I let myself get subsumed by thesis for the last few months, and haven't really been making. I'm trying to remember what I like doing. I want to get back to knitting, drawing, and running around outside. I don't know if I'll delete this or not - if I haven't posted in a month, I think I will.
I started an MSc in October. The hours are long, but at least the work is hard. I'm not having as much time to make or read or watch as I'd like, but there've been a few books/films/shows that have stuck out, and are a good way of figuring out what I want to make.
1. I started Moby Dick in August and I'm only half-way through. I'm a speedy enough reader, but as I said, I have a shortage of time and nothing goddamn happens. There's stuff to like in it - the description of Queequeg comes from a fond if intensely racist place - but Ishmael keeps stopping to describe how much he likes the sea for an entire chapter, or list everything he knows about whales, and I don't care. Ahab is also contemptible. I think you're meant to view him as pathetic and twisted, consumed by revenge, and yet admirable in his pursuit of his dream, but I can't get past "pathetic". Also, hell of a victim complex, wanting to kill something for daring to hurt him in self-defense. Also: "Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low enjoying power." I went out with that person, and it was awful. (They loved Moby Dick. I got to that line and it became apparent why.) It reminds me a little of Philip Roth for its time - by a dude with a boring notion of integrity and masculinity, for dudes with a boring notion of integrity and masculinity. I'll finish it, but I don't expect to start enjoying it, which is a pity.
2. Lights Out. I watched this yesterday, and I'm enamoured. I love short horror. It doesn't bother with world-building or explanations, which can undo a good monster. It captures a very childish fear, and has the protagonist trying to behave maturely while clearly fighting those childish self-preservation instincts. This pushes a lot of the right buttons for me. When I switched off the light before I went to bed, I felt a flash of anticipatory terror, expecting cruel claws around my spine and Achilles' tendon. I think that's a good sign in two and a half minutes.
The ending undoes it a little, but that's the nature of short horror special effects.
3. I saw Welcome To Night Vale's live show The Librarian in The Olympia in October. The Sugar Club sold out in no time, apparently, but I think a theatre was the right venue for it. I have the same problem with Night Vale I have with anything once I catch up on marathoning it. I get immersed in a world, and once I get out I can't get into it the same way. When I started listening it made me laugh until my face hurt, and now I think it's still clever, but I'm a little inured. I also have mixed feelings on the fandom - I think it's quite wonderful how people have created canon imagery to go along with it, but I also find the fandom pretty annoying, and I'm not sure how I slot in with that, as a fan who's not in the fandom.
That said - oh wow does it work live. As a podcast, it's all about the writing. Weird things happen, and some of those weird things are very intelligent, but I love the wordplay, the imagery, the sense that they take real joy in it. There are some absolute gorgeous turns of phrases in there. It's carried by Cecil Baldwin's voice - Jesus, that voice - and it's rich and dark and knowing and innocent and edged with savagery, and just right. I wasn't sure how that would translate to the stage. The show was mostly Cecil in the middle of the stage with a script in his hand, and it was absolutely mesmerising. The podcast can't convey his presence, his magnetism. I'm interested in the way stories are told, and he told a story with his whole body. He could make your heart race and create the most wonderful terrible silence. I lack charisma or story-telling flair, so both are something I find compelling. I went in thinking he was a man with a wonderful voice, I left thinking him so attractive it makes me angry. I'm a sucker for a story-teller.
I've given a few public talks in the last year - I spoke at Electric Picnic, so I think I get to say now that I've performed at Electric Picnic - almost all pop-science. There's been a lot of figuring out what works on me and what doesn't. I can't do jokes with a build-up - I get a better laugh with off the cuff-remarks. I can play to my advantage the fact that I'm quite an awkward presence. People don't expect me to be funny, they expect me to plod through something I've clearly learned by heart, so a straight-faced one-liner, in the same tone (slightly over-eager, slightly apologetic for taking up the audience's time) works well against that. I shift around a lot, which I can exaggerate and have read as energy or enthusiasm, and my body language is quite deferent, which, again, complements comedy to which I can play oblivious. I can't stand on a stage and spell-bind people - I don't have the voice or presence - but I can wrong-foot a room full of people and make them laugh when I want them to, and that's not something I expected to be able to do.
