Big catch-up post

Has it really been over two weeks since my last post? Goodness. Time flies when you're having fun and working hard! I might have to resort to a bullet-esque post, a la Sheepish Annie:

Labor Day weekend: Much fun! Greta Jane at Ivory Needles came up for a visit, so Coffeeboy and I showed her the sights. I think she might have planned on a little more knitting time. Instead, we went to an Apple Festival (which didn't have enough apples, IMHO), wine tasting (really not very good wine), eating (The Laughing Seed, again) and listening to music in Asheville, hiking off the Blue Ridge Parkway, blueberry picking, talking, cooking, knitting, etc. Possibly the best part? She found me an excuse to see her AND a ticket to see the Yarn Harlot in Atlanta next week!!

Dissertation proposal: Last week I sent my advisor a 2-page overview. He wrote back saying, essentially, looks good but vast, show me more. So since sometime last week I turned those 2 pages into about 24 pages of actual dissertation proposal. I was aiming for about half that, but the longer version turned out to be the only way I could articulate myself at this point. But yay! I have an actual draft of a dissertation proposal done! This is excellent!

Libraries: I am very impressed by the ILL service at Coffeeboy's college. They get things here really quickly, which has proven quite beneficial over the past two weeks.

September weather: It's cooling down a bit, more towards the lower temperatures these mountains are known for: low 80s, 70s. I haven't quite felt the first breeze of fall, but it will come, as evidenced by this tree we saw on our recent hike:

Knitting: Oh, you mean frogging and floundering and flourishing? Because there's been a little bit of all three these past couple weeks. Remember the shawl with the psychedelic colors? Frogged. I decided (with a little help from Greta Jane)it was just too psychedelic, after all. Instead, I'm looking for the perfect woodsy, earthy combination of blues, browns, and greens. Any suggestions?*

The socks? Floundering (well, a little bit). One is done, but another pair has yet to make it onto the needles.

But what about flourishing? Well, I decided that a male someone is going to receive a (modified) Irish Hiking Scarf for one of the winter holidays.

As you can see, I've been enjoying knitting cables on size 8 needles. Oh, the treetrunks! They fly so fast! Here's one ball of yarn out of two, almost all the way knit!

Phew! There you go! I think I'm all caught up, for the moment!

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*I have something rather specific in mind: sky blues to deeper blues, forest greens to sunlit greens, dirty brown to the browns of tree trunks, with maybe the whites of clouds peeking through, dyed in such a way as to look nice knit up into a shawl with a leaf motif.

Looking for love in the archives

My meeting with my advisor went very well. Now I'm just trying to find the appropriate love interest to star opposite myself in the forthcoming motion picture "Lazuli and her Dissertation." (The trailer [um, the proposal, that is] is supposed to appear sometime in May, I imagine). Thankfully, this search isn't quite like looking for love on, say, match-dot-com, since most of my potential prospects passed on before World War II or so. So I don't have to write little rejection letters to the catalog entries on OCLC, and apologize that I won't be trysting with them during a visit to their special collections rooms in Chicago, New York, DC, or wherever. I know which subset of potential partners I'm going for, it's just a matter now of brown hair or blond... so to speak.

Seriously? It feels gosh-darn good to be done with incomplete "coursework" and the nasty long exams so that I can actually get back to what really interests me and what I came to grad school for. I was positively giddy as I looked up various names from previous papers and notes and started to think more concretely about possible directions. Yes, I have a couple of papers that count as exams coming up, but they're both in my area of interest so I won't have to read zillions of pages about stuff that's not of primary interest. I've also gathered a bunch of new possiblities since I started grad school, hence the current need to chase around the archives trying to figure out what my "true love" interest is.

Is it true love? I certainly felt a flash of interest upon reading the WorldCat entries of a few potential matches today, but only time will tell where those will lead. My advisor was certainly adamant that my specific topic has to be something I "truly love" - with which I'd tend to agree. I mean, why spend all that time with something if you're not really "into" it, right? Especially now, as I see Coffeeboy stressing during the final months and weeks of his dissertation, I have a very vivid picture of why love in the archives can be so important.

But enough of this blather. I have a date with catalog entry number XYZ; maybe I'll wear a handknit shawl and some wool socks? It can get cold there in the archives.