How my knitting was saved

So, if you remember correctly, I was all settled in, with nothing to knit, expect those socks.  My yarn stash problem was going to be solved because fall break and Rhinebeck were conveniently the same weekend, so I had long planned a trip home for a visit.  My needle problem, however, was a little more challenging.  I first decided that I would just buy cheap needles as I needed them, but a trip to my small LYS store came up empty in trying to find a pair to finish Pteryla. Then I decided it was going to be a really big PITA to have to run out and buy new needles every time I needed a different size.  I remembered reading about getting whole sets of needles really cheap on Ebay, so I did a little bidding. Eventually,  I won a full set of 24 inch circulars...from China.

They took forever to come, and I fully expected that for ~$1.25 per pair (including shipping) they were going to be pretty crappy needles, but I figured they would get me through.  Once they did arrive, I was pleasantly surprised.

I opened my metallic-bubble mailer (looked something like this) to reveal a handy wallet of needles:

Other than the 0-16, which refers to the needle sizes, I have no idea what this says.  I'm going with "surprisingly awesome ninja knitting needles" because that is exactly what I found when I opened the snap.

There was a bit of confusion on my part because that particular pouch was labeled as size 15, which it clearly was not. So I busted out my handy Susan Bates Knit-Chek and discovered that in US terms I had a set of 12 needles ranging from size 0000 to 7.  Plus a small needle sizer and a darning needle to boot.

You can see here where I attempted to sharpie the correct US sizes on the pocket sizer, I'm still attempting to locate a slimmer sharpie.  The needles themselves are very lightweight.  I was expecting very heavy stainless steel needles, but they are light as air, smooth and fast.  The joins are really smooth and while I don't think they cables are flexible enough (or long enough for that matter) to magic loop, I hate magic looping anyways.  

I quickly transferred Pteryla over to give them a try and WOW.  She flew to the end with no problems.  A truly enjoyable knitting experience.  

Enter the sock

Near the end of the summer, hub flew back to take care of all our stuff and there was some confusion on his flights. The first time we were quite lucky that I had come into the airport with him because he had to come back with me and stay an extra few days.  The second time I dropped him off, and I was ~10 miles away from the airport when he called to say he wasn't entirely sure if he had a seat on the plane.  So I pulled into the nearest yarn shop to kill some time.  A few hours later he was in the air, and I was on my way to a concert with a good friend and a new pair of socks on a new pair of needles.  Sometimes I have no self restraint.

In any case, they became my traveling companion socks and were finished up on my plane ride home to visit my family and go to Rhinebeck.



The yarn is from libertyfibers an independant dyer who sells on etsy and it was very soft and squishy to knit with.

I'm really quite happy with them, and it is just becoming sock weather here in the south so I'm happy to have a new pair to wear.

The Illusion of Prestige

So I was asked to write a book chapter.

If you are a non-academic, a yet unseasoned academic, or my mom, you are likely thinking:

"Wow Dr. Rini!  That's very exciting, you must be well-respected in your field to have been bestowed such a great honor. Way to go!"

A couple of years ago, I would have thought the same thing.  I would have been honored and given myself a little pat on the back and gladly agreed to the extra work in my already full schedule.  I then would have agonized over what to write, spent oodles of time perfecting it, struggled through some major periods of self-doubt and impostor syndrome.  Eventually, I would somehow have managed to meet the deadline, likely by pulling some very late nights and ignoring my husband and friends for days on end, and felt a little pride in what I produced.  I then would have prominently placed this accomplishment on my CV.   At least what I think would have happened, I was never bestowed such an honor at that phase of my career.

Now, a little more seasoned, I think:

"Great, how am I going to get out of this one?"

Now you are saying: "Dr. Rini, what are you thinking?! Surely it's a bad idea to turn down such a great honor? Yes, it's some extra work, but imagine the glory and fame it will bring you."

Um. No.  While is some situations that may be true.  In reality many of these chapters are for compendiums of review papers.  Every once in while they turn into well referenced tomes in the field and the glory and the fame is yours.  In my situation this was not the case.

During my time at FU, I was asked to write two such chapters.  In both cases I it is more accurate to say I was bullied into writing two book chapters.

The first time, a member of my mentoring committee had agreed to edit one volume of a large encyclopedia set.  In total the  the exchange went something like this:

Mentor: Dr. Rini I'm editing a volume of a super large encyclopedia.  I'd like you to write the chapter on apple harvesting.

Me: Well, my expertise are really in orange growing, so I think you'd be better off finding an apple harvesting expert, there are many I know of.

Mentor: But everyone else in the department is doing it.

