Day One

While watching the last two episodes of Season 1 of Dracula, I was continuing to knit the Clapotis scarf. It is relaxing and enjoyable to be able to knit without too much pressure from outside sources. The downside is that I don't think the yarn is the right choice for the scarf. It is curling in on itself a bit more than the other Clapotis I have knit. The silky fibers of the yarn also seem to catch and separate, causing it to snag on the stitch holders. This indicates that the item will snag on jewelry and other everyday thing through wearing it, therefore the scarf will look ratty in a matter of a month. That is not my ideal gift. I believe that my gifting will digress into pretty scarfs that are easier worn from my favorite Target. 

On a brighter note, I will join a mystery KAL for Downton Abbey Season 4. I will need to get a DK weight yarn tomorrow evening from my LYS -- hopefully a malabrigo with silk. At this point, I really don't care what color it is, as long as I get to knit this mystery. A part of me looks forward to attending the knit night once again, while another part of me dreads it. I think I dread the yarn purchase temptation over anything. I miss the ladies at the shop, and feel a little hermit like these days. I think I just got so sheltered and housed in after attending school on my normal knit nights tha I forgot what a stress relief it is. Maybe this semester will feel healthier and a little more same. Probably not with my comps and replies from the PhD programs I applied to. I will probably be a nervous wreak. Wish me luck!

365 Challenge for 2014

Okay, I am seeing that people last year challenged themselves to post each day over the course of a year on a specific topic. I will now challenge myself to post about my knitting, weaving, and spinning in the new year. Some of my posts may be about time constraints with not being able to continue or complete a project. I may find that I will have minimal post subjects during the middle of the Spring Semester, due to class schedules and tests to be taken for the course of finishing my MA in English. There may be a simple photo of a project or tools saying that they miss me. My projects may become like Golem desiring his Precious. Who knows! As the Spring progresses, I may have good news to announce or I may just post about delving into my knitting as a source of comfort. Let’s pray for good news for the New Year! Tomorrow, I will post my projects in need of love and the new Clapotis I started knitting for a teacher friend. Hopefully, this will be a start to writing and creativity for the New Year. I have missed my fiber and want to return to the glory and peace it gave me to de-stress. At least I get to return to my knit nights on Thursdays at my LYS!

Happy New Year’s Eve!

I joined a writing Group!

Robin and I were on the phone discussing life and the odd little things friends talk about when she mentioned how she’d joined a writer’s group. I asked her what about, and she told me it was based on getting feedback for writing a novel. I stated, “I really wish I could go to that with you,” only because we both are so comfortable with each other that we can half invite ourselves to the other things we do in life. She checked at the group and I received a quick invitation to meet the next round for feedback. This meant I needed to find my novel on the lurking tower Alienware.

So, as usual with my last minute projects, I decided to search for it on the Sunday before my husband started a major work project. I needed the document edited to my satisfaction and submitted by that week’s Tuesday evening. I go to turn the massive Stormtrooper looking Alienware and Windows never opens. It restarts itself at least five times before I asked my computer network engineer, geek extraordinaire  husband to take a look. My USB keyboard wouldn’t respond, so he went in search of another keyboard in his pile of computer paraphernalia. It worked enough that he could tab up to the start-up setting that scans what is wrong. That is all I am able to explain about it since how the insides of computers work when all things are plugged in is beyond me. The Stormtrooper got stuck on the video driver, or that’s what my hubby said it did. At that moment I began feeling the ugly head of an anxiety attack pop up and say, “Raaaaor!” Not pretty.We opened the Stormtrooper up and dusted – a lot! It still got stuck. sigh

Solutions to the Stormtrooper and getting the files from my hard drive:
1. Buy a new video card — CHECK!
2. Buy a hard drive enclosure to make my current hard drive an external hard drive — CHECK!

Finding a hard drive enclosure for a 3.5″ hard drive was not easy. Only one store in our area had it, and we made the error of creating it as a family outing. Our two boys were insane acting and ran all over the store like wild animals. This did not help with my anxiety attack. We did a couple other things that added to my stress level and made me start dreading the week with the boys, but that’s another story I’ll tell later. Once we got home hubby took out the hard drive and put it in the enclosure. He hooked it up to my Alienware laptop. I clicked on my files — LOCKED! YOU DO NOT HAVE THE AUTHORIZATION FOR THESE FILES. Screaming at my computer ensued. I started sounding like a territorial harpy squirrel trying to get to her stored nuts for the winter only to find them locked away with an invisible key. So, hubby tried to unlock the files. He asked me the question, “Do you know which file the novel is in?” I went ballistic, since I wanted access to ALL my files and I knew if I told him a specific file that would be the only thing he would unlock for me. Plus, I needed to get into a file folder, or two, or ten in order to find where I mysteriously placed my novel. I never made anything easy to find in the past. Meanwhile, my anxiety level has reached max capacity and I started shaking.

