1. Woody and firm
2. Strong and Robust
3. Meaty and full
4. Fruity and delicate
5. Sharp and satisfying

1. I’ll work on this in the morning!
2. I’ve written twice this much in half this time before, this is easy?
3. I drink too much caffeine, maybe I need to cut back.
4. If I chew this tea bag, the caffeine will hit faster.
5. I’ll do better next semester.

Hello friends!

I’m sorry I’ve been so bad about posting things lately! I even have backlogged pictures that are ready to post and backlogged fives lists that I haven’t thrown up because it slips my mind.

I say, I better get into graduate school this time, if for no other reason that I don’t think I could take applying again and retain sanity. But we’ll see.

I have tomorrow off, from all obligations but I have to write about 7 very stressful academic pages (5 of which need to be perfect), and scores of emails and filling out forms, plus proofreading, possibly a phone call, some printing, revising my CV and making it look like a CV and not a resume again. Sigh.

We had a “cold snap,” which was just cold enough for me to wear one of my comfy sweaters without being actually cold. I hope I can move north (or a little bit higher up, even) again next year so that I don’t loose my cold tolerance.

I had a great exchange with a potential grad school advisor who I think is really swell. I’m not elated about the prospect of moving to WesternCity, but the depressing thing is that even though this prof isn’t doing queer studies work, her research is theoretically very close to mine, closer than just about anyone else. That makes the decision sticky, but I don’t want to put the carriage before the horse, and I’m just going to say, that I liked our email exchange.

Ok, enough blathering. I’m well. don’t be mad if I’m a little spotty for the next couple of days.

Also, thanks to the purloined letter for the link and the kind words!

Once I have some time to my self, I am for sure going to get a little closer to doing some group knitting projects, I just have to live through the end of the year first. See you soon.

Onward and upward!

1. In this direction I seek, to…
2. This project draws from both…
3. Multifaceted in my approach, I attempt to…
4. Drawing from Marx and Weber,
5. What began as an absurd notion is now…

I never know what to call these check-in posts where I’m like “so here’s what I’m working on…” bleh, sorry for the nonsensical titles.

I’ve been fairly buried in the academic writing and graduate school application writing. On the plate for tonight, I need to get, probably about a thousand words on my major paper for the semester, which will break the back of the draft. My concern is that it has to be perfect by friday afternoon, which is pushing things to the last minute, but on the account of this paper, that seems reasonable. But I’m not going to stress to much about this yet, and I’m in good shape. It’s just a little frantic making, I guess.

The blog will understandably be spare in the interim.

In terms of knitting news, I’ve not been doing very much: I’ve been writing with a sweater on my lap and I’ll knit a few little row-lets when ever I need a moment to think or plan for what’s next. The gray sweater is going slowly, I’m working on knitting the shoulder strap, and it’s going swimingly, aside from being kinda fiddly, it’s perfect for this kind of knitting.

Last night while I was listening to something for class I got the Morocco sweater into shape so that I could knit it in class and this week in those moments that seem to need knitting. It’s going much faster now, that I’ve started setting in the sleeves, and it’s as engauging as always. It’s kind of amazing how enjoyable I find colorwork, even when it’s devilishly complex like this sweater. I’m looking forward to casting on something else, but I’m being good and waiting till I have brain time and a sweater done.

Hope you all are well. Cheers!

Onward and Upward!

Act One: Personality

tycho describes to professor one of the reasons why he didn’t get into graduate school last year: … and I applied to personality programs as well …

professor: Oh that’s a bad idea, there are like no jobs in personality. (professor turns to computer and does a search on a higher-ed-jobs site to prove point).

Act Two: Flats

• Time: 5:00 Correspondent K. calls and says, “I have a flat tire, so I might be a bit late, but everything’s ok.”
• Time: 5:15 Correspondent E. and tycho exchange car keys so that the household will be able to fufill all evening commitments in the event of “everything” not being ok.
• Time: 5:30 Correspondent K. calls and requests roadside assistance, not, as logic would suggest from the department of transportation or the american automobile association (AAA), but rather from Correspondent E; and unsurprisingly tycho.
• Time: 5:31 tycho, and Correspondent E. gather belongings and winter weather gear and rush out the door.
• Time: 5:45 Correspondent E successfully navigates to the site of the repair in progress. tycho notes that the car does not even look to be elevated.
• Time: 5:46 tycho and C.E. descend upon the scene and discover that the car is indeed jacked, but also find C.K. continuing to unscrew the hubcap.
• Time: 5:47 tycho and C.E. relieve C.K. of responsibility in this matter, and admire how shredded the tire became during the 3 mile drive, at no more than 25 mph.
• Time: 5:55 tycho drives away in the newly repaired car, while C.’s E. & K. continue on with evening as plan, only slightly colder than they had indented.

