've moved in together is that if I don't plan my week out in advance, nothing gets done properly.

This never seemed to be an issue when I lived alone, but I think that's because I only ever had to worry about myself. If left to my own devices, I will often graze rather than eat properly, which just doesn't cut it when you need to feed someone else too. It also didn't matter when I cleaned the tub or did the dishes, or if I remembered to wash the sheets or vacuum. Add another person into the mix, though, and that does start to matter.

In the spirit of breaking out of my biggest rut, which is a food rut, I've decided to make one new recipe every week. This week's adventure in fooding will be a pork tenderloin with roasted potatoes.

Perhaps I've been going about it all wrong

The difficulties of hacking through the Gordian knot I've made of knitting and politics have been weighing on me; I've made little progress in terms of figuring out what I might like to make for the art show. It's the same crippling thought that has bogged up much of my creative writing for the last few years: everything I think of always seems so hopelessly derivative.

Then Karie passed on a link that has made me see that perhps the problem is not with me, but the way in which I am considering art as resistance and knitting as politics. Anna, of Knitting, Sex and God, writes:

What I have enjoyed about the 100 Objects series so far is that it is collapsing distinctions between ‘art’, ‘craft’, ‘tools’, ‘technology’, etc. The only criterion is that each object is an artefact – made by human beings. The semantic awkwardness there is significant – the words that easily slip in the structure of our language are ‘man-made’ – made by men, or with men representative of the whole of humanity. The whole traditional men/women, culture/nature division is particularly significant as regards ‘thingyness’, because men ‘make’ and women ‘generate’, men invent things and make decisions and get them done, whereas women give birth. Or the things that women make traditionally – textiles, food, domestic items – aren’t as valued as those of men: they are craft, not art; tools, not technology.

Feminism hasn’t always done as well as it might in trying to redress the neglect of ‘women’s things’: having diagnosed the culture/nature dualism, it has often wanted to choose one side of the divide rather than to dissolve it. So you have a disembodiedly intellectual kind of feminism that is dismissive of activities such as cooking or embroidery, versus the spiritual feminism saturated in the imagery of the natural, untouched by the social – moon, sea, soil, etc, speaking of ‘technology’ as the evil tool of patriarchy that has subjugated women and the earth. Or feminist reclamation of traditional female crafts has tended to romanticise them as being closer to the natural and part of women’s birth-giving capacities, rather than part of the general human project of negotiating the world through tools and objects that are useful and beautiful.

There's quite a lot going on there. To start with, Anna brings up the word "man-made" as significant; I would also add that the objects women produced are more often referred to as being "handmade," which is a term loaded with solipsisms, conjuring up images of macaroni picture frames and pinecone bird feeders on one hand, or expensive, "Fair Trade" wooden bowls carved in a Third World county on the other. Anna goes on to talk about the divide between intellectual vs. spiritual feminism, which in some ways reinforces this solipsism.

I think that I need to stop thinking about knitting as resistance in terms of capital P Politics, and start thinking about where knitting sits in terms of the politics of feminism, and in what ways my position as a [third wave] feminist and knitter resists, subverts, conforms, or defies this feminism.

alpacas uber alles

Castor Rouge has given me some food for thought in response to my last post about political knitting. (I will point out, though, that he likes my February Lady Sweater because of the buttons, which are Tudor Roses, and that he recognized them right away.)

I managed to sneak home this weekend, and it wound up being a very nice weekend. I had a nice long soak in my parents' bathtub, ate ridiculous amounts of sushi, and spent time knitting and talking with a good friend. I made good progress on a very sweet baby sweater, which I will hopefully finish before wee Abigail Autumn makes her way into the world.

On Friday, I was sitting on the couch and knitting, and my dad said to me, "Of all my daughters, you are not the one I would've thought to be the knitter." This was quite surprising to me. "Which of us did you think it would be?" I asked. "I'm not sure," he replied. "Just not you. But you really love it, don't you? You get it from your grandmother, though. Your great-grandmother too."

My dad's mother passed away when I was fourteen after a long battle with a number of illness, although I believe it came down to Hepatitis C and cirrhosis in the end. She taught me to knit years before that, and after making a few little things, I forgot all about it until I started working at The Historic Site Which Shall Not Be Named. It makes me very sad that she will never know how grateful I am for those early lessons, or see any of the things that I have made. I can still remember the first square I knit, in white yarn (probably acrylic), and how disappointed I was that it didn't look like "real" knitting. (It was garter stitch, and I thought it would or should look like stockinette.)

Part of the impetus to knit, for me, is that connection to the past. How does that connect to the politics of knitting? I'm not sure. I have a few more thoughts, but they will have to wait until tomorrow.

art as resistance

Every year for International Women's Week, one of the local galleries does a juried art show, usually inconjunction with the Gender Equality and Social Justice department here at the university. This year's theme is Art of Resistance, and I would really like to submit a knitted piece. Unfortunately, I just don't know what to submit.

Many knitters, all much smarter than I, do incredible politically minded projects--Rav had a whole group of "Knitters for Obama" who came up with some mindblowing ideas. The Body Count Mittens have always been a personal favourite of mine; since you finish the mittens on different dates, they will have different numbers on them, representing the number of casualties in the Iraq war. I considered doing Afghanistan mittens, but I don't know that I'd have access to the body count information, and I also don't want to simply re-tread ground others have already walked on. It's hard to justify knitting as a subversive act when you're following a pattern.

Poetry mittens are another option; perhaps with lines from Rich or Atwood? Cixous, even? But that still doesn't feel like it's quite enough.

