Independent author

Last week I started reading The Alignment Problem, a scholarly exploration of the history of neural networks (the ancestors of what we now call artificial intelligence). I have only just begun the book, having read the prologue, the introduction, and the first chapter, but it’s already giving me a lot about which to think.

I started thinking about different forms of electronic assistance in various activities and wondering when certain amounts are too much.

Racers and car fanatics might say that the only real form of driving is with a car that has a manual transmission. But the vast majority of drivers have cars with automatic transmissions. That’s driving, too, isn’t it? What about if you use cruise control on long stretches of highway driving? Is that driving, or is the driver merely managing the driving that the car has now been programmed to do? What if you have a car that can do parallel parking for you? And what if you drive a Tesla and give over your control completely? When does driving a car end and something else begin? And what is that something else?

Let’s think about reading. Many of us still imagine reading as something that’s being done when you’re curled up with a physical book. But many readers use their Kindles and Nooks to read e-books. Others drive (cf. “driving,” above) or work out while listening to audiobooks. Aren’t those books as well? Similarly, music has gone from a live experience to a vinyl record to a tape cassette, a compact disc, and a downloadable digital file. It’s all music, isn’t it?

Two years ago I participated in an online songwriting group. I don’t play any musical instrument well enough to accompany myself while singing, so I opened the Garage Band program on my iPad and used the tools it provided to me. I laid down a percussion track and used a virtual session guitarist that (who?) was provided in the software. I recorded my singing of my lyrics to the beat of a digital metronome, then edited and saved the file and uploaded the link to my file to a shared Google Sheet. I wrote a few songs via this process, but does this make me a musician? A singer/songwriter? Or something else?

Art is another obvious continuum. If I apply pencil or pen to paper, brush and paint to canvas, hands to clay, or chisel to stone or wood, I’m rather obviously creating art. But what if my process is digital, and I can Undo the virtual brushstroke I just made and give it another try? What if I have an infinite number of do-overs in Procreate and can create several layers in my file before I save it to my hard drive? Am I still an artist?

And now let’s look at writing. It would be ridiculous to suggest that the only real writing is done using a dip pen in gall ink on parchment. We accept that writers can write (as I am writing now) their words on a computer and published to the Internet. No paper was impressed upon in the composition of this blog post. But is a blog post “real” writing as opposed to a newspaper column? A short story in an electronic magazine? A printed novel? What makes the writing real?

Must I come up with my own words in that written piece utterly on my own? Am I not permitted to use a dictionary or thesaurus? Can I allude to another work or create a parody of it? Can I use spellcheck or the grammar tools within Microsoft Word, or need I turn those functions off within my Preferences menu? May I tap the center button on my iPhone and use predictive text if I’m in a hurry? Or can I enter a prompt in ChatGPT and still call myself a writer?

Where does it change and where does it end? Who drives and who writes? Who is an artist or a musician? You’ve seen the AI-generated art that isn’t informed by the rules of real life. This is something we’ll have to think about as a society, and something we’ll have to decide — preferably before the artists and the writers lose their hope and creativity.

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Knitwise, I did all of my knitting on the Habit-Forming Scarf during the sessions of the Grand Prix of China this weekend. The scarf is now 18 inches long, so there is still quite a ways to go in the yarn of the first skein.

This weekend I organized my collection of compact discs, which are stored in a cabinet that was also being used to store yarn. Until I emptied out the bottom two drawers, that is, and found evidence that mice had gotten into the yarn stash. That yarn has since been moved to sealed plastic storage (and I’ll probably set a trap in the bottom drawer). I’d better pick up the pace of using my stash or start giving more of it away before it turns into rodentine bedding.

The Improbable Read: Dialing back the big plan

One or two of you may be starting to wonder whatever happened to my Impossible Read project. To be honest, it’s still sitting in a tote bag next to my Comfy Green Chair in my home library.

I have been very frustrated at running out of time before being able to sit down and work on the project. Eventually I realized that this was happening because I took an admittedly very very long book list and converted it into an extremely time-consuming project. Not only was I planning to read some of the greatest books of all time, but I was also going to create a series of books filled with my own thoughts and annotations. And not only that, but the physical space necessary for working on these notebooks wasn’t even anywhere in my own house.

So I am setting aside the idea of creating a multi-volume artifact for myself. Instead I have a new plan, and I hope that you are sitting down as you read this. You’re simply not going to believe it.

I’m just going to read the books.

You heard me.

I will just read the books, and then watch the movies. I have plenty of other places where I can write about my reactions to the texts — in my morning freewriting, in my evening journaling, and here in my weekly blog posts. It’s even possible that as I work on my two primary writing projects, the great works and my thoughts about them may spill over into the writing I do there. (That’s kind of the point — to finally read these books and be influenced by them in my thought and my expression. To be edified, and to be improved.)

