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It has been a while since I did a knitting post.  It can be a lot of work to update for each project I finish.  I am thinking I just want to do periodic updates on what I have been making.  When I last posted, I had done the month long Dicey Knitting project.  Since then I have been keeping busy with many projects.

Swift Sac

Swift Sac

About a year ago a friend gave me some yarn made from Sari Silk.  This is a lovely yarn full of colors and textures.  It is a massive pain to actually work with.  For one, the yarn is full of dirt from the floor on where they got the silk from.  There are periodic knots where big color changes happened.  The spin is uneven, so at some points it will be really thick and then really thin.  People had suggested making bags or pillows with it.  I decided to take on a swift sack.

A swift is a tool knitters use to wind balls of yarn.  It looks like, in some cases, a large umbrella without the fabric.  It helps us keep yarn from knotting when we want to go from a twisted hank to either a cake or ball of yarn.  It also allows you to do the opposite.  Anyway, I the sack pattern online and knew I needed one to help me store my swift.  I love my swift, but it’s a pain in the rear to store.  So, I used my knitting loom to make this with the yarn and a cord to allow me to hang the swift somewhere when not in use.  At the top I left room for some type of cord to be added.  I have something in mind, but I need to keep hunting for a clasp.  The sack was a very simple project that I may make for other knitters I know.

 

Chunky Star Blanket

Chunky Star Blanket

There are four new babies being born for friends before the end of the year.  The first was adopted by a friend and her family.  They found out about the baby’s placement with them and brought him home in about a month.  That kind of notice required a super quick project.  My friend is a huge fan of the Muppets so I picked a yarn and pattern that I hoped she would appreciate.  The pattern is called Chunky Star, but I thought looked like frog legs so I made with bright green yarn that reminded me of Kermit.

One of the other baby blankets will require a lot of effort as I am making a blanket my grandmother use to make for all of us.  The pattern is in a magazine from the 50s.  I picked out my yarn and it has arrived.  I just have to sit down and start playing with the pattern.  The other two baby blankets have yet to be selected and that is primarily because I am waiting to learn sex or determine if the couples are even going to find out.  With that in mind, I do have one other blanket that I am currently working on.

Chevron Blanket

Chevron Blanket

I love the idea of a chevron blanket, but I had only ever seen crochet patterns.  The problem is that I don’t crochet and have no real desire to do so.  I have all this cotton yarn that doesn’t match in any way.  It’s all made from the same company and from the same line of yarns, but they are different weights and various colors.  I mostly had a ton of mint green in the yarn.  I decided to just use it up and if it was a disaster, I would keep it for myself as a summer throw.  Right now the colors on the left are a bit too yellow, but that is the lighting in the photo.  The bottom is the mint green with a navy blue, turquoise, and a hot pink.  I have knit much more since this photo.  I have about half the project done; that is about 8 color chunks.  It is oddly beautiful and may make a good gift for one of the two other babies.

I am loving making the chevrons as it is very simple in the end.  It’s just a matter of counting correctly.  It is not a forgiving pattern.  If you make a mistake you are best off just backing up or starting over.  The points are created by decreases (3 stitches made into 1) and then corresponding increases of wrapping the yarn on either side of another stitch.  You can see big holes in certain parts of the blanket.  Those are the increases creating the dip on this end.  I know this won’t be the last chevron project I make.  I think the others will have different methods for this though and that is what I am really looking forward to.

Margot Sweater

Margot Sweater

I started a sweater when I went to Miami in January and I have been working on it slowly ever since.  I finally finished about a week ago.  The yarn I got a year ago at the WEBS tent sale.  I wanted to make a pullover sweater and had a pattern I liked.  It took me a while to start and a while to get through and it will take a while for me to wear.  I made it small to use as a goal sweater.  It is lovely and will be perfect to wear in winter over a tank or or camisole.  The picture to the right is not of the completed sweater, but the sleeves are 3/4 length.  I can’t tell you how happy I was to finish this project.  I have another sweater on the list for the year and I need to get moving on it.  For now it is put away until the winter comes and I can see how it fits then.

