The Raveled Skein

¿Por qué hay palomas gigantes en todas partes?

2009-02-25T18:39:00.009-05:00

Week three in Guanajuato and we're starting to feel a bit at home here. There are restaurants we're tried twice now, shop owners who recognize us (it's not hard - we're the two gringas browsing the silver shops constantly), people on the street whose faces look familiar. We're also definitely improving our Spanish by leaps and bounds: I can buy a bus ticket, pose questions, chat about the weather, describe what I did yesterday (learning one of the past tenses has been the academic highlight of the week so far - I'm no longer stuck in the present, which is a linguistic relief), and even - with a bit of thought and some referral to my notes - ask someone what medications they take and if they're short of breath or having chest pain, which is honestly much better than I expected after 13 days of classes.

This week has just been beautiful so far - the sky has been this unbelievable clear blue that makes me wish I painted. I've had to settle for taking lots of photos of flowers.

Speaking of flowers, I don't think I've mentioned the bourgainvillea that grows like a weed here. I don't think I'd ever known what bougainvillea looked like, before; I seem to associate it with jasmine and the fictional verandas of 19th-century literature set in the tropics. But it grows everywhere here, from little pots on the roof of the school to great vines that cover walls and buildings.

This is one of the potted varieties living on the roof of the school - which, like many of the roofs in Guanajuato, is the equivalent to the backyard of an American house or building. The school's thick stone walls of the school are certainly very insulating, so between classes, most of us walk up to the roof to warm ourselves in the sun for a few minutes. (The hibisicus bud, blurry in the foreground, was actually what I was trying to photograph against an out-of-focus bougainvillea background, but my little point-and-shoot camera was not quite up to the task.)

Yesterday, Kristen and I visited the Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato, which was another 90 minute endeavor, but was again really interesting. The upper levels of the museum showcased artwork - we think - from all over Guanajuato state, beginning with anonymous pieces of religious artwork from probably c. 16th century (nothing was dated) to painfully postmodern deconstructionist works from the local university students. (There were series of photos of Guanajuato's plazas filled with giant pigeons and men in tutus, a close-up painting of a woman in lithotomy, presumably postpartum from the gore, and (our favorite) a photo of a fork with all but the middle tine bent down, entitled, in English, "Fork You!".)

The near-modern artwork was the best (including some beautiful stained glass windows either designed by or commemorating Siqueiros , but the museum itself was gorgeous, too, with the typical open-air courtyards:

(framed here by antique wrought-iron fences):

and a chapel, adorned with some omnipresent cacti:

The first floor of the museum is dedicated to miniatures, apparently a longstanding artistic tradition in Guanajuato. We saw copper pans and tea kettles that were maybe 6 mm across, all sorts of animals and people less than a centimeter high carved from wood and bone or woven from corn husks, entire dioramas of homes and shops that fit in boxes maybe two inches by three. Some pieces were so small they were displayed in their cases behind microscopes, in order to actually be able to see them.

Before we went into the museum, though, we wandered up the callejone next to the university, where we saw this truck parked:

We were amused by the hand-lettering that designated its officiality. We also ran into the callejonadas again last night; they're university students who dress up in period costume and lead tourists around the city, singing. We had been under the impression they only did this on weekend evenings, but they were out in full force last night. It may just be that the burro carrying the wine they give out only accompanies them on the weekends.

Los perros ladran y los gallos cacarean

2009-02-21T17:39:00.007-05:00

There's lots more on Mexican cuisine and tourism to relate from this week, but today I thought I'd write a little bit about what it's been like living in Guanajuato. Our slice of Mexico here is truly a sensual experience - last weekend, when I happened to wake up early and snuck down to the second-floor patio to knit and listen to music while waiting for the day to start, I had the odd sensation - one I've never had in the US - that I was cutting myself off from the world the second I placed my headphones in my ears. We've been learning this city by walking its streets, conversing with its inhabitants, enjoying its food, taking in its views, but I hadn't quite realized the depth of sound in Guanajuato until I closed myself off from it. I ended up just sitting at the table in our hostel's indoor courtyard and listening to the sounds of the city instead: the trucks driving by, recorded advertisements blaring, the hum of the water heater, the hammering of construction next door, the roosters crowing.

(An aside about the roosters: one of the first things we noticed about Guanajuato - and really, how could we miss it? - was that around 2 or 3 am, the roosters start crowing all over the city and don't finish until well after 9 am. I hadn't seen any chickens anywhere in our travels, but I assumed they were kept in the courtyards or on the roofs of private homes, away from the public eye. One day in coversation class, I mentioned that I was tired because the neighborhood animals had been particularly vocal the evening before, and my teacher, who has been studying at the university and living in Gunanajuato for years, chimed in that the roosters were always their cue to start really cramming for the next day's exam, because they started up like clockwork around 2 am. But furthermore, he added, he had never been able to tell where the roosters lived - he's visited homes of friends who grew up here, has eaten at nearly all of the city's restaurants, and knows the town well, and in his years here, he's never seen a rooster, either. So their exact location is still a mystery, but their presence is daily noticed.)

This richness of sound was particularly apparent today - without a trip planned by the school, we had decided to be a bit lazy and to just wake up without setting any alarm, but the city served as an alarm for us; around 9 this morning, PRI (the formerly ruling political party) began loudly demostrating in the plaza next door, and a few minutes later, the workers who have been fixing the hostel's plumbing all week (we've had a few hours without hot water, but it's so far been a painless experience for us) began the day's work of cutting pipe, smashing walls and hammering brackets. We had fallen asleep the night before only when the positive-feedback loops of the neighborhood dogs barking from their respective rooftops and music of the cover band playing in the bar next door had begun to fade; it's been gradually made clear to us that the city sets the schedule of its inhabitants, and not the other way around.

We've actually been enjoying this lapse into the local habits and conceptions of time. We've been eating our main meal at two or three in the afternoon; we've been becoming accustomed to working our errands around the shops' unpredictable hours. It's been pleasant to step away from constantly referring to a clock or a watch and let myself be timed by the bells for classes, by sunset for going out in the evenings, by the brightness of the sun through the windows to wake in the mornings. It's been restful.

This week, we had been kept fairly busy by classes, but today, we've been enjoying a slower pace: we breakfasted at the student hang-out across from the university, and slowly wended our way through the opposite side of town - as yet unexplored by us - to visit the Museo de las Momias. The museums here are small, able to be fully appreciated in an hour or two, which we've been enjoying. We visited Diego Rivera's family home nearby the university earlier this week; today we took in the bizarre and morbid entirety of the town's mummy collection inside of two hours. We weren't able to take photos in the Diego Rivera museum, whose collection consisted mostly of his youthful attempts and sketches of famous finished works that hang elsewhere, but there were a few pieces that really stood out, an oil painted entitled The Forge among them, an image of which I can't seem to find online. (In typical fashion, the souvenir shop at the museum was closed - "Tomorrow," the woman who sold our tickets promised, but when we walked by, it was closed the next day, too.)

The Museo de las Momias was fascinating, if a bit gruesome; though visitors are allowed and encourged to take photos, I'm not really sure I want to post them on the blog. (I've uploaded them to my Flickr pool here, but I just didn't want to have anyone stumble upon them unexpectedly.) Instead, I'll share a photo of the decor of a local bar, which is an excellent example of the Day of the Dead artwork and sculpture that is present everywhere here, even four months after the holiday has occurred. (They even sell bride-and-groom skeleton cake toppers for wedding cakes. You'll all be happy to hear that I passed on that souvenir.) In the setting of this almost celebratory attitude towards death, the museum seemed a little less morbid than it would in the United States.

Museo de las Momias was created when bodies began getting exhumed from the local cemetery to make room for new inhabitants; by Mexican law, all corpses must be buried or interred. (In recent years, as cemetery crowding has become more acute, Guanajuato residents are permitted to remain buried for five years, and if the family cannot afford the subsequent upkeep fees, their bodies are exhumed and cremated.) But in the heat and low humidity of the region, many corpses had simply desiccated, and particularly fine examples of this escape cremation and instead are added to the museum's collection. Many mummies had plaques mounted near them stating their name and age, the date and reason of their death, and pointing out - in an often tongue-in-cheek way - their unique characteristics (blood stains from the fatal stabbing, cyanosis from death by drowning, particularly traditional burial clothing). To close, a direct transcription of one of these plaques (the translations into English, while appreciated, were haphazard at best):

"I was almost 70 years old when I came to rest at the Santa Paula Cemetery, but on January 20, 1973, I was found as a statue of eternity. I became part of the second group of mummified men, women and children, since before me there were others. I rest in a white and smooth nightgown that accompanies me in this eternal dream."

Estamos aprendiendo a cocinar comida mexicana

2009-02-17T11:07:00.014-05:00

First off, a tourism update: yesterday, Kristen and I climbed up to visit El Pipila, the statue that overlooks the city, depicting a miner who fought in the first battle for independence. (Click on the link, if you're interested - his story is kind of cool.) Since the statue is at the top of the hill (Guanajuato, you may recall, is built in the valley between two small mountains):

we had beautiful views of the city, the photos of which really don't do it justice. I was longing for a panoramic lens. But here's a view of the city anyway, where you can see el jardin (green triangle in bottom right corner), the main basilica were we heard Mass on Sunday (big yellow building) and the university (above the church, kind of looks like a castle):

It was too close to take a good distance shot of El Pipila, and the sun was kind of back-lighting it anyway, so maybe this weekend, I'll take a picture of the statue from the town: he kind of hovers over the city. But here's what he looks like up close:

Yesterday I mentioned that we started taking cooking classes this week. The school runs these classes every week, and last week everything they cooked smelled so good that we just had to sign up. Also, the cooking facilities in our hostel are adequate but limited, and we were getting a little tired of eating out for every lunch and dinner. I'm going to be blogging about these classes this week, partly to share with you all and partly so I have the recipes written down somewhere! We didn't think of photographing our food yesterday (which is a shame, because it looked - and was - delicious), but hopefully we'll remember for the rest of the week.

Our instructor, Ana (who also works at the hostel in the mornings) is our instructor, and yesterday we chose four dishes we wanted to make from her list. (You can look forward to descriptions and recipes of enchiladas, gorditas and sopa de chayote (a squash that's very popular here), among other dishes I can't remember now.) Monday's dish was sopes de pollo, thick cornmeal tortillas shaped into little shallow bowls and filled with beans, chicken and cheese, and topped with salsa. We'll be making these when we get back for sure - they were totally fabulous. (Recipes below.)

Today's dish was not nearly as exciting, although it was very good: we browned chicken pieces in butter and mustard, then added boiled chopped vegetables (broccoli, carrots, chayote (a popular kind of squash here), summer squash and corn) to the dish and simmered it all in a sauce of roma tomatoes, two chicken boullion cubes, some garlic, some salt and some water, blended until pureed. Potatoes are traditionally added to the mix, but one of the women in the class is allergic to potatoes, so we didn't add them today. Definitely comfort food:

Our next culinary adventure is going to be tomorrow's breakfast. After dinner tonight, we finally broke down and bought a jar of cajeta, the goat's milk caramel that everyone seems to love here. We had been told numerous times that cajeta is eaten for breakfast with pan tostado, which I had mentally translated as toasted bread, or just simply toast. When we stopped at a bakery this evening, and inquired as the best bread with which to eat cajeta (and, incidentally, this question was posed and answered entirely in Spanish, which I was really excited about), we were directed to the grocery store next door, in order to buy this:

You may notice two things about this item. One: the brand name is BIMBO, which frankly I'm finding pretty hilarious. Two: it's pre-toasted wonder bread in a bag. We'll let you know how this goes.
_________________________________

Sopes de pollo
(not to be confused with sopa de pollo, as almost happened at dinner the other night. Good enunciation, I've found, is key.)

For the tortillas:
Some finely ground cornmeal (it looked like maybe half a kilo?) mixed with enough water to form a soft, pliable dough.

Take approx 2-3 tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball; flatten evenly by hand or with Ana's awesome tortilla press. Cook disks in a dry hot pan until slightly browned on both sides, flipping once, then place over an open flame until they puff up slightly, cooking on both sides. Carefully flatten the tortillas and scrunch the edges up to form a shallow lip, to hold the fillings.

Fill the sopes with a refried beans, shredded chicken, and shredded lettuce. Drizzle some crema over top, and crumble on some queso ranchero. Finish with a dollop of either salsa verde or salsa roja.

Salsa Roja

10-12 chiles pullas, dried (there will be some coming home with us; they're at the market for 25 pesos per quarter kilo)
2 cloves garlic, peeled
8 tomatillos, halved or quartered
salt to taste
water

Toast the dried chiles over an open flame, until lightly browned, about 30 seconds on each side. Pull off the stem and toss into a blender whole. Saute the tomatillos in a touch of oil until fairly well blackened. Add to the blender and throw in the garlic. Add some salt and enough water to cover; blend the salsa until it's very finely minced. Consistency should be very liquid; the salsa should be able to be poured easily.

Salsa Verde
8-10 tomatillos, halved or quartered
8 fresh serrano chiles, stems cut off but otherwise whole
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro
2 cloves garlic, peeled
salt
water

Place tomatillos and chiles in a small pot with enough water to cover; boil briskly for several minutes. Roughly chop the cilantro. Place the chiles, tomatillos, cilantro and garlic in a blender and add enough of the cooking water to cover. Blend until a similar consistency as the salsa roja is reached.

Un buen fin de semana

2009-02-16T20:53:00.007-05:00

We’ve been having a lot of fun since my last post here! On Saturday, the school ran an excursion to Dolores Hildalgo, Atotonilco and San Miguel de Allende. Lots of history in these towns, too: Dolores Hildalgo was the small town to which Miguel Hildalgo, revolutionary priest, was banished after he began preaching against the church and against Spain. Instead of quietly living out his life in this tiny mountain town, however, on September 16, 1810, Padre Hildalgo famously delivered his grito (I’m unclear on the etymology, but it was a speech calling for Mexico’s independence from Spain) from the town’s main church and then led his army of farmers and ranchers through the mountains and into Guanajuato, where they fought the first battle of Mexico’s independence. The emancipation from Spain took another ten years, and Hildalgo was killed in the first year of fighting, but he and Ignacio Allende are revered here as the fathers of Mexican independence.

Here’s the inside of the church where Hildalgo preached and delivered el grito (my exterior shots are kind of boring):

Nowadays, Dolores Hildago is perhaps equally well-known for its beautiful pottery (which was started as an industry by Miguel Hildalgo himself):

Gifts may have been purchased. (Sadly, we decided that what we really wanted to buy [the unbelievably beautiful sinks] were just a little too bulky to take back to the States. Also neither of us have a home in which to install an intricately painted sink.)

Locally, the town is also famous for producing bizarre flavors of ice cream. Unfortunately, both Kristen and I were so engrossed in trying different flavors that we forgot to take a picture of the carts, but the ice creams are sold from carts off to the side of the main jardin (literally “garden” but here its meaning is closer to “town square”). We sampled many different flavors, among them avocado, pine nut (that was just me), cajeta and coffee; I ended up getting mole and strawberry and Kristen opted for cheese and chocolate.

Then we climbed back in our van (driven by Michael, from Texas) and traveled onward to Atotonilco, a very small town whose main claim to fame seems to be an 18th century church where the priests still practice self-flagellation. (There were souvenir whips for sale at the booths outside. It was a little odd, to say the least.) The church, while in need of restoration, was lovely inside, with numerous frescos and statues of the saints and the Virgin Mary.

We enjoyed a lunch of pork tacos (grilled pork served family-style by the kilo, with a stack of tortillas on the side) at an outdoor restaurant right down the street from the church, and then continued on to San Miguel de Allende, the birthplace of Mexico’s other father of the revolution, Ignacio Allende.

San Miguel was beautiful, if a little dusty, and is home to a thriving artists’ community. The institute de Belles Artes is located in a former monastery and contains the most beautifully tropical monastery garden I’ve ever seen:

Mexican artist and revolutionary political activist David Siqueiros painted here, and upon his death left a mural unfinished in a ground floor room in the institute, which is preserved today:

We also visited the city's main church:

(where I really liked the floor):

(and the ceiling, judging from my pictures, but here's a picture of the whole church, more or less):

We wandered through el jardin:

And around some of the streets:

But, truth be told, we spent a fair part of the afternoon perusing the stalls at the extensive artists’ markets.

We drove back to Guanajuato just in time to see the sun set over the city as we returned.

Yesterday was spent mostly lazily, reading, knitting and catching up on our neglected notes. We did have brunch out, where we tried molletas (refried beans and chorizo on toast, a popular breakfast item); afterwards we heard Mass at the city’s main church. (We may have heard Mass, but unfortunately I’m not sure we understood any of it: the priest spoke very fast.)

Today was the second week of classes, and we also had our first cooking class, but more on that tomorrow. ¡Hasta luego!

P.S. As if this post weren’t long enough, I have one last story to share. Friday night, we wandered around town, got some dinner, drank some margaritas, and watched the university singers, but the highlight of the evening was Kristen asking a gentleman leading several burros (a common method of transporting goods around Guanajuato) if we could take pictures of his burros. Very gravely, he shook his head, then burst out laughing and told us that of course we could. We took our photos and as we were walking away, we realized that our request was probably equivalent to asking a gardener in the United States if we could photograph his wheelbarrow. We enjoyed the laugh at our own expense all evening. And truthfully, we enjoyed the pictures, too:

Mañana, vamos a San Miguel

2009-02-13T13:09:00.002-05:00

Guanajuato continues to be charming. Kristen and I have started to adopt the local meal schedule, as my classes end at 3 pm and we're usually at school from 9 am until then. According to my grammar teacher, Mexicans traditionally eat five meals a day, with the largest being la comida at 3 or 4 pm. Therefore all the local restaurants serve their largest meals around 3 in the afternoon. Yesterday, we tried the prix-fixe menu at one of the restaurants on the main square, which was delicious: green beans criollos (which translates, supposedly, as "creole" but was green beans and scrambled eggs), mushroom and chili soup, grilled chicken and sugared plaintains with rum sauce and ice cream. Muy rico. (We didn't eat again until breakfast this morning!)

After la comida, we somehow found the energy to wander over to the Museo de Alhondiga de Granaditas, where we foundered our way through the mostly-Spanish-language plaques describing the history of Guanajuato. The building used to be the seat of Spanish government back in the 19th century, and was the site of the first battle of the Mexican Revolution. It's amazing how little world history I've learned - I had no idea, for example, that Guanajuato was kind of like Boston during the American Revolution: they had lots of money and resources here, from the silver trade, and when the Spanish started taxing their silver exhorbitantly, they revolted. The museum also had examples of pre-colonization artwork, which was beautiful - and clearly still a popular style, as we saw an 800 year old vase that was painted almost identically to the lamp in our hostel, which we found amusing.

