Surprise

The scene last night:

It is evening, around 9:00. Dan and Amanda have just finished eating dinner and are resting for a few minutes before Amanda will go out and work some more. Both show signs of fatigue. There is a loud knock at the door. Dan and Amanda are briefly startled by the unexpected sound They exchange looks, and Amanda goes to reveal the identity of their nighttime visitor. She peeks through the window and then smiles as she quickly opens the door.

"It's Erin!" she announces with excitement.

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Erin is the fastest knitter I know and, most importantly, my dear friend. In fact, we met entirely through knitting. Over a year ago, I spent much of my summer indexing a book. One day I was working at a table outside a cafe (and a yarn store), and I saw a group of young people knitting and crocheting. When I was ready for a little break from indexing, I went over to the group to say hello. Erin immediately asked if I knit and invited me to join her group. The rest is, as they say, history. I became Erin's most loyal knitting group attendee, and we became good friends.

Currently, Erin is so busy that she doesn't come to knitting group, and I have sort of inherited its leadership. Not only does she have a fulltime job fighting mortgage fraud, she decided to go back to school for her MBA, and she is working at the CA Renaissance Fair on the weekends. She is amazingly driven, but no longer can make it to knitting on the weekends. I miss her, and was really happy to see her last night, if only for a few minutes. She stopped by to present me with a thoughtful birthday gift, which she hadn't had time to give to me on my birthday: a beaded necklace that she made herself.

Thank you, sweetie!


I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Erin for something else: this blog. You see, Erin inspired this blog. I became interested in writing a knitting blog after seeing hers. Although she is currently too busy to knit much (and thus there aren't many new entries), Erin's blog is a wonderful record of her creativity and productivity. Plus, when I expressed interest in starting my own knitting blog, she was full of encouragement and support (as she has been with all of my knitting adventures).

So Erin, thanks for everything. And remember: I'll keep the knitting group going, but I look forward to you coming back someday. Plus, you know you can always call me if you want a friend to knit with, study with, or talk with.

One list and some pictures

This was an action packed week, and I am about to start another. Unfortunately I don't really have time to describe it all for you, but here is a list of some of the things I learned:

• I love the zoo, and I love it even more when I have a camera that allows me to take about 250 shots. (Some of my favorites are scattered through this post.)
• Using a cable cast-on and elastic bind-off isn't hard and looks good.
• All the baby sweaters I knit look like they could be costumes from Star Trek. (Here are shots of the front and back of my newest almost finished project. Now I just have to sew the top seam, hide ends, and try a bit of blocking.)

• It doesn't matter how many times I explain something in an assignment if I am asking students to do something they haven't done before—many won't understand.
• Students need clear time limits and structure for small-group work, no matter how old they are.

• Responding to 20 student papers with detailed suggestions for revisions is time consuming.
• Panicking doesn't help—except maybe when it wakes me up early in the morning, thus allowing an additional hour to read student papers.

• It feels good to pass back 20 papers, each with personalized feedback and comments.
• I love my camera.
• I seem to actually enjoy teaching--even while I'm panicking.

I hope you learned something new this week too!

"Do no harm"

My students turned in their first assignment: a short essay offering a "portrait" of themselves as writers. Reading them, I find myself both fascinated and frustrated. Why? Well, I am extremely interested in my students' stories—one primary purpose of the assignment is for me to get to know them—but, so far, I haven't written any comments on the papers. I am hesitant to begin.

These essays are testaments to the diversity of students' perspectives on writing. Many talk about how they like freedom in writing. They enjoy free writing and wish they had time to keep a journal. Other students lament that they lack the creativity necessary to be a "good writer" and talk about how they prefer to stick to clear formulas for essay organization and development.

My students come from different social and cultural backgrounds. Many of them are bilingual (One talks in her paper about her frustration with juggling three languages—Spanish, Chinese, and English). They are interested in all sorts of subjects and have a variety of different majors—business, biochemistry, history, film, computer science, etc... After each essay I find myself with more questions.

Through my own experience working with student writers, and my experiences as a student, I know that teachers can have a striking impact on their students' writing practices. I keep thinking about my advisor's axiom for teaching writing: "The first rule is to do no harm."

