New Year's Wishes

I don't think New Year's Resolutions work. I've been a regular gym goer long enough to see what happens around Valentine's day: 6 weeks after they've been all excited about working out, getting into shape, whatever, over half of those enthusiastic people are no where to be seen.

I also found this year that I didn't really want stuff for Christmas. I have enough and my house is full. What I really wanted was to spend meaningful time with the people I care about. And I got that. Don't get me wrong, there is stuff I want or need in this world, but almost none of it would be rendered more meaningful because a friend or family member spent money on it.

So. For New Year's I have some wishes.

1. I am hoping for a sense of academic direction: lately I've felt a bit aimless and lost in my work. Now that I'm done with classes, I'm hoping that rather than becoming a slug person, watching Mad Men reruns, knitting, and eating pasta in my increasingly dirty apartment, I will instead get excited about my work again, and charge forward in a confident research direction.

2. I am hoping for the possibility of living in the same place as my husband.

3. I would like to spend more time with the people who are important to me.

4. It would be great if one of the multiple conferences I have sent abstracts to will say "yes, please come show us how smart you are."

5. I would like to be more goal directed in my fitness. Things sort of fell to bits after the race back in October, and I would like to get that back, without the burn out that I had in the highest mileage weeks before it. I would also like to have energy and fit better into my pants.

6. I would like to not feel guilty about knitting. Not guilty enough that I am able to start knitting with groups of knitters in London. That would be awesome.

Happy New Year's!

I Am Thankful

I've had writer's block, so I am going to try to write a list. That shouldn't be so hard.

I am thankful for the following:

1. Bulk Barn. This place is freaking awesome. Entry to follow, but in preview: they have an entire wall of stuff for decorating cookies! Also Swedish fish, which are, inexplicably, called Finnish fish. (As holiday baking approaches, I will devote a longer entry to the glories of the Bulk Barn. It is truly glorious.)

2. Free WiFi in the airport.

3. The flexibility to travel, despite it being a work day and having heaps of work to do. Sure, I have to write about Shostakovich while I'm visiting with family, but I can.

4. The sort of job where, when I can't find a way to solve a problem, no body gets hurt. Slightly annoyed I can deal with; I need to keep this in mind that the worst that happens if I don't do well, I might annoy or disappoint people who only matter a little to me.

5. Koigu Painter's Palette Premium Merino. I'm knitting a pair of the Nutkin socks and I'm loving them. I'm enthralled by them. I don't want to do anything else. As in, I don't want to do anything else to the point that this is my new diet plan. (Eventually there will be pictures of these.)

6. My health. I may be sidelined from running, but if that's the only sideline I'm on, I'm probably okay.

7. The health of the people I love.

8. Having people I love who support me on this insane adventure. I may occupy my apartment by myself, but I am not alone. I have wonderful friends in London, Nashville and everywhere, an amazing family, and a beautiful husband who may not always understand what I do but always thinks I'll be great at it.

One of my favourite meditations is a simple, but radical statement on gratitude:

"I am grateful for everything. I have everything I need."

I am and I do. In this upcoming season that so often seems more about gluttony and greed rather than goodwill and thanks, I'm going to sit with this mantra more.

Product v. Process

So sometimes, this blog looks more like a weird hybrid of a knitting blog and a running blog, rather than anything to do with going to graduate school in Canada. There are people who do both better, I know. That said, both are a major part of what I do when I'm not face down in a pile of work with a bottle of vodka glass of wine pot of tea. (Or running was, before an unfortunate incident while trying to catch a bus left me with a sprained ankle.)

But there is something that binds together musicology, running, and knitting, and it is this: the idea that both involve processes that produce products, and one can focus on one or the other and can get more out of either the process of the activity or its product. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka the Yarn Harlot) has written about this a lot in regards to knitting, and has raised the good point that craft cannot be all about process:

"Imagine this: You and I are sitting together on a park bench, and we are having a lovely time, knitting and chatting, maybe we have coffee and some chocolate. It's lovely. I spread my knitting in progress out on my lap to admire it, you know, the way knitters do. . . Then, something catches my eye, and I lean forward to take a better look at the sweater and suddenly you can see what I see. There's a massive mistake. You inhale sharply; this is going to be bad. This is one of those ugly mistakes that can shorten a knitter's lifespan. You slowly look up at me, prepared to help me through this awful moment, and much to your surprise, I break out in an enormous smile of sheer joy and exclaim:

'Wow! Look at that! I made a huge mistake way back at the beginning of this sweater. Oh my gosh, it's enormous. No wonder the rest of the sweater looks so odd. My goodness, that mistake is as obvious as Cher naked at a convent, isn't it? How did I not see that? Well now. What a fabulous turn of events. I'll just have to rip this while thing out. Yup, every single stitch except for the cast-on edge is entirely unacceptable! Oh, but I'm so lucky! I'm glad that I got a chance to knit the whole thing before I noticed this. If I'd seen that mistake right away, then I wouldn't get the pleasure of knitting this practically twice! Oh happy, happy day.'

