What blog?

Ohai! I has a blog?

It's full-on summer camp up in here, which it should be, since July in the South cannot get any better than it does at GV. Fresh corn on the cob from our farm at (every single) meal, friendly faces to gossip with, great kid-friendly but funny-to-grown-ups conversations taking place right over the kids' heads... and tie-dye. Lots. Of. Tie-dye. Day in, day out. You'll find me at the washing machines, removing multi-colored rubber bands and adding more detergent.

For a hilarious and grimmace-worthy account of what I narrowly missed by getting to camp just 3 weeks later than everyone else, please go read my friend Sarah's blog. Her writing is too, too funny, especially if you know her and can picture her reading it aloud in her sing-song Southern voice.

So yeah, I'm not too frequently on the computer these days, which is nice. Last night I slept on another staff member's floor with two big hits of Tylenol PM and two earplugs and two electric fans, hoping to catch up on the sleep I had been so dearly missing. And ca-ching, I got it! Nine solid hours, surprisingly comfy and right at home on my 2-inch thick plastic mattress. Today I feel great, and went swimming in the lake at 7:00 am and then hiking to go pick blackberries after morning cluster. They're sitting on a plate on my bed, ready to be attacked at dinner time. I have the most excellent table group this session, with chatterbox children and slyly sarcastic grown-ups with whom I have lots in common. This afternoon I teach two one-hour hula hoop making sessions, with an assistant who long ago was a child in my cabin when I was in my 2nd year working here. She is now a lovely young adult who is also freaking hilarious and a kind soul, and I'm so glad we get to work together. After dinner tonight, I'm teaching an extended "Twilight Play" session of basket-making, which will be peaceful to the max.

Feel the love,
J

A quick discovery!

I made the Green Mountain Spinnery's Turkish Rose mittens on the plane a few weekends ago when we went to my Grandma's memorial service in Dolgeville, NY. (We also go to hang out in Syracuse. Odd place.) Loved the pattern, really love the yarn (Alpaca Elegance-- one skein of each color will make more than a set of size M), and then when it came time to block them, look what I discovered:



The top of Knit Picks' sock blockers are made perfectly for blocking mittens! Tapered at the cuff, gently pointed at the top, made with cut-outs for easy breeziness.



Maybe you all knew that already. It sort of blew my mind. Adios, blocking pins!

(it also felt really great to have a finished project that I bought the yarn & pattern for at MDSW this year. That's 1 month from impulse buy to FO!)

People, now our meeting is over

"Maybe all jobs are like this in the sense that there are the good parts and the bad parts, with the bad parts occupying the majority of the space because it is a JOB after all. If you have a job where there are more good parts than bad parts then you've obviously made a deal with the Devil and you're going to spend the rest of eternity being tortured by fork-wielding elves to make up for the imbalance. I'm just saying." -Heather B. Armstrong, in her book It Sucked and then I Cried (2009, p. 139)



It's the end of the school year, and it's time for me to say something: I have an awesome job. It is 95% "good parts," and I know this because I have worked several jobs that ranged from 20% good to about 50% good if being forcibly optimistic about what constitutes "good" (this does not include seasonal work, like summer camp, because then we would need a different rating system since GV is batting over 100%). My current job, you guys, is seriously good. And I'm leaving it. Voluntarily.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. For three years, maybe more, I've been waiting to score a sacred 6-month time slot at the Folk School in Brasstown, NC. I've saved up my money and gone to week-long classes there three separate times, and each time I was there I expanded my fantasy of someday living there for longer than a week. The Folk School hires 2 people every six months to live in the Keith House (big, old creaky beautiful wooden main building where the main community gatherings are held) and take a free class every week (FREE! CLASS! EVERY WEEK!!!), while doing the duties that I have inadvertently spent my entire life polishing up on: basic camp counseling, setting up of spaces, having a bit of knowledge about a lot of different crafts, leading blessing in the dining hall, managing the put up and take down of folding chairs... oh yes, and leading morning walks, welcome speeches, handing out mail, and trotting off to find a maintenance person when someone's shower isn't working. I am made for this job. Did I mention the FREE CLASS every WEEK?!



Because the Host positions last 6 months, only 4 are available each year. Do you think they hear from 4 people every year who want to do this? I'm sure it's 10 times that number. In a way it's amazing that I only had to wait 3 years. On the other hand, it felt like forever. I remember trying to decide whether or not to begin my Masters because I wasn't sure when I'd get the go-ahead and receive a starting date to Host. Good thing I decided to just enroll already, because here we are and it's 2009 and I've finished my degree. And I've got those blessed Hosting dates: September 26, 2009 - March 26, 2010. Oh, glory of glories. Now, beggars cannot be choosers, or at least, they can be choosy if they don't mind waiting another few years. I jumped at the chance as soon as I got my dates, noticing (as I'm sure you did) that they fall right in the middle of the school year. Hmmm.



