The first graduate course has come to a bittersweet end after two reflection papers, a student affairs interview, sharing of multiple current events, a trip to Boxes and Walls, participation in a Chancellor Search open forum, a visit from a UW Regent (and other illustrious in-person and Webex guests), and a collaborative presentation and paper on a local university. Together my classmates and I read two books, several book chapters, and many scholarly papers and received an introduction to APA style.
No, not that kind of style. This kind of style!
I’ve been addicted to stylebooks since my first copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (third edition with index). My mother, when she went to graduate school as a nontraditional student (though we didn’t call her that in the 1980s), had a battered copy of “Turabian” that was her Bible. (A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, by Kate L. Turabian. It seems to be up to the 9th edition by now, but Mom used the 3rd or 4th edition; I’ll have to ask her but I suspect it was the 4th.) The Turabian guide was so frequently cited that a 2016 survey of college syllabi found that Kate Turabian was the most commonly assigned female author.
If you haven’t been embedded in the universe of professional writing for the last three decades as I have, allow me to introduce you to the major stylebooks for different categories of professional writing:
• Newspapers (remember those?) use the Associated Press Stylebook, or AP style. The 2020-2022 edition is the 55th print edition.
• Book publishers refer to the Chicago Manual of Style, or Chicago Style, CMOS, or just “Chicago.” The 2017 edition is the 17th edition.
• Magazines don’t have an industry standard, so they create their own “house style” books from a combination of what makes sense for them from CMOS and AP Style. (It’s fun. Ask me how I know.)
• Scholarly work can use MLA [Modern Language Association], APA, or another style particular to the field of study.
I have a lot of APA style ahead of me; the next course is Diversity and Equity in Higher Education and I have just ordered copies of my textbooks. My APA Publication Manual still looks pristine but it should be wiped out by the time I finish the program. But hey! Several of my classmates from this semester will also be in the new course.
Knitwise, I have been casting on for everything. These days I look at the yarn that overflows from stash with a more critical eye. Knit it Up or Pass it On is the new motto (Knit or Get Off the Pot might be a close second). So this week, even though I have yet to knit a potato, I have progress to talk about.
The Vintage Packer scarf received some attention this week and now measures up at 27 inches from cast-on.
Just today I cast on for a whole new project after finding a shopping bag containing 3-1/2 skeins of lovely blue acrylic. The yarn is Yarn Bee Fireside in the Summer Bay colorway, and it’s a Hobby Lobby knockoff of Lion Brand Homespun. (I have absolutely no idea how this yarn came into my possession. All I can tell you for sure is that I didn’t purchase it at Hobby Lobby; the ball band has a 2011 copyright, so I suspect that I got this batch with matching dye lots at Goodwill.) I decided to use what I learned from the Pink Project and knit it up as a Grandmother’s Dishcloth pattern on the ends (starting with k2, YO, k to end; ending with k1, k2tog, YO, k2tog, k to end), with a straight section in the middle (k2, YO, k2tog, k to end).
As I tidied up in different rooms and tried to rein in the stash, I came across other yarns that I had intended to ship to online friends two years ago before I discovered that overseas yarn shipping was either prohibitively expensive or just plain prohibited (thanks, Australia). With regret I put this yarn back into stash, except for two balls of Shetland wool that practically begged me to knit them into a hat. (Well…okay.) I found a free — and easy! — hat pattern on Ravelry for the Sand and Loganberry yarns I had bought who-knows-when at The Sow’s Ear in Verona.
I also uncovered a bag full of more LaurenSpun wool in pinks and blues. One small skein had the colors arranged consecutively, but the other skeins had the colors plied together. Lauren didn’t remember what she had originally planned to do with the yarn, though she had knitted up a small gauge swatch, but I have about 250 grams of it. The non-plied colors will be reserved for the border of whatever I decide to do with the plied skeins.
That would almost be everything to talk about in the knitting department, but I also came across a small ball of chocolate-brown wool (actually, it is smooth and soft and lovely and might be alpaca) and a smaller ball of natural white wool (definitely wool) that could combine to make a winter hat for Eldest.
WordPress has eliminated (or very cleverly hidden) the word-count feature, so I have no idea if this post is of a proper length for publication. On the other hand, they did supply me with a new writing prompt:
Honestly, I could do less with corporate-supplied writing prompts. Or I could do more with fewer of them. In case you haven’t noticed, WordPress, I’ve been blogging since 2007. My posts have never been contingent upon what you want me to say, and that isn’t going to change now. Gad freaking zooks.
Chocolate Sheep 