the middle knitter

I have successfully made it back from Vietnam! The trip was amazing, and there will be photos posted soon (but not nearly as many as there were for Rome, because I did much less sightseeing this time). This trip was less about sightseeing and more about experiencing the culture. I learned a lot on this trip--about Vietnamese culture, food, language . . . I also got a lot of perspective. I think everyone from a developed country like the US should be required to spend some time in a developing country like Vietnam, just to realize how big the world really is, and how much we take for granted. Vietnam is a bustling, vibrant country full of beautiful people, and it was such a pleasure to spend a month there.

. . . on the other hand, next time I go away for a month, I have got to make sure there are better spam control methods running. Coming back to 2000 spam comments is unpleasant in the extreme. Most of them didn't actually make it through the filter to get posted, but I still had to delete all of them. (Twice, actually--once in my e-mail, once here on the site.) The moment I get back to school, I'm upgrading to the newest version of Movable Type and installing some sort of spam control. (Probably some sort of captcha. I know some people are annoyed by them, but they're very effective, and much less annoying than, say, having to create an account and log in in order to post a quick comment.)

Now that I'm back, it's just about time to throw myself hard into my senior year of college. I'll be writing an honors thesis and taking way more credits than I ought to since I'm determined to graduate with honors and with a minor in Religion. I'll also be applying to the Peace Corps--and even though they tell me that's a huge hassle, I'm extremely grateful that I'll be doing that instead of studying for the GRE and applying to grad school.

I'm in Vietnam! Here are some photos!

(Sorry, I don't have time for anything more sophisticated. But, enjoy!)

Wow. Apparently I should post more often. I've been fielding tons of spam over the past week or so, and as soon as I made that last post, it came down to a much more manageable amount. (I know I should install some sort of spam protection over here, but uploading any significant number of files on dialup is such a hassle. I'm waiting until I get back to school in the fall to make some technical updates around here.)

At any rate, I don't have any photos of my recent projects, but I do have some pictures that I've been meaning to upload for over a month now. I snapped these during finals and moveout--it's the final load of what I send to Afghans for Afghans.

30 pairs of socks and 11 hats. On the bottom right, the three bottom hats and three pairs of socks were donated by other students. I kind of wish I'd had more involvement, but ah well. That's still a whopping 300 warm toes and 22 warm ears.

Excuse the mess. This was taken during move-out, and nothing's every pretty when you're packing up everything you own, especially when you live 3,000+ miles away from school. The top afghan was a collaborative donation from my school's fledgling Stitch 'n' Bitch club, and it makes me so happy! The bottom one is my first granny square afghan. (It had some truly horrible and bizarre color combinations, since it was basically made out of every scrap of worsted weight wool I could get my hands on . . . but it didn't look as bad as it could have.)

In other, truly exciting news, in just over two weeks, I'm going to Vietnam! A close friend from school is Vietnamese, and she invited me to come along with her on their trip this summer. I am psyched. I'll be taking my computer, so assuming I can find an Internet connection, there will be blogging and photos.

(Cross-posted from my LiveJournal to provide some content over here. There will be knitting etc. as soon as I get off my butt to photograph it.)

How on earth do people deal with concept-based science fiction?

When I tell people I'm interested in sci-fi, I often end up in a conversation during which I have to explain that, no, I actually haven't read much of anything by Asimov . . . or, actually, any other of the greats. I try to explain that it's just that I prefer something character-based, like Orson Scott Card, but I always end up feeling a little embarrassed.

So, a little while ago, I checked out Starfarers, by Poul Anderson. I'd heard of him, and cover quoted USA Today as calling him, "One of science fiction's most revered writers," so I figured it would be a decent place to start reading some 'hard' sci-fi.

. . . I tried, people. I really did.