So hang on, Wart! I’ll be back soon to enjoy all of your adventures with Merlyn. I’ll just try not to be taking notes at the same time.

This weekend, for the Impossible Improbable Read-ing list, I found a very good used copy of Grendel by John Gardner. (I’m frustrated that I had to buy it at all, because I recognize the cover but cannot find the copy that I surely already own. ANYWAY.) Then I splurged on a new unabridged copy of The Tale of Genji, translated by Royall Tyler. Evidently this edition was originally published in 2003. It’s more than a thousand pages long and includes exquisite line drawings, a timeline, and a glossary. It’s full of helpful notes to the reader (hooray!) and it’s printed on paper that is soft to the touch (a high clay content?) and makes you want to just sit and pet it.

I marked these titles as “owned” in my Google Sheet, then scanned down the list to what I would next need to acquire. There are several books in a whole time period that I need to find — but they were written in the late 1600s and the 1700s. Before I even get to that point, I will have read The Once and Future King, The Mists of Avalon, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Grendel, The Tale of Genji, The Arabian Nights, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales (in Middle English), Orlando Furioso, Don Quixote, and Salman Rushdie’s novel Quichotte. I have no idea what that cumulative page count even looks like (and I think it will go better for me if I don’t work it out in advance; I will log them in the spreadsheet as I finish each book [I have already created the formula]). There are also movies planned for viewing at the end of each segment, and those (so far) are The Sword in the Stone, Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, Beowulf, Aladdin, and Man of la Mancha (okay, I do need a DVD of this).

It may be two-three more years before I reach Oroonoko by Aphra Behn or Pamela by Samuel Richardson. But if you do see a nice used copy, could you let me know about it?

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On to the Primary Projects mentioned above.

For Black Walnut (the fiction project), I continue to collect and listen to bluegrass music. I’m reading mostly about the early years because that’s the timeframe that will impact my characters, and I’m doing a little side research into the bluegrass radio shows of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in the Ohio-Appalachia area. In the last few days I managed to pick up a used DVD of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a CD of the soundtrack, and a CD of live music from the groups on the soundtrack. I also snagged CDs by Mac Wiseman, Alison Krauss, and Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. From the reading I’m doing, I am starting to recognize the names of key bluegrass musicians. Some of these names may or may not sneak their way into the manuscript when I’m writing again. (I also promised an archivist that I would name a character after him, and I have absolutely no problem with that.)

I can see now how thin and underdeveloped my original storyline was. I’m reminding myself that it was a NaNoWriMo project from 2014 and that it didn’t have to be any better than it was. I wrote 22,500 words in 30 days and it was okay. But now I want to meet the characters and their parents and grandparents, get to know them, get to know the time and the region, and find the big story that’s worth telling. Every so often I get a glimpse of it.

For the Development of Mathematics project (doesn’t that sound thrilling?), I have catalogued almost every annotation in the copy of the book held by my own university’s library. When I’m done with that, the logical next step is to do the same for the other copies in the University of Wisconsin System libraries. The catch is that Inter-Library Loan operates by choosing a copy at random from the system holdings. I’m in consultation with a research librarian and our library director as to how to tweak that system so that I efficiently receive each copy in the system for evaluation and possible cataloguing. That phase will start in June so that I will have the maximum possible time with the books.

Another thing I need to do for this project is to brainstorm until I understand what the core project actually is, then what are the possible spin-off projects. That was something I had hoped to tackle this weekend, but plans changed and that’s been postponed until next weekend.

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Knitwise, this week I did put in a few sessions of work on the Habit-Forming Scarf. This evening it measures 15 inches from the cast-on edge, and the remainder of the skein weight 51 grams (out of 100). This backs up my calculations from last week about getting 30 inches out of each skein. Hooray, my scarf is now 25 percent complete.

I’m going to have to normalize adding a couple of inches every couple of days if I want to get out of “slog” territory.

And with that in mind, it might be nice to have a small and colorful project to do on the side, to keep me motivated to work on something so long and grey (although certainly elegant and sophisticated).

My friend Nicole recently crocheted an office plant for me, and my friend Mary sent me a link to some crochet patterns published by the U.S. National Park Service. Here is one for a halibut. Here is another for a walleye. There are some fun patterns out there, including one (somewhere; I don’t have a link) for a crocheted Scottish thistle. It’s time to go stashbusting and color this place UP.

The Write Type

It’s been a long week of bearing the bitter cold and snow, checking various tasks off my list, and finding peace and relaxation where I can. The spring semester begins tomorrow and I may not be able to take a deep breath until Friday afternoon.

This weekend I finished reading Uncommon Type, a collection of short stories written by Tom Hanks. Yes, that Tom Hanks. Each story refers to or features a typewriter in some way, but other than that the stories are quite diverse. They’re all very well done. I’d be proud of myself had I written any one of them.

