Monthly Archives: April 2010

baked chicken meatballs.

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Still grading, still writing, still scrambling to figure out some kind of balance. Meatballs help. Especially these meatballs. The recipe has been waiting patiently in my binder o’ things to try, and I rediscovered it during a procrastinatory (yep, I’m making up words) purge of the recipe pile a few weeks ago. Enter a meat-eating boy. How could I not make these for dinner? Surprisingly quick, incredibly delicious, and perfect with a spring salad of romaine, radishes, carrots, cherry tomatoes and goat cheese.

No knitting — but I’ve done a (very) little bit of writing. If only the 100 words I’ve written here could somehow count towards the 1000 I need to turn in tomorrow…

Hope the sun is shining where you are. Here, it has made all the difference.

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flowers and a wurm.

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And pancakes. For dinner.

I managed to knit a few rows on my wurm hat while at a lecture on Springsteen on Monday afternoon. I realize it doesn’t look like I’ve made any progress, but it felt good to have this project in my hands again. I could listen to Thunder Road over and over (oh wait, I do), and my week is certainly better than it would have been because I was able to listen to Bruce, blaring loud, in a rather stuffy lecture hall. (Roy Orbison’s singin’ for the lonely/hey that’s me and I want you only.)

And then I filled my apartment with flowers, which is an important step in grading a huge stack of papers. Clearly.

one more row.

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I knit one more row on my shalom today. Boh napped. I managed to snap a picture.

Things are going to be crazy (and thus, sporadic around here) for another week or so, but after that, I’m really looking forward to catching up in blogland. I may not be commenting/responding as quickly as I usually do, but I’m still reading. (And Boh is still napping.)

ripped jeans.

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I inherited these awesome ripped jeans several years ago from my dear friend champ, and changing out of skinny-conference-paper-giving-jeans into cozy sigh-with-relief-and-curl-up-with-boh jeans was exactly what I needed yesterday afternoon. (I know I tucked that into a ridiculous string of hyphenated words, but I gave my first conference paper yesterday, and I’m happy with how it went. Hooray!)

Also, I’ve done those dishes. Thanks, everyone, for your sweet responses to the giddiness of my last post. (I’m still grinning about all of that.)

Tonight, I made (and then ate too much) mushroom pizza. I also made some progress on my teal shalom. A few more inches, and I will be good to go.

I am still thrilled with the accidentally perfect sizing, and I’m pretty sure this is only going to require three skeins of Cascade 220. We’re getting into the crazy part of the semester — I’m expecting a huge pile of papers to grade tomorrow, and it is time for me to really get a move on with the writing I need to turn in next month, so my posting might be a bit erratic, but I’ll try not to disappear entirely. Spending time in this space makes me happy.

also, i haven’t done the dishes.

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For me to let the dishes pile up like this, something has to be going on. I haven’t even picked up my knitting this week. And I haven’t yet written my conference paper. (Well, I’ve written a page of it.)

I wrestle with categories in all parts of my life and work, and while I’m unsure exactly how much I want to say about my week here in this space, which is somewhere between private and public in ways that mean a lot to me, I also feel like you’ve all been here as I’ve tried to think about and work through some very personal things, especially in this last year. So it seems only appropriate to tell you that I’ve started seeing someone. He’s been smiling at me for weeks. The occasional conversation turned into the occasional email, which, last Wednesday, turned into a lecture, dinner, a movie screening, and tea (all in one afternoon-into-evening). So much is unexpected and surprising about this for me: there are many things about us that are quite different, and yet, we have great conversation and chemistry.

I probably won’t say much more about this. I don’t know what it will become, how it will develop. But my real-life community can see me grinning (and is giving me a good-natured hard time about it), and as you all are also part of my community, I wanted to tell you too.

So there it is: the reason the dishes have piled up, that my work is not getting done, that I have no knitting, or even silly Boh pictures to share — and the reason I’ve been smiling all week.

upside down/turned around.