See all the completed patterns on Ravelry:

Swift Sac
Chunky Star Blanket
Margot

 

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What I Learned From Jack

After such a successful Civil War program last year, I really wanted to try my hand at designing and planning my own discussion series.  I thought picking Jack Kerouac would be an easy way to test my skills and boy was it.  I wouldn’t call it a fail because it was an amazing program, but it taught me so much about Lowell, Kerouac, and event planning.

You would think a town that celebrates Kerouac so openly would have a ton of local interest in him.  What I realized this year was it may not be the case.  The goal of my program was to have a better understanding of Kerouac and how he saw Lowell.  In the end I walk away with an equal understanding of Lowell and how its citizens see Kerouac.  It turns out, they don’t really love Kerouac as much as I thought they did.

Let’s start at the beginning though, what I learned about Jack Kerouac and how he saw Lowell.  There was an element of romance to the way he saw Lowell.  We read three books.  First, The Two and The City focuses on a family that grows up in Lowell (Galloway in the book), but moved to NYC for various reasons.  It ends with their return to Lowell.  Second, Visions of Gerard, is a reflection on Kerouac’s older brother Gerard who died when he was about 10.  Jack was only about 3 or 4 when this happened, so much of the book is full of stories he was told after Gerard died.  Finally, there was Maggie Cassidy about his first love as a teenager here in Lowell.

Kerouac may be known for his stream of thought writing style, but he had moments of deep descriptive passages exploring the city itself.  It was wonderful to read these nearly poetic passages talking about Lowell.  As we discussed Kerouac, the man, during these sessions, I realized that as much as he may have not liked Lowell, he also loved Lowell.  There was an element of romance to the way he wrote about growing up in Lowell.  As someone who moved here and has lived in many beautiful places, it was nice to find a voice like this for Lowell.

Lowell, on the other hand, does not always feel the same way about Kerouac.  Many participants told stories about negative impressions they or others had about him while growing up.  I realized that, despite the recent surge in popularity for Kerouac and the Beats, at a local level nothing has really changed about him.  There is a core group of fans in the community and the city sees the benefit in celebrating him to attract tourism.  People come from outside of Lowell to celebrate Kerouac.   My program got a significant amount of national press considering it was a small reading and discussion program.  I was surprised by that attention at first, but now I understand it better.  He is popular culturally at a national level.  Had I understood this dynamic better in the beginning, a year ago, I may have adjusted the plan and the goals.

Personally, I don’t think I am a Kerouac fan, still.  I never cared for him and, while I appreciate him better, I still find him difficult to read. I am very glad I had the chance to do this program.  It didn’t turn out the way I expected in any way.  It taught me a lot about my community, a famous author, programming in libraries, and probably much more than that.

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For a few years I have gone on to librarians about a need for a scholarly journal about failing in libraries.  I really think we don’t consider the importance of our failures as learning experiences.  Most of the time they get ignored in favor of things that did work.  Librarians love to pat themselves on the back for things that do work even if it works just a little bit.  I am all for celebrating successes.  I am all for celebrating anything actually.  I have certainly failed plenty of times in my personal and professional life.  I there is something to be taken away from a failure and I want to connect librarians in a new way by sharing those failures.

My problem has always been: I haven’t even been published in a scholarly publication.  How can I start one when I have yet to experience that world?  I really want this though and I am tired of letting that little details stop me from doing something I strongly feels has to happen.  My immediate solution: publish something already!  How better to enter the world of scholarly publishing?

Enter my lovely friend Leslie at work.  We did a project together in the fall that was a total flop.  For a 8 part faculty program, only 2 people showed up in total.  Yes, 6 sessions had zero people show up to them.  There was plenty of evidence that this program was needed and wanted by the faculty.  It has been 4 months since the last session and we are still trying to process it. I had plenty of fails in the fall semester.  I learned, from personal failure, how to quickly pick myself up, brush myself off, shrug, and move on to the next thing.  Leslie was still struggling to do this.  It’s almost like watching someone grieving a failure.  First there is the denial that something has failed.  You insist that something good will still happen!  Then there is the anger: you did it all right!  People are idiots and they shouldn’t get anything from libraries again!  Then there is bargaining: if we do this and change that then maybe someone will come to the next one!  Then there is depression and I think this is where a lot of people get stuck with accepting failure because we are taught that failing is bad.  Last there is acceptance and that is where I want to really make a difference.  Leslie is stuck between anger and depression.  She bounces back and forth depending on the conversation.

