Christmas, crafts, and Conway Cradle Care

A pile of more than fifty hats accumulated when we met for class this morning. They were made by the students in the class, the instructional team, and friends around the country who sent hats by mail.




By mid-afternoon, they had been converted into this pile of holiday packages, waiting for their new owners -- the teen mothers and fathers, and their children, served by Conway Cradle Care.




Ella, Natasha, and Anna arrived early and helped the organizers set up for the party.




Adrea's "Raspberry Beret" was a big hit with Sherry.




Crocheted beanie -- just like it was made to order for this little guy.




Lon'dynn loved her girly beanie, made by Christabel.




Kim's dog-eared beanie, modeled by Kaeden, was the hit of the party.






My Urban Jungle slouch hat had many fans, intended (top) and serendipitous (bottom).




Kiran rocked Carol's roll-brim hat with super style.




Kate made this adorable tasseled hat -- a perfect photo prop.




I may have to hire Aaron for my next photo shoot. Who could resist this smile, situated under a twisted-rib knit hat that I made?




Emily knows how to show off this purple slouch hat by Carol of Kansas City.




Ariel's black watchcap couldn't have been a bigger hit with Byron, who opined that it fit his day's wardrobe to perfection.




Marshan put on this green cabled hat from Twitter follower Amy in New Jersey and refused to take it off.




Ella got a fluffy cap crocheted by yours truly.




So did Lydia, but in a more grown-up size and attitude.




Deaira is wearing the very first hat Shannon crocheted -- which came out fantastic, by the way.




And Michael got to take home the hat I wanted to keep for myself -- Diane's gray heather ribbed hat in Cascade 220.




We all felt like Santa for an hour -- giving the gifts we'd made in our own workshop. From all of us (and especially Ella, Ariel, Anna, and Eric) to everyone who gives time and love to the high school families served by Conway Cradle Care, a heartfelt thank you for allowing us to add our small contribution to these lives at this moment. May all of them know how precious and valuable they are.

Making music

I think we've reached a turning point in Archer's musical education.  This past summer, after he became obsessed with chord structures, we re-enrolled him in piano lessons with the university's community school of music.  He's had a good semester, but he's not getting what he wants out of the lessons, I know.

It's a tough call.  Conventional music lessons emphasize technique and use the lure of melody -- the pleasure of playing a song.  Archer isn't as motivated by melody.  For him it's all about structure, especially harmonic structure.  And in conventional music lessons, that's not the first priority.  In fact, it's one of the last things you do at the basic level.

I don't think we can keep Archer motivated unless his lessons focus more on what interests him: the way notes combine to form chords, chords transform into other chords, and the sequences cycle endlessly in infinite variations.  What I'd like to do is to find an instructor who will feed that interest while getting him to pick up some technique and skill along the way.  I need a music theory teacher who will use the ideas inherent in musical structures to motivate Archer to learn to produce them and their associated musical forms.

Just as an example: Archer loves to transpose.  Imagine a teacher who would share that enthusiasm and use it to get Archer excited about performing a piece well, with the expectation that he could solve the puzzle of transposition once he'd mastered it.

I'm not sure I can use the community school of music system to find that teacher.  These are undergraduates and graduate students, not people who want to teach for the rest of their lives -- people making a little extra money while they pursue performance degrees.  I'm wondering if I need to try to find someone for private lessons, someone who is flexible and can work with Archer's particular mindset.  The advantage of the community school is that it's nearby and easy, a relatively low-pressure investment.  I'm hesitant to step out into the unknown and try to find someone on my own, but I'm also worried that another semester of standard instruction will leave Archer uninterested in further lessons at all.

Halfway up the well

I've been feeling pretty good about myself for the last week, because I've spent several hours each day diligently reading and commenting on student work that I should have read and commented on earlier in the semester.  I would look at my list, decide that I would read all the papers that had been turned in more than a week ago, and get at it.  When I resurfaced a few hours later, I congratulated myself on being so diligent.

Never mind that the group of papers I hadn't read turned a week old three days later, long before the glow of self-satisfaction wore off.  Never mind that in deciding to concentrate on papers, I was ignoring daily journal writing and revision that was already piled up before I started ignoring it, and didn't stop arriving while I was getting stuff done elsewhere.

I flatter myself that I did very well keeping up with student work this semester.  It was only in November, when the press of first-paper revisions and second-paper drafts started to overlap, that I started falling behind.  And here we are in the last week of class, I have several days of solid work behind me and feel like I should be on top of the pile given all the effort I've put in.

But the reality is that I'm hardly far enough up the well to get a glimpse of the sky.  That light I see is really a reflection from the water that's still just inches below my feet.  And my pride in putting in the hours and getting through the pile is mostly self-delusion.  There's nothing to do but dive back in tomorrow and try to stay at the same level -- or maybe slightly above.

Half a pocket

I've suffered through a couple of unfortunate trouser failures in the last week.  Oh, nothing spectacular -- no splits in embarrassing places, no underwear hanging out in public.  But rips and holes where repairs are of no avail.  Evidence that the garment has outlived its usefulness, evidence that should be heeded.

My distaste for clothes shopping has been a frequent topic in this space -- or as frequent as my infrequent clothes shopping trips, which I undertake only when I can no longer avoid the need.  I don't think I'm being entirely honest with myself, though.  The trouble may be that I like clothes shopping way too much.  I could try on infinite versions of myself, infinite stylistic variations on my look.  Maybe I tell myself that I hate clothes shopping in order to avoid falling into its sucking black hole of possibilities, time, energy, money.

What I do, then, is go looking for the bare minimum.  I want a pair of brown corduroys.  I want black cotton khakis.  I want, if it can be found, a pair of black knit pants.

And if I find the bare minimum that will fill my closet and get me through a work week, if they fit with reasonable accommodation -- a belt here, a cuff there -- I head for the register and count myself lucky.  Yet when I get home, I'm as excited to wear these clothes for the first time as if they were fancy party wear.  I'm as nervous about ruining them, as anxious that they not wear out prematurely.