Hubby finally got into my folders and unlocked them all, but decided to ask me to take a look in the exact moment I couldn’t handle anything more. He gave me a few hours to settle down and then I went to look. I found the novel and just knew I would e horrified at how bad a writer I was before I went to finish my degree. I printed it out, and it wasn’t horrible. In fact, the writing was better than some of the popular novels currently circulating. So, Sunday evening I begin editing and writing sections to add to empty parts. Monday, as my kids are playing, I begin typing in those sections. One sections becomes much longer than expected and I hesitate that I took it too far. Before sending it off, I call Robin and ask her questions about what to expect from the women in the group. I am nervous about sending my writing out. She tells me they only critique to make the writing better and do not judge on the content of the writing. I certainly hope she is right since I sent out my prologue-chapter 2 out to the group to read.

I SPUN ME SOME YARN!

So, tonight I spun my second 4oz bat of roving and plied it with my former bat. So Dragonfly and Saturn look really pretty together. Making me a slouchy hat out of it. I am so proud of how thin I began to spin tonight. It may not be lace yarn but a nice DK/Worsted works nicely for my new hat. All these tones of olive-y greens with a splash of sky blue. It may actually match a silk sweater I made this past summer. Who knew the greens would be a match? Once this hat is made, I need to spin the wonderful bats Joe gave me...Sealed With A Kiss. Reminds me of Snow White....love sealed with a kiss...or maybe I have bee watching too much of Once Upon A Time. Either way, it is pretty pinks with dark greens. It might be nice to see how it looks all spun and plied together. The fun is finding a pattern to use the spun fiber on. You need just the right amount of yardage and weight for an accessory to knit up nicely. I'll post a pic of the hat when it is done and the roving before and after it is spun...well the ones Joe gave me. Too late on the greens!

Christmas Came Early

This is a short blurb that makes me so grateful and happy for the new year. Today I received word from the Sigma Tau Delta National English Honor Society that my T.S. Eliot research paper was accepted for presentation in the national convention this year. From the numbers that had submitted this year, I was accepted and have been told it is a huge honor. I was already excited and began planning the events in which I needed to arrange my teaching schedule. Then at midnight I happened to glance at my email on my phone. And what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a message from MAMA (a Medieval conference) that my Margery Kempe research paper had been accepted in their conference. This was the moment I decided that Christmas came early. I immediately emailed my professors and department chairs a second time this evening to inform them of this conference. With the first, i was told it must be some record I hold with a fellow graduate student to have three conferences in a year. Yet, at midnight, it became four. So, not only do I teach this semester, I go to Hawaii to present on Shakespeare, then to Kentucky to present on Margery Kempe, then to New Orleans to present on T.S. Eliot. This past year's work has become a fruitful harvest for the upcoming year. And it is interesting, I get to teach English 4, Brit Lit....and all my research is Brit Lit from Medieval to Modern. Excitement is not the word for this. I wonder if travel and presenting myself to people is the theme of the year?

Graduate student break

So, I have been busy studying and getting my MAT in English. After three semesters and two summers I have reached the point of interning with a GPA of 3.909, attended 3 research conferences, awaiting word from 2 conferences, getting at least 2 research articles published, attended 2 NCTE Conventions, and am now a member of ALAN. Seems like life changes drastically in a graduate program. I have hardly had time to knit, but every Thursday I go to my local yarn shop (Rainy Day Creations) and knit with good friends. I have made a couple cowls, a vest for my mom, working on a second sock, made a Lady Eleanor, completed a clapotis, made two short sleeve sweaters for teaching, made a lace tunic, made my first lace shawl, and need to finish a third sweater. I'm about to start a top down sweater class with Hattie at the shop so I can finally make sweaters that fit my body nicely. I've joined the YMCA and exercise with friends who inspire me to get healthy. I took up spinning and weaving in the last couple years and now am a proud mama of three looms and two wheels. I will probably get a traveling wheel sometime next year when I have a teaching job or am working on a second masters degree. I need to wash a sheep and card the fleece for spinning this Christmas break. I am spinning my fiber that I have stored up over the break so I have an excuse to buy more. I want to knit pretty things with the fiber I have spun. My spinning is getting nicer and my feet are slowing down. This makes me very happy. I want to start a second pair of socks with this really dark purple yarn -- very Gothic! I also have all this yarn stashed away for lace shawls....maybe I'll get to them -- or maybe that yarn will end up in my weaving. I need to finish my current weaving project and send it to my friend. It was started for her as a promise. She will get it this winter. There is so much I want to knit and weave. One day it will all get done. This winter break is a chance to get a few things completed and a few new things started.

