the middle knitter

It's raining, and I'm feeling a little melancholy, though really, you'll think I shouldn't be once you see the pictures I'm about to post. I've been knitting for Dulaan. There's something very addictive about knitting for Dulaan . . . I mean, it's fulfilling for all the obvious reasons, but I think on some level it might also be liberating to be making things that I know I won't have to deal with storing or finding homes for. I can make almost anything I want to, and somebody will find a use for it.

This is Tippy. He belongs to my roommate for the summer, Aud, and when she brought him into my room to say hi, I made him model the latest Dulaan knits. The hat is Knitty's Peruvian. I made it with the leftover yarn from the mittens below, and between these two projects I polished off the yarn I got from that particular Goodwill sweater. (I still have the sleeves sitting around, but they're pretty worn out, so I may not unravel them.)

The pattern is absolutely adorable. I only put one 'boing' on each corner, because I was nearly out of yarn, but the hat is so small that it works. I'm planning on making this hat for myself at some point, because I need more whimsical hats, and when I do, I'll do it with more boings.

The socks are made out of yarn from the Sweater That Would Not Die. Seriously--this was another Goodwill sweater that I unraveled. I made a toddler sweater out of it, and then a hat, and then a pair of mittens, and then another hat, and another pair of mittens. Every time I think, "Well, that's the end of that yarn!" I find another little ball kicking around. It's lovely, very soft yarn, mostly wool with a bit of angora rabbit and nylon, but I'm kind of tired of it, and the angora makes my eyes itch. I think these socks finally used up the last little bit of it, though, just in time for me to start in on the Super Green Sweater.

I finish the grown-up sized cabled mittens, and discovered that they're pretty small for grown-up sized mittens. I have pretty small hands, and they're even a little too small in the palm for me. I hope they'll fit someone in Mongolia!

A detail shot, not because you can't see the cables perfectly well in the last picture, but because I have enough photographer in me to want to post something more visually interesting than straight, flat pictures of mittens.

The summer research continues apace! I have been reading lots and lots of things about Dionysus, and about Euripides. In fact, on Tuesday, I realized I hadn't read any plays not by Euripides, a fact which I am remedying by jumping into Aeschylus' Oresteia. I haven't read it since I was a sophomore in highschool, so it's pretty cool . . . I just finished the Agamemnon, and discovered that Cassandra is just as moving for me as she was then.

But you're not here to listen to me talk about the Greeks--you're here for knits! And I have been knitting as well. Last weekend, I unraveled the lime merino sweater and gently blocked the yarn to get the worst of the kinks out.

This stuff is amazing, guys. It's so soft. I'm definitely sold. The sweater was knit at a fairly bulky gauge, with two strands of what I think is sport-weight yarn held together. I'll mostly just be keeping them together, for speed, but last night I separated the strands and started in on Knitty's Broad Street Mittens. On size three needles, this is the finest gauge I have ever knit at, ever. (Remember, I've only been knitting since Christmas.) Part of me is screaming that I'm insane for not picking a bulky, quick-knit, given that the deadline for shipping things to Dulaan is just over a week away. But . . . you know, it's weird, but I need to do this.

So far, I haven't made a single item for Dulaan that I haven't been guilty about for one reason or another. If it's warm enough, it's not attractive, and if it's attractive, it's too scratchy, or it's the wrong size, or . . . whatever. Give me something to latch onto and feel guilty about and I will. So, I want to make something that I can be proud of, so I can look at it and say, I put effort into that, and it's warm, and it will last. I think part of it is that Ryan posted word that F.I.R.E. is in need of items for adults. I know that there's been a dimension of Dulaan from the beginning all about respecting the dignity of the Mongolian people, but I think it really especially applies when knitting for adults. I want these mittens to be something that really represents an investment of time and effort. Not that there's anything at all wrong with tossing off a quick hat or a scarf--I've done it before, and I'll do it again. But . . . just this once, I want to go a little further.