I wrote a while back about the change that has come over me as a dresser since I became a knitter -- my embrace of accessories and flair into my utilitarian wardrobe.  And yet I haven't let that creep into my clothes purchases, for which the prevailing question is always "can I wear this every day?" rather than "would I wear this at all?" I have, however, grown skeptical of my own long-standing just-the-basics dressing philosophy.  Maybe it's never too late to change, although inevitably, as time goes on, it gets harder to turn on a dime.  So stay tuned, but give me time.

It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not

Today's post about a scarf that turned out to be a gift to myself and to my mother is at Toxophily.



It's even more beautiful with my hair out of the way. Many more pics, and the whole story, at the link above.

Beginning to look a lot like

We were invited to a holiday party tonight at the best decorated house in the neighborhood.  That may sound like some kind of boast, but really, I think no one in our little rectangle of streets and cul-de-sacs would dispute the title.  For Halloween they fill their large corner yard with ghoulish displays, and for Christmas the lights cover every inch of the property.

It's the first time we've been inside, though, and what a revelation -- Archer announced after his whirlwind tour that there were twenty-six trees of all shapes and sizes.  Skinny hallway trees, full-sized color-themed trees, tabletop trees, even a rotating tree.  And in between the trees were garlands, lighted villages (at least three huge sets), Santas, snowmen, trains, carolers, twinkles and merries on every available surface, horizontal or vertical.

The kids adored the spectacle and would have stayed for hours searching for the Christmas pickle and peanut our hosts told us were on one of the trees.  The warmth and wonder of that house, inside and out, reminded me of a lifetime of decorating for Christmas.  I can't imagine spending a tenth as much time or effort as the family that lives there, but I do remember well what it meant to my parents and their parents to pull down the Christmas boxes from the attic every year and lovingly place each element yet again.

My favorite Christmas decoration from my childhood was probably a white ceramic tree, about a foot tall, equipped with an incandescent light bulb inside.  When we visited our paternal grandparents for the holidays, I always looked forward to the job of putting colored transparent pegs in the holes and watching them light up.  Something about adding light to a Christmas decoration made it magical for me; I felt the same way about a set of ceramic carolers my mother had, who gathered around a lamp post with a soft white nightlight bulb shedding light on the scene.

What was your favorite holiday decoration as a kid?

Classic

Noel and I have the enviable job of revisiting old television series, episode by episode, and writing about what made them work or whiff.  I only take up this job during the summer, when the current shows I write about regularly (How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family, Breaking Bad) are in reruns.  But Noel has extended his TV Club Classic shows -- Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel -- throughout the year.

One of the joys of this particular task is anticipating great episodes to come.  When writing about current weekly series, we discover the show along with America, as it airs.  (Well, sometimes we get advance screeners and see the episodes a few days ahead of their air date.  In the case of our favorite shows that are really on a roll, that peek ahead of the world can be so sweet.)  But when we're writing about shows that our readership, in many cases, has already seen, we get the fun of hearing from them about what's coming up -- their favorites and not-so-favorites.  In the comments to our reviews, week to week, our readers let us know their opinions ranging over the whole run of the show.  They look forward, they look back, they make comparisons within the show's seasons and episodes.  In some cases we're familiar with the show before going back to write about it, which means we can participate in the game of what's coming up and how it rates; in other cases, we're going into as a newbies, trying to avoid the spoilers that the commenters might be posting.

I tell students all the time that they are living in a golden age of information and media.  More of the history of entertainment and communications is available to them -- easily, often freely, or on the consumer market -- than at any other time that humans have been on the planet.  Revisiting part of that history in public, step by step, along with readers who look forward to each installment and play along at home, is quite an experience.

And Noel and I get the added enjoyment of watching the shows the other is recapping.  I haven't been able to keep up with two to four hour-long shows each week, but even though the full slate was beyond me, I asked Noel to keep Buffy for our evenings together even if he had to watch Angel during the day.  At the end of his recap of the hotly anticipated Buffy musical episode "Once More, With Feeling," Noel mentions how much I was looking forward to it.  Finally experiencing an hour of television I've heard about for years ... sharing it with Noel, who was also experiencing it for the first time ... and joining the company of all the commenters who have been anticipating this moment since the recaps started a couple of years ago ... it's the kind of confluence that only the Internet (and TV series on DVD) can bring about.

Season of lights

I can't get enough Christmas lights.  While some might complain about the early appearance of lights in store windows or on Main Street lightposts, I welcome them as soon as there is a chill in the air.  The twinkle and glow through crisp air transforms each night into a magical realm, as if we'd all become untethered to gravity and were floating through the stars.

This year I decided not to stress about the strings of blinking incandescents with their inevitable colors that won't illuminate, and went to the home store to get new LED lights.  Downside: No patterns of blinking.  Upside: bright, steady light that glows with Christmas warmth.  And no missing colors.

The great joy of this season -- and as good an argument for getting the Christmas decorating done early as I can think of -- is walking home or driving home in the pitch-dark early evening, and being drawn by the colored lights in our front window.

The lights shine out with the message home, and underneath that message I hear love and hope.  If we have once again put up our lights, if we are once again celebrating, then all the pain or fear of our time has not conquered us.  We believe that Christmas will come; we believe that the new year will begin; we believe that the darkness will give way before our light.  The lights whisper courage.  Joy is still within our reach.

In his master's steps he trod where the snow lay dinted

Today's post about the overlooked value of a unisex hat is at Toxophily.



Ever since I crocheted a couple of quasi-hyperbolic shapes earlier this year, I've wanted to know more about these alternative geometries, and how it happens that crochet is one of the only media in which they can be approximated and modeled. It so happens that the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef installation is now on display at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. If you are going to be in the nation's capital before April of next year, stop by and see a roomful of hyperbolic shapes reproduced in yarn!