It reminds me of knitting. I originally learned out of frustration with writing during my first year in college. Knitting offered clear progress. Something tangible. Substantial. Writing seemed illusive. I never knew when I was done, and everything could always be better. I hope that my students aren't driven to learn knitting for the same reasons I was.

Happy, happy...

What can I say? Here in the Birthday aftermath, things are looking pretty good: there was a lovely breakfast with lovely company; the butterflies subsided after my class (which went fine, thanks for the well-wishes); and the day ended with a festive evening of good friends, bowling, beer drinking, laughing, and delicious cake!

I even got some knitting related goodies:


Yes, that is a luxurious skein of 400 yards of soft, silky cashmere. (Oh, Holly! Thank you! You have such good taste in yarn!) The brilliant Sabrina found the beautiful embroidered bag on her recent trip to El Salvador. Although Sabrina herself doesn't enjoy the art of playing with sticks and string, she did have my knitting-obsessed ways in mind when buying the bag. (Thanks so much! It will be perfect for a knitting project and a book!)

Really, thank you to everyone who celebrated with me and made my entry into late-twenties lovely and memorable.

Of course, I am terribly silly. My exciting new camera (thanks to Dan, Niko, et al.) was in tow at the bowling ally, but I was so overwhelmed with the general revelries that I completely forgot about it until after the cake was eaten, the games were played, and my lovely friends were putting their shoes back on. Thus, no pictures. Oh well. Just imagine colorful shoes, big smiles, wacky bowling technique (2 of the players had never bowled before ever, and several of the rest of us, including myself, really have no technique to speak of), a few pitchers of beer, and a gorgeous strawberry cream cake.

One last note: goodbye dear borrowed camera. Thank you for putting all 1.3 of your mega pixels toward my bloging efforts. You are a trooper, duct tape and all.

Nerves

I am very nervous/excited/eager/hesitant about Monday. What happens on Monday? Well, that is the first day of my class. When I say that the class is mine, I mean that I am the instructor... the sole instructor. Thus, I am fully responsible for the class. I am nobody's assistant. I am in charge. This is both thrilling and a bit terrifying.

I feel significant pressure, in part, because this is where my life has been leading for many years. In high school many of my teachers predicted that I would teach someday. Since then I have had copious amounts of education and worked as a tutor, workshop provider, teaching assistant, and grader/reader. Yet, Monday will be different. I feel like now is when I'll find out if this is really what am supposed to do with my life.

Breath. Think calm thoughts.

How about knitting?

Well, I keep knitting fishes, and I'm afraid that anyone reading this blog is probably getting a bit bored with the fishes and starting to wonder if I am capable of making anything else.

(An aside: I spoke with my Dad on the phone yesterday, and he suggested that a fish obsession may run in the family. He used to have an aquarium cleaning business (when he was about my age?), and my sister's first word was "ish" meaning "fish," probably because my parents sat her in front of the aquarium to entertain her when she was very little.)

Perhaps, I will wrestle up some more original knitting content by combining the two themes of this blog entry: teaching and knitting.

I have taught many people how to knit. Here is one:


This is my friend Holly at our knitting group last weekend. (You can see the entryway to my favorite LYS, the Swift Stitch, in the background.) She is working on her second project: a knit-one, purl-one ribbed scarf that she started more months ago than she cares to admit. I taught her knitting basics last fall, and she quickly knit up a very pretty garter rib scarf. Unfortunately, her knitting was stalled when she cut off the tip of one of her fingers at work. Now, she has healed and returned to the project. I predict that she will be done knitting the scarf very soon.

I'm happy to teach anyone to knit who shows an interest. I've shown random women at parties. My 11-year-old brother picked it up from me in a snap (Cody is 12 now and leaves very sweet little comments on this blog). I taught one of my favorite baristas. I've shown classmates and coworkers. A couple of times I've helped students who approached me after class with knitting questions instead of history questions.

Maybe I should just breakout the yarn on Monday. Our first class could be a little knitting party. It will be my Birthday.

My name is Amanda, and I am a fish addict.

Behold the wonder that is 131 fishes!!! And yet, I must make more, MORE!!!


All I knit is fishes. The baby sweater stalled when I got my big new bag of fishy yarn. At this point I am so familiar with the pattern that fish just spring from my hands. I like to stack them up when I finish several of the same color. Dan caught me petting them. It's definitely addiction.

Happy Birthdays!