Hanks’s work gives me encouragement to allow myself to work on a variety of writing projects. My head is full of story ideas, but sometimes I limit myself by worrying about what kind of stories I “ought” to be writing. (Finished ones, self. Finished stories are what you should write.)

I have book after book after book about how other writers write: what their libraries and writing areas look like, which computer or typewriter or fountain pen they use, when they sit down to write and when they rise up. I suspect that my attraction to these books was the hope that whatever routine and process worked so well for, say, Ursula LeGuin, would be the process that worked for me — if only I could copy it.

Of course, I am not Ursula LeGuin. I have led a different life and have a different mind and very different circumstances and resources. The lesson that I wish I had absorbed decades ago was to keep writing, try everything, and keep doing the things that work for me. So I guess I’ll have to take it to heart now, start writing, try everything, and find out what works.

Impossible Read checkpoint: The Once and Future King, Book 1, Chapter 16 of 24.

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Knitwise, I have found a recipient for the finished Thrift Stripe Scarf. Eldest told me to take it to work and find out who it belonged to, so I did.

MUSIC: SAX SOLO

I was alone in my office that day. The ownerless scarf was draped over a chair. That’s when SHE walked in — the dame who needed a scarf.

MUSIC: FADES OUT

Anyway, they’re such a good match for each other. I’m now in the process of using the rest of the yarn to create a coordinating cowl for her.

In person, it doesn’t actually look like a terrified Muppet.

The Stripe Scarf is waiting, with a few other items, for the Perfect Shipping Box to come along so that it can be sent to its recipient.

I’m thinking of frogging the very narrow shawl — or whatever I had named it — made from the wonderfully soft lavender yarn I found at a thrift store. I now think that a traditional prayer shawl or wrap shape would suit the yarn (and me) better. If the events of the coming week make me want to tear something apart, I’ll do the frogging then to settle my mind.

And then I’ll be thinking about casting on for a new project: whatever works.

Smart new world

Quite some time ago, I came across a Keurig machine at a thrift store. I had been looking for such an item for a while, and had come to believe that I would never find it. But lo and behold, there it was — for just $9.99. It didn’t look exactly like the model that my mother had recently purchased; hers had a tall water reservoir and this one had, well, a little well at the back of the machine. Evidently it was intended to make just one cup at a time, which was fine.

Anyway, I brought it home, cleaned the outside, and descaled the inside (after finding a copy of the manual online). Then I took it to work and set it up next to the K-pod drawer that I had purchased for the department (also at a thrift store) a few years before. It’s also next to three other coffee makers; we have a large department and we do go through a lot of coffee. We’re not permitted to spend department funds on anything food-related, though, so everything we use is either crowdfunded or scrounged from the thrift stores.

We soon found out that this Keurig was, shall I say, a little particular about how it preferred to receive user input. There was a definite order to the steps involved — and if you missed a step or pushed a button out of sequence, you would be arguing with it for a while before you received your cup of coffee.

Pour water, set mug under spout, raise lever, inset pod, lower lever, and lean on the giant “K” button. That should have been simple, but the process often felt complicated. The machine would make some noise, then just sit. And sit. Sometimes you would get a cup of coffee and sometimes you wouldn’t. We did learn that when the big “K” button double-flashed every 30 seconds or so, the machine was actually going to make coffee. To paraphrase part of a rhyme my father used to tell me about a curly-headed little girl, when it was good it was very very good, but when it was bad it was horrid.

In the back of my mind, I wished there were something I could do about it. Lo and behold, just after Thanksgiving I found another Keurig in another thrift store, for $19.99. This one looked sort of like my mother’s, with a large reservoir off to one side. It was called a SmartBrew. I took it back to her house, cleaned it up, and promptly made two mugs of Earl Grey tea (hot) using K-pods she had on hand. Perfect! No issues.

I brought the new machine back to Wisconsin and took it to work as soon as I could. Out with the old, I thought, unplugging the single-cup model and taking it back to my office, and in with the new, hauling the new machine to the kitchen and plugging it in.

The SmartBrew had a lot more buttons — and a video panel. It started up right away. Then it asked to be connected to the wi-fi. And suggested that I download the Keurig app. And wouldn’t make any beverages for me until it had that wi-fi.

Uh-oh.

For context, I need my smartphone to complete the multi-factor authentication process for every piece of software that I use in the course of my job — and I don’t even put my own phone on the university’s wi-fi system. I didn’t want to answer to a network administrator (hi, Matt!) who detected a coffee maker on our network. I did download the app, though, thinking that I would need it later.

Back with the old, I thought, hauling the finicky single-cupper back to the kitchen and plugging it in again, and home with the new, taking the bandwidth-hungry new machine to my car so I could take it home.

For a few weeks I didn’t know where to put it. Then I moved it to my writing desk, next to my iMac, but I couldn’t plug it in there because its cord was too short. For a moment I considered mounting the power strip on the back of my desk so that the cord would reach, but it seemed like a ridiculous amount of work.

