Paris stole my needles

Coffeeboy and I had a great time in Austria, eating wonderful food, seeking out vegetarian and fishy alternatives to wienerschnitzel, tasting beers, and taking in the music of Hadyn and Mozart in churches filled with worshippers and fellow tourists.

But he's still in Salzburg, at a conference, and he has the camera, so I can't show you pictures yet. Instead, I have to tell you about my return journey, in which, among other things, the Paris security people took my magic loop away from me! Horrors!

The return started early on Tuesday morning, 4:30 am Vienna time, when I and my under-the-weather honey trudged to the airport bus. (He went with me, kind soul that he is, to make sure I got there OK). Turns out that in Vienna at 4:30 AM on a Tuesday, there are lots of bars still open, and enthusiastic drunk people stumbling around the streets. Other than that, it seemed pretty safe.

Once at the airport, I checked in on Austrian Airlines, en route to Paris. They checked my bag through Cincinnati, because I'd have to go through customs in Cincinnati (but I still needed to fly from there to Atlanta to Asheville to get home!). On my way through security, I could tell they were scrutinizing my knitting materials. In English with a strong flavor of Austria, they asked me, "You have scissors?" I showed them my little 1" sewing kit scissors, heroic travelers on many flights. "No, bigger," said the guard. So I pulled out my Monkey sock, sitting on a knitpicks size 1 (2.25mm) 32" needle. They examined the needles, checking out the way in which, when laid side by side, they resembled scissors, and sent me on my way, needles and sock intact. After that, everything went smoothly; I slept on the flight.

I arrived in Paris, Charles de Gaulle, at about 9:30 AM. I had a couple of hours to change flights, which was good, since I still needed to check in with Air France for my connecting flight. Or so I thought. After wandering around a terminal, trying to figure out where, on earth, to check in for flights, I finally found an Air France person to ask, and he looked up my flight. At first it seemed he couldn't find my flight, but then he realized I needed to check in with Delta, who was operating the flight, a ten-minute walk away in another terminal. So off I went, tired, needing a bathroom, badly wanting a pain au chocolat. (This was as close to Paris as I'd get this trip, so why not?)

Finally I walked into the Delta part of a terminal, where I was confronted with a seriously long line, and the unfortunate sight of very tired people sitting on the floor huddled around their baggage, with further bags under their eyes. I heard an American accent, and asked what was going on. Apparently the 3" of snow I'd seen upon landing had caused considerable delays and cancellations the day before, and the long line was full of people from yesterday trying to check in. There went my plans for both a bathroom and a lovely pastry treat. I stood in line, and stood in line, and stood in line.

Finally, after about an hour (and about 40 feet and one small cup of coffee they were handing out) I got to a small desk about 2/3 of the way up, where two women were asking passengers questions about their luggage (has it been with you always, has anyone given you packages, etc). In my sleep deprived state, I think I answered one of the questions wrong. Since my luggage had been checked in Vienna, that was suspicious. Since I was flying alone, they were even more suspicious and then somehow it came out that I'd been traveling with my husband, but he had stayed behind. So then they asked me how long I'd been married, and how well I knew my husband. This wasn't very funny to me; Coffeeboy is a wonderful upstanding man, and the thought of him using me to smuggle things into the US was just plain absurd. I couldn't say that to the woman who didn't speak English well, though, and needed to be polite, so I held my frustration and conveyed my faith in my sweetie's honesty. She might have marked something on my travel documents, though, as you'll see later...

Once passed that hurdle, I darted off to find a bathroom, locating one that actually didn't have a line, and then to find myself a much-desired pain au chocolat. Luckily there was a French bakery chain right there, Paul, so I stepped inside. I couldn't remember how to ask for anything in French, because my head was too full of German (and I actually know a bit of German, whereas I know about 5 words in French), so I simply said hopefully, "pain au chocolat"? And the cashier shook her head. Darn. I saw a basket plain croissant, though, and said, "due croissant." At least I'd get some sort of tasty treat out of this adventure!

After that came the security lines. If the previous lines were an hour long, you can imagine how long the security lines were. When I finally walked through the x-ray, I could see that the technicians were spending time on my bag, yet again, and once more, and I thought, oh no. Sure enough, when my carry-on came out, they took it to the special desk and beckoned me over. They quickly located my magic loop sock (it was near the top as I'd been knitting in line), and frowned. Then they spoke amongst themselves in French and the only word I caught was "crochet." I didn't know if these two French men were simply ignorant of the finer points of fiber paraphenalia, or if the word for "knitting" in French indeed sounded like "crochet," but it didn't matter, because they switched to English and uttered my fate:

"Is forbidden."

