Curious
in which i solicit your true and honest opinion, whatever it may be.
The title of this post reflects my constant state about everything, but in this case it’s really more about buttons. I haven’t been working on my Audrey in Silt sweater for quite a long time, since I started (and then upsettingly re-started) Marnie’s Moby sweater; I want to finish Marnie’s and get it off to her so she can wear it while she still lives in Chicago. More on that one in a second. But for now, I have a question for you about the buttons for my Audrey sweater. Over on knitspot, Anne Hanson frequently mentions Moving Mud as a source of buttons for her sweaters, and she always says the buttons she receives are more beautiful than what she’d have selected for herself. Since my Audrey sweater is really so beautiful, and I feel so inadequate about selecting buttons, I thought I’d give this a try, and commission the artist at Moving Mud to just make some buttons for me. I sent her my swatch, told her how many and what size, and just trusted her. They’re handblown glass buttons with a shank. I’ve placed them on the sweater — what do you think, honestly?
there will be 12 buttons -- this is just the first 5
I want to say what I think, but I don’t want to influence your opinion. I realize that seeing a few of them on an unfinished sweater lying flat on a table is a different thing than seeing them all on the sweater, on a real body, but I ….. well, what do you think. I am happy with Moving Mud, she was wonderful to deal with, so any concern I have isn’t about her and her business, it’s just about these particular buttons. What do you think?
Marnie’s sweater is coming right along:
the sweater body, blocked and dry. even though the waist draws in quite a bit, it's still not as tiny as marnie's waist. but it should look nice on her!
that rope cable will travel up the arm, all the way to the shoulder.
I’m very fuzzy-headed today and having a hard time getting my brain to work. I really need to get to work, and want to (I’m editing a great manuscript, such fun to read), but it’s like being encased in cotton today, everything’s kind of fuzzy and far from me, and I’m not feeling sharp at all. I hate days like that…..and hope yours is crisper and better!
Please, really do tell me your honest thoughts about those buttons. Perhaps my sure/unsure thing is about today’s fuzziness, but I don’t think so. I’ve had them for weeks now and still feel unsure. What do you think?
ti-i-i-i-me is on my side [yes it is]
I’ve lately recognized my growing obsession with time — not time on my watch or the alarm, and not time passing in my life. I’m not really smart enough in a physics way to understand time as Einstein talked about it, with curving bulging planes in space (see? that’s probably so wrong). Instead, I’m growing obsessed with the idea of time, with the capitalized Time as a force, as an element, as the thing that makes everything possible. I’m afraid this sounds weird, but my problem is a lack of specific vocabulary rather than an idea of what I mean.
Time creates and defines this moment, and it lets us understand what’s happening in this moment by allowing us to compare it against our understandings of previous moments and our imagining of future moments. Time is happening but our brains fool us and trick us into seeing what’s happening as a continuous single thing; if our brains didn’t do that, every time we blinked we’d experience the discontinuity. I’m not sure about how I’m articulating that — it’s one of the things I understand conceptually but don’t know how to say it. But I am obsessed with trying to figure out how to say it. I’ve had a couple of momentary flash experiences of being able to see time, in some way (not to sound all weird), where I saw the movement streams of people on the street. I’m sure those experiences were informed by Hollywood special effects; it’s so hard to have direct and unique experience in this media-saturated world that aren’t filtered through images we’ve already seen. But those two experiences of mine made me think about the possibility that it’s always visible and there, like the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, we just don’t have the perceptual apparatus to witness it. Or maybe we’d be so overwhelmed, and our brains evolved to save us that overwhelm and instead present clean, simple stories.
I love art that deals directly with time, like Andy Goldsworthy’s gorgeous pieces, captured on film:
His work always makes me cry, and feel so grateful to be in this beautiful world, capable of experiencing time and wonder.
I love dance that deals directly with time, like the Cloud Gate Theater of Taiwan, who performed Songs of the Wanderer. Marnie and I saw a performance of this piece, and the power of that monk, standing downstage left, with a steady stream of rice pouring on his head throughout the 90-minute piece, left us both in tears:
In early February I’m going to see a performance by Cloud Gate 2, and I know it’ll knock my socks off. If you get a chance to see them, take it!
And I love books that deal directly with time. I know I’ve been recommending this site a lot lately, but this post from Brain Pickings organized 7 must-read books on time, and I want the few I haven’t already read. If you’ve read any of the books on that list, I’d love to hear your thoughts about them!
an odd year-in-review post
It’s almost 2012. Boggling. Even more boggling is that I’m 53, I have a daughter who’ll be 30 next year, another who’ll be 27, a son who’ll be 25, and a daughter who’ll graduate college and be 22. WHAT?! Also, 32 years ago today, as a matter of fact, I got married to my former husband, who saved me in a very real way. How am I old enough to have done anything important 32 years ago?!
I’ve seen this on a few blogs and really liked it, so here’s my version. 2011 in review — the first line of the first post each month, with my favorite photo from that month. The photo doesn’t necessarily (usually doesn’t) come from the same post. Here we go:
an urban snowman, with baby beets for buttons, and that's probably an organic carrot. this IS the upper west side, after all. 
Ah, New Year’s Eves I have known. One little night, fraught with such imperative – must have fun! Must be memorable! AAAAGH!!
will and katie, 4 years ago
I’m looking at gray skies, gray buildings, brown-gray-black-filthy snow everywhere, and ice-coated trees that look like glass.
giant moon over NYC
Moody. The dreadful and misleading-sounding labile. All over the place (which sounds like it could be at least partially good, doesn’t it?).
sib play
I finished Katie’s socks — the pattern is Angee, by Cookie A, and the yarn is the ultrasoft and super washable KnitPicks Felici (colorway: green vegetables, in the most obviously-named color ever).
I was here just a few days ago! This was shot behind the Greco-Roman amphitheater at Myra, in Kale, Turkey
Turkey was wonderful — in almost every way, it was a perfect vacation.
all done by hand. Every tiny leaf. The hatching on every tiny leaf. Thousands of tiny bunnies. Really. Marnie is a genius.
Remember that old Steve Martin bit about how to be a millionaire and never pay taxes? Basically, it was: first, get a million dollars.
lovely gorgeous NYC
I hope it’s been a good summer for everyone — it’s been a good summer for me! Thank you to everyone who said something here, or on facebook, or via email, about my seeming disappearance from good old Thrums.
i love this color so very much
Aside from fire ants, I don’t mind ants — regular old in-the-house ants. I know some people are freaked out by them, but I don’t mind them. I try to get rid of them, but I don’t mind them.
picture swiped from Marnie's facebook wall, so it's a copy of a copy of a copy. But that's me in Chicago, holding a Bitter Woman Ale and smiling at Marnie and Tom before digging into a giant sandwich. And being 52 the whole time.
This is the whole point with this daily gratitude thing, I guess. Sometimes you have to make a hard effort to find something to be grateful for, and that’s the very time it means the most.
my last evening in the Mekong Delta
We got home around midnight from our wonderful trip to Vietnam and Malaysia. It was just amazing; if you are interested, here’s a link to the flickr set.
central park, so artistic
So there we were last night, handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, waiting for our wonderful dinner, listening to scary music, talking with a friend who came over to spend the evening with us. We munched on Katie’s roasted pumpkin seeds, Trey tended to the smoking pork, it was lovely.
such great texture in that front panel
Are you in a book club? I really want to know — if you are, tell me about it, and if you aren’t, tell me why! I’m in a book club and I love it so much. Although the true number of members is much larger, there are 6-10 people who reliably show up. There’s no reason we don’t have men in our group, we just don’t.
* * *
So what I’ve learned is that my first post each month is usually quite banal; I need to take more photographs, since I included few of my own across the year and many more scrounged off the Internet; it was a rollercoaster year, with some real highs and some extraordinary lows. But it ain’t over yet, the fat lady sings in 14 days and 14 hours!
there’s very little that’s more enjoyable than finding the right words to say something very clearly.
I just read this and feel such delight at the prospect of thinking about it:
Henri Michaux wrote, in The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones: ”Just as the stomach does not digest itself, just as it is essential that the stomach do no such thing, the mind is constructed in such a way that it cannot grasp itself, cannot directly, continuously grasp its own mechanism and action, having other matter to grasp.”
I’m not at all sure that the reason the mind cannot grasp itself is that it’s too busy grasping other matters, nor am I entirely sure that the mind cannot grasp itself (or am I…), but I love this idea and look forward to thinking about it.
I’m trying to figure out how to write an experiential scene of dissociation, where the character makes the shift into dissociation. We all dissociate, even just to a mild degree; we zone out, we do a little zombie thing, we step out of the immediate environment, even if just for a second. Of course there’s a more profound kind of dissociation, in which a person psychologically flees the scene and leaves the body behind to take the heat. People sometimes talk about watching themselves as if they’re floating overhead; that form seems pretty easy to write. Other people talk about kind of being in an all-white (or some colored) space, as if nothing else exists. And other people dissociate and only know it when they’re “back,” and realize that some time has passed. The jargon for that is “lost time,” as in I’ve been losing time.
