This is not about Writing, Reading, or Knitting.

If I were to say that on Saturday I didn't shed a single tear as I left Iowa City, I'd be lying. I woke up crying, feeling frantic and downright uncertain that I could make the move. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Last week was one of the more interesting weeks I've ever had in Iowa City. I somehow found myself partnered up with someone. Like together nearly 24 hours a day partnered up. It is and it isn't what you think. But there was a level of intimacy there that I don't believe I've ever experienced. I'm not very good at relationships. I usually want too much from the other person, or I don't want anything and it frustrates my partner. This time, I didn't put any thought into, just dove right in. What are we having for brunch? Will you pick up a ginger ale? Can you move over? Where are my sunglasses? What time should I pick you up from work? What should we watch? I'm too tired. I'm stressed out. What are we doing tonight? Who was on the phone? Why didn't you call me back? Thank you. No thank you. Ours, not mine, not yours, ours. This was my week. And the intensity of a week like this escaped me until I woke up alone on my last morning in Iowa.

I'm not saying that I fell in love as I was leaving town, that's far from what happened, but I did realize how much in love I was with my life in that town and with the people who were part of that life. I don't remember feeling this way when I left New York for Iowa--perhaps because I had a strong idea of what I as in for. I was going to train to be a writer. To become someone who made literature. Yes, it was a daunting task, but it was one that made sense, and I had a clear idea of what I was getting into and seven months to prepare. This time around, I had less than half the time and half the confidence. I know what my job is going to be I just have no idea how I'm going to do it. My fauxmance (what else do you call it?) was the perfect excuse to not deal with any of these feelings and yet, it created a whole new set of emotions.

I learned a few things about myself in this last week an the most important one seems to be my complete inability to recognize intimacy, whether it's real or the kind that shields me from dealing with reality. It was much easier to walk around holding his hand than to pack up my life. It was much easier to spend time with him than my friends, because he's "super cute" (and he was) and I'm not attached to him, he won't make me cry.

So put it on the list of things I need to improve on as I continue on this new journey.

As for the Fauxmance? We're friends right now, we might see each other in a week or so or we might not. And that is okay.

Packing Up and Shipping Out...

...in 10 days anyway. Maybe 11 days. I'm shooting for 10. I've packed about 6 boxes, all books and for some reason, I keep committing myself to things that take me away from packing...College counseling, teaching children how to crochet....cooking for parties....Someone make me stop. But seriously, I guess it has to do with a reluctance to cut ties with certain elements of Iowa City. Now there are some things that I will eagerly leave behind, but there are a few things (mostly people) that I wish I could strap down to the roof of my car and make them come with me to B'more. Look forward to a bunch of posts where I complain about packing, being sad about moving, moving between elation and depression and how I'm going to learn to take certain things and cut them out of my heart (too dramatic? yeah, probably).

Detox

So I spent the last four days with a terrible summer cold. It totally knocked me on my ass. After ingesting too much high sodium chicken soup, NyQuil, and Theraflu (none of which really work by the way) I'm going on a detox. My lungs are still weak but I do feel a lot better and I'm excited to get things done. And there are a lot of things to get done.

More WIP's

Ugh. I'm about to start the packing process and, while my yarn will be one of the last to be put away there are so many UFO's in my apartment that I think it might be the hardest to sort out. The books are easy. The ones I need for school and the books I need to have eyes on (Interesting Women, etc.) will go in one box for my office (yes, I have an office now and it is big and awesome!!) the rest, storage until I find an apartment. The yarn...well, I like to have it around me, so I'll be carting around a whole bunch of yarn for about a month. So, I'm setting some impressive goals for myself in this last month of easy living.

1. Finish my February Lady sweater. I'm down to the last sleeve and then I need to rework the cuff of the other sleeve, block it and sew on buttons. It's about 4 hours of work (or less?).

2. Baby Sophia's sweater. Actually, I think this will be more of a "I can't believe I left Iowa to take on a real life job and I need to knit to de-stress" project.

3. My Clapotis scarfy-shawly type thing. I started it back in January and estimated it would take me about two weeks to finish. Ha! seven months later, I'm just picking it back up. I went through nearly one skein of the yarn (Ella Rae lace merino--YUM) before it got all tangled up and I got so annoyed that I stopped dealing with it. Now that we're all untangled, I'm going to wind the second skein and hopefully get it done this week.

4. Dad's socks...eh....

5. Jen's fingerless gloves...These are another August/Spetember project. They're fair isle and lovely but time consuming. I'm optimistic she'll have them for the fall.

6. Elizabeth Zimmerman's Mitered mitts....One down one to go. I definitely need to finish the thumb on the first one. Really I need to finish them both because I did them the E.Z.  way and I need some hand holding for making the thumbs. The person whose hand I need to hold is here in Iowa.

8. Socks! My fishnet anklet needs to me completed, something I could literally do in an hour or two. Also my Rushing River sock, one done, one to go.

9. Traveling Woman, I'm 1/3 of the way done. This week, or next

10. Two at at a time two up socks. I need to restart them with yarn I really like and a patten that's exciting. I have both. I really just need to start them and get to the heel. More hand holding is involved.

So that's July. Oh yeah and I need to pack and clean my apartment. And plan a semester of 9th grade English. Hahahaha....shoot me.

Traveling Woman

I took a little detour on my latest trip to Baltimore to take care of some business. Naturally I had to check out the LYS (that's local yarn shop for you non-knitters). I discovered one in the neighborhood I'm hoping to move into. It was Lovely, seemingly laid back and of course lots of new (and old favorites) yarn to get my little hands on. I met the owner and while she wasn't hiring she was always interested in people to teach classes. Especially a lace class. A lace class that teaches the Traveling Woman shawl. I've never made a shawl so I thought I should get right on it. After all, it's a perfect excuse to make use of the Pear Tree yarn I bought last autumn.

