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October 26, 2007

a day at saff in ten seconds or less

Bob's stunt double was kind enough to pose with me for the daily thesis documentation photo:

It's legal here for bars to sell you a jug for the road:

Posted by jodi at 11:58 PM | Comments (8) | categories:  jet set

October 25, 2007

we can jump in the water, stay drunk all the time

I'm heading up to SAFF in beautiful Asheville, NC this afternoon with Sandy, and am looking forward to the sort of rip-roaring fun weekend that sees you falling asleep in the car coming home on Sunday, beer soaked into the hem of your sweater, wool fibre clinging to your eyelashes and the faint smell of sheep permeating everything. Oh, yeah.

I'm a little stressed out about meeting Jen of Jenla, because I'm the sort of total slob who fantasizes about having a perfectly organized life and so I compensate by being completely obsessive about organizing things that don't really matter, and all of the fibre arts bloggers in my bloglines are organized into Canada, US, abroad and "in the flesh". Where will I file Jenla now when I've met Jen for real but not La? This shit keeps me up at night, I'm telling you. I told Sandy I might just avoid Jen all weekend so as not to have to feel like my filing's all effed* up. Heh.

Because I'm going to Asheville, the jukebox in my head has been playing that song that the Whoreshoes sang about Asheville constantly for the last two days. It's the song that gets lodged in my head every time we're driving down to Athens and I see a sign for Asheville. And yes, I get the Simon and Garfunkel song in my head every time we pass the sign for Saginaw (six or eight times a year) and I get that Harry Chapin song about the bananas in my head every time we pass the sign for Scranton (which, thankfully, happens less often).

*now that job-application time is upon me in the home stretch towards conpleting my thesis, snatching up my hard-earned piece of fancy paper and getting the hell outta Dodge, it's time to curb my tendency to spew swear words across the internet willy-nilly. If I end up slinging coffee next year, or (the gods forbid) blowing up balloons for a living again, the potty mouth will once again run rampant. I suppose I should probably also refrain from joking about getting drunk, but I'm sure y'all know that I'll actually be spending my SAFF Saturday evening cuddled up with a hotel room pillow and my laptop, writing the second draft of my statement of teaching philosophy. Because I party hard like that.

Posted by jodi at 12:18 PM | Comments (5) | categories:  jet set

October 18, 2007

soctoberfest update: two down

So I'm slow right now: October's half gone and I've finished two wee ankle socks (plus four inches of a lacy sock and the foot of a striped one). I'm only allowing myself to knit socks on the bus or while waiting for it and during meetings and lectures, and I'm working hard to keep the meetings and lectures to a minimum.

They are lovely little things, if I do say so.

Yarn is from Strings and Yarn, colour is Flight of the Bumblebee.

Posted by jodi at 06:18 PM | Comments (7) | categories:  sticks and string

October 10, 2007

pictures from a visit home

Yesterday was my first day back at school after a week spent at home to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family, and I got right back into the hectic grind of grad school with a morning meeting, office hours and three back-to-back critiques, ten hours straight with little opportunity for rest or food. Today I tried to take it easy but there was still a good deal of running around to be done, and I'm too wiped out to do more than post a few photos. I should be sewing a dress, as I've got nothing to wear tomorrow, but instead I'm sitting on the couch watching episodes of Sopranos and knitting a sweater I won't need for months. I spent two hours lovingly washing my pretty new bento box, making delicious salads and marinating tofu, then put it all in the fridge and had popcorn, applesauce and beer for supper instead. Not all mixed together.

My visit home, in bullet points:

-Airtran Airways flight 146 Atlanta to Detroit, October 2 07

-being away from home during three consecutive school years makes you lose touch with a lot of what's in your garden. During my visit home in September I got to see my Japanese knotweed flower for the first time since before we moved to Windsor, since it took until I went away to grad school for it to get established enough to flower. This month's flowery surprise was the chocolate boneset, as I planted it without knowing what it was or what its blooms would look like. Turns out it's a mass of lovely white fluff.

-had a nice (albeit short) visit with Kelly at Milk Coffee Bar, a place I dearly miss when I'm not in Windsor. This is one of my daily wardrobe images for my thesis blog, the only photo I took. Kelly metablogged my awkward posing here.

-finally got some photos of the bolero that I sewed up last week, which had been sitting there fully knitted all through August (too hot!). It was far too warm at home to actually wear it. The pattern is from Peony Knits and is super easy and satisfying for those instant-gratification types.

-southwestern Ontario on Thanksgiving weekend may not be as spectacular as some of those gaudier, more tawdry fall displays other places offer, but it's still one of the loveliest and most comforting colour palettes there is. Don't try to deny it.

-my lifelong association with Exeter's white squirrels didn't at all stop me from yanking out the camera and snapping away like some crazy out-of-towner as soon as one presented itself to us.