So this question of the mind grasping itself seems somehow relevant and interesting in terms of dissociation. I think there’s something in it for my current dilemma, I just need time to think about it. But that probably won’t come today, unfortunately, so I record it all here, for my safekeeping. If something strikes you, I’d love to hear it!
We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving. And we all have some power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing. — Louisa May Alcott
This is a question I’ve become kind of obsessed by. For the last year, there has been a simmering background potential that my life might change dramatically, and I’ve been spending a lot of hours thinking about how that might look. And I’ve been extremely specific about it, too — no vague handwaving about it. In the process, I’ve been thinking about moving ahead and doing what I want with my life, making it the way I want it. Not the way it is, necessarily, the way things just kind of develop, and you’re stuck with that table because there’s nothing really wrong with it so you can’t justify getting a new one. Instead, what if I could have what I wanted? Exactly what I wanted? What would that look like?
I actually started thinking about this several months ago, during my monthly writing group. We take turns bringing one-word prompts and each month we spend several minutes doing spontaneous freewriting on each prompt. So this one time, the prompt was different than usual, it was simple: write what you’d do if you had a whole weekend all to yourself, to do whatever you wanted.
Our faces lit up (we’re all women, this “time all to yourself” idea is so novel!), and our heads went down and the pens were scratching feverishly over the paper. Usually one of us finishes in a couple minutes, and the others wind up shortly after that. This time, we just kept writing. Pages were being flipped quickly, and the pens just kept moving. The thing that was so surprising, when we finished and we each read our little piece aloud, the others listened with wide eyes to what were essentially simple things…..but the writer always seemed to think it was some kind of crazy, impractical, impossible dream.
So for the last several months I’ve been thinking about this. Given where I am in my life, what is my big dream, now? At this point, so many of my big dreams have been achieved: my children are here, in my life, and they’re also out in the world living big lives of their own, and they’re wonderful people; I not only went to college, I finished graduate school and earned a PhD, which I never even knew to dream about; I’ve traveled a lot and seen places I’d never even heard of, plus so many places I never dreamed I’d see, and learned that there are other places in the world that feel like home; I earn money by reading and writing.
So it’s not at all about “gee, what’s left?” but more like ok: now, given this stage of my life, what is my big dream? And again, my thinking is focused, not some vague handwaving. Focused. What is my big dream now, given where I am in my life?
Before I tell you mine, I wonder about yours. What is your big dream? Specifically.
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p.s. Giving a shout out to women in my broad age group. We’re gorgeous! Check out this post on A Femme d’un Certain Age, see if you can find me among the beautiful others!
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~Thomas Mann
the dreaded blank page
No one professes to love words more than I do, I’m pretty convinced about that. Not only am I paid to read and write all day long, my graduate research focused on the words we use and what that means about us psychologically, I’ve been a voracious reader since I was 3 years old and had my own library card, and I write a lot. Here, now and then, very long emails to friends, a bit of poetry, and some personal writing. Also: I say I am writing a memoir.
I believe in daily writing, and read The Artist’s Way back in the 80s and imagine that doing morning pages is a brilliant idea. And since I know the research about the striking power of doing regular stream-of-consciousness writing, I think it’s not just brilliant but great for you in every way, physically, emotionally, psychologically, creatively. I adore Anne Lamott’s exhortation to write shitty drafts, and think that’s so liberating. That’s right, this one is expected to be shitty! I can do that!
I want to be a writer, I think it’s the most exalted thing to do. Books saved my life as a young girl, giving me a way to imagine other possibilities than the life I was living. The Hunchback of Notre Dame gave me the idea of searching for sanctuary, even if you’re a hideous outcast. Life saving. No exaggeration. If I could write words that could give someone that kind of thing, well, I can’t even imagine that.
And now, reality:
“Tomorrow morning I’m going to do morning pages.”
I’ll just go through my Google Reader this morning and do that tomorrow.
“Just write a shitty draft of a few paragraphs and see where they go.”
I think I’ll make some tea and look at the NYTimes, I’m just not in the mood to do that right now.
And so on. And so forth. Etc, etc, etc. One of my clients has written a really incredible book, so exciting and vivid and creative, and I feel lucky to be working on it with him. I’m kind of in awe of how he came up with it. He tells me it’s a kind of job, it’s work, he doesn’t wait for ‘inspiration,’ he just works at it, keeps working on it. Another of my brilliant clients (interview with her here) says writing is misery, she does it every day. I read an interview with a writer this morning, who said the way you get better is by putting your butt in that writing chair every day and just writing. Of course I know that. And she made a little video of a song she wrote which includes the point that you just have to “push that c^*ksucking boulder up the motherf^*#king hill”. Go Nike and Just Do It.
I found a website called 750words (http://750words.com/) that presents you with a totally blank screen and your words are counted while you type, at the bottom of the screen. So of course I signed up and wrote today’s 750 words (which translates to about 3 pages). What did I write about today? This. My inability to write, and why I do this, by which I mean I don’t do this. We’ll see.
Do you stop yourself before you start, like I do? How do you make yourself do it anyway? I’m looking for ideas.
it comes and goes, it comes and go-oh-oh-oes…
First, isn’t that the weirdest word, rhythm? The spelling always slows me down. Rhythm. Rhythmic. Weird.
Anyway. I get so distracted. I’ve been thinking about this general pattern that happens in life, where everything ebbs and then flows. My work is certainly like that; I’ll go through periods of being inundated with new clients/patients, and then periods of absolute silence, no work. It’s gone on long enough that I know it’s somehow just the rhythm of things. I don’t know why all at once lots of people want editing, and then for a long time no one wants it, but it does seem to go in clumps.
When I was a kid, I’d have periods of absolute addiction to reading (that was the bulk of my time, for sure) with periodic brief lulls where I just felt so burned-out by reading I didn’t think I could bear to pick up a book. It also happened with the what of my reading: obsession with literary fiction to the exclusion of everything else, and then a profound disinterest in it, and all that felt interesting was nonfiction.
And handwork follows the same kind of pattern — the frequently-mentioned “loss of mojo.” I think it’s just the same kind of deal, this ebb and flow rhythm of things. When you enjoy doing a lot of different things, that helps; a period of boredom with knitting just means more time to spin! When my kids were young, there was always so much to do and so little time, I don’t remember this experience happening too often, because there wasn’t time to immerse myself in any one thing for too long. I made most of their clothes, smocked the girls’ dresses, was president of the spinner’s and weaver’s guild (and obviously I loved to spin and weave), I did some quilting – piecing and quilting entirely by hand, and aside from that, I played guitar and picked a little banjo, and made big meals every night and had to make everything from scratch because of my son’s severe allergy to corn syrup. Even our bagels. Everything.
And I find this ebb and flow happens in blogging, too — for me and for others. I’m in an ebb right now, and was in one for most of March, due to that flare-up of depression. (Does depression flare up? That sounds too active for such a down experience.) Now, though, I’m not depressed but I just talk myself out of writing whatever I think to write about. “Nah, that’s too boring.” “Trite.” “Who cares.” “Really? Really?” The closely-examined life can sometimes just be too closely examined, I think during these ebb periods. I love my life as it is, and don’t want to change anything fundamental about it, but it’s not a lively exciting life, filled with daily adventures and drama to share. I wake up between 5 and 6, usually, grind my beans and make some coffee, drink it while poking around online, then I sit and edit manuscripts all day long, until it’s time for dinner. I eat, we clean up, then I knit and we watch something together. Then I hit the sack.
Even this post is dull and uninteresting, but instead of talking myself out of it I’ll just click publish. I’m pretty sure I’ll move from ebb back to flow one of these days!
What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?
Too bad it’s used as an insult — “smarty-pants!”, usually said with a sneer. Perhaps it’s referring to some kind of attitude of superiority or something, and who likes that….but that’s about the attitude, not the smarty-ness. When I was growing up, being the smart girl sucked. I remember trying so hard to fail so people would like me. Actually, I don’t remember trying that very hard, but I remember thinking that that was the right approach. Sadly, I don’t think it’s all that different now. Our culture has elevated mediocrity and ignorance to such an exalted degree, it’s frightening (cf Sarah Palin).
Anyway. I didn’t really come here to talk about that. I came here to recommend something, in case you like to use your brain, and read the thoughts of others who really like to use their brains. Perhaps you already know about The Edge — it’s a consortium of generally smart people who talk about generally smart things. Among other things, they pose questions and then everyone answers the question, and a recent question was “What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?” Well! As a psychologist, that rang my bell. If you want to read the answers, here’s the first page. David Brooks wrote a nice summary of the symposium here, on the NYTimes. If you are in fact interested, read Brooks’s piece first, because he pulls out some of the more catchy concepts (and throws in one of his own, the eternally-loved Fundamental Attribution Error).
