the middle knitter

(Excuse the bad pun in the title. It's a Classics major thing.)

Life's been tough this semester. I've been busy, and the busy-ness has let to stress, which has made me sick, which is exacerbated by the fact that I can't sleep very much, because of the busy-ness . . .

. . . and now my plant is sick.

Turns out, Rhoeo spathacea likes a high light environment--that's probably why Hermes did so well in my south-facing windowsill last year. This year, I also have a south facing windowsill, but there wasn't any place on it for Hermes, so I have him sitting on the end of my desk, as shown here. And I began to notice recently that he's been looking really pale.

I know this picture looks really washed out, but it's actually not much lighter than reality. It's so pathetic and sad. This picture looks even sadder, because I took it after majorly pruning the plant. The theory was that with less energy, he would probably do better with less bulk to support, though now I'm beginning to wonder if all the extra leaves would have meant more surface area to collect light.

I really don't know the first thing about plants, which makes me feel even worse that he's sick. I mean, the plant didn't ask to be brought into my dorm room. It's not like he had any choice in the matter. I shouldn't be taking on a plant if I don't have the resources to keep it well, right? (This is why I definitely don't need a pet right now. I can barely handle my houseplant.)

Anyway, I read that flourescent lights are better for plants than incandescent bulbs, so I'm going to replace the bulb in my desk lamp with one of those fancy 'environmentally friendly' kind. I'm hoping that just the one bulb will be enough--I moved the lamp to be right next to the plant.

I know, I'm probably worrying way too much about a little houseplant, but . . . I dunno. Call it a foil for my other worries in life. Or just call me way too soft-hearted. After you see this picture, you probably will.

I couldn't bring myself to throw away the parts I cut off of Hermes, so I started yet more cuttings. I don't know what I'm going to do with this many houseplants. The one in the pot on the left I just planted. I'm going to take it in to where I work on campus--they've been trying to make the office prettier, and the plant needs a home anyway.

But the other ones? No idea.

. . . anybody want a plant?

By the way, there is knitting going on. Sort of. It's just, I really don't feel motivated to blog about it, because I've got enough personal issues happening right now. I blog about those, but so far I've been keeping them confined to my LiveJournal, mostly because over on LiveJournal, they're all my friends, so I know they'll put up with my whining. Also, partly because some of the stuff is too personal to talk about in public. (This is the reason I'm not even linking to my LiveJournal over here. Some things, you just don't want to know.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm having a blog identity crisis. I'm not motivated enough to only post pictures of stuff I'm knitting, and I honestly don't know how interesting that is anyway. Personally, I read blogs--even knitting blogs--because I enjoy the writing. So, I'd like to emphasis writing more here . . . but that would likely mean even less posts. Because, honestly? Writing takes a lot of energy, and I don't have much of that.

To demonstrate my dilemma, here is a hypothetical mockup of the different things making demands upon my soul. Basically, there's only so much of me, and every new commitment takes a little piece of that, until there's nothing left of me to take.

Now, at first glance, that friendly little green area called "Free time" looks big enough, at least for a college student. But, take into account, that also includes things like sleep and personal hygiene. And eating. If blogging is to occur, it has to fight with all of those things for space in that little green wedge, so you can see why it makes it to the bottom of the priority list.

I know what you're thinking. "Emma, you've got time to make a fake pie chart, so you can't have that little time on your hands." But, it's true. I should be working right now. Actually, pretty much every minute I spend on the computer, I should be working. That's pretty much the hardest thing about college--knowing that even the time I do take for myself really needs to be spent on other things.

So, I'm not sure what to do. I need to come up with a blogging strategy that will keep me both fulfilled and sane. (Well, saner. Last time I felt sane was August.) I might end up trying to crosspost some of the more appropriate things from my LiveJournal. I'm not sure yet. I'm open to ideas, if anyone has them.

Meanwhile, if you do come here for the knitting, here's a pair of socks I made a few weeks ago for my roommate.

(Knitpicks Felici in Arugula on US 0 bamboo needles. Dang, I knit loosely.)

Deb over at Neatly Tangled made a post today that really caught my eye. It's about why she crochets, and one particular quote really struck me.

Very simple: I can’t not.

Incidentally, this is how I always wanted to feel about writing, but never did. I don’t suppose I should be shocked that the choice of medium isn’t always so much a choice, but I am.

It struck me, because that's how I always wanted to feel about writing as well, and was too guilty to admit that I didn't. I've been wanting to call myself a 'writer' since I was at least 14--I know this because I wrote it in a journal: "I am a Christian. I am a writer. Those are the two important things that I am." This despite the fact that I really hadn't written anything.

I know that I'm a good writer. I'm not trying to brag here--it's just a skill like any other skill you might have. I'm good at expressing ideas on paper. I can't play an instrument worth anything. It's just how it goes. Writing's one of the things that's always come naturally to me.