I have suggested we try to publish something in the journals about this program, but to admit your failure in a professional journal is risky.  We both agreed that a blog would be a great way to deal with it though.  So, we did it!  We made a blog called Librarian Fails!    I even published one of my more epic failures from the fall.  We have agreed that our final blog post, if this doesn’t work, will be why it didn’t work.  I am convinced it should though and I am going to pull out all the stops to make sure it does.  I have plenty of my own content to get us started.  My hope is that it allows librarians to connect in a new way, learn from their own mistakes (and those of other librarians) and that we some day figure out how to make it an open source journal.

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Boston Marathon page at 9:20pm on Monday, April 15, 2013

Boston Marathon page at 9:20pm on Monday, April 15, 2013

For the past week and a half I have spent a lot of time getting news updates about the Boston Marathon Bombings, the hunt for those who committed these acts, the stand-off on Friday, and the interrogation of the young man they took into custody.  I found myself really relying on Wikipedia for updates.  Most of the talk about Wikipedia focuses on it being a reference source.  We go to Wikipedia to understand something.  We use it for research as we would have once used a traditional encyclopedia.  What often gets ignored is Wikipedia’s place among news sources.  I often tell students that one of Wikipedia’s strengths is how current it can be.  Traditional Encyclopedias cannot keep so current because of the nature of the beast.  The wiki software combined with the collaborative environment and no need to wait for experts makes Wikipedia both reference source and news source.  It is unique in this perspective.  Nothing else we have in the world does this.

Pending Revisions on the Marathon Page

Pending Revisions on the Marathon Page

To be honest, I have a hard time trusting mainstream news.  Their motives are suspect.  I flat out ignore the very existence of 24-hour-news stations.  I feel their job is to fill time to suit their bias.  Even the network news programs are trying to simply win ratings.  Social media sources are good for the personal connection.  Google made an amazing website to help people locate others and sent along tips after the Marathon, for example.  Twitter hashtags were moving too fast to keep up with some content.  Facebook and G+ have allowed me to make sure people are OK and that people know I am OK.  Instagram has allowed people to share photos.  Wikipedia got to serve as a news source though and they did so in a wonderful way.  Not only were some Boston Marathon pages under protection (for pending changes), but it was allowing people to see the currently accepted changes and the pending changes.  They are doing fast and furious peer review.  The bombing already quickly had it’s own page that is semi-protected and listed as a current event to indicate that content will change.

8:02pm version of a page

8:02pm version of a page

I am still going to these pages periodically a week later.  While activity is not as frequent, it is still happening.  I am creating a list of what I will study next on Wikipedia and this is quickly creeping up the list.  Between this and the incident with BP I feel like I have some create research to do.  The only question is: when do I do it?  I think I need a sabbatical

 

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I got to see the Boston Marathon in 2003 from my apartment in Beacon Street.  It was thrilling to be part of the crowd even from my living room window.  I remember going out to the streets to run some errands while people will waiting for runners to come by.  I knew I would never want to do this again so I made a point of doing it just once.  I had heard stories, while growing up, of how my mother’s family use to walk down to Commonwealth Avenue at the top of Heartbreak Hill to watch the marathoners go by.  It’s a slow event and the excitement really happens in Copley Square where the Boston Public Library serves as the conclusion of the marathon.  When you walk through Copley Square, something I did often for 2 and a half years, you will see markings on the ground marking this international race.  I saw the Marathon just a year and a half after 9/11 happened.

I can tell you where I was on 9/11 when I heard what happened.  I was house sitting for some family friends and staying at their house for 6 months.  Classes had just begun for my final semester at Florida International University.  I was busy making my plans to make my move up to Boston.  I was getting organized to apply for graduate school.  I was in the best place I had been in a long time.  I had just recently given up my part time job to focus on all the important things before me.  I had a rare chance to sleep late that day and when my mother called me I was just waking up and having breakfast before getting ready for a group of classmates to come over to begin working on a project.  I spent the rest of the day in front of the television and got nothing done.