Part of the problem is that I have very mixed feelings about the relationship between knitting and politics. In some ways, yes, it is very much about resistance: it is an act of reclamation. I reclaim my past (imagined?), participating in the culture of my ancestors. I create things by hand: every item that I make is something unique, something not created by a machine or in a sweatshop. It is labour but also love. I reclaim it as a feminist act: I knit because I choose to knit; I knit primarily for myself. The act of knitting is political because it destabilizes commonly encountered cultural attitudes about knitting and knitters.

The flip side is that it only does these things because of my class; is the reclamation of a working class profession as my upper middle class hobby really all that awesome, or just kind of bourgeois? Knitting isn't truly a matter of necessity for me; it is a luxury, and one I choose to pursue. Does the mere fact of choice problematize any arguments about reclamation?

Even if you want to ignore all of these, there are still the political issues that every knitter must face: body image and body politics; man vs. animal fibre; the environmental costs of plant fibres; neoconservatism (women who see knitting as a reclamation of traditional gender roles and values) vs. progressive liberalism (people who see knitting as an honourable craft); bargain vs. luxury yarns; local yarn stores vs. online stores; stash size as a measure of worth; the DIY esthetic; design and designers; community.

How can I turn all of that into a simple handmade garment?

The first week back at work was a busy one. The school physically shut down for two weeks, which complicated the return to work; the building was opened only an hour before my first class. It went well enough, though many of the students who failed part I are still somehow registered for part II, so I will have to do some wrangling with the Registrar's Office later this week.

Back in October I mentioned visiting the dermatologist, who wanted me to come back for a biopsy in December. I got the results a few days ago. The mole was pre-cancerous, which officially puts me in every single high risk group for skin cancer. I know that it isn't a big deal, as pre-cancerous is not at all the same as cancerous, but I am going to have to be really careful about staying out of the sun whenever possible, and watching my 300+ moles to make sure that they are not changing at all.

The great Stashdown of 2010 continues on; the wedding shawl is working out very well. The yarn is so soft and lovely. I also cast on a simple pair of handwarmers that I can wear at work, which I am making out of the handspun baby camel yarn that my mum bought for me on the Isle of Skye. I've never knit with handspun before, so it's quite neat that way. The yarn is so special that I want to keep the pattern quite simple, so I'm making up my own and I'm pleased with the way it's working out.

if she can't find you handsome...

My annual sinus cold has set in, just in time for the start of the school year, when I have to do lots of talking. Huzzah. Fortunately most of my students have had me before, so they know that this is not quite what I sound like or act like; I am hopeful that things will get better soon.

There are currently men in the kitchen doing manly things, which in this instance means "home renos while drinking beer." It's a bit scary. When we bought the house, it came with some appliances, including a very old refrigerator. The fridge lived in its own little alcove in the kitchen. When we replaced the fridge, we quickly discovered that old fridges are in fact quite small by comparison to their modern counterparts, and the new fridge did not fit into the alcove.

Fast forward a year and a half or so, and the men have decided to remove a portion of one wall to enlarge the space for the fridge to fit into. This necessitated power tools, a trip to Home Depot, and beer. Naturally. This is, apparently, how renovations work.

It actually worked out pretty well. The fridge seems quite happy in its new home. The cupboard above the fridge was out tea cupboard, and we had to clean it out so that the men could do their work. Sadly, this brought us to the realization of how much tea we own. (Mat would like to pretend that it is all mine, but frankly, that is a lie. Most of the black teas are mine, but there's a fair amount of green and rooibos that belong to him.) To give you an idea, we nearly filled a large Rubbermaid container with tea. I think it may be time for a tea purge soon enough.

In knitting news, I have begun work on my wedding shawl. The pattern uses an Ostrich lace pattern, which is just beautiful, and I'm knitting it in a local alpaca yarn from the Misty Haven Alpaca farm out in Corbeil. It's so beautiful and soft to work with. I was doing some googling this afternoon and came across a quaich with an inscription reading, "Of Earthly Joys, Thou Art My Choice." I quite like that.

into the future

It has been a surprising productive weekend around these parts. I finally finished all of my grading from last semester and submitted my final grades. (160 final exams x 30 minutes apiece to grade=80 hours of grading and a very sad grader.)
I cleaned up my craftroom (you can see my work table now! It's made of plastic) and cleaned up my bedroom. I've got laundry in both the washer and dryer. Best of all, there's a turkey in the oven. It's my very first turkey, and I really hope that it comes out okay. It smells pretty good.

I've joined a destashing game on Ravelry for the next few months in hopes of getting some projects done (and not buying more yarn!) I came out of Christmas with a skein of Fleece Artist's Scotian Silk and a skein of Handmaiden's Mini-Maiden, plus some yarn from a Harry Potter Quidditch swap. I am hoping that I will be able to go the next three months without adding any more to my stash (aside from my Three Irish Girls yarn of the month). I finished my first project of the year this morning: a little cozy for Richard Parker, my iPod, with an owl cable on it. Next up is finishing my hooded scarf, and not a moment too soon: it is cold here, and when it isn't cold, it's windchills in the -30s. Brrr.

The university opens back up tomorrow. My schedule this term is pretty good--I have Fridays off, and I finish at 12:30 on Thursdays, so I'm hoping that I will be able to make good use of my time and get some academic and creative work done. It's good to be ambitious.

New Year's was strange this year. The event itself wasn't strange, especially, but it was strange to reflect back on the last ten years of my life. The strangest thing was to think about NYE 2000. I spent it at a friend's house in the country with my high school friends. Of all the people that I saw that night, I talk to one semi-regularly now. So many things about me are so different now from what they were back then--I am very lucky to have had the opportunities and friendships that I have over the last ten years.