The many birthdays in my family this week make me think about all of the wonderful things there are to celebrate at each point in a person's life. Happy Birthday to:

My funny Apple Jack who turned 80 on Sunday!
My dear husband who is 34 today!
My sweet niece who will be 1 on Saturday!


Dan and I both found this little guy too cute to pass up, and we sent him as part of our package to little Katie.

What else am I celebrating?


A giant bag of yarn for me to knit into many, many little fishes! It's almost enough to make me forget that school starts next week, but not quite.

Cameras are (not) quitters!

Today I have sad news: The digital camera I am borrowing has quit cooperating.

I also have good news: I ordered myself a new camera for my very own! (Of course, I will happily share with Dan, but I am the most excited about it.)

Thus, it looks like this may be a pictureless blog for a few weeks (I didn't pay for extra quick shipping, so it may take a while for the camera to arrive)--unless, perchance, the camera decides to be friendly again, but I am skeptical. Apparently it can sense that it has been rejected because it stopped working right after I ordered the new camera. Thus, here I am with no ability to show you the little project I have been working on instead of fishes.

But wait... what's this?


The camera mysteriously took a picture when I was trying to demonstrate how it isn't working.... Apparently it's just trying to be contrary.

Yay! You do get to see my progress on the baby sweater! I am using the yarn I showed you a few weeks ago. Despite actually being the yarn called for in the pattern (a rare occurrence), I've been having gauge issues. I'm hoping that the final product will fit the newborn sweetie. The sweater's design is rather interesting: it's knit in one piece from side to side, the sleeves are picked up and knit, and then the garment is seamed across the top of the arms and shoulders. The whole thing is closed with a tie, a kind of variation on a kimono.

Soon I will buy more fish yarn--it's on sale. Fishy, fishy, fishy.

Knitting with Dan and Conan

This week Dan and I celebrated the seventh anniversary of our first kiss. We have been together for seven years... that's over one fourth of my life! What did we do on the day itself? Well, not much because Dan worked all day, and then I went on an evening odyssey to pick up my friend Kelly and her husband from the San Francisco Airport. So really, we spent little of the day together. We did, however enjoy a pleasant lunch with Conan of Cimmeria.


Dan and I try to have lunch together whenever possible. Normally this means that I pick him up from the hardware store where he works, and then we sit in the car next to the park or beach and eat whatever we have for lunch that day. After eating, we often read to each other. When he reads, I knit.

While Conan, with his barbarian ways, is a violent and ruthless icon for masculinity, reading Robert E. Howard's stories is very entertaining. (Dan and I both agree that the stories actually written by Howard are the best.) He depicts Conan's bloody, swashbuckling adventures very cinemagraphicly, and with a philosophical sensibility which takes you by surprise. While Howard's representations of women and "the races" make me cringe occasionally, they are a reflection of the racism and sexism of 1930s United States (and the 1960s when Howard's stories gained popularity), just as Conan's brutality is a reflection of the world he lives in.

Anyway, knitting with Dan and Conan gives me something to look forward to on workdays, and I look forward to many more years of knitting and reading with my sweetie!

Grey skies

Last night a random woman at the grocery store said I "look smart" and asked me how to spell the name of the town just east of where I live. I answered, but I don't know if I was right because I have a terrible weakness: a spelling deficiency.

Those of you who know me realize that I am not exaggerating when I say that I really do have terrible spelling problems, problems that are sometimes incongruous with other elements of my life. For example, before returning to school to pursue my PhD, I worked at a writing center for five years--that's correct, a girl who can't spell her way out of a paper bag helped college students refine their writing for five years. As a teaching assistant, my current source of financial support, my students correct my spelling on a regular basis. I have become very dependent on various "spell-check" devices, and I rarely have confidence in my ability to spot the difference between correctly and incorrectly spelled words.

Thus, today when beginning my blog, I didn't know if my title should be "Grey skies" or "Gray skies." Entering both into my word processing program didn't clarify the situation because both spell something, and the thesaurus function in my computer was also unhelpful. The entire time I had a hunch that "gray" is correct as a color, and "grey" is used in other situations such as "greyhound," etc. Yet, I needed to find confirmation.