I replied: "But in Vienna they said it was OK."

"Is not Vienna. Is Paris," came the entirely expected answer. I thought to myself, oh yes, I probably shouldn't have stepped on those particular toes! Then they asked, "Do you have scissors," gesturing that I could cut off the offending five inches of metal. At that, I could only stare. Did I have scissors? Wasn't this a security checkpoint? Shouldn't I not have scissors, not even my little 1" sewing scissors which they seemed not to have noticed?

Because it was a security checkpoint, I said, "No, I don't," and hoped they didn't find the little scissors. Instead I asked, "Is wood OK," but they apparently didn't know the word for "wood." So I pulled out my 6" bamboo DPNs and asked, "Are these OK?"

The security guards consulted. "Is OK." Then while standing at the security table, I laboriously transferred the heel onto on DPN, and the held stitches of the top of the foot to the other. Had I been less tired and felt that comedy was appropriate, I might have dramatized it, transferring three stitches and glancing at the guards, then transferring three more. As it was, I just did them all, and then held the magic loop needle for them to take. At least I had the DPNs, but oh my... never had I had my knitting meddled with by security!

I arrived late to Cincinnati, of course, because of the delays in Paris. I went through customs just fine -- the only thing I had to declare was 6 balls of Regia sock yarn, bought on sale in a real live German knitting store (more on that later). I got my suitcase, rechecked it on US Air (onto which I'd been rebooked), and went off to get my boarding passes. I took the train to one terminal, and found that Delta didn't have them, so I hiked over to US Air and got my passes and went to security.

Whereupon they asked to see my other boarding passes. I thought, Great, they'll see I've been through security at least three times today, and let me through. No such luck. The "$$$$" on my ticket meant special screening, not "already screened way too much, with needles stolen besides." Had my confused answers to the security questions put a black mark on my ticket? I'll never know...

Now, Cincinnati had a device I'd never seen before. A box into which you step, and then it blew a loud and vigorous puff of air at me. I jumped and started to panic while I waited for the light to turn green and the doors to open. I hadn't expected that - and besides, it was 6 pm on the East Coast, midnight in Vienna, and I'd been traveling for about 20 hours at that point. Finally the doors opened, I went through the usual x-ray device, and a woman who in any other situation would have looked kindly took my bags and started poking through them. It was all I could do not to cry as she swabbed things and fiddled with my beloved iPod touch.

Finally I got out of there, got myself a bagel for dinner, and sat down to wait for my flight. I flew from Cincinnati to Charlotte, and from Charlotte to Asheville, sleeping on the flights so I didn't crash on the drive home. I got home just after midnight, or 6 AM in Austria. The cats were hungry and happy to see me. I had been awake for twenty-six and a half hours. I had traveled on four different airlines and seen five different airports, lost some needles and good bit of sanity. Day was dawning across the ocean, I fell asleep right away and slept the whole night through. The absolute worst travel of my life was over.

Bringing back the blog?

Hi folks, it's been a long time, hasn't it!  My summer ended up being rather crazy-busy, and if dissertation summer camp didn't indicate a busy start, it only continued from there. I left my camera, too, all the way across the country at my brother's, and it's due to arrive back with me sometime this week, allowing for actual blog pictures. 

Until the camera returns, I'll just give you a brief recap of what I've been up to: 

• three weeks traveling for research
  
• two-and-a-half weeks traveling to visit family
  
• one room-painting project (our bedroom is now a nice yellow "butterfly-bush" color
  
• some hiking, but not quite enough
  
• bunches of fresh veggies from the garden and markets canned or preserved
  
• one week-plus visit to my academic home in New Jersey
  
• twelve years of microfilm read
  
• little bits of dissertation written, certainly not as much as I'd have liked to complete
  
• rather a lot of reflecting and getting myself back on track worked on
  
• one Foliage Shawl completed
  
• one pair of socks completed, plus another, one of which was way too short and needs some work
  
• one cowl out of handspun, one scarf for Coffeeboy out of handspun
  
• a bunch of light blue corriedale handspun completed after many months of very thin spinning
  
• several academic job applications sent off (and an appropriate number of anxious dreams to complement them)
  

I think that just about covers the most of it! 

