Dissertation Summer Camp

I haven't been to summer camp in many, many years, but that's all I can think of to compare with what I'm doing now. I'm in Chicago, staying at the International House in a dorm room. A real dorm room, with a twin bed, a desk, a small bookcase, a small dresser, and some kind of wardrobe to hang clothes in. All in all it looks like a smaller version of my dorm room senior year of college (except this mirror was taken from a fun-house, and my mirror in college, as far as I can recall, didn't make my face look like the face in Edvard Munch's "The Scream.")

(Image taken with my computer's camera)

There are other things that make it feel like summer camp. For example, I'm here for two weeks - so often a classic campy amount of time.  I just got here yesterday and  I don't know anyone except a friend from school who happens to be here too. I don't know my way around either this dorm facility or the streets outside (but I'm learning as fast as my directionally challenged self can). I'm still figuring out where to eat and what the best routes are to get from here to there.

And I'm spending at least eight hours a day working intensively on something. When I was a kid, this something was French horn playing. At music camps I learned I could actually play for many, many hours in a day (and my lip got really, really good.) This time, of course, I'm hanging out in an archive all day, doing dissertation research.  (I brought a hoard of knitting with me, and plan to knit while listening to audiobooks after hours, but haven't gotten to it yet). It feels so similar because there's that same sense of focus and purpose, the sense of having come to this place in order to pursue a particular goal.

In this case, that goal apparently involves having my research interrupted by the cutest of all animals, cats. The papers I'm working with are owned by a seminary, and stored in a separate building other than the library. This building houses a few students, a few offices, a bunch of manuscript archives, and best of all, two cats! I was delighted when the librarian told me not to be alarmed if a cat wandered into the room where they'd set me up to research - and indeed, a cat came trooping along and even, after I'd put away my papers for the day, plopped down next to the box I'd been perusing, and posed for my computer's camera.*

Every archive, it seems, has its pluses and minuses, and this one, so far, seems good for the entertainment value. It's sort of amusing to be in a dorm again (especially since there's a very definite time limit on my stay), and totally incongruous that I get to research with cats (not something I'd ever expect to see again). Even if it's weird and lonely to sit here in a dorm room with the unfamiliar noises of a city I hardly know, it's strangely comforting to think that just a few walls over, someone else is going through a similar set of feelings, just as if all us grad students were once again enthusiastic and scared little kids at summer camp.

----
*Normally I'd be concerned about allergens in close proximity to precious historical materials, but I'm really careful, and believe me, if that box hadn't been closed, the cat wouldn't have been on the table!

This isn't so bad

You know, I know I've not always been the happiest about being so far from my home institution, but right now, life in the mountains has its advantages: 

Such as dissertating on one's back patio, with mountains in the distance and the springtime sounds of birds, wind, and a stream nearby.  The folks I'm writing about appreciated the "restorative powers of the pastoral," and I have to say, I agree with them.  This really is a great way to dissertate.  Lovely smells and sounds, a cup of coffee, my computer's screen easily visible in the shade, wireless internet. 

I'm not sure it'll be quite so pleasant in the summer when it's hotter, but in the shade and springtime, it's really, really great!  I'm also not sure this is the best place to churn out the pages.  That would probably be upstairs in my office, or 45 minutes north of here in the library at UNC-Asheville, where on Wednesday I churned out seven whole pages in the course of an afternoon's burst of productivity.

Today Coffeeboy and I purchased tickets for several concerts at our local summertime classical music festival, the Brevard Music Center.  We stepped inside the shed and it reminded me of nowhere so much as Tanglewood, where I spent one of the best summers of my life. To have music in the mountains that I can go to all summer (all summer, that is, except the several weeks I'll be away at archives!)  is yet some more icing on the cake.  

I promised I'd show you a WIP and an FO. I haven't had a chance to get the FO photographed yet, so we're just going to go with the WIP, Tailored Scallops, my current leading-love in the fiber world.  It's Malabrigo, it's blue, and it's feather-and-fan - - how better can it get than that? 

My MIL is in town this weekend (she needed to come to the area on business) so we're looking forward to getting out with her into the nice springtime. I hear the rhododendrons, which grow the size of trees along the streams of mountain coves, are starting to bloom, something we've been waiting for months to see. 