Since I don't have any new pictures to share today, here's a written bit of local color: there's an old man who sits on the street just down from our hostel, playing his guitar and singing, seemingly all day long - he's there when we walk to school and he's there when we've passed by in the evenings. He seems to prefer American/English-language songs; so far we've heard him singing Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, show tunes and once, I think, a Britney Spears song. But it's pretty clear that he doesn't actually speak English: all the syllables run together into this mix of sound that sort of resembles English. It's a bit of a challenge every morning to identify the song he's singing. I don't usually give money to street performers, but I think before I leave I'll have to send at least a few pesos his way - so far, he's been a good diversion in the mornings.

Tomorrow (if more people sign up to meet the minimun group size), the school will running an excursion to San Miguel de Allende, a neighboring town about an hour away known for its artistic community and, I hear, some truly beautiful hot springs. We'll also be visiting Dolores Hilalgo, which ostensibly has some sort of historical significance but, by the comments of our teachers and other students, is mainly memorable for the odd flavors of ice cream produced there, such as avocado, tequila, cactus and pork-skin. I'm not sure I'm adventurous enough to brave the pork-skin ice cream, but if the trip happens, I'm sure I'll manage to bring back a report about one of the other flavors.

La ciudad es muy divertida

2009-02-11T13:12:00.007-05:00

Just wanted to share a few pictures of some buildings around Guanajuato - last night's post was getting a little long! This is the street our school is on (it's the yellow building on the right):

This is one of the many plazas in Guanajuato, Plaza de la Paz:

The basilica of Guanajuato is on this square:

As is the little place we ate lunch on Monday:

We're going out tonight to watch the Mexico vs USA football game at a restaurant with some other people from the school, which should be a lot of fun. (We had to promise to cheer for Mexico, but since I don't even know who plays for the US, I felt okay about that.)

The main adventure this morning was the yogurt I had bought last night for breakfast: piña-apio-nopal. I knew "piña" was pineapple, and thought, "How bad could the rest be?" After tasting the bright-green yogurt, the dictionary came out, and I discovered that my breakfast was pineapple-celery-cactus yogurt. Not quite as bad as it sounds, as it turns out, but certainly a unique flavor, to say the least.

We're also getting used to the sound of roosters crowing every morning, and all the dogs in the city (and there seem to be lots of them!) barking every night.

¡Hasta manaña!

¡Hola! Me llamo Christina y soy de Estados Unidos

2009-02-10T13:16:00.015-05:00

So, I'm not going to even attempt to catch up in any meaningful way from the last time I posted here (residency interviews: done; NaNoWriMo: epic fail, but I'm okay with that; knitted: two sweaters, a shawl, most of a pair of socks; holidays: amazing; current educational state: ready to graduate; wedding: mostly planned). However, I do want to start posting again, in order to chronicle this next month.

I'm currently in Guanajuato, Mexico, studying Spanish with my friend Kristen (from med school) at Escuela Mexicana. We arrived on Sunday, and have already gotten a feel for the city. There are about 150,000 residents, and the city is full of plazas, churches and open-air restaurants. There's actually no car traffic in the historic center of the city; instead, all car traffic is diverted to underground tunnels that run beneath the city.

Beneath those tunnels, our tour guide told us yesterday, are drainage tunnels, as Guanajuato is built in a valley. The surrounding homes and businesses tower over the central city, which is gorgeous, but apparently the city had quite the problems with flooding until around the 1920s, when the drainage tunnels were constructed.

But so far we have mostly seen our hostel (Casa Mexicana) and the school. The school is a large building off a small side street open to pedestrian travel only, and there are several stories of classrooms. It's really a beautiful building - here's the foyer:

Just off to the right of the foyer is a large room with tables, chairs and (all importantly) wireless internet access; this will be where most of my posts are made from.

The best part of the school, however, is the roof:

The buildings here are neither heated nor cooled, but constructed to hold heat in winter and keep cool in summer. They are certainly good at keeping cool, at least, and this morning I very much appreciated being able to duck up onto the roof between classes to warm up in the sun!

We're staying at a hostel run by the school, so all the people staying there are also taking classes. The women who run the hostel are very lovely, but they speak no English, and, between the two of us, Kristen and I speak very little Spanish, so we've been mostly miming our interactions. It's been working out so far.

Our room is actually very lovely (if also a bit chilly):
We have a beautiful window overlooking the interior courtyard of the hostel:

And our bathroom, while spartan with regards to light fixtures, is large and equipped with running water that is (so far) consistently warm, so overall, I'm very happy with our accommodations. As for classes, I've already learned the alphabet, how to order in a restaurant, some words for food, some regular verbs and how to tell time, so we're keeping pretty busy "academically." And speaking of classes, I do have some tarea to complete tonight, so I will just say ¡buenas noches y hasta manana!

don't be shy, don't shut your eyes

2008-11-06T00:11:00.008-05:00

Got distracted by the HISTORIC, AMAZING ELECTION (ahem), but did manage to write over 1700 words today, so I'm just barely under pace, even with two days of no writing at all. A huge shout-out to Ben for very sweetly nudging me to get back to it.

I've "finished" an essay on why primary care is still important in our sub-sub-specialist era of medicine, and started one reflecting on the challenges and the crystalline moments in palliative care. ("Finished" in quotations because it's terribly rough and needs tons of editing, but I have to keep reminding myself that that's what December is for.)

Also, I cast off both the Luna Moth shawl and the Adamas shawl today, so ... good day all around, I think. (And I got that second widget working in the sidebar, finally. Plea to web designers: Please don't post sample code with a punctuation error in it. Thanks.) Tomorrow's goals: block at least one of the shawls and write 2500 words. But first, a cozy nap. :)

title from "Be Like Water," by Sarah Fimm.

YES WE CAN

2008-11-05T01:29:00.004-05:00

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

- Barack Obama, presidential acceptance speech, November 4, 2008.

half accidental, half painful instrumental

2008-11-02T23:58:00.003-05:00

The NaNo website and associated widgets are not behaving, but ... 5,039 words. I'm almost done with my first essay. That ... was easier than I thought it was be.

title from "Half-Jack" by the Dresden Dolls. Because somehow goth-grunge-trip-hop-punk is what my writing music turns out to be.

i wish i was a writer who sees what's yet unseen

2008-10-31T17:15:00.005-04:00

So when the only elective I could register for was another two weeks of radiology, I decided that I didn't have any more excuses, so I'm going to try and do NaNo. Ten essays, 5,000 words apiece, 30 days - piece of cake, right? I am going to try and write more than the average word count I'd need in these first two weeks, because the end of November will be interviews and Thanksgiving and less free time, probably, even though I'll technically be taking two weeks of vacation.

So, there's a new widget on my sidebar so you can see how I'm going, word-count-wise, and I'll try and post here with updates - public failure to finish might help motivate me. I decided to post my notes, thus far - my scribbled thoughts may not make much sense, but I have a few ideas for topics, at least. Anything not on the list that you'd like to see me write about?

- primary care and how it will save the world. (ha. not really.) Radiologist wanted ENT to look at his infected ear, woman d/c from hospital not on warfarin --> in ED two months later c PE. People need to expect more from their doctors. The trap of the specialist perspective. Common sense.

- On bodies, body modesty, viewing people (self included) as bodies, too, not just brains. Looking at their insides, "eww, gross." Body "modesty" as contributing factor to sedentary lifestyle, obesity.

- palliative care, pain control, end-of-life. the guy I'll never forget from research experience. why doctors hate it and why I don't, really. how is this influenced by my own life experiences (or lack thereof). grief. psychiatrist who couldn't treat grieving pt.

- obstetrics in the inner city. frustration, difficulties, "i just keep getting pregnant and i don't know why." troubles with contraception: "i don't want anything up there." delaying own child-bearing.

- how medicine changed me, how I thought it might and how it did. Decisiveness, callousness, comfort level with people not my own.

- how people view their doctors. trust. responsibility. "are you in high school?" how doctors don't have the doctor-patient relationship any more. "who thinks their doctor is above average?" fraternity of mutual silence, united front. self-policing. double standards: our own drug use, etc, vs our patients' drug use.

- why abortion, what people do and don't get about abortion, looking at it from the inside vs looking at it from the outside. S. L. MSFC. Bunker mentality.

- difficult patients. what makes a patient difficult. M. J. why difficult patients get better and worse care.

- pediatrics vs adult medicine: EMLA, murals, art therapy, etc. why do we care for children differently? their fault vs someone else's. pressure (self-imposed) to get it right; disability matters less to us at fifty than at five. integrating consideration for life and life factors into care: teachers, unlimited visiting hours, mental health care.

- CPR, resuscitation, "saving lives," what actually saves lives and what medicine looks like on TV. how TV medicine shapes patients' expectations. how it shapes doctors' expectations.

title from "Wish (Komm Zu Mir)" by Franka Potente, from the movie "Run Lola Run." My favorite techno-German song. Mostly because I don't know any others, but if you've got some to share, I'd be interested for sure. I'm still trying to figure out what the song was that played on German MTV incessantly in 2004, with the video of creepy monster-kids' birthday party - one of those artistic endeavors that was just so bizarre you had to love it.

that time of year when we push ourselves ahead

2008-10-29T18:28:00.013-04:00

*deep breath*

So, it's been, um, a while since I was here. Things that happened/were accomplished since July:
- I've applied for residencies (in family medicine, of course) and scheduled my interviews. So that feels good. I'm really looking forward to the interview thing, actually, even though it's going to be tiring and all that, but I'm excited to meet the people I'll be working with for the next 3-4 years, whomever they are. (For the record, in case anyone is interested, I applied to UH here in Cleveland; Montefiore, Beth Israel and Columbia in NYC' Tufts, Boston Univ Medical Center and Lawrence in the greater Boston area; Brown in Rhode Island; and Middlesex and UCONN in Connecticut.)
- Did rotations in emergency medicine and geriatrics, did my acting internship in pediatrics, and am now chilling in musculoskeletal radiology. And kind of scrambling to figure out what rotation I'm doing for the next two weeks, but that's another story.
- Took Step 2 CS! Our clinical skills exam, part of our licensing boards, is a big pain in the butt (expensive, offered in only 5 cities, long and tiring) but I took it in Houston on Monday and now I am done with standardized testing! Until Step 3 in, like, a year or two, but whatever.
- Attended some lovely weddings of family (my cousin Lisa) and friends (my childhood friend Christine). Discovered that yes, it is possible to drive to Connecticut and back to Ohio for a weekend. Thanked God and good fortune that I have a life partner willing to actually do all that driving, so all I had to do was sit and knit and be conversational and not get a DVT.
- I've also been knitting a ton, although, as Ben is quick to point out, I haven't actually finished a project since, like, May or something. However, I believe firmly in the utility of parallel knitting projects and many of them are nearing completion, so stay tuned. I've been working on:

- a shawl of my own design (ran out of (discontinued) yarn on the edging, need to devote some time to emailing Ravelers to see if they'll part with a skein)
- a scarf for my mom's birthday (in May) that I, um, still haven't finished. (There's beading. It's driving me crazy. It will be done by the time I go home in November.)
- a Pi shawl that may or may not be wedding material (halfway through the edging, it started to get not-fun; I'll be picking it up again soon when I'm ready for more finicky knitting)
- a pair of socks that exist solely for portable knitting, which I started during the AAFP conference in August. They'll get finished while I'm interviewing.
- the Luna Moth shawl (ran out of yarn doing the bind-off. This was even more annoying as I purchased three skeins of this yarn, but could not find the third skein anywhere in the house. Since it's only $2.99 a skein, KnitPicks got an emergency order from me.)
- another shawl (noticing a trend?) that may be a gift so I'm not going to say more about it. But I got a lot done while I flew to Houston and back earlier this week, with connections both ways.

However, as it gets colder (and these projects get finished), I think I'm going to transitioning to winter knitting. I appreciate a lapful of wool in November in a way that's just not possible in August. I have yarn and patterns for the Urban Aran, cardigan version (Cascade Ecological Wool in beige) and the Sayuri sweater (Rowan RYC Soft Lux in amethyst or green - I lost it a little when I found it for $1.99/skein, so I bought two sweaters' worth. This is how that excessive stash thing starts, isn't it?), so those will probably be my next projects.

In other news, I'm thinking very seriously about doing NaNoWriMo. (Since their site has been very slow, the short version: November, National Novel Writing Month, write 50,000 words in 30 days. Go.) Except I think I'm going to skip the "novel" business and just try to write 50,000 words of more-or-less non-fictional essays. I've had a few medically-related essays percolating for a while, and this might be a good way to actually get them down on paper. And interview season might be just the right time to reflect on the practice of medicine. And writing ten 5,000 word essays seems a lot more possible at this point than 50,000 words of plot. So we'll see.

Tangentially, I'm loving Genius, iTunes' version of Pandora: you pick a song, and it builds a playlist from your library based on that song. I've been actually listening to music again, and enjoying a lot of the stuff I'd forgotten I had. (If I end up doing the NaNoWriMo thing, I have a feeling it will come in handy.)

title from "The End of Summer" by Dar Williams. Because it's snowing here today.

drive-by posting

2008-07-28T23:07:00.010-04:00

Hi! I know, it's been forever. And I'm not even really here (because how do I get caught up on two months?!) except for how I didn't want July to go by (like June almost did) without posting so... hi! How's it going? Here's what's been occupying me lately:

Things that Are Awesome:
- Manhattan. Seriously. I had my doubts about living in NYC but I had a great month when I was there at a fantastic hospital that is basically exactly what I want out of a residency, and I'm getting pretty excited about this next-stage-of-our-careers business.
- The beach. Specifically the beach in Westerly, RI, where Ben and I passed a lovely week with my family and Anna earlier this month. Speaking of...
- Family and friends. A lot of this online silence has been because I've been visiting and hanging out with all the people I love in person, which has been delightful.
- Weddings, other people's. Specified as such because of how you just get to buy presents and show up looking pretty and eat cake and enjoy how much they're enjoying their day. And also because of how we've been to a few lovely ones recently. Planning ours is lots of fun, too, but... see below.
- Being done with Step 2. I think this is self-explanatory.
- Knitting!
- (and, similarly) Reading! (I have actual books to talk about soon!)

Things that Are Hilarious:
- How the Cleveland Clinic starches the scrubs. I always forget this, and then I pull on a weirdly-crisp set of scrubs, and I think about how much better my real clothes would look if someone else tended to them.
- That was actually it, really. Starch! On what are essentially pajamas! I don't even know how (or to be perfectly honest, why) to starch real clothes!
- (The back half of season 3 of Entourage was pretty fantastically hilarious, though, now that I think about it. Highly recommended.)

Things that Will Never Be Done, OMG (even though they totally will be, of course):
- Ordering wedding invitations. Seriously, people: April 25th, 2009. Come hang out. It'll be fun. (I have to think about cardstock weights and ink colors for this?)
- Importing my CV into ERAS* one line at a time. Bah.
- Laundry. Bah again.
- Getting my car to e-check. Mostly because it is so low on my internal list of priorities, I keep forgetting it's, you know, something I have to do.
- Wading through my back-logged email.

Things I'm Looking Forward to:
- AAFP** conference: on Wednesday! (If anyone knows of some crazy-cool hotspots in Kansas City, let me know.) (I'm serious.)
- International Blog Against Racism Week: I talked about this briefly last year, but this is a really interesting (and, for me, a knock-me-out-of-my-comfort-zone) event, and I'll probably be linking around to different posts that I find intriguing. If I manage to blog more regularly.
- Emergency med rotation: So this technically started today, but I enjoyed it a lot and I'm looking forward to the rest of this month. (Which you should all remind me about when I'm cranky from having my circadian rhythms completely disrupted.)
- Being done with ERAS: which is a long way off (see above) but I've got my eyes on the prize, people. Or something.

So, that's ... wow, about all I've done for the last two months. I've been so computer-shy recently that not only have I not been blogging, I haven't been reading at all. So... how've you been?

* ... Electronic Residency Application System? Too lazy to look it up, but you get the gist.
**American Academy of Family Physicians (i.e. my future tribe) (!)

Edited to add: I can't believe it's been 19 days since I've listened to music on this computer! That's... really sad.

what he said

2008-06-04T23:40:00.003-04:00

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for this country that we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.

- Barack Obama's speech on June 4, 2008, St. Paul, MN (excerpted from transcript here, video available here.) If you're so moved, click to donate to Obama's campaign or to MoveOn.

I have nothing relevant to put here today

2008-06-04T21:31:00.005-04:00

Belatedly, the answers to a meme that Sarah tagged me for (and then Ellen tagged me, too, with a slightly different variant, and so I really had to get my act together):

What were you doing ten years ago?

Finishing my freshman year of high school. So... getting ready to go to Girl Scout astronomy camp - correctly termed a Wider Opportunity (I kid you not) - for three weeks (the first time I flew on an airplane without my parents!) and reading unholy amounts of classic SF - that was pretty much The Summer of Asimov. Just starting to think about being an adult. Crushing on increasingly nerdy boys. Starting to question how much of the Nicene Creed I really believed. (And re-reading Contact over and over. These were not entirely unrelated activities.) Probably talking on the telephone a lot - which was maybe by that point cordless. No cell phones! I used my dad's email address! Uphill both ways!

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

Um, the day is mostly over, so getting to bed at a reasonable hour is the only one on the list, really (and I'm here blogging, so.... that should tell you how well that's going). Things that were on the agenda today were attending my respirator training and fit-testing, which was about as exciting as it sounds. Spending some money at the Union Square Greenmarket because I like supporting these kinds of things - but the rhubarb lady from Monday was not there today, so I only bought a few apples. Registering (finally!) for Step 2 CS and CK, which I did. And, you know, getting up on time, which I did not accomplish, as my cell phone alarm entirely failed to go off. Luckily, Fran woke me up, but, man, I haven't moved that fast in the morning in a while: it was literally ten minutes from bed to subway, people. (I've been showering at night, so that helped.)

What are three of your bad habits?

Oh, my. Just three? Procrastination, although I like to think of it as relaxation time management. Talking before I think (mostly evidenced by me asking you over and over what you're doing this weekend, etc). And my perennial messiness, which I think may count as at least two bad habits - the making of piles (papers, clothes, whatever) and the real lack of attention I give tub, toilet, etc.