Self promotion

Gradually, as my teaching style has changed from traditional and classroom-focused to experimental and real-world-project-focused, I've had to adopt another style that didn't come naturally.  I've had to be an advocate for the accomplishments of my students out in that real world.

Doing something that makes a public difference is all well and good in itself.  But how much it's magnified when other people know you've done it!  Most of these projects aim to accomplish something concrete, but almost all of them can handle an additional goal -- to let other people know about the need that the project is addressing.  To achieve that goal, you need to utilize the communication channels that exist to get the word out.  And that means not being shy about asking people to open those doors for you.

Some are under your control.  Make a website; put up a YouTube video; link to them from your Facebook or Twitter feed.  But beyond that, you need others' help.  Ask your friends to retweet and spread the word.  Call the newspaper.  Get a photographer to your event.  Suggest a story to the campus newsletter.  Invite participation by folks beyond your classroom walls.

If any of that comes through, it means what you're doing has intrinsic interest.  Others can participate in the awareness campaign for reasons that mesh with their own goals.  Then the ball's back in your court -- publicize their publicity through the networks of which you're a part.

The reasons for doing so aren't self-aggrandizement.  It's a further step in making the activity real and consequential.  The more the outside world takes an interest -- and takes up the cause -- the more the students at the center of it all aren't just doing a class project.  They're setting something in motion that is bigger than their grade, bigger than the semester, bigger than the academic game we all learn to play.  They can start something that attracts other people -- that has gravity, that has legs, that inspires and moves people to action.

That's reason enough to let go of any remaining humility and recruit anyone you can to help you shout it from the rooftops.

Suspended

I have a colleague who used to come back to the office at night and work until the wee hours of the morning.  He doesn't do it anymore -- childcare keeps him at home during his off hours -- but I'll bet he misses it.

There's something about a college campus at night.  The few classrooms still in use call to you from their lighted windows.  The library buzzes.  If there are staffpeople still working at desks or counters, they are not the same people you see during the day.  It's like there's a night shift; everything switches, the view darkens and becomes illuminated, the activities change, and those of us who go home at five o'clock will never know it.

Tonight I exited my evening obligation into a cool mist.  It had rained all day, and as the front moved through with relatively warm air, fog blanketed the streets, lawns, and sidewalks.  Lampposts wore halos.  Under the spreading shade trees, the ground crackled and popped -- moisture still falling from the autumn leaves, along with the occasional brief hailstorm of acorns.

I walked slowly to my car, parked in a space reserved for the dean; for tonight, I'm close enough.  Beside my station wagon in the other two deans' spots were unfamiliar cars -- students at the library or at study groups, making the relatively safe bet that the deans won't be stopping by at nine o'clock on a Monday night.  As I backed out, a truck waited patiently for me to vacate.  It was inconsiderate of me to be present and in my proper space, I know.  Time for me to turn the campus over to those who own it for the night.

A holiday of our own

Noel invented his new favorite day of the year -- the day after Thanksgiving, when there is mail delivery, everything is open, and there are delicious leftovers to eat.  He named it Noel Day.

I like the days after a holiday, too.  Even though our Thanksgiving feast was awesome this year, it still comes with some stress, at least on the day itself.  On Friday, with nothing but a long weekend ahead of me, I took a morning to go to an empty office and get work done that was necessary for Monday's return to classes.  We watched football all day Friday and Saturday -- great games, too.  I knit practically nonstop and finished a one-skein triangular scarf out of sock yarn in four days; as soon as it's blocked my mom, who admired it while it was still in progress, will get it.  With Granny Lou and Papa's help, the tree was up and trimmed in a couple of hours Saturday afternoon.

The next three weeks will be busy.  Two full weeks of classes (one more than we usually have after Thanksgiving), an administrative planning retreat on the designated study day at the end of the second week, the culmination of two service learning projects in one class and a collaborative final exam in the other class, two parties during finals week to celebrate the end of those endeavors, a summit with my teaching assistants to debrief this semester and plan for the next one, and a full day of thesis presentations on graduation eve.

Thank goodness I'm not having to prepare for Christmas travel during that madness.  The campus doesn't even close until the day before Christmas Eve.  It will be tough enough just to get all the gifts planned, wrapped, and on their way to their recipients, but I'm infinitely more sanguine about it knowing I'm not facing interstates or airports over the holidays.  As busy as we'll be, there will be time for everything -- including enjoying the season.

Word magic

No grammatical form is as wondrous as the modal of past habits.

I would sit for hours and look at the Christmas tree.


We would have to wait until Dad set up the lights for home movies before we could run down the stairs Christmas morning.


Mom would make pancakes after all the presents had been opened.


Whenever I use that structure, I am transported.  In the simple word "would" is the sense that these moments formed a tradition, repeated with all the joy of a fulfilling ritual.  That those who participated engaged in a tacit agreement about the meaning and significance of these simple actions.  That even at the time, we knew these shared behaviors were special.

And when we talk about them now, our reminiscences are tinged with the golden glow of memory.  Somewhere within this humble bit of grammar is a time machine.  It only goes to the moments no one else knows are the best of your life.

Fairy tale hats

Today's post about hats fit for a fantasy world is at Five Alarm Fire.

Yes, that's right -- another blog!  This one isn't my own, though.  It's a group blog started by a member of the silver-medal-winning Dish Rag Tag team Five Alarm Fire.  The team was so wonderful, so active, and so generally enamored of the camaraderie achieved during the race that the members wanted to keep in touch.

Shortly after the race, I put out the invitation to the eleven other team members to make hats for my class's Conway Cradle Care service project, and I've gotten three different contributions so far (with one more in the mail on the way, according to the USPS Click-n-Ship notification I just got my e-mail).  Each has been more beautiful than the last.

More importantly, they are tangible evidence that the spirit of our project reaches beyond our classroom walls, inspiring and motivating people around the country who become connected to it via various social networks.  I'm realizing that what I did this semester -- sending a personal invitation to a small group of folks with whom I'd recently been personally and rather intensely involved -- is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of leveraging social media for efforts like this.  Or looked at another way, there are people out there waiting for such an invitation -- hungry for the opportunity to connect, contribute, and make a difference with a personal touch.