Navajo ply!

Last night I needed to clear a few singles off a bobbin. A few weeks ago, I'd spun up a little bit of this juicy merino fiber from Lorna's Laces that I got for the holidays. I thought I'd give reputedly slippery merino a test-run. As I recall, it wasn't too bad. It was, however, a while ago.

Then I was left with very little on the bobbin, but I didn't want to spin the rest of it then. So I set it aside, and last night, I navajo plied it. See?

This new type of plying was a bit tricky. Since I'm a lefty, I tried doing it with my left hand, but I kept needing to use my right to help pull the single through the loop. Eventually I was getting my left index finger to take care of the pulling through the loop, while the right did something with the twist. I saw what hadn't been clear on the on-line video, that somehow the creation of the loops gives you a three-ply. Pretty cool! I'm not an engineer, I can't explain how it works, just that it did!

What I got was something like this:

I have a few questions about navajo plying for you more experienced spinners: Do you see that purple strand on top, on the right side? Right there you can see where the two loops interlock. Why is that? Is that normal for navajo plying, to see where the loops are?

I had another question, which is how the heck do you finish it? When I was done I had an awkward floppy loop that didn't quite twist and ply up nicely.

Also, why is it called "navajo" plying?

Here is the little skein-let, only a few yards long, all twisted up.

I think it looks pretty good for a first attempt. Of course, that's probably half the dye job on the fiber - hard to go wrong with such gorgeous colors!! They remind me of summer berries. I don't remember what the official colorway name is, but these sure do speak to me of berries.

Last week I went to a conference at my home institution, a conference I've been planning for the last year or so. It went really well - great papers, interesting people, good networking. The conference involved people working on topics very similar to my dissertation, so it provided a lot of excellent food for thought and really has me actually thinking about the diss with excitement for the first time in about a month. I came home and scanned 16 pages of notes so I'd have electronic copies of what I wrote down. I've never actually scanned in notes before, but it seemed to make a certain amount of sense. Add them to the e-file for the conference, and I'll always be able to find them. The paper notes - who knows?

Of course, I can't really capitalize on that excitement because now that I'm home, I'm preparing the house for Passover & the arrival of guests this weekend! (Granted, since the Judaism represented here is Reform, the housecleaning isn't as, um, thorough, as it could be, but there's still plenty to do!) I'm going to try to put in some time on the diss this afternoon and tomorrow, but I still have to clean the house and go grocery shopping, so it's looking like the diss will have to wait till next week!

Handspun yarn or rejected writing?

As I considered my options this afternoon, I decided I'd rather tell you all about my latest spinning news than spend too much time worrying that an article submission I sent out a couple of months ago was essentially rejected for not having enough postmodern theory in it. Actually, they didn't reject it outright. They wanted me to revise it based upon a whole lot of theory I'm not entirely familiar with, and I'm not at all sure I want to write the article they want to read! Instead, I think I'll try it with another journal! On the bright side of the schoolwork, though, I have finished a draft of a chapter for the dissertation and will send it off to my advisor soon!

I've been procrastinating on showing you my latest bout of spinning, which occupied me from January 4 - sometime last week, at which point I sent it off to its intended recipient, Greta_Jane, for a belated birthday present. I haven't been showing you many pictures of this spinning because I didn't want her to see too much of it (and she tells me she liked what she saw when I let one little image slip through).

What you see here is about 550 yards / 8 oz. of Louet Corriedale fiber in the colorway "warm wine." It worked out to be about worsted weight. Although it wasn't as even as I'd hoped it would be (it never seems to be, once it comes to plying), I was quite pleased to see that the yarn turned out pretty light and fluffy, not nearly as dense and tightly spun as my previous yarns have been. Maybe I'm getting the hang of this!

The first picture is more true-to-color. I had a really hard time getting good close-ups of the yarn that weren't either entirely blurry or entirely washed out from the flash. This one will have to do.

I also managed, over the past few days, to spin up 4 oz. of yarn that, once it's dry, will be worth of the esteemed title "Sock Yarn." At about 17-19 wraps per inch, it ranges between sport and fingering weight, and has enough yardage for socks - 380 yards! This accomplishment, my friends, is a big milestone as a lover of socks and spinning! But you (and I) will have to wait until it dries to see pictures.

