An Abundance of Yarn

I like to think of myself as a conscientious stasher of yarn. I buy mostly from local fairs, straight from farmers and small fiber mills. The look on a farmer’s face when you say, “I’m only buying three skeins of yarn today, and this is one of them,” or when they overhear you tell your shopping buddy “this is the best X I’ve ever felt” is beautiful. Otherwise, I try not to buy yarn lightly, filling in post-festival season with careful purchases from local stores. I love the yarn I have.

But, as I sit looking at the long underwear (Elizabeth Zimmermann’s “Nether Garments” from Knitter’s Almanac) that I’ve been knitting since September 1st, I realize that even a slow-growing stash is still growing. I cast on some socks last week with yarn that I’ve had for just over two years. And, unlike the cursed Rowan Linen Drape I’ve had since summer ‘06 that refuses to cooperate in any project I try, this was yarn that I’ve really been “meaning to get to.”

The funny thing is that I still have days when I forget to knit anything at all. I enjoy knitting, but, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not the kind of knitter who takes socks to the post office. I spent eight hours on airplanes last weekend without knitting a stitch, even though I had a project with me. Last week I read somewhere about setting short-term resolutions to be completed before New Year’s Day. I think maybe I’ll practice knitting every day. With no fiber festivals and Christmas shopping to take the discretionary income, I might even manage to knit more yarn than I accumulate.

The Tipping Point

No, I don’t mean that weird economics book. Rather, I’m realizing that my dissertation chapter writing process has a bizarre, and slightly frustrating, internal rhythm. For weeks I toil away, using every tool in my psychological arsenal just to get in a few hours of work. And then, Click! I must finish! Working eight hours a day is fun! The end is in sight! Become a workaholic!

I’m taking this as a good thing, really. It’s irritating to live through, because having to drag your brain kicking and screaming into the work day is never fun. But, now that both completed chapters have followed this exact pattern, I’m also a little happy. It isn’t that the work is bad (my serious worry with chapter 2) or that I’m not smart enough to write a dissertation (my really serious worry with chapter 1), it’s just the way my brain works.

So, for chapter three, I think I’ll brush up on my “get myself to work” methods and trust that the joy will come back, sooner or later.

On Baking Bread

There’s a certain slice of early ’70s culture that I find quite charming. That would be the back-to-basics, do-it-yourself part, for those of you who were expecting something quite inappropriate for an academic blog. I love it especially in cookbooks, where my collection suggests that people revolted from an oppressive kind of domestic regime, the kind that wanted women to hand-frost six dozen cookies, but they weren’t willing to give up on the kitchen altogether. The “crunchy granola” crowd put out some real gems, suggesting that we do radical things like bake our own bread and plant our own gardens. (Not that this was a majority, of course. I’m pretty sure that my copy of The Joys of Jello is from the early 1970s. You do not even want to know the ingredients for “Chicken Mousse.”) You have to keep your eye out for the excessive “crunchiness” of some of the recipes, but there’s also a real, joyful earnestness and a belief, untainted by cynicism, that the way we eat can really change the world. I like to think that my generation of cooks has something to learn here, something that shopping at Whole Foods alone isn’t going to teach anybody.

In my case, that’s baking bread. I’ve done it before, like most products of a large southern family. When I first moved out on my own, I learned to cook all over again with the help of Mollie Katzen, another product of the same ’70s movement. (This had the somewhat unfortunate side effect of making every dish I make too garlicky for anyone else to eat. I think every recipe in Still Life with Menu calls for at least three cloves, and I distinctly remember making a soup that called for twelve.) I made bread with Mollie in my tiny kitchen, with the cookbook on the floor because there was nowhere else to put it, but it was more as a treat than as a regular event.

Then came my true, wheat-y love, The Tassajara Bread Book. Originally published in 1970, but still available at your local bookstore, this book is everything I love about that back-to-the-earth crowd. There’s the occasional recipe that no sane person would ever try (my very favorite in this category is the “Gruel Bread,” made from all that leftover rice gruel you just happen to have sitting around), but there’s also a fundamental honesty and decency and practicality. Instead of our modern cult of celebrity chefs, the author tells us bluntly: “I am not a great baker . . . I do not bake to be great. I bake because it is wholesome. I feel renewed, and I am renewing the world.” The bread takes forever–four risings of up to 45 minutes, if I’m remembering correctly, plus the stirring and kneading. You do not bake this bread on a whim, unless that whim happens at 10:00 in the morning on a day you’re likely to be home. It is the definition of slow food. And I like that.