As for why I'm returning to the blog after a several-month absence, I have a few reasons.  Chief among them is that I had started to lose track of my projects, and figured the blog would be a good way to get back on-track.  I could also use Ravelry for that, but I haven't been good, lately, about updating there, either.  In fact, once the camera returns, I'm not entirely sure if I'll blog or use Ravelry.  

I've usually blogged about either my fiber adventures, my academic life, or about Coffeeboy's and my adventures in things like cheesemaking, gardening, hiking, or other activities that attempt to get us closer to the source of things.  Sometimes I fear that the blog spent too much time on academics, and not enough on fiber.  So many of you are so reflective about your pieces, about your process, about your choices or the ways you change a pattern, that my fiber-blogging always felt so matter-of-fact by comparison.  "Here's an FO! Yes, it looks just like the picture.  No, I didn't wildly change the pattern.  I like how its [insert 'blue' or 'autumn colored' here]. I wish the sleeves weren't quite as tight as they are, but I'll try to block it and see how it goes."  So you see, it doesn't exactly make for exciting blog fodder.  And on a purportedly fiber-focused blog, too much ruminating over the minutiae of the dissertation or the job search just might bore many of you.   

Maybe that's precisely the point - no, not to bore you - rather, maybe the blog reflects the place fiber has in my life.  It adds color and texture and warmth, it adds some challenge but is primarily there for relaxation and enjoyment.  Especially of late, the dissertation has been challenging enough to work on from what still feels like nearly the middle of nowhere.  If I'm working harder on that (or on other stuff that's taking up mental or emotional space), I want the knitting and spinning to play a different, more relaxed role.  I almost think that in order for it to be relaxing, I sometimes need it also to be private, which means I don't need the extra effort of blogging about it.  I guess this is what happens when an introvert tries to blog. 

Then, there are those friends who don't particularly care for all the fiber-stuff, and would rather hear about my life than about knitting and spinning - but since to my mind this is still, among other things, a blog about knitting "between the lines" of everything else going on in my life, the fiber will still play a role -- and I expect I'll also still write about schoolwork, hiking, or those other activities that Coffeeboy and I've taken to calling the activities of "amateur homesteading."  

If you're here for the fiber or here for a general idea of what I've been up to in other areas, I imagine you'll still find both.  

So, with that, I'll leave you with a good-faith gesture, a picture  or two of "socks on a train," my handspun socks that I worked on while Coffeeboy and I chugged our way from Colorado to California this summer: 

And finally, the supposedly finished socks, made of handspun BFL, too! Don't they look cute there on that train seat? 

Of course, in my eagerness to finish them while still on the train, the second sock ended up being 1/2 inch too short... a month later and I have yet to undo the kitchener and actually finish it, but now that it's [Sock]tober, I might as well! 

All my (book)-bags are packed

Yup, that's right, all my books are packed and I'm ready to go.
 

Except, that is, for two books that I'm pretty sure I returned in April. I really hope the library just failed to scan them in and they're happily on the shelves! 

My school, in a fit of brilliance for their retention of books, but not for anything else like my sanity, my saving of gas, or a useful way to spend my time, requires all books checked out for the year-long period be renewed in person.  Yup, all however-many bags of them.  Minus whichever two bags I'm returning, to lighten the return trip load, you know!  

Tomorrow, I drive north all day with all the books, for Part II of my very busy June.  Our quick trip to the midwest was a lot of fun, and passed quickly. I didn't get much knitting done, but I did get some dissertation work done. I met a whole bunch of Coffeeboy's extended family - second cousins  neither of us knew existed, giant family pictures, and way, way too much good, tasty food.  In the car we listened to The Time Traveler's Wife, which was a really great book (and a fun one to listen to, too!)

The world seems suffused in heat.  Asheville currently is beating out Miami by about 15 degrees, and it's not much better up in the mid-Atlantic, either.  Here's to staying cool this weekend, or enjoying the heat, whichever you prefer!

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. 

Rest in Peace, Old Mac

Well, it's finally happened. My trusty old iBook has been set aside and replaced. It didn't die in a horrible crash of unutterable proportions, but simply got old, as few computers get to do. Old, slow, cranky, but thankfully never wrinkly.

RIP: August 2001 - January 2008

The new computer's on-board camera

takes a picture of the old,

now shut down, its sleep light no longer glowing. 

Goodbye and Hello. 