WIPs roundup

While I've been spinning, I've also done a bit of sock-knitting lately.

See? We have these Retro Rib socks, coming along nicely.

And also this oddball here, the Cascading Leaves sock by Jeanne Townsend of the Yahoo knitalong group:

I'm using Great Adirondack Yarn in their wool/silk/nylon blend, and it feels heavenly! The colors are knitting up a bit odd, but everyone I've asked says they kind of like it. I kind of like it, too, but I also kind of think it's an odd fit between pattern and yarn.

I have one other pair of socks, but I didn't take their picture, as they are currently suffering from "procrastinating on kitchener stitch syndrome," poor things. It's been a couple of weeks they've had that particular issue; maybe I'd better put them out of their misery soon.

Finally, remember how I finished a sweater recently? Well, I started another one: Cobblestone!

I'm using Mission Falls 1824 wool that I bought years ago to make Rogue. Turns out I need a few more balls to make a guy-sized sweater, and goodness knows if I can find the right dyelot anymore! (Yeah, I know. Another dyelot problem? But this one I know about in advance!) I'm thinking of using a different dyelot to do the yoke; that should hide the change in color fairly well).

I'm thinking of bringing Cobblestone to the conference this weekend (the American Academy of Religion, meeting in sunny San Diego this year), in order to get through the many inches of relatively brainless knitting I have ahead of me. It's still small enough where it might make sense, at least for a little while, to have it with me.

... Speaking of conferences, I made a little mistake yesterday:
I sent an email yesterday to a whole bunch of major scholars in my subfield about logistics for a conference, and I've just now seen that it had a couple of typos. I checked carefully to make sure the dates and times and logistical details about travel were correct, but not that I'd spelled the title of the conference right! Oops! Earlier I was quite worried about this but now I feel a little less anxious. No less embarrassed, but less like hiding is necessary!

Study in contrasts

I'm now back in the beautiful, mountainous "boonies" where my honey and I now live. After spending a week with my academic colleagues in New Jersey, I fully re-acclimated myself to a more, shall we say, cosmopolitan environment, and I felt a bit sad about leaving. Don't get me wrong, I was excited to see Coffeeboy (and the two cats and Coffeeboy's dad, not to mention the lovely new wheel!), but this switching back and forth from the big ole' northeastern seaboard to the small-town life is definitely a study in contrasts.

Certainly, I've really enjoyed getting a taste of the small-town experience these past three months, but I wonder if a lifetime spent almost entirely in major metropolitan areas hasn't affected me in ways I was hardly aware of. It'll be interesting to see if I like the quiet better for this time surrounded by people, or if I'll miss the people more. The move has certainly been a learning experience, a good one, and I'm looking forward to learning more of what this particular set of contrasts has to teach.

As for this past week, what can I say? In many ways, it was quite stressful, as evidenced by the fact that my stomach felt odd much of the time and I didn't sleep well (whether because of couch-surfing, being away from my own bed, the proposal defense, or the readjustment to grad student life, or all of this, I don't know). Despite the stress, I also had a simply a wonderful week. I got to experience sunny, crisp, cool fall weather with maple leaves blowing and crunching underfoot, something I always love. It felt absolutely great to reconnect with fellow grad students, shoot the breeze with them and faculty about things academic and things non-academic, get advice and feedback from professors, and to attend a workshop/seminar with a visiting scholar. I even feel like things are all right (and fixed if they had been broken) with people I'd parted from awkwardly, and that leaves me much more centered. Now that I know how keenly I can miss the stimulation of intellectual life at the university setting, I can think more clearly about how to take positive steps to alleviate some (but never all) of the loneliness of dissertation-writing. And perhaps it will give me even more impetus to find perspective in the woods.

Or on the spinning wheel and the needles!

ABD!

That's right, folks! I'm ABD! They passed my dissertation proposal, so I suppose I am now all but dissertation!*

The consensus of the faculty was that might be piled a lot higher and a lot deeper on the way to that Ph.D., in that whichever chapter I write first could well become the whole dissertation. Hearing that was not unexpected; my advisor had warned me that the chapters were vast. I now feel like I have a Very Important Decision to make about where to start. Hmmm.