With Glowing Hearts

The Olympic Torch Relay rolled into North Bay last night, having made its way through the tiny village that is my hometown the day before. I went on the advice of one of my uncles. He is sarcastic and cynical, almost always dressed in black, and refuses to be photographed. He and my aunt once owned cats named Topper and Strummer after members of the Clash. So I figured that if he, of all people, was recommending the torch run as something to be seen, then it was worth seeing.

It was pretty commercialized, since Coca-Cola is a sponsor, but there was still lots of neat stuff--the live performances of musicians and acrobats, as well as several community groups. There were even fireworks at the end. My feet were pretty cold by the time that it was over, but that's what I get for wearing running shoes instead of proper boots.

I bought a new winter coat yesterday, after I finally admitted that the boiled wool peacoats that I adore (in a very pretentious, hipster way) are simply not warm enough to cut it in a northern Ontario winter. The coat I picked up is a skiing/snowboarding coat, and it attracted me initially because it has birds on it. (I am simple like that.) It also has a bajillion pockets (and armpit zippers for those days when I am skiing hard) and places to keep my electronic equipment. (Does anyone remember when coats were just coats? And your lift ticket went on the front zipper and it would fly up in your face for the whole night and you liked it? Those were simpler times, Gentle Reader.)

The best part is that it was a $200 coat on sale for $50. I do love a good bargain.

It's New Year's Eve, and I am spending it with the old roommates. I hope that it will be a good night. I really dislike New Year's - to me, it is the prom night of holidays: much ado about nothing, a night where anything could happen but nothing ever does.

Christmas Eve Eve

I am not grading exams right now. I should be, but I am not, because it manages to be both tedious and painful and I have developed seasonal ADD that prevents me from focusing my eyes on a single object for longer than twenty seconds.

It's totally a real medical condition, you guys. For real.

The Christmas shopping is all done, although I still have a few gifts to make, and mostly everything is wrapped and sitting in a laundry basket at the door, waiting to be taken away.

It's a bit too early to think about New Year's Resolutions, but I do want to think about the things I want to knit next year. So far, tentative knitting goals are include: 1) knitting ten sweaters (Rogue, Featherweight Cardigan, Coraline, Wrenna, St. James, Icelandic Star are all on the list so far--the really sick part is that I can knit all of these out of stash yarn). 2) My wedding shawl. 3) At least one project per month from my Three Irish Girls stash. 4) Socks. I love wearing handmade socks. I just don't particularly want to make them.

Take A Good Look At My Face

The school term finally ended on Wednesday, and I am still marking furiously to catch up to my students, who expect to get their essays back on Monday. They will then write the exam on Tuesday (at night!) and I will mark furiously to get it done before Christmas. Good thing I did not sign myself up for lots of Christmas knitting this year.

I did finish the one project I was really keen on: a Swallowtail Shawl for my grandmother. My grandfather has been very sick lately (and has just been diagnosed with a chronic lung condition) and my grandmother has been having a hard time, since she is his primary caretaker. She used to make all sorts of things: she knit, crocheted, sewed, smocked, etc. until her arthritis became too painful for her to continue. Her grandchildren definitely benefitted from all of this creativity, so I wanted to make her something to show her that I was thinking of he.



I also published my first pattern this week: The Celtic Moonrise Mittens are available for free on Ravelry, and I've already got an idea in mind for the next pattern, which will also be mittens. I had a lovely custom dyed merino-silk blend arrive in the mail this week that will be perfect for it.

Sometimes the knitting life is so much better than the real life. Although, in real life, I need to sing the praises of Vista Print. We ordered Save the Date announcements for the wedding on Monday night, and they were printed and at our house by noon on Thursday. The quality is really nice, and the prices were very reasonable. I have a calendar coming in the next few days, and I hope that the quality is as good.

The Joys of Being A Pet Owner

We've had Bad Cat for approximately 18 months now, and for the most part, he has been a delight, and our lives have been all the richer for his presence in our house. (Exceptions to this statement include his need to have someone awake with him when he's awake, his need to eat--or try to eat--everything, his cries of distress to arouse sympathy from the neighbours, his...odorous...contributions to the bathroom, some occasional scratching, and the time he ate a plant and vomited bright green on our duvet.)

This holiday season, Cat has decided to contribute to the family by helping with the decorations. Mat and I set up our tree yesterday, but didn't have a chance to start decorating it. The knitting guild is having a sale/trade table at our holiday party in a couple of weeks, and while I was evaluating what parts of the stash I could be persuaded to part with, I found the Dread Sock. As Bad Cat has recently expressed considerable enjoyment in the unravelling of half-knit socks, I broke the yarn and passed it on to him.

Mat worked a night shift last night, and I went out for a few hours to attend a silent auction in benefit of the local AIDS Committee (alas, I did not win anything). When I got home, I saw this:



On closer inspection, I could see this:


Needless to say, Bad Cat is very pleased with himself:


He's lucky he's cute.

And your bird can sing

I have spent the last hour playing The Beatles Rock Band and I have sung myself hoarse. It's marvellous! Sometimes I like to imagine a world where karaoke is made for people like me: slightly tone deaf, but with a love of music that makes up for. Someone who isn't interested in singing Top 40 hits. I want Crowded House Rock Band and Elliott Smith SingStar. I want to sing songs that actually mean something.

I miss the Albion Hotel in Guelph. I miss the jukebox, and the Strongbow (one of my least favourite things about this town is the total lack of cider on tap anywhere). I miss eating nachos and putting ten dollars of quarters in the jukebox and pissing other people off because the next ninety minutes of music were all mine and I was going to be drunk and enjoy every word out of that beautiful lighted box.

Today was a good day at the end of a long week. Mat went hunting for deer, which left me alone with a queen sized bed. There is something to be said for having a whole bed to yourself. He came back last night, as the hunting party reached their quota quite early in the week (and it was raining).