That old iBook and I have seen a lot together. It's been my trusted technological companion since August of 2001, a few months after Mac OSX and the new, square, white iBooks came out. It saw during its 7.5 years of service:

• an upgraded hard drive, from 10 to 40 gigs
  
• new memory added
  
• an airport/wireless card added
  
• a new keyboard (after the cats kindly removed the 'E' key)
  
• an external screen when its own became dim
  
• a new battery after the old one failed to charge

It helped me through many projects, fun times, and transitions:

• 1 close call in which I nearly left the Mac universe (I've been a Mac user for as long as I've used computers) for the PC universe, and this Mac kept me so securely in the fold that now I can't imagine using anything else
  
• 1 master's program and over half of a PhD
  
• 2 autumns of PhD applications
  
• seemingly countless term papers and their associated documents
  
• 1 breakup (one which was a very good thing, too)
  
• 1 wonderful spouse (really and truly: way back when he first met me, Coffeeboy was impressed that I had an iBook and that it was running beta software. He figured I must have been a fellow geek of some sort). 
  
• 1 year of wedding planning
  
• 44716 emails stored in Eudora, now successfully and safely transferred to Apple's Mail program
  
• 5 homes in 3 different states
  
• all the photos for a knitting blog, slowly, slowly opening up in iPhoto, and slowly loading in Flickr
  
• innumerable history files in my web browser for knitting patterns and yarn
• the beginnings of a dissertation, and its very many documentary demands

You almost never crashed, old friend. You never lost my data. (I have all my emails going back to 1996, freshman year of college, for example. That's almost an insane amount of memory and data). You would have kept on trucking along, maybe at 15 mph instead of 60, if I had let you.  You got me through a good majority of the previous decade of my life, and I can only hope that my new computer proves to be as excellent a machine as you were, that it can assist me through whatever comes next with just as much ease and style!

A new decade

Now that I've entered a new decade, do I feel older?

The short answer is no, not really. Turning 30 isn't that bad (despite what I've decided is a new sympathy for people trying to read menus in dark restaurants!). Many of my friends have had a lot of 3-0-angst, and I haven't suffered the same. It seems that those who have had angst have had things they're still looking for in life - feeling like they've found a career, buying a house, finding a spouse, having a kid(s).

I've never felt pressure to do any of these by a certain point, but making progress on 3 out of 4 probably eases the transition into this new decade. Turning thirty and thinking about it from this perspective does give me renewed sympathy for those who have already turned that corner (or will do so soon) and are still looking to add to that list, fill in those blanks. I have it pretty good, I think, and I'm really thankful for that. I can only wish the same happinesses for all my many friends! I'm not so sure that I'll be quite so calm when the next decade comes around - but that's not for a long while yet, thank goodness!

What did I do to celebrate, you ask. Coffeeboy and I spend the past weekend in Atlanta, celebrating in the "big city" with my/our friend Greta_Jane at Ivory Needles. We went out to eat at a yummy restaurant, went for a hike, and generally had a good time hanging out. (I'm not sure that GJ's wall appreciated being drilled into, though. We tried to put up a shelf, and in the manner of most housing projects, found that the house provided its own complications - this time in the shape of strange plaster and metal door frames. Yikes!)

My actual birthday was pretty quiet. I spent it at home, working, spinning a very little bit, and starting to listen to holiday music.

I did get some nice gifts, including a reminder that the wheel is a birthday present:

Isn't that sweet?
My wheel was all decked out in pretty blue bows!

As for those packages that kept arriving on Friday, one of them was indeed fiber - 8 oz of reddish Corriedale. And another package was indeed a book from Amazon - Spin to Knit. Thank you, honey!

The third package, it turns out, was for me; it was just vastly larger than anticipated! I'd ordered what I thought was 8 oz. of fiber from Paradise Fibers (I typed "8" in the quantity, which to me implied "per ounce.") They sent me 8 bundles of 8 ounces each - four whole pounds of fiber, apparently by mistake! After a few thoughts of what I could do with 4 pounds of fiber (make an absolutely huge amount of yarn, enough for a couple of sweaters), the good Samaritan in me won out, and I called them to arrange to return the extra 7 bags. Because really, I'm not at a point in my spinning where I want 4 pounds of the same thing! Oh my! In return they've given me a 10% off coupon for my next order, yay! The only problem is... the UPS truck never arrived to pick up the box. I guess I'll need to call them again, hmm?

I survived the dentist!

That's right, everyone! It's been, well, a few years since I had insurance and since a dreaded dentist last looked in my mouth, and today he did so, and I checked out in relatively good oral health! I'm thrilled! Even having one cavity was a relief, compared to the plethora I expected!