. . . of course, it would help the dignity aspect if the yarn weren't so damnably lime.

My gauge is about half a stitch larger than the recommended gauge, which means the mitten is coming out pretty big . . . either that or I just think it's big because I'm a girl with small hands and I don't spend that much time around men with large hands. Anyway, I hope that there is a man in Mongolia with big hands who needs a convertable mitten and doesn't mind lime green.

(Also, I'm not reading Suetonius right now--it was just sitting on my desk for some reason. I think I got it out to prove a point about the geneology of the Roman emperors to Aud.)

Also up there in the 'guilt' column--I made myself a hat. A winter hat. In June. Right before the deadline for Dulaan. Bad Emma! But, I couldn't make anything for Dulaan until the lime merino finished drying, and that little Peruvian hat I made was so cute . . .

What you're seeing there is me struggling to get a picture of the top of the hat, standing with my back to the mirror, with my camera held up in front of me, and a handheld mirror behind that so I could see the LCD screen of my camera. My kingdom for a flip-out LCD screen! Needless to say, none of the pictures I took quite capture the charm of the hat, so this is what you get.

Incidentally, this hat was my first time ever doing colorwork, and I think my blood pressure shot through the roof while I was trying to get the hang of having to manipulate yarn with both hands.

The campus dining hall isn't open this summer, so those of us who are here doing research have to fend for ourselves. That means that in edition to reading and knitting, I've also been cooking. This was my dinner for tonight:

Potato soup, and a sort of pseudo-runza (more on that in a second). I was able to make these things because, when I realized I'd have to cook for myself all summer, I called my mom and said heeeeelp. She sent me an e-mail with a grocery list and a half a dozen easy recipes. Potato soup is one of my favorite meals on earth, and making it for myself was almost like being home. I used red potatoes, which adds color and texture to the soup, and also meant I didn't have to bother peeling them--w00t!

The runza was a little more improvised. For the uninitiated (which I'm guessing is most of you), a runza is a bread roll, stuffed with burger, cabbage, onions, and cheese. Your traditional runza would be about three times the size of the one pictured, and done with wheat bread. My mom has been making them as long as I can remember, and only recently did I discover that there's actually a restaurant chain in Nebraska for them.

The original plan was to make a large batch and freeze them, then reheat them like Hot Pockets. That didn't end up working out, in part because I have a roommate and we cook for two, and in part because, lacking the ability to make bread dough, I have to rely on whatever frozen biscuit I can get at Food Lion, which limits me to batches of eight very small runzas. I had three of those babies for dinner last night. At that rate, you can imagine how long eight of them would last between two people. However, Aud seems to really like them, so that's good.

I finished the first of my giant convertible mittens for Dulaan. It earned the nickname "The Tent" while I was working on it, but now I just call it my Man Glove. I was having some serious frustrations decreasing the mitten top there this afternoon. I had to rip back twice, and the yarn is a multi-strand yarn composed of six strands of two-ply yarn for a grand total of twelve plies--it's splitty as heck and even more frustrating. Also, as I was finishing off the very top, one of my cheap 'I made this from a 25 cent dowel' needles snapped in half. I have enough dowel leftover to make a replacement, but that really highlighted the frustration of the experience.

And I finished the big brother to my sweater bag. It's made out of the front and back of the same sweater. I felted it in the dorm room shower, using a big plastic Tupperware tub and my feet. And my hands. I made a huge mess in the bathroom, but I did get the thing to felt successfully.

For a strap--and I can't believe I'm admitting this--I cut a long strip out of the pant leg of an old pair of jeans. I wasn't really sure that I wanted to add the denim look, but it was free . . . I also cut out one of the back pockets and sewed it onto the inside of the bag. The way I folded the front and back of the sweater together created a nice flat pocket in the back, too. (You can't see it, but I decorated it with the same shiny star buttons I used on the other bag.)

