Light and Momentary

Enthusiasm tempered

I finished Unraveling today and I am less enthusiastic than I was in my last post. I think it's largely an editing issue. In one chapter there were spots where she used very similar phrases close together on the same page, in a way that I would absolutely understand in a second draft but found grating in a published book. The diversity of topics that seemed pleasingly eclectic early on seemed a little more scattershot toward the end of the book -- I'm still not clear how the section on Fibonacci numbers was supposed to fit. 

Maybe because I know more about planning and knitting sweaters than I do about shearing and spinning fleece, I had less patience with her uncertainties in those chapters; maybe a non-knitter would like those better than I did. Or maybe it's just hard to write a whole book about making a sweater and hold the reader's interest all the way through. I had a similar experience with Adrienne Martini's book Sweater Quest -- the first half was more fun than the second half. Final verdict: glad I finished it, would still recommend it, but the recommendation is a little more measured now.

A couple of interesting books about women that might be niche recommendations

I am reading Peggy Orenstein's pandemic memoir, Unraveling, and I am really enjoying it. She'd always been a knitter, but during the pandemic she decided to learn how to shear a sheep, process and card the fleece, and spin her own yarn. But I don't think -- I'm not sure, but I really don't think -- it's too fiber-artsy for the non-fiber-arts-inclined among us. And you guys, there is SO much interesting stuff woven in (ha! see what I did there!) among the spinning bits. For instance, she discusses:

• research quantifying the amount of labor required of Viking women to produce sails in a time before spinning wheels
• textile millworkers as key drivers of both organized labor and the women's movement
• the face recognition abilities of sheep (better than mine!)

She has a lot to say about the fashion industry, and it's well timed for me given my recent forays into more sustainable clothing. The writing is zippy and engaging, and it's such an evocative book. That was a wild time to be alive, and lament and uncertainty are beautifully interleaved with fabric factoids and anti-fast-fashion segments. Enthusiastically recommended, with the caveat that I might have more patience for passages about sheep breeds than the average reader.

Yesterday I finished Trollope novel #14, Miss Mackenzie. On one of my recent-ish book posts, Nicole-the-Victorian-lit-professor (as distinct from Canadian Nicole, whose teaching interests lie more in the yoga-ward direction) asked me what I thought about Trollope's female characters, and the answer is that I am generally a fan. In contrast to Dickens, who has approximately five female characters to whom he assigns different names across all of his books, Trollope usually does a nice job creating interesting characters who also happen to be women. I had low expectations for this book because of its obscurity, but I'm glad I read it.

I wish I knew of a Trollope-loving corner of the internet. There are UK and US Trollope societies, but they seem to be a little too academic for my taste. I want a 1990s-ish bulletin board, or something like Pemberley, only Trollope-flavored. Lady Glencora Palliser makes an appearance late in Miss Mackenzie and I was so pleased to see her there-- alive and well, not yet a duchess, presumably rolling her eyes affectionately at Plantagenet's plans to decimalize English currency. Alas, the number of people to whom I can say, "You guys, you guys, it's Lady Glencora Palliser!" is approximately zero.

Well, I did say it to my husband, who nodded patiently if bemusedly, but you know what I mean.

Day 50

My 30-day dress challenge turned me into a Wool& fangirl, and I started a 100-day challenge on day 31. Today is the halfway point. Do you remember when I posted about how my swingy black tank dress caused the jam-session guy to ask me if I was a nun? That's my 100-day dress and I love it. It's cozy but never hot, and it lends itself to all kinds of layering adventures: shirts underneath, tunics atop, knitwear every which way. I have an eShakti wrap dress that is very pretty but a little too revealing, and today I wore it over my challenge dress. No cleavage issues, no skirt-blowing-open surprises when the wind came gusting off the prairie. I wondered if it would be too bulky to have that much yardage tucked underneath the wrap dress, but I think it works. (Facial expression caption: the person in this photo does not love taking selfies. Least favorite part of the challenge.)

So far Stella seems to be the only person in my life who has noticed that I am doing this admittedly rather odd thing. She told me that today's ensemble made me look like a Disney princess, and I did not ask whether this was a good look or a bad look. (She's not the only one to think the eShakti dress has a Disney princess vibe. Once when I wore it to class one of my students once said to me, "Dr. Gladly! You have Merida's hair AND you have her dress too!") My friend Beth, the one who encouraged me to give it a whirl, texts me every so often asking if my husband has commented on the wardrobe shift yet. So far the answer is no. One of my colleagues said something complimentary about "that dress you wore yesterday," not recognizing that I was wearing the selfsame dress again.

Sometimes I will only wear the challenge dress for part of the day, and put on something different to teach. Only sometimes, though -- mostly I love the structure of knowing what I will wear while retaining a bit of freedom to accessorize.

When I first heard about this challenge it sounded implausible. Like, c'mon, of course the clothes get stinky. Also: it's wool -- how could you not get overheated wearing wool every day? But it turns out they were telling the truth: an overnight airing does the trick, for their leggings as well as their dresses. And even as a person whose inner furnace is set to ROAST far more often than she might like, I'm finding that the temperature control element of their marketing materials holds up as well. 

Wool& doesn't do promos but here's a WoolX referral link for a $20 coupon, if you want some magic leggings or magic PJs of your very own.

More thoughts on leisure activities that require persistence

Today I came home from work and plunked myself down in the armchair. I picked up a project I started knitting almost 3 years ago, and I said to myself, "I am tired of knitting this thing." It reminded me of my post from earlier this week about books that I have to make myself read: I spend a not-inconsiderable proportion of my leisure time doing things that are more annoying than pleasant in the moment.

