happy 1st anniversary, my love!

interdisciplinary

Knitting is stretchy, and cotton is not. This is frustrating, but so rewarding. It's going to be so wonderful when I'm done with this phone cozy!

a summer of socks

In preparation for the Sock Summit in August, I have been brushing up on my sock-knitting skills.

My latest endeavor: the Temperance socks.

You'll have to forgive the cruddy phone camera, there's no hope of a better picture until I can swipe Paul's camera for a day! Until then, imagine some beautiful, manly, black socks and some bright blue and yellow ones with a diamond-print.

yarn art

The other day I went to Stumptown coffee on my way to work and saw an amazing sight: yarn on the wall! Coffee and yarn! The art exhibit featured a local artist named Jo Hamilton, who creates crocheted portraits.






She even made a giant crocheted Portland! Here it is, almost finished. If you're in Portland, go check it out!

ode to the blue screen of death

Repeating blue screen
taunting me relentlessly.
Why copy files wrong?

Ravenclaw Homework: The Contact

The shadows lengthened as the lonely witch waited in the graveyard to make her connection. Where was he? He couldn't have forgotten about her, could he? The shiver of cold slithered down her back and her heart jumped to her throat as she spotted someone in the distance. Was that him? She had never met him before, but hoped it was her contact. If she were to be caught by Ministry officials with this in her possession, it could mean real trouble for her whole family! Impatient and fearful, the stranger approached too fast, but too slow all at once. "How did I get myself into this?" she muttered under her breath. The faces flitted though her mind of those that coerced her into submission...

...her mother, pressing the item on her with strictest confidence, and her sister, wild with impatience for the transaction to take place. The only one not eager to see it happen was father, but what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. She recalled with a shudder the day her mother found his secret store of such treasures, stowed away in the musty garden shed. Shelf after shelf was lined with Muggle artifacts in various states of working order.

Discovering this silly collection would have been indulged and laughed off if it had not been for his confession of having tampered with the tokens. It was bad enough that he was foolishly obsessed with Muggles and their machines, but magical experimentation could mean serious trouble with the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department! She blushed as she thought of how humiliated and guilty her father had been as he described the devices and sputtered out what kind of magical experimentation he had done.

The stranger was almost to her now, breath issuing from him in great puffs of steam that trailed behind him in the growing twilight. She cleared her throat and hoped he would be the first to speak.

"Good evening," he said at last, and though his tone was friendly, she could not help tensing and clutching her package tighter.

"Good evening," she managed to squeak back. She stole a glance at what he clutched in his hand: a bunch of handpicked wildflowers. They were exactly the kind of flowers her contact was supposed to have with him. Was it really him?

He spoke again. "The graveyard is so nice this time of day. I'm just visiting my cousin's grave to leave some flowers," and he waved the small bouquet with a smile. She breathed out a sigh of relief at this phrase, it was exactly what her contact was supposed to claim.

It was him! It had to be, and yet she could not help asking, "Are you Antonius? Gwendolyn's friend?"

He nodded and with another smile asked, "So you have a little problem with a Muggle appliance, eh?" Did he think this was funny? Amusing to find that you have enchanted and misbehaving Muggle artifacts stored up in your home? Or was it that, skilled as her father was, one of them was actually beyond his ability to fix? Not amusing in the least.

She trembled as she shifted the sack she had brought with her and held it out. There was no amount of coercion her mother could have used to persuade her to show open the bag and take out the item inside. It was safe in the sack, quiet and peaceful. She wouldn't risk being heard or seen.

The wizard took hold of the bag, paused, and held out the flowers. "I may as well trade," he said with a laugh.

"Do you think you can you fix it?" she asked impatiently, take the flowers and squeezing the stems a little too tightly. She was eager to be gone, and to be assured that he wouldn't fail to fix the object and get it back into a Muggle home where it belonged. It was nearly dark now, and growing colder by the minute.

To her frustration, he laughed again. "I can certainly fix it! But remind me again what it's been doing."

This was not a welcome question, and she would have much rather not have been asked. She recalled with horror the chaos it had caused around the house when her mother pulled it out of the sack for the first time since her father had hidden it in there. Unfortunately, it had been a bright morning, and direct sunlight seemed to make it worse. No stunning spells or freezing spells had been enough to shut the thing up.