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Another picture of last week’s daffodils as a way to say that I’m still here. I’ve had a week that has me all upside down and turned around (in good, surprising ways). And although I still haven’t written that conference paper (note to self: do that tomorrow), I am celebrating spring.

More soon.

lack of motivation.

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I snapped this photo last night. Boh got halfway off the couch, and then seemed to either forget what he was doing or lose the motivation to continue. Oh Boh, I can relate. I am having a hard time staying focused and motivated to work on many of the things on my plate right now — April is just crazy.

I’ve had a few skeins of finished yarn sitting here next to my computer, waiting for me to blog them. I might not be done reading, planning paper topics, or (ahem) writing that conference paper for next weekend, but I can blog these skeins and check them off my list!

This is that lovely blue-green merino/wool blend that my dear friend H. picked up at a Maine sustainability festival in the fall from Friends’ Folly Farm. This is 257 yards of worsted weight (maybe light worsted in some places), in 2 skeins of 181 and 76 yards, respectively. This stuff was beautifully prepped, almost batt-like, and I spun it in sort of a modified long-drawish kind of way, which seemed to allow me to get a more even single. I have no idea what this will become, but I absolutely love how the colors catch the light.

This is a scrappy 2-ply skein of all the leftovers on my bobbins — a mixture of Hello Yarn shetland in Sour Fig, the gorgeous green stuff I just finished, and Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino in Albatross and Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. 68 yards of surprising prettiness.

And now, back to the pile! I’m hoping to get caught up on blog reading and comments soon. Apologies for the radio silence this week.

daffodils and dancing.

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My yard’s first daffodil. I woke up early yesterday and got a fair bit of work done, as well as some plying and Easter baking.

I had to request consultations with my dough advisory council (my dad and my friend K.) when my Slovenian Easter buns took forever to rise, but I think everything that was supposed to happen occurred, and the result is delicious.

I also made an enormous Caesar salad (above), and then dished myself a 2-quart mixing bowl-sized serving. Yum. And that would have made for a pretty good day.

But then I did something rather uncharacteristic: I went dancing. Something about the arrival of spring gave me a burst of energy last night, and I stayed out way past my bedtime. And had fun. And consequently, I’m having a tough time motivating myself to do anything of (academic) import today.

But I’ve got daffodils, and the sun is shining.

ear up.

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Self-explanatory, right? For a brief moment yesterday, I was feeling okay about my piles of things to do. The sun was shining, so after we finished a book, Boh and I went for a run. Half an hour, nice and slow. Though this is the first run we’ve taken in something like six months, the second I got out my running shoes, Boh began to whimper. He remembers…and when he isn’t being lazy, he loves running. It was nice to see that he needs to ease back into it too. (In fact, we probably ran not quite 3 miles, and we turned towards home because Boh was slowing down! Don’t get me wrong, my muscles certainly greeted me loudly when I rolled out of bed this morning.)

He snored for hours after our run. It’s almost as if he just plain forgot to put his ear down.

Are you taking pictures of me again?

Also, late last night I decided to put something else on the wheel. (During break,  I was spinning every day, and this week I haven’t been able to find the time. So I made some.) This is 6 oz. of 50% merino/50% other wool in a gorgeous range of deep greens and blues from Friends’ Folly Farm in Maine. My dear friend H. (her last name initial, since that’s what I call her) picked this up for me at a sustainability fair of some sort this fall and surprised me with it. I was itching to spin a 2-ply, and decided that this might be just the thing. This stuff drafts like a dream, and part of the way through putting the first 3 oz. on the bobbin, I switched to spinning this in more of a long-draw type method, and my singles became even more even. Here’s a less than awesome shot of the bobbin. I blame the lateness and the harsh overhead light.

While I was working on this, emails adding to my workload/stress for the weekend arrived in my inbox. Isn’t that always how it goes? I’m glad I claimed some spinning time last night, and I’m going to aim to spin the other half of this luscious stuff over the weekend. Happy Friday! (And if you’re in the East, happy sunshine!)