What I'm thankful for

1. The health of my children.
2. Our jobs.
3. Studio screeners stacked by the TV for end-of-the-year listmaking.
4. The bins of yarn tucked away by the garage, waiting to be made into beautiful things.
5. My husband's talent and prestige in his field.
6. My kids' enthusiasms -- for Nintendo games, Pokemon, chess, comic strips, whatever they choose to love and enjoy.
7. Leftover turkey sandwiches with bread-and-butter pickles.
8. A new retaining wall that makes our property infinitely more presentable.
9. Free public-domain books on my Kindle.
10. A Christmas and New Years to look forward to -- with no travel to dread!

Poultry time

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving always sneaks up on me.  That's the day I need to locate my five-gallon bucket, boil my brine, and pray the turkey has thawed.  That's the day I start preparing the bird.

Even though Alton Brown's recipe has been fool-proof for the last several years, I always find something to stress about.  Today it's the weather.  I'm in the habit of putting the bucket outside in the cool weather overnight.  But it will be far from cool here tonight.  After checking the fridge to see if there is space for a five-gallon bucket -- even though I don't believe there has ever been room for a five-gallon bucket in that fridge, including when it was brand new and empty -- I decided that I'd just to get up a few times overnight and make sure the brine was well iced.

That led to a new worry: Do we have enough ice?  I broke out our iced-tea maker this afternoon and made a pot, which involved digging deep into the freezer for ice.  Would enough be rejuvenated by tonight to properly ice down the brine?  Or would I be sending Noel out for a bag of ice around 10 pm?  (Just checked the freezer; looks like the icemaker is chugging away.  See -- this is what the anxiety does to me.)

Turkey is a high-profile meal component, and you only get one shot at it.  To make matters worse, Noel casually asked my parents (here visiting for the holiday) if this was the first time they'd ever had my turkey.  I could have sworn they've been here before on Thanksgiving, but nope -- this is the first time.  I have the utmost confidence in my recipe, but my ability to execute the game plan isn't a matter on which I'm nearly as certain.

Sideways arithmetic

Lately Archer has been interested in creating word addition problems of the type he reads in his beloved More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School.  Wikipedia tells me that these problems are called "cryptarithms"; an example would be "one plus one equals zero."  The puzzle is to find out what digit each letter represents.

Archer has been trying to make his own, but the trick of constructing them so that all the elements are real words is slightly beyond him.  (He did offer "no plus no equals too" today.)  Yesterday he emerged from his room with "problems plus problems equals srbenpolm," and suggested -- without prompting -- that "srbenpolm" might be a city in a foreign country.

Cady Gray tried her hand at one last night.  She brought me out a sheet last night headlined "Bonus."  On it she had constructed "quail plus quail equals lequqi."  As a starting point she gave me that E=3 and L=1.  Can you figure out what Q, U, A, and I are?

Six times a year

I believe in the purpose-built device.  As opposed, you see, to the all-purpose device.  I find great pleasure and utility in having a Kindle that is built for reading.  Sure, I could read e-books on my phone or my computer screen, but that's not what those devices were built for, and so reading long passages on them has significant drawbacks.  If I value reading, then I don't want to struggle through the compromise it takes it read on a device that will present e-books, but not well.  I want a purpose-built device so that it disappears and doesn't constitute a barrier to my work.

For years now I've had a tablet PC at work.  I insist on it because there are six times a year, at minimum, that nothing other than tablet technology will do.  Those are the three student essays I typically need to grade every semester.  I want to receive the papers electronically and give them back electronically.  And although I could type up my comments or use Word's track-changes feature to interpose them, I find this process extremely clunky.  I just want to write on the page, cross out things, add things, bracket things, make marginal notes.  And so only a tablet will do.

I like my tablet PC (Lenovo's X series of ThinkPad tablets) just fine.  But my current X200 died for the second time today, the predictable victim of connections through the swiveling hinge.  I can always tell when I'm in trouble -- the swivel suddenly becomes difficult, and after pushing the screen into place, a few days later, the tablet pen won't move the cursor anymore.

So I took it to the help desk, and I expect to get it back with a new motherboard again in a few days.  But it's made me wonder whether the hybrid nature of the tablet PC (it's both a laptop and a tablet) makes it especially vulnerable to this problem -- and whether it is almost time to go with a new purpose-built device for this important task of grading essays in a natural, speedy, and paperless way.  I wonder whether it is time to get an iPad.

A few weeks ago I did some poking around to see if any teachers were grading papers on the iPad, and I saw that some people have cobbled together little ad hoc suites of apps that annotate PDFs or Pages documents.  I don't want to spend time inventing something, really.  I just want to grab a tablet and write on a paper that I can then send back to the student in a form they can read.

How about it, iPad owners and instructor or editor types?  Are you using the iPad to mark up text?  How do you do it, and do you think this use of the device is ready for prime time?

On the air

Venita Jenkins from the UCA publicity office and her videographer Aaron were kind enough to come out on short notice to film some of our Craft-In a couple of weeks back.  It was so windy that day that the interviews we recorded on the scene had audio obscured by the noise of the wind against the mikes.  So they truly went above and beyond by coming over a few days ago to re-record them inside.

Here's the video from the UCA YouTube channel.  Feel free to share!

Planning a feast

It's the weekend before Thanksgiving, and that means it's time to decide what we're making for the big dinner on the big day.  My parents are going to be visiting for the occasion, which thrills their grandchildren to no end.  It makes me think of all the Thanksgiving dinners I enjoyed at home over the years.  When I was a teenager, that meant my mom taking dishes down the driveway to my grandparents' house, where my favorite parts of the meal were waiting: Nana's stuffing (casserole style, cooked in the oven) and her yellow layer cake with thick caramel icing made on the stovetop and spread quickly before it hardens.