Then, while I was in the midst of reorganizing my kitchen this weekend, I suddenly saw the perfect place for the new machine. It meant moving eight glass jars filled with various flours and sugars to the dining room. The best place to put those jars was on the sideboard where the books for the Impossible Read were set up. So I squeezed some items together and created shelf space for the (currently) thirty-two books of the Impossible Read. Then I set up the glass jars on the sideboard. And then I was able to plug in the new coffee maker. Huzzah!

Add water, said a message on the screen. So I filled the reservoir.

Connect to wi-fi, the screen now read. Follow instructions on app.

I would like to say that this was a simple process. I scanned the QR code on the back of the machine three times, checked my Spectrum records for the network password, and entered the password at least two times before it “took.” But in the end, after about half an hour, I had the machine all hooked up with the home network — and I clicked on the “BREW” button in my Keurig app to make my first mug of Green Mountain Nantucket Blend Medium Roast coffee.

Then the SmartBrew registered itself and extended my warranty by an extra twelve months.

It was a good cup of coffee. But then I noticed a new message on the screen.

Software update detected, it read. Machine will restart after installation. And it did.

In fact, if I put my coffee mug in place and insert a k-pod before I go to bed tonight… I can press that “BREW” button in the app and start my next cup before I even get out of bed.

When I haven’t been wrestling with technology, I have been immersing myself in a book I picked up on the university bookstore’s discount shelf on Friday morning. Its title, Morning Altars, intrigued me, and the photography was stunning.

It turns out to be an amazing book that connects Zen and art and creativity as a spiritual practice. And the author has a series of short videos that sum up each chapter of the book. Here’s a video that gives a good overview of the concept. As he mentions, it’s an exercise that allows you to build up a certain tolerance for impermanence.

At first, I told myself that I could read the introduction on the first day and then go through the rest of the book at one chapter per day. After I started getting into the book, my plan began to sound like nonsense. It was a holiday weekend, why couldn’t I just dive in and read the whole book? Why was I being so strict with myself, metering out the book in such tiny portions? So I have been reading a chapter and thinking about it, then watching the corresponding video. Tonight I’m almost through the entire text.

This morning when I walked Monty, I saw a little “fairy ring” in the grass. So I decided to try my hand at making my first altar. I didn’t follow all of the steps, because I didn’t know about them yet, but it was really satisfying just to do the little that I did with arranging the leaves and blossoms that I found.

One of the steps of the altar-making process is to share the altar that you make. So I used this image as my first-ever Instagram post, with the hashtag MorningAltars. I am still trying to figure out how to use Instagram, but when it asked who else I wanted to share the post with, I typed in MorningAltars — and lo and behold, the author did have an account. I shared the photo, and a short while later he put a little heart on my post. So that’s a heartening little human-to-human connection made possible by, of all things, Instagram.

I wonder what natural objects I’ll find tomorrow morning, and what I might make from them?

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Knitwise, I added a few more repeats on the Thrifted Stripe scarf; I’m at 41 repeats now and will measure it at 45 to see if that will be enough.

I went through a lot of my stash to see if I could find any little scraps or partial skeins of Plymouth Encore in color 151, but I came up empty. However, I did decide to pull out some nice-looking yarn and match it with patterns.

I have one skein of Trekking Pro Natural in a pale grey (color 1511, oddly enough), and after searching through Ravellry for a while I decided to knit it up in a shawl pattern named Reyna. One Ravelrer who made the shawl added some modifications to use up the entire skein, so I’ll have to go on Rav at some point and make a note of the changes she made.

The other yarn consists of two balls of Sublime (get this) Cashmere Merino Silk Aran. In black. The pattern I really liked was “Cosy knitted hand/wrist warmers” by Joelle Hoverson, but the yarn is worked on two 8-inch circular needles, a technique I have never used. I had better look for a new pattern or commit to learning something entirely new. The wristwarmers do look so nice….

Pivot

For reasons of privacy, and from my belief that people should be free to tell their own stories, I will not go into detail about some of the things that happened this week. I have had some bad weeks, but this has probably been the worst week of my life.

I can say that, just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I tested positive for COVID on Saturday morning. I spent an hour or so texting everyone I’d been in contact with in the previous 48 hours or so, then settled in to rest in isolation for the first of five days. Fortunately, I don’t have a fever, my symptoms are treatable with over-the-counter medicine I already had on hand, and I have the ability to work from home this week as I continue to recover. But, heck, there was no need to kick me while I was already down.

This week I have done a lot of reading (my sickbed resembled a bookshelf with blankets) and a lot of thinking. There are things in my family, in my house, and in myself that really need to change. In many ways I have continued to be stuck in parts of my past. I’m beginning to feel ready to make changes and start to move forward into an uncertain future.

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I had hoped to have some peach-seed roots to show you by now, but they haven’t started to do that yet.