These days, the bread is a perfect companion. My trusty kitchen timer calls me away from whatever I’m doing, be it a break that has gone on a little too long or a work session that has made me lose track of time, just often enough to keep me honest. Bread, except in the early measuring stages, requires just enough attention to let your mind think up good ideas on its own. It’s the perfect companion to academic work. And, unlike the other rewards of academic work, the result is tangible and, better yet, edible.

In which two worlds collide

I called this blog Knitting a Dissertation mostly because those were the two things I was doing at the time, but also because I tend to use my knitting time to think about things. Sometimes, though, the connections get a little weirder. Take today, for instance. I realized this morning that my current chapter has stalled because I’m angry at the critic I’m reading, but I don’t have my own fully formed counter theory. I can say why he’s wrong, but not why I’m right. The novel I’m working on is resisting my efforts to form a cohesive argument, even though I have lots of things to say about it. I decided today that I would do the productive thing and write through it, starting with my opposition to the critic and seeing where it took me. After about 400 words of this, I realized about 75% of the solution to my problem, and I have that tickling feeling in the back of my mind that the other 25% is much closer.

In the meantime, I’ve been listening to my backlog of Cast On episodes. Cast On, the knitting podcast, for those of you from the other side. I’m way behind, listening to episodes from early spring of this year. In the episode I listened to this morning, Brenda discussed her fear of “wasting” art materials, like her stash of “good” spinning fiber, by using them to make less than perfect products. At the same time, she discussed a change of attitude toward her work in producing the podcast. She links both her reticence to use her “good” materials and some anxiety about the podcast to our innate fear of being wrong. More importantly, she reminds us that the joy of doing good work is doing good work. Knowing that we have an important contribution to make is more valuable than any external, or even internal, perception of wrongness or rightness. Letting go of the idea of being wrong, and of being criticized, (or, on the flip side, right and praised) lets us go back to the core of what we do, and why we really do it.

In a funny way, Brenda articulated the things that had gotten me started writing today–a draft is a draft, my ideas are important even if I haven’t worked out 100% of the kinks, and waiting for perfection is only going to result in nothing getting done. If you’re feeling a little stuck in your work, of whatever kind, check out the last 15 minutes or so of episode 76.

Plain Socks for Charity

I started these for the last Afghans for Afghans campaign, but of course the deadline has passed. I think I’ll keep them around for the next charity drive they suit.

The pattern is my usual plain sock formula–64 stitches, 7 inch leg, Dutch heel, round toe. I knitted them for a bit longer foot, since I’m somewhat below average in that department. The yarn is Seacoast Handpaints in the “Summer Garden” colorway.

What this picture can’t show is the eye searing vividness of this yarn. You can see it better in this photo:

Seriously–if you have a seven year old girl to knit for, this is the yarn. It’s dyed very well; you can see that it doesn’t flash or pool at all, with a very small exception as I worked the heel gusset on one sock. The yardage is more than generous, too. I can barely tell that I’ve even used any of the yarn. The Ravelry info lists the original ball weight as 114 grams, and I have 45 left. Meaning, after a generously sized pair of socks, I still have probably 200 yards of yarn remaining. I would have picked a very different color if I had picked this for myself, though. Very different.

Summer Comes Slowly

This isn’t, technically, my first summer in New England. I’ve been here at least part of the last two, each sending me into weather shock so severe that I spent the entire month of May in a sweater. This year, as you know if you live in this part of the country, is a little different. I kept that sweater on for most of June, when it rained what seemed like every day with temperatures that struggled to reach 70 degrees. Since this year I don’t plan on being back in Texas for “real” summer in August, September, and even October, I was beginning to despair.

Slowly, slowly, though, this pretend summer and I are coming to appreciate one another. Now that July is here, the temperatures are in the low 80s (well below average, even for here) and the rain has scaled back to something a little more palatable. I never loved the Texas heat, except in juxtaposition to the Texas air-conditioning. After twenty minutes freezing in a store that believes you should be instantly cool when you come in from the parking lot, a blast of 100 degree air feels very nice. Honestly, I still expect that comforting warmth when I go out of a cold store, which is pretty much never going to happen around here.