I know people who are fanatical about making every component of the Thanksgiving meal themselves, right down to the cornbread used in the stuffing and the scratch yeast rolls.  Call me a child of convenience foods, but brown-and-serve rolls (or even better, Sister Schubert's) are about my favorite bread of all time.  We've got a number of prepared items that will be on our table -- apple pie made by local bakers, to be sure, but also cranberry sauce and gravy straight from the factory.

Last year's feast was one of the best we've ever had, and we're going to pretty much duplicate it on Thursday for the other set of grandparents.  I love eating, and I've always loved Thanksgiving just for the food.  But the longer the live, the more you have to be thankful for, and the more you appreciate the side of the day that your parents tried so hard to teach you about when you were a kid.

Letters to Charlotte

Cady Gray brought home some writing today from school that I really liked.  Let's start with an invitation form that she filled out (this got a "Great!" from her teacher).  The underlined parts are the blanks that Cady Gray filled in:

Dear Charlotte

You are invited to my Thanksgiving.  I would love for you to come because We are BFFS!  (Best friends forever).  It will be on Thursday at 5:00 pm.  We will be eating turkey and potato salad.  Yum!  We sure hope you can make it! 

Sincerely, 

Cady Gray 

Then apropos of I'm-not-sure-what, she composed a thank-you note to Charlotte during some free writing time.

Dear Charlotte,

I just wanted to say thank you for all you do!  Thank you for comforting me and being my friend.

-- Cady Gray 

Finally, here's another free write.  I believe she composes these in the morning during the time before the first scheduled lessons begin.  There are pre-printed sheets with blanks for the name, date, and deathless prose.  What I like about this one is that it accurately represents how CG talks these days, complete with excitement and backtracking.

Author: Cady Gray Murray  Date: 11-15-10

I got a new Stuffed Animal and it was ... Hello Kitty!   Well ... really ... Hello Kitty Purple Peace!  Yay! 

A time to knit

Colder weather is finally here.  There's an edge to the wind and a chill in the rain.  And knitters everywhere are rejoicing, because that means it's time to wear those scarves, mittens, hats, and sweaters we spend all year making.

If you wear your handknits, sooner or later someone will admire them and make some comment like the following: "I wonder how much that would cost in a store?" Or, "How much would you charge to make me one?"

We have trouble answering, to be honest.  One of the reasons we knit for ourselves is to make unique items you couldn't buy for love or money.  People don't have any point of comparison, usually, to give you a compliment on the quality of your work -- so they try to imagine what the consumer price point would be as a measure of how much something like it would be valued.

When it comes to setting a price for our work -- well, where do you start?  A fair market value, consider the  cost of materials and an appropriate rate for labor, would quickly rise out of the realm of credibility for even a simple item, given how cheaply one can buy them ready-made.  Even catalog items that advertise themselves as handknit or handmade can be had far more inexpensively than even the stingiest calculation of a rate for my services.  (Which should tell us something about who's getting the shaft when those items sell for that price.)

Take a cozy striped scarf.  The nice yarn you admire could cost about $20-$50 all by itself, depending on the luxury factor.  Add in an hourly rate for the twenty hours or so it took me to make it ... well, you see how far into the stratosphere we are already, even at minimum wage.

I find it very flattering when people want me to knit them something.  But there are commissions, and there are commissions.  The students who think I can whip them up a pair of socks on demand just aren't being realistic -- nor, as a consequence, will they properly appreciate the work.  On the other hand, the friend who offers to trade her time and talent for mine, knowing that from me she can get something unavailable in retail, to her exact specifications, and willing to fill my kitchen with baked goods of similarly incalculable value in return -- that's a person who's "knitworthy," in the parlance of the craft.

In the end, it's all about finding a way to compare the value of one's work to the value of what's offered in exchange.  Often the appreciation of a knowledgeable recipient is enough.  For one-of-a-kind handcrafts, though, the most appropriate systems seem to be barter or gift.  Either agree in advance on an exchange of talents, or act in trust that your gift will be met by a gift in return that expresses the value placed on your work by the recipient.

The show must go on

Tonight as I took Archer to his piano lesson in my university's music department, we passed through a lobby full of undergraduates in long dresses, heels, and incongruous winter jackets against the cold rain outside.  They clumped in excited gaggles outside of the recital hall, a few breaking off every so often to run after some forgotten item or person.  Soon they'd be herded into a rehearsal space to make final preparations for their choir concert.

After Archer's lesson, his teacher mentioned that the end of term recital would be coming up for him, too.  He has three pieces to memorize.  Immediately that brought back memories of last year's recital; it was a watershed moment for me, seeing how Archer could concentrate and perform under pressure.

And of course it reminds me of the many, many recitals in my childhood.  There were choral performances galore, and those I loved.  Piano recitals, not so much.  The individual pressure was less to my liking; the nakedness of the performance and the complexity of the task intimidated me.  I was more confident as a singer, less nervous about making mistakes -- certain, in fact, that I would not -- and had a lot more fun making music with my voice.

As an adult I'm more accustomed to individual performances, and more confident that I can pull off a success even when I'm going it alone.  So now I'm nervous for the child I used to be.  We've tried to raise kids who believe in their own abilities implicitly.  I hope they take pleasure in stepping up to the plate and knocking it out of the park when they get their chance.

Save the words!

I'm indebted to my student Lydia for tonight's entry.  She posted on our academic online community about savethewords.org, a site produced by the makers of the Oxford English Dictionary.  You are hereby invited  to adopt a word that is in danger of expiring from disuse.

I took trophaeal, adj., of or pertaining to trophies.  It seems like a word that deserves to live.  I mean, if we want to discuss trophaeal industries these days, we have to use infelicitous phrases like "trophy shop" or "trophy maker."  The only way we can refer to trophaeal display solutions is to talk about "trophy cases."  I think we can all agree that there's a troubling ambiguity there.  Are the shops, makers, and cases worthy of trophies -- that is, they are of the highest quality?  Or are they pertaining to trophies?  Trophaeal clears everything up.