And I figured, what's a messenger bag without a cryptic and snarky logo somewhere on it? The Greek there transliterates (once you add punctuation) to, "Ti moros ei?" which means, awesomely enough, "Why are you a moron*?" Prof. Casey brought that one into class one day. I believe it's a quote from Aristophanes, but I could be wrong on that.

You can BET I'm looking forward to the first time someone asks me what my bag says.

*And, yes, the "moros" is where we get the word "moron". Gotta love those Greeks.

This post is not about knitting, and there are no pictures. This post is about menstrual cups, because, well, it's my blog, and it's something I care about enough to talk about it. This was originally posted to my LiveJournal, but I'm copying it here for the sake of posterity. Just as a warning, I go into a fair amount of detail about menstruation and menstrual cups. If you're a male, or if you're a female and the phrase 'menstrual cups' gives you the wibblies, you may want to skip this post. On the other hand, if you're interested in alternative, environmentally friendly menstrual solutions, maybe you should keep reading.

Menstruation. Not a pretty subject, but, let's face it, almost every woman has to deal with it monthly for the better part of her life. A few women claim that they find menstruating empowering, or that they look forward to it. Those women are strange. For me, menstruation is a body function like any of my other body functions. Bodies are pretty good at doing icky things and screwing with your head, and menstruation is the worst.

Most of my life, I've used disposable pads. My mom doesn't use tampons, so I never learned to, and the idea always squicked me out. I was always reasonably content with pads, apart from a few quibbles. A few years ago, though, a friend got a DivaCup. I didn't think much of it at the time, but late last year, I began to get really frustrated with my pads. The first few days of my period are very heavy, so I was always leaking, and I got very tired of scrubbing blood out of my clothes. After that, though, my period becomes very light, which presented problems of itself. I finally came back to the idea of a menstrual cup. I bought one for myself just after Christmas, and I've been using it since last February. I wanted to give myself a few months to adjust to using a cup before posting a review here. So here we are--an introduction to menstrual cups for you.

First, what is a menstrual cup? Well, it's exactly what it sounds like: a small, tapered cup, worn inside the vagina to catch menstrual blood. While there is one product (The Keeper) made of "natural rubber" (aka latex), most cups are made of high quality, medical grade silicone, the same sort of thing they use for contact lenses and nipples for baby bottles. There are a few different brands that vary slightly in shape or size. Currently, the only US-based company that makes cups is The Keeper, Inc., which has recently fallen into disrepute because of bad business practices. I went with a DivaCup, which is based out of Canada. Other options include the Mooncup UK, and the Lunette. My general impression is that among silicone cups, the differences aren't substantial, just matters of taste.

Are they healthy? Well, the DivaCup and the Keeper have been approved by the FDA, and I believe the Mooncup UK is currently pending approval. Menstrual cups have not been associated with toxic shock syndrome. There has been a question of whether menstrual cups could cause a risk of endometriosis. I personally find the arguments against that to be fairly convincing. In 2003, the FDA determined not to revoke approval for approved menstrual cups on the grounds that there is no evidence that the concern is anything more than theoretical (pdf link to FDA's response).

I also had someone suggest to me that the cup could increase your risk of pelvic inflammatory disease, but I haven't been able to find any evidence for this online to date. With the research I've done, the conclusion I've drawn is that while using a cup may introduce some risks, they're no greater than the risks of using a tampon. If you're looking for the most risk-free solution, I'd recommend pads, but for me, the cup is worth it. With proper hygiene, I see no reason not to use it. Additionally, unlike a tampon, a menstrual cup is not absorbent, so it won't disturb the natural lubricants produced by the vagina.

