Finding a hat that fits
We've all heard the phrase "if the shoe fits" and "wearing many different hats." Well, this week my life has a little bit of both.
Luckily, it's not shoes, but socks, and these socks fit admirably and they even match!
These are the conference socks made with Regia (details at Ravelry link) that I knit in Chicago and in California, finished a couple of weeks ago and finally photographed. I love that I was able to keep the stripes aligned! This took some doing, unfortunately, in that about halfway through the second ball, there was a knot, and after the knot, the pattern started going backwards. Yes, backwards. So I had to wind down to the end of the ball and re-wind it from the outside in in order to get the colors to stick together. This happened somewhere on the middle of the foot of the second sock. As you can see, it all ended up just fine!
Slightly more scary of course are the hats I need to wear. This hat, for example, is scary just because of its sheer size - its unintended sheer size. Here is Gretel, and it's not half-done yet and it already envelops my face!
Clearly at this point I started thinking about making a felted cabled beret, not just a cabled beret! I also started wondering if this was one hat I just couldn't wear, one that was just too, too big.
There's another really big hat I'm desperately fit my head into (or around, as the case may be), and that's an on-campus interview!!! It's a rural SLAC (that's "small liberal arts college") in Pennsylvania, given that I'm not yet finished with my PhD, I'm really honored to have been asked to campus. Regardless of what happens with the job, this will be an excellent, if nerve-wracking, experience to have. So, while I've been working on a hat that's just plain too big, I've been preparing for my interview.
The toughest part to prepare is my sample class. Can you believe it, I've gotten through graduate school without having to plan my own class from the ground up? I've only been a teaching assistant, meaning that I've led entire classes on material other people (the professors) have picked out. So I have to give a sample class on a topic from the survey course they'd want me to teach. I need to create something that's engaging, that demonstrates my very-much still-evolving teaching style, that fosters discussion and also reveals how do at speaking for a longer amount of time (so, a very very short lecture), and that requires absolutely no advance preparation on the part of the students.
A big hat to put on, indeed.
The Gretel hat, certainly, came out too big. Way too big. This is not a tam, nor a beret -- as Coffeeboy said, it looks like I'm wearing an orthodox Jewish woman's headcovering. I thought perhaps I needed to grow a lot more hair and shape it into dreds or braids to fit the hat around, but either way, this is no tam.
I can only hope that the hat of aspiring scholar, teacher and professor fits a little better... but first, we need to felt this fiber and see if it's destined to be a nice felted tam, a cozy cat bed, or something else entirely!
These are the conference socks made with Regia (details at Ravelry link) that I knit in Chicago and in California, finished a couple of weeks ago and finally photographed. I love that I was able to keep the stripes aligned! This took some doing, unfortunately, in that about halfway through the second ball, there was a knot, and after the knot, the pattern started going backwards. Yes, backwards. So I had to wind down to the end of the ball and re-wind it from the outside in in order to get the colors to stick together. This happened somewhere on the middle of the foot of the second sock. As you can see, it all ended up just fine!
Slightly more scary of course are the hats I need to wear. This hat, for example, is scary just because of its sheer size - its unintended sheer size. Here is Gretel, and it's not half-done yet and it already envelops my face!
Clearly at this point I started thinking about making a felted cabled beret, not just a cabled beret! I also started wondering if this was one hat I just couldn't wear, one that was just too, too big.
There's another really big hat I'm desperately fit my head into (or around, as the case may be), and that's an on-campus interview!!! It's a rural SLAC (that's "small liberal arts college") in Pennsylvania, given that I'm not yet finished with my PhD, I'm really honored to have been asked to campus. Regardless of what happens with the job, this will be an excellent, if nerve-wracking, experience to have. So, while I've been working on a hat that's just plain too big, I've been preparing for my interview.
The toughest part to prepare is my sample class. Can you believe it, I've gotten through graduate school without having to plan my own class from the ground up? I've only been a teaching assistant, meaning that I've led entire classes on material other people (the professors) have picked out. So I have to give a sample class on a topic from the survey course they'd want me to teach. I need to create something that's engaging, that demonstrates my very-much still-evolving teaching style, that fosters discussion and also reveals how do at speaking for a longer amount of time (so, a very very short lecture), and that requires absolutely no advance preparation on the part of the students.
A big hat to put on, indeed.
The Gretel hat, certainly, came out too big. Way too big. This is not a tam, nor a beret -- as Coffeeboy said, it looks like I'm wearing an orthodox Jewish woman's headcovering. I thought perhaps I needed to grow a lot more hair and shape it into dreds or braids to fit the hat around, but either way, this is no tam.
I can only hope that the hat of aspiring scholar, teacher and professor fits a little better... but first, we need to felt this fiber and see if it's destined to be a nice felted tam, a cozy cat bed, or something else entirely!
1 comment:
Great socks! Good for you for showing the yarn who was boss! Best of luck with the interview!!!!!! That's great news. :) Interview experience is always a good thing.
Can't wait to see what you do with the hat. ;)
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