I’m realizing the many benefits of having a summer that isn’t so hot your eyeballs cook in your head. I do not have to make the choice between an outfit that will keep me from having a heatstroke on my way to the store and one that will keep me from frostbite once I’m there. I never have the feeling that it’s too hot to knit. I can ride my bicycle every day, even at 6:00 in the evening, without worrying that I will get sunstroke. I no longer sunburn after only fifteen minutes outside. I do not have to ride the bus with anyone who does not have adequate personal hygiene to withstand 105 degree temperatures. I will not have to wait until the fall fashions are out of fashion before the weather lets me wear them.

Come winter I’m sure I’ll miss my Texas weather, which barely required a coat, but right now I’m more than okay with the switch.

The Work Cycle

In June I was amazingly productive and determined. Chapter draft finished, massive research done, novel for the next chapter read kind of productive. July, thus far, has fizzled. (I jokingly blame this on Le Tour de France.) Yesterday as I was starting to get very upset over my lack of progress, I realized something important, and probably apparent to everyone else. Academic work isn’t a do-the-same-thing-everyday kind of job. My brain, at least, can’t switch from John Stuart Mill to Tobias Smollett just because I say “okay, today we do chapter two.” Also, the kind of thinking that has to be done before the writing starts isn’t a quantifiable, measurable goal. You can’t check “have a solid chapter idea” off a to-do list. I think the pressures of a regular academic semester obscure both of these facts, since there’s always something else to do. There’s no time to focus exclusively on one thing.

I drifted off to sleep last night thinking, “Hey, I’m good at my job.” I don’t know why my subconscious decided to bring up that little piece of self-esteem, but two weeks after turning in my chapter draft I’m finally feeling back to 100% again.

A Little Space

The blog has been quiet largely because I’ve been moving. My annual trek to New England to summer with my husband (ahh, academic marriage) is, for this year at least, permanent. On a level of my consciousness far beyond my control, I dislike change. Now I’m facing days, and a life, with an entirely different rhythm. 

My project now is to find myself a little space to call my own. A little space, with room for my teapot and knitting and current reading project. A little space in this comparatively very large living area where I can start to put down new roots. My tiny, weirdly ugly apartment was my home, in a way that my husband’s much larger, newer, nicer townhouse isn’t quite yet. 

I’m hoping to be back more often now that teaching is over and moving is mostly over. My plan for surviving my first winter in New England involves knitting as many colorful hand coverings as possible, a project I’m hoping to document here starting in a few days. I’ve also, as usual, got an ambitious set of dissertation goals that may have me back here, chatting about all things academic. I’m looking forward to it.

Avoidance

Putting off school work is, I’ve come to realize, often an important part of the process. I almost always procrastinate about writing when I’m just not ready to write yet–some important piece hasn’t clicked into place. If not that, it’s generally because there’s some other work, like grading, that’s blocking my mental space. That alone isn’t enough to worry me.

But I’ve been avoiding a lot of things these days–grading, dissertation work, exercising, the laundry, you name it. I’ve been in a serious sit in my chair and surf the internet slump. I’ve been chalking it up to a bad case of April burnout, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s really the case.

Late Friday afternoon, when I was finally doing the grading I should have done on Wednesday,  it occurred to me that I wasn’t just putting off my work–I was also putting off the reasonably pleasant things I usually do instead of working. I went a week without knitting a stitch, barely even cooked my dinners, and spent three days without nail polish.

I’m starting to think that this is something a little more in my control than just burnout. My sleep schedule is all crazy, thanks to the terrible combination, from the angle of consistency, of two days of 8:00 teaching and five days of nowhere to be. I’ve also been eating very badly–quick burritos or fast food on campus, too much sugar and too few vegetables at home. Top that all off with a good case of just not paying attention to myself or to my time, and I’m guessing I get weeks, like last week, when I spend more time checking my e-mail than reading.

So this week’s goal, rather than being about work, is going to be about the basics of life: better sleeping and better eating will, I hope, help the work take care of itself.

Oh, Sisyphus

At 1:00 this afternoon I finished reading The Wealth of Nations. That culminated a two month stretch of reading Adam Smith, both the Theory of Moral Sentiments (which I found interesting and important) and Wealth (which was less so), for a grand total of 1600 pages. I felt proud, like I had accomplished something. I might have done a little dance.

At 3:30, the UPS man came.

The UPS man brought the 800+ page unabridged edition of Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees. I’m glad to have it, and have no reason at all to read this one cover-to-cover, but that timing crushed my soul a little.