Best of all, it's got that whole "aea" vowel cluster thing going on at the end.  That's super-classy.

So please join me in utilizing trophaeal in everyday conversation, whenever possible.  And if you adopt your own word, I'll be happy to return the favor.

I'm in the amen corner now

Today's post about hats that satisfy in the making and in the giving is at Toxophily.

And with that, I've got to be done writing, since I just cranked out a very late TV Club post as well as that blog entry linked above.  So go over there already, wouldja?

Two million hands at work

Unless you are a knitter or crocheter -- or a web developer -- you probably don't know exactly what Ravelry is.  Yet the site signed up its one millionth member in the wee morning hours of Saturday, November 13.

I've been on Ravelry since August 2007.  I still run into fellow knitters who've never heard of it, let alone the general public.  And I still find it difficult to explain in a sentence of two why they should be a part of it.  It's not just a social network.  It's not just a database of materials and patterns.  It's a socially-generated database that turns out to be the greatest collaboratively-updated repository of information about a specialized skillset ever produced.

When I wrote about Ravelry in my presentation to the Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Theology and Energy last February, there were a quarter of a million members.  When I updated the essay for publication this summer, there were 600,000 members.  The join rate keeps accelerating.  Of course the number of regular users is much smaller and grows more slowly; yet the daily high point of simultaneous users also keeps climbing.  Not only are there more members, but there are also more people logging onto the site regularly.

On January 12, 2008, I sent my first message to a new Raveler as part of the newly-formed Ravelry Welcome Wagon.  Almost three years later, I've sent more than 31,000 messages to people within a day or two after they join the site.  My Welcome Wagon beat is the G's, which means that I welcome everyone who chooses a username that starts with G.  That's 31,000 grandmothers, girls, grrls, glows, and geeks.

It's no exaggeration to say that Ravelry has changed my life.  It's brought me hundreds of new friends in the last four years.  It's pushed me to acquire new skills and try techniques that I would have thought utterly beyond me.  In fact, it's turned me from a person who has managed to learn the basics of knitting, into a knitter.  The living, palpable, visible example of thousands of people just like me who transformed string into art and comfort and warmth and adornment -- that's what it took to make me into a maker. 

Now I create my life rather than consuming it.  Ravelry made it possible.  One million members is quite a milestone.  But a far more impressive feat, from where I sit, is how Ravelry bridged the distance between me when I picked up the needles, and me now.

If your heart is in your dream

Today's post about humble yarn for special hats is at Toxophily.

Here's the postscript that didn't belong in that little essay about making something beautiful out of the cheap and ubiquitous.

Many aspects of my students' service learning project for Conway Cradle Care are worthy of remark and reflection.  But the one I keep coming back to is the participation of crafters around the country.  People who have heard about the effort have stepped up and committed themselves to joining us, becoming honorary members of our class and augmenting our local handwork with theirs at a distance.



Yesterday I received the first of these extracurricular donations. A member of my silver-medal-winning Dish Rag Tag team sent this beautiful bright cap. Its broad and firm seed-stitch brim, smooth and even stockinette body, spiraling crown decreases, and soft angora haze create something truly gift-worthy -- hat perfection.



The generous knitter, whom I'll simply call G. since I haven't asked her permission to identify her, enclosed with the hat a prayer for the recipient, making that as-yet unknown teen mother doubly fortunate in the warmth of the gift and the intentions of the giver:

Dear God,

I pray for blessings on the young parent who will receive this hat. I ask you to guide them in the decisions the need to make and to show yourself in the people around them.

In Jesus' name,
Amen

And all the people said: Amen.

Lost weekend

Noel has gone to Chicago for a weekend of hard work, and I'm here with the kids for a weekend of hard fun.  (To coin a phrase.)  He'll be filming segments for a video version of the popular A.V. Club feature Inventory ... all day Saturday, all day Sunday.  I'll be making the usual weekend rounds -- library, playgrounds, church -- trying to keep the kids fed and entertained.

The only wild card in our weekend routine is a surprise birthday party for one of Cady Gray's classmates.  But this is an unusual situation.  Carson has cancer and has to be taught at home.  He has visited Cady Gray's classroom exactly once, making a huge impression on her.  She explained to us how he had to wear a mask so he didn't catch any germs and get sick, and I explained to her how the medicine he was taking probably made his immune system not work right, so he can't fight off normal germs like she can.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation is putting on this surprise birthday party for him.  And I must admit to being curious about how these kinds of things go.  All we have to do is show up on time and party.  It's at the college across town, in a large banquet room.  Cady Gray hasn't stopped talking about it.  She's pumped --about the party, about the surprise, and about Carson, this unusual (non-)presence in her class.  I'm interested in being a part of a Make-A-Wish event, which most of us hear about in national news stories but don't participate in firsthand.

It's only three full days, really, to make sure the kids stay safe, nourished, and engaged.  Yet as with all weekends, the possibilities seem, on Friday night, practically endless.

The winding road

An alumnus returned this week to give the keynote address for our Challenge Week series on corruption in government.  But this is not someone who popped over from across the state or even across the country.  This alumnus flew 23 hours from Macedonia to be our guest expert.  A native of this young country (which became independent from the former Yugoslavia in 1991), he works with a U.S. government agency there to foster democratic development -- something very hard to do in a transitional state where corruption is an ever-present reality and threat.

What's remarkable to me about this particular person and their return to our institution is not his expertise nor his current position of responsibility.  It's the fact that his route through life took him to Conway, Arkansas for four years, where he was a fixture in the Honors College socially and academically, and occupied positions of leadership in student government as well.  That contingency is what led him back here, and surely for many people it's the one discordant note in his vita.  Eastern Europe, Washington D.C., Lisbon, Paris, Germany -- all these locations make sense.  What the heck is Conway, Arkansas doing there?  How did we become the fortunate recipient of this remarkable person's time and energy for four years, when in so many ways it seems so unlikely?

