Second chances

First of all, if you are reading this, I want to thank you for sticking with me through my inconsistent blogging: thank you, very much. Plus, you should know, it's really reassuring to see your lovely comments. I sincerely appreciate their humor and caring sentiments. I've become increasingly annoyed that Blogger won't allow me to respond by email to people's individual comments. Oh well. Maybe I'll just start commenting on other people's comments to keep the conversation rolling.


I've been knitting again. I'm making "Ribby"—the sweater I've referred to in my last few posts—and, so far, it's quite simple. I almost finished the back piece but was unhappy with the way I joined the third ball of yarn, so I frogged back to an inch or so below the armhole shaping. Below is a picture I took before ripping back, but you can see the poor join better in photo above. It's a horizontal line of uneven stitches.


The feeling of frogging was redemptive and freeing. The mistake doesn't matter. I can erase it. The sweater will be better because I made a choice to fix it. Still, it was a choice. Not fixing it would have also been fine because it's all a matter of my own needs and preferences. I'm not trying to please anyone else. I am free to choose either way. My actions. My time. My sweater.

I love knitting.

Working

I’m in Los Angeles on a research trip—almost like a real historian. I’ve been knitting in the evenings, and have made a good bit of progress on the back of my very first adult sized sweater (woot!), but most of my time has been spent in my archive or stuck in traffic between my family on one side of L.A. and the archive on the other.

Here, in all its glory, is a picture of my archive:


Can you see it? It’s in the corner, behind the chairs and curtain and stuff. That’s right! The boxes back in the corner. That’s the stuff dissertations are made of. What may (or may not) be goldmine of untouched, untranslated Jewish activism. Lovely.


And really, my research setup is quite nice. They gave me a key to the building, there's plenty of room to spread out, and no one cares if I take off my shoes while I'm going through stuff.


You should see some of the pictures I've found. Just imagine: socialists in the 1940s dressed up like pirates for a costume party. Too cute!