Me: I'm really not sure I'm the right person

Mentor: I vote on your tenure.  (Ok, maybe it was a bit more subtle than that, but this was clearly the message)

Repeat a variation of this for two or three more rounds of email and I finally relented and agreed to do the article if my husband the social scientist could co-author with me.  We'll loosely define "co" here and I'll be honest: my unemployed hub did 90% of the work and I listed him as first author.  I'll spare you the suspense and tell you right away: Our masterpiece will be available for purchase, in 2012, as part of a $10K encyclopedia set that I'm sure will be on every apple harvester's desk or at least at some location they can access through interlibrary loan shortly after it's publication.

When the second offer came around I was  determined to be stronger in my refusal.  This time is was more like, since you are an expert in picking oranges, we'd like you talk about how to pick oranges in Antartica. It is at least of technical interest to me, but still not a big help to my career. Turns out I'm not as strong as I thought and since we had not yet decided to leave FU the threat of a no vote on my tenure was to much for me to risk.

So hear I sit, dying to dig into some of my own fabulous orange tree data and make a contribution to the field, but learning all about  how it's done in Antartica.

At least my mom be proud :)

Returning to the WIPS

It's been a long while since we did a WIP Wednesday around here, so when I started to write this I decided that's what it would be.

Once I was settled and got over the disappointment of the inaccessible stash and missing needles, I realized that I shouldn't be sad because I had a whole list of WIPs that I could just finish up.  They were already on their needles so that wouldn't be a problem. Plus, I typically store each WIP with the rest of the yarn to complete it in a big basket, and I knew where it was!  In all honesty, it would take me a year to finish all them up anyways.  Yippee, my knitting life was saved. Almost.

Here is the list as it stands now.

1. Fern Garden Scarf:  row 99: still haven't found much quiet time to knit on it)
2. Charade Socks: 50% complete: All set good to go here!
3. Fingerless gloves: This one was first on the finishing list and it's almost made it.
4. Sabine: Satisfying my sweater knitting I'm now about 5 inches into it.  I realized I never measured my gauge and it's very off, so I'll have to make a bigger size.  This may mean I don't have enough yarn.  This realization has dampened my enthusiasm, but I'm going to plod through anyways.
5. Decimal: body and one sleeve complete.  Hmmm.  It seems I'm out of luck on this one.  I only kept one more ball of the yarn with the WIP, so I can do the next sleeve but the yoke will have to wait until next year.  This was a big bummer for me. I was hoping this would be my Rhinebeck sweater, but it wasn't meant to be.
6. Shawl in progress (gift for mom): Now this is rapidly joining the unspeakable list.  I'm having hand-dyed-skeins-aren't-always-the-same issues and I can't decide how to fix it. 
7. Mittens: one complete, but it seems a moth ate through the tip...
8. Adult surprise jacket: still increasing (about 2 inches done). I have all the yarn, and the needles, but my copy of Knitting Workshop...you guessed it, in the abyss of storage. Ugh. 

Oh well, there goes that plan.  Good thing I was headed to Rhinebeck!

petryla

She's done. I'll explain how some other time, but depending on the weather she might make an appearnce at Rhinebeck tommorrow.

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Stored up.

So, the socks, the blanket, where does that leave us? Ah yes,

#3. Pteryla: ~50% complete and would make good car and plane knitting
to
#1. Pteryla: ~90% complete

Pteryla was started sometime in April after I ripped out yet another attempt at a Clapotis.  (the clapotis by the way is dead to me, it's name will not be spoken again).  The yarn I was using some Araucunia Ranco Multy was just screaming to be a shawl of some kind and after some Rav searching Pteryla was it.  Easy pattern to remember, right amount of yarn.  It was the perfect substitute for the name we speak no more, and I was very much looking forward to seeing it completed.

Pteryla does indeed make good car and plane knitting.  In fact, it makes such good car and plane knitting that I made really great progress on it over the summer and was happily knitting away in the Chicago (?) airport waiting for my last flight of the summer conference season.  I had just come to the conclusion that I could likely cast off before I landed when right then and there MY KNITTING NEEDLE BROKE!  The cable from my knitpicks options just fell right out of the needle!  To be fair this needle had seen it's fair share of abuse over the summer travels, but GRRRR.  With a little yelp I managed to pick up the stitches and save the shawl.  But my summer travel knitting came to a screeching halt right then and there.  I think I scared the nice lady reading her kindle next to me, but man, I was pissed.