My awesome, lucky job. The Folk School. Awesome job; Folk School. Argh. I struggled for, well, at least an hour, talked to Kenny and my Mom, and said yes. I'll have a month of working just the After School part of my job (reducing myself to an hourly position, instead of full time) before I go, and when I come back hopefully I'll be able to just assimilate myself right back into After School (as a helper, of course, rather than the Director). And in the mornings, I'll be nannying for an amazing family here in Williamsburg who by some miracle don't mind that I have to be gone for 6 months. I'll work for them for a month (including paid time to go to the beach with them! And Kenny is invited, too! omg.) and then pick right back up when I come back at the end of March. It's all going to work out.



Of course, this means no pay for 6 months, so I'm saving up everything I can right now and babysitting my butt off every chance I can get. I am SO EXCITED about going to the Folk School. 6 months of being fed wonderful food, 6 months of living in Western NC again (close to Brevard, close to Asheville, an hour away from the ATL airport!), 6 months of free classes and living in a beautiful creaky wooden room and walking around the hills and having a weekly contra dance literally in my house. These things are barely the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure, and I feel the need to say again:

I am very, very, lucky. For both my awesome job and what I get to leave it for.

Latest hooping video

I shot this on Friday morning, before I had to get dressed up for the Upper Elementary graduation ceremony. Hooping is a good way to clear your mind, especially if you can blast some music. This is my current favorite song to hoop to ("Say Hey" by my secret lover, Michael Franti. For real, we shared a bottle of water one time at the Orange Peel. Le sigh!).


(click to embiggen)

Meh.

I've been trying to psych myself up to blog lately, but it's just not coming. I've been taking pictures of various things, thinking, "I want to make a post about this," and even sort of writing it in my head, but... eh, I've got so much else to do. The blog can wait.

Some things:

1. I've been revising my thesis a lot, working off of a hard copy that my 3rd reader read meticulously. There are corrections on every single page, I kid you not. Typety typety type type type...

2. School (the kind where I work, not study) is almost over! One more week, which shall include many "last" lessons of various types, a closing ceremony wherein I lead a group of very smart children in singing "People Now Our Meeting is Over" (a shout-out to GV folks, indeed) and playing guitar for various small-group performances.

3. Starting with my Grandma's memorial service a few weekends ago and its legendary dessert buffet, I have been gaining weight like crazy. I'm talking seven pounds in a week and a half, dear god have mercy. This is very depressing, especially since I've been going to the gym and walking early in the morning and hooping and and and... I think it's an understatement to say that it's much easier for my body to gain weight than burn it off. I think I re-figure this out every month or so and renew my resolve to eat fewer calories, only to crack under the pressure of lime bars and pita chips and snacks with the kids in the afternoons. Blah. Bring on summer camp, where we all have perpetual quasi-nausea from the sheer insanity of the dining hall.

4. I found a very sweet family to nanny for part-time next year. I'll be doing After School in the afternoons as usual, and hanging out with Baby Joe in the mornings. Nice. :)

5. For the first time in awhile, my hair is free of all artificial colorants. I discovered a few natural streaks of very light brown around my temples, and I now check them out in the mirror several times a day. Hmm. I wonder if that's where I'll start going grey?

This is what I've got for y'all: 1 month

It's getting easier and easier to move the hoop up and down my body. Knee hooping continues to evade me. I can take alternate arms in and out, but it's tentative at this point-- more practice is needed! I do the "revolving door" quite a bit in this video mainly because I haven't filmed myself doing it yet and wanted to see what it looks like. I'm also working on hooping to my opposite direction (or "current") but I plum forgot while trying to shoot this before my camera battery died. It also imported in a format incompatible with iMovie so what you see here is uncut-- try to enjoy the times I drop it/sling it almost into my neighbor's shrubs.

YAY!

A massive blog post, overdue

I made a to-do list last night at way past midnight, because I just wasn't sleepy yet and Kenny was still up too, attempting to fix my incommunicado iPhone. It actually was quite a scene, complete with sharp kitchen knife and insufficient lighting. I avoided trouble by making to-do lists and casting a discriminatory eye over the trouble brewing on my desk. Now that the Master's Degree Shiznit is almost over, I can start thinking about a rehaul of the massive amounts of papers that currently clog my desktop(s), both real and computery.