So, what's it like using a menstrual cup? Well, there was a bit of a learning curve at the beginning, as you'd expect. The first month was somewhat awkward, but by halfway through the second month I had become quite comfortable, both with insertion/removal and with wearing the cup in general. For me, the biggest advantage is one of convenience. I don't have to worry about whether the position I'm sitting in will shove my pad out of place and cause leaks. I don't get that horrible GUSH when I stand up after sitting for a while on a heavy day. And since the Divacup is approved for up to twelve hours, I generally only have to empty it twice a day. While I do continue to wear cloth pads as backup on my heavier days, towards the end of my period I don't need to, and I have never been so comfortable. In theory, it can also be worn swimming and exercising, but since I don't regularly do either, I can't speak to that.

That said, the menstrual cup is not the Holy Grail. It hasn't changed my life, though it has made me a little more comfortable. It has advantages and disadvantages, the same as any other menstrual solution. It isn't for the squeamish; it does put you in direct contact with your blood--you may get some on your fingers, and you will certainly have to see it--and I realize some people aren't comfortable with that. On the other hand, I know for me, the squickiness faded quickly, and, without going mystical about it, I have become much more pragmatic about my period. It's given me the attitude of, "Hey, it's just blood!" But, I realize not everyone will be quite that comfortable with it. There is also an initial investment--you can expect to pay about $30 for a cup. In the long run, of course, it saves money, but I know better than most people how coming up with even that $30 can be a challenge.

The biggest advantage of a menstrual cup, though, is the elimination of unnecessary waste. Disposable pads and tampons create huge amounts of waste, and call me an idealistic college student, but for me that really isn't acceptable. So, while I've tried to stay objective for the rest of this post, I'm going to get up on my soap box briefly. Even if you're not comfortable with the idea of a menstrual cup, there are still environmentally friendly options open to you. My favorite secondary option is cloth pads. Now, I know, I know--ew, gross! Really, guys--I use cloth pads for in addition to my cup, and it's not as bad as it seems. Like I said, it's just blood. All cloth pads require is a quick soak and you can throw them in the laundry with your clothes. Also, they're really comfortable--remember, Always only recently switched to "cotton-like" surfaces for their pads--why not just use real, honest-to-goodness cotton? Curious? Lunapads is a great place to start--a friendly company with good products.

Okay, I'm getting off the soap box now. My basic conclusion is this: the Divacup is a good solution for me. I like that it's convenient, and I like that it's environmentally friendly. I don't think it's the be-all-end-all, and I don't think it's for everyone. But, hey, it never hurts to open your mind a little bit and consider trying something new, right?

So, um, all that big talk a few days ago about how the Man Gloves are about dignity, good work, etc. etc.? The first problem was the lime green color of the yarn, but I figured that could be overcome, right? So, I first really I began to suspect there was a problem when I realized that the little I-cord loop at the top of the mitten made the whole thing like it was wearing a little elf cap. But it wasn't until tonight that I realized the full extent of the problem.

My Man Glove looks . . . like Kermit the frog.

The hysterical laughter as I made this discovery has really only just faded. "A man in Mongolia with largish hands who doesn't mind lime green" was one thing. "A man in Mongolia with largish hands who is a huge fan of the Muppets" is quite another.

Dignity? We don't need no steenking dignity!

Ryan has pictures up from Dulaan 2006! If those faces aren't inspiration to keep plugging on the KermitMan Gloves, I don't know what is.

You think I could claim to have been inspired by those adorable little frog hats?

. . . yeah, me neither. Oh well.

Anyway, I loved the pictures, though the post came at an inopportune time . . . the Man Gloves have been doing murder on my (already borderline-repetitive stress injury) hands, so I'm taking a day off of knitting, and the urge to cast on a hat was so strong after looking at those pictures. I guess that means as motivation, it's working!

The KermitMan Gloves got finished last night while Aud and I stayed up late doing GirlTalk.

Dignified they may not be, but I'm really proud of them . . . they actually look like what they were supposed to look like, and it feels good to have knit something so different from what I'm used to, at least with regards to gauge and complexity. Also, after I finished them last night, I sat there for ages just flipping the mitten top back and forth. (Easily amused? Check.) On the other hand, working with all those little stitches on size 3 needles really did a number on my right wrist. The last couple of days were a trial. When I saw those pictures up for Dulaan, it was all I could do not to cast on a hat then and there.