Let's review.  I'm living out of my car, that means no spare knitting needles or extra options cables.  In fact at the exact moment of instrument failure all of my possesions were on a moving truck somewhere between FU and NU.  They were most definitely not accessible.  This means not only was I not going to finish before landing, but there was no hope of finishing in the foreseeable future either. So back in the bag she went, so close to completion, but yet so far.  I was pretty sad.

Now, here is were we reach the really sad part of my knitting story.  We haven't found a house yet, so we are living in a sabbatical house for the year.  Which means, all non-essential possesions are in storage.  In fact, everything we own except for our clothes, bed, sheets and towels is in a room that looks like this:

Try as we might, hub and I have not been able to unearth my knitting needles.  One box of stash, a basket of the remaining WIPS, and my DPNs, but no straights, circulars or options components.

What's a knitter to do?

Head to Rhinebeck of course, I'll be on the plane when you read this. :)

The baby blanket

When I found out I was going to be an aunt again I was ecstatic.  I love being an aunt.  It's probably my favorite role in life right now, so another niece or nephew was thrilling!  I also wanted the new one to know right off the bat that they were loved just as much as the first one.  So there would be knitting.  I queued up a bunch of blanket patterns in ravelry and patiently waited to find out the gender.  I found out that another nephew was arriving just days before I stumbled upon a score of Queensland Bamboo Cotton in Tuesday Morning for a song.  I couldn't resist.  The stash doesn't have many baby friendly yarns in it and those it does have are mostly pink.  Immediately I had a plan and 5 balls each of powder blue and light mint were on there way home with me. 

I decided to use my Vogue Stitchionary Volume 3 to make several squares or panels and then sew them together to make a whole blanket. The process and the blanket just sort of grew out of that.

Here's some pictures of the final result:




 

I apologize for the picture quality, I haven't quite figured out the lighting my new digs yet.

From left to right the stitch patterns are "scooter pie", "switching yard", and "masonry.  I joined the panels with a little triangle edging that reminds me of a dragon back.


I joined the panels by picking up stitches up one side of panel one and then down one side of the next panel on a large circular needle and folded it in half.  Then I worked an edging like you would on a shawl knitting together one stitch from each side at the end of each mini-row.

The edging in worked separately along each edge and it's just a simple ruffle pattern, which takes forever but has a nice effect. 

Overall I'm really happy with it.  Next time I'd use smaller needles to account for the drape of the bamboo, but since it's a blanket that doesn't matter so much. 

All in all it took 3 balls of each color, which means I have some leftover.  I don't have any plans for it right now, so it will return to the stash.

The one downside to this project, however, was that it took me a really long time to do it.  I just couldn't seem to find the time to finish it during my busy summer schedule.  I also wouldn't knit on it when my sister was around because I wanted it to be a surprise.  So, I didn't actually finish it until last month.  Parts of this blanket were knit in probably 7 different states and near the end, that edging really became a labor of love. 

Then I stupidly sent it in a package with a gift of crayons and a coloring book for my other nephew, From the south. In the summer.  I'm an idiot. My sister claims that there was only one small spot of red wax on the blanket and that she was able to get it off...but really my heart can't handle what I suspect to be the truth.  Sometimes I am my own worst enemy. 

Pyroclastic Fantastic

I have a sock rotation. There are a select group of people for whom I make socks and I just rotate through them.  Mom, Sister, Hub, Me, wash, rinse, repeat.  It works out pretty well with everyone getting a new pair of socks about once a year or so.  Sometimes there are random pairs thrown in just because I felt like it, or occasionally on request from Hub's uncle. But in general socks get finished in that order.

So, the last socks I had finished were for myself, meaning it was Mom's turn.  I had the yarn and pattern all picked out and ready to go, but for whatever reason hadn't cast on.  One day mid-spring, my phone rang.  My pregnant sister was very sad because she had worn a hole through her favorite socks and could I fix them?  I mention she was pregnant because I think that a hole in a sock might not have been such an emergency in a non-hormonal state.

She really didn't know what to do and she was really sad about it.  Which made me sad, because she's a good sister and a good mother and deserves comfy feet.  So, I dug through the bucket of sock yarn scraps and found  the leftover Artyarns Ultramerino4 and tossed in in my knitting bag.  I knew I was headed home soon and we would see what we could do then.I was, however, not hopeful that the socks could be saved and sis had really thought she would bring them to the hospital with her when she had the baby. 

In the meantime, I thought I might try to eek out a new pair before baby arrival.  So, I grilled her a bit on what exactly was it about those socks that made them her "favorite". The short-row heel? The short-row toe?  (I really hoped not, I hate doing those) The stitch pattern? The yarn texture?  After a lot of "I don't know, they just are", I finally established that a) she really liked the color and b) she thought the cables were beautiful.  I was a bit confused on that second point because they didn't have any cables, and my sister knows that  I don't really like to knit cables and I definitely don't do them on socks.