Some plain socks on the needles might help. All the socks I brought with me to work on have relatively easy patterns, but patterns nonetheless. This has resulted in my getting almost no knitting done, as it hasn't been as relaxing as it could be. I'm craving plain vanilla knitting here, folks (or spinning, but the wheel's at home). Besides, I need to start the plain socks before the conference next weekend!

---

*I might have been ABD in the reckoning of my department after I finished my exams, because finishing the exams (and turning in the necessary paperwork) results in a little M.A. diploma in the mail. I guess that's not quite the same as ABD, but it's fun nonetheless.

Perfectionism and the Embossed Leaves Socks

For the past, oh, six weeks or so, I've been working on a particular dissertation topic. You see, I thought I had found my "love in the archives". Everything was going along so well - except for a nagging doubt that the sources I was looking at really didn't specifically answer the questions I was interested in. But maybe it would be OK, I thought, so I trudged along, digging in archives, hoping, writing.

The process, in fact, looked something like my progress on my Embossed Leaves socks: everything was going along really well until it seemed I would run out of yarn, a problem that fast became a reality: I didn't have enough yarn.

Pay no attention to the library-pale toes...

I faced several choices: knit the toe of this sock in a different color (which wouldn't have looked good), try to buy more yarn and probably fail, given the number of colors Koigu has, try to swap for yarn that might not quite match, and finally, unknit the first sock and give both socks a bit of toe in the right color and a bit of toe in a different color.

Coffeeboy repeatedly, these past few weeks, has likened my perfectionist difficulties with my dissertation topic to my perfectionism in knitting - and in this case, the two coincided in time, as well. Last night I decided I needed to change my dissertation topic as well as undo the first sock and reknit it. Besides, I'd messed up on the pattern.

All ready to unravel!

It wasn't so bad, after all. I got all the stitches back on the needle of the first sock and prepared to finish the toes. For the dissertation, I realized I didn't need to go back to the drawing board, either. I haven't finished the proposal yet, and the topic I've been focusing on for the last few weeks is very, very close to what I'd ultimately like it to be, so I just need to sort out what works of that topic from what doesn't. Some of it might even fit as a chapter in the reworked topic.

Ready to reknit!

With that good base to work from, I redid the socks. I also opened a new Word document and started to write things down. Suddenly, just like fixing the socks - and with a little help from my friends - really figuring out the topic seemed as possible as getting going again on these socks.

(The color here is pretty true.)

Maybe reworking the socks even quite literally helped me regain my confidence regarding the dissertation. I'm not sure. I do know, though, that by the end of the evening I had a pair of finished socks, ones I am quite happy with! I just hope their recipient is as happy!

Pattern: Embossed Leaves socks, now in Interweave Knit's book of 25 Favorite Socks from their magazine
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM, obviously from a color and dye lot I've long since forgotten
Needles: size 1 bamboo DPNs
Time: 6/3 t0 6/26

Leaf pattern detail

Thoughts: I really enjoyed knitting this pattern. While I didn't quite memorize it, it was quite easy to follow and worked well for TV and group knitting once I got the hang of it. I'd definitely like to knit it again with a full-length sock! As it was, I had only one skein of this Koigu and decided to use it for anklets. Since the yarn was green and blue and brown, a leafy pattern seemed appropriate.

Up next on the needles: MONKEY SOCKS! I'm actually jumping on a popular sock bandwagon at the same time as, well, virtually everyone else on the internet, it seems. And I promise you, I have some very pretty yarn for it as well, yarn I've been saving for something special:

Yarn in the color "Autum Moon" from Woolbearers

Getting a garden going

Classes are over for the year! While I'm pleased to have more time for my own work, I was a bit sad that it was my last class that I'd be TAing at my school. When next I teach a class, it's likely it'll be my own class, not one I'm TA-ing for, which is a scary thought indeed.

This weekend, rather than go to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival like, oh, some huge, gigantic number of knitters out there, I stayed home and worked on my paper before and after working in the garden for a bit of hands-on, home-grown sun-and-garden therapy. "We're getting back in touch with the sources of production from which we've been alienated," I believe Coffeeboy said, sounding uncharacteristically Marxist. I was merely waving the hoe around, deciding whether or not to quote Edwin Markham's poem "The Man With the Hoe."