I’ll check back in another week to see if anything has started to happen. If not, then maybe it’s just not going to happen. But since this is an almost zero-effort project, I can keep it “going” for as long as I want to. It’s not hurting anyone to let them sit there.

I mentioned that I have been doing a lot of reading; I have also been trying to update my reading journal. Right now there are only 4 books that I have read this year and not completed an entry in the journal. (Let’s not go into how many books I’m still reading but have not finished yet, or how many titles have just plain fallen off the book-cart. That’s not important right now.)

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Knitwise, I thought about the scarf I’ve been asked to make. I logged in to Ravelry and I did a Google search to see if someone had already written up a pattern for the scarf (it’s based on the celebrity photo I included in last week’s post). I came up empty, though, and when I have the time I’ll just cast on and forge ahead, and see if what is in my mind is something that will work.

I’ll write it down, I promise. But it’s basically a 1×1 rib that I want to knit in the round, then close off at the ends with fringe. The problem is that I’m a thrower and my “lateral gauge” will be inconsistent as I go between knit stitches and purl stitches. It will also be slow going for me.

Knitters, if you have any suggestions please put them in the comments. My brain is too occupied with other matters right now to think clearly about how this scarf should be made.

Chasing rainbows

I had good intentions when I sat down at the computer tonight, I really did. I didn’t know what I wanted to write about, but I honestly intended to crank out those one thousand words about…something.

I’ll be honest. It’s been a busy week and my mind and my tasks have been all OVER the place. I’m doing research on a topic that might not bear fruit for years. I’m [waking up] thinking about what I need to do to help my department(s) prepare for the coming academic year. I’m bracing myself for the workload of this fall’s graduate course in higher education leadership. I’ll have two sons in college and my youngest son in his senior year of high school. I have Secret Projects About Which Nothing Shall Be Revealed Until Afterwards. And it’s Sunday night, so I’m also finishing the laundry for the week.

I sat here for a while, and what came to mind was the rainbow. Good people in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, Google it, have been making Good Trouble for the last couple of years over their support of other good people who support the students in their school district.

The Minocqua Brewing Company has been “shut down” by officials who don’t have the authority to shut it down, in part because of the company’s support of Progressive policies and persons who find community and shelter under a rainbow umbrella. When some businesses need to follow the rules and others don’t, that’s called “selective enforcement.”

So I did a Google search for CHASING RAINBOWS and I discovered a lovely song by John Mellencamp that was released on the 2022 album “Strictly a One-Eyed Jack.”

You can listen to it, and watch it, here: https://youtu.be/TMUpq8fIXKw

Here is “Chasing Rainbows” by Big Freedia and Kesha: https://youtu.be/ZlNI7UhRoyc

Please let the message sink in. There are folks out there who could use your support and protection. All human beings deserve human rights. If you need a minute to think about that before you come around, take the time. We’re waiting for you.

Then celebrate with Irish band The High Kings and their own “Chasing Rainbows”: https://youtu.be/46jAXMq7esQ

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Knitwise, you know the drill. No stitches added, no stitches removed. No net gain, no net loss. It’s all good.

The infinite library

I’m pleased to announce that this week I read the last book in my library. With a satisfied smile on my face, I closed the book and set it on the Goodwill donation stack. Then I promptly recorded my thoughts about the book in my reading journal. As fate would have it, the two pages allotted for that book were the last two pages of my last reading journal — and my pen used its last drops of ink for my review.

It was so satisfying, but if you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know that the preceding paragraph is an utter lie. And I’m not sure at all that it would actually be satisfying to have read every book in my house. I’d imagine that it would be terrifying. What would I do next? What would I read next? Would I have to start all over again?

Illustration of Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel,” by Erik Desmazieres

To be honest, I have no idea how many books I have. It would probably take me at least one full day to count them. And do I count my kids’ books, almost all of which I have purchased for them? They aren’t reading them, but I bought them. Does that make them mine?

Several of my books are from my parents’ library, and a few of my books are from my grandfather’s library. The rest of the thousands are books I was given, books I bought new, books I bought used, and books I rescued from — shudder — horrible fates.

Illustration of Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel,” by Jean-Francois Rauzier

This weekend I brought my reading journal up to date, at least in the sense that there are now two pages allotted in the layout for every book that I started reading in January through June (so far), and every book that I started last year and finished this year. (Books that I began before 2022 and actually finish in 2023 will receive a very special asterisk and a place of privilege at the end of the journal.)

Illustration of Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel,” by Andrew DeGraff

While updating the journal, I used it in two ways. First, I used it to motivate myself to make progress on a few stalled books. I hadn’t read anything from Grimms’ Fairy Tales for a while, so it was easy to sit down in the big green chair and knock out “The Three Spinners” and “Hansel and Grethel.” Second, I used it to reward myself for the reading I’ve already done. I recently finished three books that I started about a year ago. That’s great! I also noted the entries for books that I read in just one or two days. That’s great!