Upon being released from the dark sack, the appliance had crowed like a rooster, squawked like a parrot, warbled like a songbird, then creaked and jangled as it hopped around the house, getting more and more rambunctious with each hop. It knocked things over as it scrambled to escape the clutches of the various family members who were trying to catch it. Finally, it had started ripping and setting fire to the furniture. They managed to trap it once in a cloth sack, but it had burned a hole right through it. Keeping it in a dark, fireproof bag had been the only solution so far.

"Uhm...I think you should talk to my mother about it. I really should be going. I just want to know...what are you going to do with it?"

"I see. Well, I'll try some more complex spells than your father did. My shop is suited much better for this kind of"--he shifted and shook the bag, which gave a metallic rattling noise--"thing. If it makes you feel better, it's not the first one I've come across."

"Thank you," she said, and started to turn away. It really was dark and freezing now and she couldn't wait to get back home. The wizard turned away as well and started to walk in the opposite direction when her curiosity got the better of her and she turned back. "What's it for?" she asked. "I mean, from what mother described. What do Muggles even do with that thing? Does it have something to do with birds?"

He turned back as well, now a few feet away, and smiled. "No! Not at all. I think the bird noises were just an odd twist."

"It's not something harmful, is it?"

"No, it's actually quite mundane, without the enchantments. From what I've seen, Muggles use it to mix together ingredients for food. Usually batters for sweet things. I know it sounds silly, but they made little machines like this so they could mix ingredients faster. Quite ingenious, actually."

She breathed a great sigh of relief--it wasn't so harmful after all! Her mother had assumed the worst, that it was some kind of Muggle weapon. The squawking, whistling little appliance was used to make cakes! The thought of her father trying to mix cake batter with a devious, pyromaniac, quacking mixer was enough to make her smile. Relief and laughter started to pour out of her as she stood there, and the wizard smiled at her.

"I see you've got the turn of things now. Good evening!" he called as he walked away.

She couldn't wait to get home now. What would her mother and sister say? What would her father say when he found out it wasn't as glorious of a Muggle invention as he'd imagined? She set the wildflowers down on the nearest grave with a smile and walked a little ways to the cover of some trees. With another fit of laughter she thought eagerly of home and stepped into darkness.

Hogsmeade Pub Quiz #1

Welcome! So glad you could make it for our first house Pub Quiz! Hogsmeade's pretty busy today, isn't it?

Here, have a nice, warm butterbeer with me:



You will have 1 hour (until 9:30am PST) to answer as many questions as you can and email them to me. You can use any resource you need: the books, the library, Hermione...you get the idea.

Points will be awarded for correctness and speed. Good luck!

Update: The quiz is finished! Thanks for playing!

a lover's secret

I was taking a walk today near the Forbidden Forest when a fluttering caught my eye. I followed a path leading inward, saw this on a tree trunk and moved closer to see what it was.








How shocking! I had stumbled upon someone's private, passionate thoughts, pinned to the tree for their lover to find.




From where I was standing I saw another fluttering sheet of parchment.








And then another!










There wasn't anyone else around that I could see, but as I continued on the path I had the creepy feeling someone was watching me. I decided not to go any further and turned back for the castle at once. After all, I shouldn't go wandering into the Forbidden Forest anytime of the day. I wonder if I would have found F.S., or if I would have intruded on a secret tryst. Or maybe someone or something would have found me first! Eek!

"A lavish lust for flesh" and "As from afar I watch and weep"?...I don't think I was supposed to see those poems!!

etsy at last

I finally got my first sets of stitch markers up in my etsy shop, Bumblebirch, so now I feel official! I'm a businesswoman! Well, more a crafter, really. But I think it's a good start!







Check out more pretty, sparkly pictures in my shop!

duplicating myself

The strangest thing has happened at work. There's another me. Well, not really me, she's a completely different person. More hopeful, less frustrated, and certainly less tainted by the chaos that is my job. Lucky her, she only has to take on 25% of it. So she's only 25% of me.

Last year was a battle. I was stressed out to breaking point, and then got married (but it was awesome and worth it, like going down in blazing glory). I got shingles on the way back from our honeymoon. Why? Because my subconscious recognized that I was returning to the domain of excessive stress. Shingles sucked (it's like revenge of chickenpox), but then I got progressively worse and worse. Mentally, I mean, which has a huge effect on your physical well-being. I was descending into depression and illness; it was a dark place.