Just sharing. Hope it’s as sunny where you are as it is here!
why? and on top of that, why are all today’s whys about technology? I’M NO LUDDITE!
- WHY did Firefox move the refresh button to the other damn side of the bar?! I don’t buy their “we wanted to clean up the real estate” explanation. They could have as easily put it in the address bar on the left, as on the right, when they were moving it off that toolbar. This is irritating me so much, I may just abandon Firefox altogether. GOOD GRIEF.
- Twitter. I have it, my posts go out on my Twitter feed, every day I get notifications of new complete-strangers following me (why?!). I just don’t really get it. When I worked in midtown, it was fantastic for letting me know exactly where the cupcake trucks were parked at any given moment, but beyond that I just don’t get it.
- iPad. I can’t believe I’m saying that — I’m a devoted lover of all things new and technological, usually an early adopter. I have 5 computers in my tiny home, and there are 2 of us here. I have a laptop and my Droid, and I did have a Kindle but I gave it to my son. I can get a new Kindle for $139, or I can get an iPad (or something like it)….but why?! Why would I get that? I know people who have an iPhone and an iPad (and one person also has an iPod). So much redundancy! I just don’t get it. With my droid and my laptop, why do i need an iPad, besides the coolness of it?
- Why I cannot capture the green in my Saroyan. No matter how I photograph it, in what light, and do how much post-processing, it looks brown. It’s not brown, it’s green. It has streaks of gold and brown in it, but the thing is green. I just tried again, thinking that maybe, perhaps, mysteriously, it would photograph correctly now that it’s finished blocking, but no.
this is pre-blocking, but it doesn't matter. it took so much fiddling to get it to turn out at all green. this color is NOT right. WHY???
Really. Why. It’s not like it’s some extreme color, or in an extreme setting in terms of light, with one color blowing out everything else. I do not understand this one little bit.
I am finishing our taxes today, and I’m going to do some housework, laundry, all that jazz, and figure out my next knitting project. I’m thinking of making the mothed sweather (rav here, knitty here), in a very pretty espresso-brown wool (with a bit of cashmere in it). I’ve done a couple quick projects recently (saroyan, obviously, and my killer red shawl) so I think it’s time to get a bigger thing underway. Happy Saturday y’all, whatever you’re doing!
and it was red, too. with a froth of lace around it.
I didn’t think the SNL skit was really all that funny — the tiny hats sketch — and apparently there was a big firestorm after it aired. It seems the writers are accused of stealing the idea from someone else, some other show. Maybe it was funnier on the other show.
Basically, a group of women are having lunch, and one comes in wearing a tiny hat, like the photo above. it becomes a one-up contest, with the hats becoming tinier and tinier. Pretty silly. Oh, tv, where do you come up with such dreck.
Union Square subway station, New York City! That’s where. Yesterday when I was walking through the subway station, a woman passed me wearing a very tiny red hat, cocked rakishly on the side, kind of like the photo above. It was about half the size of that one, though. She had some kind of stud stuck in her face, to complete the look. The station was so crowded, and we were all moving so fast, there’s no way I could get a picture, unfortunately. Who gets up in the morning and thinks, “All this outfit needs is my tiny hat!”
sperm and smelly feet. ah, new york, you charmer.
There were a few interesting things I saw on today’s journey downtown:
- In both the Times Square and Union Square subway stations, there was someone playing the saw. Really? That seems pretty odd to me.
- Coming out of my subway station at home, I saw a guy ahead that I’ve seen before. He’s easily recognizable because he wears white shoes, white pants, a white jacket with a white hoodie underneath (with the hood up) and he has a white bag. I want to know his story! Every time I see him, I think of the sperm scene from Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *but were afraid to ask”:
did you see the movie? Parts are so so funny...
- Going downtown, the 1 train smelled awful, like someone dumped a bag full of extraordinarily smelly gym socks that had been fermenting for a month or two. I had to fight gagging.
Not the most fascinating stories today, but they caught my attention. Hope you’re having a good Wednesday…
what’s the reverse of forecasting? retrocasting?
We’re so bad at emotional forecasting — it’s just what it sounds like, it’s our ability to predict how we’ll feel in the future. It’s primarily the work of Dan Gilbert, a social psychologist at Harvard (here’s a cool paper if you want to read more). It seems crazy, right? Like surely we can do that, and surely (since we know ourselves so well) we’d be mostly right. Of course, not always right, because everything’s so complex, but mostly right. Nope. We’re really bad at it.
Well, turns out I’m bad at emotional remembering-the-past, too. When I think of the last few months, I think “yeah, I’ve been happy!” But when I look back through my posts, which I did at 3am this morning, what strikes me is how often I talked about being down, having a hard time, having things go wrong. That’s so funny. One thing it suggests to me is that this is a good survival mechanism, a tendency to forget trouble and remember the good things. Another thing it suggests to me is that generally and at the base of it, I’m a hopeful and optimistic person who is fundamentally happy. The down states are therefore exceptions, and forgotten. (Note: I actually think I’m a very complex person, fundamentally happy but also fundamentally complex and layered.)
Of course, I do, can, and always remember that the period around March 5 is difficult for me, and that I struggle a lot and things get kind of dark. But otherwise, I tend to remember that I’ve been pretty happy, and expect that I will be pretty happy in the future.
But of course you don’t know that, so you might assume, given the emotional color of my posts, that I’ve been unhappy for the past few months. Even if I have, I don’t remember it that way.
i’m still not sure i really overheard this, even though i know i did….only in new york, man. only in new york.
I couldn’t make this up if I tried. Yesterday I was coming home from my weekly trip to Union Square, and the subways were extremely and unpleasantly crowded. At times like those, I tend to curl into myself and just try to endure and get home. But there was a young couple standing near me whose conversation was so….. well….. Here. You’ll see what I mean.
HIM: ~25 years old, tall and thin, bad skin, arrogant sneer
HER: ~25 years old, short and heavy, bad skin, sad expression on her face.
HIM: opinion opinion opinion CERTAINTY opinion opinion holding forth on inanity
HER: my Jewish boyfriend….
HIM: I am not Jewish. My mother is not Jewish, so I am not Jewish. My dad is, but I am not.
HER: but you have a Jewfro….
HIM: If you were at all an attractive person, you might be able to get this, but you’re not. You probably won’t get this at all, but one time I put on a dress and put make-up on my face and fixed my hair, and when I looked at myself in the mirror I actually got wood. I mean it, I actually got wood. I looked so hot, so gorgeous, I actually got wood.
I stood there with my mouth hanging open, staring at him. What do you do with something like that?
Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.
This morning I met a blog friend for breakfast – our first real-life meeting, but certainly not our last, if I have anything to say about it (hi Nancy!!). I was not at all surprised to find that we have a lot in common, some similar experiences (similar in essence if not in detail), similar sensibilities, and similar tendencies to smile. It was a wonderful experience, getting to meet her. She knew more about me than I know about her, of course, but I was struck by how close my developed sense of her was to my real experience of her. I think this would be true with most of you who read my blog and leave comments. Also: I think I would like you so much, as much in real life as in blog comments.
What did surprise, me, though was Nancy’s first question of me, which was why. Why do I do this, why do I write in this public forum, why do I share so much of myself here. It’s a good question, and it’s certainly one we all think about if we keep a blog — why, how much, what voice, where’s the line. We also grapple with our own definition of the personal, if we reveal personal experiences. Even though it’s a question I’ve thought about, my response was awkward and kind of graceless, and not really much of an answer. It’s such a good question, so I thought I’d say more here.
Why do I do this, why do I keep this blog, why do I reveal the things I reveal? First, I kept a blog a few years ago that was really personal; in fact, compared to that one, this blog does not feel personal at all. For a number of reasons, some of which had to do with one of the blog’s followers, I shut down the blog. And I missed it, terribly. This blog represents a kind of compromise, because the fact is that I don’t talk about deeply personal material.
So what does that mean to me, “personal material?” I talk about knitting, obviously (not very personal there); I share my thoughts about things, my feelings about things, some of my experiences; I tiptoe around the edges of sharing some bits about my past, but typically in oblique fashion. I don’t, though, talk about my deeply personal struggles, of which there are many. Those are the private issues I share with friends and my family, and sometimes not even with them. I don’t talk about issues that carry embarrassment or shame, typically. I don’t talk about experiences from my past that are shocking.
So here’s the big why, for me. When I was growing up, our life was secret. Our family life was extremely different behind the doors of our house than anyone knew. This is true for a lot of people, and there are lots of different reasons this happens. Mine may be unique in degree, and in reason, but this is not a rare thing. We children were explicitly told that everyone was like us, which left me with a profound uncertainty about the world, and an abiding desire to peek into others’ lives. I love driving around at night, and seeing how people live (if their curtains are open!) — ah, so that’s what people do. They watch tv. They talk, they play games, they knit, they do housework, the kids do homework. That’s what people really do at home. Ah. All these years later, I still need verification.