What are five places where you have lived?

Um. I totally fail this one. Ridgefield, Connecticut. Cleveland, Ohio. Aix-en-Provence, France. And I guess you could count Queens, New York, although I only lived there until I was two and the only thing I remember is the dog from next door. I've visited D.C. a lot? And, oh, I guess you can count Manhattan now, too, although I've only been here three days. But I'll be here for two months out of the next six, so that's something.

What are five jobs you have had?

Jobs I worked for monetary compensation, in temporal order: Cashier. Biophysics research assistant. College tour guide. Protein crystallography research assistant. Undergraduate admissions interviewer. And that's it, really, unless you count my med school research. Oh, and babysitting, I guess. (Let me tell you about the time I applied for a job at the mall and all I could put on my resume was biophysics research jobs, etc. No, really. I failed to land a job selling cheap jewelry to fourteen-year-olds - it was right around that point that I realized I had better stay in academia until I had enough letters after my name to be employable, because I had absolutely no real-life skills.)

Snacks I enjoy:

Cheese, oil-cured olives, apples, dried fruit and nuts, hummus, chocolate and coffee. And almost any baked good known to humankind.

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Probably I'd buy lots of yarn, let's be honest. When I got that out of my system: fund some research into women's and reproductive health issues, because Lord knows the government's not paying to study women's reproductive health choices. Set up one of those Millenium-type prizes for working out a practical method of clean energy production. Maybe fund development of private space travel, mostly because it would be awesome. In terms of philantropy, I'd probably do something like Kiva, to fund microloans (and maybe macroloans, I'm no economist) to entrepreneurs in the developing world, because I think it's really the best solution we've found yet for effectively getting money from the developed into the developing world. And I'd give Greg Mortenson a substantial budget to work with. (I think I'm imagining myself as a multibillionaire, here with this list.)

--------------------------

I have lots to say about NYC, but it's getting late so... suffice it to say that so far it's been great and I'm getting very excited about graduating.

always getting curious and leaving town

2008-06-01T22:52:00.005-04:00

So here I am, posting from New York City! (Thank you, ELWIN, whoever you are, for your unsecured wireless network.) The drive out from Cleveland yesterday was surprisingly enjoyable - I turned on an audiobook and settled in for eight glorious hours where no one's BP meds needed to be held, nobody needed a little something to help them sleep, and no one needed a gold form or a social work consult or a dressing change. I'm not sure what it says when driving aross the boring part of Pennsylvania is a pleasant change of pace, but there was no traffic, no bad weather, no speeding tickets and I got to listen to the entirety of a scifi novel plus a few mix albums of new-to-me music I had downloaded from somewhere or other, and it was really quite a lovely time.

Of course, the down side was that I had to leave town on Ben's birthday yesterday, which really couldn't have worked out worse in terms of timing. I did get to celebrate a little in the morning with some birthday French toast (which I completely forgot to garnish with the birthday candles I had bought and then hid so well I didn't see them, so Ben, imagine there were birthday candles. I'm sorry, hon).

So, now I'm here in New York and I've got orientation at Beth Israel tomorrow at 8:15. I'm going to try and post much more frequently this month, since I know I won't be able to keep up nearly the correspondance I'd like with everyone while I'm gone, so... I'll let you know how things go. Hope everyone had a good weekend!

title from "La Familia" by Mirah, which I've already used but whatever, a little more peppy pop music can never hurt

it's back to sleep to re-dream me

2008-05-20T21:20:00.000-04:00

I actually have a couple of hours free tonight, and I am too tired to knit. Even surfing Ravelry is making me feel exhausted. Send help. Or possibly caffeine.

Recent happy-making things have been:

- Attending my sister Katherine's college graduation this weekend! Spent less than 24 hours in Rhode Island, but I was able to celebrate with her and my family the night before and see her all dressed up in cap and gown. (Sadly, I had to drive back to catch my plane before she walked, but I was able to wave at her during the procession.) (I'm not sure she reads this at all, but if you're reading, Katherine, congratulations again!)

- Less life-changing, but Ben and I have excavated the office closet and set up a workable desk situation for me. No more laptop at the dining room table! And I got to page through all my old college notes before recycling them, and let me tell you, not only was my handwriting neater and my notes far more carefully taken, I was a lot smarter four years ago. At the very least, I knew far more calculus. (However, I also apparently thought jokes about safer math through parenthesis usage were funny enough to scrawl in the margins of my notes. So it maybe evens out.)

- We also made a lot of pesto and I managed to document the process before returning Jen's camera. (Incidentally ... expect a lot of text here until I find someone who can fix a digital camera for less than $200.) But for now, pictures!

This is just under half of the basil we went through - the other half is already stripped off the stems and soaking in the other sink.

One finished batch with more basil leaves and cheese waiting behind it. (I think I minced something like 20 cloves of garlic that day as well. Our pesto is not particularly subtle.)

The fruits of our labors. As we manage to do every time, we vastly under-oiled it, so the effective volume of this batch is far greater, since we're adding oil to it as we use it. (We've finally figured out it's because the pesto heats up in the processor and we go by texture - which is obviously much firmer once it sits in the fridge for a while. We're learning.)

- Also, we went to see "Prince Caspian" last night and, people, it was excellent! I didn't love the first Narnia movie, actually - I thought the effects were simultaneously overdone and not very good, and the pacing was a bit off, but this one is fantastic. (Also, I am completely envious of Susan's badass-ness and amazing outfits, although where I'd be able to wear a cut-on-the-bias chain mail shirt and leather bustier is ... probably no place I'd want to be, come to think of it. She looked great, though, and I am completely smitten by her archery skills.) The rest of the cast was very good, too, although Caspian's accent was a bit irritating at times (mostly the times it faded in and out during the same scene). It was good enough that I broke out our omnibus edition of The Chronicles of Narnia last night and re-read a bit of The Lion... last night before bed. (I seem to recall Prince Caspian being not that good, and I didn't want to spoil the movie experience.) At any rate, I'm excited that the summer movies are starting to come out, although I'm not even sure what else is on the horizon.

- And it's off to bed with me - when I left tonight, we were four patients over our cap. I don't think tomorrow's going to be any better - we've already got a number of patients waiting in the internal medicine wings for as soon as we discharge our current patients. Wish me luck.

title from "Wake Up Exhausted" by Tegan and Sara. Yes, it's a link to a Grey's Anatomy fan vid. I can't help where these girls got their big break. (Have liked them for years! Since they toured with Ben Folds! God, I'm so curmudgeonly some days.)

to break the still of day

2008-05-07T21:55:00.010-04:00

Just popping in here to say that I'm loving family medicine. The patients come into the hospital, they get more or less fixed up, and then the same person follows up with them after their inpatient stay. And, you know, addresses the issues that landed them in the hospital in the first place. Love it. (Additionally, we're only calling consults when we have an actual question for the consultant. My consultant calls are going like this: "We've got a patient who's still having blood in his urine 4 days after his traumatic Foley placement and we've worked him up, done these labs, gotten this imaging and we're thinking it's 60/40 for Diagnosis A vs Diagnosis B but we'd like your input and additionally some recommendations on the current best treatment modalities for either diagnosis" vs "This patient has diabetes and we need endocrine on board. Just because." Incredible.)

I really don't have much else to say, and I'm off to bed in about 5 minutes, but just - *happy sigh* When do I get to go do this full-time for real again?

Also, totally stolen from Ben: go check out Pandora - it's this fantastically fun music streaming site where you enter in one or two of your favorite artists and it builds you a radio station. I've already found 3 new artists whose stuff I love.

title from "Of Angels and Angles," The Decemberists.

here's wishing you the bluest sky

2008-05-04T11:35:00.005-04:00

Book log time! Since the things I'm knitting are a) gifts or b) maybe possibly going to be submitted to Knitty one day. And I haven't cooked anything blog-worthy all week.

Knitter's Almanac, Elizabeth Zimmerman, 1974. I don't usually claim to have "read" knitting books, as I don't really count a pattern book as "reading" but this delightful little volume is really more like a journal with some knitting thrown in than a pattern book. It's the first EZ book I've owned, and I can see why she has such a following in the knitting community: she's smart, funny (in that wry, transplanted-Brit sort of way) and completely on your side. I enjoyed her little asides directed towards the reader and how she simultaneously elevates the craft of knitting to art and emphasizes that it's art anyone can produce. I'm trying to curtail the knitting-related spending, but when I give myself a knitting budget again, I think I'm going to be hunting down a few more of her books.

Worlds of Exile and Illusion, Ursula K. LeGuin, 1964-1967. Three novels in one volume, I read this both to expand my exposure to LeGuin's work and as preparation for writing again. I love how LeGuin has such a sense of the vastness and the continuity of history, how she can link events separated both by hundreds of years and light-years and show you the connectivity among the events, without beating you over the head with it. She's great at world-building, but her characters - like many seem to be in SF - are not particularly well-fleshed out. I was reading this with more of a critical eye than I usually do with fiction, and so I noticed the lack of vivacity her characters have - the reader has a good sense of their motivations, but maybe not for what lies beneath their motivation. Definitely an entertaining and thought-provoking set of stories, but I think LeGuin's preference for the short story shows through here: these seemed to be more novellas than novels.

James Tiptree, Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, Julie Philips, 2006. I'm not quite finished with this one, but it's a biography of one of LeGuin's contemporaries and friends, so it fits here, I think. I first heard about Tiptree from the Tiptree Award, "an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender." James Tiptree, Jr was the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon, a Chicago socialite, CIA agent and psychologist who wrote speculative fiction throughout the 1960s and 70s. Tiptree was secretive and conducted all his SF relationships (many of which turned into deep friendships with editors and other writers, including LeGuin), via letters, and didn't meet any SF colleagues in person until his mother died and correspondants deduced that from that week's obituaries that Mary Bradley, whose obit listed as a survivor her only child, Alice Bradley (Mrs. Huntington) Sheldon, was in fact Tiptree's mother. I haven't actually gotten to that part of the biography yet (but Mary is very ill, so I imagine it's coming), but even if you have no interest in SF, this is a fascinating work. Alice Bradley Sheldon was a remarkable and, really, tragic woman - from her behavior and writings, she was probably bipolar, and bisexual if not lesbian - in an era that didn't really understand either. She led a riotous and richly full life - and a lot of that was probably an underlying mood disorder, but it makes for interesting reading, especially when filtered through Julie Philips' perspective as a woman writing in 2006, and reflecting at length upon the positions, freedoms and restrictions women had over Alli's lifetime, which spanned from 1915 to 1987. I highly recommend this and if anyone would like to borrow my copy when I'm done, just let me know.

The Omnivore's Dilmenna, Michael Pollan, 2006. I'm not sure I can say anything about this book that hasn't been said already, but everyone who eats in the developed world really ought to read it. This, with Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, further sold me on the "locavore" movement. The way food gets grown, transported and consumed in this country is really appalling when you look at it, and the only reason it's worked for this long (since the 1950s or thereabouts) is that no one really had looked very closely at it until now. I think (from my very limited perspective since I wasn't, you know, there) that the organic movement in the 1960s and 70s was reaching for this point but didn't quite get there. And I'm not sure if the research and the information was really possible to obtain to put it all together until now, now that we have a better understanding of the environmental cost of fossil fuels, and how soil architecture works and more independent agencies taking a look at what's going on in terms of our food production. And I don't think it's so much the pesticides, etc, that are the problem -which is why I've always been kind of wishy-washy on the organic thing - but it's the way in which our crops and food animals are being fertilized and growth-hormoned and what-have-you past the point of healthy growth so that they require such intense levels of pesticides and antibiotics to survive: that's the root problem. I've been idly compiling a mental "required reading" list for the post-industrial age - in terms of understanding how our society and our economy works and doesn't work and how it suceeds and fails and why - and this is close to the top of that list.

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Atul Gawande, 2007. I still haven't read Complications, but I will have to look it up. I breezed through this, and I enjoyed it a lot - it was interesting to read a surgeon writing for a lay audience from my perspective as someone within the medical field. I appreciate that there are physicians writing about these issues, and forcing change from the inside: I've found there's a lot of resistance among existing doctors towards even conducting performance-based outcomes research, let alone grading/judging/paying doctors based upon those outcomes. But I think it's coming, and frankly, I think it's past due - every other profession in this country is pretty consistently evaluated on their performance in one way or another, and it's the worst kind of arrogance to state that our profession is so special we can't possibly be judged by a standardized metric and we're all performing at the very top of our abilities. Because we're not, and no matter how you look at it, just the act of evaluating performance makes people perform better. Which was part of Gawande's point, I think, and it's certainly something the medical profession - and its consumers and customers - need to hear.

~

Well, that got a bit long-winded. Events of note in real life, short form, include:

- Ben and I celebrated our "T -1" anniversary on April 25th - less than a year till we get married! We had a lovely dinner in (truffled wild mushroom risotto, which was pretty tasty if I do say so myself) and brainstormed ceremony/vows ideas, which was fun. And also made us realize - again - that we started dating in high school. We were going through this little worksheet thing for vows ideas and it was all "talk about your first date, about how you met each other." And we met on the stage crew for the spring musical and our first date was going for ice cream at Mr. Shane's and I had to be back home at 9 pm because my parents were terrified that I was out with a boy and there was just so much cognitive dissonance there. But it was a lot of fun and while we don't have anything actually written down yet, we have (just less than!) a year and a good sense of what we want from the ceremony, so I think we're in good shape.

- Relatedly, we went to the Unitarian Universalist church last Sunday, and really enjoyed the sermon - a very interesting mediation on the whole Jeremiah Wright thing that I was going to blog about before I got sideswiped by the cold from hell last week. I really enjoy the UU perspective and position as religion/spirituality as a basis for fueling social justice and I think we're both pretty comfortable with the idea of finding a UU minister for the ceremony (and possibly as a spirtual home for our family thereafter as well.)

- Okay, I did say this was the short form, so: starting my family medicine AI tomorrow! (Two months solid of doing what I want to do. I can't wait.)

- Still looking for a place to live in June, but have two possible people from Craiglist and one from the plea I posted in the NYC Ravelry forum, so I'm feeling a bit more settled about that.

- Spent the weekend hiding from the rain by doing laundry and gift-knitting. And rewatching LOTR: The Return of the King. Now I'm off to the gym and the grocery store. How can you all stand the excitement of reading about this?? :)

title from "Better Things," Dar Williams. How is this song not on YouTube?

squeals

2008-04-28T19:34:00.005-04:00

Okay, I have a journal club presentation to put together tonight and so I'm not actually here posting except: I was (momentarily) procrastinating with the presentation thing and discovered that Kay Gardiner herself favorited my kitchen rug on Ravelry! (I'm not the only one who occasionally checks her projects to see if anyone likes her stuff, right? Right.) At any rate, I'm just sitting here bursting with knitterly pride.

....all right, back to work.

when May is rushing over you

2008-04-20T21:16:00.011-04:00

Eight pounds of strawberries? Is, for the record, an enormous quantity of strawberries. If you were wondering. (Seriously. If you ever find yourself standing in Costco, telling yourself that maybe you might need the second gigantic box of fruit, you don't. Trust me.)

But, now I have 16 half-pint jars of jam cooling on our dining room table. And two cookie trays full of quartered strawberries in the freezer. And, unrelatedly, I may be developing seasonal allergies. I think I'm going to be in bed inside the hour.

For those of you in Cleveland, let me know if you prefer strawberry preserves (whole fruits in jelly, basically) or strawberry-blueberry-raspberry jam. The jam fairy will be making deliveries this week.

title from "These Are the Days," 10000 Maniacs.

step from the road to the sea to the sky

2008-04-19T10:23:00.008-04:00

So the laptop is back home again, virus-free and with freshly-vacuumed hardware. I therefore have access to my food pictures, which may or may not be interesting to you, but... I have no real knitting news, so cooking will have to do.

Ben and I made fresh pasta last Sunday, inspired by Brandon's birthday party fun, and made possible by Lola's generous donation of her pasta machine. (Thank you!) We ate half of it on Sunday, and it was... just okay, which was disappointing. I didn't help matters with the sauce I had made, which was not my finest effort, and the texture of the pasta was sort of soft and rubbery and blah. Which was kind of a bummer after spending two hours preparing it. But! We made the rest of the batch on Thursday with an alfredo-type sauce, and it was fantastic - either the pasta seasoned itself in the fridge a little, or we kept a closer eye on the cooking of it or something, but it was very satisfying and something we will definitely do again. We also made garlic cheese bread, more or less on the fly, and that also turned out very well. So, for your culinary enjoyment, some recipes:

Almost Guilt-Free Cream Sauce (no, really):
1. Make a roux: melt 1-2 tbsp butter in a saucepan over medium heat, and stir in 1-2 tbsp flour. Cook with more-or-less continuous stirring, until a paste forms, and keep cooking for at least 3-5 minutes, so the flour won't taste raw. (The paste may thin out some as it cooks, but that's fine.)
2. Season the roux: for a plain alfredo-type sauce, I like to use white pepper (just for the lack of black specks, but black pepper is fine), a dash of salt and about 1/8 tsp nutmeg.
3. Gradually stir in about 1.5 cups milk (I usually use 1%) and keep stirring until well-blended, making sure you stir/whisk out any lumps from the roux. Keep stirring over medium heat until almost ready to serve.
4. Just before serving, add 1/2 c grated parmesan cheese, and stir until well combined. Remove from heat and toss over cooked pasta.

This sauce actually takes almost no time to make (I usually put the pasta water on to boil and then start the sauce, and it's done well before the pasta is) and, given the small amount of butter and the lowfat milk, it's actually not that bad for you - certainly an improvement over the traditional "equal parts butter, heavy cream and parmesan cheese" alfredo sauce recipes. We've used it as is, and we've also added to it - cooked chopped spinach and diced dried tomatoes are a tasty addition. We've also made a southwest-inspired pasta dish using this as a base, and adding chili and chipotle powder to the sauce, and tossing the pasta with black beans and sauteed diced peppers and onions. Anyway, it's one of our staple, easy weeknight meals, and I thought I'd pass it along.