It has been 10 years since I saw the Marathon from my apartment in Brookline.  It has been almost 12 years since 9/11.  The world is a different place and I am a different person.  These days the Marathon is more of an abstract idea for me.  I am not living in the city anymore.  I am not living on the route.  I know to avoid my grandparents house since traffic flow is limited around his house.  I accept the quirky holidays of my home state as a matter of fact.  Today is Patriots Day, a holiday that Massachusetts and Maine celebrate.  I have the day off of work as a state employee.  I had a busy weekend and was happy to have a day to run some errands.  I went to the mall today to get some things I needed.  I wasn’t even thinking of the marathon when I heard about the bombings.

Here is the thing about this holiday: it’s about the Revolutionary War.  September 11 has become a holiday they call Patriot’s Day.  It’s not the same thing.  This is entirely about the birth of our nation.  We became a nation along the path of the Boston Marathon.  Concord, Lexington, Charlestown, Bunker Hill, and more are places with acute historical significance to residents of Massachusetts.  This is the day when most of us in this state are highly inclined to remember all of this.  One of my student employees even asked me why this holiday wasn’t on a national calendar this year.  If we took today for granted, the residents of Massachusetts no longer will.  What happened today, regardless of who did it and why, will only serve to re-enforce the local significance of this holiday for us.

Right now, about 6 hours after the first bomb went out, I am sitting infront of the television.  I am not watching the news. I am checking in with it, but I am not watching it like I did after 9/11.  I am safe, my friends are safe and my family is safe.    Thank you to all my friends and family who have reached out to check in with me.  I love you all and appreciate your concern.  For now I am actually a bit obsessed with what is happening on Wikipedia with this. I promise, I will have something to say about that very soon.

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A little over a month ago my little sister officially turned 30.  I was surprised to see that she seemed to long to be back in her early 20s.  Personally, I hated my 20s; early, middle and late.  I had expected panic about turning 30, but honestly, I couldn’t have been happier to get beyond the most difficult decade of my short life.  My 20s saw me fail at school, at money, at planning, at making connections with people, at almost everything I did sometimes.  Granted, I would probably do it all the same if I had the chance.  It doesn’t change that 99.9% of the problems that came up in my 20s were my own fault.  I am sure other people played a role in my failures, but it was overwhelmingly me.

To be fair, a lot of great things happened in my 20s.  I found a career I was passionate about, I made friends I still am close to, I moved to Boston, I got a graduate degree, I graduated with honors from my BA program, I got a job, and I learned what made me happy.  The lessons I learned from the mistakes I made in my 20s have ensured that I have been as successful as I have been in my 30s.  I had no idea about that when I turned 30 though.  I only realize it now that I begin to near my 40s.  When I turned 30, I just didn’t want to be in my 20s anymore.  I was more than ready to move beyond that decade of my life.

As critical as my parents were to helping me get through my 20s (and believe me, they were critical), most of the work had to be done by me.  They could bail me out over and over, but until I learned why I was making these mistakes, I would be doomed to repeat them.  When I accepted my first absolute failure at the age of 21 (yep, I started failing quite early in my 20s) my parents brought me home and made me focus.  I was depressed, in debt, had not completed a degree, and had few local friends.  I was lucky to get a job because of my father and his amazing friends (mostly Howie and Linda).  All I had was work and books.  See, the things is, books are at the center of my world.  I can look at a book and tell you when I first read it, where I was in life, how it changed me, and why it is important.  I use books to trigger memories (good and bad) more than I use anything else (even food).  I can pull out my copy of Pride & Prejudice and remember the first time I read in at 15, well before my friends and classmates.  I can tell you directly how it impacted what I expected from the boys around me and the men in my future.  I can tell you exactly what it says about me.  More to the point, there are 10 specific books that I read in my 20s that helped me deal with what was going on around me, understand myself, and move past it.  Without these books I would probably still be living in my childhood bedroom with my parents.

Here is a list of the books that got me through my 20s, what was happening, and why they helped.