4. I'm late to the game, but I'm digging Lana del Rey. Her voice drips with sorrow, and I really like love songs that are broken without romanticisation.
I have so many books to read and there are so many good films in the cinema! One day, I will create for myself a world where I have free time, and it will be awful.
I graduated, and got to wear a wizard's robe all morning! So now I'm a real zoologist!
I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show in the RDS! My brother was visiting and I had to catch up with friends who were back in Dublin for the weekend, so I was pleasantly strapped for time, but I've missed it every other year and was determined to go. I got there less than an hour and half before it was due to finish up (I thought I had another half hour!), so I had to zoom around and didn't see everything as well as I would have liked to. Didn't leave empty-handed though!
I don't know what the two fabrics on top will become - they both feel a bit lightweight for a skirt - but one of the stalls had a bag made out of the atlas material which looked gorgeous, so one of them will be earmarked for that eventually. This is why samples are a good marketing strategy - I wouldn't have looked twice at that pattern if I saw it in a book. The pattern and fabrics were both from Fabrics Galore, I think. The yarn is from some very nice British men, the name of whose shop I can't remember. It's 100% silk, and a warmer turquoise than the photo shows up. I have a rule about not buying yarn unless I have a specific project in mind, but I might never see that make and shop again, and I graduated, I deserve a treat! (See also: "But it's on sale, this might be my last chance to get it," "But I sold a lot at a craft fair, I should get some nice yarn for myself", "But it's my first pay-cheque from this job, I should get something decadent," "But I just got my results," "But I just finished exams," and when I say I don't know how I have so much yarn, feel free to call me a liar.)
I finished the first of my sister's Christmas gloves! I'm using the Amy gloves pattern, knit with some Louisa Harding Ondine I bought on sale. It's probably slightly too heavy a yarn, but I had already bought it with a view to making her gloves for Christmas when she asked if I would make her a pair of gloves like these for Christmas, and it is too perfect not to use for her present. I wouldn't be concerned about the weight of the yarn only I don't know whether she wanted the gloves to have the same pattern, or be similarly snug. I made mine quite snug so that I can wear them to knit without my needles snagging, but I have child-hands, and she has normal-sized hands, so it seems like gloves which are small on me would be impractical on her. I'm worried they'll grow with blocking, but the yarn is 100% cotton, so hopefully I'll be able to shrink them in a hot wash if needs be.
I've signed up to sell at a Christmas craft fair in college (I didn't quite get around to leaving, I'm volunteering in a lab in the college where I did my undergraduate degree, though it's a different department at least) at the end of this month. After these gloves, the only Christmas knits I have left to make are toys, and they are a bit too finicky to knit on public transport or on lunch breaks, so I should have time to build up a solid stock. Now that Hallowe'en is over, I don't feel bad about feeling pre-emptively Christmassy anymore.
I haven't posted in quite some time. I have been busy sitting finals, sleeping off finals, rereading Harry Potter and watching Firefly (I am with Randall Munroe, if that wasn't a mortifying oversight Joss Whedon and/or the casting director should really jump in the lake) and consuming other media on which I will never be examined BECAUSE I CAN, going to Galway with my class after results (I got to pet dogfish and rays!), and sitting in the glorious sunshine.
I don't see how I'm meant to organise the next stage of my life when all I want to do is lie on the grass reading. Anyway, it would be a sin to be inside when the weather is like this. My efforts to go running have been thwarted by things like stopping to lie down in the park so that I can't see anything but the clear blue sky, and think about how beautiful the world is. I do stuff like that. Don't hate.
I feel slightly guilty about the lack of crafting I've been doing, as I've booked a table at a crafts fair midway through June. It will be my first time selling at a crafts fair, so that's an exciting milestone! Unfortunately, it is too warm outside to knit, and my sewing machine needs to be plugged in, which means crafting and being outside are at crossed purposes.
I did get some study-knitting done though, before the weather and my levels of obligation took a turn for the amazing.