I got a PhD in psychology because I don’t understand people; human life is mysterious to me, why people do what they do, and anyway, what do people do?
So I write in the personal way I write because my life is not a secret. Parts are private, but I’m the one who gets to decide what that means, and where the line is. I write to feel less alone, because I think we all feel the same things, we all struggle in the dark, we all have moments of thinking we’re the only ones who, we all face the essential questions of meaning and responsibility, and we all sit alone in the silence now and then and long for connection.
I write to be known (even though I fully realize that what I present is crafted, and you’re knowing some version of me that may bear only a slight resemblance to the full me). I write to connect with you. I write so I don’t feel so alone, and I write so you don’t feel so alone, too.
“In the matter of ideas the public prefer the cheap and nasty.” Charles Sanders Peirce
I’m looking at gray skies, gray buildings, brown-gray-black-filthy snow everywhere, and ice-coated trees that look like glass. It looks like every post-apocalyptic movie I’ve ever seen outside; I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see Viggo Mortensen and Boy walking down the road. Yuck it’s ugly out there. Before my Union Square appointment this afternoon, I’m having sushi with a friend in midtown, which means a several-block walk and I don’t like ice. But I’m not grumpy! I don’t know why, this eternally bleak weather seems like it ought to be wearing on me. I don’t like it, but it’s not getting me down. Too much. Yet.
I was dashing through my Google Reader this morning before getting down to work, and I started wondering how y’all feel about something. I know I wrote a blogrump post, where I complained about multi-step commenting and way too many pictures a la Pioneer Woman, so this complaint may not make sense but who cares — consistency, hobgoblin, small minds, etc. What’s your preference for how a blog shows up in your reader? The options are post titles only, titles and excerpts, or full content. I have an opinion but I want to know what you think. I already know what I think.
tell me something good – wackawackawacka
One important area of research in social psychology is attributions — the explanations we come up for everything, from our own behavior to others’ behavior, to the way the world works, to who we believe and why, etc. And social psychologists have identified a bunch of really cool findings…..very cool to me, but I’ll spare you (for now). One way people try to figure out attributions has to do with identifying the cause of things — right? Pretty obvious. But it all depends on where you start, because very few things begin all at once, arising out of nothing (at least not since the Big Bang). The process can quickly deteriorate into a “he said/she said,” “but he started it/no he started” it mess. Just pick any hot spot in the world and listen for a few minutes. Israelis: The Palestinians started it! Palestinians: The Israelis started it! And from each of their perspectives, given the way they chunk the series of events, they feel perfectly justified.
But the thing is, life doesn’t work like that. Time doesn’t work like that. Everything is a continuous stream, every little thing is multiply determined, overdetermined, even. Although we all say it (“it started when….” “and I was just sitting there when….” “everything was fine until…”), none of those stories hold up to close scrutiny. Actions have long, long ripples, and sometimes they undulate through time, through generations, and you might get smacked by something you never saw coming, because it started long ago and far away. That’s just life. We’re meaning-makers, though, so we come up with a story to explain things because we need to. (and oh, here I could tell you one of the coolest research studies ever but I’ll do that another time.)
[just don't anyone say "ooh, the butterfly effect" because for some reason that irritates me. ]
What the hell does this have to do with the price of tea in China?! Well, in the wake of this disastrous pulled muscle in my shneck (shoulder + neck), since I’ve had plenty of time to sit here squinching, thinking about it, I realize that it didn’t come out of the blue. For the last couple of weeks, at least, something has been squirming around in my psyche, something is trying to work itself together, something is trying to crystallize so I can see it, and it hasn’t been even a little bit pleasant. I’ve gone in and out of waves of extremely high anxiety, where I felt like if you flicked me I’d shatter into a million pieces, everything in me was so very, very taut. And always for no reason I knew, for no explanation I could point to. So of course my poor body will have muscles that end up in spasms! They’ve been tense as all hell for a couple of weeks.
It was a too-easy story to say “oh, I slept wrong. That’s it.” Instead, this is a system story, and something is rippling from a cause I can’t see, or recognize it even if I do see it. My mind and body (and dreams) kind of assume I’m an idiot, and communicate with me using Dummy 101 methods. My dreams are as obvious in their symbolism as possible, and if I still don’t get it, I’ll just dream the same dream again, but this time in red! Didn’t get….ok, this time in blue! How about green! COME ON LORI, we can’t make this much simpler for you! How’s about we give you a pain in the neck.
Even though it’s causing me a good deal of physical pain right now, I actually find this among the most fascinating parts of being a human. Once I get it – smacking my forehead, oh! Obvious! – then it’s kind of fascinating just to watch and wait. I’m learning something, I just don’t know what it is yet.
Thank you one and all for the excellent suggestions (but Nancy, I couldn’t find any Blue Goo!). I tried extremely hot baths and showers, a heating pad weighted down with a big bag of rice, a klonopin, and sleeping. By the end of the evening last night, muscles in adjacent areas were going into painful spasms, including my arm muscles and my pectoral muscle on that side. THAT hurt, I’m telling you! Today it’s no longer having spasms (thank heavens, I’ll take that), but the muscles are really painful and I’m cautiously worried that it might go back into spasm. I’ve been sweating with the heating pad, and trying to stretch and relax the muscles, and moving gently, big muscle movements, etc. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be gone.
But the best part is that one of these days all these little unpleasant puzzle pieces will come together and I’ll be able to figure it out. Even if I can just get a corner put together, psyche….c’mon. Tell me something good (wacka wacka wacka….that’s actually playing right now ).
Paging Alfred Hitchcock, paging Alfred Hitchcock.
Across the street from my apartment, on the 2nd floor of the building, something’s going on. From my couch, I can see the bedroom window. It’s a fancy one. It is more like a glass door, it swings open like that. There are no cross-panes, it’s just a full door-sized window. The owners open it when the weather is nice; they have one of those tiny little balconies sticking off the front of the building, just deep enough for a few potted plants.
For the last several days, the overhead light has been on 24 hours/day, and for the last 3 days, that window/door has been standing wide open. Last night I was up from 1-3am and there it was. Lights blazing, door/window wide open, despite the snow.
Now, the door/window has been closed but the curtain is still pulled aside and the overhead light is still on. I haven’t seen a person once; it’s not like I see them very often — it requires a coincidence of timing, I just happen to glance over as they just happen to be there. But it does happen often enough that I would’ve seen them by now.
So! Just enough ambiguity to leave me uncertain what to do.
Tomorrow: lots of knitting. Hope to finish knitting D&S, in fact. Fingers crossed.
did you know that God’s favorite book is Frankenstein? IT IS!
radiolab
Do you listen to Radiolab? It’s an NPR program, hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. They take a topic and present interviews, stories, and musical bits about that topic. I’ve mentioned it before when I wrote about how weird my own thinking is, and if you’re on the home page of this blog (and not just a page with a single post), there’s a widget — the “favorite things” widget — presenting the most recent program. I have small potatoes complaints about the program now and then, but I have enjoyed every single program they’ve produced so far. I highly recommend it — get the podcast.
A program they did that stuck with me, actually a series of programs they did in July 2009, was about the afterlife. That program comprised 11 brief stories about death and what comes after, from an individual’s death to the death of the universe. And most points in between. They interviewed a biologist, a paleontologist, a geologist, a neurological psychologist, a man who survived a suicide attempt, a man who lost his partner, and they present readings of very tiny stories. None of it is about the “white light” at the end of a tunnel. It’s smart, and moving, and fascinating. A couple of the stories were written by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist and writer and all-around Smart Dude. The stories were taken from his most recent book, Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives.
This book doesn’t need me to help sell copies; the reviews are amazing (it’s even been turned into a performance at the Sydney Opera House, music by Brian Eno). For the most part the book is so strong, and I wanted to share a couple of things with you. (Out of 40 short stories, you can’t like them all, of course, but they’re mostly wonderful. It also reminds me of Alan Lightman’s great little book Einstein’s Dreams.)
The story that was read on Radiolab that left me thinking the most was called “Metamorphosis.” The concept: we have three deaths. The first is when our body dies, the second is when our body is buried, and the third is in the future, when our name is spoken for the last time.
And that’s the part that really left me thinking. I have no great aspirations to make my mark on something (other than the lives of the people I love, I hope I mean something important to them). I don’t need my name on a building (good thing, it’s a little late to start now!), or to be immortalized in some way. And actually, if you read that story, you’ll find out that that’s a path to misery. But to think about the moment when the last person alive who remembers me dies or never mentions me again, that’s stirring in some way. Isn’t it? I was thinking about this regarding my dad last month. I don’t think he had any friends, but aside from any he may have had, I’m the last person alive who knew him, really. He only exists in my memory, now, and when I’m gone it’s as if he never existed. (Not sure that’s altogether a bad thing.)
