I've been spending so much time carefully organizing my thoughts into well-constructed writing that you might consider this to be a bit of slopover, to make up for all that delicate work. Might not be quite so organized as usual.

Jeremy bought a copy of Geek Magazine recently, mostly for the story on the upcoming series of Futurama movies*. It's a fun magazine--mostly pop culture kinds of stuff, but then there's also an interview with Freeman Dyson, and an article on structures in dinosaur bones which imply the existence of useful feathers.

I've been flipping through it and enjoying most of it**, but the celebrity interviews started to work my last nerve. The people being interviewed seemed to all be trying to prove that they were geeks in high school. Then they backtrack a bit, saying that it's not like they got made fun of, they were really into sports, and they started modeling their senior year, but they still had embarrassing moments or what-have-you.

I call bananas on that.

Geekdom is starting to gain its own sort of cachet--geeks can make lots of money being good at what they do, people very serious and focused can be well-respected for that specialty.

But it's getting so that anyone who didn't enjoy their teenage years is talking about what a geek they are. "And, I mean, I love my iPhone. Doesn't that mean anything?" Being a geek, or a nerd, or a dork, it has some very specific connotations. It means getting incredibly technical and serious about at least one thing in the world; preferably something that people barely understand in the first place, like science or computers or role-playing games. It usually involves not understanding, or not being willing to conform to, the social code that led to popularity. Geeks were SHUNNED in high school--did people nominate you for homecoming queen as a joke? Were you openly laughed at? Did people's jaw drop at aspects of your appearance (that you hadn't intended to cultivate for shock value)? Then you're not a geek. I was BARELY a geek in high school (there were too many people in my crowd with natural charm and social skills), and ALL those things happened to me.

And there's another aspect in what I think of as the more genuine geekdom that never shows up in these interviews: shame.

I got to thinking about that last night, because of two mirror-image experiences that happened to me yesterday made me realize something: I don't talk fiber-geek with people I know in my science sphere, and I don't talk science-geek with fiber friends. With one or two exceptions of people who very clearly live with me in both those spheres (hi Shelley), they don't interact in the real world.

And here's the thing: I don't *let* them interact, *even when someone from one sphere is interested in the other*. Someone mentioned they liked my new hat, and I just said "thanks". When they asked where I bought it, I just said "Oh, I made it," and left it at that; no talk of spinning or designing or how I thought it functioned compared to my plans. I don't feel like I'm ashamed of my spinning and knitting, but I didn't even want to give any... the word I'm thinking of here is "ammunition", even though this is someone that I like, that I'm friends with, that does crafty stuff themselves, that I trust not to go laughing at me behind my back.

And the same in the other direction. I *love* the research project I'm working on right now; it has important implications, the experiments are all beautiful and consistent, the writing is coming together like the self-assembled structures I'm synthesizing. But I don't get into any detail beyond what my major is when I'm talking to fiber people, even if they're talking about scientific advancements *in my field*.

And I think both those examples are part of a semi-socially-aware geek trait. There's a fear of boring people, of them getting that oh-look-at-the-time look in their eye. There's a worry of coming off as a know-it-all, except hey, I'm one of maybe a dozen experts in the world on my little plot of scientific land, and I write long technical treatises on spinning dyed fibers, so I'm damn well qualified to talk about the stuff that interests me. And there's the junior-high-era fear of being labeled one of THOSE people, who are great if you need something calculated but are no good for inviting to parties.

I should get over that. I'm sensitive enough to know when people are bored, and enough of a teacher to know when people are curious about something, and I know I'm pretty good at explaining things at an amateur level. I wear dorky science-themed t-shirts. People know I'm a geek, I may as well not hide it.

*We watched the first one last night. Very amusing, particularly the first 5 minutes where they poke a lot of fun at the show's getting cancelled and returning in this format.
**I don't know how long the magazine's been out, but they seriously need to hire a proofreader. If you're writing a magazine called "Geek", you need to know the difference between "to" and "too", and understand that your readership will NOTICE THESE THINGS. And now I'm blanking on the instance, but there was an obvious mangling of a common phrase...I'll have to look through it again to remind myself.