The winter Interweave came today, along with my skein of Dye For Glory yarn: Three Irish Girls' Father Time. It's beautiful and manly. I got it on Finley Fingering, which I'm quickly realizing is one of my favourite sock yarn bases. It's very squooshy.


I also grabbed a few snaps of some finished projects. First is Caitlin's birthday rpesent, the ubiquitous February Lady Sweater:



I also finished the Ripley hat from Whimsical Little Knits 2:



And I have cast on a Swallowtail Shawl as a gift for my gramma.

In which I participate in gratuitous acts of commerce

Ian and I took a trip over to Sudbury today to visit our favourite warehouse super store, Costco, and to take in the other shops. It was a productive, if funny, shopping day. I was quite excited to get a Friends and Family coupon for Old Navy worth 30% off the prices, and I picked up some sweaters and long sleeve Ts. Ian used it to buy baby clothes. It was quite touching to see him pick out the little pink dresses and sweaters. My favourite was the hooded fleece sleeper--it has ears on the hood.

I also managed to snag a new Roots hoodie from their new "We're Not the Official Clothiers of the Canadian Olympic Team Anymore, So We'll Just Happen to Come Out With a Canada-themed Line Right Before the Olympics" line. It has thumb holes in the cuffs, which I love. Hurray for warm hands.

Once we got home, I took a quick trip downtown to the new yarn store. It's been open for a few months now, and I haven't bought much there. The selection is great; I've just been broke/living under the delusion of 'stashbusting'. I needed to pick something up for a swap I'm doing, and this store carries Misty Haven Alpacas' yarns. (As my swap partner lives in the Netherlands, I thought it would be great to send her some local yarn.)

holding pattern

Gentle reader, the last few weeks have kicked my ass.

I managed to pick up the hinny, as we've taken to calling H1N1, somewhere, and while I have been better in every way that counts for about a week now, I'm still pretty tired and prone to taking naps whenever I can get away with it. The hinny was unpleasant: I was so miserable I didn't even want to knit. The worst part was the fever and chills. At one point, I was dressed in fleece pyjamas, wearing a housecoat, wrapped in a down-filled duvet, and wrapped in another blanket, and I still couldn't get warm.

Thankfully that is all in the past.

We had a beautiful day here today. It was sunny, and almost warm (about 11 Celsius); I raked some leaves in our backyard. The backyard is much bigger than I remember it being. (Our lot is 34'x125', so I know how big it is, but sometimes I forget what that actually means.) I really hope that next summer I can get my act together to give the backyard the TLC it needs, as it could be quite beautiful. Perhaps if it doesn't rain every other day next year.

I cast on my first knit sock in almost six months last week; I'm finding that my store bought socks are not cutting it in terms of keeping my feet warm. And it's not like I have a shortage of sock yarn...I was almost half finished my sock when I finally admitted that it was too small, and tore it out. Naturally, the excitement of yarn being frogged was too much for the cat to handle, and he grabbed the sock in his mouth and ran off with it. He managed to unravel it for me all around the kitchen and living room. He was having so much fun that I couldn't quite bring myself to stop him.

Now that I'm back in the land of the living, things should be more interesting around here.

drowning not waving

The first big markathon of the year has been underway for about two weeks now, and I am so close to being done I can taste it: I only have about 23 papers left to grade out of 173. I am also so close to being done that I am almost totally braindead. I have literally marked my way through three pencils. It's a wonder I can stand up right.

I've had almost no time for non-marking related activities, but I did manage to sneak down to Toronto to attend a baby shower for my cousin (who is first in our family to procreate) and to visit The Brides Project to try on wedding dresses. I had high hopes for The Brides Project (they sell donated dresses and then donate the proceeds to camps for children with cancer) but there really wasn't anything that tickled my fancy. Most of the dresses were too elaborate for my tastes. I tried on an Alfred Sung dress that was totally ridiculous: heavy, heavy satin, huge skirts, huge train, a sheer, beaded halter neck over a satin sweetheart neckline. It looked dreadful on me, but would have been fabulous on someone with the personality to carry it off.

Far from the shores of England

Yesterday was one of the best days I've had in a very, very long time. It's Fall Fair weekend here in the village, which means it's a time of parades and tractors and cows and oddly shaped vegetables. My father's Masonic Lodge was sponsoring a child identification program, and he had asked all of the sisters to volunteer for a few hours. It wound up being a lot more interesting and fun than I had thought.

When I was a child, child identification programs usually consisted of inky fingerprints on an index card. (Since our father was a police officer, all of the sisters have amazing fingerprinting technique--we were taught how to roll them out from a young age.) Child identification has changed pretty substantially in the 20 years since I was a child. The packages we put together yesterday consisted of digitally scanned fingerprints, digital photos, a short video clip of the child answering questions, a dental impression, and a DNA swab (along with their parents' information). The Masons were all quite impressed with our computer skills. It's good to know that when they aren't keeping the electric car down, they're actually doing good in their communities.

My dad took us (sisters + cousin) out for dinner to thank us for volunteering, and we went to the Wild Wing the next town over. I had never been to a Wild Wing before, and it was fantastic. I'm a fairly unadventurous sort, so I tried the medium wings and the Desperado wings (medium + maple). Youngest sister had something a dill sauce on top, which I was quite happy to skip. The wings were so good--just at the upper edge of what I can stand to eat, heatwise, and sharp and vinegary in taste. There was also ample celery, carrots, and blue cheese dip.

Youngest sister also managed to throw a bone right into my beer glass, because she is a jerk.

We had two pitchers of beer between the five of us (except me, who was driving and had her single glass of beer destroyed by an errant chicken wing), and my dad attempted to pass on the manly skill of how to pour a beer properly. This was less successful the more everyone drank, and we wound up telling stories of SOME of the stupid things that we had done as teenagers while drinking underage. Apparently, according to my dad, we were never quite as subtle about it as we wanted to think we were.