But the stories are definitely not all heavy. Some are funny, and some just have hilarious lines, like the opener of the story “Mary:”
When you arrive in the afterlife, you find that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley sits on a throne. She is cared for and protected by a covey of angels.
After some questioning, you discover that God’s favorite book is Shelley’s Frankenstein. He sits up at night with a worn copy of the book clutched in His mighty hands, alternately reading the book and staring reflectively into the night sky.
Well, that just completely and totally cracked me up. What a starting point. Not all the stories are about God, and some are about what that means, the idea of God.
I grew up in the Church of Christ (you know, “the only ones going to heaven”); fire and brimstone, we’re all worthless worms, not a lot of grace. And no stained glass or cushions on the pews or musicians, for heaven’s sake! Those things aren’t mentioned in the Bible!! (I always wanted to point out that neither is air conditioning, but we had that.) In high school I completely lost my faith, and any belief in God. Then I lived a few years as a Quaker and that meant something to me. Now, though, I just don’t know what I believe. Of course I have no idea what will happen after I die; I definitely don’t have that heaven, St. Peter, and God on His Heavenly Throne idea. I’d like to think that it’s about energy, that my energy will just become part of the universe in some way, but hell, I don’t know if I’d really like to think that or not. It’s a story to hang on to.
Auld Lang Syne — and New Lang Syne too! I just made that up.
Did you hear that in Barbra Streisand’s accent, the post title? That’s how I wrote it.
Ah, New Year’s Eves I have known. One little night, fraught with such imperative – must have fun! Must be memorable! AAAAGH!! Here are my most memorable New Year’s Eves to date:
- 1977, making macrame with my mother
- 1981-1987, setting the alarm clock for midnight (these were the baby years, so we were crashing the moment the babies went to sleep), waking up to kiss my husband and then going RIGHT back to sleep, with urgency
- 2000, the big one, the one that was maybe going to bring the world to a crashing halt. i was all alone, analyzing data for my master’s thesis, feeling extremely sorry for myself. the tv was on in the other room, and the arrival of the new year was being announced as it came: 2000 in Sydney! 2000 in Bangkok! 2000 in Paris, in London! it’s coming, it’s coming! Stock up on water and guns, aagh!
- last night – yesterday was not a great day, but at 11:50 I bundled up in my coat and lake-proof boots, and headed outside. I walked to Riverside Drive, and at midnight I stood in the middle of the street and looked at the sky.
I didn’t think 2010 was so bad, though I know a lot of people did. I have high hopes for 2011 but I’ve been a failure with the crystal ball often enough to know I’m not even going to make a prediction of anything, much less what I ‘plan’ to do. A day at a time, that’s my plan. Do the best I can every day, and then try to do the same the next day. Make as much stuff as I can. Enjoy the life I’ve been given.
For now, though, I’m off to bake a couple loaves of cranberry nut bread, then do a bit o’ house cleaning. And make some blackeyed peas, of course — I’m not crazy enough to tempt fate by not doing that!
why aren’t we feeling it this holiday season?
I normally take my fall vacation at the beginning of November – I’m always back at least a week before Thanksgiving. I’ve never been a huge fan of Thanksgiving; my kids and I aren’t wild about turkey (but o mashed potatoes, you sing my soul), and it always feels like a hella lotta work, followed by a hella lotta cleanup. I’m no Thanksgiving Grinch, I just don’t feel all sacred about Thanksgiving.
So this year, for some reason I no longer recall, my fall vacation came later than usual. I was gone from November 18 to December 4, which means (obviously) that I was gone for Thanksgiving. Big deal [i thought!]! Thanksgiving at Angkor Wat, cool. And it was, and I had a lovely meal that I called my Thanksgiving dinner, and all was well.
But I got home, and I was confused. December 4, what’s going on?! I didn’t feel in sync with “the holidays” and decided that maybe Thanksgiving served to herald the holidays in some way, so on December 5 I had a big “Thanksgiving” dinner. It was delicious, but it hasn’t helped. I see Christmas lights, and all the trees for sale, but it just doesn’t feel like the holidays.
I won’t get to be with my kids this year – they’re converging in Austin and boy do I wish I were there with them all.- I’m doing NO gift knitting this year. I don’t think anyone really wants handknit gifts, and I decided not to stress myself out about it.
- My apartment is so tiny, I don’t have a tree.
- Last night I went to a holiday candlelight concert. University choirs, Beethoven’s Mass in C and a selection of Mozart’s Vespers and a handful of “traditional” hymns. OH MY LORD. It was so bad I left at intermission. Really. Bad. There were 11 males and 42 females, so right off the bat, the imbalance was foreboding. None of the sopranos could hit their notes, and most were flat. There was no life in their voices. Come to find out, it’s an unauditioned choir (good on ‘em! We should all be able to sing together!), which is fine, but the choral director selected music that was far beyond the choir’s abilities. OY.
It’s a gray, rainy day here in NY – really lovely, I must say. The perfect day to stay in, be cozy, curl up on the couch and knit, watch old movies, and eat some good food. I made lasagna yesterday and I made bread, so I’ve got good stuff in the house. Happy Sunday to you!
what? I was gonna wha…oh yeah! That’s right. I was going over there to do that wait why am I here? Why is the refrigerator open, and why are my keys in there?
Well, my attitude is to roll with it. Don’t fight it too hard, don’t waste time griping that this is how it is now, taking it to mean that death is just around the corner. Yes, I’m getting older, and yes, things change in all kinds of ways. Yes, some things are harder (but some things are easier, too!). And sometimes things are just different, now.
My short-term memory has a very weak grip, these days; if I don’t act on something when I’m thinking about it, odds are pretty good that I’ll forget and that’s that. If the thing comes around again, I frequently don’t even know that I’d thought of it before! New world, and all that.
So here’s how it goes in my new associational way of being in the world:
I’m working and realize that my face is feeling tight because the air is so dry. Oh yeah! I was going to put some moisturizer on my face! Walk to the bathroom, as I’m putting it on I remember oh yeah! I was going to refill the humidifier in the living room because the air is so dry….walk to the living room and get the tank, walk to the kitchen to fill it oh yeah! I was going to empty the dishwasher, empty the dishwasher as I put away the mugs I remember oh yeah! I was going to make some mint tea, go to the cabinet to get tea and see oatmeal oh yeah! I was going to have oatmeal for breakfast…..
My life is a series of ‘oh yeah!s’ now. I experience this in a delightful way, a never-ending series of eyebrow-raising, gasp-inducing insights. Ah! Oooh! Oh! Luckily, I always remember that I’d much rather be knitting. If only these manuscripts would edit themselves…..
when i think about my thinking, i don’t like what i think. about my thinking. i think.
Driving back from Rhinebeck last Sunday, I tried to pay attention to my thoughts while letting myself have thoughts. And you know what? My thoughts are often like old people, by which I mean this: Have you ever taken a very old person out for a drive? They say what they see, right? Toyota. Look at the trees. 55 miles per hour. In fact, that’s a funny bit from a Billy Crystal movie (we’ll always have paris? something like that….his father in law sings the Toyota commercial over and over). So we’re driving along, and here are my thoughts:
red leaves
Taconic Parkway
traffic
knees
trash
yellow leaves
Not “wow, look at those beautiful red leaves, I love fall!” Just “red leaves.”
Then I started wondering what my thoughts sound like in my head. When I speak, I have a drawl and characteristic ways of saying words – awl for oil, I aspirate the wh- when I say what when where why (i.e., I don’t say wat wen were wy. Why? Because there’s a frickin H in there y’all!!), pilla for pillow, yella for yellow, winda for window, etc. But in my head the thoughts are neutrally spoken, there’s no accent, I don’t think awl, etc.
This morning, perfectly coincidentally, I clicked over to the RadioLab website. I used to listen to the podcast regularly during my commute, but without a commute, I’ve fallen out of the habit of listening. Also, I can’t listen to words while I’m editing, so I’m way behind on RadioLab and This American Life and all the others I love. So anyway, I visited the RadioLab site and saw a recent short program on……………THINKING! I put it here, in case you’re interested:
Here’s their description of the program:
Jad talks to Charles Fernyhough about the connection between thought, inner speech, and the voice in our heads.
In our last episode, Words, we got into a debate about whether kids can think before they have words. For this podcast, Jad revisits that question with Charles Fernyhough, who tells Jad about a theory developed by a Russian psychologist named Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky’s theory describes how words and thoughts move from speech outside our heads to speech inside our heads. We also talk to someone who hears other people’s voices in his head, and ask Fernyhough about whether Vygotsky’s ideas could shed light on this surprisingly common phenomena.
It’s short, and interesting, so I’m happy to share if it sounds interesting to you!
where do YOU buy buttons? would you share?
One of the things about living in New York is that you can find anything here. And there are “districts” for so many things – the flower district, the handbag district, the sweat pants district (kidding, but maybe there really is one!), the garment district, even the button district. If you’re in the mood to spend a lot of time poking around, wandering, going in and out of dozens of shops, you really can find anything here.
