I'm back on campus to start my research! I just finished unpacking, and I'm exhausted. I'll post about that later. Right now--I promised Dulaan photos before I left, so here they are!



That's the entire load, 32 items in all. A dozen more than my goal of 20!

( More photos (and stats!) behind the cut! )

I shipped off the box to Dulaan! I took pictures, but they're still on the camera, so they'll have to wait until later, but the total number was 32! That's 12 over my goal--w00t!

Pictures and stats to come!

I want to make a well-thought out LJ post with deep thoughts and soul searching. The problem is, all of the deep thinking and soul searching I've been doing these days--and there is a lot of it--is on matters that I'm not really willing to talk about in public just yet. Go figure. So, I'm going to talk about my relationship with schoolwork, which has evolved suddenly, but is definitely not as interesting as . . . well, as any number of other things.

I've run into a sudden lack of stress over schoolwork. I have discovered that I just don't care anymore. I want to do well, but . . . it doesn't really matter to me anymore whether some of my grades are Bs. I know I'm doing well enough that I'd have to work pretty hard to anything less than As and Bs this semester, and . . . I'm no longer concerned so much about the configuration of those As and Bs.

And I should be stressed out about the paper that I have to write this weekend for Religion of Socrates, and the fact that it's due the same day as my paper for Roman Empire, especially since I haven't started either of them. The plan is to work on Religion of Socrates this weekend, and Roman Empire on Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm fairly prepared to write the one for Roman Empire--it's about Apuleius, and I adore Apuleius. But the Socrates paper--I haven't even sat down to read through the dialogue I'm writing about yet. (I'm writing on the Symposium, in case you were curious.)

Yet . . . I'm not stressed. It's like a big mound of apathy piled up on top of my head. I'm not stressed that we haven't found a storage unit for the summer yet. I'm not worried about turning in sub-standard papers. I'm . . . coasting. Look at me--it's 4pm, and I haven't started working yet. (Bad Emma!)

Oddly, this change of attitude seems to have been sparked on some level by my involvement with Dulaan. There might be something there about a connection between energy spent focusing on others versus energy spent worrying about myself. I'm not sure. But I suppose that if it's the case, it's a good thing, so who am I to question it?

Speaking of Dulaan, I met with a guy from the Lynchburg News and Advance yesterday to talk about it. There'll be a piece on it in Tuesday's paper. It's a little late for getting people involved with Dulaan!SBC, but I hope that it'll stir up some interest and get Lynchburg knitters sending things to Arizona. That would be shiny.

Today I finally got around to picking up the Dulaan items that have been waiting for me for a little while, and--yay! There were more than I expected. Linda Shank in the President's Office made SEVEN SCARVES. And that was just this month--imagine what this woman could do in a year. She's also volunteered to host a party to kick off the project again in the fall! She's amazing. I also got two fleece blankets I was expecting, which means that the Dulaan!SBC Haul grew by NINE items today, bringing the total up to 24! I don't have any pictures, unfortunately--there just hasn't been time. But, I will share some soon.

Also, on Monday I got to go to a lecture called, "Images of the Good Life in Bronze Age Mongolia: Rock Art, Gender, and Role". I had to go, because, dude, Mongolia! It was very interesting--all about what we can make of these many, many pictures pecked into stone in the mountains of Mongolia. I was really surprised by how much you can get out of those, and the detail on some of them was amazing. So, look at how good Dulaan has been for me--I wouldn't have gone to that lecture at all if I hadn't been interested in Mongolia.

I've been avoiding coverage of the shootings at Virginia Tech, and now that the initial shock has faded, I've also been avoiding the myriad LJ and blog posts about it. I understood the coverage and the posts in the beginning, but now the publicity has begun to feel uncomfortablely like a Roman spectacle--how much vicarious grief can we squeeze from this tragedy?

I'm generally a highly empathetic person. This works both on a personal and a global level. Today in Latin, the friend who sits beside me became very agitated and angry, and I found that the longer her agitation went on, the more distressed I became. (This isn't the first time that's happened.) I tend to take tragedies rather hard--the tsunami in 2004 upset me a lot, and I still twinge a little when I think of it. Katrina was the same way. So, I do understand the human need to feel involved in other people's pain. But there's a difference between empathy and . . . ostentatious mourning. I heard some seniors coming from Honors lunch table on Thursday, talking about this, about how people appropriate and perpetuate a tragedy like this.

I've been getting e-mails and seeing LJ posts urging me to help send aid to Virginia Tech, and I've been made uncomfortable by it. Getting involved with Dulaan has been helping me rediscover my urge to help other people, and yet . . . the people who died, died. I can't help them. Their families and classmates and teachers have difficult times ahead of them, but . . . their grief is something that will ultimately have to be dealt with on a personal level. I can't grieve in their place--maybe if I could, I would feel differently. I feel for them, but what they need now is time, and that isn't something I can provide.