Mum comes home from Scotland today!

Alpacas Part II

Sadly there are no alpacas in this post, so if you only like things that are actually about alpacas, feel free to skip this one.

Remember that time I told you the story about the alpacas? Remember how, in the epilogue, I talked about my parents and their trip through Alberta's Badlands?

Well, I have something to show you.



These horses are just hanging out, doing horsey things.



These horses have just been yelled at: "Alpaca alpaca alpaca!"

What do you mean, it's only Wednesday?

It's been a busy week here in North Bay Rock City. The T-1 year countdown to the wedding is on as of last Friday, my special snowflakes handed in their first essay assignments to me, and it may (or may not) have snowed at some point in the last seven days. I did not personally witness any of this alleged snowing, so I am opting to believe that it didn't actually happen.

I did, however, break down and turn on the furnace a few days ago when I got home and the thermostat told me it was 14 degrees in the house. Brrr!

I also had an appointment with a dermatologist on Monday. My body is covered in moles--I easily have between 200-300 of them. (According to the US Cancer Institute, most people have between 10-40 moles.) I also fall into just about every category of risk for melanoma: fair skin and light hair, freckles, UV exposure and sunburns, having more than 50 moles, and having many dysplastic moles.

There's one mole on my arm that the doctor described as being "just wrong", so it's going to be biopsied in December, and in the meantime I am not to ever sunbathe again, ever, and to wear long sleeves and a hat when in the sun. I also get to check myself over every month to make sure that nothing's changed mole-wise.

Then today Mat was playing with the cat and asked, "Is it the cat's ear bleeding?" It wasn't, but there was a large red bump inside his ear, and another one where his eyebrow would be (if he was human. Do cats have eyebrows?) Thankfully, the vet was able to see us today, and my poor kitty has neurogenic dermatitis--basically, he's stressed out and it's manifesting itself in these sores on his skin. He was given a cortisone injection and is now on the road to recovery, so hopefully he'll be all better soon.

We also got him on a scale while we were there, and my wee beastie weighs a not-so-wee 16 lbs., 8 oz.

A sweater for Caitlin is on my needles currently. It's another February Lady, but I've done the yoke in Noro Yuzen (a wool/silk/mohair variegated) and the lace part in Berroco Inca Gold (a silk-merino cable spun). The Inca Gold is heavenly to knit with. The finished sweater will be unique, but hopefully in a way that suits Cait. (And hopefully it will be finished in time for her birthday next month.)

Cool for Cats

The lovely Tara came up to visit for the weekend, and we had a smashing time. We visited the farmer's market, the library's annual booksale, the yarn store, the local eco-boutique, and had lunch at a pub. (The pub now offers sweet potato fries as an option. God save me from sweet potato fries, particularly if they are served with chipotle mayo. YUM.)

We also got to play with a spinning wheel. Tara did really well for her first effort; I started my second attempt at spinning this morning with the alpaca/merino/silk roving I bought at the alpaca farm. It turned out gorgeous--I can't believe how much better my spinning was this time than the first time I tried. The cat was also quite excited, and tried his best to help.




The other big news this weekend was that I finished my Rosamund's Cardigan. I purchased the buttons from The Hibou Boutique. They are made out of local oak limbs by the people at the Pie Bird Bed and Breakfast, and I love that the holes are drilled in a star shape.

The truth about alpacas

Intrepid, semi-anonymous reader R. asks, "What is it with the sisters Don and alpaca farms? Mystical kinship, like daemons in His Dark Materials perhaps?"

Well, R., let me tell you a story.

I have liked alpacas since I first started knitting. I think that they are really cute, which I will demonstrate with some photos of the last time we visited the alpacas:





I also really like their fibre, which is very different from sheep's wool. It's very soft, and super warm. It also had no lanolin (the heavy, oily substance that sheep naturally produce that softens their wool and is sometimes used in cosmetic products to soften your skin).

The family's obsession with alpacas actually dates back to the summer of 2007. That summer, my parents spent three months house and cat sitting on a tiny island off the coast of British Columbia.

(There were also some deer involved.)



Youngest sister and I were able to go out to visit them for three weeks at the end of the summer, and had a blast touring around the wee island, as well as visiting Vancouver Island. When we went off Island, we would take a ferry across, so any trips off really needed to be quite substantial. One day, we went driving to visit Coombs, BC, where there are goats on the roof, and my dad promised that each of us could choose one place to stop, with no questions asked and no protests from other passengers in the car.

One of the first places we drove past was an alpaca farm. I put in my request for a stop as soon as I saw it, but it was close to lunchtime and everyone wanted to eat, so I was told we could visit it on the way back. Youngest sister had never seen alpacas before, so she was quite excited; we could see about twenty of them grazing in the fields.

Coombs wound up being such a good time that we spent the whole day there, and by the time we were making our way back to the ferry dock, the alpaca farm was closed for the day. As we drove past, Dad slowed down so that we could have a good look at the alpacas.

"I want them to look at me," said youngest sister.

"You have to call the alpacas," said my dad. "If you yell, 'alpaca alpaca alpaca' really loud at them, they will look at you."

"Really?" said youngest guilelessly. She rolled down her window, stuck her head out, and yelled, "Alpaca alpaca alpaca!" very quickly.

Sure enough, all of the alpacas turned to look at her. It was quite funny. Perhaps you had to be there.

(A month later, when my parents were driving back the 4700 km. across Canada, they stopped in Drumheller, AB, to visit the dinosaurs. They drove past a field where some horses were grazing. My dad pulled over the van, snapped a picture of the horses, and then yelled "Alpaca alpaca alpaca!" and took another picture of the horses. In the second picture, the horses are all looking at the camera. My dad swears this is true.)