Act Three: Thanks

tycho walks into house at about 6:02pm

cellphone rings obnoxiously. tycho answers: yes?

Correspondent K: Good, you’re home.

tycho: silent stare

Correspondent K: I just wanted to make sure you made it home safe.

tycho remains silent.

Correspondent K: you did something nice for me, I just wanted to check in on you.

tycho wryly: And this is the thanks I get?

I hope you’re weekend is going well.

I had a somewhat less than productive day yesterday, there were things that needed to be done, and doesn’t it always seems that those things are the same things that you need to be doing. But we can pass it off to the curse of modernity and move on, I guess.

I’ve been working a lot of my statement of purpose, which is getting very close to being done. Close but not there. None the less, I have a 2-3 page document that only needs polish and a few sentences here and there to tie everything together, and punch up things like research experience and what not.

At the same time, I’ve been working on outlining and starting my big final paper for this semester, which will also be my writing sample for a couple of schools. It’s scary that I’m not further along, but it’s a relatively short paper, and while I don’t have an actual version of this paper that I can cut and paste text from, this paper is about my interests, exactly (it proposes the project that I describe in my statement,) so I know it backwards and forwards and I just need to figure out how to get it out into words.

The cool thing: I get really excited and happy when I get to work on the material, which I think is a really good sign. Though I’ve been doing (obviously) a lot of fiction and informal writing (blog stuff) of late, the truth is that I kind of enjoy academic writing, and I think with a little time and energy, I’m not that bad at it. Now all I need is some time, some caffeine, and it’ll be ok.

In the knitting news, I think I’ve successfully bent space-time. I’ve been knitting on the gray sweater of doom. Apparently I name sweaters {color} sweater of doom, when they’ve taken forever to knit. Anyway, I started this in, abut august of 2005, and have dabbled in it a bit for the past couple of years.

Well, I picked it up for a change of pace, while I wait to get back to the color work when I have a better idea of how I want to do the shoulders and the brainpower (read above for info on where my brainpower is going).

I didn’t actually expect to get so close to finishing the sweater, this has, for some time been my “movie knitting” because there’s so much plain knitting without thinking, that it’s often good for knitting whilst at the movies. It’s one of those projects that I don’t really think of as “counting” towards the number of projects I have on the needles. I spent next to nothing (maybe 15 bucks for the yarn,) and I’ve since bought, I think, a replacement needle because I considered this one to be something of a lost cause.

But what do you know, this project was the right thing for my brain at the moment, and perhaps I was further along on this project than I thought I was. Anyway, end result, I’m basically done knitting the body. Wacky I know. I decided late in the game to knit a single cable from the neck across the shoulder and down into the cuff. Because, you know, how much stocking stitch can you really cope with.

I did some sort row shaping across the back of the shoulders, and just this morning I cast on the 8 stitches for the shoulder strap, and by god is this fun. My latest design feature that I’ve been working on for my next couple of sweaters is shoulder joins that have straps or saddles in them that then run down the sleeve. It adds to the flexibility, it gives you something to gently shape the sleeves downward, and makes it possible to avoid sleeve cap shaping which is awkward in knitting fabric. (It works, but really in a knitted fabric, the main goal is to get the shoulder set in far enough, the sleeve top will take care of itself, particularly if there’s some sort of strap/saddle.) And the straps allow you to keep the structure of the seam, while avoiding the inflexibility of a hard join.

The other nifty thing about this sweater is that I think, I have developed a way to--assuming you knit off of a cone as I have--to only need to weave in ends at the terminating ends (cuffs, bottom hem, collar). I think I’m going to have to cheat a little bit on the collar, but it’s a cool game to figure out how to get everything to even out without having to break the yarn.

Anyway, be well, I should get back to real writing.

Onward and upward!

ps. If I run bibtex/latex through TeXshop, rather than through the TextMate bundle, everything compiles fine. Still not sure why this is the case, but I don’t argue with success… Much. I’d of course not have to use more text-editing programs than I have to, so if anyone has ideas, I’d love to hear them.

1. Knitting Elbow
2. Second Life Wrist
3. WoW Throat
4. Expose Ring-Finger
5. iPod Thumb