Coffeeboy, unfortunately, has to get a "deep cleaning" tomorrow, wherein they'll numb his mouth before starting the cleaning. It sounds like a pore cleanser or something, only ... worse.

I don't really have much knitting news right now - but thanks for all your kind comments on Kiri! I have many goals for this week: presentation on Wednesday, summer funding application due Wednesday, emailing some dissertation thoughts to my advisor, finishing a complete draft of my lit review, and TAing the final two sections of the semester.

I think I got through the worst of it today, especially since I've been dreading this dental visit for, well, years. Makes everything else seem like pancakes.

Knitter's first hole

This past week we celebrated Passover in Colorado with Coffeeboy, returning yesterday with plenty to do before we take off to see some of my mom's family in Florida this weekend. Hence the lack of bloggy communications. I managed to do some knitting, but largely ignored the internet and blog-land while there, in the interests of hanging out (and doing some reading). While there, I discovered something on the bottom of my fuzzy foot:

A GIANT THUMB-SIZED HOLE!

... well, I also discovered that under what had been a lot of mohair, the slippers had hardly felted, probably explaining the hole. Harumph. I knew felting wasn't really my friend! Perhaps I will try to add some fiber back in there and send these soles through their watery cycle once more, or maybe I'll just wait until I notice the cold floor leaking through on the ball of my foot... and do something.

Speaking of Coffeeboy, he accepted the job in North Carolina! (I kind of added a "breaking news" section to my previous post as he got the offer soon after I'd posted it). We'll be moving sometime this summer, and until then, we'll be trying to figure out what to do with our current place (rent? sell?) and hopefully buying one somewhere around Asheville, NC.

I hear Asheville is a really fun place to live - music, arts, hiking, a yarn store or two. It probably doesn't quite have the research libraries I'm used to in the heavily-libraried northeastern seaboard, but there are still ILL and related borrowing systems, car trips to visit friends (and their schools's libraries) at cities nearby, and the inevitable longer trips to archives in various places. Other than what I hear are the inevitable awkwardnesses of writing a dissertation from afar, it should be OK - and fun to start off on this adventure! I know I'm going to miss many things about grad student life "in residence," but I'm trying to focus on the positives of the move (living in the mountains! an artsy subculture! great opportunity for the Coffeeboy!) to balance out all my half-panicked thoughts of "how can I possibly read all those volumes of that old, rare journal, before we move?!"

Anyone know of yarn stores near my soon-to-be new digs? Or how to patch a hole?

Knitting, between the times

Juniper is clearly pleased that I've been working on Clapotis #2 and decided to photograph it!

She seems to think she's going to have a new blanket to knead and suckle (yes, she's odd) but noooo, Juni, it's not for you! (That's not the most flattering picture of the little dear, either... a head, tail, and furry body!)

I really am almost done. See? Just a few more rows!

Coffeeboy and I had a nice time in DC. I knit a bunch. I would have finished the Fetching mitts if I'd had the pattern. Oops! Now I just need to put them and the knitting bag in one place so they actually get done. I didn't manage to get to any yarn stores, unfortunately, we really were stuck out by Dulles, in a hotel surrounded by a few office buildings and tons of surprisingly good restaurants.

It's strange how different life can be from one semester to the next. This one is amazingly busy in comparison to last. You'd think that taking my general exams (last semester) would make me busy, but in reality, it was monotonous to read 3 books a day, and have that be it. This semester has been nothing but teaching, reading, revising a paper, going to lectures, writing proposals for presentations, proofreading Coffeeboy's dissertation, visiting family (this past weekend) or having them visit us (Tuesday-Thursday), and generally zipping around like a chicken with its head cut off. Somewhere in there, I knit a row or two. I read a blog or three (not ten-zillion like when I was procrastinating away from exams) and try to post once a week, but I just don't have time! I've totally ignored Socktopia, having completed only 1/2 of one sock this month.

(Strange how when I'm enjoying life, I feel less like blogging and recording things. When I'm less excited and into life, I dwell more on things in writing. It was like this for me with my old paper journal, and it seems to happen for my blog as well. Anyone else share this same pattern?)

And yet, there's something about the intensity of these days that I really enjoy. I wouldn't say my life is exactly balanced or predictable right now, but it's intense, and I'm enjoying it, which is enough for me. For the moment. We'll see what tomorrow brings.