My husband is incredibly supportive, though, and after some consideration and prayer we decided it wouldn't be the best thing for me to leave my job just yet, but I should work less so that I wasn't falling apart every day and/or unable to work. The chaos of the new school year in September brought more stress, so I bargained with my boss. He listened, and supported me (people often say they don't know what he'd do without me...and I know he'd be so lost and sad; I don't really want to leave). I reduced my hours from 40 to 30, and rather than spreading it evenly over 5 weekdays, I decided the best thing for me would be to commute less overall and to have one full day off in the middle of the week (I jokingly tell my boss that I can only handle 2 days of him before I need a vacation).

The cool thing about volunteering to reduce my hours was an idea I had to give the other 10 hours per week to someone else, and have them focus on 25% of my job, so that I wouldn't be so stretched over so many projects. This is where Beyth comes in (you remember, the other me, who's actually someone else). She's the new journal coordinator, so she gets to focus on production and coordination of the seminary's biannual academic journal. This was supposed to take 25% of my time, but always got neglected and wasn't very well-organized. The idea is that giving it all to a single person with a dedicated amount of time will give the journal the care it needs and help it flourish. I'm sad to say goodbye to the editorial team, but it's really for the best.

So Beyth. She's very organized, very professional, has high standards, dresses way better than me, has similar musical taste, and likes to laugh a LOT. Good so far! We've completed 1 week of training, which has been enough time to give her an overview of her new job and start some pressing tasks.

Oh, and speaking of pressing tasks, I get the new dean of the seminary is testing me. Each time he asks me to do something, it gets progressively more difficult and further outside my training and skills. And it's always urgent. The first time he asked for a report of our financial data, which I had to track down (turns out my predecessor didn't keep that data to hand). Then I had to calculate potential budget savings from hypothetical initiatives, all of which are impossible (it's like squeezing a lemon that's already bee squeezed...and left out on the counter to dry...for a month.)

Then he asked me to come up with a new pricing system for the journal. I dragged Beyth into it with me, and we thought we came up with a pretty good plan. At the end of the meeting, he said he needed more information: our production costs laid out against some different revenue scenarios. We put our heads together again and managed to figure out how to forecast various hypothetical pricing rates with hypothetical growth and renewal rates for the next few years. We think he'll be impressed. But if he's not, I might just remind him that I have a BArch, not and MBA and if he wants an accountant, he'll have to pay me much more than I get paid right now. Sheesh.

So training is going well, and we're off to a good start. Getting all of my other work done is more hectic, though, and more draining. Once again, I'm spreading myself pretty thin, and juggling too much for too long isn't my thing anymore. Every night I've come home exhausted, numb, feeling queasy, but then I haven't slept well all week. And I haven't been motivated to go to the gym, cook delicious foods, or even knit. I just want to be unconscious or lost in a book. On the plus side, I've been getting a lot of business planning done for Bumblebirch Designs. I got some supplies in so I can get more stitch markers listed soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

advance!

Last week was spent exerting all of my efforts on 3 main tasks: help my boss get through the first week of classes; write a departmental financial report for my boss's boss; and prepare for the Intern Retreat, for which we were departing on Friday afternoon. Every single day was exhausting. I came home from work each evening feeling like my brain was numb and about to implode. It was just plain stressful.

Friday morning finally came and the intern who was officially "running" the retreat, Laura, my awesome student worker Brandon, and I set off for groceries. After 2 grocery stores, we had all the food we needed, and were under budget (yay!). We picked up another intern and my husband, and headed to Sister, OR. The weather was clear and crisp, so the pass was particularly beautiful as we drove through it. We only got a little bit lost, but the rest of the group left a couple hours later than we did, so we were far enough ahead of them to text corrected directions when we finally found our way.

The cabin was large and well-stocked with everything we needed, and was very close to the main part of Sisters, which is a small resort town. We had large meals together, the families had their own bedrooms, and the rest of us crashed wherever we could. We had breakfast, devotions, a morning teaching session, lunch, free time, dinner, and an evening session each day. Luckily, I didn't have to run everything, so most of the schedule was as optional for me as it was for the kids! Unfortunately, there was nowhere to "get away" from the group in the cabin, since it was all one large space.

I ended up not getting much sleep, even after procuring some earplugs from the grocery store on the 2nd day. Even with the freedom to not always participate, it wasn't very restful at all! The only good restful time Paul and I had was going to the local coffeehouse with the interns who wanted to study. Ahhh...sinking into a big leather couch with a soy chai latte and a good book...it doesn't get much better.