1) A Confederacy of Dunces
I can admit it, I read this book to impress a guy. Still, at 20 when I first read it, I had a connection to Ignatius.  I felt that I could easily slip into Ignatius’ skin and be him.  I was at Florida State and at the very beginning of a depression that would take me back to Miami.  My own obsession with New Orleans (and desire to be there) and the absurdity of what happened in the book kept me going back to it.  In fact, I think that over 3 years I read it about 6 times from cover to cover and many passages inbetween.  I would always bring it with me when I traveled.  When I found myself unable to connect with other people, I relied on Ignatius to make me feel like it was OK.  When Ignatius blamed fortune, I remembered that I was doing this to myself and I could get myself back to where I wanted to be.  This was the story of everything I didn’t want to become.

2) The Red Tent
I think the main reason I fell apart at Florida State was because I let others convince me what I wanted was not a good idea.  I wanted, above all, to major in religion.  I had no idea what to do with it in the future, but I found myself energized by learning about people’s faith and how religion made people act.  Practicality pushed me away from this and I learned the first lesson about myself: I will be miserable and will shut down if I am not doing what I love.   The Red Tent, which my mother got autographed for me, reconnected me to my own religious background and to my own feminist ideas.  In the end, as much as I loved this story, I was frustrated with the fact that this was fiction and not the way biblical Judaism actually talks about the women in the stories.  As wonderful as this story of sisterhood was, I couldn’t reconcile what I knew about my beliefs with what I was reading in the story.  It was probably my first step to accepting that organized religion was not for me and eventually my accepting that I truly was an atheist.

3) Tao of Pooh & Te of Piglet
Yes, these are two books, but I think they are really two parts of a whole.  My second summer in Miami found me still floundering.  Financially, I was getting back in shape, but I had no idea what to do beyond that.  I was just taking classes at the local community college to do something.  I was pretty sure I wanted to be a librarian, but I was struggling to put all the pieces together.  My parents helped me get a summer job at a leadership camp.  The camp needed some administrative help and to run a bookstore.  I wrote about that experience a bit when I went to Chicago.  Anyway, these two books were part of the collection the teens could buy from.  At this point I was not considering eastern religions in anyway, but I did know that Judaism wasn’t really going to be more than a cultual world for me.  I knew I had problems with the way Judaism approaches life and faith.  It had been no help because, from my point of view, I had to learn how to get myself out of my problems because I had gotten myself into them.  I could not turn to a higher being because I was quite positive there wasn’t one there.  These two books taught me how Taoism saw the world and people’s place in it. As I read and re-read them that summer, I understood what I was doing wrong and why I was not finding a path.  I understood I was fighting against everything instead of flowing with the world and making a place for myself in it.   The copies I bought that summer are the copies I still have and go back to when I need to re-focus.

4) Fight Club
I came home from that summer in Wisconsin with a better sense of what I was doing wrong, but I wasn’t there yet.  It would take Fight Club to make it happen.  I had seen the movie, enjoyed it and found the beginning of something in the movie’s message.  I knew the book would be better to help me.  The heart of what helped me was this underlying message that we have lost our own identities to fit into a specific mold.  The men in the novel were dissatisfied with the world around them and took extreem action to carve out something for themselves.  For me, I realized that I was trying to live up to the expectations I believed others had for me.  It taught me to stop trying to be what I thought the world wanted me to be.  In the end I knew I couldn’t live in other’s expectations.  I had to do what I wanted in the way I wanted so I could be happy with who I was.  I wanted to study religion, I wanted to be a librarian, I wanted to live in Massachusetts.  After reading Fight Club I knew what I wanted and had the ability to make a plan to get what I wanted.

5) Dune
While Tolkein was part of my childhood, Dune was much too mature for me.  Even in my early 20s I could never had mad sense of what was going on.  Even in my 30s there are parts of it I struggle with.  Herbert had some really big ideas.  I decided to finally tackle Dune in my mid-20s when the Sci Fi channel did the mini-series.  I was actually getting ready to graduate when I picked up Dune.  I was house sitting for some family friends who were spending 6 months in France.  I lived in the house, took care of their cats and was living on my own again after about 2 years at my parents.  It was the perfect place for me to have my own space again.  I had a senior thesis to write so I could graduate with honors (a big deal when you fail out of one school) so I needed to be able to spread out and work in peace.  I read Dune when I couldn’t take transexuals in India anymore.  I was reading Dune when 9/11 happened.  To be able to see politics and society through the lens of science fiction helped me make peace with what was going on in the world around me.