And that is the story of why the sisters Don are obsessed with alpacas--and that doesn't even get into the slew of awesome alpaca related puns that can be made.

Words, Stories, Ideas

The first week back went decently well. My grammar teaching skills are not great, but things got better as the week went on. It will be an exhausting semester, and I'm going to have try to extra hard to keep myself healthy. I'm pretty sure that I will get either H1N1 (Knit One Purl One, as my mom keeps calling it) or the regular flu this year if I let myself get run down. This is one of the "perks" of working with a university-age population: once it hits, it will hit our population hard.

Tomorrow, I get to make a trip out to the alpaca farm with Caitlin. I am really excited about this because I am going to buy the yarn to make my wedding shawl. I don't have a pattern picked out yet (although I do have a few in mind, and I have purchased Knitted Lace of Estonia). I'm also excited to see the alpacas, of course.

In one of my classes this week, we talked about how English majors are interested primarily in three things: words, stories, and ideas. I think that knowing which of these is most important to you says a lot about the type of person you are (literature student or otherwise). The importance of each has changed for me over the years. Right now, I would say that story holds the most importance: I've been watching a lot of TV lately, and I feel that TV has really come into its own as a medium of storytelling in the last eight or nine years. Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, LOST are only a few examples of shows that demonstrate the possibilities of storytelling.

I also like stories and storytelling because they are a part of my knitting. I love knowing where my yarn comes from, and how it has made its way to me. Part of my affectio for Three Irish Girls (aside from Sharon's obvious talent--she did win 4 of the 8 Dye for Glory categories she entered) comes from her use of Celtic names for her colourways, and also the fact that my sisters and I are three Scottish girls. I love that knitting connects me to my family's stories, too: both of my grandmothers were knitters, as are my mother and one of my sisters. It also connects me to my historic site, to the history of Huronia and to my time as an interpreter there. I love the ways that patterns can form parts of stories, whether in their names or in their content.

This is why I want to buy the yarn for my wedding shawl from Misty Haven Alpacas. I'm not getting married in North Bay, but this city is a big piece of my life, of my story, and including a local yarn in my wedding day will be a nice tribute to that.

tell me why I don't like Mondays

The year begins for real tomorrow morning, at 8:30 a.m. sharpish. I am nervous but also not, which is about par for the course for me. I will have to brave the roundabout, possibly with actual people in it, which is possibly scarier than other things.

The gross thing about Mondays this year is that I have class from 8:30 to 5:30. There are some breaks in between, but it's not enough time to really do anything other than sit in my office and knit. (And mark, presumably, someday when assignments have been handed in.) Tomorrow doesn't have marking but it does have a department meeting. Our department is up for review again this year, so we'll be learning about that and the various other things that will happen this year, like library funding. Yay.

I am almost done the raglan increases upto the arms on my Rosamund's Cardigan. Once that's done it's into the more boring parts of the cardigan. The cables do keep it interesting, but other than that, it will be a good, simple knit, perfect for the office.

Return to Oz

I finished my top secret knitting project and sent it away. Once I'm allowed to talk about it, I can tell you about the new techniques that I learned and about my thoughts on the pattern, but for the meantime, I'll tell you simply that I got a great fit out of it and that I can't wait to have it back so that I can wear it.

My next project is Rosamund's Cardigan. There's lots of new techniques in this project, too, like reversible cables, and cabling without a cable needle. I actually much prefer cabling with a needle, and in fact had scripted a mini-rant in my head about how I don't understand why people think cabling with a needle is so hard. Then I went to a union meeting and forgot my cable needle, so I had to do a couple of rows without one. It wasn't quite as traumatic as I'd figured it would be, but I still like using the needle better. I'm hoping that I can finish up to the sleeves by tomorrow.

School started again year. I don't know who decided a Thursday start was a wise idea, but it's the kind of decision that makes it quite obvious that the people making the decisions are not the people who are teaching classes. I had one class today, and had to cancel my seminar sections for today and tomorrow, so the work will start in earnest on Monday. I have almost 170 students this year across 9 seminar sections, so it is going to be a rough working slog--the turnarounds for grading are supposed to be three weeks or less, and I fear that those will be three very unpleasant weeks.

I find myself feeling very anxious tonight, and I'm not even entirely sure why I am. Perhaps because the course I'm teaching is an entirely new course, and one focused on writing skills in general and academic writing in particular. I know how to write (and like to think that I wrote well as an academic) but I don't know that I know how to teach someone how to write, per se. There's also the part where my students are going to hate it...

One of my colleagues is teaching a course on online identities. I think that I will have to ask to sit in on that.

Joss is...

Girl Tuesday and I have spent the summer knitting while watching our way through Firefly, and we capped that off tonight by watching both Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog and Serenity.

The first time I saw Serenity, I hadn't watched the show at all, and came into it as one of those things that everybody kept raving about and that I was supposed to like. Every once in a while, though, there is a reason why you're supposed to like those things. I remember really enjoying Serenity when I saw it, and once I watched Firefly, I greatly enjoyed it. Seeing the movie now is such a different experience: I know the characters so much better, and that knowing makes the movie more uneven, somehow. It just wasn't as good as I remembered it being.

And also, Book dies, and that ticks me off.

Serendipity

Mat was supposed to have gone fishing in Quebec with his father this past weekend, but he couldn't get four days in a row off to make the trip. He did get Monday and Tuesday off, so we decided to head south to visit our parents and work on some of the details for our wedding.