I sifted through the first few pages of unconnected vignettes that didn't actually introduce any of the characters who had been listed in the dramatis personae helpfully provided at the front of the book, but had several talking heads setting up the stage for the ideas to come. Then I suffered through a long and very technical account of a television interview with a physicist which was clearly just as much an attempt to introduce the concepts the book was focusing on as it was relevant to the plot.

Finally, the scene jumped again, and I saw several repair men watching the plot point soaring through the sky. They talk about how they'll brag to their grandchildren about seeing the sight. And then, one of them says to the other, "That is what they are lately calling the quantum field gate drive. Have you not heard? A ship springs from the energy state normal in this universe, what they call the zero level, to the superhigh energy level it gets from below the universe, and then falls back to down again to normal, over and over."

I couldn't take it. I snapped the book shut. Setting aside the fact that the 'interview' (read: thinly veiled exposition of the science behind the story) already covered this ground--and I could forgive it more easily there, because it was a physicist being asked to explain his theories--people don't talk like this. Not in casual conversation. And the fact that these are yet more throw-away characters makes it even more annoying. Their purpose is to appear, convey information, then never be thought of again.

My creative writing teacher last semester had a quote she loved, and I'm kicking myself for forgetting the exact wording, but it was something along the lines of, "The worst purpose of dialogue is to convey information. 'You know why we're on this space station, Caruthers--to save the world!'"

I can see that if I'd hung on one more page, I would have started to meet the real characters of the book. But that's no good for me--you don't get 23 pages to win a reader over. The fact that only the ancestors of the main characters appear in the first chapter, plus all that emphasis on technical detail, makes it clear that this book has very different priorities than the kind of books I read. I'm sure it's a great book for the kind of book it is, but I want to read books about people. I like science fiction and fantasy because they provide vehicles for exploring things about people. I don't read for the spaceships.

Likewise, I don't read fantasy for the swords and elves. As far as I'm concerned, Tolkien and all the millions of cheap imitations he spawned fall into the same category, only in this case the author is saying, "Look at this cool culture I made up!" instead of, "Look at this cool science I dreamed up!" So, instead of having a first chapter full of characters espousing scientific theory, you have a first chapter that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about Hobbits. (Incidentally, though, that chapter was the only thing I liked about that book.) And I know I shouldn't criticize these books, because they're doing what they set out to do, and I can't try to make them do what I want them to do.

But it frustrates me, because speculative fiction has so much potential. Creating an alternate reality is a tried and true method of exploring human nature in our own world. Sometimes this can be overdone to the point of preachiness, which is also distasteful--see Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness. Actually, I just read her Gifts, which is much more subtle, and is, unsurpisingly, classified as young adult. I love young adult fantasy. It does such a better job of saying something that means something than most adult fantasy or sci-fi. If I ever do get around to becoming an author, that's what I'll write.

Anyway, I'm guessing this is a side-effect of my being in humanities instead of science--I feel like the only stories worth telling are about people first and concepts second.

If you're still reading this, you probably noticed that I haven't been updating. That's mainly because I'm taking six classes this semester, and it's all I can do to stay above water most of the time. Sometimes I feel pretty burnt out about the whole business.

Which is why this last, busy stretch of the semester is actually the perfect job for me to start charity knitting again. I'm making baby socks and hats for Afghans for Afghans. As counterintuitive as it sounds, it's great to have something to focus on that isn't related to school at all. It keeps me grounded, I guess. It's also nice to be doing something where I can make with measurable, visible progress.

I found a shoebox in the recycling and turned it into my Box O' Warm.

Currently, it holds 7 baby hats and 17 baby socks. That's 14 warms ears, and 170 warm toes. (Can you tell I'm really craving measurable results? When you study the humanities, there's so little of anything concrete. It's all interpretations and subtext and subtlety. But, dangit, 17 socks means 170 toes.)

There are two groups of special interest in there. First, I had all this leftover Harry Potter themed yarn sitting around, so I hope some babies in Afghanistan don't mind showing some house pride:

Second, I took my first foray into the world of dying a few weeks back, with Koolaid and the dorm kitchen. I had made a pair of socks with white yarn, because it was all I had at that moment, and I needed to dye them so that AfA would accept them. I threw in a couple other socks while I was at it.