There are roughly several bazillion things I want to do right now--knitting pattern ideas, spinning experiments, actually reading the books I get out at the library rather than renewing them the maximum number of times and returning them late, playing capoeira, buying plane tickets to go home for Christmas.

Instead, my to-do list currently looks like this:

1: Write thesis.

I'm doing okay with it, but I do keep having to remind myself that I really can't do anything else right now if I want to finish soon.

This process might either permanently cure my procrastination, or it might permanently set it in place, if I completely lose my marbles. Hard to decide yet. In any case, ack. Also, I have a lot of sympathy for those humanities people who avoid writing for 10 years. I'd never get this stuff done if I had to sit in a library carroll.

I did a good job of undoing some of the Total Freak Out through a change of scenery. J has been taking a pottery class and he wanted to go into the studio and play with some stuff last night, so I came with him and brought my spindle, which is going with some fingering-weight two ply merino right now. The studio was pretty quiet--just J and one of the pottery teachers--so I came in and spun while they puttered.

The pottery teacher was fascinated by the spindle, mostly how such a simple tool can make nice stuff. So I showed her a little bit of how I spin, and talked about how you can get even simpler than the toy-wheel-and-dowel spindle that I was using. And then I asked her about some pottery stuff, which I found just as neat as she found the spindle, though in the opposite kind of way; here's this really complex process; needing the right materials and the right temperatures to get something that looks like pottery, and the exact right chemical combinations to make glazes so you pottery can actually hold liquids. All that got figured out VERY early on in human culture. How did we do that? What even made us think to experiment?

It was nice to sit around and talk craft with someone. I think there's something to being a person who regularly gets asked the question "why couldn't you just buy that in a store instead of spending so much time to make one?" We recognize each other.
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J mentioned that we went to see Story of the Last Chrysanthemum last Friday. It's a Japanese movie from the 30's about a kabuki actor and his wife, and was the sort of thing that would never show up in Western culture. When was the last time you saw a movie about a heroic woman who risked everything so that her husband would be the most famous, widely-respected female impersonator in the country?

It was a beautiful movie; long, long, takes that gave richly detailed scenes of life in 1880's Japan. I know it was probably very romanticized, but still wonderful to see. Because there's a lot of actor's backstage business that happens, you get to see lots of clothing, and lots of clothes changing. This was one of my favorite parts of the movie. In these 5-10 minute takes, someone would come off of backstage, remove their wig, makeup, costume, put something appropriate to walking around backstage on over their under-robe, then change again into outdoor clothes. As someone who's always curious about fiber and how people dress (if not with capital-F Fashion), watching all the layers go on and off was fascinating.

The movie doesn't seem to be widely available (I see an out-of-print VHS tape on Amazon that's going for 70$), but check it out if a campus or local art house happens to be showing it. It is a beautiful thing, and I'm glad I got to see it.

I can't talk about anything right now.

If I make it to Thursday without my head exploding I'll be VERY thankful.

About half of the singles for Madam's soy silk are done. I kept a little bit of the 2-ounce lump in reserve, and I'll eyeball the two bobbins when I'm done to see which one needs a little extra.

As a little reminder, I'm doing a two ply yarn from some space-dyed fiber. For the first ply, I spun it up at the full width of the top, leading to llloooonnnnnggg stretches of color. The second ply, I'm breaking up into thinner bits, which will lead to shorter color repeats that will be modulated by the longer ones they lie next to.