Illustration of Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel,” by Derek Philip Au

I’m trying to be consistent about writing down when I start reading a book and when I finish it, even if I don’t meticulously record the progress I make along the way. I’m not consistent yet, but updating the reading journal gives me a chance to do better. And making progress in one area gives me the strength to try to make progress in the areas of my life that are much less enjoyable — like cleaning the bathroom. (I don’t plan to start a cleaning journal, but I would give myself a couple of gold stars for scrubbing the toilet and cleaning the floor.)

Illustration for Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel,” artist unknown

There is no feeling of progress in tasks like washing the dishes or doing the laundry. The same items come around again and again and again, and you must be well practiced at cultivating Beginner’s Mind to enjoy the task for its own sake. But books can be recommended, sought, discovered, bought, received, stored, admired, begun, enjoyed, savored, finished, re-read, saved, sold, and given away. What on earth can compare to them?

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Knitwise, I made a bit more progress on Red Scarf. I wondered whether I was slipping the first stitch of each row knitwise or purlwise, decided that it didn’t matter, went forth as I felt like it, and figured that I would rip back and re-knit the piece if one technique seemed clearly superior to the other.

I didn’t get much further before I started to think that maybe a double-knitted scarf would be a better design for the recipient. So I paused the work to think about things, and I won’t go either forward or backwards until I’ve come to a conclusion. Maybe I’ll even ask the recipient what is preferred (or if they want a scarf in the first place). I think I’ll also be well off to choose a printed pattern, note any modifications on it, and keep it close at hand as I do the work.

Just because I want to be knitting something doesn’t mean that my head is in the right space to do knitting right now. Maybe it would be enough, for now, to be reading about knitting.

Let’s not keep having the same old epiphany

Last week was reasonably productive, but I often found myself thinking more about the things I wanted to do (and wasn’t doing) rather than anything I had actually accomplished. Then I started to wonder why I couldn’t just obsess about having read one book in a week (and finishing another book after a year), or pat myself on the back about keeping up with the Daf Yomi schedule, or give myself a gold star for putting on foot lotion every night, or anything like that.

What’s so wrong about noticing that I did task A? My brain won’t let me do that. If I finished task A I probably neglected tasks B through YYZ, and I’d better stay up late figuring out a way to read ALL the books, learn ALL the languages, knit up ALL the yarn, and start exercising and lose fifty pounds while I’m at it. Not that that would be enough; I’m sure that there would be dozens more things over which I could beat myself up. (I’ll figure them out as I go!)

By the end of the week I was seeing, really seeing, that I had literally walled myself away from the things I want to do at home. In front of the electronic keyboard is a pile of useless items I need to triage; there’s literally no room for me to stand in front of it and try to play it. In front of the bookcases are plastic tubs of cables, mice, and old computer hardware. Or plastic bins full of kid clothes that need to be sorted and donated. Or plastic bins full of VHS tapes that should be watched, sorted, donated, sold, or tossed. (Can you tell how much I like plastic bins?)

Want to do yoga? Not enough space; something’s in the way. Want to ride the bike? It’s behind the old mattresses and box springs that we need to call and have someone pick up. Want to look through family photos? They’re in boxes on the top shelf of the closet, and you’ll have to move a pile of boxes just to be able to open the door.

I told Eldest about this and he said, ever so gently, “Mom, you’ve noticed this before.” That gave me something to think about.

I was also making myself anxious about learning a new instrument. Piano? It’s out of tune in the middle octaves, and the noise might bother someone. Guitar? It’s in a bag in the corner of the room, behind a pile of stuff, and I’d need to tune it and then…the noise might bother someone. Accordion? The noise might bother someone, and any wrong notes I hit while learning it would probably bother me.

And that notion gave me more to think about and led me to a place where I wouldn’t feel compelled to beat myself up quite so often. If the new tasks make me anxious, I can put them on “pause” for a while. I can occupy myself with more familiar things, like rewatching a favorite movie or listening to a CD I know by heart or playing an instrument I already know how to play. (Andi? Tell your kids that this is when we Gen Xers would say no duh.)

Earlier today I had the opportunity to listen to a piano player who really, really knew his stuff. He was playing show tunes and old standards, linking them into medleys and improvising and embellishing and flourishing and absolutely enjoying himself. Someone would call out a title, and as soon as he figured out what key the song was in, off he went as some of us sang along. I realized that I would probably never be able to play the piano like that. And I wasn’t sure if listening to him would inspire me to try to play like that.

Today was also Father’s Day. I didn’t make a Facebook post about my father, but I did read a lot of heartfelt tributes to the fathers of other people. Eldest’s father, of course, passed away almost a dozen years ago. I didn’t think that he and I had a lot to celebrate today. But as I thought about the piano player I thought about how I was needlessly winding myself up over the possibility of making any mistakes at all while I learned something that was new to me. And I decided to set those new things down for now.