And I've been keeping journals since I was 13, either on paper or online. So, I know the urge to write is there. I used to go insane when I couldn't roleplay--the only reason I don't go insane now is because I'm too intellectually exhausted from school. But, what have I written, otherwise? My fiction, outside of fairly substantial amounts of words for NaNoWriMo and hundreds of thousands--probably millions--of words of various roleplays, consists of a few abandoned attempts at ill-conceived stories.

And that lack of actual writing is accompanied by huge levels of would-be writer's guilt. So, seeing Deb express this so openly was rather eye-opening. I don't know if knitting is an "I can't not" for me--I haven't been knitting long enough. But, it's something to think about.

I also taught myself how to crochet tonight--I'm not sure if it was as a result of Deb's post or not. I've been considering it for a while now--I'm not crazy about the fabric crochet produces, as far as things like drape and flexibility, but for the same reasons, there's a lot of stuff crochet can do that knitting can't. (Particularly, I want to be able to make amigurumi. So cute!) And, I needed something to keep me sane, but didn't have time to knit.

I made this:

That's a Build-a-Bear bunny that my friend Virginia gave me as a birthday present. I foresee lots of bunny clothes in the future. For now, here's a newsboy hat and a scarf.

And, finally, a question for anybody who might be reading this: What is it that you can't not do?

Venomous Kate*, one of my favorite bloggers (who I believe has recently picked up knitting!) said, "Bite me!" I've been skipping most of these, since I haven't really been blogging much. But, I've actually been updating for the last few days, so I felt like I earned the free plug. If you've got a blog, go over and drop a trackback--two links for the price of one!

Today, I bought fancy fluorescent bulbs for my plant. He's now got two of them shining right at him. I sure hope it helps--I'll keep you all posted. If you want, you can cheer him on. "Photosynthesize! Photosynthesize! Gimme a P! H! O! . . ."

Or, you know, just clap your hands if you believe. Meanwhile, I'll be trying to adjust to the different color of the new light. I've been around nice warm incandescent bulbs for over 20 years, so having light this white and cold is going to take a while to get used to. I've never liked the color of fluorescent lights, but if it makes Hermes feel better, I'll suck it up.

*See also, I Think Therefore I Blog.

My webhost has been having some trouble recently, so I'm getting all kinds of irregularity. I'm assuming that has to do with why the last post posted itself twice, among other things. Movable Type has been moving really slowly over on my end--it took me half an hour to rebuild the site the other day, because it kept timing out on me. I think my host has been doing some MySQL work, so I'm assuming that's why things are weird. (They said they were done with the work, though, so . . . yeah.)

And then I couldn't access the website at all yesterday. At this point, I'm highly tempted to switch to a different host once my account comes up for renewal next spring. I've heard good things about Dreamhost, and it's two dollars a month less than what I'm paying now.

Grumble.

This summer, I made a pair of Knitty's Broadstreet Mittens for the Dulaan Project. They weren't very dignified, and they were also very large.

Well, now I'm making the same mittens as a Christmas gift, and they're coming out huge. Possibly bigger than the last pair. I don't know the first thing about the size of a man's hands, guys, which is probably why I got this far . . .

. . . before realizing that this size thing might really be a problem. Only then did I look up actual sizes for men's hands. A man's medium is about 8 1/2" in circumference at the base of the fingers. This glove? At least 10".

Now, never having met the recipient in person, it's really hard to know what to do. What I've just knit is a perfectly servicable XL men's glove. The only thing I know about this man's hands is that he has long fingers. I think that if he had XL hands, I'd know about it.

My roommate balks at the idea of me frogging it and starting over. Frankly, I do too, for different reasons. For each of those fingers, I had to cut the yarn, which means I'd have several tiny balls of yarn to deal with. Also, I used a sewn bind off for flexibility--I'd have to pick that thing out by hand, and this yarn is DARK.

On the other hand*, the recipient this is intended for is doing me a huge good deed in a few months, and I really want to make this the best gift possible. (I actually have several other things I need to knit for the same occasion. It's the only way I can think of to say 'thank you' in any meaningful way.)

I suppose I could always set that one aside and finish the pair and donate it to charity later. That would work, but these have to be done by Christmas--I don't have time or money to buy more yarn to finish them. I think my best bet is frogging**.



* Transparent pun not intended.

** It occurs that of the few readers I have, most of them aren't even knitters, so I'd better translate. "Frogging" is our term for ripping out knitting--you go "rip it, rip it". You know, rip it? Ribbit? . . . yeah.***

*** That pun IS intentional. Knitters are some wacky people.

whenever she wishes, she drives these clouds from the gloomy sky

What I did with my weekend:

(From this pattern, with some modifications.)

Also pictured is my Latin homework, held open by my trusty FlipKlip. If you want to multitask, or you just get tired of holding your books open, you owe it to yourselves to try the FlipKlip. I'm not even knitting right now, but it's so nice not to have to hold my Tibullus open while I'm translating.