Garlic Cheese Bread
1. Slice 1/2 baguette lengthwise, completely separating the halves. (We used the Stone Oven's Pugliese baguette, which is of course consistently delicious).
2. Mince 3 large cloves garlic and place in small microwavable bowl/ramekin with 1 1/2 tbsp butter, maybe 1 tsp Italian seasoning and black pepper to taste. (We also added a tsp or two of Trader Joe's crushed garlic, because we seriously love garlic in this household.)
3. Microwave on high for 10-15 seconds. Stir and microwave for another 10 sec or so, until the butter is all melted and the garlic a bit cooked, so it loses that acrid, raw-garlic taste.
4. Stir in about 1 tbsp olive oil to the mix, and spread on both cut sides of the bread. (I usually use a spoon to drop the butter-and-garlic mixture on, then spread it around with the back of the spoon - I've found this works better for me than a brush.)
5. Season further with Italian seasoning or pepper if it needs it. (I'm obsessive and fill in the spots with inadequate spice coverage.)
6. Top breads with maybe 4 oz total grated mozzarella cheese (NOT fresh unless you really squeeze the life out of it, as it will be too watery. TJ's "fresh" mozzarella is actually a good compromise)
7. Bake in preheated 375 deg F oven until cheese is melted and browned.

This one isn't maybe all that good for you, but it did turn out to be very, very tasty.

Culinary exploits planned for this weekend include learning how to brew beer from a friend who brews and making strawberry jam from the pounds of strawberries that tempted us in Costco. And maybe some strawberry-blueberry jam, as I still have some of last summer's blueberries frozen in the fridge. (I really need to start trusting that I've frozen enough fruit, and eat this stuff in December, too.)

We were going to make pesto, but the basil that Zagara's had on Thursday disappeared by the time I went back Friday afternoon, so that will have to wait a few weeks. (I think I scared the poor guy in Zagara's, asking him where their basil comes from and what the season is like, and when will I be able to buy 10 bunches, and if I call and ask, will someone know if it's in yet? Last summer's pesto ran out a month ago, and we're going through withdrawal.)

I thought I had pictures of the bread I baked a few weeks ago, but I can't seem to find them. Maybe I'll have to do some baking this weekend, too.

title from "Snow [Hey, Oh]", Red Hot Chili Peppers

we crossed the deepest ocean, cargo across the sea

2008-04-16T20:25:00.007-04:00

A finished object! With pictures scavenged from my Flickr account, since my laptop is getting its annual tune-up down on campus. How much do I love our IT guys? (Having someone else to go virus hunting on my hard drive is a joy I will miss once I'm done with academia.)

Pattern: Tuscany shawl, from No Sheep for You.

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Pure Silk, 4 skeins

Needles: Size 8 / 5.0 mm Knit Picks Options circulars

Modifications: the size 8 needles rather than 6's; only did 9 repeats instead of 11 as written.

(I would have cropped this if I had access to my photo editing software - pretend there's not so much towel and couch in this shot. Also, um, let's further pretend the towel I blocked it on actually covered the entire section of couch I draped wet shawl all over. Thanks.)

Even with the fewer repeats (I bought the yarn on sale and they only had 4 skeins left in this color), it blocked out to a substanstial 72" x 23", which is plenty large enough for me. I've already worn it out three times, as spring is slowly but surely making its way to Northeast Ohio. (It may actually already be the most-frequently-worn knitted object I own, aside from hats/mittens/scarves). I'll have to get someone to take a photo of it out in the wild.

As far as med school goes, well. I'm doing my Perioperative Care rotation and I'm not going to be an anesthesiologist, I can tell you that. Mind-numbingly boring, in terms of the OR stuff. And I've just deleted two-paragraph-long rant on the staff of the pain clinic which no one really needs to hear, but suffice it to say that I've been frustrated by the complete lack of concern re: pain that cannot be fixed with/has not responded to an injection or a spinal cord implant. If they can't treat it with a (very well-reimbursed) procedure, they do not want to deal with you. (Why do these patients keep showing up to the pain management clinic, wanting someone to treat their pain?! )

Okay, so I am going to rant a little: here's a sampling of real, live quotations from the residents and staff: "You have to be careful with these old ladies, because most of them don't really have any pain - they're just pressured by their families to get these drugs so they can sell them." "I try not to write scripts for opioids for people who aren't working - you know, if you're young and active and have a job, then fine. But if you're sitting at home all day anyway, there's no way you need that kind of pain medication." "I'm not going to give you any more Percocet to treat your [diagnosed on MRI, nonoperable, nonblockable, 8/10] pain. It won't fix the problem, it's just going to mask it."

Bah. They're not all bad, but it's just so frustrating to sit there and watch a resident or attending make a total mess of a patient interaction (Patient, very apprehensive on being told they can try a nerve block for her pain: "What's a block?" Attending: "A block? A block is a block! Like at the dentist. We'll do you next week.") and not be able to speak up. I've been trying to catch patients on the way out and explain things if it seems like they're confused, but it's still awful to watch.

Two weeks until my family medicine AI. I cannot wait.

(In other, happier news, I've just made my first international yarn purchase - a cone of gorgeous pewter laceweight cashmere/silk. I think I'm going to attempt Frost Flowers and Leaves with it, once I actually finish a laceweight project.)

title from "Hands on Me" by Vanessa Carlton. I really need to find another album to listen to at the gym, so I don't keep outing myself as a Vanessa Carlton fan like this.

none of us forget about who we are

2008-04-07T19:15:00.019-04:00

But, um, sometimes we forget to blog about it. I do apologize for all the radio silence around here lately - my only real excuse is that I've gotten back into writing fiction lately, and I've been trying to do that when I sit down to write. Nothing really ready for public consumption yet, but I've got about eight thousand words on a story that might have a viable plot if I can bring the fortitude to actually write it. (I'm trying to ignore the fact that it's going to require that I invent a religion from the ground up. There's already poems and folk songs involved, and I think it's just going to get worse.)

If you've been Ravelry-stalking me, you may see that I've uploaded some pictures of finished objects over there. I'm going to wait to post about them, though, in order to do an update sort of entry. (And it'll also give me some ready-made content while I try and remember to post regularly.) But here are some teaser pictures, from the Tuscany shawl and from the kitchen rug:

I've got two laceweight shawls on the needles, one of sort-of my own design that I'm very pleased with and another that I may end up frogging. The pattern isn't really speaking to me, and it's becoming a chore to knit it, which is, you know, not the point. I also started Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts, which are fun but may also get frogged and re-knit (I've only done most of one so far, but I learned a few lessons about colorwork in the process, which was most of my motivation for knitting them). I think it's interesting that I've reached the point in my knitting career where I can quite comfortably contemplate just ripping something out and starting over if it's not working out well. Gone are the days where every stitch was precious to me, and I think that's a good thing.

Non-knitting life stuff has also been proceeding in my blogging absence. I really liked my family med clerkship (surprise fun procedure I enjoyed? Botox, of all things. And I&Ding abscesses, but I knew that already) and I held on to the family-med love during my med-peds elective, so I think the winner is going to be family med in the end. I've set up two away electives in NYC (Beth-Israel in June and Columbia in November) so I'll be checking out some programs relatively soon. And applying not long after that, which is something I'm trying not to dwell on. I still need to work out where I'm staying in June, but I imagine Craigslist will come through when it gets a little closer.

I'm currently doing perioperative medicine at the Clinic, which lives up to its reputation of legendary organization. I'm already thinking about doing another core or elective over there. So I'll be hanging out in the ORs on the other side of the drape for the next little while, trying not to freeze to death. I have never missed being wrapped in non-breathable plastic-coated paper so much as I have today.

title from "La Familia" by Mirah; link goes to a remix that differs subtly but unfortunately from the copy I have sitting on my hard drive.

Anybody wanna join Pownce (messaging/social media/file-sharing network, now out of beta so you don't need an invite) and I can post these there? I'm theraveledskein over there, too - friend me and I can cross-post a copy of the next title-song for your listening enjoyment.

fail with consequence, lose with eloquence

2008-02-18T20:26:00.016-05:00

So, I've never pointed you all over to xkcd, which is a fantastic webcomic about "romance, sarcasm, math, and language." And that's a tragedy I'm rectifying today, because it's absolutely hilarious (and will provide you with a few hours' entertainment browsing the old strips). I thought today's comic "How it works" was an excellent introduction to everything I love about the artist's comics, and also a pretty good reminder of how it does work, sometimes:

Go enjoy reading the rest of them. (Edited to add: And make sure you let the cursor hover over the comic to read the embedded pop-up text thing that I'm sure has an actual technical name. They're usually just as funny as - if not funnier than - the actual text.)

In other news, I just discovered this: Sea Socks Cruise and Yarn Expedition! I want to do this. I particularly love the question in the FAQ: Can you bring your family? As if you have non-knitter family members you might be able to convince to spend seven days on a ship surrounded by knitters, who probably would not be so much concerned with getting a tan on their vacation as protecting the handspun from harsh UV rays. It sounds like heaven. However, I think the family medicine AI is going to have to take priority.

....Also, I started Tuscany (lace shawl from No Sheep for You, scroll down for a pic) yesterday and am already one skein of Pure Silk into it. I'm ... not entirely sure how that happened. Further progress may have to wait until the arrival of my gorgeous new stitch markers from Etsy vendor SeeJayneKnitYarns, as I'm approaching the end of my stitch marker collection with two lace projects on the needles. I did get some good work done on it this morning, when I finally brought knitting to our completely useless Monday morning lectures. It helped some.

title from "Consequence," The Notwist

holidays are made for reading

2008-02-15T17:13:00.007-05:00

There are free books on the internet! I wanted to pass along this link - SF publishing house Tor is trying out this whole viral marketing thing, and the rewards they're offering are pretty good: a link to a downloadable .pdf full-text book every week! I just received my first book today (Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, which I know nothing about), and next week's text is John Scalzi's Old Man's War - I've actually been meaning to pick up a novel of his, so I'm pretty excited about this one. So for all you SF fans out there, Tor.com wants your email address, and in return they will give you weekly free e-books. I'm pretty okay with that.

This is also probably a good time to tell you all about my favorite sites to get free books on the internet. I've had these links on my side-bar for a while, but for those of you who are interested, LibriVox is an archive of free audiobooks, produced by volunteers, whose texts are in the public domain. For a fantastic free archive of such texts, check out Project Gutenburg, which has gotten much more tech-savvy and user-friendly since I first discovered it in, like, 1999. Both places are great for discovering interesting books written, you know, a hundred years ago - I particularly enjoy browsing the medical texts, which are mostly hilarious but frequently terrifying. Also included in the public domain are, of course, all the Victorian era classics - I've been listening to Emma recently while knitting, which has been fun.

I am woefully - woefully - behind on the booklog thing, and I may not return to it, especially since I don't know if anyone but me is interested in reading about what I'm reading. I also think my ability to read literature critically has declined in proportion to my increasing ability to read nonfiction and academic literature critically, so I feel that I have very little that's new or interesting to say about books I've read recently. However, for completeness' sake, here's a list (more or less) of the books I've read since the last booklog update - as I recall, all were pretty good and worth the time.

Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, 2006.
The Invisible Sex, J. M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page, 2007.
Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky, 2002.
Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler, 2005.
Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, William Bryant Logan, 1995. (Truly excellent. Seriously. Completely entertaining and you will never look at dirt the same way again.)
Atonement, Ian McEwan, 2001.
Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor, Perri Klass, 2007.
Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brien, 1994.

I've also been reading The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart, which was a Christmas present (thank you, Lola and Peter!) and a fantastic reference on the art of bread-baking. I've made a few breads so far, including the pain à l'ancienne and the pain de campagne, both of which turned out to be pretty tasty.

I have an ungodly number of works in the "to be read" pile(s), especially after I stopped at a Half-Price Books yesterday out by my clinic in Mentor and left with 7 new books. (Total cost was something like $32, so it wasn't such a ridiculous splurge. But a splurge nonetheless. And here might be the time to mention how much I love buying used books: the sense of history that someone else has read this, the economics of it, the fact that it's effective recycling that works. Love it.) I picked up a Spanish-English dictionary, a pocket guide to Spanish verb conjugations (in anticipation of heading off to Central America next winter to learn Spanish) and some books I've been meaning to read for a while: Octavia E. Butler's Kindred, Toni Morrison's Paradise, and E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. Unfortunately, they had only really crappy knitting books, but you can't have everything.

title from "Things to Forget," Sarah Harmer. (YouTube has failed me on this one, unfortunately.)

we are bound by symmetry

2008-02-10T15:25:00.003-05:00

It's done, it's done, it's done! Here, have some photographic evidence:

That is Henry, blocking away on our sunroom couch. Done! I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to be done with this: the finished product is great, but the knitting was very boring, very fussy - and did I mention boring? The bind-off ALONE took 3+ hours, which I'm really trying not to think about. But it's done (finally!) and Ben will be able to wear it at least a few times this winter, which pleases me immensely - I really hadn't thought I'd get done with this sucker until June. Done!

Pattern: Henry, by Mareike Sattler in Knitty.com

Yarn: Aussie Sock in Oak Moss, about 1.5 skeins

Needles: Size 3 / 3.25 mm for the body and size 2 / 2.75 mm for the first and last three rows.

Modifications: Only that I did 6 of the 7 pattern repeats, mostly for my own sanity. If I were ever to knit this again (which appears very unlikely), I would probably see if I couldn't get away with less freakishly time-consuming set-up and bind-off rows. I don't think the edges look that great, especially considering how annoying the bind-off is. Also, I'm not in love with the little weird ridge at the ends of the scarf, but it's fine.

Done!

title from "Red Right Ankle," The Decemberists

want a garden by the ocean tide

2008-02-09T18:33:00.002-05:00

So I was home visiting my family last week (for my grandpa's 80th birthday!), and I received this very lovely present from my sister Jen:

She threw this flowerpot and tray (or whatever the bit is called that goes under a flowerpot to catch the water) in her ceramics class, and I cannot wait to get some herbs planted into it. I think a big bunch of parsley would look great with the gorgeous glaze. She had also done me a huge favor and glazed a porcelain pot that I had thrown, according to the date carved in the bottom, in 2002:

I can't believe it's been 5 years since I've done any ceramics work. It was something I loved in high school, and I always thought I'd keep it up, but I haven't really touched a wheel since then. (2002, of course, was after I graduated, but if I recall, my ceramics teacher had let me come back the summer after freshman year and play around a bit, which is when I had made that bowl.) I think both knitting - and cooking, to some extent - have fulfilled some of that creative urge, but I do miss the alchemy of taking a lump of mud and turning it into something pretty and useful. Another item to add to my fantasy farm: a wheel and a kiln to share space with the apple orchard and the goats. (I do know how ridiculous this is. Watch I spend the rest of my life living in Manhattan, growing miniaturized fruit trees on the roof and hiding a chicken coop up there from the zoning department like a crazy person.) Anyway. I had really just wanted to share the pretty pictures.

In other news, Ben and I went to go see Chris Rock last night at the Palace Theatre downtown. He was, of course, absolutely hilarious, and I'm not sure if my abs are hurting today from yesterday's workout or from laughing so hard. He had a number of political-oriented segments, and a really interesting bit about white privilege, where he discussed the people who live in his upper-class neighborhood in New Jersey. The four black homeowners in this community are him, Mary J. Blige, Denzel Washington and Jay-Z. All extremely famous people who are superlatively good at what they do. And yet the white guy who lives next door is a dentist, "not a great dentist, not in the Dental Hall of Fame, but a yank-your-teeth-out dentist." The punchline of the segment was along the lines of: "And do you know what a black dentist would have to do to live in this neighborhood? He'd have to invent teeth!" And it's a very funny line, and it's really a great example of what makes Chris Rock's comedy so hilarious, which is that it's absolutely spot-on true. Not literally, obviously, but this segment of his show very clearly illustrates what it means to have white privilege and how the lack of privilege manifests itself in day-to-day life for people of color. (If you've taken a sociology class in the last ten years, I'm sure you've seen this, but more for my own future reference, a link to "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," which is the article that really made the idea of white privilege real and immediate for me - and, I think, the one that first defined it in the academic literature.) At any rate, it was a great show, and also something I'll be thinking about for a while.

(A parting quotation from Robert Heinlein on humor: "Of course it wasn't funny; it was tragic. That's why I had to laugh. I looked at a cageful of monkeys and suddenly I saw all the mean and cruel and utterly unexplainable things I've seen and heard and read about in the time I've been with my own people - and suddenly it hurt so much I found myself laughing.... I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll be people.")

(I sometimes wonder what Heinlein was like in real life. It must have been rough on your psyche to hang out with him all day long, but it just might have been worth it.)

title from "Nolita Fairytale," Vanessa Carlton

fill our mouths with cinnamon

2008-02-05T19:25:00.003-05:00

An actual finished object! With pictures! (And with much thanks to my sister Jen, who has let me take her camera back to Cleveland after I dropped mine off a table and it became displeased with me.)

Pattern: modified from Absorba, the Great Bathmat (from Mason-Dixon Knitting)

Yarn: about 3 lbs total of worsted weight cotton, knit with three strands held together: the same 2 strands of neutral (cream and natural) throughout and changing color with each log cabin strip. From Bernat and Elmore-Pisgah.

Needles: size 13 / 9.0 mm circulars

Modifications: increased the row width to 8 garter ridges, knit a bigger (17 garter row) center square, added two strips to each edge to get a longer rectangle.

I'm not sure what it is about the Mason-Dixon patterns that make me want to knit eight of them in a row, but I found this to be a lot of fun. I'm already contemplating rugs for the kitchen in more tame colors arranged in an actual pattern.

And here's a picture of my latest project, which is really a very old project that I knit 8 rows of and decided that I couldn't handle lace. Eighteen months of knitting experience later, magic happens so that "Oh, my God, I would rather be scrubbing the toilet" turns into, "Oh, the flight's almost over? Maybe we'll have to circle for a while? I hope?"

I've officially caught the lace bug, I think.

title from "Sons and Daughters," The Decemberists

old men with broken teeth stranded without love

2008-01-31T20:03:00.001-05:00

(Odds are Dylan wasn't intending to describe the patient population that comprises the vascular surgery service at the VA, but he did a pretty good job of it nonetheless.)

So, I'm back! Surgery clerkship is over and done with, and I have been a Very Bad Blogger for the duration of it, but frankly, there's enough whining on the internet, and I didn't have anything really positive to say. In summary, now I know how to: do a guillotine amputation, dress a lot of really nasty wounds, distinguish a mono- from bi- from tri-phasic arterial Doppler signal, recognize gangrene at twenty paces and keep my head down while angry people in nicotine withdrawal shout and cuss a lot. Valuable lessons indeed.