-this is another photo from my thesis blog (I'll force y'all over there eventually, just watch), included here simply because it's taken at my grandma's house, along the walk where I've had my photo taken so many times before (but not for twenty-five years or so). And look at how I was dressed on Thanksgiving Sunday, and let me tell you I sweated in this getup. Last year it snowed, or so I'm told. I was sweating down in Georgia then.

-the Ausable River, covered in a blanket of algae so thick it resembles those horrible lawns that people try to get looking like Astroturf. My little cousin Riley said in a disgusted voice, "my mom says she used to swim in this river". Those trees across the way to the left there are where the rope swing used to be, where Riley's mom and I swam with high school boys, twenty-three or so years ago.

Riley threw a stick in and the carpet of green opened up to accept it, then closed up again with a burp and a shudder. Just like the quicksand used to do on Gilligan's Island.

-come Monday I was back in Lavender Lullaby again, heading south (Airtran Airways flight 288 Detroit to Atlanta).

Posted by jodi at 08:52 PM | Comments (8) | categories:  jet set : sticks and string : true patriot love : windsor

October 01, 2007

queueing up the Soctoberfest hopefuls

Clockwise from top:

Superwash merino from Strings and Yarn, in the "flight of the bumblebee" colourway, with a wee toe already started (actually there's a whole other sock already but I don't like the fit, so it's on the block).

Superwash wool/tencel blend from Mama E, colourway "blood orange".

Superwash merino from Dyed in the Wool, "swamp thing" colourway.

Trekking XXL, in the fancifully-named colourway "146".

Just in case I run out (because, you know, it's so like me to exceed my own grandiose expectations) (in case it doesn't come across so early in the morning, that's sarcasm, folks) there should be another skein coming my way from Mama E soon. I knew it was a mistake to leave all of my sock yarn back home when I returned to school; I thought it would make me concentrate on other things but instead, somehow sock yarn found its way here (okay, the Trekking and the Mama E stuff were the ones I allowed myself to bring back from home after summer, so really I've only bought two).

Here's the thing. Because of my thesis project, I'm wearing these weird looking dresses every day. Some of them are brightly coloured, some of them are (and will be) muddy with heavily layered ink. Y'all may have noticed that I like colour a lot, and none of these sock yarns is particularly neutral. Already I have no prospects in the near future of finding anything in my new wardrobe that will not look hideous with my beautiful new kage bunshin socks,

which I have not yet worn (and it's just now begun to be cool enough, at least in the mornings).

The orange yarn I always envisioned as knee socks with a black ribbing and toe, just like the kage bunshins, and I think that will still be okay, as it's solid(ish) enough that I will find dresses to wear them with. But for the others, I can't decide. I love little socks like this:

and I love knee socks. I'm not so keen on socks of an in-between height. Right now I've mostly been wearing calf-length dresses, but the latest batch (of which I've got to finish at least one before I can leave the house this morning, as I've otherwise got nothing to wear) are all above the knee, and this fall and winter I'll be wearing them with leggings and tights. So I could just make little footie socks with all of this yarn and probably have enough to get two pairs out of a few of them or mix some of the colours in extra pairs, and these would be far enough away from the dresses, with solid leggings in between, that the variagated colours wouldn't clash so badly. Or I could make knee socks and throw caution to the winds, or wear my high boots all winter so that only a sliver shows out the top anyway. I'm leaning to the first option, because I'm an instant gratification sort of girl and I can make a lot of footies in the time it takes to knit all that leg. But footies don't keep the ankles warm all winter, do they? And Soctoberfest, coming as it does in the first cool days of autumn, seems to me to be about preparing for winter, putting up stores of warm things for later. To complicate things, I've just thought of two other possibilities: just make whatever socks the yarns call for and not give a rat's ass if they go with the dresses and wear them anyway (okay, that one is not so complicated), and make whatever socks the yarns call for and then put them away and not wear them until my project is over, which isn't the most appealing option. Throw into the mix that I have some awfully cute and awesome Mary Jane flats on the way that are going to look amazing with handknit footies. Jeez, why is this so hard?

Posted by jodi at 06:56 AM | Comments (4) | categories:  sticks and string

4019 love

Cross-posted from flickr, because I'm a slag like that. Although I'm really tempted to leave yesterday's post at the top for a while longer simply because I'm so pleased with the (stolen) title. Ah, well.

I've been waiting a long time for my beloved McIntosh apples to come into season; this is the only time of year I eat apples, and these are the only apples I eat. I can't stand the small, hard, sour apples that are picked underripe at end-of-season and saved to be sold in bags in February, so distant from the perfection of a fat, lovely, tree-ripened McIntosh.

As soon as these finally showed up in Kroger I bought twenty, even though I knew I was flying home for a week-long visit in six days. They're half gone already, and I'm sure I can eat three or four in the airport while I wait for my flight.

Posted by jodi at 12:02 AM | Comments (4) | categories:  food