From left to right: white socks dyed with cherry Koolaid; white socks dyed with strawberry Koolaid; green socks overdyed with some sort of blue Koolaid; striped socks overdyed with blue, next to socks made with the same yarn but not dyed.

I have also, heaven help me, learned how to make granny squares. Seriously--look:

Those things are addictive! Once I start one, they just keep coming! Which is sort of a problem, because while I can read while I knit (and thus accomplish homework at the same time as I'm making socks; convenient), I can't read while I crochet (thus, no homework; inconvenient).

If you're utterly appalled by the color choices, don't worry--they're going in a big fun patchwork afghan for AfA.

If I post again before finals are over, it will be to share the rest of the bounty. Otherwise, I'll be trying to survive college without burning out or suffering a total breakdown.

I have a feeling there will be wool involved.

I'm on Spring break visiting my friend Mary in DC. Today we went to the zoo! I love zoos!

I want to share all the pictures I took, and there are a whole bunch, so I'm going to put most of them behind a cut.

These are Asian Small-clawed Otters. I love otters. They're the best thing to see at the zoo, because they do lots of interesting things. (Second best is meerkats.)

Behind the cut: meerkats, elephants, tamarins, and more! (Um, and not a stitch of knitting. Sorry guys--I'll post some up soon.)

EDIT: Comments disabled because this post was getting a high volume of spam.

Continue reading "Daddy's taking us to the ZOO tomorrow!" »

Yeah, I'm still alive. School's been rough--you've heard it all before. Spring Break is next week, so maybe I'll find time to post some. The couple projects I've found time for (read: tore time away from the gaping maw of the homework abyss for), I haven't had time to photograph. But I did find these pictures on my memory stick, and I thought I'd share.

This is from the bathroom of an Amtrak train--I think it was the Capitol Limited, but that was a while ago now. Every time I go to the bathroom on the train, I see that sign and think, "I have GOT to post a picture of that on my blog," because the little janitor looks exactly like the devil.

Maybe having the devil threaten you works, because the train bathrooms are surprisingly clean. Most of the time. I still hate touching anything in them, because they feel like a cross between an outhouse and an airport restroom. Ick. But, the soap is good. It smells like cherries.

And yes, they are always that horrible seventies olive. Except when they're a horrible seventies mustard. Or, if you're really lucky, horrible seventies orange. Poor Amtrak--sometimes I want to give it a hug.

I also got this picture (part of my fascination with graffiti):

I'm trying to figure out whether it was written all by one person, or by two people. The handwriting on the "Wook" looks different than the handwriting on the "ies". But, it would make more sense if somebody had written, "Woo," and some nerd had seen it and turned it into "Wookies". Only, it wouldn't have been a very good nerd, because they misspelled Wookiees.

(Also, the Wookiees' home planet is Kashyyyk, spelled with three Ys. It has to be a bitch transliterating that language.)

I've concluded that it's probably more likely that it was all one person, but that scratching into enamel with some primitive tool could change the handwriting halfway through.

Wow. Sci-fi obscurity AND amateur epigraphy. This post is totally a twofer on the geekiness front.

I finally went through my 827 pictures from Rome and managed to pare them down to 318, which I have now exported into a nice little Picasa photo album and uploaded for your enjoyment.

Click here to go to the album.

I should note that most of the claims I make about what you're seeing are either vague memories of what somebody said while we were in Rome, or me consulting a guidebook (which I didn't have while I was actually there) a month and a half later to try to determine what's in the photo. As such, inaccuracies may exist, and I apologize. Don't use my photo captions to study for any tests and you'll be fine. Also, there are a few obvious typos--it's kind of a hassle to get them fixed, so I probably won't. Sorry about that.