So there I was with the mission to recreate these socks.  Easy peasy right?  Not quite: That yarn was purchased in late 2007.  That color is long discontinued, plus, since they wore out so quickly,  I had some misgivings about using the yarn again.

The hunt began.

I spent many hours searching the internet and LYSs for something that could be a suitable replacement.  I tough job, I know, but for my sister I'd bear the burden.  ;) I finally settled on Cascade heritage paints in the colorway wild roses (9883).  It's not quite as bright, but I thought it was pretty close.  Plus, the nylon content would make it more durable.

Then I set out to find a pattern.  I wanted to recreate the original socks as much as possible, but I hate knitting things more than once.  I finally decided on Pyroclastic from Knitty.  It had that same cabled look, without the cabling and a neat arch construction that I thought would be fun to try.

It turns out that the stitch pattern for pyroclastic and that for nutkin are identical except that pyroclastic eliminates three plain rows between each repeat.  A little ways into the cuff I realized that the knitting was very familiar and dug out the old pattern.  Sure enough pretty much the same.  It seemed to be a lucky guess on my part. 

In any case, I did mange to finish them up before both her birthday an the baby's slightly early arrival.  Both are doing fine and she was wearing the socks when we video chatted this morning.  She loves them, but the verdict on the arch shaping, which was kind of a pain in the butt, was that she didn't notice enough of a difference.

Here you have, the fantastic pyroclatics:



The yarn was nice to work with, and if these hold up well, it will likely become a go to sock yarn in the future.

So there you have it, the knitting emergency that put me from a  sane-knitter-with-a-reasonable-number-of-projects to a crazy-out-of-control-ADD-knitter.

A sucessful start to the summer knitting if I do say so myself. On to the baby blanket....

back in action

Ok, so after a great summer of craziness and finally settling in at the NU, I'm finding comfort in routine and home and all that jazz, which means I'm back to blogging as regularly as possible.

So, the knitting.  I'm a knitter, right?  I also spin, right?  I sew too?  Really?  I'd never really know it from the last few months.  What a surprise?  Let's just say my life was a bit more about the science than the craft lately.  In general the science is the majority of what I do everyday and the craft is my relaxation time.  But when you do fieldwork, you eat, sleep and dream about the science, leaving very little time for the craft.  

Normally, this is just for a few weeks every summer, but this year was a little different.  You see, when we jumped in our little VW Rabbit and fled the 1500 miles home, we left all of our worldly possessions behind.  Which meant that the stash stayed safely tucked away in our house, while I adventured away.  The spinning wheel too.  When we first starting packing the car there was some hope, but in the end both my wheel and hub's guitar had to stay behind. This meant that I spent three months with only the essentials: regular clothes, field clothes, conference clothes, and field supplies (computers, boots, etc.)  Oh and, of course, our houseplants, since we couldn't leave them behind to just die :)   It was only going to be for a few months, so I figured I wouldn't miss the stash too badly. Turns out I was mostly right.  Here's what happened.

I did what any rational knitter would do and took stock of all my active WIPs and ranked them in order of priority and packablility.  Turns out I'm a bit of an ADD knitter here's what I came up with: 

1. Pyroclastic socks: 50% complete, deadline in mid June for my sister's birthday
2. Baby blanket: 70% complete, deadline July 2nd when my 2nd nephew was scheduled to arrive in the world.
3. Pteryla: ~50% complete and would make good car and plane knitting
4. Fern Garden Scarf:  It was on row 99 of like a bajillion and this requires complete quiet to knit.
5. Charade Socks: 50% complete.
6. Fingerless gloves: first one was about 75% complete.
7. Sabine: about 2 inches into the yoke.
8. Decimal: body and one sleeve complete
9. Shawl in progress (gift for mom and since we were staying at her house I wouldn't knit it in front of her)
10. Mittens: one complete
11. Adult surprise jacket: still increasing (about 2 inches done)

I try to keep it under 10 WIPS at a time, those pyroclastics were a knitting emergency. 

So, after much deliberation, I cut the list off at  #7.  All the projects were small and didn't take up too much room.  The last four would require larger amounts of yarn and no one wears sweaters or mittens in the summer anyways.  So there we had it, 7 WIPS, all my sock needles, plus a spare ball of sock yarn, just in case I ran out (large eye roll here). My capacity for optimism never ceases to amaze me. 