General surgery was far, far better, but still not what I want to do with the rest of my life (seriously, if I ever see another *^#%# hernia repair it will be too soon), and I'm happy to leave the OR behind for now. I'll have at least two months of gen surg during residency, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Speaking of residency, a decision has been made! I'm (99.9% sure that I will be) applying for family medicine residencies, and I am going to be spending June and November in Manhattan, checking out Beth Israel and Columbia-Presbyterian, respectively. The away electives are still pending some paperwork, but I think family med is going to be my eventual destination. As such, I am completely delighted to be on my family med clerkship, which has been really fascinating so far.

I start my outpatient clinic next week, and so this week I've been working downtown at Care Alliance, a clinic for the underserved. I don't know the exact specifics regarding who qualifies for care, but a number of the patients are homeless and most are uninsured. It's been a pleasure to be back in a primary care setting, and I've been really enjoying working with this population. I understand how chasing an obscure diagnosis can be really intellectually exciting, and there's the thrill of stabilizing and managing the acutely ill patient, but... seriously? A free bottle of hydrochlorothiazide (a super-cheap diuretic, used to treat high blood pressure and heart failure) can make an incredible difference in somebody's life, and hopefully prevent that somebody from landing in the ED retaining 40 kilos of water and unable to breathe.

So I'm still getting excited about preventative medicine, which bodes well for the whole family med thing. I'm going back to Care Alliance tomorrow, but today my big adventure was tagging along with one of the staff at 2100 Lakeside, a men's shelter downtown. The day included: a discussion with Cleveland PD regarding this hostage situation, a board meeting for another shelter in town, an hour-long intake interview with a new client, and a tour of five of the area's homeless shelters. It was a pretty busy six hours. (Generally, on this day of the rotation, us medical students shadow a nurse who drives a van around town providing mobile medical care for the homeless, but she was off today, so I saw the more administrative side of things, which was probably more of a unique opportunity.)

All and all, it's been a great week, with more professionally interesting and satisfying patient encounters than I had over all five weeks of surgery, so... three cheers for primary care! I've also had the opportunity to get my life back in order, and have gone to the gym, done some knitting, started a non-medically-oriented book, and even cooked dinner a couple times. And blogged! Which will hopefully be a more frequent occurrence from here on out.

title from "Shelter from the Storm," Bob Dylan

remember how it all began, the apple and the fall of man

2007-12-05T17:10:00.001-05:00

"The Golden Compass" comes out this Friday, and I am looking forward to this with perhaps-excessive anticipation - my excuse being that this Friday also marks the beginning of a whole entire weekend off. ("Atonement" also opens this Friday, and I think I'm planning on spending a large and mindless chunk of Saturday at a movie theater somewhere.) I've been perusing the reviews - which have been, sadly, mixed - and I discovered this interview with Philip Pullman: contains some spoilers for the books but is an insightful discussion of the religious aspects of the His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman is one of those authors (along with Kingsolver, Cunningham and Butler) who consistently articulates something very similar to my own views and convictions with much more precision and eloquence than I can manage, and I was particularly struck by this passage, which explicates exactly some of my own frustrations with my natal religion:

What on earth gives Christians to right to assume that love and self-sacrifice have to be called Christian virtues? They are virtues, full stop. If there is an exclusively religious sin (not exclusively Christian, but certainly clearly visible among some Christians) it is the claim that all virtue belongs to their sect, all vice to others. It is so clearly wrong, so clearly stupid, so clearly counter-productive, that it leads the unbiased observer to assume that you're not allowed in the religious club unless you leave your intelligence at the door.

But the whole (lengthy) interview is great: conducted via email with the film reviewer for Christianity Today. Equally intriguing, for me, is reading the interviewer's questions, which are, necessarily, from a pointedly Christian and dogmatically religious perspective. (Also amusing is how Philip Pullman seems to live under a bit of a rock.)

I'm post-call and will be going to bed just about as soon as I'm done with dinner, but I'll be catching up on emails and phone calls to everyone this weekend. (And, Ellen, I'll definitely be taking photos of my new finished objects when I'm home during daylight hours, but if you're still looking for some holiday knitting inspiration, the new issue of Knitty is up today! Also, I've been making a few of these, which are just too fun and completely jump-started my holiday knitting motivation.)

I want to wreck my stockings in some juke box dive

2007-12-03T19:16:00.001-05:00

(Or, you know, be able to stay awake past 10 pm. That would be fun, too.)

There's something about cold rainy days that make me want to cook comfort food and listen to Joni Mitchell albums. Luckily, the weather is completely awful here (just cold enough that it's not quite snowing, but not really raining either) and I got out just after 5 today, so.... there's cornbread and muffins in the oven, and chili simmering on the stove. (If you're reading this and haven't had dinner yet, feel free to stop by around 8:30.) I really do enjoy this first part of winter, when snuggling up with a sweater and tea is not yet necessary to maintain my circulation and so it's just cozily comfortable.

Internal medicine has been tremendously fun, if time-consuming (see above re: my usual bedtime these days) and I'll be sorry to leave it behind and switch to surgery next week. I haven't quite figured out how to blog about my patients without violating HIPAA about six million ways, but I haven't had any crazy cases yet, so it really hasn't been an issue. I did hear today that we have the city's first influenza case in house now - 'tis the season.

I actually got some knitting accomplished over Thanksgiving - the shrug is finished (Karen, remind me to return your needles - thanks!) and I've finished 5 of the 7 repeats of Ben's scarf, so we're making progress. Photos pending.

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving!

I will not be afraid of women

2007-11-15T19:02:00.001-05:00

(Dar Williams may be the most quotable songwriter on the planet.)

I am post-call and have not yet browsed all of this - or even most of it - but check out this collection of thoughts and opinions: "Feminism is not your expectation." Thought-provoking and interesting.

Because I love academics being totally geeky and calling it work: No, I'm not telling you what it's about.

It's hailing here. Profusely. How likely is it, do you think, that tomorrow's admissions are all elderly ladies who slipped and fell and have been hanging out in the ED all night? I hope not very likely. We'll see, I guess. (Also, I've apparently forgotten how to compose the future past tense. Did I completely mess that up back there? And is that even what it's called? Sarah, help me out.)

That's really it, I think. New yarn was recently purchased in a fit of optimism, fueled by the realization that, Oh, crap, it's not that far till Christmas. I really haven't done anything interesting lately, except work through the weekend and think about metabolic acidosis and morbid obesity.

How are you?

poets that we never find time to know

2007-11-11T16:30:00.001-05:00

[I think I'll be titling posts with song lyrics from now on, because of all the things that drive me crazy, coming up with subject lines and titles are one of the things that get me there the fastest.]

So this week has consisted mostly of me falling into bed at 11 o'clock and hauling myself out of it at 5:30 am, with lots of internal medicine in between. Which I'm enjoying far more than I expected to, actually - I'm not the biggest fan of the inpatient setting, but I'm learning exponentially more on this service that I have on any other, my team is great, and I have a ton of autonomy. For example, I wrote my first prescriptions this week! Like, on a prescription pad and everything. I wrote scripts at Metro occasionally, but they had the electronic prescription system, which is vastly superior and less error-prone, etc, and I totally appreciate that. But the prescription pad thing is kind of fun. It's almost like I'm a real doctor. :)

So the actually interesting part of my week, though, was our society dinner at my dean's house on Friday. She invited Dr. Joseph Foley to come and speak, who, sadly, does not have a Wikipedia entry, but he's an internist and neurologist who first described asterixis in 1949. He's in his 90s now, but he's still pretty involved in teaching and community activism. He spoke about his early training in Boston in the 30s and 40s, and his time as a medic in WWII. It was a really interesting evening, and his talk sparked some great conversation afterwards.

A few of us were discussing the existence of the "physician-scholar" - you know, those people (often neurologists, it seems) who are incredible clinicians and also experts in Roman architecture or something totally esoteric, and we were wondering if those kind of physicians are perhaps a casualty to the modern face of medicine. Because none of us seem to have much time to even fully study what we're supposed to be learning, much less pursue an avocational interest in something non-medically-oriented. Or do we find the time for that sort of thing later, once we're attendings or have our own practices? (I'm not sure knitting counts, if only because I usually knit while I'm doing something else.)

Anyway. I think part of these musings stem from the shock to the system that is the transition from research to clinical medicine. I managed to forget how intensely time-consuming this whole thing is. What I do appreciate, though, and what I'm not sure I ever heard before I started clerkships, is that the hours really don't seem that bad when you're there. The wards are always (or usually) incredibly busy, and you've got enough coffee and epinephrine to get you through a 16 hour day without much difficulty. It's only once I'm home, I find, that I'll get hit with it - on my way to the shower or something, I'll find myself kind of looking around the apartment and thinking, Oh, yeah, I live here. That's right. It's this bizarre sensation, when you're conscious for less than an hour a day in your own home, how it starts to feel ... less real. I remember this from when I started on OB, and I think I'll be getting more accustomed to the schedule as time goes by, but this first week has been a bit of a readjustment.

But sleep deprivation and dissociation aside, it's actually been really great getting back to clinical medicine again. I was worried that I would have totally lost those skills after research block, but I can still do a decent physical exam and get an assessment and plan together, so that's reassuring. Hopefully I will have some interesting clinical stories to share soon, but so far it's just been heart failure and renal failure and ... heart failure and renal failure. I think internal medicine will be what it takes to get me back to the gym.

-------

(P.S. - I totally turned on iTunes just now, solely because my Last.fm widget was showing that the last song I listened to was John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" over and over. I'm not sure I fully appreciated the fact that I'd be publicly airing my guilty-pleasure music when I stuck that feature on the blog.)

Back into the fray

2007-11-03T13:57:00.000-04:00

So this research thing is coming to an end, and I'm starting my internal medicine clerkship at UH on Monday. I'm hoping to post occasionally, if only to get my own thoughts in order regarding this medicine thing, but if there's radio silence for a while here, that's the reason.

Ben was out playing poker with some colleagues last night, and I had a rather delightful evening at home - I curled up in bed, watched the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring (and disc one of The Two Towers - shhh) and knit like crazy. I'm now almost halfway through Henry, and it's definitely looking scarf-like, which is gratifying. I had hoped to finish this before, well, now, but at least I finally feel like I'm making progress. (I really need to get my act together and dig out the camera.)

Last weekend was so much fun with Ben's parents - we had a big dinner party on Saturday, which I utterly failed to photograph - but it was really a great time. Everyone brought just amazing food, and my maiden attempt at chicken cacciatore was pretty successful. (I had a lot of help from my grandmother via telephone, but it worked out all right.) And it was really lovely to get to spend some time with Ben's parents. Lola and I did not make it to a yarn shop, though, so she'll have to come visit again.

That's really about it here, I think - this past week has consisted mostly of frantically getting my research manuscript together. It ended up cohering into something I'm fairly proud of (although I totally need a sexier title, as "Associations Among Patient Demographic Characteristics and Cancer Care Practices in the Early Treatment Phase of Advanced Cancer" is pretty yawn-inducing), and we'll be shopping it around to a few journals in January, probably. It's nothing ground-breaking, and will probably end up in some journal with a fifteen-word title, but it's nice to have something completed.

Oh! Ben and I going to Table 45 tonight, as a last-date-before-I'm-living-at-the-hospital sort of thing. I'll report back - the menu looks amazing, and it's been getting pretty good reviews in the Cleveland press, so hopefully we're in for some deliciousness tonight.

Edited to add: Also, I'm not sure if anyone I know in real life is doing it, but I'm sending well-wishes out into the ether for everyone doing NaNoWriMo - every November I think I'll try it, but each year I am just not brave enough. Maybe next year.

Update, Short Form

2007-10-26T10:36:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I've totally given up hope that I will write about all the things I've been up to lately, so I'm going to blog in outline form and call it a day.

- Knitting: working on Henry (and I do mean working.... I think the scarf will be great, but it seriously stresses me out to knit it), made some fingerless mitts with the alpaca yarn that Sarah gave me in August, started this shrug in a purple silk/wool blend. No pictures yet, but the mitts just need their ends woven in, and the shrug is 2/3 finished, so I just may wait and photograph them when they're all done. (I think this new-found obsession with things on size 10 needles is directly related to the fact that I'm knitting a scarf on size 2s.) The unbloggable knitting project has stalled in favor of these, but I'm going to try and get back to it soon-ish. (Christmas knitting? What Christmas knitting?)

- Ben and I were able to go home two weeks ago, which was wonderful - highlights were seeing both sets of parents and my youngest sister, spending time with friends, and finding my wedding dress! All around a great weekend. (Also, I found and acquired dried kiwifruit at a grocery store in Manhattan, which was not a highlight so much as a weird thing I'd never seen before. They're much better fresh, for what it's worth.)

- We also went to Regina Spektor's concert at the Hammerstein, which was fabulous. Go to her site and check out her music videos - she is just as adorable and talented in person. (And she is seriously talented: she's a one-woman show, and there were multiple points at which she was simultaneously singing, playing piano with one hand, drum pad with the other, and stomping on the stage for added percussion. It was like watching someone live inside their music.)

- Research is winding up, which means I am frantically writing two manuscripts simultaneously while endlessly hassling our statistician. I'm sure he's having just as much fun as I am. (EndNote, by the way? Rocks my world. Once it works properly.)

- Ben's parents are visiting this weekend, which is why I have given up hope of really updating the blog this weekend. (A trade I am delighted to make, by the way.) They came in last night, and I'm really looking forward to spending time with them and getting to play tourist at home. (We've already had one culinary adventure, and it's shaping up to be an action-packed weekend.)

- I made pumpkin pie this morning. While wearing a sweater. It really must be fall.

- Also, I really don't have time to do this. I really don't. But I want to - I think it would really interesting to explore the evolution of the concept of a "hospital" historically: start with Islamic medicine c. what, like, 400 AD and the spread of "hospitals" throughout the world. (Because, seriously, there are a lot of ways in which hospitals are structurally and ideologically bad for the administration of health care (and a number of ways in which they do work, of course) but it would be interesting to see how we got to this structure.) Or take a look at the relationship between religion and medicine (ancient temples of healing, hospitals run by religous orders, faith healing, etc) thoughout history. But somehow I don't think I'll be able to crib something together during my surgery rotation. Alas.

Geekery. For real.

2007-10-24T13:24:00.001-04:00

Okay, so I haven't posted in forever, and this really isn't what I meant to post next, BUT I couldn't bear to deprive all six readers of the totally awesome thing I found: Free Rice. I'm not sure how much it really helps the developing world, but it's a vocabulary game where they give you a word, you pick the synonym/definition, and if you're right, you get a harder word; wrong, you get an easier one. (Apparently, since the [really very tiny] ads refresh each time you submit a choice, the sponsors are using the ad revenue to donate rice to the UN. I have my doubts about the efficacy of this, but: vocabulary game!)

There are 50 levels, and each word you get wrong drops you down a level; each three or so words right bumps you up. It's completely addicting (I may have spent an hour on this site last night), and the thing is, it's hard, and I'm usually not too shabby in the vocab department. So far, I've topped out at level 48, but hopefully I'll get to level 50 soon - I'm very curious as to what will be there, because I've already run into a lot of words I've never even heard of. Anyway, go play! It's fun, I swear.

(I totally warned you this was geeky.)

Jes's Pick-Me-Up Dishtowel

2007-10-10T09:33:00.000-04:00

My friend Jes has recently moved down to Mississippi to earn her Ph.D. in chemistry (because she's awesome like that), but is finding the move kind of tough. So I decided to knit her something bright and cheery and also, you know, useful in 95 degree weather. Unsurprisingly, the fine women at Mason-Dixon Knitting came through.

Two ballband dishcloths, and a dishtowel based on the Nine-Patch Dishcloth that Kay Gardiner designed. I modified the pattern in order to make it large enough to use as a dishtowel, and thought I'd post the pattern (such as it is) here, in case anyone is interested.

Yarn: Lily Sugar'n Cream Super Size Solid in White (C1), Hot Pink (C2) and Green (C3). [Each 4 oz (113 g) ball has something like 200 yards; I used one ball each to knit the dishtowel and two ballband dishcloths, and have enough left over for probably another ballband.]

Needles: 4.5 mm/ US 7

Pattern Notes: (Based on Kay Gardiner's Nine-Patch Dishcloth)

There are a LOT of ends to weave in here, what with all the color changes and the striped miters. As someone who hates weaving in ends, I advise you to do it as you go along - not only will the dangly bits of yarn not be driving you crazy, you also won't have to feel like an idiot when you sit down to do two hours of finishing on a dishtowel. (I'm not kidding. Weave in as you go.)

You will be knitting in intarsia for part of the time, and so you may want to divide your C3 ball into two balls. I will admit that I just knit from the other end of the ball, but you may be less slovenly.

Also, I have specified to pick up all sts on the RS, which gives you a kind of patchwork effect exclusively on the WS, like so:

If you want to distribute this effect to both sides, just pick up some squares on the WS.

Pattern:

With C1, cast on 16 sts. K 32 rows (16 garter ridges). *Break yarn, join C2 and k 32 rows. Break yarn, join C1 and K 32 rows. Repeat from * once: you will have a strip of knitting with five blocks of color. Bind off.

With C3, on RS of work, pick up and K 16 sts along one C2 block. (You can easily pick up sts at each garter ridge, and so your squares of color will match pretty well.) Leave C3 yarn dangling, and joining C2, pick up and K 16 sts along the center block in C1. Leave C2 yarn dangling, and with second ball of C3, pick up and K 16 sts along the second C2 block.

Now you have three color blocks that you will be working simultaneously. Just knit across all sts, changing colors at the edge of each block. (This is the intarsia bit, and it's really not hard - just make sure you twist the yarns around each other, bringing the second color up from behind the first, so there's no gap between sts. I found this very difficult to imagine, but simple to do once I had the knitting in front of me. Check out this link for an illustration, but if that seems confusing, just start knitting - what you need to do quickly becomes apparent.)

K 32 rows/16 garter ridges along all three color blocks. Bind off in color pattern, against twisting the yarns in the bind off row as you have done for the color blocks. Repeat for the other side.

(Now we'll work the mitered corners, basically as described for the Nine-Patch Dishcloth, except that I picked up the miters on the RS, and we're striping three colors.)

In one corner, using C2 with the RS of work facing, pick up and K 16 sts along one side of the corner, 1 st in the corner itself (the center st), and 16 sts along the other side of the corner. (If you want to place a marker, do so before the center st, but I found the marker more cumbersome than helpful.) On WS, K to center st, purl center st, and K across to end.

Row 1 (RS): Letting C2 dangle, join C3 and K to 2 sts before center st, SSK, K center st, K2 tog, K to end of row.

