This post is my attempt to lay out some of the work that Heather and I accomplished at the end of the semester, but never got around to posting in a vaguely coherent form here. It’s a post that will help share our definition, as it were, of “queer” in our usage, and how we’re going to go about completing our project.

“Queer”, as we’re using it represents a theoretical mo(ve)ment which seeks to destabilize and trouble normative structures, social practices, and definitions, to expand and change the manner in which we define the world and each other, and furthermore trouble the notion of “definition.” This mo(ve)ment is inextricably to an understanding of sexuality, queerness, in the mode of Gayle Rubin’s “Thinking Sex,” in many ways this second definition positions queer as both the product of and parallel to feminism, and a functioning identity umbrella for people who sleep with people they’re “not supposed to” (or in a manner that they’re “not supposed to”).

One one down, one to go:

Basically, each week (or so) we’re going to look at a given selection of poetry and/or theory, dividing it up as needed. Our readings will certainly overlap, there will be a lot of material that we’ll both read, but in order to cover as much ground as we can we’ll split some of the material up. We’ll post notes/summaries/interaction here, with what we read. During the first half of the semester, we’ll have more reading, we’ll have fun with the material. Clearly the “project” will loom large in our thoughts, but we won’t be drafting or even outlining at this point. By a week or two before spring break, we’ll have produced a “plan of attack” for completing the symposium paper, and the final essay. Which we will spend break, and the remainder of the semester completing according to plan. April 13th, is the spring symposium day. The semester ends in early May.

There you have it. Stay tuned.

I’m not compleatly ready to push this to prime time, but everyone has a story is another TealArt sub-website. Again it’s the same code as the knitting and (re)ping id but this ‘site’ will cover ideas concerning narrative as a tool for exploring ‘culture,’ cognition, thought, community, with a focus on queer and virtual communities. I’m comendeering the old “Where We Ought to Be” category, and I intend for this to be more of a collection of resources than any serious musing on the subject. The wwotb story project isn’t something I think I’m in the right place to complete, but the underlying interest in narratives, community, personal agency, and life history remains, so it seems fitting. Stay tuned for more developments!

Over the past few months I’ve reacquainted myself with the Opera Web Browser. I’d used it before in previous iterations, and wasn’t pleased with the way that it parsed web pages. Displays were off, it was minimally customizable, and seeing that the only thing it offered at the time, was marginally faster browsing, I went sulking back to Mozilla, or IE, or whatever I thought was the gold standard at that point.

I’ve taken back to Oprea, after Chris told me about their 10th anniversary. What with the variable speeds of downloads and Wi-Fi (haven’t plugged in in months) the little speed boost is nice, but I really like the fact that if the computer or program crashes, it can recover your lost tabs. And if you close a tab accidentally, there’s a “trash” can where closed tabs from a window can be recovered. The program still borks on tables, from time to time, but there are a lot fewer tables on the internet these days, and there are a couple of minor features that I’m still waiting on, but it’s become my favorite browser.

I’ve also started saving tabs much more aggressively than I used to. I’ll open a window, open anywhere from 10 to 60 tabs and then read them over the next few weeks. It’s replaced bookmarking, and it lets me survive away from an active connection for a while. Since, Opera saves tabs for ever, basically, there are some tabs that I’ve had open for a while, and as the title of this post suggests, I lost a huge mess of them a few days ago.

Let this message be both an endorsement for a great program, and a warning against personal stupidity. Save your sessions (oh, did I mention, Oprea lets you do that too!), and don’t click the “No” button by default.

Cheers, sam

I suppose I haven’t offered up a clear description of my current knitting progress in a fairly long time. Since this TealArt knitting site is way more of a reality now than it’s been in a long time, I should outline what I’ve been knitting this semester.

I still need to fix the graphic at the top of the knitting savant(s?) web site, and I want to have one more knitting contributor, I think that’ll be cool. So we’re/I’m not quite at v1.0 with ta:ks(s?) but it’s close. Anyway…. Onword!

Fair Isle, and stranded knitting in general has always been that knitting style that’s fascinated the hell out of me, and for some reason I’ve always been afraid of getting into it because I guess I thought it would be too hard, or something. We’ll this past year has shown me that, in fact, it’s not only not too hard, but it’s also the kind of knitting that keeps me entertained, and at least theoretically it’s something that I can wear (at least more so than lace work).

I’ve been very much enamored of Alice work. Her patterns are really well thought out and generally very clear. This summer I made a sweater, straight out of Fisherman’s Sweaters, called Faroe (see below). My version is blue green-ish and/or teal tones. The book called for worsted weight Rowan yarn, and I made do with a coned sport weight yarn. In true savant fashion I didn’t do any gauge testing , and in a truely surprising move, used the needle size that the pattern called for. I knit the body during the summer when I was in Kansas City, and finished up the sleeves this semester.