It's been troubling me how curiously uneffected I've felt by this whole tragedy, especially in light of my recent re-commitment to caring about people beyond myself and helping them. I think the best way for me to explain it is this: I have limited resources, both emotional and physical. I have to believe it's best for me to direct those resources--including the emotional ones--towards people I can help.

I'm going to keep knitting.

I have a lot of things to do today, and I'm definitely behind in getting them done. This is mainly because my period started today (a full WEEK late) and I feel like crap. So, I'm posting to LiveJournal instead, and I'll get to work afterwards. Hopefully.

I spent most of the afternoon on both Friday and Saturday making this vest (warning--pdf link!), out of the Lion Brand Homespun donated on Friday. I was reminded of two facts that I had suppressed:

1) Working with Lion Brand Homespun is a pain in the butt. It splits like the devil, coils annoyingly, and is generally nasty to work with. I did my first two projects in this yarn (a hat and a scarf), and I'm surprised I didn't abandon knitting entirely. However, the fabric it produces is soft and pleasant. (I love the hat and scarf--it was making them that was annoying.)

2) I hate purling, so taking on a project knit flat in stockinette stitch was probably kind of silly. I did teach myself, though, how to knit back backwards, which didn't prove to be useful on the long stretches of stockinette (just as slow as purling and not as automatic), but was very useful when working those little shoulders. At seven stitches wide, turning the entire vest every time I finished a row would have been a pain.

Anyway, here's a picture of the vest, in front of the Stack O' Fish (up to 28 now--only seven to go!):

( Read more... )

The camera angle makes it look a little squatter than it actually is, though it's true I could have stood to make it taller. I'm also (as always) concerned about warmth, but . . . I guess I'll just try to make sure the next thing is warmer. Hopefully it'll be better than nothing. I feel like I should use the yarn that's been donated, but I do have some wool leftover from the sweater that I plan to make into something before the deadline--mittens, I'm thinking, and maybe another hat. That'll be warmer.

Got another Dulaan!SBC update for you! (In case you've missed my involvement in this, posts are archived here.)

Remember how I said President Muhlenfeld was going to donate a sweater? Well, I saw her in the dining hall today, and she let me know that she had just dropped off a couple sweaters and a bunch of yarn at the Chaplain's Office! I picked them up right after lunch, and here's a picture of the Dulaan haul so far:

( I hide my photos because I care! )

With Betsy's two sweaters (the teal one on top, and the cream colored one on the bottom), and with the pair of blue mittens donated by Sheila Alexander in Development, the total number so far is 12 items. I think we're doing pretty well, for having been at this less than a month.

Also, I continue to knit fish. Fish after fish after fish. As soon as I bind off one, there's another one just waiting for me. But it's not the fish I'm getting tired off so much as the cheap acrylic yarn. Last night, I happened to grab the ball of wool I used to make my own Dulaan sweater, and I practically melted, it felt so good after touching nothing but rough acrylic for so long.

Anyway, here's a picture of the stack of fish so far:

( Under the cut! )

You can't see in the picture, but I used black yarn to sew eyes onto every fish, and they're very cute. When the blanket is finished, it will look like it is made of multi-colored goldfish crackers! There are 21 finished so far, and half of another on the needles. I WILL make it to 35. Then I WILL seam them together into a (hopefully) attractive blanket. And then I will throw it in the washer and the dryer a couple times to soften it up.

This weekend will be occupied with taxes, writing a dance paper (seriously, why the heck do I have a paper in YOGA?), taking the quiz that got postponed on Thursday, and Mary's Spring Party on Sunday, which is going to be a Big Deal with lots of Good Eats. But in between (or during?) all of that, I hope to knit. Among the yarn donated by Betsy were several balls of Lion Homespun, which I think will make a nice soft baby sweater. I figure on a baby it won't matter so much that it's not wool, especially since the Homespun is nice and soft.

EDIT!: Remember how I said that my hometown paper got the press release for that news article about Dulaan? Well, I just found out that they published it this week! It's up on their website, here. But you don't really need to read it, since it's exactly the same as the article on Sweet Briar's news page. It's just exciting, because maybe that will get people back in Delta County participating, which would be AWESOME.

Since this project is becoming something of an obsession, here's a fun-and-photo filled post about how Dulaan!SBC is coming together.

I currently have 20 items pledged, and I've received nine of them. I'm crossing my fingers that people will get me their items in time, and I'm trying my best not to get discouraged by the relatively small output--it helps to tell myself that those items represent nine Mongolian children who will be warmer this winter. There isn't anything insignificant about that.