The green are acrylic left over from a scarf, the two darker blues are Sublime Merino DK, and the light blue is Debblie Bliss Rialto. I used different patterns from a stitchionary I got a while ago - it's a fun way to test them out. I think my favourite new stitch is the seersucker stitch, which I used for the dark blue gloves. (While it doesn't come across well in the photo, in real life that yarn is the most perfect shade of TARDIS blue, and I really should have used it for something nerdier, but I was halfway through a glove by the time I realised. Pity.)
I also study-knit several headbands, but I keep forgetting to take decent photos. I still have to weave in all the ends of my study-knit goods, because weaving in ends is my least favourite thing.
My start of summer present to myself was lots of Debbie Bliss Cotton, which I am using to make this top. I love the look of it in ecru and beige in the Ravelry Project pictures, but I was limited in my colour choices by wanting something machine-washable.
I also got cubic needles! I've never used them before, but various forums (is it too grammar/language-nerdy to say "fora"? It feels like it is) have been talking them up. I get to use them in a few inches, exciting!
I have also been having baking and cooking adventures. I made oreo truffles using this recipe for the party the department held for fourth years the evening before we got our results, and they were well-received. (And the next day I found I had a First. Coincidence?) These brownies are also tasty! Projects involving making or altering clothes are being shelved for the time being, because in this weather I can't imagine wanting to be anything but naked, and that makes it difficult to make wearable clothes. But yesterday I went for a cycle and picnic in Phoenix Park and brought my SLR camera! So that can be my weather-appropriate project.
I wasn't going to post this because it wasn't very good, but I have been looking through lots of cosplay pictures, and am trying to put together something respectable for this, and have a renewed hankering to dress up as things. It's a pity Ireland doesn't do cosplay conventions.
So! My college do-gooder group had a Harry Potter party two weeks ago, and I went as Tonks. I wasn't going to post the pictures as both the costume and the photos weren't up to much - I forgot about it until the day before, and had to do everything in a rush - but it's also the first time I've dressed as as a specific character in quite a while, so I may as well document so I have something to mark progress against.
Pro: I have short hair! Tonks has short hair! I like an excuse to do silly things with my hair!
Con: I brought glitter spray, not colour spray. The fault lies entirely with me for shopping in Claire's and also for being unable to read labels at twenty-one, especially having just finished up the guts of a year working in a lab. (Incidentally, gloves are for whiners who don't respect the environment, and should my hands be this colour?) I tried to make up for it by loading on the glitter, in the hope that a layer of pink glitter would look pink. It did not.
Pro: I borrowed a wand from a girl in my class (she says it was a gift). As I was leaving my room, I heard someone coming up the stairs. Not wanting to look ridiculous, I hid the wand up my sleeve. Nothing like it for feeling like a wizard.
Con: That is a terrible photo and asking people to take photos of me makes me feel too narcissistic to do more than once.
Con: Those shorts should ideally be black. (They were jeans in a previous incarnation, but I was wearing them while walking the Camino de Santiago in first year, and it was unseasonably war.) I might have dyed them if I'd had the time.
Pro: People understood who I was meant to be! I think this is a victory as I based the costume on my perception of her in the books, which was quite tomboyish, whereas the films were not so.
Pro: I went to the club as it was free in, and spent the entire time sitting in the corridor around the side having a Harry Potter trivia contest with fellow do-gooders and some strangers who came just for the Harry Potter.
Costume:
Black string top
Black pinstriped underbust corset
Black shirt
Black waistcoat borrowed from my boyfriend
Cut-off denim shorts
Ripped black tights
Unlaced black Doc Martens
I think it was alright for a rush job, though the hairspray was disappointing. I already have PLANS for October and Hallowe'en, so hopefully I can make people have costume parties!
Thesis is in! I have to give a presentation on it in two weeks, which is worth five percent, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
2.
Being offensive and "edgy" is so lazy. Making people feel safe is what takes the real work.
— Holly Pervocracy (@pervocracy) March 10, 2012
Best sentiment? Best sentiment.
3. I saw The Muppet Movie. I was going to link the trailer , but it contains spoilers. How can a trailer spoil a film with so little plot? It's heart-warming anyway. Full of joy. This much joy. You should go see it.
4. I finished the gloves I've been working on for a million years.
Tomorrow I will post them off to America! Getting commissions from 1. people I don't know, even by proxy 2. who live in different countries is a pretty cool feeling.
