Entries from March 2010 ↓

I taught all day yesterday, so today I am rewarding myself with a (planned vacation) day off from my regular job. The timing is pretty excellent, since I stayed up late-late (for me) last night watching the Academy Awards, which ran long, as usual. I was so thrilled to see The Hurt Locker win a crapton of awards. Tim and I watched it on Saturday night and we both loved it. It’s difficult to make a movie about the current war in the Middle East without a) being political; or b) being manipulative, and I thought The Hurt Locker managed to not do either. I can’t stand movies where I feel like my emotions are being manipulated–that’s why I hated Crash, which won a few years ago. I thought The Hurt Locker showed us people who were real and heroic and flawed and broken, and I loved it for that. I am also thrilled that finally, after 82 years, a woman won the Best Director award. I thought Mo’Nique’s speech was inspiring and I was creeped out that everyone sitting in James Cameron’s section seemed to be wearing Avatar-blue.

So it was a late night for me after an eventful week (teaching all day Sunday, guest-speaking in the fantastic Dorothea Salo’s collection development class on Saturday–seriously, GSLIS is lucky to have her as an instructor) and I am happy to have the day off to unwind.

The plan for today: I’m going to grocery shop and buy ingredients to make a lasagna. I’m going to go to lunch with Tim, who is working diligently upstairs in his office. I’m going to read, since I have a pile of books to review and an impending deadline. I may watch some or all of the Masterpiece Classic adaptation of Emma, which is sitting on the Tivo. If I get really ambitious, or if I need any of the stuff in the sink for cooking, I might do the dishes. I was going to take pictures of some new yarn acquisitions and add them to Ravelry, but the fog and rain is making this a bad day for that.

Also, I am going to knit. I haven’t picked up my needles in over a week. You’d think that, given the stressful time I’ve been going through, I’d be knitting like mad right now, but I’m not. I’ve been coming home from work and sitting with Tim, talking and making jigsaw puzzles or watching TV. I have so many projects that are thisclose to being finished, and I’d like to get there on a few of them before it gets too warm to wear handknit socks and handknit shawls. I’d also like to make sure that I have a handknit gift for my mother, whose birthday is on May 2. (She has come to expect handknit gifts from me, and I don’t blame her!)

So now, on with the day.

So for the third time in a row, I have not finished my Ravelympics project during the Olympics. This time out, I was knitting an Ishbel (the large size) out of some magnificent red Bugga (Longhorned Beetle, to be exact). I didn’t have any problems with the pattern–I found it very straightforward. My excuse? A rotten week at work, which made me too preoccupied to knit in the evenings, followed by four days out of town at an intensive leadership/technology training workshop.

I could have done some knitting last weekend, but I had to grade papers for the class that I teach, then I got sucked into playing a game on my computer.

I think I am just destined to never finish a Ravelympics project. I ask myself, “would I have finished if all had been going swimmingly at work? Would I have finished if I wasn’t out of town for four days?” Perhaps. Or perhaps I would have found something else to take the place of those two things, some other distraction that would prevent me from meeting my not-so-lofty goal.

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Knitting Olympics 2006 (the pre-Ravelry days): I attempted to make a Cheryl Oberle cardigan. I got about 3/4 of the way through it, messed up a three-needle bind-off, and threw it across the room (literally) in disgust. Tim forced me to take a time out from the project after that incident, so I did. I ended up finishing the cardigan in August of that year during a big UFO clean-out. It’s a lovely cardigan but it desperately needs a washing. It’s covered in cat hair.

Ravelympics 2008: I do not remember what I attempted, I only remember that I didn’t finish it.

Ravelympics 2010: One Incomplete Ishbel. It’s going to be gorgeous when it’s done.

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I did finish an awesome pair of Jaywalkers, though. (Picture to come.) And now I’m in the midst of the March UFO Madness challenge–I plan to try and finish a few pesky UFOs by March 15. I have some pretty strict plans for finishing the projects that I’ve started. My goal is to get most of them finished by the end of May, and I don’t plan to start more than a couple of gift projects between now and then. Like everything else, we’ll see how that goes.