. . . so, I waited about ten hours instead, and then cast on the hat.

I have a feeling that anyone reading this blog is going to get just as sick of seeing this Kermit yarn as I will be of knitting with it. But, hey, I don't argue with 750+ yards of merino for like $2.50 (plus my time in unraveling and blocking it). No sir!

This hat got dubbed "The Nipple Hat" by Aud, because the first time I decreased for the top, I knit a round even after the last decrease round, which put a little button on the top, so that when the hat was worn, it made the head look remarkably like a giant green breast. (Lest you think that Aud's mind is in the gutter, I was the one who first observed this, and she was a little shocked before she started laughing.) I unraveled that round, and now the hat looks much less erotic, but it will always be the Nipple Hat to us.

Also, something that I didn't mention in my introductory post is that I'm a casual collector of My Little Ponies. By 'casual' I mean that I collected them obsessively for about two years, and now I've mostly moved on, but I have a couple hundred ponies sitting around that I'm not sure what to do with. I thought I was mostly done with buying ponies, but . . . apparently not. It looks like Hasbro has released a 25th Anniversery edition of the original six ponies from 1983--AND they're available online. (Here and here.)

My brain immediately started to figure out how I could come up with $30 to get both sets. (I ruled out selling my roommate, but I am still considering the merits of eating primarily ramen for two weeks.) If nothing else, I'd like to get my hands on the Snuzzle/Blossom/Minty set, because, really, the last vestige of my MLP collecting has been Minty paraphernalia. I suppose we'll see . . . my next non-grocery purchase was supposed to be a drop spindle and some fleece so I could learn to spin, but that may have to get put off another month or two . . .

Dang. I hate when my hobbies conflict with each other. Especially when one of them is a zombie hobby come back for the dead to eat my brain unless I pacify it with money and shelf space.

Edit, 10/8/07: This post is getting a lot of spam, so I'm disabling comments. If you want to comment, send me an e-mail--I'm museofastronomy over on gmail.com.

As an addendum to the previous post, Aud put on the Nipple Hat and Man Gloves, stood in my doorway and said, "Blog me!"

So I am.

The photo makes it look like the middle of winter. This is because we're all bundled up today. (I am, in fact, wearing that hat as I type this, though I had to abandon the Man Gloves--too big for me.) Despite the fact that it's June, the temperature outside is about 60 degrees today. I checked the forecast. High today? 66. Saturday? 81. Sunday? 90. In theory, as a Colorado native I ought to be used to wildly inconsistent weather, but this still boggles me. I asked Aud, "What's up with that?" And she said, "Welcome to the East Coast, love."

As far as I'm concerned, the East Coast can bugger off. I don't like knowing that this time tomorrow will be hot and sticky as heck. Right now, it's 85 degrees at home, with 17% humidity. I want to be there.

I mailed off my last box to Dulaan yesterday! It's pushing the deadline a little close, but I wanted to use the weekend to squeeze out one more hat.

Since school's out here, this box is less of a group effort, but that blue scarf is from a good friend who also happens to be a Sweet Briar alumna. If you include the store-bought sweater that I threw in, this box had 13 items in it, which isn't too bad if you throw burnout, lack of yarn, and repetitive stress injuries into the mix.

Also, I talked yesterday to a woman from Lynchburg who I met last semester. She's been buying warm second hand items and sending them off--she says she just sent off her fifth box! I think that if nothing else she's to be commended for buying up warm clothes when the weather is like this. Between the heat and the humidity, I'm utterly melted.

