Homemade Holidays

White Christmas in on AMC tonight: this is a wonderful thing. Perfect for grading undergrad papers and blog updating, yes?

With the holiday a few weeks away, I've been knitting and sewing away - nothing I can show here just in case someone happens upon my ramblings (hi!) - but as I haul my knitting from one space to another, I'm reminded I haven't written about my new knitting basket.

A few weeks ago, I was flea marketing with my aunt and uncle and happened upon this vintage sewing basket. The print was gaudy and the fabric musty but there's something delightful in the idea of having such a contraption in which I could place the plethora of projects I'm currently working on and move from room to room. A quick check of the price tag - $6 - and it was coming home with me. I knew it was meant to be when I was checking out and discovered it was half off. Lovely.

I got it home and slowly but surely began pulling it apart. Rather than being glued, the dowels were stapled in, making it quite a challenge to disassemble the contraption without losing a finger. After the basket was apart, I made something of a faux-pas: I washed the fabric bag, figuring that I would make a pattern from it after it no longer smelled like damp basement. The fabric, which wasn't high quality to begin with, literally disintegrated in the wash, leaving me with shreds of what was. Ugh.

I used newspaper to lay out what I imagined would be a pattern for a new fabric bag to fit onto the frame. A quick trip to my local fabric store, Shiisa Quilts, resulted in a yard of John Dewberry's rust-colored damask home decor fabric. On sale, nonetheless. I found a different shade of burnt orange for the inner liner at Joanns. I cut out my pieces and, over Thanksgiving break, spent an entire morning piecing the bag together. Since I'm relatively new to sewing and it was a pattern I somewhat figured out, it was a morning of thinking and rethinking where seams need to go, what steps to do first, just how is the liner going to get sewn into this thing?

In the end, it turned out beautifully and by beautifully, I mean that it's functional. There are seams that don't match up, pieces that are cut just a smidge too wide (or perhaps my sewing is inaccurate...) but it works well. It'll make a great bag to carry all the knitting I'll have to finish as I travel over the break.

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

I big red heart Carole King. She's the soundtrack of my childhood - I can't count the number of records, tapes, and CDs we went through as we repeatedly listened to her 1971 album Tapestry over and over again. These are the songs my mom made marinara to, the songs I studied Shakespeare to, the songs we sang at the top of our lungs on road trips. I return to this album when I'm incredibly happy, blaring Smackwater Jack as loudly as I can, or when I simply miss my mom, taking those minutes of Way Over Wonder as a respite from the chaos of my life to acknowledge how much I miss her before I throw myself back into the fray. It's cathartic.

Lykke Li released one of my favorite albums of last year, the brilliant Youth Novels, and, as posted by the delightful PaperMichelle, recently covered King's Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. It's lovely. Li's wavering voice and sparse piano highlight just how fragile this song is as it poses that most daunting question. Brillz.

Coincidently, Li contributed the song Possibility to New Moon. I recently saw the movie and, while I had issues with the movie, loved the music.

Bubble Lights

Is there anything better than a strand of bubble lights? Over the course of the last few years, I've collected a few strands but am a long way off from being able to deck out a whole tree with these effervescent delights.

Regardless, the House of Whelmed tree looks pretty spiffy and makes the entire house smell like pine.

Relax. Breath. Everything will get done.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

For the first time ever, I didn't head back to the Mitten state for Thanksgiving. Rather, I stayed in Bton and gathered a group of lovely people for dinner and a showing of Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving. Conversation was delightful, food was delicious and the lines we encountered when we went to the Outlet Mall afterward were distractingly long. All in all, a fine Thanksgiving.