All in all, it was a good trip home (if short). We got to spend time with our families, and made good progress on the wedding front. The highlight of the trip, for me, was visiting Burnetts and Struth, which is a company in Barrie that makes kilts and sells various other bits of Scottish-ness. We wanted to go with my dad to price out kilts for the wedding, and rentals for the groomsmen. My father had never been before, and I think he was very surprised at all of the neat things that they have for sale. (Actually, I'm quite sure of that; he has made a Christmas list of all the things that he would like.)

Once the saleslady ascertained that we were looking to order kilts in the Modern Dress Gordon tartan, she found a kilt on the rack to show us what the construction looked like. It was too small for my dad, but Mat thought it might fit him. The saleslady agreed once she'd measured him, and sent him into the fitting room to try it on. When he came out, she adjusted it for him, and it was a perfect fit.

For their custom kilts, you have three options: machine sewn, machine and handsewn, and completely handsewn, with price increasing according to the amount of handsewing. The kilt that Mat tried on was completely handsewn, which should have priced it at about $800. This one was on sale for $450. Apparently, when you're having a kilt made, if your body shape changes substantially, it is easier to start over than it is to alter an existing kilt. When this happens, they start over and then sell the original kilt at a discounted price. (The measurements for the kilt are more elaborate than just a waist measurement, too--there are knees and height/weight involved. Which is why they are usually custom and not off the rack.)

So what, then, are the odds that on a day where we've taken a spontaneous trip to Barrie, that there would be a handsewn kilt, made to my fiance's exact measurements, in my family's tartan, waiting for us at nearly half the actual cost?

We've bought our first thing for the wedding. Somehow that makes it seem more real.

working for the weekend

I've been taping both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager on the PVR for the last several months, and the series of TNG went full circle last week. Unfortunately, somehow the PVR managed to tape only Part I of the finale. Colour me disappointed.

The clock is ticking on my return to work. We have a late start this year because of where our Labour Day falls, and things don't start in earnest until the 14th of September, so I have been avoiding accepting that my life will be very, very busy for the next few months. The course I usually teach has been split from a full year course to two half year courses, which dictates a much more frenetic pace to the semester. I also have approximately 165 students. It's going to be a lot of marking this year, that's for sure.

I'm helping an old roommate move in with his fiance today, and a friend from teacher's college is swinging by tonight. It is a cold, wet, and potentially miserable day here. If it weren't raining, I'd take my new February Lady out for its inaugral wearing. I made an Urchin beret yesterday out of a Fleece Artist kit I had kicking around in my stash. I held a strand of a thick and thin yarn with a mohair-wool-silk boucle, and it looks gorgeous. Exactly what I needed for my new grey wool coat. I have plans for another Urchin in a few weeks. I love patterns that knit up in a day.

Cat Beast

I have determined that the reason why I am so fond of How I Met Your Mother is that it is produced by the writers/producers of my beloved Clone High. I'm also into the third season of Buffy, which is a much better show than previously expected, although it does leave me feeling a little like Joss Whedon just keeps writing the same show again, pitting the characters in different settings. The parallels to Firefly are fun, but disappointing.

Basically, I want to be watching Battlestar Galactica again for the first time, and am always going to be disappointed that I'm not.

world turning

Everything is a whirlwind. This weekend featured a quick trip to visit my parents, who had purchased concert tickets for the whole family to go see Great Big Sea down in Toronto. It's kind of nice to go to shows with my dad, who is of an age now where he doesn't see the point in having crappy seats, and is always willing to pay for better seats. The last time we saw Great Big Sea, back in November, we had front row seats (due to some Ticketbastard stalking on Dad's part). The seats weren't that good this time, but it was a good show.

I also got to do some shopping with my mum, including a trip to the yarn store in Barrie to check out their pre-fall inventory sale. The next thing I knew, I had eight balls of Sublime Organic Merino DK (how could I say no to that, at $2/ball?) and four skeins of Berroco's Peruvia Quick ($5/hank). The Merino DK honestly feels closer to a worsted than a DK to me, so I'm anxious to see how it knits up.

I was also able to pick up some new clothes for work. I've lost about 25 lbs. in the last nine months, and none of my old clothes fit properly anymore. It will take a while to build up a wardrobe that actually fits the way it's supposed to, but I've at least made a dent in it.

maybe I'm amazed

I had an entire post written about the wedding I attended this weekend, but Blogger managed to both eat the post AND the draft. Bollocks.

Thus, I will leave you with this, since I can't recreated the entire thing:

aaron + jess // a short film about us from stillmotion on Vimeo.

In Conversation

[While watching So You THink You Can Dance Canada, we see a dancer use a very poor cover of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes"]

Me: You know, I haven't entirely given up on "In Your Eyes" as a wedding song.

Fiance: Really?

Me: Yeah. It's the whole "In your eyes/ I see the doorway to a thousand churchs" line. It's gorgeous.

Fiance: I think we're avoiding the real issue here.

Me: We are?

Fiance: Yes. Why don't we just accept the obvious?

Me: The obvious?

Fiance: Our wedding song is Distant Sun.

Me: It is? It is. It is! How did I not know this?

Fiance: You're dumb. I think we'd talked about a few months ago but decided against it for some reason.

Me: I don't remember what those reasons were, so obviously they weren't very good reasons.

Fiance: Agreed.

Me: Distant Sun is pretty much my favourite song ever.

Fiance: I know.

Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland

Scotland has been on my mind these last few days. I'm not really sure why this has come up now, exactly, although we are coming up on the sixth anniversary of the last time that I went.