I can dial it back and ground myself in the things I already do, the things I enjoy because I’m good at them. I can let myself sit in the comfort zone for a while. I can forgive myself for breaking a streak or making a mistake. I can put down the accordion (and the guitar and the keyboard and the piano) and pick up the saxophone, something I already know how to play. But more specifically, I could pick up my father’s saxophone that I brought home after he died.

Eldest approved. “We can honor my father by watching the Canadian Grand Prix, with doughnuts and Labatt’s. You can honor your father by playing the tenor saxophone.”

And so I did.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd this week, particularly A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Delicate Sound of Thunder. And one day I watched the YouTube video of DSOT and found myself captivated by the sax player on “Us and Them.” Why do I not even know this musician’s name? He is amazing! He delivers a virtuoso solo on the baritone sax and then picks up the tenor sax he is already wearing and does an even better solo while he still has the bari sax hung from his neck.

I am not going to be able to play like that. But I can learn to play well, and I can play for my own enjoyment and love of learning. And that’s okay.

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Knitwise, I finally got the urge to start working through some of the rest of my stash. It was the weekend of the Grand Prix of Canada and I wanted to have a mindless project in my hands while I watched the practice sessions, qualifying, and the race, so I started pulling open drawers and looking for red yarn to make something, anything, with.

I found a cake of already-wound-off red wool — probably Cascade — weighed it (105g), and started thinking about what I could make with it. (A hat? A brooch? A pterodactyl?) Time to refocus. A tiny shawl? (What kind of triangle? Where would the eyelets be?) A cowl? (What size? What design?) A scarf? (Knitted flat or in the round?) How wide?

I decided on a scarf knitted in the round, which would be doubly thick. I could close it off with tassels on each end. I cast on 72 inches, joined the round, and got going. While I went round and round I wondered if I should add bands of color on each end (how would I know where the right place would be on the other end?), then decided on the occasional random stripe so I wouldn’t knit myself into a corner. For the contrast color I thought about using white wool (which I probably had), then changed my mind to using black wool (which I surely had).

Around and around I went as the knitting made itself into a fabric, and about ten rounds in I could finally see…that I had twisted the work when I joined it. It was no longer mindless knitting but thoughtless planning. (Sigh.) I pulled out the needles and ripped all the stitches out, tucking the freed yarn back into my project bag.

Deep breath. Start over. Keep it simple.

CO 26, K across, then sl1 and K across, turn and repeat….

It’s 6 inches wide and now 4 inches long. Did I add anything to it during the Grand Prix? Well, no….

…but that’s okay.

Pictureless

At the start of the weekend my mid-2017 iMac, on which I had tried in vain for several months to install an incremental system update, suddenly decided that it was time to heed the call of Cupertino and get completely up to date on its system software.

This evening I sat down to assess the damage, and since the iMac has slowed to some motion slower than crawling, I’m composing this post on my Qwerkywriter Bluetooth keyboard in combination with my iPad. Perhaps this week I will be able to figure out how to put my iMac in retrograde and give it an operating system that will actually work; after that, no further updates will be possible.

It’s time to upgrade my iPhone 8, too, perhaps to an iPhone 12. I have never enjoyed injuring myself on the cutting edge of technology, so now I’m aiming for a spot in the middle — somewhere between too new to be compatible with anything and too old to be compatible with anything.

This means that, unless I install and access my Flickr account from my iPad, which is also not the latest version of the technology, all you will get this week are my words. (I could stretch myself or limit myself to a thousand of them if you like.)

If I set aside my concerns about the utility (or lack thereof) of my primary home computer, I’ve had a pretty good weekend.

On Friday afternoon I received a new fountain pen that had been shipped from Istanbul less than a week before. Freakin’ Istanbul! And the company tucked in so many extras — two hand-stitched leather pen cases, a teabag, a citrus-scented moist towelette, a zippered pen case, and an amulet to protect me against the Evil Eye — that I feel that they must have adopted me somehow. They also included a 10 percent coupon towards my next order. I filled the pen with a special ink called Diamine Writer’s Blood, for which I had voted during the pandemic days as part of the r/fountain pens community.

The pen came with a medium nib, so it flows a lot of ink. This ink varies from dark red to black, and the effect is pretty cool. I’ll have to work up some writing samples and photograph them for next week’s post, assuming that I will have gotten my hardware in better working condition by then.

On Saturday morning I picked up the meat for our weekly slow-cooker beef stew, then visited the thrift store next door and bought a stuffed bunny and several “Peter Rabbit” books and related stories. I have an idea. (Be afraid. Be very, very afraid….)

By Saturday afternoon I finished a book that I had been reading off and on — mostly off — since I purchased it almost a year ago. That was pretty satisfying, and I also recorded my thoughts about it, and another recently finished book, in my reading journal.