The lilac bush is blooming (and it smells wonderful, but I can't put that online), and it's a sunny day, so I thought I'd show you a picture of the lilac shawl I started a while ago. Don't they go well together?



Seriously, though, I'm hoping I'll have enoug yarn to make it long enough. I'm almost at the end of ball one out of two, and it's barely 2 feet long! I'm assuming some good old blocking will help once it's all knit up.

We've had a lovely weekend here in NJ, so Coffeeboy and I planted our garden. Yes, we decided to go ahead and do it even though we're moving halfway through the summer. It'll be hard to pick up and leave our plants behind, though, especially when we're not sure what the next person who lives here will do. Will they garden? Or will they just let everything rot and turn into a nasty mess? Will they enjoy the bulbs that, unless we bring them with us, will be sleeping through the summer? We decided, though, that we'll get some edible enjoyment out of the plants, and that we should go ahead and plant anyways.

Those milk cartons (the things that look like bulky white plants) are keeping our pepper plants warm while the weather is in its early spring state. It's cool at night, and peppers don't really like that. If only the milk cartons didn't blow all over the yard during the dark hours, though! It kind of defeats the purpose!


Here we have an early tomato plant on the left, and on the right, some beans and peas. Yum!

We've also planted eggplant and summer and zucchini squash, plus some canning and salad cucumbers. In front of the beans we planted some old scallion seeds and some lettuce seeds, but those haven't shown their little green heads yet, and they might not - we kind of decided not to add nice compost to the soil, which means the soil there is, um, rather hard indeed, and probably difficult for a small green thing to press through.

If you have a garden, what are you planting this year?

Days of blue on white

Between Thursday and Friday nights, it snowed, it hailed, it rained; it sent down slush from the sky. When I awoke Saturday morning, the world looked like this:

I'd hoped it would keep snowing all day - what a perfect excuse to read and/or knit, but instead we're just left with the messy, slushy cleanup effort. I've been doing some reading because I got precious little done this past week, due to my students having questions about their mid-semester papers. I've also been knitting, however:

I might be crawling out of the knitting slump, finally. Last night I dreamed I was in a yarn store, touching beautiful lace yarns for shawls. That's probably because I determined last night that I'd start this:

It's not a sock! Does anyone recognize the pattern? I've just finished chart 1 in that photo and am into chart 2 for the long haul!

I expect that I'll get a lot of knitting done between Monday and Wednesday, as Coffeeboy and I are flying off for his dissertation defense. I'm bringing some books, of course - but ones I want to read more carefully so that I can haul fewer books. I'll be waiting in the same building as his defense, so I imagine I might switch from work to the shawl at some point out of nervousness. Kind of like hospital knitting except he's not actually ill or anything, "just" defending his dissertation!

Meanwhile, Juniper (and Mage - not shown) will be holding down the fort back home, catching up on some much-neglected reading...

"The books make the shelf bow... really, it's the books, not my girth!"

When I get home on Wednesday evening, I'll have two full days of spring break left - not enough time to do all the work I need to do, but still better than nothing. Between reading for my fourth exam and grading student papers, I'd say I'll have plenty to keep me busy while Coffeeboy is at his on-campus interview on Wednesday-Thursday!

Missions: accomplished

It's been a week of accomplishments here in the Lazuli-Coffeeboy household. Most importantly...

1) Coffeeboy finished his dissertation!
2) Coffeeboy received an email from a press, expressing interest in considering his dissertation for publication!
3) Coffeeboy ALSO had a good phone interview for a tenure-track job AND 3.5 hours later was asked to campus for an on-campus interview, to be held the day after his dissertation defense!

Wow, what a week, huh?

My week wasn't quite so accomplished, but then a week like finishing your dissertation can only come once in a lifetime, right? This past week, I

1) Turned in a draft of my third exam to my advisor
2) Finished Clapotis #2!

Project specs:
Pattern: Clapotis, of course
Yarn: Cestari sock yarn from Woolbearers, in the color "Tuscany"
Needles: Size 7 K-P Options w/ the 24" cord.