But it takes that kind of effort, unless you get lucky in your first stop. Sometimes the idea is daunting, and I can’t even begin. I need buttons for my new sweater……ugh, it’ll take a lot of walking, wandering, poking, I wish I could just walk into a supersized store and pick up what I need. Like snaps, for instance – I don’t need special snaps, just large plain snaps. If I lived somewhere else, I could just drive over to JoAnn’s, park, run in and pick up snaps, and head home.
At Rhinebeck, I was specifically hunting for handmade buttons. Sure, Tender Buttons has all kinds of amazing buttons, and I can always go there, even if it’s on the east side and so not that simple to get to. I could do that. I’d pay an arm and a leg, too, because they’re Super Fancy, but I could always do that. But I’d like to find a source for beautiful handmade buttons, and I did find some at Rhinebeck but I needed 11 and could only get 6.
So I feel a little bit bad, complaining about buttons when I live in a place with a button district, for heaven’s sake, but here I am, complaining anyway. Do you have a good online source for beautiful buttons? Handmade buttons, in particular? I don’t want the kind that are made with that plastic modeling clay you buy at Michael’s, and bake. If you have an online source you can recommend, please let me know!
This morning I woke up just before 5am – wide awake – so I made some coffee and sat down at my computer to catch up on ravelry, blog friends, etc. As I kept thinking about it, I started thinking that maybe the Laar sweater wouldn’t be nearly as flattering on me as it is on this beautiful skinny model:
I have a much more busty shape than the model, for one thing, and I’m probably 25-30 years older. I am not sure if the style is too young, or if it would work on a bustier figure. I’m starting to think the answer is no. I bought this yarn for it:
Spirit Trail Fiberworks - Clotho (colorway dragon's blood, isn't that deliciously named?), 3 skeins
I don’t know. I’m thinking the answer is no. No one else has made it yet, so I can’t see different versions of it. I have a bunch of other things in my queue, so maybe I’ll work on them (and finish my Eve Shrugged) and by that time, someone with my shape will have made it.
edited: Thanks to Karie’s comment below, I’m much more confident about the Laar sweater! And thanks to a new plug-in I installed that lists related bookmarks in my del.icio.us account, I found a site I’d bookmarked a long time ago and forgotten about Sawyer Brook….and promptly bought two different sets of buttons as potential elements of my future Laar sweater:
Anyway – other button sources anyone?
This morning I was thinking about the difference between thirst and hunger. The words for satisfying those needs have such a different feeling to me. Thirst is quenched, or slaked. Hunger is met or satisfied or fulfilled. Quenching and slaking have such a powerful feeling to me, something vigorous and vivifying. They even include powerful and hard consonants – a lot of K in there. We die of thirst before we die of hunger; it’s a more fragile need, maybe; a more immediate need. An image of thirst might readily be someone in a desert; that’s a common tv and movie trope, for sure. For me, though, the pertinent image is a neglected houseplant. As long as you don’t neglect it to its death, it can be pretty quickly revived by a deep soak. It doesn’t take very long at all before the leaves plump up and abandon shrivel; before faded color disappears into a more vibrant color; before wilted structures stand up straight again.
Continue Reading–1 words totally
This morning I was thinking about the difference between thirst and hunger. The words for satisfying those needs have such a different feeling to me. Thirst is quenched, or slaked. Hunger is met or satisfied or fulfilled. Quenching and slaking have such a powerful feeling to me, something vigorous and vivifying. They even include powerful and hard consonants – a lot of K in there. We die of thirst before we die of hunger; it’s a more fragile need, maybe; a more immediate need. An image of thirst might readily be someone in a desert; that’s a common tv and movie trope, for sure. For me, though, the pertinent image is a neglected houseplant. As long as you don’t neglect it to its death, it can be pretty quickly revived by a deep soak. It doesn’t take very long at all before the leaves plump up and abandon shrivel; before faded color disappears into a more vibrant color; before wilted structures stand up straight again.
We hunger for more, hunger for blood, hunger for God, hunger for your touch (the Google dropdown recommendations for the “hunger for” search, except that last one comes from the Righteous Brothers ). We thirst for knowledge, God, freedom. It’s interesting that God is in both lists, which I suppose speaks to the centrality of that need for something beyond ourselves, whatever you may call it.
Anyway. Just thinking on a Sunday morning, and that’s not just a stall tactic to avoid grading stats papers. I swear.
stupid workmen – today i hates them.
Early this morning, it appears that the workmen in our building somehow disconnected the telephone and internet cable. So all day long, I have been without the internet and y’all? I HAVE A LOT TO DO!!! It couldn’t have come on a worse day.
grrr.
The sweater is taking its own sweet time to dry, but while I’m watching it dry, I’m playing around with fasteners. The pattern has you sew large buttons on – 3 of them – and put large snaps underneath; the buttons are just for decoration. Well, I’m not sure how I feel about that, but of course there aren’t buttonholes. So I got an idea to use a large silver shawl pin, like this – what do you think, really?
Of course, I haven’t had a chance to try it on so I don’t know if the pin will work.
Anyway. So there I was with no sweater to work on, waiting for my new yarn to arrive, when I thought “hmm, well? Maybe I’ll just cast on the Austin Hoodie with my tosh merino light (in porcelain, the palest pink). If you’ve used TML, you probably know that the skeins are the biggest tangliest mess ever. After handwinding the ball for 70 minutes, my doorbell rang and the mailman delivered MY BYZANTINE!!! The color is even more amazing than I thought. Unfortunately, I have to leave for a meeting tonight but tomorrow, you’ll see.
Kelli, I cast-on and am on row 3. It’s really fun! I swatched and hit it on the money, first rattle out of the box, so Eve’s Rib Shrug, I’m a-coming.
a photo I took is in a glossy magazine!! If you can read Hebrew, tell me what the magazine is called please…
So one of my photos has been published in a glossy magazine! How bizarre. No, it’s not Vogue, or some knitting magazine, or something about food. Or Riverside Park (my favorite subject after my kids). I don’t know what the magazine is about, actually. I don’t know the name of it, even though I’m holding it in my hands. I just know it’s a real magazine, it’s very glossy, and it seems to be about travel. I got a big envelope from Tel Aviv, and this was inside:
the magazine - read from back to front! That's how I do it anyway!
The cover photo kind of freaked me out, and I was wondering what the hell, man. What the hell is THIS about? Why am I getting this magazine? Who do I know in Tel Aviv anyway?
So I opened it and started thumbing through, with an extremely vague memory of someone asking if they could publish one of my photos in some magazine. Was this it? The whole dang thing is in Hebrew, so I just looked at the pictures. And here’s what I found:
I took the picture in Zagreb, at the market - and there's my name above it, almost the only English word on the page
the page, for context - see how tiny my photo is?
Isn’t that wild??
.
have you seen it? did it run past here?
Creative people, knitters, makers, sewists (I still can’t get used to that word), I know you’ve faced this problem before. Me too. My mojo done hightailed it outta here.
At first I thought it was due to stockinette boredom. That makes sense, right? I have my Mondo Cable cardigan, and my Peasy sweater, and then I cast-on a stockinette hat (wasn’t thinking about variety, there), so I yielded to the siren call of the Cascade Eco Duo seductively reaching out from my knitting bag, and cast on a little hat. Colorwork, Stockinette Gone Wild, small, shaping, variety.
Bleh. Nothing. Nothing is jumping into my hands. In fact, evenings pass without my having much interest in picking up any of my projects…..and I don’t think the solution is to cast on something wild to jazz things up. I think my mojo has left the building.
oh peasy, you haunt my waking moments. Both sleeves finished, hoofing it down the body, row after row after row....
I want to get that sweater finished to wear to Rhinebeck. And then:
snowflake hat in cascade eco duo, you certainly do delight
Really soft, really pretty, fun to work…..not feeling it.
I think the solution is to let the mojo come back whenever it’s ready, and not fret about it. Instead, I’ve been reading a little more, trying to finish Let the Great World Spin. Walking a little more. Watching TV at night. Going on little photo shoot treks around my neighborhood. And – oh! Yesterday I read a pretty great novel by a new Nigerian author; it was an editorial gig I scored, and the author is really an author, not a typist (which is a Truman Capote distinction….he called Jack Kerouac a typist ).
So this explains the distinct lack of knitting content on this alleged knitting blog lately. I’ve tried to hide it by talking about random other stuff, but I’ll bet you noticed. You’re smart that way.
.
no calories goals or weight-loss goals. instead, just 2 weeks.
I’ve lost enough weight, enough times, to equal a small army of people. Or is that an army of small people. Whatever. 50 pounds this time, 50 pounds that time, 35 here, 25 there. Yeah. One of those yo-yo people. (I just love bread way too much for my own good, and for the good of my trunk. Bread and potatoes, ooh la la, never met one I didn’t love.) I’m tall, 5’10″, so it takes a while for weight gain to show on me.