After a bit of hunting, I made a discovery. According to Wikipedia's entry on variations in American and English spelling, the correct American way to spell the humble color follows my earlier hunch—gray. But, it is acceptable to follow the British spelling when one wants to attribute a positive aspect to the color, instead of dwelling on dull or negative connotations associated with "grayness."


And, although it is overcast at the beach today, I do not find it dull or depressing. I think it is lovely. As a child of the pacific northwest, I find grey skies homey and rather pleasant. Life would get boring if the sky were always blue. (Plus, when the skies are grey, there are less tourists crowding my little town.)

I want to proudly point out that I have 11 colors of fish at this point in my blanket (not all are in the picture below). Two of those colors are grey, and I like them. Grey fishes, and skies, are a source of joy in my life.

Red fish, blue fish, old fish, new fish

All I knit is fish. I have several really interesting projects waiting for some attention, but all I've done this week is make approximately two fish every day. (That is, all I've done as far as knitting is concerned. The grading and writing part of my life has been really busy lately.)


At the same time, aren't they sweet and clever? Look at the clever shaping which produces the fin. And the yarn is such a good, economic choice. It's Lion Brand Wool-Ease--which means that the resulting blanket will be machine washable, and I have been using coupons to buy a few skeins from the craftstore each of the past few months.


Even Niko approves of my thrifty yarn selection! But, it's a good thing that I'm not paying too much for the yarn, because it will take a lot to finish this thing. I currently have 70 finished fish, but the sweet hubby and I both agree that I will need at least twice that number to make a decent sized blanket for an adult sized person to snuggle with on the couch. I'm trying not to think about how many ends I will have to hide when I'm done...

Summer bounty

My summer has begun!

I'm already well into August, but it wasn't summer until now. Why? Because it didn't feel like it before now. I was busy, traveling etc, and until now I haven't had any time to just get down to work on all of my summer tasks (reading, preparing to teach, and working on my dissertation proposal, to name just a few).

The other thing about summer: I have time to go to the farmer's market!


I haven't been able to go to the local farmer's market for months because I had work conflicts during spring quarter, and then I left the country for over a month. Now, I have tasty locally grown nectarines, lemon cucumbers, the sweetest peppers ever, tiny squash, organic cilantro, and a gorgeous gigantic heirloom tomato! Now it tastes like summer.

I also have another kind of summer bounty: yarn!


Here are my new acquisitions for summer knitting. The lovely light blue is lace weight alpaca for the Icarus Shawl from the Summer 2006 volume of Interweave Knits. The light green is amazingly soft cotton yarn for a gift for my classmate's baby who is due in fall. For months I've had visions of making a nice little green sweater for her little sprout... and I can now realize my vision using this yarn which I found in Olympia, WA last week while I was there visiting family.

Oh, and here is a picture of my cat. She was very interested in what I was doing outside, and I couldn't help but take a picture of her watching me through the window.


Yay for summer!

Home and knitting on planes

I am home, safe and sound. Spending about 20 hours in planes wasn't fun, but I survived. The second leg of my trip was delayed a couple hours because when they loaded the plane the cabin was as hot as a sauna. The captain announced that it didn't seem smart to fly across the country (from NY to CA) with the cabin at 95 degrees, but they left us sitting in the hot plane for 90 minutes while they tried to fix it. My body didn't like it. I had already sat in a plane for over 12 hours! And, by the time we got in the air (luckily, with a working air conditioning system) the flight held over 6 more hours of constrained movement and mediocre movies.

I had one consolation: I was knitting. That's right! I knit on an overseas, transcontinental flight. Not only that, but I was on El Al, the Israeli airline with a reputation extreme strictness. I was restrained and didn't try to knit during the strange sleepy time-warp that was my trip to Tel Aviv. But, by my trip back, restraint was gone. Of course, I am using rather unthreatening needles for my current project--US size 8 wooden double pointed--so I didn't really expect any logical person to be threatened by my knitting. And I was right! I was randomly selected for my carry on baggage to be searched twice in the Tel Aviv airport, and no one cared about the needles, or anything else in my bag really.

Now I am home. My husband and my cat are both happy to see me, and life is returning to its normal frantic pace. But, you know what else is special about being back:

Home = Iced Mocha!!!