Having been the knitter who has mad a mistake of that magnitude, I think that if I ever heard a knitter say that, I'd either get up and move, consider talking about her in unflattering terms after she left, or, even though I'm a nonviolent person, I think I'd momentarily consider knocking her off the bench in an attempt to smack the stupid right off the poor unfortunate."

--Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Free-Range Knitter, 107-8

Even the most devoted process person almost has to be, on some level, at least interested in the product, just as the most devoted product person has to be interested in the process, or they would just buy the stuff at the store.

That said, there are knitters who find their joy in having a big heap of finished objects that they use regularly, rather than on the hours of craft that goes into making them; there are runners whose only pleasure in running is in race times, personal records, and statistics; and there are researchers who measure their success in terms of books and articles published and presentations given. I am not one of these people. I might have a better relationship with time if I was one of these people: if I wasn't having so much fun doing the stuff, maybe I'd be more likely to finish it on time.

I enjoy running because I enjoy the journey: I enjoy watching the world around me, seeing places from a particular perspective, the feel of my body moving through space. It is like dancing, but rarely am I judged for my grace. I race, because the particular experience of racing gives is a different experience from that of just going for a run, not because official results impress me. I work as a musicologist because I love the part of it where I sit down with a heap of sources and actually find something interesting. I am less impressed by the actual act of sitting down and writing up my findings. That is, that part is like pulling teeth and must be surrounded by the perfect environment, or I will gladly clean the kitchen before I can even contemplate getting started with the real work in the other room (a room from which I cannot even see my dirty kitchen). I knit, in the full knowledge that socks are available for $5 for twenty pair at Wal-Mart and sweaters can be more efficiently acquired at the mall. I knit because I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of the act of playing with sticks and string. I teach because I like the sound of my own voice sharing what I know and seeing the moment when students "get it."

These processes would be pretty pointless if they didn't have some sort of product. I like my half marathon medal and my collection of racing t-shirts. Upon finishing my master's thesis, I printed it out and stood on it to see how much taller standing on 117 pages would make me. I wear or gift the things I knit, after taking pictures of them, and am proud of what I have made. (A sweater out of sock yarn is nothing to sneeze at.) The thing that keeps me coming back, however, isn't the ultimate product, however, it is the simple, everyday acts of which the accomplishments are built.

A Week In the Life

So, last Wednesday, Sally and I left for the beach. We had a lovely time, it was windy, which made actually being on the sandy part of the beach a bit interesting and exfoliating, but in the water or on the deck was just fine. Sally hooped in the sand and I sat on the deck and read and knitted. It turns out you can knit this much sock in 4 days:


I cast on for this sock in the car on the way to the beach, and stopped knitting on it while we were there because I misplaced its mate, and need to make sure that the ankles are the same length before starting the heel flap.

Then it rained and we went shopping, and finally we left the beach just in time, since the waves had made their way under the cabin.


After heading back to Nashvegas, I hung out at home with the Beloved Husband and on Monday, a holiday here in the States and our 7th wedding anniversary, I ran a 5k that benefited the Nashville City Cemetery Association. Since my goal was to finish, I accomplished exactly what I set out to do.

Look, me at the start:


Kickin' it in what I like to call "tortoise style:"



Watchin' out for zombies:

And the finish:

Later, the Beloved Husband and I went out for a fun fish dinner, followed by ice cream.

Tuesday night included knitting, which was great, and I cast on a new sock.

Then I came home and the BH and I hung out with Mr. Calvin, who was doing his dangedest to be cute.

Now it is my birthday, and I'm another year older. Not sure about wiser, but older. I'll be inspecting for crow's feet later. There are movers, painters, and the bug spraying guy at our old house right now, getting it ready for potential renters.

The Desk Sock

I am, my friends, an inventor.

I have invented a truly amazing study tool. At least for knitters. But if Raverly is any guide, there are a lot of graduate students who also knit.

I present to you, humble reader, the desk sock:

That's it, over on the right. It is a very simple concept, and I'm a bit stunned that I haven't come up with it before, but I'm a little slow. It is a basic sock, out of a lovely yarn, that lives on one's desk and is worked on while one accomplishes the endless reading that accompanies graduate education. I am working on a better system for holding books open, and one of these or one of these would probably help, but after one more chapter of the book on the desk, most of my reading will be photocopies or things I've printed from the internet, so no hurry. (It can totally wait for my birthday.) But the idea of the desk sock is this: because the sock (which should be out of particularly pleasant yarn-- this one is Noro Silk Garden Sock) is always at the desk, one will want to stay at the desk and continue reading. Because it is a basic sock pattern (no monkey business like cables or lace to keep track of), one can set it down mid-round to write down a note and then resume knitting and reading. Short of tea and washroom trips, I can stay at the desk with much more endurance than before because of this sock.

I fully expect royalties from the subsequent innovations of the desk scarf and desk sweater front and back, as they are clearly derrivitave of the desk sock.

(And if you can keep track of lace while reading complex literary theory, don't burst my wee bubble. I'm very proud of figuring this study tactic out, and my ego is a bit fragile lately.) (And no, I haven't decided exactly how to handle the heel in this idea.)