There's two main ways I could have broken up the top into smaller bits: Either I could split 1/4 of the fiber along the whole length of the top at once, or I could break it into smallish pieces and break each of *those* into 4 pieces at a time:

It's a pretty subtle distinction, but it'll lead to two different yarns. I have no idea if it'll even show up in the final product, but my thought right now is to take a four-unit color run at a time, and break it into four pieces. That way, if I lived in a perfect world, each short four-color repeat will be the same length as one unit of a long-color repeat. I'm thinking it might tie the colors together a bit when knit up--there'll be little sections that match in color tendencies.

Or maybe not. Again, this has been the first project I've done with handdyed varigated fiber where I thought the design through beforehand; what (very) little amount of work I've done with this kind of thing before, I just split it up wherever I felt like. So we'll see if any of these things I've been talking about are obvious visual elements in the final product. Spinning is a pretty non-analytical activity while you're actually sitting there on the wheel; you just try to keep doing that thing you've been doing, as consistently as possible. Since my brain isn't capable of non-analysis, it's fun to think about these little technical things as I go.

So pretty much everything crafty has been stagnating, and then suddenly a hat jumped onto and fell off my needles over the weekend.



It's kind of a goofy thing. My hat stash has been low lately; I lost 3 or 4 hats last winter and am down to either "fashion" hats or ones that work when it's 10 below. Really needed something in between right now.

I had less than 60 yards of grey Romney that was the first thing I'd spun on my wheel. I also had a skein of Shetland wool which came out too thick compared to its companions. It suited the gray, though, so I figured it'd be a good test to see how I liked the yarn.

I cast on for a completely different hat, really; it was going to have the same... welting? Is that the word? The horizontal bumpitude evenly spaced along the bottom, but was then going to have some cables. There was a hat in a recent issue of Spin-Off which looked like this, and I really liked the effect.

So I knit a couple of welts, and I realized that I was going to have an annoying amount of the gray left over; enough left over for this to be no kind of stash-reducing project at all. At that point I realized that I was enjoying the color-texture combo, and that I could have enough gray for the whole rest of the hat if I stretched it out in some way.

So, more plain rows in between each set of gray purl rows.

I really like the final product. Both yarns were somewhat uneven--being the first stuff on the wheel and losing out on my quality-control standards will do that to a yarn--but it seems to go with the color and texture combination. If it does poorly in the cold I might rip it and redo it on fewer stitches, but for now I like the smooshy comfortableness, and I like how the design of the purl bumps emphasizes the squishyness, as if the hat is so comfortable on my head that it can't help but let its rings slip.

Travel notes:

-Gel-style deodorant (the kind that oozes up through the little gridlike dealie) does not interact well with the low-pressure environment inside an airplane. I suspect that cranking the dial until the level of the gel is well below its usual spot would work, but people who know me will be impressed that I even REMEMBERED deodorant, much less that I would think that far ahead.

I remembered toothpaste, too. That might be a first.

-So the TSA people seem sort of put-upon wherever you go (although wearing my socks with individual, multicolored toes plastered with Buttercup from the Powerpuff Girls will always get smiles when they ask me to take off my shoes). Not so at Ithaca. I almost gave them some of my precious bagels, because they started to explain about the gels-and-liquids-plastic-baggie thing, and before they'd gotten 3 words in I handed them my quart bag, and it was like I'd given them a little Christmas present of not-having-to-explain-this-thing-again. So we chatted about the weather and what was bringing me into town instead. Chatting! Because there was no line! Imagine!

-I usually fly through Detroit, because Northwest is cheap, and I've discovered what may be the most genius business I've ever seen.

The PB&J stand at the airport.

This would be totally stupid anywhere *except* an airport terminal, because who would pay for something they can make for 30 cents at home? But think about it for a bit. When I'm in an airport, every food option looks overpriced and disgusting. I'm not usually starved, but it's my last opportunity to get some food for another 3 hours, and I'm going to take that. There are the sit-down places, which have no need to try for repeat customers. There are sub shops selling a sandwich for 8$ that you KNOW you buy for 3.50 at work. There's cookies and caffeine at the coffee places, but you've been eating crap for the last 48 hours, and even cookies can get old.

