forgetgutenberg

The new project goes live on Monday.

About forty pounds, actually. I think that after my last post’s cynicism, I ought to balance it out a little.

I went to vote yesterday, along with quite a few other people. My opinions on voting might be a little strange, but I figured it was worth the effort (for one thing, there was a question on my ballot that I find hilarious, more on that later) even if I don’t live in a swing state.

So I walked up to the polling place and joined the line. I had knitting and moral support from a friend who doesn’t even vote in this town. The next people into line were a woman and her very small daughter.

I have to say, this kid, people like her are probably why I bother. (And the small people from my time as a teacher, most of whom aren’t old enough to vote yet.) Her mother brought along flashcards so they could work on music theory in line, and the kid really did know what she was doing. She asked me what languages I knew, because she’s learning some herself. She can read pretty well, certainly better than I did at her age. She was having fun. It was a wonderful thing to see. This was a kid who still loves learning and teaching the people around her about what she knows. That, right there, that gives me a reason to keep working towards better things.

Now, for the funny part. One of the non-binding resolutions on the ballot was an initiative to have a hundred randomly selected people work as the state legislature. It’s basically a terrible idea, I suppose - but wouldn’t it be fascinating to see how people reacted? It would certainly get people involved in politics, and there would probably be some fascinating shifts in priorities … Frankly, I think I’d be awful at it, and I can’t imagine that I’m unusual in not having that particular skill set. Still, it gave me something to smile about on my way out the door.

Now we get to start on the hard part.

We’re too specialized too young: too focused on a single point to spread out and learn outside our specialty, concerned only with what immediately affects our path, unwilling to observe the periphery.

It’s starting to get to me.

I’ve worked with a couple of people so focused on what they did as college students - and both of them were recent graduates - that they didn’t know anything outside of their field. These are the people who stock your used bookstores. They don’t know Daniel Pinkwater or William Sleator. They don’t know Lawrence Ferlinghetti or Milton Friedman. Which, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t matter. Unless, and this is important, you’re responsible for keeping a general-interest bookstore stocked and your only real guideline for buying is avoiding things you haven’t heard of.

This got me thinking about who I wouldn’t have heard of, if I didn’t make an effort to know things outside my major. Mo Yan. Bao Ninh. William Goyen. Michael Parenti. It would never have occurred to me to read W. Somerset Maugham or  G. K. Chesterton if people I worked with hadn’t handed them to me. (Speaking of which, Maugham’s spy novel is pretty awesome.) If my co-worker hadn’t said I should try Absalom, Absalom so many times I got tired of listening to her rave about how awesome it was, I’d probably still hate Faulkner. The best classes I took in college were outside of my major, and they’re why I have John Donne and William Crashaw and Juvaini’s History of the World Conqueror. Why would you limit yourself like that?

Maybe I’m strange, but I like learning. I like taking all the disparate threads of everything I can read, and turning them into part of how I look at the world. (I love being able to pick up Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul and read the bit about Lucius Varenus and Titus Pullo.) Is it any wonder that what I want to do is teach? I’d like to share this awesome, fabulous wealth of fascinating history and amazing art with, well, everybody who’ll listen.

I wouldn’t mind teaching art history to five year olds. That is an amazing thing to watch.

If more people approached learning with joy, maybe we’d haul ourselves out of some of the cultural quagmires left over from nineteenth century industrial society. Just a thought.

I don’t think of myself as an expert on anything, really, but I’ve got my moments. And, really, that’s what teaching is about - being a student of learning. I don’t know if that really makes sense, but what I mean is that teaching something often makes me better at it. It forces me to think about the basics, the things I might not always remember are even there, and the better I know the foundation of something, the better I am at building on top of it. So there I am, better at what I do, having just given someone else the foundation to do it too.

It’s not about competition. Competition, in a lot of contexts, isn’t conducive to growth. Particularly in my kind of creative endeavors, things work better with cooperation and community.

I’m not sure how I got from over-specialization to cooperation. I think, perhaps, that part of the problem with specialization is that you lose sight of what you can gain from collaborating with people who work in fields outside of your own. There’s something to be said for thinking outside your comfort zone, anyway. (Which is why I’m a little bit concerned that maybe I need to go learn some serious math. I missed something along the way; it sounds like the subject gets incredibly fascinating and awesome once you’ve gotten past the pesky stuff they torture you with in high school.)

Yeah, that’s me. Maybe I should become the All-Inclusive Fiber Harlot. It just doesn’t have the ring of Yarn Harlot, though, so I won’t.

In the interest of having one more thing to do with fiber, I pulled out the Weavette. Which, um, I haven’t really used, oh, at all.

I was right - there are some sock yarns that really want to be woven. The purple and green (which matches the socks I’m wearing) makes a very nice plaid.