So on that to-do list was "do a catch-up blog post" and of course that sounds like way more fun than completing old Brain Gym homework so that I can finally get my certificate. Here we go, then:






Last weekend I went to Prescott, AZ one last time to present my thesis work at Colloquium. See, don't we look happy to be almost done? I stayed in a cabin (again) with Gina & Maria (again) which proved to be an excellent idea (again). Love renting cabins in Prescott. Definitely the cheapest and most relaxing option, although couchsurfing that one time was pretty awesome, too. At the cabins, though, we can walk to school and all around town, which makes the weekend all the more special.

I finished TWO pairs of socks while listening to all the presentations and on the planes coming back:

My 1st picot edge; yarn from Ellen's 1/2 Pint Farm (bought at MDSW 2008)


Laurie's "Secret Power Socks," made by special request for taking the MCAT.

For some reason, I always get more knitting done faster at Colloquium than anywhere else. Sort of sad that I won't be going to them anymore! I'll also seriously miss getting to see all my new MAP buddies all in one place. Also, I really love the weather there and how light and fresh the air feels. Plus the deliciousness of The Raven cafe, one of my favorite eateries ever. Here are our celebratory orange-pomegranate mimosas, so cold and perfect:


********

When I got back, I had only 3 days of work before a luxurious 4-day weekend, which was spent hosting my soon-to-be brother-in-law (can't have enough brothers, eh?) and having an absolute blast doing every possible activity one can do in Williamsburg and Virginia Beach. Soccer, go-carts, Ghost Walk, aquarium, kite-flying, beach jogging, many meals out, many meals cooked in, picnicing all over the place... it was pretty awesome. For all the pictures, go to Kenny's comprehensive Flickr set.





(I also spent a happy evening out with Kenny, in which we decided to live it up in full VA Beach style and drink tequila and walk around on the beach in the dark. Ah, love.)

Aaaughh! Happy Mother's Day!

My phone has been crippled lately by intermittent periods of NO SIGNAL. It surprises me by suddenly having signal when I take it out of my bag to check, and then when I excitedly start dialing a number it all of a sudden says NO SIGNAL. Hmph. Perhaps it has developed a condition which allows it to communicate with a tower only when it is tucked safely away in the darkness of a bag? It works for my pocket, too, apparently.

So I tried, during one of these after-dark periods, to call my Mom. A few seconds into, "hello? Hello??" and it cut off, so I have to say this here:


This veggie sandwich, priced at a lofty $8 at the Phoenix airport, represents my love for you. Made of simple ingredients, yet somehow so perfect when put all together on some nine grain bread. May your decorative toothpick always stand tall, Mom! May you have extra pesto mayonnaise, enough to cover all of your cucumbers forever! And may the lemon cookie on the side* tide you over through all your overnight flights to come! I love you!

*some of you probably looked for the lemon cookie, but it is not pictured. This is because I am a grown-up and may eat my dessert before dinner, if I like.

Oh, and also: BAAAAA!

Back from MDSW...

...and boy is my wallet tired! Ha. Just kidding, I budgeted pretty well. I was ready for the onslaught of pretty and soft, after last year's maiden voyage. First up, the yarn purchases!


Lame-o colors in a really great yarn for an even better price: sock yarn mill ends from Cherry Tree Hill, soon to be overdyed. Muahahhh.


More of my favorite Acero, from Brooks Farm (soon to be a Woodland Shawl for my self.)


Finally found the perfect "midnight purple" blue to go with my goldenrod-colored Koigu. Mmm, the things they could be together...


Because I wanted to try something from Shelridge Farms last year, but didn't get a chance. Eh?


Loved the display mitten so bought the yarn! Lovely Green Mountain Spinnery. I want to work there someday.


These people (The Bransonas) were nice. It was close to the end of the day. Liked the colors. Probably shouldn't have bought more sock yarn, though....


Oh my god, splurrrrge! It was the very end of the day, and Holly was buying one... I love it I love it I love it. Isn't it pretty?! Here, you need a detail shot:

Oh yes, pumpkiny pumpkin deliciousness. Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, roving for needle felting projects with the kids at school:


And I got a mug and a pair of earrings from Jennie the Potter, who was nice beyond belief and with whom I'm totally going to do a last minute interview for my thesis chapter on clay-- if she has a sec. And we can't forget the lamb kabob, kettle corn, maple sugar candies and (though I'll admit it, pretty gross) soft serve with a peanut-butter flavored dip top. It didn't digest so well, probably cause there wasn't much real food in it.

So when I laid out all this new yarn to be photographed and dutifully entered into Ravelry, I realized something...

Hmm...


Why yes, I am a Unitarian Universalist, how ever did you know?