Surprisingly, I emerged without purchasing a single thing from the Outlet Mall trip. True, prices were low, but it just felt weird. Women in the hundreds were wandering around the store, bunches of purses on their arms, confident these objects were the key to their holiday joy. After last year's knit-a-palooza, I find that I can't try to my loved ones with whatever the stores are offering. I really enjoyed knitting for everyone last year, regardless of how much work it was. I haven't had the time to do the same this year, so I'm taking a different strategy: I've knit quite a few things for people over the course of the year. For those who I have not squirreled some piece of fibery goodness away for, I will figure out sewing possibilities. I've managed to collect a decent stash of fabric and some decent sewing skills; I can come some up with something, I am sure. For those who are left, I'm trying to wrap my head around books (I love books as gifts, especially when said books come from people who share my reading tastes and/or know me well) and vintage items from flea markets and thrift stores. If I can't make a homemade holiday, I'm thinking this is the next best thing: gifts that are thoughtful and attempt to sidestep the cookie cutter commercialism of the season. Now to check my list and make a plan to finish everything in the midst of papers and grading and general school insanity.

These next few weeks are hectic: holiday preparation, classes wrapping up, and the everyday goings-on of life. I will try, however, in these coming weeks to breathe and enjoy the season, revel in my friendships, and not let the to-do-ness of the holidays get me down.

Today I Broke

Nope, I'm not crying. At least not in this picture.

It's nearing the end of fall semester, third year in and I have yet to have cried over a professor's feedback. I've taken classes with some of the most difficult profs in my department, submitted papers where I was unsure of what I was doing, spelled out my ignorance about this topic and that with glaring clarity. And never once have I cried.

There has always been something to be learned, something I've done well enough to warrant revisiting the writing a second time. There's always been something redemptive about the feedback I've received from my professors, regardless of how crappily I laid out my argument or splotchy my literature. I've never had a professor tell me my writing is sloppy and nothing more.

Honestly, I don't quite know what to do here. Were the assignment something polished, rather than a working draft, I would understand the comment. But it is a working draft and while there are sections of the paper that are sloppy, I felt my epistemology and theoretical underpinnings were solid. I don't think I'm someone who needs coddling but I am here to learn. Nothing comes out of feedback that is meant to belittle and gives no direction for positive change. Teach me.

Today, I cried. Her feedback, my apparently sloppy writing, broke me. Today, after seven semesters, countless papers, and eleven sections of teaching, graduate school broke me. I'll mend but, for today, I just want to wallow.

Welcome, November

October was a great, if not harried, month. Papers (one of which I should be writing right now...), proposals, teaching, giving feedback on assignments: it makes one really have to schedule time for enjoying the season. And there has been enjoyment, friends, particularly in these last few days of October. Take a look-see:

Haunted Halloween Hellaballoos, Mummy races, and zombie parades: a nice way to see one of my favorite months out and usher in the home stretch of the semester.

Now only if I could get this paper written...

The Ghosts

And, suddenly, we're back where we began: on the phone, after the rest of the world has gone to sleep, talking out the problems of our days. Well, your day primarily, but that isn't anything out of the ordinary.

In the course of four days, you've seeped back into my everyday, your emails piling up in my inbox, your messages on my voicemail. I've heard more from you in the past three days than I've heard from you in three years since you and I were no longer you and I. As I attempt to parse your problems into manageable questions leading to an ultimate conclusion, it strikes me as funny that your current relationship problems are our past relationship problems. Is that why you called? Because I have first hand experience?

When I told you I wanted to be friends, I meant it. I called. I emailed. I didn't hear back from you, so I'm adrift in a tumultuous sea as we engage in the witty banter: simultaneously, I'm ecstatic to hear the familiar timbre of your voice while drowning in how angry I am with you for never returning my = occasional phone call, never responding to an email with more than one line. I don't want to admit how much you hurt me, how much it still hurts, and, as such, will continue to believe my high pain tolerance to be strength.

Crap.

This? This pile of books? It's not what I want to read nor is it what I've read thus far this semester. This pile of books is what I'm reading RIGHT NOW. All of them are attached to some class, some project, and I find myself reading for the majority of my days. That's not a horrible thing; I'm not whining (okay, maybe a little), I'm just trying to justify why I haven't been here lately. Between the classes and attempting to get a jump on my proposal and quals, time's been a little strapped, leaving barely any time for friends much, much less blogging. I need to be better.