I understand that 318 is a lot of photos, so they're organized in the same order as our trip, with little narration and anecdotes to keep you interested. Since I never managed to write up the trip, this is the closest I'll come to telling you about what went down. But, if you don't want to sit through the entire thing, here are a few of the highlights:

Links go to the first photo from a given site--just keep clicking "Next Picture" until you get bored or start seeing pictures of cats and ivy instead of, I dunno, Pompeii.

St. Peter's
The Baths of Caracalla
The Colosseum
The Forum
The Capitoline Museum
The Ara Pacis
The Pantheon
Ostia
Pompeii

PS: This project involved uploading over 900 files on an Internet connection that was spotty at best. I think I've managed to fix most of the files that didn't quite make it, but if you notice one I missed, could you drop a comment here so I can fix it? Much obliged.

This blog was designed to be "public face" as a counterpart to my LiveJournal, which is full of whining and memes and the like, but occasionally I'll feel the urge to post something more substantial on my LiveJournal. So, in the interest of keeping this blog updated when I have No Time Whatever for knitting, I thought I'd start cross-posting some of the more interesting posts. My apologies to those of you who see these twice.

I've been meaning to write a post about the bittersweetness of speculative fiction, particularly my favorite kind of speculative fiction, the kind that combines the fantastic with the real world. I love it, of course, but part of the reason I do is that when I read it, I'm filled with this aching longing to be part of it.

It's been like that since I was a child--I wanted so badly to stumble across another world like Narnia that I used to carry around a kit of essentials that I would need if I did magically get transported to another world. (For all my fantasizing, I was a practical kid, and I knew that an adventure would be less fun if I didn't have a toothbrush.)

As I've grown up, I've been struck more and more by the sobering realization that nothing fantastic will ever happen to me. I'm never going to visit another world (like in Narnia). I'm never going to witness an encounter with aliens (like in Doctor Who). I might do interesting things with my life, but never something fantastic. Never something with magic.

That ache has been particularly bad lately, because in the past few months, I've been introduced to Doctor Who, and The Golden Compass. It's The Golden Compass I want to talk about here, and the concept of daemons. I feel like I should clarify the concept briefly to avoid confusing people who haven't read it--the daemons in the trilogy have nothing to do with what we call demons nowadays. They hark back to the original meaning of the Greek word daimon, a little spirit. In the trilogy, every person has one, and in the world of The Golden Compass, a person's daemon is sort of semi-embodied--it takes the form of an animal.

A girl in my speculative fiction class commented on how lonely reading these books always makes her. The concept of these daemons, that are always with you, so you're never alone. And when I read the books, I can't help but picture myself with a daemon of my own. (I'm even fairly confident of what it would look like.) And I ache.

Orson Scott Card once said that speculative fiction is the last surviving realm of religion fiction. This isn't what he meant, but it makes me think that perhaps this ache I get when I explore speculative fiction is exactly the ache that has driven people to religion for all of human history. It occurred to me in the shower yesterday that if Philip Pullman's trilogy were a religious text, I would convert in a heartbeat, just so that I could believe that it was really true, that people had daemons and everything. (Given that Pullman is infamously atheist, it's a strange impulse on my part, but there it is.) Over and over, growing up, I was exposed to the idea that everyone on Earth is looking for something do believe in. I wish I could believe in magic.

Tonight, the creative writing department sponsored a reading of student works, and I was able to participate. I read an excerpt from one of my stories from last semester. But, I think my best work in that class was actually done in a couple of the exercises we did. So, since this blog is supposed to be devoted to my hobbies in general, I thought I'd share one of my favorite things from last semester. If you come here to look at pictures of wooly handknits, I won't be offended if you skip this one.

It's called "Lord's Day", and I'm sticking it behind a jump so as not to spam the blog. (For anybody reading on the RSS feed, I have no idea how the feed handles those, so . . . we'll find out!)

Continue reading "Fiction moment!" »