6) A Handmaid’s Tale
I may not be a radical feminist, but I certainly have a strong identity as a feminist.  Part of it comes from reading this Margaret Atwood novel.  Once I got my AA degree, I quickly enrolled at FIU and started one of the best religion programs I have ever found.  FSU’s program focused on Judaism, while FIU had eastern religions as well as classes on religious anthropology.  I had the opportunity to explore the role of women in religion and develop my own understanding of women in the world.  A Handmaid’s Tale remains fiction, but it remains my fear of what can happen if the religious right takes over.  Even now, when reproductive rights are being fought over, I find myself going back to this book to strengthen my resolve and remind me of what is important.  I didn’t read this book until I was in graduate school though.  Some of my FIU professors suggested it, but I didn’t get a copy until I was living in Brookline.

7) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Of all these books, this is the one I don’t actually have a copy of anymore.  It was probably because it wasn’t a book that I have a positive association with.  It is not a book that helped me deal with the world around me or with where I was in life.  It is a book that reminds me of something negative.  I was living in Boston when I read it and working at Simmons.  A few people wanted to start a book club and I made the mistake of thinking I was invited because they talked about it with me.  I had already read the book by the time I realized I had simply been around when they planned the club, I was not invited.  I had been desperate to make friends and finding it difficult.  Add to it a book that is about overwhelming loss and finding a place in the world… well, it didn’t have the greatest effect on me.  It is an amazing book and speaks to the state of my generation.  Still, because of when I read it, I will never  keep a copy for myself.

8) Wicked
I read Wicked well after it came out.  In fact, I read it after I heard the musical was coming out.  I had read other Maguire books and I loved them.  The OZ series was the problem.  It is one of my most favorite stories ever.  My childhood is peppered with Oz books, movies, and more.  I was afraid of Wicked.  I had been told it turned Oz on its head.  I had heard it was a lot like Dune in what it said about society, politics and culture.  When Maguire came to Brookline to promote Mirror, Mirror I found myself ready to finally read Wicked.  I was about to graduate with my MLS and was very unsure about what was going to happen after that.  I knew money would be very tight, but I could live.  I knew job hunting would take up a lot of my time, but without school to work on, I needed to fill my time.  I had a huge pile of books I had been collecting just for this time.  Wicked went right to the top and I am so glad I finally accepted its awesomeness.  My friend Becca and I bonded over Wicked as the musical had just been announced and she was a musical enthusiast.  A few years later we would try to get into the lottery for tickets to the show (we failed).  I had Maguire autograph my copy instead of the sequel when I saw him at Book Expo one year.  Wicked reminded me that things are not often what they seem, the people are not black and white beings who live in a vacuum, and that I should always give people the benefit of the doubt because I don’t know their story.

9) In Her Shoes
I don’t typically care for Chick Lit.  I can read it and read it quickly, but very little of it resonates with me.  That is not true for In Her Shoes.  This book deeply resonated with me a overweight older sister with a much thinner younger sister.  I understood where Rose was coming from and the things she was struggling with.  She gave me hope that, even though I knew I didn’t want the same things as she did, I could have what I did want.  Not only could I have them, but I could take them without apology.  I read this at a time when I was hunting for my first professional job.  I had six months to do this after I graduated and then I had no idea what I would do.  I use those six months to read, loose weight, and learn more about myself.  I had just enough money to squeak by.  This was the time I started my first goals notebook listing life long and big picture goals along with smaller goals to accomplish over the next 5 years broken down by year.  It was all a bit out of my control though.  I happened to get very lucky and had a job offer within 3 month of graduation.

10) Persuasion
I will admit that I didn’t read Persuasion until I was in my late 20s.  Actually, I didn’t read most of Austen’s novels until my late 20s and early 30s.  Pride & Prejudice had always been my own personal little bubble of romance.   I am often accused of being too cynical, but I am convinced that a cynic is just a romantic who understands how difficult the world can be.  Still, I have an obsession with the idea of second chances.  It’s not so much the chance to do the same thing over again, but more that I will find myself forgiven or allowed to learn from my mistakes in future situations.  Persuasion is the Austen novel that speaks most to that.  Anne and Capt. Wentworth’s romance is primarily about the idea that we make mistakes based on so many factors, but sometimes life gives you the chance to correct those errors.  This is exactly what I needed in my late 20s.  I was living alone in Fitchburg with no money trying to pay my dues in a career I had worked so hard to find.  I had so little money that I took a second job at a gas station on weekends just to pay heating bills.  This time I knew to ask for help before things got really bad.  This novel reminded me that this was my second chance to make better decisions.  It reminded me to ask for help before things got out of hand, understand what I needed to do to continue to learn more about myself, and to take any chance that came my way.