Yesterday morning, the last day, I woke up with an awful sinus headache and the return of my sore throat (which I've been battling for a couple of weeks). I really don't want to get a sinus infection, so I stayed home today. Gah, my head!

a new year of knitting

One of my first projects to start off the new year has been to organize my knitting: the yarn, the projects, the patterns, and the plans! Yesterday I tackled the stash. My particular challenges are:
space - we live in a studio apartment
categories - all of the yarn was intermixed
cat - she gets into everything she can reach

Here is the stash in all its messy glory:



These baskets are so disorganized! I have to search every basket for the certain yarn I'm looking for. There are printed patterns everywhere.



Look at all this fiber! I should have like 100 sweaters by now!


First I bagged multiple skeins of yarn together as well as WIPs, re-matching labels with the yarns by wrapping them around with a rubber band. I found that I had several partial balls of some yarns--no more of that now that they're all together! I decided to organize the yarn by weight rather than fiber, because 1) that's how I choose the yarn for projects and 2) it's not being stored in a dark closet or cellar, so no worries about moths. Here are the organized baskets:


Olive kitteh approves of the new orderliness.


Bulky


Worsted


Sport


Fingering (just sock yarn right now)


The last basket has circular needles, swatches, my new winder, and bagged yarn I'm trying to trade/sell.


My notions/current small project box looked a lot better after cleaning out all the extra labels, yarn snippets, and swatches.


I put current projects in my project bag. I hope this will help limit my WIPs.


I collected all of the paper and sorted out the patterns I wanted to keep.


I slipped them all into sheet protectors and organized them into a binder. The sections are by use. Here's is what I have so far:
Techniques
Hats
Scarves
Mittens/Gloves
Sweaters/Tops
Socks
Bags
Baby items
Toys


Here's the finished product, yarn and needles tucks safely away at the top of the bookcase:

It's been snowing for days. There's a thick, white blanket of snow covering the whole city. It dramatically changes the landscape, which is novel and entertaining, but it has also caused quite a few problems. Roads have been closed, traveling has been difficult, and people are unable to get to work. The first 2 things don't affect us at all, since Paul's work is within walking distance and public transit is doing just fine. And my work has been closed due to weather since last Wednesday!

Wednesday was not bad at all, but they thought it would snow bad so they closed work; Michal and I had a fun brunch and then went to the deserted mall for the last of her Christmas shopping. I did finally manage to find some cotton thermals (not fake ones made with nylon and polyester, but real clingy cotton ones with tight cuffs).

Thursday it wasn't supposed to snow at all and work was declared open, so I went to the bus stop, waited for 20 minutes for the very late, but properly-chained, bus to arrive. To my surprise Dr. Robertson was also on the bus; I've been catching many of the same afternoon buses with him lately. As we rode, the rain changed to snow and we watched out the window in horror as it stuck to the ground. That wasn't supposed to happen. Dr. R was concerned for his wife, who was driving around without chains (which were, until then, unnecessary). By the time we got to the school and jumped off the bus, there was over an inch of snow on the ground, traffic had slowed on the icy streets, and it was beginning to blizzard.

We just got into the Seminary building, took off our snowy coats and hats, got warm, and I was about to make myself some tea when someone announced, "They're closing the school and sending us home!" Not surprising, but I was concerned for those who had driven in and who might not be able to make it home again. What a hassle! Luckily, Farrah was in her office and some quick consultation with our respective husbands led to the ultimate plan for the day: knitting and hot apple cider at her place, snuggle with her little dogs, lunch, then downtown for some shopping. Perfect!

Since then, the online closure announcements have had my work closed. Which is nice for me, since our benefits cover "inclement weather closures" as paid days off. All of the professors had to have their grading done by last Friday, which must have been a hassle to finish if they couldn't get to work (let's hope they all took it home with them or finished early!), and of course I had things I wanted to finish up. But oh well! let it snow!

modern social networking

I love Jane Austen's work. I love the escape into her stories and imagine myself the daughter of a gentleman, obsessed with balls and finding a husband. The beautiful thing is that her themes and plots are timeless. I can relate to all of the characters at some level (yes, even Mr. Collins and Mr. Willoughby) and thoroughly enjoy Austen's unique sense of humor.

For those of you not quite convinced, who perhaps prefer more modern means of social networking, I give you Pride and Prejudice, Facebook style.