I’m a big fan of knitting sleeves off the shoulders: it helps me combat the problem of “sleeve island,” sleeves seem to go faster because they get smaller rather than bigger as you get further into them, and you don’t have to sew them in when you’re done. Having said that, unless you do the pattern upside down (from your perspective as you knit) the sleeves will look backwards in reference to the body, which just means you have to turn charts upside down. But frankly I’m ok with that, as it makes the process a little more interesting. So be it.

After I finished the Faroe body, I started on Ram’s Horn, a pattern inspired by a cardigan from Meg Swansen’s “Knitting” book. I turned it into a pull over, changed the ribbing, and altered the size. So I really just used the chart, basically. I still haven’t steamed (blocking) it, but it came out really well. I must admit that it sort of makes me look like a rug (despite what some people tell me) and the forearms are a little too tight, so some day I might get some black yarn and reknit the forearms, but I’m not aching to wear it too much so I think that’s something I need some distance from for a while. I finished up the body after returning to school and then I did the sleeves for both the Ram’s Horn and Faroe in alternating (just to mix it up)…

That brings us to date with mid-October. Since then, I made a sweater I’ve called Norge Fantasia, it’s a norwegian themed sweater. Simple, but there was some fair isle work on it. I used an amazing yarn that was 50/50 llama wool, I believe it was Classic Elite Monera, but I think Cascade also sells it as La Paza (i’m not sure about that though). It’s a worsted weight sweater, and its really rather nice. I’m going to write it up as a pattern I think. Near the end it almost drove me crazy, so I slacked off and didn’t do the patterns on the tops of the sleeves, but it came out really really well so I’m happy with that. It’s in a deep blue with some black patterning.

I also started another blue and black sweater (bruise the second). It’s also from Starmore’s Fisherman’s Sweaters. Ironically enough, it’s an easier pattern than Faroe. That’ll learn me. I also changed the pattern a bit more to make more butch(;)). That is, I took out flowery bits, and dropped the third color and made the whole thing more subtle. It’s nifty, and I have about 8 more inches before I’m done with the body. I think I have a hope of finishing this before I go back to school. I might have sewing up left to go.

So that’s my status update, I’ll be back in a bit with my plans for the next few patterns.

Cheers and Knit on! Sam

Here’s the second half of the tealart winter update. the knitting savant(s?) is the tealart knitting blog, reborn in a nifty new page. it’s something, sort of like (re)ping id, in terms of site structure that I’ve wanted to get done for a while, but never had the brain cells in the right place. check it out, link to it, and have some fun. I hope we will….

Oh, and my mother is going to be partaking in the knit blogging as well. oy. we’ll see how that turns out. well I hope. it’s a solstice present, doncha know.

hey guys, I have my first early holiday gift for you all: (re)presenting identity’s own little corner of the universe. WordPress and I got to know each other better, and I hope you like how everything’s turning out. I’m done with school, basically, and excepect some more substantial updates in the near future.

Somtimes, the old favorites are always a good to have around. I’m quite fond of this CSS Guide and as you can tell by our recient little mini redesign, it’s been a godsend.

So I’ve once again been thinking about graduate schools, and the eventual implications of those choices and some choices I’ve made at this point.

Saturday night, I said the following “If I had to do it all over again, I’d probably be a Cultural Anthropology major,” which only vaguely resembles truth on second investigation. As far a social science goes, I like cultural anthropology a lot, but I don’t really want to do that major, so I’m glad I’m doing what I’m doing, but that statement has pushed me to look at yet another breed of graduate programs.

I started this grad school search process by looking at neat clinical programs where where was some sort of women’s studies possibility. There are problems with clinical psych programs, they don’t tend to be flexible, and they tend to be really hard to get into, and I want to have other options.

My next step on this journey, was to look at personality psych programs. Now there aren’t many here, and they’re hard to get into, (but I think a bit easier). They seem to address psychology using units of study that I think are appropriate, and at least theoretically I’d still be able to practice clinician if I wanted to (because the internship and licensing process is fairly distinct from the research portion of the Ph.D., so that’s cool. Also tied up in this is an interest in community, life history, and narrative psychology (psychologies?).

This has also lead me in the direction of interdisciplinary social science Ph.D. programs, mostly psychological anthropology, cultural psychology. I have 3-4 spaces for courses over the 2006-07 school year, which I think I’ll use to soup up my anthropology background, in this direction.

Where this takes me, will be a site of further deliberation in the near future, so expect that. At this point I’d like to present a list of programs that I’ve been thinking of. No real order, but a vague one.

• Joint Ph.D. in Personality Psychology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
• The Ph.D. program from the Committee on Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago
• The Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program at Clark University in Worchester, MA.
• The Personality/Cultural Ph.D. program at the University of Toronto

I’m sure this list will grow and change in the near futre. There are also programs like the Clinical program at Temple University, and maybe even Clinical Psychology or even Sociology/Gender Studies at SUNY Stoney-brook.

Stay Tuned! Cheers, sam