This one has much thicker fabric than Clap #1, given that it's a pretty thick sock yarn. I can't really wrap it around my neck without looking like a chipmunk! (I might go for the chipmunk look in the next day or two, given the cold weather we're supposed to have!) However, it works great tucked under my coat for extra warmth, and it also wraps nicely around my back and shoulders for warmth. I haven't blocked this one yet, because I don't want to ruin the twist, but it may help it drape more nicely and fit 'round the neck better if I do. We'll see.

In other knitting news, I'm down to the toes on my cabled blue socks; news of them coming soon!

The great big happy-along

After I finished my previous post about how I've been enjoying life in academe these days, I got to thinking that this enjoyment is what brought me here in the first place. At the end of my senior year of college, feeling the angst of impending unemployment, I finished my senior thesis. I was so excited! I did well on it, too, which no doubt helped me take the plunge into grad school.

Spring was in the air, and spring in Massachusetts is a beautiful thing. Maybe I was just being my usual self, high on the changing seasons, but did I ever want to just keep that feeling of being high on life - or, as my favorite burrito shop says on its wall, "Drunk on dreams, high on life, and just now seein' the sky!"

I'd also started downloading music, but only a little, since my hard drive was very small. I remember typing into Google - or was it Yahoo back then? - the lyrics to a song that kept coming into my head as I took my "last" walks around favorite haunts on campus: "All I want is to feel this way / to be this close, to feel the same / All I want is to feel this way / the evening speaks, I feel it say...." I don't think that the actual meaning of the song really applied, but something about the sense of joy and longing still came through.

I don't think I really had that rush very much at all during my master's program, at least not for what seemed like days on end - not until I almost got into my current program. They had waitlisted me, and one night, I heard news that made it possible I might get in. I wandered down to the Charles River in Boston on a similar purple-skyed spring evening so like the ones I'd had in college, and thought of those walks and that song that was in my head. I didn't get in that year - so I waited it out and got in another year, and here I am.

Now, strangely, it's back. I'm not asking why (though I think it has to do with my thesis and current area of interest being quite similar) and I'm not expecting it to last (but maybe? Maybe a little something could stick this time?). Regardless, like a marker or a signpost, it's good to see that once again, I'm back where I started, knowing the place for the first time (to borrow my favorite line from T.S. Eliot). Sheepish Annie is right; those weeks are a happy time in my life to look back on, and hopefully in a year or two when I'm stuck in dissertation doldrums, this time will be one too.

In that mode, I've decided to join Zarzuela's Happy Along!
All I have to do is 1) knit something that makes me happy...

Yes, I think that'll do the trick (and so does Mage)!

And 2) make someone else happy. Since Coffeeboy and I are at diametrically opposite points in our grad school careers (he wants a divorce from his dissertation and mine's in that early rush of blushing possibility), I really need to do anything I can to help him finish the darned thing in the next week, to be precise. If finishing will make him happy, then help with the finishing I shall!

Speaking of finishing, we've both gotten a lot accomplished... a finished object, finished exam, and finished dissertation post (or set of posts) is in the works over the next few days!

The week of academic meet-and-greet

Talk about getting all of one's semester of socializing taken care of in a single week! This week marked not only the first week of "spring" classes, but also a busy week for my department. We interviewed potential job candidates in my subfield, meaning that grad students and professors came out of the woodwork to greet them. We ate lovely fancy dinners and drank coffee and discussed potential classes, methods, approaches.

This week also started the spring semester, adding a further element of busyness. I'm a TA for the second time ever, and I was happy to say that this time I felt a little less nervous than last. We'll see how that continues into the actual discussion groups next week!

Not only that, but one of our professors announced that she's pregnant, causing much enthusiastic discussion amongst, well, just about everyone, on top of discussion about new classes and job candidates. That same professor also co-edited a book, the publication of which is being celebrated this afternoon at some kind of eat-drink-and-be-awkwardly-merry event.

To add the final touch of craziness to this week, tomorrow, we grad students are starting a series in which we introduce each other to the rudiments of our subfields. We all take classes on approaches to the study of religion, but this often leaves Islamicists without a working knowledge of the rudiments of Buddhism or Christianity - or vice versa - not to mention what it means to study religion in America or what, after decades and centuries of debate, accurately describes the current state of discussion about the origins of Christianity. Each week is devoted to a different topic with a grad student presenter, and we're all supposed to pretend to be totally ignorant and ask really basic questions. The presenter has 20 minutes, and then there are 40 minutes for questions. I think it'll take about 4 minutes for someone to gripe that "this is an essentializing narrative of X religion that doesn't take into account the Western hegemonic narrative of oppression that causes X religion to be described that way, when really isn't it all just about power?" Thus will commence a great intellectual food-fight amongst overeager graduate students. Yee-haw!

