27 September 2009

Mondays are just so weekly

One of my favorite people was here this weekend and it was spent laughing, talking, picture-taking, and people-watching. Lovely.

Highlights:

* I bought new jeans this weekend, which allowed for two new discoveries: (1) that I am actually one size smaller than previously thought and (2) that I can no longer shop in the young men's department. I bought jeans from Kohls. This, friends, is a first.

* My iPod died. It makes the strangest little sound and then I am faced with the iPod face of death. This is the refurb they gave me last year at this time when my year-old iPod's battery died. I believe my AppleCare is officially expired but will be making an appointment at the store to plead my case. iPods should not have a year life expectancy. That's ridiculous.

* I am insanely tired and need to go to bed. I've been neglecting the blog, however, and felt I needed to remedy that immediately if not sooner.

20 September 2009

Currently

It's been a stressful day, attempting to navigate the multiple egos that makes up group work. I'm really just in it for the grade, people, and refuse to allow it to take up any more of my time that it absolutely needs to.

So, at eight o'clock this evening, I shut my laptop and proceeded to iron and cut fabric in preparation to make Halloween treat bags for the little ones in my life, as well as a set of pillowcases for holiday gifts. No sewing today, but I did manage to get everything cut and started a project I've been looking forward to for a while: embroidery. Jenny Hart's Sublime Stitching book guided me through this first piece of embroidery. My stitches aren't even and aren't really even all that pretty, but I like it and am pretty excited to finish up the project to see how it all comes together. Embroidery + sewing = possible good time?

Now I just need to find time to finish it.



19 September 2009

Four

After I told my first graders I would be gone for a while, I walked out to my car to begin the long drive up north to my parents' house. Clara somehow, in between shuttling her children to school and daycare and attending to her own busy life, managed to shove this note underneath my windshield wiper blade. For the next nine hours, as I tried to make sense of what my life had become, who I had become, I would take quick glances at it, reminding me that even though I felt like my world was ending right there, in that car, that I had friends who would help me rebuild.

"Of course, all of their words for a thousand years could not fill the hole left by his mother, but they could raise a loving fence around it so he didn't keep falling in." (Spinelli, Eggs)

And that is what Clara and so many others have done for four long years now: stopped me from falling in.

18 September 2009

I'll never tell you what I do on a Friday night

My new idea of an exciting Friday night: reading about concepts of gender and development while watching The French Chef on DVD. Oh, yes, this is living.

I will admit, though, that I am a little in love with Julia Child. She's just adorable and makes me want to cook all kinds of things in massive amounts of butter. I am a little less in love with gender and development as I struggle to maintain my interest in the topic. I fear I am at the point in my academic career where I find myself reading the same ideas over and over again when all I really want to do is work on getting my own ideas down on paper.

Unfortunately, I am still embroiled in classwork and I am still responsible for readings assigned by someone else. However, there are three The French Chef DVDs, meaning I have entertainment lined up for the next three weeks.

11 September 2009

Doable.

I went to a friend's dissertation defense this afternoon, the first since I've become a doctoral student. She was nervous at first, partly because the LCD projector failed to sync with her laptop (called IT - they fixed the problem) and partly because... well, it was her dissertation defense. You're supposed to be nervous at a dissertation defense. I think it's a rule written down somewhere.

After the insanity of the technology and once her committee was sitting around the table, she totally transformed into this eloquent, lovely intellectual. She spoke of her research with passion, with conviction, and it was truly a thing of beauty to listen to her document the years of hard work put into her data collection, analysis, and writing. Even when her committee began questioning her, she continued to be graceful, injecting humor where appropriate and carefully weighing the opinions being given to her.

It was inspiring, albeit a little terrifying, as I consider the very real possibility of defending my own work in the coming year. While her defense looked ever-so-elegant, I know the hours she spent in the library translating, transcribing, and making diagrams. Ph.Ds aren't for everyone but they are doable.

I just have to keep telling myself that: they are doable.

08 September 2009

Making the Habitat a Habit

With school in session, my knitting time has decreased in dramatic ways. It makes me sad as the chilly weather has descended on Indiana, totally putting me in the mood for wool. I do sneak in a little knitting here and there in between classes, carrying small projects with me that I can finish a row or two on when I have a spare five or ten minutes.

One of my recent favorites is the Habitat by Jared Flood, the infamous Brooklyn Tweed. Hats in general, I have found, make great knitting projects for those in between times, but the Habitat is a great cabled knit that makes a beautiful product while being interesting enough to keep me from getting bored. I've knit three of these hats thus far and have a fourth on the needles. I think this next one may very well be for me.

But for now, must go read. And write. Lots of that going on today.

06 September 2009

The 365 Project

Back in July I ordered a new camera, a shiny SLR that I could play around with and use to teach myself more about photography. I've been taking pictures like a mad man, documenting everything and everyone. It's a little obnoxious, really, but I can't help but feel like it is forcing me to really think about how I'm taking pictures.

With the camera comes a new obsession with photographs themselves, which fed into a whole new obsession with Flickr. I started uploading photos for Ravelry, then began wandering around and found Project 365. Documenting an entire year in photographs, one a day, seemed like an ideal project to give myself opportunities to learn how to use my camera. I decided to begin the project this past week, coinciding with the first week of school. Perhaps not the best move on my behalf, but I've survived.

Trying to think through the 365 Project, however, has made me into a bad blogger (is anyone reading this thing anyway?) so I figured I would through up my week's worth of pictures. My week, in pictures:

1:365

2:365

3:365

4:365

5:365

6:365

7:365; Yarn Fun, it's all in the planning

Week one done. Onto week two. And perhaps carving out a little bit more blog time.