Update and Feeling Smart

Update:

Well, exams are now over. I know according to the points posted that I earned that I have earned an A in one of my classes. The other class I took I am suspecting that I earned an A in it, too (due to being graded nothing less than a 99 in my writings and mid-term exam and making a B+ on my term paper before revision...also think I did well on the final exam). I have completed most of my Yule and Christmas shopping, but need to send off a couple packages to family. They will get them by New Year's. I have joined a new group and am making new friends of like minds; responsible, working adults that don't whine about things without having tried to remedy the situation themselves. One offered me a trial of supplements that I have tried and am disappointed at how my body seems to react to. They cause an adverse reaction and I end up having a flair up of my chronic fatigue syndrome, which is why I began taking the darn things in the first place. I looked up the ingredients and there is nothing in them that should cause the reaction, but my body is being freakish.

We are not happy with our church either. I have a difficult time going after having talked with my minister about a few things of importance to me. I was told I am a Diest and that Gnosticism has dangers, those being that the belief that Christ and God reside inside the soul means that you start believing that you are becoming a god. Hmm...Nope, don't think I am a god or goddess. But I do believe that Christ, God and the divine force lives within my heart and my soul and that it is not an external force guiding me. If I don't feel the divine within I have a hard time believing in it and will break it down until it either no longer is valid or I find the force behind the belief and understand it. Topping it off is that I was told that the Saints and the Virgin Mary are not fundamental beliefs in the doctrine of the Episcopal Church, but the following Sunday a prayer in the Book of Common Prayer all but invoked Mary and the Saints. Contradiction? I think we are going to try the Unitarian Church here in Charlotte in hopes we have a more pleasant experience with them here.

Feeling Smart:

Last night my loving husband came up to me and said, "I am Enkidu to your Shamhet." He took me off guard and I asked him who Shamhet was since something about it just didn't sound right. He was referencing The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is very sweet of him since I am an English Literature Major at Winthrop University and just finished a class in World Literature. I thought that my brain was just not remembering effeciently since that was a reading from the very beginning of the semester. My hubby said Shamhet was the temple prostitute that tamed the wild forest man Enkidu, and then I knew why his statement to me didn't click. The translation we read never named the temple prostitute and only called her the Harlot and referenced her as being from the Temple of Ishtar. I asked him where he saw that Shamhet was referenced as the name of the Harlot and he showed me the article on Wikipeadia. I read it and then went and got my copy of The Epic of Gilgamesh, since they were translating the menaing behind the name Shamhet as being the "glorious one.". I saw that there was a sun god by the name of Shamesh in the epic and that he was referenced as the "glorious sun." So, all my studies on ancient religions began clicking and I dared to comment and suggest that there was a mistranslation by the original poster.

My instinct led me down the thoughts that a temple prostitute traditionally took on a portion of the name of the goddess/god that the temple is dedicated to. For the Harlot to have a literary force behind her characterization her actual name would have had a connection to Ishtar, not Shamesh, since she was dedicated in the Temple of Ishtar. The name Shamhet suggests a connection to the god Shamesh, not to the actual connection to the goddess Ishtar. Plus, a temple prostitute rarely would take on a masculine force in her association via her temple name. That would suggest a position that would not involve civilizing a man through the sexuality of a woman, as the Harlot civilized Enkidu with exposing her naked breasts and laying with him in the forest. Women were also not associated in Akkadian culture with the sun, but were associated with lunar cycles and dark mysteries like the goddess Ishtar is of the night and darker mysteries of women...menstration, fertility, birthing and death. I have a study in this topic since I am dedicated to Ishtar's Egyptian counterpart...the goddess Sekhmet.