I want to go back so bad I can almost taste it. I want to revisit many of the things that I did see, and I want to bring Mat with me so that I can show him these things and these places, so that he can understand where my family comes from. His family is French-Canadian (although franco-ontarienne and not quebecoise) and has been in Canada for many generations--so many so that no one really knows (or cares) how long. My dad, along with his parents and his sister, came to Ontario in the late 1950s; they travelled around a fair bit because my grandfather was an electrician for the Post Office (I think--I will have to double check that with my dad) but our family is from Dunfermline, in Fife initially. My great-great grandfather on my mother's side was from Glasgow (the Gallowgate to be precise) and came to Canada as a Barnardo Boy--orphans that were rounded up and farmed out to the colonies as domestic labour. My g-g grandfather was treated well by the family that got him, from what we can tell, which was not typical for many of these children.

I also want to see the things that I didn't see: Campbelton, in the south, where my dad was born; the pub my dad's grandfather owned; the Isle of Skye; the north; more of Charles Rennie MacIntosh's work; woolen mills.

My parents went last summer--my dad for the first time since he was 16, and my mum for the first time. They did a two week driving tour and saw more of the country than Mila and I did. My mum loved it so much that she's going back for ten days this fall. She and her sister are travelling to Loch Ness to run in a marathon (or a 5K in my mum's case) and then doing more sightseeing.

There is a knitting camp in Stirling next August, and I would love to go to that. Stirling was my second favourite place (the first being Dunfermline, where I got to spend the day with two of my great-aunts and eat my own weight in Scottish food) that Mila and I visited while we were there. The castle is wonderful, and the town is quite nice, too. We had lunch at a little pub, and Mila didn't know what Yorkshire Pudding was, so she gave her share to me (and regretted it later when she saw how awesome it was).

Unfortunately, it looks like I'm getting married next September, and all of my spare time and money for the next little bit is going to get funneled into that. I reckon it would probably cost me about $2000 Canadian to do two weeks in Scotland, and that's just not viable.

Maybe in a few years. I hope.

A Tidy Mind in A Tidy House

My office, aka the craft room, has been looking rather like some sort of yarn storm had hit it: There were project ends everywhere, uncatalogued yarn, and even a few sad, abandoned projects. So I did the only thing that someone who doesn't want to do the dishes could do: I cleaned my office.

I reorganized my plastic drawer sets so that all of my fabric was in one (and filled up an empty banker's box with more fabric). I then filled two drawers with sock yarn, and two more with worsted weight yarn. (That might seem like a lot of yarn to you. I assure you, it is not. It does not, for example, include the yarn in my giant plastic bin, the yarn that is stored in the three duvet bags on top of the wooden shelves, the bag of novelty yarns that people keep gifting me with, the aforementioned abandoned projects, or any of the yarn that is currently downstairs.)

You can actually see the floor now. I guess that means I should do the dishes.

Tonight is the finale of my one reality TV show guilty please, So You Think You Can Dance. I'm having a hard time caring much--it's been a really lacklustre season compared to previous showings. I'll still watch the finale and results show tonight and tomorrow, but I'm certainly not invested in this crop of dancers. Hopefully SYTYCD: Canada will be a better showing this fall.

I've finished my shawl for the wedding next weekend, and it has blocked out gorgeously. I made it bigger than the pattern had called for, and was terrified that I was going to run out of yarn--so much so that while I was visiting my parents on the weekend, I returned to the Purple Sock and miraculously found a second skein of the same colour. (It's Fleece Artist, so a second skein was not a guarantee.) Naturally, after I found one, I was able to finish the shawl with the yarn I had in the first place. Sadly, I still can't find my camera, so I can't even take a picture of the shawl in all its glory.

Perhaps I should go have a look for it.

Going to the Chapel

If you're interested in all in weddings, particulary in their early 21st century formation, this interview from IndieBride is a fascinating read. In it, Elise Mac Adam interviews Rebecca Mead on her book One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding.

We've just started planning for next year's extravaganza and it's already crazy. There are so many pitfalls that I'd like to avoid, and it just won't be possible to do so. The first one, of course, is the guest list. Already full of awkward. Not much we can do right now but ride out the storm.

So Say We All

As per usual, I'm several months behind everyone else. We finally finished Season 4.5 of Battlestar Galactica tonight. The last few episodes were so well written. The final episode got a bit lazy, writing wise; I liked it well enough, and I accept that when you're telling a story this epic, that some threads don't get woven in just because of the sheer scope of the thing (see also: X-files), but it felt weak. The Six and Baltar bits in particular bugged me: it was unnecessary and undervalued the audience's intelligence.

There's so much else to love about it, though. I don't know that there is anything else on TV that even begins to compare to it (sci-fi or otherwise). To me, the most compelling part of the show is its characters: you come to love those you hate in the beginning, but not because they have changed. Instead, you change as a viewer/reader (not unlike George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire). Awesome.

I'll write more once I've had a chance to digest a bit more. I want to rewatch the last few episodes so I can think through what it all means.

Hey lucky you, lucky me...

My parents recently returned from a fortnight in our smallest province, Prince Edward Island. While there, they did a number of very awesome things (of which they took very awesome pictures):



They also visited two wool mills. The first, Belfast Mini Mills, had a tearoom (with fresh cinnamon buns, which shut down any objections my father had to spending lots of time there). They got to see a variety of fibre animals and how their fibre is processed, including quivit (which my mum was quite taken by), and how the leftovers could be made into felt. Mum bought some really nice aran yarns there.

They also went to MacAusland Woolen Mills, which makes yarn and weaves blankets. Here mum got a baker's dozen of yarns there, which she had shipped home along with two wool blankets.

"How do you work with yarn in skeins?" she asked while she was on the island. "I tried to wind one off my feet in the car today and it didn't go so well. Your dad had to keep driving so I could finish."

My mum had never seen the ballwinder and swift before, so when I brought it home this weekend, she was amazed. By yesterday afternoon, she'd wound more than 30 hanks of yarn into balls.

I think my mom is a Knitter again.