There are others that meant a lot to me during my 20s.  I read the entire Dune series as well as all the Harry Potters that came out while I was in my 20s (most of them).  There are others that changed my life during my 30s, but given that I still have 3.5 years until I turn 40, who knows what I might read in the future that will keep me changing.  I would love to hear what books others have read that have changed their lives.

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Chaos Completed

Chaos Completed

2013 is quickly becoming the year I explore conceptual knitting.  One project that came up unexpectedly is the Chaos Scarf.  This is part of a bigger project from a G+ Knitter I know, Ray.  Aside from dying yarn, he created this Dicey Knitting project.  Pat bought a set for both Christ and I for the holidays.  The kit is a set of 5 dice and instructions.  You roll the dice to determine what you will do over the row of a project.  The suggested project was a Chaos Scarf where you would only work the roll over 8 rows.  Basically: you roll 5+ times until you have worked all your stitches.  The even rows would be purled and the 3 and 7th rows would be knit.  Row 5 would be similar to row 1 except that when you once increased/decreased, you would not do the opposite.

The three of us decided to do a Knit-a-long for this and then opened up involvement to a few friends we had on G+.  We actually got a few people who decided to buy some kits of their own to do this with us.  On March 1 we started the Knit-A-Long.  Everyday we would roll again and knit the 8 rows dictated by the rolls.  Each day we would keep track of what we did and share with the group along with a photo.

My rolls

My rolls

This plan was all well and good and, as I have learned with all my little conceptual knitting projects, doesn’t always work. The effort going into a daily project is quickly derailed by life.  I got through most of week 1 without a problem, but once week 2 hit, I was overwhelmed with other things to work on.  Each roll would take about 30 minutes to work.  There would be problems as I tried to reverse what I was doing.  The beginning of my scarf is a bit of a mess as I worked to make sense of the instructions.  I had to make changes to do what would actually work for me as I found I would always end up short a stitch or have 1 too many based on what I had to do.

I spent most of the last week catching up with the days I had missed.  In the end I was very pleased with what I had done.  It had been a chance to practice techniques for decreasing and increasing; I got very comfortable doing cables; and I got better at managing the project when problems came up.  The yarn I used is not something I will ever use again.  It was Vicky Howell’s Sheepish in two colors: blue and grey.  The problem I had with this yarn is that it is little more than roving.  It has very little spin to it so it is easy to split and accidentally create an extra stitch or a weaker stitch.

I am glad I did it and I may do it again someday.  I am quite sure I will get the kit for another knitter someday as well.  This was a fantastic gift!

See the project (with more pictures) on Ravlery

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Hush-A-Bye

Hush-A-Bye

In all the family drama, I have put off posting about the other toddler blanket I knit and sent last week.  My parents best friends have a son with an 18 month old little girl.  They live out in New Mexico now, but they were in Miami when I was in Miami in January.  It was my first chance to see them since their wedding a few years ago and my first chance to meet the toddler.  For the sake of privacy, we will call the couple M and S.  I have many stories about what M was like as a teenager.  He is a few years younger than me so I never really hung out with him.  While I can’t really go into details.  If his 15-year-old self knew what he future career would be… I fear what he would have done.

Anyway, their little girl (R) was attracted to my baby magic when we had dinner one night.  She kept showing me these cute Hello Kitty shoes they had bought for her.  My mother was thrilled to have bought her a tutu in hot pink.  I had been waiting to meet R before I made a gift.  Why?  Well, these are not close friends of mine.  I like to get a sense of the child when I am not close to them.  I went home from Miami with a firm idea of what I wanted to make R.  I wanted the blanket to be hot pink and black.  I was thrilled to find both colors in the yarn I wanted to use.

pattern details

pattern details

It’s hard to see the details of this blanket, but it’s in a basket weave pattern.  That means there are blocks of rows alternating between knit and purl stitches for chunks of the row.    You can see it on the left to get a better sense of what it looks like.  The pattern is not difficult, but you have to remember exactly how many stitches per block and which row to swap the order on.  I know a few people who have struggled with basket weave because it can trick you into not thinking about it.