I have been updating my Flickr Project 365, though. Well, weekly at least.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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

The Summer, She is Finished

I am of the opinion that syllabuses (or syllabi, depending on your preference) are best introduced when accompanied by a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. As the instructor verbally outlines the work load of the semester, they give students something to munch on and, I would like to think, reduce the amount of stress they experience as I repeat, over and over, "late work is unacceptable and don't copy and paste off of the Internet. I have mad Google skills and will find you out."

I don't teach until four-thirty in the afternoon and have a seminar immediately before, which may work out to my advantage tomorrow. When I stopped at the School of Education this morning, the copier was refusing to make double-sided copies. The day before classes begin and the copier has decided to be moody. This is not good.

My advantage is this: I can drop off my syllabus, timeline, and phonics pretest at the copy center early in the morning and they should be done by the time class actually rolls around. I would go and make single-sided copies of all three pieces tonight but at seven pages each times twenty-four students, that's a lot of pages. (504 pages to be exact.) I'm trying not to be a tree killer.

But the syllabus is finished, so there is that to be thankful for. Not copied, but finished at least.

Ketchup

There's a lovely vase of zinnias on the kitchen table, obtained from this morning's Farmer's Market. They're bright and cheery and make me think of this little old lady who would come into the flower shop I worked in as a high school student. Every Saturday, she would stop after grocery shopping and she would purchase five dollars worth of flowers, usually daisies and alstro, often stating that it would make sense for a woman on a fixed budget to spend that five dollars on food but the flowers fed her soul. She had to have them, especially when the dreary UP winter descended. I looked forward to her weekly visits, which continued through my last summer working at that small shop in college and hope she's still making her weekly floral purchases.

The zinnias got me thinking about my poor, neglected Lizard Ridge. They share quite a bit in common: brilliant color and a generalized feeling of happiness, save for the fact my poor Lizard Ridge squares are sitting in a pile. I'm still nine squares short, still have to weave in the ends of the squares already finished, and the blocking! Oh, I don't even want to think about the blocking!

The stack of knitted squares is indicative of a larger problem: I have far too many unfinished projects. Mittens that need thumbs, shawls in need of another skein of yarn, a half-finished baby blanket that might be complete by the time the intended child goes to college. I've made a list of all these projects and will, hopefully begin finishing them off in these first few weeks of school. The Lizard Ridge, I am hoping, will be done for December movie viewing... and then onto more holiday knitting. So much to be done, so much to be done.

The School Year Begins

When I was an Assistant Hall Director at my alma mater, two of my staffers teased me that I spoke way too much with my hands. The above picture, taken as I was MC-ing the department orientation confirms as much. Every picture of me has some element of hand movement - at times, it looks like I'm attempting flight. I'm Italian; that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

Today's move-in day. Approximately 7000 freshman and their anxiety-ridden parents are moving into the dorms today, throwing the entire city of Bloomington into a frenzy. Traffic has been rerouted, out-of-town visitors are driving the wrong way on one-way streets, and there are people EVERYWHERE, which makes it an excellent day to stay home and begin the coursework that is coming. Unfortunately, grass is being planted at the House of Whelmed today so I'm spending the morning at Kroger, munching on Dunkin Donuts and attempting to finalize my syllabus.

I do like thinking that this is someone's first day of college, though, and hope their own adventures in the coming school year are meaningful, enlightening, and empowering. For today, I just wish they stay out of the way of my car.

Canning Summer

When I was small, the signs of the changing seasons were less artificial than they are now: rather than the arrival of the Target back-to-school ad, the emergence of box upon box of canning jars from the basement heralded the impending close of summer. My mom was a thorough and thoughtful food preservationist, canning bushel upon bushel of beans, tomatoes, and apple sauce while pickling cucumbers in a variety of ways and still finding time to make raspberry jams for the cold weather ahead. At eight years old, canning season annoyed me. There were all those jars to be washed. The water bath made the house unbearably humid. My mom's temper would flair as she attempted to balance preparation for all these different processes. It was a trying time but one that seemed to fade into the background as we ate from these stores throughout the winter.

After some reading, I decided this would be the year I tried my own hand at canning. Armed with my grandmother's phone number, thirty pounds of tomatoes acquired at yesterday's farmer's market, and brand new canning jars, I began the process this morning.