The photo is from the designer's website. See how pretty!

I love lace, it's so pretty and delicate and it just makes me happy. So this is less of a challenge and more of a "Yay, a reason to knit some lace and finally use some of my stash".

I will admit that I'm not loving the set up row, CO 3 K6 rows and then pick up 6 stitches along the long side of the knitting and the cast on row. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to tell the truth, but once I got started, I fell in LOVE. And I haven't even made it to the chart yet! Really, it's the yarn. Like butter. But because I think I'll enjoy knitting this project, I'm already thinking about doing a second version with yarn from the shop in B'more.



I like the idea of a scarf called Traveling Woman. I'll be leaving Iowa City pretty soon, road tripping across the country to my new home, where old friends and new friends await me. So this scarf just makes sense. I hope that like this, other good things will fall into my lap.

P.S. I'll also admit that I'm totally charmed by the fact that the designer is a fan of Bones and some of her knits are inspired by the show. Normally I'd be annoyed (the way I feel about Twilight, Harry Potter and Dr. Who knits) but today, in my good mood, I'm charmed.

I bought the yarn at Home Ec. in Iowa City. Seriously, if you are not a knitter, if you say you don't like wool, then this is the yarn that will change everything!

Justin Cronin's "The Passage"

I wasn't going to buy the book. I feel like I tell myself that almost every time I go to a reading and I have no money. I say, I'm not going to buy the book and I give myself a million reasons why--most of them having to do with a lack of finances. No offense Mr. Cronin but $27.00 is a lot these summer days when you've spent the last year as an adjunct. So, like I said, I wasn't going to buy the book, even though "Mary and O'Neill" is one of my favorites (still can't find my copy). Also, I wasn't going to buy the book because, don't we have enough vampire stories out there? So, I wasn't going to buy the book, but I'd go to the reading. I mean, that's free, my friends were going and I genuinely admire the author's work. So I went to the reading, in fact I planned a whole night around it. Reading, then drinks and dinner with the ladies.

It's always the damn readings that do me in. It was a good reading. So good that I bought the book. And then, I read the whole goddamn thing in two days. All 766 pages of it. And I was terrified and I was sad and I was like, wait a minute, I'm reading a vampire novel and I'm liking it. What?

Well, that's because it's not your typical vampire novel. "The Passage" is the first of a planned trilogy that will span 1000 years and will focus on, amongst other characters, a young girl named Amy Harper Bellafonte, also known as The Girl from Nowhere or the girl that lived 1000 years. So, what's different? This isn't a story that relies on mythology to tell a story about the undead. A science experiment goes wrong and the world changes irrevocably. This is a concept that's not so hard to believe in, is it? Mankind driven by it's own arrogance screws up the world (BP, I'm talking to you and your friends). Not really a shocker. It was also quite refreshing to read a science fiction piece that paid as much attention to the prose as it does to the action. There are times when things feel overwritten but there were also some really beautiful sections. The story itself moves fairly well with a few lags where I just wanted to thumb through and get to more interesting stuff. By more interesting, I meant the character development, the further development of this world that these character inhabited where it was the part of the novel that takes place in an America that might resemble ours in the next five to six years or the world that America becomes 92 years after the change. Perhaps there was a little too much on the side of these terrifying battles in the wilderness. But I'll give those to Mr. Cronin. It is after all, a vampire novel.

WIP's

I've been so neglectful of this space and I know why. My life, for the last year has been fairly uninteresting, meaning that I haven't really had any major changes. Usually, when life feels calm, I have little to say to the internets, my feeling being that the people I love and know are around to hear most of what I need to say so why post it online?

Well, now there's some news. After nearly three years in Iowa City, I'll be leaving at the end of July to take up a post teaching English on the East Coast. Home at last. But this change does lead me to think about my time here in Iowa. Although I'm leaving, I realize that my connection to this place is a lot like some of my knitting projects, the ones I start and will probably never get around to finishing, on Ravelry, they call them WIPs (Works in Progress), I'll never quite be done with Iowa City.

I came here to write, which I did, maybe less than some but more than I could have hoped to accomplish in New York.

I cam here having fallen out of love. While I was here, I fell in love. Fell out of love. Fell back in love, with myself. Fell in love with writing. Fell out of love with writing. Fell even further out of love with writing, only to get close to the end and fall back in love with my writing. Can you say DRAMA? I can. I also realized that you never really fall out of love, you just move on and discover new (and hopefully) more fulfilling love (I know, it kind of sucks but really it's kind of awesome).

I learned to live alone. Learned that I love living alone, learned that I should probably learn to live with others.

I learned to knit (a skill I will always treasure).

I learned to drink whiskey (a skill I will always treasure and a skill I'm sure I'll regret time and time again).

I learned how to be a teacher. I even wrote (for a failed job application) a statement of my educational philosophy from where I got this gem of a line: "What I learned about the classroom environment at Sarah Lawrence is the very thing I try to make the foundation of my classes at Iowa: that while we have university-designated roles—teacher and student—we are all learners."

I learned to knit a cardigan. A freaking cardigan.

I learned more about friendship that I ever did before. Taking those failed friendships in New York, the friendships that are still so dear to me from the time I live in NYC, and the amazing people I connected with here in Iowa, I learned what it mean to have a friend and to be a friend.

I learned how to be a writer from some really good teachers. And I hope I can pass this on to other young writers I will encounter in my future.

I learned that even though you will continue to lose the ones you love, life goes on.

In all these sentences, I used the past tense when really, I should have used the present. Like the unfinished baby blanket, the socks that have no mates, and well, the cardigan (it's missing a sleeve) I'm a work in progress. I'm hoping the finished product will be last long and look awesome.