Aud and I are house sitting this week for these two lovely ladies:

Lilly (look at those soulful eyes!)

and Leia

That's how Leia actually looks. This is how my allergies see her, though:

Without going into too much detail, let's just say that attempts to stay in the house with the animals did not go so well, and we've returned to our dorm room, where I drug myself up on Claritin and Benadryl. We're going to go there tonight to watch a movie and keep the animals company . . . I really hope I'll be able to survive it. They're great animals, though. I really miss having a dog around.

Now that I've shipped that box to Dulaan, I'm on a knitting hiatus to give my hands time to recover and my brain time to focus on Dionysus and Greek tragedy (FTW!). There may or may not be posting while I'm on knitting break. It depends on whether I get around to washing all of the yarn I've got sitting around waiting to be recycled.

(Also, I'm using this post to participate in Electric Venom's Bi-Weekly Bite Me, because, hey, a young blog needs readers! And EV would be worth the link anyway--very cool blog.)

So, Deb from Blogblivion (previously Accidental Verbosity) recently started up a crochet blog: Neatly Tangled. I admit, I haven't always been the biggest fan of crochet, but it looks like she's done some pretty neat stuff! And it's kind of cool that a blog I've been reading for years has overlapped into familiar territory so soon after I finally got myself a real blog. So, I updated the blogroll to add that and a few other things.

And then, a link on Neatly Tangled led me to Thread Banger, which was fortuitous indeed. I've just started to get into refashioning old items, but I didn't realize there was actually a community around that sort of thing. (I know, I should have. It's the Internet: there's a community for everything.) Now I'm all jazzed to go Goodwill digging.

No pictures today--I just wanted to get those links posted before I forgot about them.

So, I was thinking that I'd have to break down and show you a picture of my shelf of books for my research, just in order to post something in here. But, fortunately for you, today I got to go on a good, long Goodwill raid. It was marvelous. Here's what I got. (I may still post a photo of my bookshelf, though.)

I found this enormous wool sweater.

I'm not sure what it says about me that I looked at this thing and thought, "Wow, imagine all the YARN I can get out of that!" But I can indeed get a lot of yarn out of it. It's a fairly standard outer-wear wool--very scratchy, but it should be warm. I have a Christmas present to make out of this, and the rest will probably end up in Dulaan items.

Unfortunately, it's also covered in animal hair, which is dangerous, since I'm allergic to most animals. (It's really sad, because I love animals, but I'm highly allergic to horses and cats, and even mildly allergic to some dogs.)

And I found three pink lambswool sweaters which are destined to turn into bags. I started showing off my "timorosei" bag, and people were impressed, so I'm going to try making a few more, either to give as gifts or to sell on Etsy. (It seems more practical than selling knitted items on Etsy, since the felted bags are far less time consuming.)

Oh, also, I found that cool belt, which I am sure I can find a use for.

I did actually buy a few things that I'm not planning on breaking down to their constituent parts, but I figured you probably didn't need to be bored with pictures of my new clothes. Suffice it to say, I scored a very cute purple hoodie and a pair of jeans that actually fits. Also, Aud ended up buying her very first pair of Goodwill jeans! Good times.

And now, I'm gonna go take the dog for her bedtime walk, and then go read about Aeschylus. Man, Goodwill, dog sitting, and Greek tragedy. I love my life.

Aud is studying abroad in France next year, and we just got back from a trip to D.C. to get her a visa. (Which, by the way, has been paperwork hell, and I say this as a relatively unbiased bystander.)

The trip was an adventure.

(Incidentally, it's going to sound like I'm totally dissing Aud's driving, but I promise, if she were telling this story, she'd do it the same way. Besides which, 90% of this was totally not her fault, and for every 'doh!' moment, there was at least one moment where she admirably pulled out of a tricky situation.)

Like me, Aud is from a very rural area. Unlike me, for her 'rural' means '30 minutes out on a dirt road'. She's really not comfortable with driving in cities. Or anything resembling traffic. Or crowded parking lots, really. At any rate, she's fine with highway driving, but hitting D.C. was interesting, especially since we were working from Mapquest directions, which are a step above 'well, that looks like a suburb', but not a very big one.