Row 2 (WS): K to center st, P center st, K to end of row.

Letting C3 dangle, join C1 and knit Rows 1 and 2.

Continue in patt (working miter stripes in C2, C3, C1), stranding yarn up the side of the work, until 3 sts remain. On the next row, slip 1 purlwise, K2tog, PSSO. Fasten off the remaining stitch.

Repeat for the other 3 corners.

Weave in ends and enjoy!

On Repeat

2007-10-09T16:10:00.000-04:00

Today has consisted mostly of working on my manuscript and, when that stalls, messing around with my iTunes playlists. (There's a reason I haven't posted in a week.) But - sometime in the past few days I have rediscovered Sarah Harmer, which has been delightful. I've listened to Basement Apartment, oh, at least five or six times today, and so wanted to share a link to the music video on YouTube. The perfect song for a kind of cloudy, kind of boring Tuesday. (Although I have to say that the fake leather pants really threw me.)

[Edited to add: Also, for anyone who watched this week's episode of House and ~~is obsessive like me~~ was wondering about the Alanis Morissette song, I did some internet sleuthing: Not As We.]

There's really no new knitting news - I'm slogging along on Henry, which is turning out nicely but is more than a little tedious. 400-plus sts per row! In tiny dark yarn I can't see while watching TV! On the other hand, the pattern really is very easy - you get into a slip 2, knit/purl 2 rhythm pretty quickly. I do enjoy the first four or so rows of each repeat, as the jumbled-looking mess resolves itself into chevron stripes, but there's only so much joy to be had there. (Joy that is counterbalanced, incidentally, by my irrational conviction that it really is a jumbled-looking mess, even though this has played out a couple times now without catastrophe.)

Because updating the book log feels like work today...

2007-10-02T23:02:00.000-04:00

A meme! One that combines easy blog content with my love of LibraryThing, which is wild and passionate and knows no bounds.

What follows is a list of the top 150 titles marked "Unread" on LibraryThing, with the number of books so marked in parentheses. I have made bold things I've read, italicized the ones I've started but didn't finish, and colored red the ones I couldn't stand and green the ones I loved. Feel free to play, too!

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One hundred years of solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
Life of Pi : a novel (94)
The name of the rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A tale of two cities (80)
The brothers Karamazov (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
War and peace (78)
Vanity fair (74)
The time traveler's wife (73)
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The kite runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great expectations (70)
American gods : a novel (68)
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67)
Atlas shrugged (67)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West … (65)
The Canterbury tales (64)
The historian : a novel (63)
A portrait of the artist as a young man (63)
Love in the time of cholera (62)
Brave new world (61)
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault's pendulum (61)
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A clockwork orange (59)
Anansi boys : a novel (58)
The once and future king (57)
The grapes of wrath (57)
The poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57)
Angels & demons (56)
The inferno (56)
The satanic verses (55)
Sense and sensibility (55)
The picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One flew over the cuckoo's nest (54)
To the lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's travels (53)
Les misérables (53)
The corrections (53)
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel (52)
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (52)
Dune (51)
The prince (51)
The sound and the fury (51)
Angela's ashes : a memoir (51)
The god of small things (51)
A people's history of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A confederacy of dunces (50)
A short history of nearly everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The unbearable lightness of being (49)
Beloved : a novel (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The scarlet letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Pu… (48)
The mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud atlas : a novel (47)
The confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger abbey (46)
The catcher in the rye (46)
On the road (46)
The hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of… (45)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into … (45)
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's rainbow (44)
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its … (44)
White teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The three musketeers (44)
Cold mountain (43)
Robinson Crusoe (43)
The bell jar (43)
The secret life of bees (43)
Beowulf : a new verse translation (43)
The plague (43)
The Master and Margarita (43)
Atonement : a novel (42)
The handmaid's tale (42)
Lady Chatterley's lover (41)
Underworld (41)
Little Women (41)
A brief history of time : from the big bang to black holes (41)
Stardust (41)
Jude the obscure (41)
The chronicles of Narnia (40)
Possession : a romance (40)
Fast food nation : the dark side of the all-American meal (40)
Never let me go (40)
The trial (40)
Kafka on the shore (40)
Bleak House (40)
Sons and lovers (40)
Alias Grace (39)
The Arabian nights (39)
Baudolino (39)
Confessions (39)
The great Gatsby (39)
To kill a mockingbird (39)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Gla… (39)
The alchemist (39)
Candide, or, Optimism (39)
Snow falling on cedars (39)
Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story (39)
Midnight's children (39)
White Oleander (39)
A passage to India (39)
The elegant universe : superstrings, hidden dimensions, and … (39)
The house of the seven gables (39)
The lovely bones : a novel (38)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (38)

I've missed a number of classics, apparently. And also a lot of Austen, which is unsurprising, I suppose, because I don't particularly like Austen, but now I'm wondering on what, exactly, I based that opinion, because Jane Eyre wasn't so bad. I think it may have been Pride and Prejudice, although it was so long ago I don't even really remember why I disliked it. Hmm. I'm surprised at how few books are on this list that I couldn't stand, but I had forgot how vehemently I despised The Catcher in the Rye. I wonder if I'd appreciate it more on re-read - I think I was just too close to Holden's age (and, in attitude and life-view, Holden's polar opposite) to connect to the book at all when I read it. I think his angst would annoy me less now. It would certainly feel less... threatening, I think. There are a number of books on this list which I love and I hope the LibraryThingers who haven't read them intend to do so.

(By the way, my username on LibraryThing is my first initial and last name - for those of you who know it - in case you'd like to book-stalk me. I will say that I haven't gotten around to entering all my non-fiction yet, so my catalogue is skewed towards the fiction side of things. Someday.)

Thousands of words, thousands of yards....

2007-09-30T19:56:00.001-04:00

This past week has been pleasantly busy - I have about a thousand words of my research project manuscript (and another thousand words for the IRB), I've been working on several knitting projects and I had some quality reading time. I'll update my book log later this week, probably, but I did want to get some new knitting pictures up here!

So, after much talking about it, I purchased some yarn for Henry and cast on!

The yarn is Aussi Sock in Oak Moss (complete with cute koala picture!) from Susan Yarn up on South Taylor. I've knitted 6 rows of the pattern, plus the cast-on. (Which I loved, by the way, and will totally use again when the time is right. It makes a little picot edge with no sewing required - there is no bad there.) I've already picked out the waste yarn, because it was annoying me endlessly, and a word of advice for anyone knitting this: use a waste yarn that doesn't split. Like, at all. Ever. There was some cursing involved in picking it out.

The abandoned sock re-discovered last week has been proceeding apace - I finished it off and have a few inches of its mate. You'll notice the heel is kind of weirdly puckered - this was, apparently, one of the socks I knit before I learned how to properly pick up the gusset stitches, which may be why I left it to comtemplate its flaws in solitude. My tension is also completely off from Sock #1 to Sock #2 but I'm just going to roll with it. If I never wear them, at least I'm getting back in the sock-knitting mood after never wanting to knit a sock again after the Medrith's Little Lace episode. (A 20 row chart! What was I thinking?)

I also had a very exciting yarn find today, but I'm going to wait until I can photograph it properly before I post about it. I will say this: there were $15 spent, and I am now in possession of a couple thousand more yards of fingering weight wool than I was this morning.

Seafoam Stitch scarf

2007-09-23T13:38:00.000-04:00

It's done! I finished the last few rows and added the fringe while at the Stitch-n-Bitch yesterday at Phoenix Coffee, up on Lee. This was my first time at the SnB, and Karen and I went together - we has a lovely time and met several really amazing and welcoming knitters and crocheters. It was a fun afternoon, and I hope to join them again.

Here's the requisite finished object photo. (Thanks, Ben, for the photography!) I was too lazy to change into scarf-appropriate clothing, so just imagine it's actually cool enough to be wearing it.

Pattern: Modified from the stitch described in this post, the scarf was 37 sts wide. I wrapped the yarn once, twice and thrice to get the stitch pattern - as written above, I found the stitch too loopy.

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Pure Silk, in bright pink (I used about 2.5 skeins)

Needles: 6 mm/size 10 straight bamboo

This yarn is deliciously soft, and I can't wait to wear this for real -I think it will be a great fall and spring scarf for those days when it's just cool enough to warrant something snuggly.

Next up will be Henry for Ben, and a return to another unbloggable project. Oh! And while photographing my stash yarns for Ravelry (which I still can't quite believe I did), I came across a stalled sock from ... first year, maybe? It's plain stockinette in a blue-and-gray self-striping yarn from Elann, and although I don't quite remember the pattern I was using, I can probably just wing its mate. I brought it along yesterday and knit two or so inches between the SnB and movie night at Karen and Brandon's. I'm remembering again why I like no-fuss sock knitting.

Back Home

2007-09-22T12:29:00.000-04:00

Ben and I had a lovely mini-vacation yesterday! His company had purchased a block of tickets to the Indians vs the A's last night, and so we joined his coworkers for dinner and drinks before the game down at Jacob's Field. (We won! Go Tribe! ....and I've officially been living in Cleveland for a long time.) After the game, we headed over to The Corner Alley, which is this great combination of restaurant, martini bar and bowling alley. We'd been once before, and it works unexpectedly well - they've built the place such that there's really almost no noise from the lanes, and the dining area is visually separated from the bar-and-bowling area, and it's just a lot of fun. (And for the record - their creme brulee martini? Totally worth the drive downtown.) I haven't really been down to East Fourth much, and I was pleasantly surprised - the street is closed to car traffic between Euclid and Prospect and it has this almost European feel:

(Photo taken from http://www.east4thstreet.com/ - I managed to forget my camera last night.)

I had somehow missed the fact that The Corner Alley, the House of Blues, Lola and Flannery's (all places I've visited and enjoyed) are all right on the same little pedestrian street here.

The reason this excursion became a mini-vacation, though, was that we didn't have to schelp back to the east side at 1 am, but stayed at the Hyatt downtown (which is right across the street from the Corner Alley). Ben's boss has been singing the praises of Priceline, and we scored a room at this lovely hotel for $35! Click this link to see the hotel lobby - the first floor is all shops and restaurants, and the hotel itself is very quaint and 1920's looking on the outside (the doors to the rooms had letter slots! Soldered shut now, but still) yet the rooms themselves are modern and very nicely done.

We had a lovely time, and I was completely charmed by Cleveland's downtown - we joke about the Rust Belt, and there is some truth in that, but downtown is really revitalizing itself. We had dinner, watched the game, went out for drinks and then back to our hotel, all happening within half a mile of each other. And though there were definitely people around - last night's game was sold out - the crowds were still manageable, unlike what a similar evening would have been like in New York, for example. And the hotel room cost $35! Which still blows my mind. Anyway, we had a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the opportunity to play the tourist at home.

In knitting news, I am determined to finish the silk scarf this weekend - all that fringe makes me want to cry, but I will be brave, because it will be pretty. I've decided to nix the beading - I think I'd probably just end up smacking myself in the face with it, and really, that's no fun for anyone. And I'm on the hunt for some suitably drab dark gray sock yarn with which to knit Henry - I promised Ben a scarf last April, and, well, it's getting to be that time of year. The idea of a 452 stitch 24 row repeat terrifies me a little, but the pattern does seem to be one of those that seems way more complicated written down than it will actually be to knit. We'll see how it goes.

Edited to add: It seems I have unfairly slandered my beloved - once he saw a forest green yarn held against his gray coat, Ben decided to go for a little more color in his winter wardrobe. Which thrills me, because the mere thought of knitting an entire scarf in fingering weight dark gray yarn made my eyes hurt. So - thanks, Ben! (And sorry about the drab thing.) We'll be buying yarn tomorrow....

Made Like Bread

2007-09-19T12:57:00.000-04:00

You know, I really can't remember the last time I was able to read so much for pleasure... maybe during high school? This research block thing is suiting me just fine.

The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1971) This novella deals with George Orr, a man whose dreams become reality, changing both past and present. I enjoyed it - the premise was unique and I found the novel intriguing. I actually read this a few weeks ago, and while I thought this was an interesting read, I don't know that it made much of an lasting impression on me, overall. A solid novella, but not one to which I'll be returning. (Of course, having been written over 30 years ago, the elements that now seem a bit trite could certainly have been ground-breaking; I'm not terribly familiar with the history of SF.) Oh, but! I almost forgot: this is the origin of a quotation I've known for years, without ever knowing the source, and which is even more poignant in context: "They said nothing of any importance. They washed up the dishes and went to bed. In bed, they made love. Love doesn't just sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new." (p. 153) I had heard the last line quoted, but I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of this declaration with the simple descriptors of any night at home with a partner.

Pope Joan (Donna Woolfolk Cross, 1996) I had read this sometime during late middle school/early high, and was pleased to run across it again. According to her back-of-the-book bio, Cross isn't originally a novelist, and it shows in the often predictable subplots. However, the main story is remarkable. Written as historical fiction but clearly well-researched, the basis of the book is the legend of Pope Joan: a woman who, sometime in the mid 800s, became Pope and reigned for two years. In her afterword, Cross provides evidence for the historical basis of the legend, which she believes to be true. The novel itself suffers from some idolization of the main character, reminding me a bit of Jean Auel's Ayla. (Joan is a master scholar, a priest, a physician, and singlehandedly responsible for re-introducing reason and logic to Rome. Et cetera.) But overall, the story is great and well-told, and if the point that Women Can Do Anything is a bit belabored, I'm kind of okay with that. I remember feeling the same way when I read this circa age 14 - I could see that this novel was written with a purpose and agenda in mind, but it was still an excellent story and an agenda I could get behind. Additionally, Cross has clearly done her research regarding quotidian life in 800s Europe, and while I am no expert on such things, there was nothing that rang false, and I thought she did a great job of putting you in that place and time with detail that was relevant and never seemed forced or gratuitous.

The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien, 1990). I had read Going After Cacciato in high school and always meant to look this up, so when it turned up of Barnes and Noble's sale table, I snagged a copy. I sailed through this, and probably read it too fast for proper appreciation, but I will definitely be re-reading. It is, at first glance, a collection of short stories written about the Vietnam war, but I think it is best described in Amazon.com's review: a "sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three." There's an almost ... drunken feeling to the book, the consequence of an unreliable narrator who freely admits to his unreliability and, indeed, revels in it. Favorites among the group were "How to Write a True War Story," "Style," and "The Things They Carried." But the following passage, from "Stockings," caught my attention: not an original simile, perhaps, but I really enjoyed O'Brien's descriptive economy of speech, and since I seem to be quoting today:

"Henry Dobbins was a good man, and a superb soldier, but sophistication was not his strong suit. The ironies went beyond him. In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. Like his country, too, Dobbins was drawn toward sentimentality" (p117).

Traveling Light (Katrina Kittle, 2000). I read this book first during my sophomore year of college, I think, or possibly the spring of freshman year - my roommate Rachel, a native of a Dayton suburb, recommended it to me since the author is essentially from her hometown. After reading The Kindness of Strangers, I picked it up again. The novel is about Summer, a young woman who has moved back home to care for her brother Todd, who is dying of AIDS. On re-read, I actually didn't like Summer all that much - her existential angst is a bit less appealing now than when I was 19 - but all the characters are exquisitely drawn. It's another heart-wrencher, but this one is much less bleak than The Kindness of Strangers, and overall, it's a wonderfully crafted first novel. I enjoy Kittle's works, I think, because her artistry is not in her prose, but in her characters, who feel incredibly immediate and real. Her language is good and doesn't get in the way of her story at all, but ... I don't find myself quoting bits of her novels but rather thinking about her characters. And that maybe sounds like a criticism, but isn't - I enjoy that she can people her novels so effectively with layered and nuanced individuals; no character, no matter how peripheral, seems wasted or one-dimensional. She's an excellent story-teller, and I think this novel is a great example of that ability.

My other expensive and time consuming hobby

2007-09-18T14:26:00.000-04:00

The unbloggable knitting proceeds - although I really need to get back to my seafoam stitch scarf and finish it up, as it's getting cool enough here to start wearing it. Since I've started knitting, I definitely appreciate the charms of cooler weather more!

Since I have no pretty knitting pictures to post, I'll share a recipe for my roasted red pepper cream sauce instead. I know Lola was asking after this, so: free to a good home. I meant to take pictures when we made this pasta over the weekend, and failed to do so. But this sauce ends up being a delightful bright orange color, and it looks great with some chopped parsley sprinkled over. It's not entirely my creation - my roommate Jane, when I studied abroad, made her family recipe a few times, and I loved it. This version is what I've cobbled together from my memories of her recipe, plus the addition of garlic and some spiciness. Now that I think about it, I don't think she bothered with a roux, either, and just blended all the cream with the peppers, but if you're using milk rather than cream, the roux helps to thicken the sauce nicely.

Roasted Red Pepper Cream Sauce

1 medium yellow onion, roughly diced
3 red bell peppers, roasted with skins, seeds, etc removed* (or 1 12 oz jar of same)
3 cloves garlic, roughly minced
1/2 - 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (depending on your heat tolerance)
3/4 c milk or cream, divided (I've used 1% milk just fine here)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
Parmesan cheese, black pepper, salt, to taste
1/2 c chopped parsley leaves (optional)

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan; saute onion, garlic, red pepper flakes and black pepper until onions are softened and translucent. Roughly chop the peppers and add to onions, heating through. Place mixture in blender, add approximately 1/4 c milk/cream and blend until a smooth puree is achieved. Reserve in blender.

In the saucepan, melt butter over medium heat; add flour and cook the resulting roux, stirring continuously, for 2-3 minutes. Slowly add the remaining milk/cream in several-tablespoon increments, stirring well and allowing the sauce to thicken.

Once all the milk/cream is incorporated, add the onion-pepper mixture back to the saucepan, stirring well to combine and heating through. Season to taste with additional black pepper, salt and/or Parmesan cheese.

Toss over 1 lb dried pasta, cooked, and garnish with chopped parsley (or, in our house, more Parmesan cheese).

*To roast bell peppers, I usually core and seed the peppers, slicing them top-to-bottom into thirds or quarters. Line a baking sheet with foil, place the peppers skin side up, and stick under a preheated broiler for 6 to 10 minutes, until the skins are completely blackened. Fold the foil tightly around the peppers and let them sit for 15 or so minutes, to steam the skins off, then peel them when they're cool enough to handle. I particularly love this method because a) I don't have to hunt around for a paper bag, b) I don't have to turn the peppers around constantly while in the oven and c) the baking sheet doesn't get covered in sticky pepper juices. I am all about the easy clean-up. Those of you lucky enough to live with gas appliances get to just scorch them on the stovetop, but this is a pretty good method for those of us with electric ranges.