Here are the items so far:
( Includes cute little sweater and mittens! )

I got the big batch of donated yarn on Monday!
( Photo of donated yarn )

Fortunately, I stumbled quite by accident upon the concept of tesselated fish blankets. A little poking revealed that someone had worked out a pattern to mimic the one that had been published years ago in a magazine. It's more interesting than knitting squares, and with an even cooler result.

( Fish! )

. . . I think this might be morphing into a knitting blog. Whoo boy. Don't worry--you know the schoolwork angst will be back soon.

I just got an e-mail from President Muhlenfeld (aka "Betsy"), offering to donate a handknit sweater (and possibly more) to Dulaan. How cool is that?

My list of pledged items is up to 17--now I need to wait for those items to start coming in. (Right now I only have two in my gritty little hands, but I know there are several finished and on the way.) It's exciting!


PS: That "quitting the Internet" thing? Totally didn't work, because I fail at being disciplined. But despite the Internet and its nefarious and multitudinous distractions, I WILL get this paper finished.

I said I'd post about how Dulaan!SBC is going, so here it is! The news article went up on the college website today, and it will be in the faculty/staff newsletter as well. A press release also got sent out to local papers and the paper in my hometown.

If you're interested, here's the link.

It's cool! I wish my goal (20 items) sounded a little more ambitious, but honestly, trying to introduce a charity project on a college campus the month before finals is . . . basically crazy. I'll set a higher goal next year. Oh and also, that "unbelievably beautiful shawl" is just my full-of-mistakes, made-from-cheap-acrylic, Tri-Aran-Angle that I made over spring break. People seem really impressed by it, and I've been having the hardest time convincing them that it really wasn't that challenging (other than the miles of garter stitch), and that I really am still a very amateur knitter.

Anyway, I now have 12 items now on the "pledged" list, and I've received two of them (if you count my sweater, which I do). I know that one scarf is finished, but still needs to be delivered, since it's from someone who lives off-campus. I think, given that I'm a month from the deadline, that I'm doing fairly well. I've got someone donating yarn, which I hope to use to draw more knitters into the project--I'll be picking that up on Monday. Things are coming together!

If only I should be so lucky with my Socrates paper.

I'm behind in EVERY CLASS, and I have a paper due Thursday.

BUT!

I've been talking today with a lady from college relations, and she's going to put an article about the Dulaan Project up on the website, as well as sending out a press release to the local paper, and she's even going to inform my local paper all the way back in Colorado!

AND!

I've been sending e-mails all evening about the Dulaan Project--I've now got 9 items pledged, as well as a donation of yarn coming in. Students are beginning to contact me, even!

AND!

Last night I finished the sweater, and it's really cute! (I am, however, barred from all further knitting until I get through the latest schoolwork snarl of papers and tests.)

AND!

In the Dulaan excitement, I totally didn't see the e-mail notifying me that my Honors Summer Research Project has been approved! Prof. Casey had to point it out to me. That means I'm going to spend the summer studying Greek mystery cults! BOOYAH!

So, I'm in surprisingly high spirits, for being incredibly behind and over my head in work (that isn't getting done).

My latest knitting "thing" is the Dulaan Project. I found out about it over Spring Break, and now I'm both knitting for it and trying to organize Sweet Briar to do the same. The first has been quite successful (picture below!)--the second, somewhat less.

What is the Dulaan Project? Well, there's a flier here (PDF format) with all the information. Basically, they're collecting handknit items to send to poor people in Mongolia to help them survive and live during Mongolia's severe winters. The more I find out about it, the more passionate I feel about participating, so I'll give you a few links: There's a video on YouTube here, and Mossy Cottage Knits has regular updates on the project.

Since I only found out about the project towards the end of Spring Break, I was a bit late in trying to bring it to my school, but I thought it would be worth a shot. I spent yesterday afternoon plastering the campus in fliers, and the Chaplain's office sent out an e-mail for me. The latter proved to be very useful, because so far, the four people who have contacted me (not counting the people I've nagged), have all been either staff and faculty, no students yet. I find this kind of discouraging, but at the same time, I still got the warm-fuzzies from the people who did contact me--I even got a pledge of a scarf and a hat from the wife of a professor! My goal is to collect 20 items to send to Dulaan before the end of the semester. (It's not a huge number, but it's such short notice. I'll shoot for more next year, when we'll have more time.) Out of those 20, I currently have six items pledged, and a few possible others. Cross your fingers for me! (And if you're reading this from Sweet Briar, get involved! Actually, if you knit at all, get involved, but you're gonna have to ship your own things in.)

As for me? I'm working on a child's sweater right now, and I have to say, it is adorable, on account of being tiny. It's my first sweater, which is exciting, and since it's so small, it's going very quickly. Like really quickly--I started on Thursday evening, and I finished the body tonight. All that's left is the sleeves.

( Sweater in progress! )