That's right, there are no iced mochas in Israel, or at least I couldn't find any. There is a drink Israelis call an iced mocha, but it is not the same. An Israeli iced mocha is a very sweet blended drink that circulates in a kind of slurpee machine--a sort of prefrozen frappuccino concoction. I spent one day on a mission for an iced mocha: I looked at multiple coffee shops, I tried asking for a "mocha with ice," and I explained exactly how to make one. Yet, everywhere I went they looked at me like was crazy.

I had a really wonderful time, but it's good to be back.

Coming home, soon

Tomorrow evening I will begin the long trek home. It will not be fun, but I am looking forward to the end destination: my home with my sweet husband, my cat, and my bed. Normal life will resume again, with all of the reading, writing, and researching. It's amazing to think that on Saturday I will be at knitting group. I think my friends and fellow knitters won't be impressed with how much knitting I have done in Tel Aviv, but they might be interested in all of the Yiddish I have learned. We'll see...

What's in the bomb shelter?

Well, that's what I wanted to know. So, after all of the warnings about what we should do if we hear a siren, I took a little trip to the bomb shelter in my dorm building. And, you ask, what did I find? Well, not much:


I found a big empty cement room with dust, some fans, and a bunch of mediocre murals. Including one with an important message to remember when you are hiding from missiles:


Don't forget.

Have I been knitting?

Long ago, before I left on my trip to Israel, I ended a blog entry with a picture of my current project and the tease, "For next time: 'What's that on the fence?'" Well, my next entry didn't talk at all about what was on the fence, but a couple astute blog readers correctly noted that the picture showed a bunch of little knit fish. I am making the lovely tessellating fish blanket (of which you can see very nice examples here), but I haven't gotten too much done while "ich bin lernen zich yiddish" here in Tel Aviv. Yet, someone did take this picture of me on the bus, so I must me knitting at least a little.

More holy places

Well, as I am in the "holy land," I am visiting holy places. I already posted a picture of the Western Wall, so now I want to show you some of the Muslim and Christian sites.

This is a beautiful mosque across from one of the beaches near downtown Tel Aviv:


When I was in the Old City of Jerusalem last Sunday, Esther and I were walking in the Muslim Quarter, and we just happened upon the entrance to the courtyard around the Dome of the Rock. We couldn't enter, but we were able to take pictures through the entry. We felt very luck to be there.


The most holy place in the Old City for Christians, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is rather unassuming from the outside, but inside is a dark, incense filled maze of elaborately decorated areas for different Christian groups to prey:


The building is supposed to be built on the spot where Jesus died, as depicted in this fresco which greets visitors as they arrive.


And, for fun, a picture of Bartek and me waiting for the bus:

Looking around

Last weekend I couldn't go on the tour to the northern part of Israel, so I spent more time exploring Tel Aviv. I saw lovely vistas:


and interesting architecture:



I ate breakfast with two of my new friends from Poland (Adam is in this picture with me while Bartek to the photo):


And, as always, I saw plenty of cats:


Now, in my fourth week in Israel, I'm having an amazing time, but I'm also having recurring dreams in which people talk to me in foreign languages and then refuse to translate.

For those who worry

You should know that I am alright. I am not able to email everyone I would like to tell them: "Don't worry. I am well." So, I am posting this message.

Some parts of my program have been canceled because of danger in the Northern part of Israel, but there is little risk in Tel Aviv. I have been briefed about what to do if there is a siren warning of a possible rocket, but it is unlikely I will need to use this information.

My life and studies continue. Yesterday I traveled to Jerusalem again and visited the holy sites for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Today I had class, went on a tour of the Jewish Diaspora Museum, and in the evening I saw an elderly holocaust survivor perform a one man play entirely in Yiddish. After I post this, I will work on my homework.

I send my love to my friends and family, and I want you to know that I am happy and healthy and people are looking out for me.

Israeli cats and some art

Cats are everywhere in Tel Aviv. I see them lying in the grass when I walk to class in the morning. They beg at the tables where people sit outside cafés. I even saw three sitting on a parked motorcycle when I was in the center of town. It’s not what I expected when coming to Israel.


Last Friday morning I went of a tour of an area that claims to be the earliest settlement of Tel Aviv. There was a museum there in one of the original buildings, but it is owned by an artist who renovated the house with her own money, and her art decorates the building.


Here is a picture of Tel Aviv.


As the situation in Israel escalates, life here seems to stay the same. People go about as normal, but they watch the news more and talk more about family in the north.