Oh... what's that? This is a knitting blog and you hope I won't mention Foucault? Don't worry, I won't. You want to know if I've been knitting? ... Oh yeah, right...

You see, my various "friends" in the archives have been sort of captivating my attention, making a nice quiet distraction from academic angst. I loved all your comments about love in the archives, by the way! From the way things are going, I certainly know the "type" I'm looking for, just not quite why!

I don't know if I should confess this here, but I haven't actually touched the needles since... Sunday? How... very odd! Am I ill? (Oh, yeah, I did have an upset stomach on Monday or Tuesday that made me want to lie down rather than click the needles). Have I actually posted three times now about academic rather than knitting? Am I actually in a knitting slump? Have I really truly been more interested in school than in socks? How very bizarre! If this course of events continues, I might have to consult Dr. Knit!

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.

Am I commitment-phobic about sweaters?

In my last post (about hats), I mentioned that I might be a commitment-phobe when it comes to knitting sweaters. Specifically, my track record with sweaters is pretty low. I've finished one sweater for myself that I like, a simple striped raglan (finished in early 2005). I've finished one for Coffeegoat; it fits him and he likes it (finished early 2006). I finished two others for myself - both years ago (we're talking 2004, here) and neither of them fit or make it out of their hiding places to be worn. Both successful sweaters were knit in the round and had minimal finishing: just adding a simple collar band. I didn't even have to stitch the sleeves on as they were an organic part of both sweaters .

Lately, I've been writing papers as if they were sweaters that needed extensive finishing: blocking, seaming, button bands and buttonholes, crocheting the edges, sewing on the buttons, tweaking, and a tiny bit of admiring that it all came together so well out of so many fragments and strands. I've been experimenting with a new method of writing papers (well, new for me). Previously, I'd almost always sort of wait until I had most of my materials gathered before writing anything. Then I heard that some of my professors write their books by writing a little bit every day, even if all they write is that they have no idea what's going on in a certain project.

The idea stuck with me. In December, right before going to Panama, I managed to write about 8 pages of 3-4 different sections of a paper. I wrote what I could based on the research, primary and secondary, that I'd yet done. While in Panama I did a lot of the primary source reading because I could carry that with me more easily than the secondary sources. When I got home, I started writing about the primary sources and integrating them into what I'd already written. Since I already had 8 pages, the rest of the paper seemed to fly by. Somehow I was able to take rough ideas, awkward sentences, and sketchy transitions and stitch them together into an actual paper.

I seem to take it for granted that writing is a craft, something that takes time, effort, a little frustration, a little skill, and a little luck. Yes, sometimes it's a bother, but the results of a job well done are worth it. (And yes, I don't always apply this to my blog; maybe I should do so more often!)

Why can't I assume the same about craft for sweaters? Have I been tricked by the instant gratification of buying them in the store into thinking they should pop as easily into existence as a stockinette sock? Aren't they "crafts" - things that need to be shaped, sculpted, cut, worked, labored on with skill, attention, and care? Why can I happily knit a sock when I balk at the idea of starting a sweater?

My use of fiber-artsy metaphors to describe the writing process is partially intentional (this is a knitting blog!) and partially unavoidable: why not speak of "stitching" sentences together, of "finishing" a paper? The metaphor is apt, isn't it?

This thought brought me to another idea about my apparent aversion to knitting sweaters: maybe they are too much like what I do for what I consider to be (at least part of) my job and my career - namely, writing. I knit for a hobby, for relaxation, for enjoyment, right? Perhaps the mental energy that goes into putting a sweater together is too much like work to be adequately relaxing.

Or maybe I'm just making excuses for why I've hardly knit any sweaters, despite a profound love of wearing them, and my problem has nothing to do with anything.

What do you think? Do you have a type of knitting (or related fiber art or other hobby) that you prefer because of how it does or doesn't overlap with your job or whatever you're taking a break from?