Also, Aud's not too clear on the difference between right and left.

To start with, the first thing after we got off 29, we had about ten seconds to make sense of three steps on the Mapquest directions, and of those, two were either unnecessary, or so obvious that telling us about it just made things confusing. This left us sitting in a very busy intersection, with the light turning green and people honking behind us. We needed to turn left. Between the honking and the heat of the moment, Aud got rattled and ended up sort of trying to go left and right at the same time, regardless of lines on the road. Me sitting next to her yelling, "No, left! LEFT! At least get in a lane!" probably didn't help much.

We survived the intersection, and the cab honking behind us survived having to wait ten seconds to get through his green light. Jerk.

Then, when we turned off of the highway into what Aud calls Suburban Hell, the road Mapquest wanted us to take would have had us driving through a house. So, we tried the 'well, that looks kind of right' method and managed to find the right road, but with no idea which direction to go on it. We were supposed to turn on a road called Greenbrier.

We passed a lot of roads that were not called Greenbrier, and one road with a missing street sign. As we passed it, Aud said, "I sure hope that's not Greenbrier." I agreed. We kept driving. No Greenbrier. We decided we'd gone too far and turned around to go the other way. Still no Greenbrier, but we did pass the road with no sign again. Aud said to just watch, it would be that one--Murphy's Law,

In the end, she called our host, and he led her on a merry little tour trying to place our location on a map, which sent us in a big circle to end up exactly where we had been. Fortunately, in Suburban Hell, you can stop in the middle of the street without getting honked at, although you may get funny looks from kids with soccer balls or golden retrievers. Anyway, once he'd pinpointed where we were, he got us going down the same road for a third time and told us which intersection to turn at for Greenbrier. Can you guess which one it was?

If you guessed 'the one with no street sign!' you get a cookie. Or a dorkslap. That was about when the hysteria set in, really.

You don't even want to know what it was like for us navigating the D.C. bus system. Aud did get her visa, though.

Okay, I admit, the knitting hiatus isn't going perfectly. I did sort of start making fish for a second fish blanket--but only once in a while, and only in my free time. And I did wash a bunch of yarn from recycled sweaters yesterday, but that was only so that it could start drying, I swear.

Just as a bit of proof that I really am doing things other than knitting and blogging, this is a photo of my shelf at the honors center. (I did threaten to post one.) My advisor, Prof. Casey, is a man after my own heart--he is a collector of many things, including t-shirts, guitar amplifiers, and dachsund paraphernalia. I have a feeling that's part of why every time I meet with him, I seem to walk away with five or six new books, half of which are, "You know, if you have time . . ." Would that I were so deluded dedicated.

At any rate, I'm not reading all of those books. Actually, apart from the plays, the only book I've read cover to cover is one called Dionysiac Poetics in Euripides' Bacchae, by Charles Segal. Mostly I'm just reading one or two articles from the rest, and there are quite a few I'm sure I won't get around to at all, although there are some I really should.

Honestly, the main reason I talk about knitting and house sitting and trying not to get hit by cars is that when you're a Humanities student, doing research is really, really boring. You sit down, and you read. Then you read some things about the thing you just read. If you're lucky, you might even read some things about the things about the thing you just read. (This is how I spent my evening, in fact.)

The other reason is that, while I find Dionysus and Greek tragedy utterly* fascinating, I can pretty much guarantee most of you won't care about my excitement in discovering that the festival at Athens where the tragedies were performed is based on a myth that is really similar to the plot of Euripides' Bacchae, only with gender roles curiously inverted.

I mean, I'm guessing that I have maybe three readers right now, and I don't want to scare them away. Although, since I'm about to start writing, that may have to happen. Um. Hey, look some funny yarn!

(While it was being washed, this yarn looked like nothing so much as a huge pot of ramen. It still does, actually.)

* Not sarcastic italics.