Hmm. Thursday Odds and Ends

2007-09-13T13:33:00.001-04:00

(I'm obviously going to need work on coming up with titles to these things.)

I've been sick the last few days (nothing like an upper respiratory infection to get you in the mood for fall!), so I haven't really done anything exciting or blog-worthy. I was feeling crappy enough that I didn't really want to read or knit. This may have been due to the fact, however, that the current book is Tolkien's The Silmarillion and no knitting is more tedious to me than the back half of a scarf.

However, I do have a cool link to share! Denise McClune wrote today about the concepts of "kind," "nice," and "good" and the differences among them. Interesting stuff. I was reminded while reading that I do want to look up Stephen Post's new book, Why Good Things Happen to Good People. Stephen was a co-lecturer for the bioethics class I took freshman year, and the faculty member of our weekly Science of Clinical Practice class during the first two years of med school. His research is primarily on altruism, which is just a cool topic to be studying, and his descriptions of the book sounded interesting.

I do have a few knitting projects percolating that, unfortunately, will be un-bloggable, as they are gifts for people who might potentially be reading this. (And now all eight of you think you're getting knitted goodies. Um. Maybe? Leave a request in the comments :) ) Photos may be published when the gifts are given, though, just to prove I haven't been a slacker.

Well, I think that's all that's happened recently - I'm going to go back to work and try to make up for coughing my way through working hours earlier this week.

Edited to add: Ooh! I'm a culinary genius! Well, not really, but I just made a very yummy lunch out of leftovers that I'd like to make on purpose sometime. I had made stuffed acorn squash last night, and had leftover stuffing kicking around (rice, quinoa and bulgur wheat with diced onions, eggplant, apple and a ton of spices) that I mixed into this afternoon's Campbell's Select butternut squash soup. The soup was not great on its own (more salt than squash, I think), but with the stuffing mixed in, the saltiness was somewhat tempered and soup became nice and sludgy. Or, err, hearty, I guess. Like a stew. Anyway, it turned out to be pretty tasty, and I'd like to try this grain-and-squash soup concept again, so I figured I'd jot it down here so I might actually remember it.

Ravelry!

2007-09-10T09:35:00.000-04:00

Got my invitation to Ravelry today! I don't have a ton of time to play today, but I set up my profile and linked my Flickr account - my user name is theraveledskein over there, too. Happy knitting!

"Heaven ain't close in a place like this"

2007-09-08T14:03:00.000-04:00

The Killers' concert was indeed delightful - their energy kind of lagged toward the middle third of the set, but the first and last 6 songs or so were phenomenal. I think part of the slowness at mid-show was that the songs from Sam's Town just aren't as high-energy as Hot Fuss and there was some dissonance involved with mixing more ballad-type music with straight-up, drums-and-bass rock. I thought, too, that the front end of the show was pretty heavily weighted with their radio singles, and that the crowd kind of got what they were looking for a little too early. But despite the pacing issues, the concert was a lot of fun, and I'm glad we were able to go.

Tonight Ben and I are going over to Karen and Brandon's for a potluck - Karen's parents are in town, so that will be fun. I'm in the process of making eggplant roll-ups, but while my eggplant slices are cooling, I thought I'd update my book log.

Measuring Time (Helon Habila, 2007). This novel is set in modern-day Nigeria, and is the story of two twin boys living in a largish village, Keti, some distance from Lagos. LaMamo becomes a professional soldier and Mamo, who ends up being the main character, becomes a historian and writer. I enjoyed this immensely - Habila's writing is spare and his words carefully chosen. Now that I've been thinking about pacing above, I realized that the pacing of this novel worked well for me - the chapters are all each only a few pages long, and the tone is well-suited to the story he's telling.

I took a course in Nigerian literature in undergrad, but we focused there on the immediately post-colonial era, and the native fables and folkstories that predated contact with European cultures. It was particularly interesting for me, then, to see a portrait of Nigeria today, reading about the problems with the current government structure and the quotidian experiences of village life. I was used to reading stories set within the traditional family and village structure of Igbo society, and so it was interesting to see how European and Christian influences have changed that society. The first example, of course, was that the twin boys were permitted to survive infancy, and the familial structures in the village seemed to be modeled more on the Christian practice of one wife per husband versus the traditional compound style with several wives in each family. But even beyond my interest in Nigerian literature, the characters were well-crafted and engaging, and I thought the story was interesting.

The Kindness of Strangers (Katrina Kittle, 2005). This book ... basically kicked the crap out of me. I started it yesterday night, and literally could not put it down until I had finished. It's a novel about incestuous sexual abuse, and it's very raw, emotionally. It's told from varying 3rd person limited POV, and it's ... powerful. I've read Kittle's other two novels, and she has this overwhelming talent for putting you right there with a character, which is a heart-wrenching experience when that character is an eleven-year-old boy whose parents have been sexually abusing him for years. And it's not heart-wrenching in an Oprah's book club, tear-jerker bestseller sort of way, but as if you're actually there watching this horrifying situation come to light. It resolves not happily, necessarily, but as well as it could, and the whole novel just feels so incredibly real. I feel about this book as I feel about the movie Traffic, maybe - I can't say I enjoyed reading it, because there's nothing enjoyable about the story she's telling - but I am incredibly glad I read it. It makes you feel exactly what it must be like to be in the middle of a tragedy, right down to the overwhelming anger you'd feel towards nosy Carlotta in the bakery and the it's not true, this can't be happening to me feeling of having something like this unfold right next door. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who could stand to read it, but I think you have to be ready to have your feet kicked out from under you. This is a novel I'm going to be thinking about for years.

Clay's Ark (Octavia Butler, 1984). This - I'll have to read again, I think. I liked it, but I kind of blew through it to see how the plot turned out. Part of the problem was that I knew that this novel was part of the Patternist series, but I hadn't known that it was more of an offshoot than a continuation - I kept waiting for the characters I knew to appear, and didn't realize until about halfway through that this was going to be an entirely separate novel from the preceeding ones. I really don't have any concrete thoughts on this yet, so I will definitely be re-reading, but I think I might wait a little while to do so.

Friday Odds and Ends

2007-09-07T17:03:00.000-04:00

I've deviated a bit from the knitting news in the last few posts, mostly because there's nothing that exciting going on. The Seafoam Stitch scarf proceeds, and I've almost finished the second skein - I think I'll knit 2.5 skeins worth, and then add a substantial fringe to it. (Ben and I are rewatching Season 4 of the West Wing, and this has been very good for my knitting productivity.) I'm contemplating mixing fibers on the fringe - maybe adding some silk embroidery floss (not divided) in different shades of pink, or perhaps some beads, but we'll see how ambitious I get.

An idea for a shrug has been percolating for a while, and I think I'm getting close. I liked the construction technique Iris used in her Jellyfish pattern, but knitting it all in one direction like that would drive me crazy, I think. (The pattern on the sleeves wouldn't be symmetric.) So I was thinking of knitting something similar: cast the back on, increase at each end, divide for the bits at the top, then pick up each sleeve from each edge and knit from there. It would still avoid most of the seaming, and the sleeves would match better. I want to use the 50/50 silk/merino blend I bought at the LYS sale a few months ago, but I'm not sure if my 3 balls of worsted weight could be stretched into a shrug. I'm thinking lace on size 12 needles or something.

Oh! Here's a cool news story: a seventh-grade schoolteacher takes pictures in space. For some reason, this really got me thinking about the whole Web 2.0 cultural revolution, which has made it so ordinary for ordinary people to do extraordinary things, like write an encyclopedia or, you know, publish a blog. It still blows my mind sometimes, how incredibly interconnected our knowledge base is becoming. Even with something as admittedly low-tech as knitting: people have been doing this for thousands of years, but now, instead of having to apprentice myself to a knitting guild master, I can read a bunch of blogs and instructions that generous people have shared and teach myself. Of course, launching a weather balloon and taking photographs isn't quite the same thing, but I think the ambition to do so is rooted in the same gestalt that's been building over the last decade: it's no longer exclusively the fashion houses and the publishing companies and the aerospace engineering firms that are setting the trends and furthering the accomplishments of science, it's us. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It's a pretty amazing societal change, and I'm glad I've gotten to be around to watch it start.

On a less navel-gazing note, Ben and I are off to the Killers' concert this evening, downtown at the Wolstein Center. I'm looking forward to seeing them perform. I'll also probably do another book log post this weekend. (I made the mistake of starting The Kindness of Strangers last night at 11:30, and I couldn't sleep fall asleep until I finished it. At, oh, about 4:30 this morning.) But I think my pizza dough is ready to be punched down and shaped, so... that's it for now.

International Blog Against Racism Week

2007-09-06T16:12:00.002-04:00

I was recently talking about IBARW with Sarah (it happened in the first half of August), and discovered it was mainly a LiveJournal thing, not an across-the-blogosphere event. So, mostly for Sarah, but also for my own reference, the LJ community is here and the del.icio.us account with all the links and posts tagged is here. To be entirely honest, I had thought initially that the premise was naive at best and kind of stupid at worst - how do you blog against racism? But it ended up being an incredibly interesting event, with a number of practical discussions on, first, how to notice racism (the more subtle instances, obviously, that someone possessing white privilege may not even recognize as racism per se), and second, how to retrain one's thought patterns and implicit assumptions. The event organizers also complied a wonderful (and huge) list of references and resources, which I have been slowly perusing. I have not studied race and racism in any serious way, and it's very possible that there was nothing new said, but it was certainly a teachable moment, raising one's awareness thing for me.

A cool offshoot of this event was the formation of the community, Writers of Color 50 Book Challenge, wherein members are attempting to read 50 books over the next year by writers of color. I haven't joined, because there is no way in hell I'll be able to read any 50 books over the next year, but I thought it was an interesting idea, and I've been skimming the reviews.

It is startling, once I stopped to think about it, how deep the divide is between "white" literature and that written for a non-white audience. At Borders (and at the public library), there's the "Literature" sections and then the "African-American Literature" section, the "Gay and Lesbian Literature" section, etc. That division may be good and useful - highlighting the existence of such works, and displaying them prominently - but it also reinforces the implicit assumption that "Literature" is written by white heterosexuals, and everything else needs a qualifier. The other effect, which I've noticed before, is that I'll tend to drive by the "African-American Literature" section because I feel both that a) it's somehow not "for me" and b) that I "don't belong". I've definitely gotten some sidelong looks from fellow shoppers when I do stop by the African-American Literature bookshelf, and it's ... uncomfortable. I've been thinking about this entertainment divide every time I go to the Severance movie theater, where the trailers are all for completely different movies than the ones I see at Shaker or Cedar-Lee theaters, both of which serve a more predominantly white audience, but it's more recently that I've been pondering that same division in written entertainment as well. (Also, see this entry in Overheard in NY.)

At any rate, I thought the most useful part of IBARW was that I actually starting thinking about these issues, which is a step in the right direction. Like I said, I really have zero training in the "-isms," and so it was a good starting point, just becoming more aware of my own implicit assumptions, etc.

Book Log

2007-09-06T14:46:00.000-04:00

I've been seeing these around, and since I've actually had enough free time to read more than 3/4 of a novel lately, I thought I'd jot down some notes on the books I've been reading recently. I'm completely out of practice with actual literary criticism, so this will be more my thoughts and reflections than anything else. This list comprises what I've read over, hmm, the last 3 weeks or so. I may do this weekly, if I can manage to read enough in a week to make it worth it. Maybe biweekly.

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein, 1961). I actually pulled this out again a few weeks ago in order to tipsily quote things out of it at Karen. (Er, sorry about that, hon.) But I ended up re-reading it again in its entirety. This is one of my "go-to" books, that I read over and over, and I was shocked to realized I hadn't read it since starting medical school. (In high school and college, this probably got read every 6 months or so.) It's not a good book, in the sense that the plot is carefully constructed or that the characters are well-depicted, or even internally consistent, and it's horribly sexist and homophobic in places but... it's one of the best meditations on the human condition - and what it means to be human - that I've ever across. Thoughts and phrases from this book just stay with me, in the way that poetry or quotations from religious texts do; they have that quality of simplicity that signifies something different every time you come across it. Some of these are one-off lines ("Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence" "'Love' is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own" "Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition; they're almost incompatible") and some are longer paragraphs that manage to express exactly my own personal philosophy on a number of topics. It's an incredibly thought-provoking novel, and I find something new in it every time I read it; I'm glad I was prompted to pick it up again.

Bee Season (Myla Goldberg, 2000). This was... weird. I found it engaging and difficult to put down, but I'm not sure the author was saying anything I particularly needed to hear. I found the characters one-dimensional, even at the times they were clearly supposed to be Very Deep and Troubled, and... I don't know. I didn't not like it, but I'm not sure that Goldberg achieved her purpose - whatever it may have been. (The overall plot, without giving too much away, is that the younger, less gifted daughter discovers a real talent for spelling. The development of this talent brings to the forefront the background level of intrafamilial conflict, and the family members react to this in a number of ... fairly bizarre ways that I didn't quite feel were reasonable developments.) Hmm. I think I enjoyed this book more when I was actually reading it, but I don't think it holds up very well to reflection. Not one I'd re-read.

Mind of My Mind (Octavia Bulter, 1977). This was very good. I inhaled this book in one 3-hour sitting, and I'm continually amazed by the tight spareness of Bulter's writing. This was actually a first read for me (I was just talking with Sarah about how I've been rationing Butler's works, especially now that she's passed away, because I enjoy knowing that there's more of her work out there), and it's set, hmm, probably a hundred years or so after Wild Seed, which I had read a number of times previously. I thought the plot was engaging - twisty but believable, as is Bulter's style - and I ended up liking the characters. I'm interested to see how this fits within the rest of the Patternist series. I did think this novel was very plot-driven, and lacked the more meditative, reflective side of Bulter's later works. Told mostly in dialogue, and from a cycling limited 3rd person POV, Mind of My Mind was interesting, but I wouldn't say it was ground-breaking, and certainly didn't have the cultural and societal insight and commentary that draws me, again and again, to the Parable novels. I'm curious to see if my thoughts on this novel change once I've read Clay's Ark and Patternmaster.

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year (Ed. Jonathan Strahan, 2007). I was thrilled to see a story by Connie Willis in this collection ("D.A."), which ended up being good but certainly not my favorite of the bunch. Neil Gaiman's "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" I had already read here, and I enjoyed it more on re-read, but I'm not sure it deserves the buzz it's been generating.

I thought Cory Doctorow's "I, Row-Boat" was phenomenal, and I need to look up his novels. (The main character is a sentient rowboat, who tends to human "shells" - bodies that are available for tourists to download their consciousness into, in order to vacation in the tropics - and he's an Asimovist, following this religion the AIs have made, founded upon Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws. How can you not love that?*)

Similarly, Ellen Klages' "In the House of Seven Librarians" was marvelous - a story told as a fable about "a young girl raised by feral librarians" (cited from the editor's preface to the story). Feral librarians! I worried that the story would not live up to such an intro, but, to my glee, it did.

Walter Jon Williams' "Incarnation Day" is another story from this collection that has stuck with me, also - now that I think about it - with the downloadable consciousnesses, but told from a very different viewpoint: that of a young girl with a penchant for the works of Samuel Johnson, who was conceived as a computer program and who becomes a legal person only when she is accorded the use of a body. This story became a insightful discussion about what confers "humanity," and it possessed an engaging plot and excellently crafted characters. Another one whose novels I'll be tracking down.

I'd say the anthology as a whole was good, and definitely a worthwhile read. From what I could tell, it was organized semi-thematically, which I didn't love, as it seemed after a while that you would read the same story three time in a row, only interpreted in different ways. There were 24 stories in all, clocking in at just under 500 pages; I can't speak to whether these were truly the "best" short stories of the year, since I haven't been reading more recently published SF at all, but they were consistently good and occasionally superlative.

To Say Nothing of the Dog (Connie Willis, 1998). This was another re-read. I scored a copy of this book at the Raleigh-Durham airport, from the used bookshop whose very existence delighted me to no end. This is a cute little jaunt of a novel, the premise of which is a quest to locate, using time travel, the bishop's bird stump (it's this ... thing, that no one can describe except in terms of its ugliness), in order to properly store the Coventry Cathedral, which had been destroyed during WWII. Combining SF and historical fiction, this novel is just fun - it's hilariously funny and a Romance in the classic sense of the word.

---------------------------------------------------------

I'm almost positive I'm forgetting a few here, beyond the knitting books that I haven't included, and there are a few novels that I've almost finished, but I think that's it for now. The most bizarre thing about writing this post? I actually knew the copyright dates for almost every work before I looked it up. I didn't realize that was information I actually stored about books.

---------------------------------------------------------

*In the interest of full disclosure, I find it necessary to say that my junior year research thesis for AP English was on Asimov's Foundation series. I ... may be a bit of geek, and I'm definitely a geek for Asimov's SF. Just sayin'.

Fun over the holiday weekend

2007-09-03T15:50:00.000-04:00

The weather here in Cleveland has just been absolutely perfect over this past weekend.... I've found myself going for hour-long walks just to be outside. Ben has been in New York this weekend visiting friends, so I've been rattling around the apartment on my own, but I have managed to have fun. :)

Saturday we went raspberry picking at this great little farm, which was a ton of fun. Karen, being much more on top of things, remembered to bring her camera, so you can check out our massive haul of raspberries and other fun photos of the day here. (Thanks, Karen!) I still have about a quart and a half of berries in the fridge, which will have to be either frozen or turned into something else very soon. I'm actually not that fond of raspberry jam, unfortunately, so... there may be pie in our future.

In knitting news, the scarf grew tremendously last night after I got home from the bar and watched Battlestar Galactica until 2 am. (....what?)

The way this stitch stretches, I think I'm only going to need two skeins, which makes me regret not knitting it wider. Sigh. At least I will definitely be able to add a fringe. However, I think I will eventually buy a cone of silk yarn from Colourmart and make myself a full-size wrap in this stitch. (I'm envisioning something similar to Nereides, but knit with a laceweight mohair yarn held together with the silk. I think I would just want to pet it constantly.) It's not quite mindless knitting, since I have to look at it when I'm dropping the yarnovers, but it's simple, it's knitting up super fast, and I do like how this stitch stretches prettily both vertically and horizontally.