Everywhere I go I find people who have Arkansas connections, and it never ceases to surprise me.  I suppose that's because I lived right next to Arkansas for eighteen years, in Tennessee, and never found a reason to set foot in the place (or even allow it to cross my mind, to tell you the truth).  Yet here we have a hotbed of interesting theological thought, with one panel in the Open and Relational Theologies program at the recent AAR meeting dominated by Conway residents, three to one.  I meet people all the time who have lived in the state, have family there, know its ways and its colleges and its business and its politics.

All this helps me to feel confident -- and pass the confidence along to my students -- that their home state and my adopted one is not a backwater or an also-ran.  People everywhere have been touched by it.  If a Macedonian trying to guide his country into open and transparent government has reaped benefits from time in Arkansas, anything is possible.

Getting out the vote

This week is Challenge Week in my department.  It's a week of presentations and discussions around a common theme.  For the first time this year, the theme was brainstormed by seniors last spring; they chose corruption in government.  And for the first time this year, the focus was not on national speakers that cost five figures to bring in, but local talent: a professor from Hendrix, a current student, and an alumnus currently working for democratic development in Macedonia.

Because our previous experience has been mounting large-scale events that cover multiple out-of-town speakers, large budgets, and time periods that have extended over two weeks in recent iterations, we didn't really know what to expect in terms of an audience for this time around.  Here are the lessons I've learned so far.

• When you do huge events, you change the audience from an internal to an external one. The focus then becomes doing publicity in the media and lining up partners in the community or other institutions to turn out an audience.
• Because of this emphasis, the necessity to get your own students to come is reduced; they are no longer the primary audience, because by themselves they are not enough to justify the expense and scale of the event.
• This leads to a strategic mismatch, if your institutional goals are centered on your students rather than on the community.
• By scaling down, the audience of the event is correspondingly redefined.  Now there isn't a draw for the general public (no big names), nor the imperative to make multiple partnerships that can deliver segments of the eventual audience.
• Your audience becomes the student body, then -- a result aligned both to the expenditure of resources and likely strategic goals of the organization.
• Because you need the student body to turn out for the events, the pressure increases to offer curricular incentives for their attendance.  Incentives are not mandated, and therefore not as frequently offered, when the primary audience is external.
• Incentives, not surprisingly, tend to increase attendance in the student population.

The result is the audiences we've seen at the first two events of the week: overflow student participation. And that's exactly what we should want for this reconfigured Challenge Week.  With limited resources, it makes strategic sense to pursue initiatives aimed at the students, which creates a momentum to do what it takes to make sure the students are reached.  If we can resist the temptation to believe our job is to educate the whole campus, city, or region, and work on educating our students, whaddya know -- we actually end up with structures that direct the education their way and vice versa.

Reaching out

The students in my Craft Wisely class have been busy ... but that hasn't stopped them from blogging and podcasting.  Check out what they're writing about.  Pick a link, click in, read, and leave a comment.  Your brief message will reinforce the nature of blogging for them.  They're writing for a vast unknown audience, and when you pop up and identify yourself, they can't help but be reminded of that.

• Kate writes about knitting beards -- and an unlikely congruence with a running joke in her family.
• Natasha reminds us that the creativity of designers is all around us, and is intimately connected with the creativity of makers.
• Anna finds solidarity, community, and strong connections in the example of Burning Man.
• Adrea meditates on the unusual interest her knitting arouses among her family and friends.
• Ariel reveals the man and the grieving that inspired a very special hat.
• Eric comes out of the closet as a knitter (we always knew!) and looks back to describe the shape of the closet.
• Kirsten shows us some beautiful examples of illusion knitting.
• Sara interviews a state senator about her knitting habits.
• Shannon introduces us to the baby who will receive a very special blanket and labor of love.
• Kat risks becoming a crazy cat lady and develops a passion for crocheted flowers.
• Christabel shares the experiences that taught her why to give.
• And the Craft Wisely podcast rolls on with conversations about our class texts, discussions, and projects.

Thanks in advance for visiting and commenting!

Some expressions take me back

Today's post about a knitting secret and the girl who keeps it close to her heart is at Toxophily.



You're still here? The content is at the link above, people. All we've got here is a picture of two kids very excited about Arbor Day. You're right, it is a nice picture. Thank you very much indeed.

Sweetness

I save up my sweet tooth until the weekend.  That's when I indulge in my longest love affair -- the one with chocolate.  And there's no better time of the year for chocolate than Halloween.

With the big night falling on a Sunday when I was away, this weekend was the first time I got to dip into the kids' haul.  Cady Gray had already made the accounting: The most treated candy was M&Ms, of which they received a stunning 82 fun-sized packets.  (Archer won the contest with a guess of 82.)

When I was a kid, we used to dump out our bags on the kitchen table on Halloween night and make sure everybody got an equal share of the most desirable items.  Chocolate came first, with Hershey's miniatures at the top, followed by Reese's cups, kisses, Snickers, M&Ms, and other lesser candy bars.  SweeTarts were the best of the non-chocolate treats.  At the bottom were Smarties.

In our house, we put the chocolate in one bowl, the rest in another.  The kids get their dessert from whichever they choose after dinner.  And on the weekend, I raid the chocolate bowl for the choicest bits.  It's pretty much the same priority as thirty years ago.  I still can't figure out what a serving is of these little mini-candies, so I eat too much, I'm sure.  And I'll be just as sad when the good ones are gone and I'm left scrounging through the off-brands hoping there's a stray Dove nugget that I've overlooked.

My lost friend

Noel and I were amused to discover, when we went to Cady Gray's parent-teacher conference, that she'd been writing about some of her more emotional experiences at home.  Here's an example.  One day she came home with a cheap little pink stuffed bunny from a claw machine.  The tag said "Rose," and Cady Gray decided Rose was her favorite toy.  A couple of days later, she misplaced Rose -- maybe in her brother's room, maybe out and about somewhere.  We hunted for the toy, but couldn't locate it.  For the next week or so, every time Cady Gray asked about Rose, her eyes filled up with tears.  I kept hoping we'd run across the bunny behind some furniture or under a bed, but so far, nothing.