The square on top is the evil soysilk handspun that I’d been pointedly ignoring, since I had no idea what I was going to knit with it. Well. It works pretty well as a woven thing, I think. Which solves my what to do with strange yarn problem. Who knew?

Now I have this strange urge to do something with water-soluble interfacing. Fortunately, I can’t think of anywhere to get something like that at this hour of the night. Maybe I’ll have come to my senses in the morning.

So this afternoon, I posted pictures of a shawl. (Did you see the shawl?) It was, to be frank, sopping wet and pinned out on the living room floor.

I went out to register to vote (because I am virtupus, and because I’d like to be able to rant and rail against the government for the next four years, and I feel obligated to try a little first), was successful, and realized (with a bit of help from my favorite bad-idea cohort) that in fact a hairdryer, judiciously applied, would speed the blocking up. A lot. Enough, in fact, to take my shawl to hear the Yarn Harlot.

(I don’t think anybody saw her; the entire room was knitting. I’m shocked, I tell you. The shawl-in-progress down the row from us was gorgeous.)

Great idea. Not only did I convince my housemate (and company) that I’m even weirder than they thought I was, I got to take a genuinely spectacular (seriously, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever knit) finished object to the one place it was most likely to get great reactions.

My favorite was the “What yarn is that?” It’s handspun. I spun that. And then I made this awesome thing out of it.

(There was oohing and aaahing from complete strangers. It was fantastic. I did not wait around in line to get a picture of the Harlot with it. I need to take a picture of it that isn’t blurry, though, so I can show the internet.)

She’s entertaining, and she’s never going to look at a room full of people knitting and think they’re not paying attention to her. Also, she has some incredibly smart things to say about knitting, and craft, and being a real writer. She’s not too short. I’m really glad I took my shawl to hear her talk.

Really. All right, maybe not. Maybe listening to Lucy was actually what I did right - it often is. Suffice it to say that I have cast off the second Adamas shawl, with a tiny ball of yarn leftover (at least I’ll be able to fix holes in it with matching yarn), and then … then! Something strange happened! I sewed in the ends! I dunked it in warmish water! (It really wasn’t exciting enough to warrant all this punctuation.) And you guessed it, I blocked it.

It’s still really, really wet, so I won’t be able to wear it tonight, but I’m sure the Yarn Harlot will understand.

Maybe she’d think I should wear it anyway.

It’s going to be serious lace when it grows up:

That’s a twelve-inch ruler along the center line, for scale. There’s hope for this one. (I’m dreading my first shawl’s blocking experience even more; it’s circular, and about four feet across without stretching. I might get around to it one day, though, if the improvement in definition of the lace pattern on this one is any indication.)

I got a chance to do a bit of work for a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago. It was, surprisingly, a whole lot of fun, and now that the occasion is past I feel perfectly justified in posting about it. He wanted a notebook as gift, so I came up with this:

It started with a series of pictures he took of road signs, printed so they’d appear every few pages. I did five sections with french web stitching for the text block. (On a 32# natural-white cotton paper from, mmm, Strathmore, I think.)

Because I’m fond of odd little details, I said I’d sew on the endbands instead of making them out of scraps of book cloth. Hey, if you’ve got the fancy silk, you might as well use it, right? It took a couple of tries, but eventually I remembered that key first step … and managed to attach them to the book. After that, it went relatively well.

I found some handmade flax paper for the end sheets. (From raw flax, made for class at the Lost Arch papermill in Alabama, and it’s always good to find a constructive use for neat things.)

And one of the last sheets of green cotton/linen paper from one of my more successful paper-making experiences.

All right, I’m really glad I sewed the end bands.

And the final product, with another road sign on the front.

I hope it was well-received. Making it was secretly kind of a lot of fun. (I do commissions. Reasonable rates. Need a book? We should talk.)

Because yes, I have taken pictures while driving, but it’s not easy. And this is not the place to do it. (Also, all I had with me was my phone. I love the future, sometimes.)

I’m not actually sure why I thought this was worth taking a picture of. I think it’s because I missed another thing a couple of blocks earlier.

This one speaks for itself.

Just in time to get ice cream. And get lunch at a diner with epic pie.

No pictures. Again. Eh, that’s what happens when I’m not doing anything visual.

(Which is not strictly true, but it’s close enough for blogging. I am working on that sweater, and a book, and … right.)

But what I’m here to say tonight is:

So I was poking at GoogleMaps, trying to do some location research. For some reason, I wanted to know how big Texas is (enormous) and, oh hey, there’s satellite pictures. Well, would you look at that? (Go ahead, check out the zooming feature, a little west of Amarillo.) That looks like a quilt that I should make. Dude. Check out the circles and squares and crazy little meandering bits of water …

I think that’ll be my next huge freakin’ project. If I start collecting scrap, and learn how to weave (isn’t that funny?), maybe I can get something out of that.