I try to do my bit. I recycle. I use a cloth towel to dry my hands instead of the paper towels in the dorm bathroom. I even switched to reusable menstrual products to cut down on all the waste from disposable pads.

But, you know, it boggles my mind that in America, we have to struggle madly to cut down on our consumption. This is a recent phenomenon. When the Industrial Revolution happened in the West, suddenly all of these material goods were available--to everybody! For reasonable prices! Hooray! Suddenly, we can eat as much as we want, and have enough clothes to go a month or longer without doing laundry, and travel thousands of miles in ease and comfort.

Oh, wait, though. Now we're getting fat. We have too much stuff! What society in the history of the world has had this problem before us?

It goes back to a theory expounded over and over again--extremities are bad for us. Up to this point in human history, the problem has been having too little. Too little food, too little shelter, clothing, land. Now we're starting to see what it's like to have too much.

It looks like the middle is the way to go.

Every time I tell someone that my major is Classics, I get the same question*--"Classics? What are you going to do with that?" I usually say I'll probably end up teaching. But, as you can imagine, I get a lot of conflicting information about the difficulty of finding a job with a humanities major.

There are the cheerleaders. These tend to be people involved in my education somehow, who are always eager to assure me that the education I'm paying exorbitant amounts of money for really is worth something. And there are the nay-sayers. Those tend to be unconnected outsiders who want to deliver a 'dose of reality'.

My family varies in opinion. My mom is convinced I'll be fine. My dad keeps saying that I should find a high-paying job, but I really don't think he understands higher education very well. I'm a first generation college student--they want me to do well. I don't mind--I want myself to do well too. I'm going to have major loans to pay off once I get out of this place.

Right now, I'm thinking I'll join the Peace Corps after I graduate. If I do that, I'll be able to get 15% of one of my loans forgiven**. After that . . . well, right now, I'm looking at grad school, and then going on to become a professor.

Trouble is, I'm not sure I want to be a Classics professor. I'm somewhat disillusioned with Classics. It all feels so disconnected from reality--it's really the epitome of scholarship for scholarship's sake.

Actually, what I'd really like to do is write books. Maybe not novels--I've actually got a growing interest in non-fiction. Maybe it's from spending so long blogging. I'm 21. I started blogging six years ago. Six years isn't a long time, but still, that's--what, a quarter of my life? And if you figure in that I started keeping a journal when I was 13, it's closer to half. It's gotten me used to writing, even if I don't write a lot of fiction.

Non-fiction writing could also give me a chance to use my degree, and maybe to get back to what made me love the Classics in the first place. There's a passage at the beginning of Livy's History of Rome:

"The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid."

That passage inspired me so much in high school. That's what I care about. And that's not what Classics is about. Here, we have to be "serious" scholars, and only think about what the texts tell us about the authors, or the society, or even about the texts themselves! We don't even get to just appreciate the texts for their own beauty--if we admire them, we're supposed to admire them for how cleverly the author incorporated so many themes and metaphors, etc. etc. etc.

I know all this, and yet I find myself well on the way to becoming this thing I find so distasteful. I'm thinking--what if I could write books that explore the things in Classics that I care about? Obviously, I couldn't pass them off as "serious" scholarship, but the only people who read "serious" scholarship are more "serious" scholars. If I want to have any sort of affect on the world, that's not the people I want to reach anyway.

I'm not complaining, mind. I'm excited about how many different, exciting things I can do with the rest of my life. I'm just a little worried about doing the wrong ones.



* Well, two questions, actually. The other one is, "What, like Beethoven?" Other variations being, "What, like Dickens?" I've taken to saying, "Classical Studies--Latin and Greek and things like that" to avoid this problem.

** Obviously, that's not my primary reason for wanting to join, but it would be a bonus.

I made an elephant. His name is Quincy. Primarily made of Caron Simply Soft, leftover from another project. I started him yesterday afternoon and just finished the final touches!

I didn't use a pattern--I just made it up as I went. The beauty of amigurumi is that it's just a bunch of variatons on a cylinder attached to each other, so even a newbie can make stuff up. I weighted his bottom with pennies to give him a little heft, so he sits nicely.

And, yes, there will be knitting as well, but it might wait until next week. I've got three or four projects on the needles (which is record, for me), but I keep getting distracted by the lure of cute little animals. Well, and school. Can't forget that.

I'm struggling through midterms right now, so this will be a quick post. (At my school, midterms vaguely describes everything from about the beginning of October till the end of the semester--it never really gets better from this point on.)

I made a snowy owl last night, for the 2007 Holiday Softie Awards.

I tried to make it reasonably accurate for a snowy owl. It was fun figuring out how to do the wings. Well, and the beak. And the feet. And the eyes too, for that matter. Making these things is like solving a puzzle, and it's fun.

I just bought a ton of yarn for my Christmas knitting. I'll be going to Rome over Christmas, courtesy of Aud's family, so as a thank you, I'm making gifts for all of them. (I'm just going to keep hoping that none of them stumble across this blog.) Let Project Rome commence!