What you really want--what you'd make for yourself at home--is some little thing. A few crackers, maybe, or, or...

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The PB&J place only makes nut butter and jelly sandwiches--peanut or cashew (!) butter, 4 or 5 jelly options, a few different breads. Marshmallow fluff, chocolate, and banana are extra. Then there were beverages (including soy and cow milk, which I consider necessary to my PB&J experience), and chips, I think. That's it.

The sandwiches are significantly cheaper than a sub, even with extras. The ingredients can't go far wrong, so you know you won't be disgusted by some accidental horror on a bun (and I found everything to be higher-than-average quality). You can get your kid to eat something before their crankiness rips a hole in space-time. You feel like you're eating something reasonably balanced. The line moves fast. Your sandwich gets made right then.

Most importantly, it's a bit of home for people who aren't. It's a little silly, sure--I wasn't the only one standing there a goofy smile, surprised to be waiting in line for kiddy food. But if you just said goodbye to a place you love, or if delays are keeping you from seeing your people, or if you're skipping from business suite to business suite with no end in sight, it's nice to have a small comfort.

Anyways, when's the last time someone made you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich once you were old enough to handle a butter knife? Never, that's when.

Detroit airport, at the little concourse on the low-number end of the A terminal.

Phew. So that's all the job stuff for the time being. By the end of the month I should hear from three different jobs I have a *reasonably* good chance of (as in, I've gotten past the first interview stage). If any one of them pans out, I'll know where I'm going, which will be a huge relief. And all three are super-interesting to me, and they're all in places I'd like to live, so I'd be perfectly happy with any one of them. If none of them works out, then I'll get back into the job search grind in earnest--I haven't been looking so much recently, just because I've been so busy with these other things.

Now, to get the "I Hope I Get It" song from A Chorus Line out of my head. It's not helping with my stress level.

I require more well-wishing, sorry for the bother. I'll be giving another talk for another job at 10am EST tomorrow. Think kindly upon me.

(Haven't heard from Big Interview #1 yet; I'm supposed to know by Dec. 1st. Frankly, getting either job would have me giddy.)

J was out of town on Friday evening and most of Saturday for a capoeira thing in Chicago. He tends to fear for my ability to fend for myself when we're apart, because I'm likely to be doing all sorts of crazy things. Dangerous, worrisome things like walking home by a slightly different route, falling asleep with the radio on, and eating cereal when it's not even morning.

Scariest of all, I started to prepare dinner at *8pm*, like some wacky European. dun-Dun-DUNNNN! Really, this didn't scare him at all; he got home a few minutes before nine and was starved, so a bowl of butternut squash soup, some salad, and a loaf of bread with olive oil, salt, and pepper was just about perfect.

It's hard to go wrong with butternut squash soup, I think. I've got one version on my recipe page, and last night I varied things a bit but kept with the general idea. No tofu, no carrots, no bothering with cooling off the mixture before throwing it in the blender, which I'm pleased to say didn't break my blender at all. I used a dried chipotle pepper instead of red pepper flakes, which was interesting--I threw it in with the cooking squash until it was hydrated a bit, then chopped off the top and threw it back in, mostly whole. Blended up just fine, and it was a neat pairing with the slightly more India-inspired spice mixture. It's a great Saturday kind of dish, because it takes a while to chop and cook the squash, but it's not too sensitive to your puttering away to fold clothes or answer the phone. In fact, if you chopped up the squash the night before, it'd be pretty easy to handle on a weeknight.

Even better, the soup has a bit of a magic trick. When it's just stock, big chunks of vegetable, and a lonely pepper, it looks so *doubtful*. It doesn't look cohesive. It doesn't taste like anything. The annoyance of peeling that big fargin' squash just doesn't seem worth it.

Then 20 seconds in the blender, and it's transformed. Silky, flavorful, and gorgeous to look at. How does it trick me every time?