I sent M & S their blanket at the same time I sent my cousin’s the other one.  I suspect this one will be kept happily.

See on Ravelry

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4th Grade Hat

4th Grade Hat

Anyone who has been reading this blog knows I have a fascination with entrelac projects.  I have had this beret sitting in my Ravelry queue for a few months because I need more hats and because doing entrelac in the round seemed like a nice idea.  I admit, I felt a little intimidated by doing the later, but I had the yarn for it.  The pink yarn I got almost two years ago at my first Webs Tent Sale.  I have 10 balls of it and have used it for a gift scarf in the past.  It is a tweed yarn and I just love it so much.  I just a little over 1 ball of it for this project.  The black/grey is a skein of Noro yarn that I got last year during the yarn crawl.  It is just one skein that changes to different shades of grey and black.

I started the project just about a week and half ago at an open project night at the new yarn shop Twill in Nashua.  Jess (who is one of the students I supervise, but also a knitting friend) suggested I attend and when another colleague of ours decided to learn to knit, it made perfect sense for all three of us to go together.  I am loving the yarn shop, but I am not sure how often I will get out to project night.  I took this with me because I was just starting and could teach Leslie to cast on while I did the same myself.

I am thrilled with the way it turned out, but it is a bit on the big side.  I think I may try to felt it just a tad in order to shrink it to better fit my head.   Now, I need to think of what else I can do with the 6+ skeins of the pink that remain.  Maybe a shawl…

See in Ravelry

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I don’t normally go on and on about ideas… at least, not on this blog.  I have typically used it to reflect me.  For a while it has been necessary for me to just focus on me.  There has been a lot going on over the past few years: new jobs, new homes, school, thesis, writing, etc.  The past 6 months of freedom have really allowed me to explore communities.  Not just the ones I live in, but the ones I have online.  My increasing dislike of Facebook has moved me to other social network tools.  I have been playing with Tumblr and Instagram.   I still love Twitter too, but I want something collective and universal.  Google+ has been the only real alternative to Facebook that has been working for me.  It has made me rethink social media too.  I think it has gotten a bad rap because people want to translate their Facebook experience right to G+, but that’s not what works.

The thing about G+ is the way you can develop communities around topics/circles and share your interests with people.  This has happened primarily, for me at least, with knitters.  With Pat and Christi both on G+, we have an easy way to coordinate plans, chit chat about nonsense and be silly.  Plus, keeping things private between us is much easier than FB.  I either make a circle with just them and only let that circle see a message or I mention them in the message and don’t let any circle see it.  I have the ability to keep things from people who don’t care.  My librarians may not care about knitting and my knitters don’t care about libraries.  If there is an overlap then the person goes in both circles.  People are typically good about not sharing all things with all people.

The beauty of this has been the real community that has been built with my fellow knitters because we can share circles.  I share my knitting circle with my knitting circle so they can see and include those people in their circles.  We have done Knit-a-longs, swaps, and project together as a result of the community we have built.  Pat, who does more of this than I do, has even gone as far as to meet many of the knitters at knitting events and in his life.  While I maintain my Ravelry account (and love to use it), the real conversations, sharing and project development is happening on G+ for me.   The group of us who do monthly knit-a-longs are using it as an opportunity to learn new techniques.  Next month I am going to do a project that will allow me to learn steeking: cutting the knitted fabric!  We just did a swap where we made bags for each other.  Some of us go as far as sharing patterns with each other.  When I visited Miami, these are the people who told me which yarn stores were worth visiting.

G+ has turned into a very interactive community for me.  It’s not a group of self-promoters and tech people.  There is a strong community of people who share a passion even if they aren’t real life friends.  Facebook may connect you with friends and family you already know, but it rarely allows us the opportunity to connect to new people in a meaningful way.  G+ has seems to do a better job at facilitating that.  Now I just wish Google would play better with non-Google products.

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