5. Yo, Is This Racist? is my new go-to site for a few minutes of dossing. Do recommend.
You know things are getting real when PubMed has edged out Facebook on my 'Most frequently visited' sites. Makes me feel like a scientist though. Boom.
I have been working on a commissioned pair of gloves for what feels like a million years. They're nearly finished, and I'm looking forward to new projects (and thesis free time to work on them a bit more)! My brother's 30th is on Thursday, so I'm going to make him this scarf. (It will be late. Thesis. My excuse and reason for everything these days.) I've loved it since I came across it, and was considering making one for myself, but as a geneticist I think he'll appreciate it. Family of nerds.
Now, do basal receptors play a role in transducing mechanical signals and initiating intracellular responses? LET'S FIND OUT!
Do I make a joke about how it took way more stuffing than I thought it would, because it's bigger on the inside? Or the fact that it took way longer than it should have, and something something time? Do I go with a quote? I don't know how I'm expected to make that kind of decision.
The thumbnails on my camera led me to believe this wasn't so blurry, and I've already given it away. Oh well!
Blurrier and before I managed to punch it into some sort of rectangular shape. Wibbly-wobbly etc.
This taken a ridiculous and kind of shameful length of time to finish. The extent to which I was relieved when I sewed up the last seam is kind of silly. Mostly Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted, and the white is Cygnet DK, which is probably why the light is a bit small.
But it's done, and now I can get back to gloves! I've also been making speedy neckwarmers in lectures and while out and about, but I don't have the light in my room in college to take nice photos, or the confidence to stand around campus taking photos of myself.
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Dublin Zoo's youngest elephant learning not to grab. But she got bored
and left to eat different food and probably did not benefit from the lesson.
In unrelated news, on Thursday I got to go to the zoo, and go into the elephant house, nominally as part of my course. (I don't do the module to which the trip was connected, but the lecturer got tickets for everyone in the class anyway.) I think zoos are ethically problematic, and their nature puts them in a bind (have to have animals that'll draw people so they can fund breeding and conservation programmes for the animals in need of them, even if there's no conservational merit to holding them), but I do like the route that Dublin Zoo is taking with the new elephant enclosure, and now the new gorilla area.
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Also also, my thesis is due in less than a month. Um.
A few weeks ago I stocked up on relatively cheap yarn. I used the Noro Aya to make a few circle scarves.
This colourway reminds me of the sea.
It's hard to describe just how much I like this yarn.
This one reminds me of the seashore, which is slightly different.
Just... learn to knit if you don't know how, and then make something with it, and you will understand. I've held on to one skein for myself. I don't know what I'll make with it, but it would have made me sad to give it all away if it won't be on sale in Dublin in the future.
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I am making another pair of flip-top fingerless gloves
but this time I'm writing down the pattern. Foresight!
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A Christmas present! Going to own so many socks. The box includes trilobite socks - my loves of knitting and long-extinct animals can be combined at last! (Or "again", but in a practical way this time!)
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Meeting a PI tomorrow to discuss possibilities ("job"? Did he mean to type "job"? I hope so. Those letters are very close together.) for next year. Only three of his papers are available for free on PubMed, and they're rather old ones. Hopefully he's more interested in what use I can be than what I already know about a field I haven't worked in.
An organisation I volunteer with in college put on a panto before Christmas with all the kids' clubs we run. I was on the costume committee, and offered to make the mask for Roger Rabbit (who, it turned out, only appeared right at the end to say one line. Which got cut out on the second night because someone forgot to say the line he responds to. Worth making a mask? Arguably not. But I got to make something new!)
Did you know there's no non-creepy way to put cling-film on someone's face? Fortunately, Roger Rabbit was in school with my little brother, who was also in the panto. When he mentioned that he was going to my apartment during a break in rehearsals, my brother invited himself and two other people up for tea. So that minimised the creepiness of "So, now I'm going to put cling-film over your face." (Just the top half. But still.)
Plaster of Paris'd to resemble a rabbit...
And then painted!
Unfortunately I didn't get any photos on the night, because you try herding thirty children who want to be doing anything but what they're meant to. I think it's a decent first attempt though!