Thirty pounds of tomatoes doesn't look all that intimidating at first. In fact, at ten this morning, I was still convinced that I had scored a great deal: thirty pounds of tomatoes for ten dollars. Thirty pounds of really lovely looking tomatoes from an organic family farm. Three hours later, after peeling all thirty pounds, I was thinking otherwise.

Don't let this picture fool you: I had a large stock pot and another smaller pot filled with these tomato quarters. The LeCrueset happened to be the most photogenic. I love that pot. Is it wrong to love a piece of cookware?

On to Sarah's, where the actual canning would take place. We've made the decision to make this an annual event, having helped her with her tomato canning last year. Along with our friend Yi-Ching, we began boiling jars, simmering lids, and filling said jars with what seemed like a never-ending supply of tomatoes. Thankfully, despite the balmy weather elsewhere, it was a relatively cool day here in Indiana and we were able to throw open the windows and the doors to make our task bearable.


In the end, I canned eleven quarts and six pints of tomatoes, all destined for dinners of chili and spaghetti and just general yumminess. My gram managed to talk us through how to can in the oven, which totally revolutionized our system, allowing us to get through all of my own canning along with all of Sarah's in a little over four hours. Not horrible considering how much we actually put into containers.

The side of my brain that love statistics and numbers is screaming that today probably wasn't all that economical. The money spent on jars, produce, and energy as well as time probably outweigh the money I would spend buying cans of tomatoes at my local market. There is a certain satisfaction in knowing where these jars of red deliciousness come from, that I spent an afternoon with my friends, laughing and telling stories, storing these away for fall's savory soups and winter's thick sauces. It was delightful, though I am thoroughly exhausted. My muscles hurt from yesterday's strength-training class (even my neck - unsure what that means...) and my hands smell like tomato.

Hopefully, I will be able to stay awake long enough to watch the new Mad Men... It's a goal.

5T :: 8.21.09

5T :: 8.21.2009
Originally uploaded by LimeGreenOctopi

Things off to better homes this week:

2 photo frames, donated to Goodwill.
2 CDs, donated to the Friends of the Library store.
1 knitting gauge, donated to my LYS for use with school kiddos learning to knit.
1 HP bookmark, donated to Goodwill.

The Books! They Have Arrived!

The first box of books for this semester's classes arrived this morning. It doesn't look like $200 worth of books does it? Such a small stack and only representative of a portion of two classes.

I also need to start thinking about buying clothes, even though I have to giggle a bit at the thought of going school clothes shopping at the age of twenty-eight. Giggles aside, an inventory of my closet reveals I have very few articles that actually fit me after last fall's weight loss meaning that I need to invest some money in new trousers and shirts. Given the strict budget, I have to be more than thoughtful in color combinations and individual pieces, which has never been my strong point. Perhaps there is something of a list floating out there on the Internet: the neccessities of a guy's wardrobe.

Let's Face This Night and See It Through

I'm a little obsessed with this song, Skeleton Boy, from the UK band Friendly Fires. Like constant rotation on my iPod kind of obsessed. Great video as well - a bit creepy but overall just plain fun.

Jumping the Pumpkin

School starts up in two weeks; I keep referring to this fact in order to remind myself to spend these waning hours of summer doing fun things, things I may not have time to do once my nose is stuck in piles of books and my fingers are flying across the keyboard writing papers. Yesterday, I feel, was a good use of time, engaged in some crafty goodness for the little ones in my life.

Up first: the candy corn hat. Quite a few of my friends have babies and these small knit candy corn hats are irresistible as well as a quick, quick knit. I think this hat encompassed a whole hour and a half of mindless knitting while watching season two of Mad Men. I did deviate from the pattern a bit: rather than k1p1 ribbing, I made it a k2p2. I like the look of the k2p2 ribbing much more than the k1p1 - simply an aesthetic change. Another aesthetic change was to finish the hat after the k1k2tog decrease; when knit according to the pattern, the hat becomes really pointy. I wanted the top of the hat to be more rounded and finishing after that particular decrease accomplished the task.