And, oh, I almost forgot! A picture of my birthday presents in action:

I am so unbelievably delighted with how wonderfully this whole ball-winder and swift setup works. I want to wind up all the yarn I own into little yarn cakes, but then I know I will inevitably lose ball-bands and then I will end up with a mess of prettily wound yarn about which I know nothing. So. I will wind yarn as I go, but oh, I'm having lots of fun.

New Project

2007-08-30T17:08:00.000-04:00

So I've figured out a use for the impetuously-purchased Debbie Bliss Pure Silk DK weight yarn (it's pink! bright pink!) I acquired a few months ago. (Having limited knitting time and even more limited financial resources available for yarn, I have only just recently started buying yarn without a specific purpose/pattern in mind. By how much fun this experience turned out to be, I think it may become a problem.)

I'm making it into a seafoam stitch scarf, modeled after this version, except with 1, 2 and 3 yarnovers, instead of 2, 3 and 4, which was just far too...loopy. I'm making it 37 stitches across, which is working out to be about 9 or so inches wide. (Needles are 6 mm/US10 bamboo straights, to which I'm returning after a period of circular/dpn monogamy.) I'm hoping this will be wide enough that I can wear it kind-of, sort-of as a stole, and not too bulky to wear as a normal scarf. I'm not in love with it yet, but it's growing on me as I knit it longer and the stitch pattern evens itself out. It's about 10 inches long so far, and I don't think I'm quite halfway through the first of the 3 skeins, so... it appears that I may have enough yarn to knit a decent-length scarf, and (possibly) enough to add some sort of fringe.

I'll add a photo when I'm feeling inspired to hunt down the camera and camera cable.

Cables and Lace Cardigan

2007-08-28T12:38:00.000-04:00

It's finally finished! I started knitting this last year (July 2006, maybe?) and completely stalled when it became clear that the sweater would not be as cute as I had hoped. For one thing, I knit it a size too big, I turned out to be not-so-competent at crochet, and the drop sleeves are not terribly flattering, but... hey, it's done. It will be warm to wear around the house this winter.

Pattern: elann.com Cables and Lace Cardigan, size for 41 inch chest (I'm not sure why I imagined this would be a great fit for my 37 inch chest....)

Yarn: elann.com Den-M-Nit Pure Indigo Cotton in Ecru

Needles: Clover US7 bamboo circular (I think... it was a while ago)

Here's a close-up of the stitch pattern, which I really do think is pretty, with the added benefit of being simple to memorize.

So now that I've finished these backlogged projects, I'll have to start something new! I have some gorgeously indulgent silk yarns waiting in the stash... I think a scarf and/or a shrug may be next in the queue.

Birthday celebrations

2007-08-27T08:44:00.001-04:00

Well, I'm back in Cleveland, having spent a really wonderful week visiting the family. Ben picked me up at the airport yesterday, and when we arrived home, I had this waiting for me:

Which was just so sweet of Ben. (The boxes contained a a new pair of headphones, a yarn swift and a ball winder, about all of which I am very excited. I am currently having to resist winding every ball and hank of yarn in the house, while dancing around with my suddenly fabulous-sounding mp3 player, in the hopes that I will get something productive accomplished today.) Thank you, Ben!

Since I was visiting my family for my actual birthday, this year I had an indulgent number of birthday celebrations: dinner and drinks last week with friends in Cleveland, an evening out with my family on my birthday proper, and a lovely visit to Blossom yesterday evening.

Karen and Brandon joined us:

(Here's a picture of Ben and me:)

And here's a photo of our picnic, before we made a sizeable dent in it:

Needless to say, we had a great time: good company, good food, good music. The Canadian Brass were playing, who are a brass quintet with a sense of humor. It was a delightful end to a great vacation.

Wedding!

2007-08-25T21:24:00.001-04:00

Well, it's (almost) official - Ben and I will be getting married on April 25, 2009 at Saint Clements in Portland, CT! I went back for a second visit today with my parents and Katherine, and we still loved it, so we've got our date picked out and our contract in the works. One decision down, approximately 18,000 to go.... :)

The rest of the week has been lovely as well - we came back home to CT on Thursday night (there was no clamming, unfortunately, as it was really too cold to be wading around). I was able to visit twice with the fabulous Sarah, who is far too kind to me and gave me both books and yarn! (I'm still trying to decide what the 160 yards or so of Plymouth Alpaca Baby Grande wants to be when it grows up, but in the meantime it is very nice to pet.) And now I have a fantastic collection of new reading ahead of me, including The Invisible Sex and The Kindness of Strangers. Thanks, Sarah!

In knitting news, I have 3 buttons sewn onto the cardigan - only 4 to go! I'm hoping to finish that tonight, but it's slow going - I've apparently learned carelessness dealing solely with knitting and tapestry needles for so long, and I keep stabbing myself with the sewing needle, as the buttonholes are too small to be sewn with yarn. But I'm going to try forging ahead this evening, and hopefully I will be posting a finished object photo tomorrow!

Vacation (the knit-free edition)

2007-08-22T20:39:00.000-04:00

So I'm in Rhode Island this week, having a wonderful time at the beach. Since my sisters came up Sunday night, the weather has been pretty crummy, but we stuck it out this afternoon and put in our time down by the water. My dad engineered a shelter from the wind:

We had to find non-tanning alternatives for beach entertainment:

Although not quite as warm as tanning, Scrabble did turn out to be fun. That's my sister Jen on the right, then me, my mom, and my sister Katherine.

We weren't the only ones on the beach, but I do think the seagulls outnumbered the humans:

We warmed up after the beach with a lobster dinner:

All in all, it's been a lovely week so far, even with the sub-par weather. We've had good food, good company and I've gotten a lot of knitting and more than my usual share of reading done. (Aside from the wedding planning magazines that seem to spontantously multiply around me, I've been reading Three Cups of Tea, which reminds me very strongly of Mountains Beyond Mountains both in content and style, and an anthology of last year's best sci-fi and fantasy short stories, which have been stunning. I think I'll have a few novels to look up by the time I'm finished.)

Overall, a completely relaxing vacation, and it's only Wednesday! On the agenda tomorrow is clamming with my dad at low tide, which will be fun - hopefully I'll have some photos of clams for tomorrow's dinner!

Medrith's Little Lace

2007-08-22T17:31:00.001-04:00

Vacation with the family in Rhode Island has been lovely, if a little cold. I had hoped to make this vacation the Week of the Finished Objects, and so far I've been doing all right with that goal: the cardigan is shrunk, seamed and buttons purchased, and the socks are finished! That's me knitting the socks over the weekend, back when there was still sun around.

And here's a photo of the finished socks:

Pattern: Medrith's Little Lace, in A Gathering of Lace

Yarn: KnitPicks Essential, in Black

Needles: KnitPicks double pointed, size 3.00 mm/US 2

No modifications that I can remember. These socks were fun, but took forever to get through - I think I started these back in March. I've realized that, in order to knit socks in any sort of efficient way, I need a pattern simple enough to memorize.

Socks are, for me, is the knitting cotton-candy equivalent. The socks should be fun, portable knitting that can go anywhere and be worked on without thinking about it too much. I liked how these turned out, but I don't think I'll ever make them again - the 20 row repeat made them feel like work.

Anyway, I'll be updating soon (possibly tonight) with photos from our beach excursion today, complete with sweatshirts, a windbreak, and a Scrabble game. It was a determined sort of day.

My sister Jen and I were totally swimming. The water was really warmer than the air.

Saturday Market Bag

2007-08-15T14:02:00.000-04:00

The blog's first finished object!

Pattern: Saturday Market Bag

Yarn: KnitPicks CotLin in Key Lime, Linen and Desert Turquoise, about 3/4 skein each for the first two colors and less than 1/4 skein of the turquoise

Needles: 8 mm/size 11 KnitPicks Options (used throughout)

Modifications: 9 repeats of the lace pattern, instead of the 6 repeats written; 10 sts for the strap instead of the 6 written, used needle size as above.

This was, I think, the quickest thing I've ever knit - I cast on as soon as the yarn arrived, and something like 2 days later, found myself weaving in ends. I had made this bag already, but had played fast and loose with gauge, and it turned out a bit too large, but I think this set of modifications worked perfectly! The pattern is easily memorized, and I'm very pleased with the yarn, as well - the linen softens beautifully as you knit, and the bag is stretchy but keeps its shape well once it's emptied. I think friends and family might be getting these for Christmas....

In other news, the pieces for my Cables and Lace cardigan are in the dryer as I type this. Hopefully I can seam that together this evening, and finally be done with this sweater - I cast it on last summer, and the pieces languished in the closet for months until I learned how to crochet and could make the button bands. Better late than never, right?

So I've got knit and purl down...

2007-07-19T20:40:00.001-04:00

Being a newly minted knitter, I thought I would put together an initiation post of sorts, a guide to making the transition from "Okay, so knit is when I stick the needle in back and for purl, it's in the front" to "So, I'm knitting this sweater, but I'm changing it to 3/4 sleeves and a v-neck instead of crew and I stuck in some short-row shaping, and, oh, I also added a little lace around the hem." I found it a bit daunting, once I'd knit scarves for everyone I knew, to branch out into less rectilinear shapes. Or, you know, anything that required me to read a pattern.

Pattern reading was, for me, actually the biggest hurdle. I could gather that "k" and "p" stood for "knit" and "purl" but after that, I floundered. The pattern would say "inc" and I would think, okay, but how do I increase? How do I decrease? What, for the love of wool, is a yarnover?

I learned how to knit in 2004, knit furiously for eight months and then stopped completely. I was bored with scarves, I didn't know how to make anything else, and every time I tried to read a pattern, it ended in frustration. I finally met a woman who took the time to explain these transitory mysteries of knitting to me, and I've been gaily altering my way through patterns ever since. So here, after that long-winded introduction, is my primer on learning to read a pattern, explanations of knitting terminology and links to various sites that I found helpful when just beginning this whole knitting business.

For the sake of your scroll bar, I've broken this post into several, so just click on the links below to take you to the post with that topic.

--> Please note that these posts are under construction and so some links don't yet exist - once I've wrestled this into some kind of shape, I'll remove this disclaimer.

Definitions

Techniques

Yarn! (A Guide thereof)

Please do let me know if anything here is unclear, wrong, should be cut/expanded/whatever. I'd like to make this as helpful as possible, and I always welcome constructive criticism.

Techniques (So I've got knit and purl, cont'd)

2007-07-19T12:49:00.000-04:00

Techniques

I realized this post was a bit too ambitious when it took me ... a long time to write even the finishing section. So I've linked to some really good, comprehensive websites that have excellently written and illustrated articles on techniques for just about anything. Following this is my own take on, and links to specific articles, regarding finishing techniques.

Learn How to Knit : This is a really phenomenal site, based in the UK, that explains the basics of knitting better than I ever could. This is the site I wish I had known about when I was starting. Also explains the basics of crochet, which is useful for the knitter as a finishing technique.

Knitty.com: This online knitting magazine has tons of great, free patterns, but it also has a number of technique articles. The archive, unfortunately, lists out only patterns, but you can retrieve an article from Google pretty easily, if you know it's there. But if you haven't come across Knitty yet, I'd recommend browsing each back issue directly - there's a treasure trove of information in the articles, and they are uniformly well-written and well-illustrated.

The Knitting Room: This is a corner of KnitPicks' site. Though they are primarily a yarn company, KnitPicks has been branching out into technique instructions, both in their catalogues and online. They've actually done a phenomenal job with this, and The Knitting Room is becoming my go-to site when I need to brush up on a technique.

Finishing
I think the most frustrating part for me, learning to read a pattern and branch out into more complicated knitting, was the finishing instructions. Many techniques are actually explicitly spelled out in a pattern, but not finishing techniques. A typical sweater pattern can go on for pages, and then, once you're left with sweater bits, merely states: "Weave in ends, block pieces to size, and sew seams." Sounds simple, but how? Here I've assembled some good online articles about all these techniques.

"Weave in ends."
Here I will refer you to KnitPicks' article on this subject, which illustrates how to do this better than I could. They begin by saying there is no one way to weave in ends, which is true, but there are definitely wrong ways. A perfect example of this is my first sweater :).

"Block work to size."
Blocking is, in essence, getting your work wet and slightly stretching it, then pinning it down and letting it dry. Knitty has a good article on blocking. I find blocking kind of tedious, but it really does help and is, in some cases (like lace), indispensible to the final character of your knitting. For a good article on "Why suffer the pain of blocking?", see the Yarn Harlot's entry entitled "Be the Pin".

"Sew seams."
This injuction drove me crazy as a beginning knitter. After a few attempts at just, um, randomly threading yarn between pieces, I realized there had to a good way to do this. There is. It's called mattress (or ladder) stitch, and it's actually kind of magical how well it works. Knitty.com has a good article on mattress stitch, as does Learn2Knit (scroll down).

"Graft or Kitchener stitch together."
True confessions: I actually kind of love grafting. This may be because I first learned how to graft here. This site is an amazing sock-knitting tutorial, and my first pair of socks, knit sitting in front of my laptop, following along with Terri Lee's instructions, were the most polished piece of knitting I had ever constructed at that (very early) point in my knitting career. The link is to page 6 of the tutorial, where she explains Kitchener stitch, but do read the rest - I would never have tried sock knitting without this website. All the reference sites listed above have good articles on grafting as well, but this is my favorite.

Books:
If you prefer a hard copy reference guide to knitting techniques, the following are books I've found useful. There are many, many books out there and I haven't read anywhere near to all of them, but these were helpful for me.

Vogue Knitting: A solid, all-around reference book for everything from knit and purl to designing your own sweater. I hope to own this one day, but am now just checking it out unreasonably often from the libary.

Finishing Techniques for Hand Knitters: Just what the title says. I don't love the tone of this book - it's a little condescending - but the techniques are useful and well-explained.

Definitions (So I've got knit and purl, cont'd)

2007-07-19T11:16:00.000-04:00

Definitions

Because I'm an incurable academic, let's start off with some words, and their knitterly definitions. These definitions will probably be updated as I think of new things, or as suggestions come in for words I've missed. Additionally, this may serve well as a lexicon for those among us who love a knitter, but who (inexplicably) do not love to knit.

Bind off: the act of tacking down loops of yarn left when your knitting is complete, so they can be freed from your needles and not unravel into a big mess. Often abbreviated BO, and, to my knowledge, synonymous with "cast off."

Blocking: the act of shaping your knitting so that it looks its best. Blocking is accomplished by getting your knitting wet (but not sopping wet - damp is usually fine) and pinning it into place stretched to dimensions specificed in your pattern on a surface like a bed or a clean rug. One then very patiently lets the knitting dry completely, then unpins it from the surface. This is a crucial step for lace, which can and does look like a scraggly bunch of crap until it's blocked. It is also important for other projects, but lace is where blocking has the most magical effect. You can also steam block your knitting, which is supposed to be a pretty fabulous way to block, but I don't have a steam iron, so I can't tell you any more about that.

Cast off: see "Bind off."

Cast on: the act of putting loops of yarn on the needles so you have something to knit. There are a number of ways to do this, but I confess that I only know one, and it's served me well so far. Often abbreviated CO.

Circular knitting: the best way to knit ever! No, seriously, circular knitting is just like regular knitting, except using differently shaped needles that form a circle. Instead of flipping your work back and forth, you knit continuously in a spiral, always working the "right side" of your knitting. If you're knitting anything tubular (socks, sweater, even double-thickness scarves), this way avoids sewing seams. Also known as knitting in the round.

Decrease: to subtract a stitch (or stitches) from a row of knitting. There are a number of ways to decrease, each of which slant in a different direction, or have a different appearance. I have found the proper selection of a decrease stitch to be more important to the final appearance of your knitting than the selection of an increase method.

DPNs (double pointed needles): just what they sound like: needles that have points on both ends. Usually shorter than regular straight needles, and often used, in sets of 4 or 5, for knitting circularly.

Dropped stitch: what happens when a loop of yarn fall off your needle, and that column of stitches unravels. May be purposeful or accidental, but in the latter case, is easily fixed with a crochet hook. Don't sweat it.

Felting/fulling: the act of washing your wool knitting in hot water with agitation, so it shrinks and the fibers pull together. Felted knitting is very sturdy and can even be cut as one would cut any other fabric. Often used to make bags like this, since felted knitting doesn't stretch or pull out of shape, but also a useful technique to make housewares (pillows, coasters, placemats, etc).

Finishing: a term encompassing all the non-knitting stuff required to turn your knitting from a big heap of knitted fabric into a Finished Object. Includes sewing seams, crocheting edges, weaving in ends, attaching buttons, etc.

Increase: to add a stitch (or stitches) to a row of knitting. Can be performed by the "make 1" method, casting on extra stitch(es), knitting into the front and back of a stitch, or making a yarnover. Each method has its pros and cons. Sometimes the method used is not particularly crucial, and other times it's integral to the character of your knitting.

Knitting: the act of pulling loops of yarn through other loops of yarn, using needles or other stick-shaped objects. (This definition is paraphrased from the incomparable Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.) While kind of obvious, this does bear remembering, especially when trying to fix mistakes (see "Dropped stitch").

Knitting in the round: see Circular knitting.

Lace: knitting formed by a series of increases (usually a yarnover) and decreases, yielding a fabric with lots of holes in it. Often, the increases and decreases are balanced, so while you're subtracting and adding stitches, the number of stitches per row stays constant by the time you've finished the row. Additional terms you might see are lace knitting and knitted lace. These are generally taken to mean that, for the former, you makes these increases and decreases on one side of the fabric only (that is, every other row), while for the latter, you're increasing and decreasing every row.

Side (as in, right side or wrong side): often abbreviated RS or WS, this denotes the side of the fabric you're knitting. For something like a sweater, there is a definite right and wrong side. For a scarf or afghan, the pattern may be more reversible. Important both for constructing multi-piece Finished Objects (like a sweater) and for following the pattern, which will often say something like, "On the next RS row, dec 1 st at beg of row." You are "on" the right side when, as you hold your needles ready to knit, the right side is facing you.

Stitch: one loop of yarn pulled through another. There's really just knit, purl, and variations on that theme. Often abbreviated "st" and, plural, "sts."

Weave in ends: a phrase, explicit or implied, at the end of every knitting pattern in existence. Seemingly a simple imperative, I found out there are many unattractive ways to do this. The right way involves a darning needle and "sewing" your ends into your knitting so that the end follows the path of an already-knitted piece of yarn. See my "Techniques" post for links to some guides on how to do this well.

Under Construction

2007-07-18T19:39:00.000-04:00

This blog is currently under construction, but will have a more detailed intro post soon. Happy knitting!