Oddly enough, this is the first year I have ever used a reading journal. I have found it harder to keep up with than I had imagined at the beginning of the year. Two of the books that I finished had been passed along to other readers before I even started writing their entries in the journal. I guess that fact is another thing that can go in the entries. And I read, or started reading, several books in May without writing down all of the titles. Just this morning I finally created the title page for the May section of the journal, and I’m trying to hold off starting any new books in June until I have saved enough space for all of the May books.

Perhaps it’s a special talent to make so much work out of what should be my leisure time. If there’s a way I can monetize it, drop me a line.

Most of what I did this weekend, though, involved making just a little bit more space for myself, or my self. I eliminated some of the clutter in my bedroom by hanging up my clothes, organizing my art supplies, and switching out my bedding from winter-warm items to a light set of sheets and covers more appropriate for the low-90s temperatures we’ve had this week.

I signed up for a couple of art-related webinars that will take place this week: learning brush lettering, and incorporating watercolors into my bullet journal. I can’t actually attend them because they’re being held during work hours, but I can watch the recorded sessions at my convenience.

And then there was the Spanish Grand Prix to watch. Eldest inquired about the possibility of Spanish cuisine to accompany the race, and I found a couple of wildly different recipes for chicken with Catalan picada. This evening, though, I ran out of the steam required to prepare the dish; instead, I oven-roasted a batch of asparagus and put off the chicken until, perhaps, tomorrow.

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Knitwise, I bought a book about knitting prayer shawls. It was written by the folks who founded the Prayer Shawl Ministry several years ago, and I was glad to have it in my hands. Last week my cousin Tesia passed away after a valiant three-year fight against colon cancer. She was just 32 years old and leaves behind a devoted husband and a 6-year-old son. Our extended family is swinging between numb and devastated at the unfairness of it all. Prayer shawls, whether for myself or for someone else, sound like a pretty good idea right now.

I’m not quite up to starting something yet — and it would certainly be unfair to all the the projects-in-waiting — but I do have some yarn given to me by a friend, and partially knitted up. It didn’t work out for her and it might not work out for me, either, but perhaps pulling it out and winding it up will be a useful and healing task that I can do for myself and my self.

Miss you, Tesia.

Reading and writing and where was I

It’s been a scholarly week here as I ramped up my efforts on the paper I’m writing for my graduate course. The instructor has the entire course intricately scaffolded so that you absolutely have to keep working on the readings, reactions, class contributions, and research all the time. There is no “I’ll put this off until the last week of the course.” The possibility does not exist, and the course is organized in this way to keep such a massive workload from crushing every one of us.

Several of my classmates are taking multiple graduate-level courses this semester. They are grateful for the class we’re taking together, and they’re always talking about how overwhelming some other class is. This is not necessarily making me optimistic about how I will cope when I’m taking that other class, but it does make me appreciate the peculiar advantage in having to take the classes one at a time.

This week, as I downloaded articles, requested books through inter-library loan, read articles, took notes, rewrote the outline of my research paper, ran to the library to pick up the books I had requested, made photocopies and printouts, reformatted my reference list, and started an entirely new draft of my research paper, I realized two things.

The first thing was that some scholarly writers have a writing style that I absolutely do not want to emulate. They use too much jargon and too many acronyms, they’re not always good copy editors (and neither are some of the journal editors, sadly), and some of them are repetitive to the point of self-plagiarism within the same article. I understand the logic of “tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em, then tell ’em, then tell ’em what you told ’em,” but rephrase it, for goodness’ sake, don’t just copy and paste. I see what you did there.

The second thing I realized was that scholars who manage to crank out paper after slightly-refocused-paper for a range of different journals have amazing organizational and time-management skills that I have never learned, regardless of whether or not I want to copy their writing style. Holy cow. And they are probably also teaching multiple classes, making lessons plans and syllabi, and grading hundreds of class assignments over the course of a semester. It’s unbelievable that anyone can do this much work and live, let alone have a relationship or a family or even a healthy houseplant. College instructors, I salute you!

That being said, I have to log in and download the next six or so articles that I must read and ponder before class on Wednesday afternoon. We’ll see when I might be able to read and synthesize the other 17 articles that haven’t yet made it into my research paper.

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Knitwise — another F1 weekend, another stint of knitting on the Vintage Packer Scarf. I now have just 10 g left of the gold yarn, and the scarf is 68 inches long. We’re getting there.

I promised to take up the abandoned Yoga Socks project next, but I’ll have to work on it when I’m able to pay attention to it and do things like, um, count repeats and cross off lines of pattern directions. And then I’ll have to make get the opportunity to create an exact duplicate!

What I’ll need to find, for when my knitting time is in combination with another activity rather than in isolation, is another good TV knitting project that isn’t complicated at all. Perhaps the Sketchbook Sleeve will work for that, after I do some swatching and figure out what size needles to use. Even when using double-pointed needles, plain knitting in the round is a good candidate for TV knitting (after the first ten rounds or so, anyway).