Valentine from my honey
Stephanie made me this cute little crocheted heart. Love!
February Blahs
Seasonal Affective Disorder has hit me full in the face in the last several weeks, and sadly, my 365 project is a casualty. Between a number or projects at work and the weather, I can’t seem to get photos processed and online. I’m actually not far behind on taking the pictures, but my enthusiasm for editing is out the window. I’m hoping it comes back once spring starts to come into the picture.
On the other hand, you know what I am keeping up with? You know exactly what I’m going to say here, right? Yep. In the past nine months I’ve finished: four scarves, two hats, a large pillow, and a pair of leg warmers. I have in progress (with significant amounts of work finished): a sweater, a baby blanket, and three more scarves. And I have some sampler squares for practice that will eventually be an afghan. I’m rocking on the knitting, which seems to be an antidote to the SAD. And far from stressing me out or feeling like an obligation, it’s actually fun.
So I am accomplishing something, even if it’s just decompressing in a brightly colored, snuggly warm way. What could be wrong with that? Nothing, I say! Nothing at all! Pay no attention to that cynical voice behind the curtain! Knitting is awesome. Now if I could just find some murders to solve, I’d rocking the Miss Marple homage big time.
Doctor’s appointment
The echo-doppler machine in my cardiologist’s office – a routine checkup I get once a year or so.
Knitting and Design and Flow
It struck me on the way in to work this morning that the reason I love knitting so much is because it’s design in almost pure form. With web design, there are so many hurdles you have to jump through to get your design into a working state – css attributes to learn, scripting languages to inhale, content management systems to navigate, coding issues, browser inconsistencies, bugs, communication, frustration, office politics and ridiculousness; the pure visual design work (the part I love) is only about 15% of what I get to do, and the rest is just necessary evil.
Knitting, on the other hand, is just pure design elements: space, line, color, texture, shape, form, value – all right in your hands to sculpt at will with nothing in between you and the finished work – blissful flow.
I feel the same when with photography much of the time as well — just me and a camera and vision in my head captured.
At Yack Arena
Watching the ice dancing competition and waiting for Stephanie’s
competition. (in Wyandotte, Michigan.) She passed her Bronze moves in the field test this morning, so she’s really excited. She’s been working hard on the test requirements for the last several months, so this is quite a validation of her work. I’m really proud of her.
On the road again
Headed to Michigan to visit our friends Dan and Melissa and to go to
Stephanie’s skating competition in Wyandotte, MI. Left the pooch home with our petsitter for this trip; too far for the little dude. Stephanie is also testing for her bronze moves in the field.
Weekend Update 2010-01-19
Nope, I haven’t quit the 365 photo project, I’m just behind on putting the photos I’ve taken up. I know – three day weekend for me and I couldn’t get it done. But I was working on the project — I want to do some portrait work, and we have a southern-exposure window that I wanted to put a chair in front of so I could take some pictures in natural light. That entailed taking down the Christmas tree, rearranging the library, and moving the trunk from in front of the window. Lots of work, but now I have a place to seat people in pretty lighting.
I’m trying to create some variety and different opportunities, because all my pictures are of knitting and cats. 😉 It hard to come up with entertaining things to photograph when I hate the cold and am hibernating at home a lot.
I’m the knitting cat lady! Yes, knitting and cats. And dogs – wouldn’t want to forget the pooch.
Gratuitous knitting photo
Things will also pick up once it gets warmer. This coming weekend we’re going to a skating competition for Stephanie and I’ll have a lot of pictures there, and we do get out a lot more in the spring.
Stephanie took me out last night to a Asian/Vietnamese food place on the east side of town – Sandra Rice and Noodles. OMG. The best lemongrass chicken I’ve ever had, hands down. Simply wonderful. I have leftovers that I can’t wait to get at. We tacked a dessert on to the order so we could use a coupon – rice pudding that was the best afterthought ever. Really delicious. It’s on Pendleton Pike, so it’s a bit out of the way, but definitely worth the drive from downtown for us. Yum yum yum. I wish I were a better writer when it comes to food, but I’m not good at separating flavors and identifying what went into a dish. And I tend to only talk about places I really enjoy, so every food review sounds the same – “Yummy, delicious, best ever.” Not terribly helpful to anyone, other than to let you know what I like.
Dealbreakers
You know how you find a site that you really like, and you read it and enjoy it and show it to everyone you know? And you go along and after awhile the site changes, and you find yourself enjoying it less and less, and then there gets to be a point at which you go, this is not so much fun anymore?
And then one day someone posts something that you really don’t agree with, and you state your case in the comments, and they churn and rationalize about why they’re right, and finally you give up and say “unsubscribe”? I guess It’s the “it’s not you, it’s me” moment for one of my former favorites – Shakesville.
Even some of the best-intentioned communities can turn insular and unable to admit when they’re wrong, and vicious towards anyone who even questions their ideas, sadly. Granted, I only get the stray, inane comments on my blog, so I don’t have a lot of moderation to worry about. And I know that managing a large community must be stressful. But… I don’t know how to express it, exactly. There seems to be a level of tolerance that they demand towards their own writing that they don’t return to the people who make comments, ask questions, or post opinions on their threads. The level of snide that comes from some of their posters/moderators, particularly deeky, towards anyone that has a thought they’ve haven’t embraced is too much. I don’t want to read that every day.
I’m auditioning Feministe as my new regular feminism reading to keep me up on what’s going on in feminist thought. We’ll see if that’s a better fit.
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