This is a great project to use up odds and ends, should one have bright yellow, bright orange, and white yarn in their stash. I did not but collected said shades in Plymouth Encore Worsted at my LYS. I used so little of the yarn to make this one hat, I'm thinking one skein of each will be enough to make seven more. Or, at least, I hope.

Also: Why was I convinced that orange was the base color of a candy corn? Where did that come from?

Next: A trick-or-treat bag, or at least the prototype I will use to construct more later on. I've slowly but surely been spending some time in front of the sewing machine in order to build some skills. I was sick with mono when my classmates had sewing in Home Economics and my mom didn't think it wise to teach me, even when I asked. Hence, I've been reading, reading, reading, and attempting a few easy-peasy-lemon cheesey patterns. I had thought I'd found one such pattern in Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing - a tote pattern I figured would make a great tote for holiday-inspired candy gathering. I purchased fabric from the local Joanns, cut out all the pieces, ironed on interfacing, and prepared for an hour or so of sewing the next day.

Perhaps it's my lack of sewing schema or just a lack of comprehension period, but the directions lost me. I can read learning theory and have it make perfect sense but can't seem to follow directions for a simple tote bag. Epic fail on my behalf. Also: the interfacing I purchased wasn't so great, not adhering to the fabric completely and causing some issues with the sewing machine. So I improvised. Using some of the measurements provided in the book, I made the above tote: fully lined and reversible, ready for trick-or-treat goodness. My sewing skills still are not those of Adam, but I managed through a quilt top and now a tote-like bag. When can I start sewing coats and such?

I also managed, in course of yesterday, to make a pot of chicken noodle soup (to use up a stalk of celery - it made sense in my head when I woke up yesterday, but seems silly now) and a peach pie, which will be enjoyed tonight with vanilla ice cream. Not a lot of creating today, however: I have a syllabus that needs to be polished and at least three rubrics I need to write.

School starts in two weeks.

5T :: 8.14.09

5T :: 8.14.09
Originally uploaded by LimeGreenOctopi

So I started doing the 5T thing and stopped, mostly because I went on vacation and then did the whole move thing... attempting to get back in the swing of it...

Things off to better homes:
Acrylic yarn :: donated to LYS for use in a classroom.
Cell phone :: given to a friend who goes through a lot of cell phones.
Charger :: yes, I'm counting it as an item this week. It went with the cell phone.
Pinnacle Video Converter :: listed on Amazon.com for someone else to utilize.
Electric Insect Swatter :: donated to Goodwill; someone will think this is cool.

Waning Days of Summer

I've been baking up a storm, slowly but surely working my way through the baking section of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. The latest project: cinnamon buns, which were stickily delicious and forced me to engage in an extra half-hour on the elliptical yesterday.

I'm procrastinating, wishing and hoping that a slew of baking will slow down the onset of the school year. I had my first "not prepared for the first day of school" dream last night, a reminder that yeast will make bread rise but will not make the hours pass any more slowly. I'm teaching two, taking four this semester, which may very well change before the end of the day. Two of the classes are in my minor, gender studies, while another is dissertation proposal preparation; the fourth is a class in online content analysis through our School of Library Science. When scheduling in the spring, I was counting on only teaching one section this term. With two, I'm unsure I can manage such a schedule and actually learn something in it. Online content analysis may be going to the wayside.

I'm looking forward to returning to teaching, despite the fact my syllabus has been chopped up into pieces. This will be the third year I've taught this class and finally feel like I have a grasp on how I want it to go, what I want to change to make it a better class for both my students and for myself as an instructor. I'm introducing a memoir project through which I hope to walk my students through both the writing workshop structure and process writing. I've mapped out concepts to be covered throughout the course of the year. I hope this will alleviate some of the pressure I feel to cover everything in the fall and then flounder a bit in the spring. I'm also hoping that this will more authentically connect assessment and methodology for my students. We shall see.

All of this, of course, relies on finishing actually writing the syllabus and then working through all of the assignment sheets and rubrics for grading. Syllabuses (just as correct as syllabi) are never simple and this current one just seems overwhelming...