A couple of weeks ago I decided to take stock of the WIPS again: 

1. Pteryla: ~90% complete
2. Fern Garden Scarf:  row 99
3. Charade Socks: 50% complete.
4. Fingerless gloves: first one about 75% complete.
5. Sabine: about 2 inches into the yoke.
6. Decimal: body and one sleeve complete
7. Shawl in progress (gift for mom)
8. Mittens: one complete
9. Adult surprise jacket: still increasing (about 2 inches done)
10. New socks:  12% complete. (I might have tripped and fell over a yarn store or two while I was away)

Hmmmm....a knitter, huh, who in 3+ months does what? Knit 1.25 socks, and less than half a baby blanket?  Pretty pathetic.  But, there's stories in there.  The knitting misadventures of my wandering summer will continue another time.

I am, by the way,  going to attempt to redeem my knitter badge by going to Rhinebeck this year!!!!!!! I figure it's about time that I use up those frequent flyer miles you watched me rack up over the years and who can argue with the fact that it coincides with my fall break for the first time ever!!

The two-body problem: Part 10 - The aftermath

If you know me, you know I like round numbers, and 10 just sits better than me than 9...

I'll start with the punchline first: Hub and I are happily ensconced at NU (New University) and we are flourishing.  We've made friends. Work is great. We are living in a ginormous house, which we are not paying for.  Life is generally good. 

The road from there to here, however, was a bit bumpy. For a while now, I had been thinking that an "aftermath" post was appropriate to finish out the series.  The other day I wrote a very long, detailed post about what happened after we officially decided to leave.  It turns out, however, that it is completely impossible for me to write about the experience in anyway that doesn't sound bitter.  Even simple sentence structure, straight to the point facts, come out well, angry.  I sat and stared at that post for a while but just couldn't bring myself to hit publish.  There is good stuff in there, stuff someone could learn from, but I just don't want you all thinking that I'm a mean person.  I think the other problem is that the truth is so bad that by publishing it I feel like I'm betraying those at the FU (former university)* who actually were decent human beings.

 The thing is, I'm not really bitter, or angry, maybe a touch, because I have a right to be after the mess.  But putting it down makes me sound petty, and I'm not petty.

Here's the short story: It was late February, the new jobs didn't start until August.  I was still teaching at FU and had other professional obligations. In those 5 months. I tried my best to make the transition as easy on everyone as possible.  The administration had other ideas.  There were lies, unprofessional actions, and questionable ethics. I visited the ombudsperson.  I considered consulting an attorney.  Eventually, we reached a reasonable solution, but I had to play dirty to get it. Well not really "dirty", but there were some moments where I had to get a bit feisty and tell it like it was.  People don't really expect that from a 5'2" quiet girl, but push me hard enough and I'll always fight for what I know is right. 

My "colleagues" who had only previously only pretended to be polite stopped pretending at all.  Most of them I found unbearable when they were pretending; you can imagine what is was like when they stopped censoring themselves.  Other colleagues that I had considered friends turned against me, and got mean (I think that was the hardest part).  Some were good, but the bad far surpassed the good.

In the end, I finished out the semester. I kept my door closed at all times except my office hours. My students knew the situation and had no trouble knocking and then announcing themselves to be sure I'd open up for them.  The day after graduation we packed up the car and drove out of town.  I spent the summer home with my family and in the field.  I haven't looked back since.

I really like this to be an educational post, with some great nuggets of advice for some other young faculty who may be considering leaving a TT position.  But, the reality is it was a crappy experience.  I had a fairly good relationship (or so I thought) with my colleagues before deciding to leave.  I had a really good - nearly bullet proof - reason for leaving. An unemployed husband. I mean seriously, what rational human being could argue with that? I went out of my way to keep (most) of the professional reasons to myself.  Yet still,  I was treated badly. Borderline illegal badly.  If it was a contentious situation to begin with, I would imagine the transition period would have been even worse. But, the optimist in me would like to think that my experience was an anomaly; that most faculties are normal, rational human beings (despite much evidence to the contrary)


So I guess the question is: Would I do it over again?  ABSOLUTELY!  It was a crappy few months, I'm not going to lie about that, but in my mind it was short term pain for long term gain.  My life situation now is so much better it is not even a fair comparison.  So here is the wisdom from one who has gone before: if you know it your gut your situation is a bad one, there is a better one out there.  The TT doesn't have to suck.  Ironically, that's just about the same thing my friend-lleague who had moved mid-TT told me when I first considered applying!  She was right; maybe I should send her some yarn :)


* Sorry I just couldn't resist.  If we can't laugh a little what the heck is the point?