Usually, I start off with a specific weight loss goal in mind. I start well, thinking I’ll eat X calories a day, and I’ll just be very healthy and eat exactly the right things. A few days in, I’m starving myself and eating less and less. I’m VERY good at doing that. I’m obviously less good at managing a just-right norm.
Recently, Marnie started wondering if she has a gluten sensitivity, so she set off on a 2-week experiment. Well, I started thinking about that approach for myself. Instead of focusing on a specific weight-loss goal, I’ll set myself a 2-week goal. For two weeks, I will eat carefully, and significantly less. And no bread or potatoes or cake or cobbler, either. Fruit is in glorious season, which definitely helps.
I’m on day 3 and going strong, and the framework makes the whole thing different for some reason! On September 9, I end this diet, no matter what. If I want to keep going I can, for another set period of time, but if I don’t, that’s just fine. Secretly I hope I want to keep going, and secretly I think that if I have lost weight I’ll definitely want to keep going, but I stop this on September 9.
Other times, I kind of obsessively weighed myself every day, first thing in the morning. This time, I weighed myself on Monday, when I started, and I won’t weigh again until next Monday, and then again on the day my diet ends.
And in the funny way the mind works, I swear my jeans are loose already.
.
Now they’re getting serious. No more “set up” shots, no taxicab confessions. Now it’s time for the dirt. Ice T is on the scene.
That's Ice T blocking my doorway. Like he does.
Meloni (in shorts) and Hargitay, rehearsing the part where they find the victim. The SPECIAL victim.
Now they’re getting serious. No more “set up” shots, no taxicab confessions. Now it’s time for the dirt. Ice T is on the scene.
watching the Law & Order SVU episode being filmed right outside my window…..want to see Mariska? I’ve got pics.
OK, I’m getting kind of bored. They say that making a movie (or TV show) involves mostly standing around and waiting, and they’re not kidding. It takes a crew of dozens to do every single thing. Each person does one thing – this guy stands and slowly rolls up that piece of tape, another guy slowly rolls up another piece of tape, while half a dozen stand around and watch those two guys slowly roll up their pieces of tape. All for one very brief scene. I’m just uploading the photos into a flickr set, which I’ll update when anything interesting happens. I want to see the hair and make-up girls make the murder victim look victimized. If that happens, I’ll snap the pic.
To work. Enough farting around for me this morning.
I thought the murder scene was a cab, but I was wrong. The team spent all morning preparing the cab for a driving-around scene, with Mariska in the cab.
Hair and makeup are still outside my window, and now the team is setting up tables and tents. More to come….
I thought the murder scene was a cab, but I was wrong. The team spent all morning preparing the cab for a driving-around scene, with Mariska in the cab.
-
- and there she is!
-
- Mariska’s inside – lighting the scene
Hair and makeup are still outside my window, and now the team is setting up tables and tents. More to come….
The SVU victim will be in a cab, I think – literally just a few feet from me:
The SVU victim will be in a cab, I think – literally just a few feet from me:
lighting the murder scene
i’ve never HAD time to kill! i don’t know what to do with it.
greek yogurt with greek honey - luscious
It’s so strange, going from having too little (time) to having an abundance. From having too much (stress) to having almost none. I don’t quite know what to do with myself.
I know what I want to do with myself! I want to arrange a life of balance, that’s the big picture. I want to do yoga regularly, to strengthen my very bad back; I want to walk regularly, to be outdoors and to benefit my heart; I want to lose a bit of weight and eat well; I want to write; I want to line up enough work so I don’t feel frantic about it; I want to make things; I want to stay connected to people; I want to keep my house clean and neat. Balance.
If I’m not careful, though, I piddle away time without doing anything at all. I sit with my laptop, just checking this site one more time and oh yeah let me look at that one and oh wait I need to respond to this and after I look at that I’m shutting it down and getting busy and then it’s time for dinner. That’s what happened yesterday.
I tend toward Prussian organization, which then collapses and I’m back to wasting. In other words, I get way too anal about it, like this: On Mondays from 8:30 to 8:45 do this. From 8:45 to 9:45 do that. Tuesdays and Thursday from 7:15 to 8:45 do that. Every Wednesday afternoon from 3:00 to 4:15 do that. Rigid, strict, entirely structured. And all it takes, when you’re set up like that, is one fail and then the whole thing can wash down the drain. (Of course it needn’t, but if you’re a person with these tendencies, that’s what happens.)
So I think instead, well, how about if I just say “3 mornings a week I’ll spend an hour doing yoga” etc. But what I do in reality is this: well, right now I’ll just finish my coffee and poking around the internet, then I’ll get up and straighten up the living room – I’ll do yoga tomorrow.
Maybe, instead, I need to deconstruct the beginning – do what alcoholics have to do when they’re trying to learn how to stay clean. Break up the routine that supports the addiction. Right now, I get up and make a little pot of coffee — 2 mugs’ worth — and then I slowly drink my coffee and feel justified in poking around the internet. Just while I drink my coffee, you know? That’s all. Then I’ll get busy. But I take a long time with it! I may take 2 hours drinking those 2 mugs of coffee. A little sip, poke poke poke. Sip poke poke poke. Sip poke poke poke. It’s really really hard to break up that very slow start to my day. Every night I think, as I drift off to sleep, “in the morning, don’t open the computer, just take your coffee to the table and write by hand for 20 minutes. Just do that.” But then I don’t, because I’m tired. Or whatever.
My life has been entirely structured, forever. Babies’ nursing schedules, naptimes, picking up kids from school/snack/homework/dinner/baths/tucking in. My own college and grad school schedules. Work work work work work work, always at jobs that are intense and draining and never the kind that nourishes me in any way.
So now, here I am, for the first time in my 51 years of life, with time. I can’t squander it. Do you have any advice for me? How do you manage your time?
what do you call a dealie-bobber?
I don’t know what this is actually called; my dad was a draftsman for an architectural firm and I remember seeing him sitting at a table, with blueprints spread in front of him and a carmine pencil in his right hand, counting electrical outlets. With each touch of the red pencil on an outlet symbol, he’d click the thing.
here's how you use it
I keep it in the drawer with my other miscellaneous stuff next to the couch; now and then I see it and think “maybe I’ll use that to count rows” but of course I don’t. My dad died in 1982, and this is one of 2 things I have, of his. If you know what this is called, let me know! It’s probably just called a counter. But I like old things like this, old machines.
For a bit of knitted content, since that’s the ostensible reason for this blog, I set aside my circle socks to finish (or at least almost finish) Marnie’s wedding shawl. Here’s how it looks now, with the heel flap. I just adore the color changes.
heel flap done, ready to pick up gusset stitches
And finally, since I’ve mentioned that Marnie’s wedding is handmade, I thought I’d show you a bit of her invitation. She is a print-maker and artist and book artist, so she put it all together for a truly unique wedding invitation. Guests received a giant mailing tube in the mail; inside was a large woodblock print of the wedding cabin, done in the style of the old WPA National Parks posters. It’s amazing. She carved the blocks by hand, of course, and printed them all one at a time.
Also in the tube was a small handmade book providing all the details – the when, where, how, what else to see, etc. It’s so charming I wanted to show you a couple of things from it:
adorable, right? this is the front cover of the book.
When you open the book, you get the charming story of the beginning of Tom and Marnie’s life together. She handset the type:
the top of the page (click to enlarge, and you can read it)
the bottom of the page
Then there are a few pages of specific information, followed by the schedule of events for the wedding day. I draw your attention to one part of that page:
look in the red box. are they cute? YES.
I love this. I was never clever enough, or self-confident enough, to think about any options beyond the norm. It worked, and that was good enough!
But isn’t that adorable? Really? It’s not just me, right? She also included unique postcards in each tube for the RSVPs. Each postcard featured a great old woodblock print of the WPA National Parks. Ever the artist, she created a flickr set to show all the responses. They’re often quite wonderful; click here to see them.
We’re dying here in NYC; today it hit 102 in Central Park. Lest you southerners or westerners scoff “102, big deal!” keep in mind that people here don’t have central air, for the most part. They have little window units, if they have anything at all. Back in the 70s, people used to leave their apartments and sleep in Central Park when it was too hot, but then it became too dangerous to do that.
Stay cool, yo.
where the hell IS everybody?
riverside park
That photo was taken today – Saturday, a summer Saturday, at 1:30. It’s 87 degrees, calm winds. Really nice! SO WHERE IS EVERYONE?
This is New York City! Crowded, teeming New York City. BUT: This is New York City in the summer. It really empties out, at least in the parts of town where people live. I’m sure Times Square is its usual bloated bleeting mass of tennis-shoed, fanny-packing, camera-wielding humanity, but luckily, I don’t have to go there.