And here's Cady Gray's view of the situation, copiously illustrated.  It perfectly captures that brave face she put on every time she thought of Rose.

My lost frend 

By Cady Gray Murray

My favorite stuffed animal named Rose is lost.  She has been lost a long time and she still hasn't shown up yet.  I am getting worried about her.




We do not look for Rose.  We try to find her while we're doing something else.




We have still not found her even when the cleaner came.  I sure do hope we find her soon!

A real weekend

For the last twenty days or so, my weeks and weekends have blurred due to two extended conferences.  That's all well and good when the weekend is bleeding over into the week -- like when you get an extra hour of sleep on a weekday, or have a couple of hours free for leisure -- but you pay the cost of having the work week bleed into the weekend as well.  Weekend days at these conferences tend to be a whirlwind of scheduled activities and getting up far too early.  At my last conference, I had 7:30 am meetings on both Saturday and Sunday.

So it's a relief to get back to my routine, where weekdays are for work and weekends are for play.  The little indulgences I save for the weekends now are part of a pattern of enjoyment, not stolen moments consoling me during a packed schedule.  

I get to knit with my daughter, play Wii with my son, and take some time for myself.  There will be sports on the television, Arbor Day celebrations in the park, chat with Ravelry buddies, Sunday school, soda, chocolate, spending time with my husband, and sleeping in.  That's the way weekends ought to be.

Cradle, Conway, Craftivism

Today my Craft Wisely students took it out into the yard.



One of our two class service learning projects involves Conway Cradle Care, an organization that helps teen parents finish high school by providing daycare and life skills training.



After three representatives from CCC visited our class, the students coalesced around the idea of support and education.  We decided that it wasn't just the babies who needed our love; it was the parents as well.  So we are planning to give the clients and their children handmade hats for the holidays.



To increase support for the organization, and to educate our campus about teen pregnancy in the local community, we spent three hours on the central courtyard outside the student center, crafting together.



A few students collected facts about teen pregnancy and sexual activity in our state and nation, and we printed those out on slips of paper and pinned them to handmade items hanging from a clothesline. Here's Kate attaching the slips to our knitted objects ...



... and Christabel helping out.



The idea was that people would be drawn to the long lines of fluttering scarves, come over to see, and read the slips to find out more about the Craft-In's cause.







This young man was clearly attracted to the colorful scarves, even if he couldn't absorb the message.



Passersby stop to look at the crafted products and read the information.



They took some literature with them as they browsed.



Meanwhile, other visitors asked for knitting lessons from the assembled crafters.



Crochet instruction was a popular offering.



Ariel (with her back to us, in the blue sweater and hat) led an impromptu crochet workshop for members of our class.



You can see from Sara's hair how windy it was. What you can't see is how cold it was. The temperature may have been in the fifties, but the windchill was brutal.



Lynn wrapped yarn around her hand to form an improvised glove. That's how cold it was.



As the crafters represented their pride and commitment, their work hung in the sun testifying to their skill.



The most frequent comment from those who stopped at our tables was: "Are those for sale?"



On a cold day, the scarves, hats, shawls, and other beautiful accessories drew both the eye and the touch. Their textures spoke eloquently of warmth, hours of pleasure in the stitching, someone special for whom they were made.



Solidarity, skilled labor, giving, support, education. I think our message was plain to everyone who witnessed it.

Journaling

If I understand correctly, Cady Gray's teacher provides time for journaling regularly.  The students can write about whatever they want.  Here are two journals from today that Cady Gray brought home; I really appreciate the infectious enthusiasm in her writing.

By the numbers

Plane trips since Oct. 20: 6
Hours of delay: 2
Hours of task force, board, and committee meetings since October 28: 10
Ribbons attached to my name badge: 2
Knitters met in Atlanta: 5
New Ravelry friends: 1
MARTA trips: 6
Business cards collected: 8
People I have to say hi to from people at the meeting: 2
Classes missed: 4
Handouts collected: 3
Keynote presentations witnessed: 3
People in my family who were happy to see me come home: 3

My kind of town

I've loved Atlanta ever since I can remember.

Growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Atlanta was our big city.  It was two hours down the interstate and a cultural world away, but it was the default choice when we needed more than our burg could offer.  (Knoxville or Nashville, you say?  Nashville was a longer drive and required going over the mountains; Knoxville wasn't any more cosmopolitan than home, or so we thought.)

And so we went to Atlanta regularly, several times each year.  The youth group loaded up the bus and went to Six Flags Over Georgia.  The family loaded up the car and went to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to see the Braves play.  The teenagers went to concerts.  The college students went to clubs and restaurants and the Olympics and Stone Mountain and the laser show.

Atlanta has drawn me back throughout my life.  I lived half an hour away for five years and made the trek into town for food or music or sports monthly, sometimes weekly.  I married a man who was born in Atlanta, who loves the Braves, whom I met while living in Athens in the city's shadow.  Now I go to conferences that regularly stop in Atlanta on their multi-year circuits of the country's convention centers. I'm an officer of an organization that is headquartered in Atlanta; the direct Delta flight to Hartsfield-Jackson gets my patronage more frequently than any other route.

Atlanta tries too hard but has a good sense of humor about itself while doing it.  Atlanta parties hard and smiles the next morning.  Atlanta eats too much and sleeps like a baby.  Atlanta stands tall today and tries to stand taller tomorrow.  Atlanta makes spaghetti out of its interstates and parkways out of its major roads.  Atlanta sprawls and soars and saunters.  It's crass and cute and cultured and courteous.  Atlanta always feels young.  Atlanta is new every time.

Atlanta, I love you.  And I'll be back soon.