sara skates

Ketchup, as Marta says.  While sparse in posting, I’m not ready to give up blogging altogether.  I am on sabbatical now, and have had a chance to start and finish some projects and regain the head-space to post.  No doubt, many details that I have wanted to blog about will be forgotten and lost – but heck.  It’s still worth it to pick up and go, rather than fading out completely, eh?  I am facebooking more – and while it’s entirely not the same as blogging?  It’s nice that some of the same “chatter” with online friends has picked up there.

Sabbatical. It’s a wonderful thing.  Last year at work was pretty much hellacious from start to finish.  I transitioned out of my Institutional Research job (with some regrets, but all in all, with open arms), and back to a regular faculty member.  It’s a good time to do so for a lot of reasons – I have a year left on my grant to finish up (and it was getting entirely shafted while in IR), it’s a good time to be home a lot with the kids, it’s a good time to gear up and produce a lot in the soonish bid for promotion.  I am making headway on getting one manuscript for publication, with two more planned for the year – if I pull 2/3 out of my hat this year I’ll be happy.

Fibery Things. Oh My.

1. Knitting. As usual, I have a gazillion things on the needles.  Unfortunately my socks-in-progress are all at hard places – I skipped the heel turn and went right to picking up the gusset stitches on one so need to rip that out and remember how to turn heels; I’m on sock #2 of another pair and despite using the same needles and having the same row gauge – one sock is skinnier than the other (the stitch gauge is off – I KNOW – that seems physically impossible doesn’t it?  To have the stitch gauge change but not the row gauge?  It did.  The socks are fraternal not identical.  They’re intended to be a gift, and I’m not sure what to do about it.).  The third – I’m down the ankle of the first sock and I have decided that the gauge is really just too tight – I don’t want socks of armor after all.  There’s a fourth pair somewhere I believe and no doubt something is wrong with it too.
2. I am so so so nearly done with a sweater (Marta), though I need to rip out 5 measly inches of a neck ribbing and redo it.  It’s nothing really.  I just need to do it.  I have another sweater started and it’s suffering a similar gauge issue as that sock – I used Sweater Wizard and my gauge to generate the pattern, which is turning out nothing like what it should.  I now have a giant gauge swatch of the top part of a top-down raglan (nearly to the split of the sleeves at the underarm from the body), and have no clue what the problem is.  I have about 3 more sweaters I am desperate to start and since I seem to only complete about one a year, well, something needs to start making progress.
3. New Equipment! Risa put her NZAK circular sock knitting machine up for sale, and I’ve been wanting one for oh about a decade, so I bit the bullet and met her somewhere in Pennsylvania (I was traveling back with Hannah from sleepaway camp and a stay with Marta and family; Risa was traveling back from a stay with her sister), and brought it home.  The learning curve is shall we say steep.  I have figured out how to cast on and how to knit tubes.  Next up – heels/toes and the ribber – I was going to start with the ribber, but that’s not going well, so I think I’ll back off of that and wokr on heels for a while.  B/c socks can be knit without ribbing after all.  AND, this weekend I took the kids off to the Syracuse Rabbit Show and picked up a small table loom from Kim – there  showing her rabbits.  Oh my gosh the bunnies were cute.  Toby is now pondering starting a rabbit breeding business (ever the entrepreneur).  How I managed to come home without a black and white spotted one with ears the size of its body I have no idea.  But the loom – it’s perfect – I’ve been intrigued by weaving for a little while, and starting with a small table-top one??  Perfect.
4. Spinning. I have some Brooks Farm roving on the wheel, and totally love it.  I picked it up at Hemlock (aka Finger Lakes Fiber Festival) probably a year ago.  There’s a lot of it – I haven’t been spinning a lot but it’s pulling at me to do it more.

Kids!

1. Hannah has started 7th grade, she’s still playing the bassoon, and after much todo involving her being sick for all of week two of school and missing tryouts, she is on the cross-country team and enjoying it.  She’s a tired puppy at the end of the day – the team meets from 3-4:30 Monday through Friday.  Love it.
2. Toby has started 4th grade.  He is rising to the increased homework expectations and settling in nicely.  He starts instrumental music this year – and after trying out a number of things, settled on the baritone.  He was going to start with the trumpet – but, the baritone is easier to hold and similar in many ways.  Bonus for me, the baritone is too big to carry on the bus (school rule), so the school rents it to us for $50 for the year – one for home and one for school.  Love it.  No need to track down an instrument myself.  (Hannah does the same thing with the bassoon, which is still bigger than she is.)

Other.

I seem to be in a weird (albeit productive) sort of ‘nesting’? phase of life.

1. I did a clean-sweep of the basement playroom, sold a bunch of it and had a big yard sale, and am now working on repurposing the room.  The top contender idea is to turn the space into a movie-watching room – with couches and chairs and a DVD projector.  I figure it’ll get used throughout the teenaged years (which are soon for Hannah, very soon!).  A big craft table is moving down there too.  Really I could do without the room (I know, how “eesh” to be in the position of wishing for less space), but – moving is not an option.  The basement only has one egress so it’s not suitable for a bedroom – though Hannah did have a sleepover down there.  I may sort out some sort of rope ladder/window breaking thing for a small high window exit – and not worry so much for future sleepovers.
2. Hannah’s room also got a big clean and purge, and Toby’s got a once-over.
3. I am done – well, ok, nearly done with what I can do until I sort out one last problem, with the front deck project – it was built last year when Toby’s ramp was put in, and never painted or stained.  The main part has a coat of paint on it (and needs a second, and then varnish).  I am using linseed oil paint which really functions as a stain – it’ll never peel and won’t need re-doing.  The unsolved problem is tracking some down in a specific trim color for the uprights on the railing.  Eesh.  I could paint it with the regular exterior trim paint used on the rest of the house…
4. I am now focusing on the kitchen – I want to add a wheel-chair height counter to the one empty wall (with probably a base cabinet, or more likely, an under-counter freezer that we currently have in the basement, under it) – to give Toby more usable workspace in the kitchen.  It’s not an enormous project, but it does require some time and tools, and the time has been the issue lately.

Lego League. For three years, Hannah was on a FIRST Lego League team. She had an awesome time – although it ends with a challenge competition that – like anything else with a competitive component – can get a little intense (often more on the part of the parents than the kids).  She sort of wants to do it again, although Toby really wants to do it.  The team coach from the last couple of years is not doing it again – though he’s willing to pass on all the equipment (table, kits from prior years, etc.) and to mentor someone new.  It’s a little late but not too late (yet, Oct 15 is the deadline for signing up teams), and I have calls out – if I can get a group of kids together I’ll coach it.  I love the program – kids research a problem, present their research, and also build and program a robot and put it through its paces.  It focuses on teamwork, and kids end up learning a lot and – what’s not to like about playing with robots???  Last year the research component was focused on climate – and Hannah’s team did a whole thing on the local climate and maple syrup production.  Yes, I feel slightly insane even pondering taking on a task like this – but heck.  If the team thing doesn’t sort out – we’ll just do informal robot building and playing.

Last for today – I had an essay on knitting published in Times Higher Education.  I already posted this pretty liberally on Facebook – but I’ll link it here too.  It was a really fun article to write – the goal of that column is for academics to write about something that is specifically *not* in their academic field of study.  There are some awesome articles about things that folks are passionate about.  I was asked to write it by a fellow adult skater – one I have not met in person but who I have connected with via blogging.  She’s on my list of people to meet in person and skate with someday   Thanks Karen!