Parking is easy – spots everywhere. Sidewalks aren’t crowded. Parks are pretty empty. New Yorkers go to the beach – the Jersey shore, out to the Hamptons, anywhere there’s a spot to lie down with water nearby. And luckily, since I live on an island and am surrounded by other islands and a coastline on the Atlantic, there are lots of options. I usually sneak onto the private beach in one of the Hamptons during the summer.
Me, though, as a pale-skinned very white woman, I’m delighted to sit indoors, watch the sun streaming through my white curtains, bake something yummy, watch something engrossing, and knit my brains out. I’m so easy.
Here’s some summer music for you:
help me swatchers, help help me swatchers
There are some things we all know we should do – flossing our teeth at least twice a day, weight-bearing exercise as we age – and swatching, if we knit. I confess that I have never swatched, and I know I should but I don’t quite get it.
I understand the need to make a swatch if I’m making a garment that needs to fit in a particular way. Scarves don’t have to be swatched, I get that. Sweaters do. Yep, I get it. I know how to change needles to get stitch gauge but I don’t know what to do if my row gauge is off, even if the stitch gauge is right. Basically I just kind of do a bit of ostrich-dealing, pretend I don’t know anything about row gauge, and sally forth. It hasn’t been a problem, since I’ve frogged every sweater I started.
This time, though, I want to really make a sweater. Finish it, block it, take it to the end and end up with something I love to wear. So I know I need to learn more about swatching. When I’ve got spilkes, or when I’m not going to get to use a new yarn for a while and I’m just dying to do more than touch it, I’ll cast on 20-30 stitches and just knit a few rows in stockinette, to try to get it out of my system. Hardly swatching, but still, it’s a little fun.
I couldn't leave that Rowan Felted Tweed alone....
But there’s another thing about swatching I really don’t understand. I’ll read people’s posts describing swatching all the new yarn they get. Or they’ll say things like “my binders full of swatches were taking over the library!” and I just don’t know what that means. Even if I pretend I know what it’s like to design a sweater, I can imagine making very specific swatches to figure out the yarn and needle combination to get drape; the yarn and needle combination for different weights of yarn if I want to provide alternatives; and the gauge issues for pattern knitting. I get that. Is there some other use for swatching that I just don’t understand? Swatchers? (and I’m serious: how do you change needle sizes to hit row gauge, when the stitch gauge is right?!)
help me choose!
SO! Freedom is coming, along with more time to knit. Halle-freakin-lujah, that’s all I have to say. My last day at work will be July 7 (or sooner, if I get everything done). Marnie’s wedding is July 17 (but I’m heading up there on the 15th). In the short run, here are my deadlines:
- finish all my work stuff
- finish knitting Marnie’s wedding shawl
- finish an online course (6-weeks in length, week 3 begins today, which means it ends on Marnie’s wedding day)
So everything is coming to a head on July 17, and after that? Complete and total freedom, for a while, anyway. I’ll have to be scurrying around trying to line up work, and I need to do some deep house cleaning, but relatively speaking, I’ll have the luxury of some free time, which I haven’t had in …. um …. oh, since 1994, more or less.
green ishbel
My first goals will be to finish my Mondo Cable Cardigan and my lettuce green Ishbel. And whatever small sock-ish project I’ve got going, too.
I recently realized that all the projects I’ve been knitting I rate as “piece of cake” or “easy” when I complete the rav project page, so I want to challenge myself. Of course there is more than one way to challenge yourself – choose a technique you haven’t tried, a more complicated pattern than you’ve tried, or a larger project that requires stick-to-it-iveness. And here’s where you come in.
So many of my best rav friends make sweaters – lots of sweaters (I’m looking at you, Kelly and Jocelyn, among others). I’ve started several sweaters but never even finish the back, or up to the sleeves (until now with the Mondo cardigan). I start thinking it’s going to look dumb, or homemade, or that it won’t be flattering. And then I frog. So I want to commit myself to starting and finishing a sweater, but I want to give myself the best shot at sticking with it and ending up with something I love.
If you are on ravelry, here is my sweater queue (though obviously I’m not committed to the order, at all!). I have sweater quantities of Classic Elite Princess, KnitPicks Shine Sport, Madelinetosh Pashmina and TML, and Valley Yarns Sheffield. Have you made any of the sweaters in my queue? Or another sweater that you truly, truly love and wear a lot?
I’m inclined toward these – one you’d vote for?
[poll id="2"]
OR, of course, just tell me your fave!
show me your hands!
I have a thing for hands – lots of people do, I think. I’ve never really liked my hands because they look just like my dad’s and grandmother’s hands, which is weird because I always loved my dad’s hands. They were not always kind hands, but I still thought they were beautiful. Recently I’ve started thinking differently about my own hands, because my daughter casually mentioned – in passing – something about my beautiful hands. It was the casual in passing part that produced the shift; she said it as if it were obvious.
I also realized, when looking at a couple of blog posts this morning, that when I see a knitter’s hands I feel like I know her better. In fact, I feel like I know her differently when I see her hands, as opposed to when I see her face. So I got this idea for a show of hands. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours? I’ve pulled a couple of photos I already have, and then I took some while I was kneading bread for a how-to-make-bread tutorial on my other blog, Luscious.
pay no attention to the face - i was trying to explain SOMETHING but i don't remember what. i like my hand, it does look graceful.
waiting to board the flight to Zagreb - Newark Airport is boring, unless you have your knitting with you. Ishbel plus leaving for vacation = happy me! But I like my hands here.
This one’s blurry because it’s an action shot, but I love seeing hands making things:
kneading bread
SO again, I don’t mean you need to show your whole self, just your hands. If you show them in a post on your own blog, leave a comment here with the link so I can go meet you. Whatever – let’s just have a show of hands!
why can’t i just say “i’m a photographer”?!
When do you shift from saying “I do X” to “I am a X“ From, for example, I knit, to I am a knitter. I design, I am a designer. I like to write, I am a writer. There is an important psychological shift that has pretty fascinating implications for health-related concerns – I have diabetes –> I am a diabetic.
This morning I was reading through a ravelry forum about photography. One woman said something like “I am a photographer blah blah” and she gave a link to her work. I really love photography; I have favorite photographers, books about the philosophy of photography and how-to books; I have a folder of photos of favorite photographs. And I enjoy taking photographs. So I clicked the link to see her work and it was really not good at all. Very poor lighting, trite, poor quality of the images themselves, etc. And she is a
me and my camera
photographer. My photographs aren’t anything special, but they are considerably better than hers.
So my point is not to boast about my photographs, because I’m not doing that, but rather to think about the identity issue. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to make those kinds of claims – it’s not as if it matters! I could walk around saying “I’m a writer,” “I’m a photographer,” “I’m a baker,” etc., and it would not make one bit of difference to the world or to anyone. But I can’t do it. I like to write, I like to take pictures, I like to make bread. I see other people making the claim, and I’m always in a bit of awe at their self-confidence.
I can imagine possible reasons for my hesitation: it feels like bragging; it feels like I’m saying “I am a professional X” when I’m not, and if anyone looked at 
my ‘work’ that’s exactly what they’d think, that I’m full of myself, or lying in some way. I think another aspect relates to my thoughts about writing and photography; books have always been extremely important to me, and I hold writers in very high esteem. They have a kind of exalted place in the world, to my mind. Photographers less so, but good photographers can transform people, understandings, even policy. To say “I am a writer” just feels impossible. Salman Rushdie is a writer. Cormac McCarthy is a writer. Victor Hugo is a writer. Jose Saramago is a writer. I am not Rushdie, or any of those.
I also think that saying “I am a” invites people to ask if they’ve seen/read your work. It implies public or professional acceptance and reward. At a party: “I’m a writer.” “Really, have I read anything of yours?” “No, I just like to write.” Clunk.
But that’s not what people mean when they casually claim these identities (I think). The ravelry woman is a photographer because she takes pictures. Maybe I just need to get over myself and quit over-thinking everything. I do have a tendency to do that. In psychology, there is a construct called “need for cognition,” the meaning of which is pretty obvious. People vary along a continuum in their need for cognition, and I’m way way way at the top of the scale. 99th percentile, I’d guess.
paralyzed by gorgeousness.
This is what happens when you have yarn that’s just so perfect, you have to pick a pattern that does justice to it and shows it to its best effect. I am paralyzed. I have a bunch of madelinetosh in my stash, and want to make something really beautiful. I’m thinking of the Daybreak shawl, which has been made 43 times with madtosh sock. (Sorry for the ravelry links, if you’re not on rav. If not, why?!)
So I have 3 skeins of tosh merino light, in filigree, and my new skein of eyre light in jodhpur, but I don’t know how well they’d go together. Since I have 3 of the filigree and one of the jodhpur, I’m thinking the green would be the main color. What do you think, seriously?
do you see a daybreak shawl in these yarns together?
I just can’t decide. I really ought to swatch them together. That’s the only way to answer this. Still, if the combo strikes you in some way – great or awful – please say so! I’m just as interested in the bad as the good.
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