This project is a design by Ysolda Teague, a pair of colorwork mittens with some bells and whistles. They have a flip top, they have a lining (pulled out in the picture below), they have a fancypants braided cast-on. Unfortunately, they also have a gauge issue.

This is not my first go-round with Ysolda's mitt patterns and gauge issues. Gauge has bitten me in the butt on two other Ysolda projects, actually.. The last time I made a pair of Ysolda mitts, I started over THREE TIMES in an effort to get them right. But! Alas! I used to have the problem that my knitting was looser than expected, and the finished product would be too big. These mittens, though, are too snug.

I don't get it, actually. My gauge is spot on and I have average-sized hands. Did the pattern get rushed to print because she was trying to wrap up the Colourwork Club? Is there some other weird alchemy where the size can be right and the gauge can be right and the finished item can still be too small? It's a mystery.

Maybe if I tell you what the steps are, I will talk myself into completing them. Maybe they will grow when I block them, or maybe I have a friend with Lilliputian hands who would love them. We shall see. Anyway, here are the tasks standing between me and a pair of completed mittens.

• There are only ten rounds left in the main mitten chart, plus a little I-cord button loop. Painful level: yellow; definitely fiddly.
• Next up: flip-top openings (top and bottom) and thumb. Painful level: orange shading to red.
• After that, the lining. Painful level: yellow shading to green.
• Finally, the finishing-- tidying up, weaving ends, adding buttons. Painful level: fiery flame-bright red. Not my favorite part of any project and this one is extra-complicated.

It's really rare for me not to finish a knitting project, even if it marinates for a while. Which is a little funny, given that in this space I tend to grouse about my knitting more often than I say happy things about my knitting. I grumbled about this selfsame project nine months ago today, as a matter of fact. I wonder if I'd be happier if my leisure time included more purely leisurely things and fewer things that feel like work. Or maybe I am just wired this way. How about you? How much of your leisure time do you spend doing things that you enjoy more in the rearview mirror? Do tell -- I'm very curious.

Bon courage

This semester, friends, I have done a series of brave things that I can't tell you much about. I was left queasy and disheartened by the outcome of deliberations I was part of, and I resolved to see what I could do to make the situation better. I made a couple of scary appointments; I wrote (and rewrote!) a couple of scary letters. Today I sat in a room with the deliberating group again, and I told someone very senior that he was wrong, and why. My voice was calm but my heart was thumping loudly.

When I did the scary things I was mostly focused on the fact that they were scary (and hard, and time-consuming). But here is what happened as a result: five of the people involved in various steps of this process said, "Thank you for raising these issues; I agree with you." Best of all -- hurray! huzzah! -- a bad decision was reversed. 

So this post is to say that if you have been hesitating to rock a boat that needs rocking, or to push back on a bad outcome, or to do some other flavor of hard thing-- maybe it's a good day to take a step forward. Sometimes people are just waiting for someone to say, "This needs to change."

Books that reward persistence

Nicole posted today about abandoning books, and it made me think about books that I've kept reading when I wasn't enthusiastic about them. Sometimes it's a great decision, and sometimes it means throwing away additional hours of my life on something that wasn't worth the time.

When we were living in Scotland an older friend from church gave me a copy of Far from the Madding Crowd. I did not enjoy the first three-quarters of that book, you guys. I was pushing myself to finish it because it had been a gift from this kind and helpful person, but I was forcing myself to read it. And then! to my amazement! the last quarter of the book was really, really good.

A friend's recommendation is not always sufficient. I kept waiting for the part when I would like Middlemarch, because a different friend said, "You will absolutely love it!" I did not love it: not at the beginning, not in the middle, and not even at the end. That was a LOT of waiting fruitlessly for things to improve.

It's pretty common for me to start a book, set it aside, and then come back to it. Two of the best books I read in 2022 were Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, and I had to start them both more than once before they caught my interest.

But it's also pretty common for me to buy a book, read part of it, and then feel that I ought to finish it because of some blend of stubbornness and enduring susceptibility to the sunk cost fallacy.

You must have books in both categories, too. What's something that you were glad you put in the effort to finish? What's something that wasn't actually worth the time it required?

One of these days it will stop surprising me

Today was a long full day at work (they're all feeling like long full days right now), and I walked home under spitting gray skies feeling tired and sick. I walked in the door and took a COVID test. But I had told Pete that we could climb today, so when my test was negative I changed into workout clothes and headed off, a little reluctantly, to the climbing gym. 

After 45 minutes at the gym I felt seven million times better -- perky, upbeat, singing happy songs about dinner. This always seems a little weird to me. I can read about the mood-boosting effects of exercise, but when my own personal mood is boosted by exercise I'm always like, "Wait, this is not fair. Why can't I get my mood boosted by lying on the couch with a bag of Lindor truffles?"

I am shifting my focus back toward endurance training for the first time in a while. It feels pretty terrible right now, but bodies are adaptable and so I am just going to lean into the terrible. My plan is to dial back my lower-body weight-training to about once a week. I'm not willing to give up deadlifting, because nothing else makes me feel quite as mighty, but I find it very tricky to combine tough lifting sessions and tough running sessions. So: for a while I am going to run more and lift less, with the goal of maintaining my current level of strength while also getting enough rest to absorb the benefits of my running workouts.

Pete and I have been climbing more lately, which I am counting as a strength + cardio + flexibility cross-training session. I am trying not to focus on the ground I lost over the pandemic; I'm just going to try to keep nudging it forward from where I am.