So I’m moving, from Williamsburg to Prospect Heights. The new neighbourhood bar that I will be able to call my own is Franklin Park–a big open space with picnic tables and good beer. I am pleased. On my first trip there the other night after picking up keys, I noticed this plaque in the concrete floor. Home!
Okay world, now is the time that I make the same promise I make every summer: I am going to finish Infinite Jest.
It’s going to happen this time: it’s Infinite Summer.
And then I’ll move on to the pre-phd reading list.
The desire to open up photoshop and make this little mockup is actually what got me out of bed this morning! Here’s my big idea for NPR fundraising: the Nina Totenbag. Coming up next: Carl Leggo Castles and maybe some Ira Drinking Glasses. What does Soterious Johnson get?
(Oh. NPR already did this. Oh well)
Hello world, RSS reading-humans, and the like…
New blog design, and now time for bed.
A few weekends ago, we got in the car, drove up route 17, ate at a diner or two, hung out in Buffalo, went to Wilson, looked at Toronto from the other side of the lake, bought junk a flea market, ate barbecued things for memorial day, and then drove back to New York.
there are lots of holes in the elbows of my sweaters! I have lots of mending to do.
1. That thing that I was working on, with the blue and white triangles is done:
In the photos it’s not bound or quilted, but those things happened, and it got shipped off to its rightful owner. It makes me so so so happy to have it out in the world. I’m kind of amazed that I only really knit for myself, but the quilts I make are meant for others. I have a new project in the works, but it’s still at the stage where I stare at strangers on the subway, looking at the colours of their shoes and totebags and wonder what they would look like as log cabins or flying geese.
2. I also made a new dress, for the studio presentation I have to give on Friday. It’s another Amy Butler Lotus Dress, in blue corduroy. Pictures eventually, maybe
3. I’m knitting these socks, Hanging Vines out of dark grey yarn from Yarnia. They’re going quickly and are really fun, unlike the German Stockings that I bought the yarn for, and have started and ripped back twice. I love the way the German Stockings look, but they were so many stitches that I needed my super-long dps, and then I couldn’t knit on the subway because I kept poking people, so I gave up! Cookie A, I’ve made your Monkeys and your Pomotomous socks twice each, I’ve loved them lots, but the German Stocks are amazingly un-fun.
4. I made some maps of Saginaw:
dory and zach, originally uploaded by dorywithserifs.
I don’t think I’ve said it publicly here, but it’s for real: I’m starting a PhD in the fall! At Columbia, in Planning, so I’ll be in New York, reading books, for quite some time.
Also, I’m excited that Zach is in New York too. He got some jobs, and a sublet in the neighbourhood.
Photo is us at Coney Island almost two years ago. But we’ve been friends since kindergarten, so what’s two years?
I’ve been working a pair of ugly socks. I’m using up all my scraps of sock yarn from projects past, switchingc colours whenever I feel like it. They’re turning out spectacularly, and I’m really excited to have ‘em done. I think I might actually get 4 or 5 socks out of the project and then I can mix and match.
This photo, on the other hand, is of my favourite sock-shoe combination.
First, from A Softer World:
And this, from Mia Nolting:
So since I’ve been writing about getting things capital-D Done, it makes sense to post the Cult of Done manifesto here:
The Cult of Done Manifesto
- There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- There is no editing stage.
- Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
- Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
- The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
- Once you’re done you can throw it away.
- Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
- People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
- Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
- Destruction is a variant of done.
- If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
- Done is the engine of more
I can’t say that I follow all these rules, nor that I want to. I’m a graduate student, a planner, I like to think things through and make sure that I’m picking the right course of action (which is especially important when making decisions about other people’s lives and environments!), but keeping all this in mind is really helpful. Especially if thinking is doing (it is), and writing is doing, and telling other people about your idea is doing.
My favourite is point 8: the anti-perfection declaration. That’s how I felt in quilt class; while I was impressed that people were taking their blocks apart and re-doing them because pieces were a quarter-inch wider than they wanted, that’s not my style. I’d rather do, work, make more. I don’t like to agonize.
I guess I just mean to say that the Cult of Done doesn’t apply in all circumstance, and you have to know when it works and when it doesn’t. I probably need to focus more on NOT following these rules and I’d be prouder of some of the papers I’ve written and sweaters I’ve knit, but I’d rather be a doer who makes some mistakes than deliberate forever and have one perfect thing to show for it after 15 years.
This is me on the floor of Emily’s apartment, cutting out squares of fabric. In December.
I’ve posted about this before, also in December, this secret project that will be sure to amaze and delight its intended recipient. I was going to have it done before the new year!
Clearly, that didn’t happen.
I mean, there’s this
but that’s hardly a whole quilt. And most of it is still in squares on the sewing table.
I’m using the Crafty Slacker challenge as motivation to get it done before the deadline of March 16. Possibly irrational, but I organized the piles of tiny squares and pinned some of them together and now I want to see them sewn together so badly that I think it’s truly possible.
Projects! I want more of them! And I want to Get Them Done! Yes!
I finished this crocheted afgahn in November of 2005. I’ve been usinging to sleep under and rad on the couch with and give to guests when they crash. I’ve taken it on trips and am even using a photo of it as the header of my blog here!
Thing is, it’s not really done yet. There are about 8 million yarn ends to weave in, and I know that it will be a much more glorious project if I get it done. I worked on it during last year’s Oscars, and hauled it to Quilt Sunday at the workroom at least once. But mostly, I’m making no progress.
But thanks to the Crafty Slackers Get ‘er Done giveaway at the Toronto Craft Alert, I’m thinking about working on it again. I can’t really take this mammoth thing on the subway or work on it in class, so it probably wont’ happen before the March 16th project deadline, but I’m on it! Going to happen!
I’m taking Intro to GIS (Geographic Information Systems) this term. That means, after years of reading and writing about maps, I’m finally learning how to actually use GIS software and make maps.
We’re just at the start of the class, so our assignments are simple and not all that earth shaking, but I’m already all excited about scale and colour scheme and classification levels and the like.
Here’s a recent map I made:
All of my projects are online. You can peek at them if you like.
Stay tuned for cooler things. Or go look at the collection of culturally significant maps over at Very Small Array
Facebook is silly
I had a really nice time in BC over my winter break. I really like my friends, and the ocean, especially in tandem.
Following a link that said “what’s the cost of being a nerd?” I landed at the Atlantic.Project–which looks to be a new package for the Atlantic. Set up as a series of questions, there’s a cute little video for each and links to “conventional” articles and blog posts. The whole thing looks great! Screenshot (click to embiggen):
Each question gets written out in neon in some wonderfully ordinary place, on the street, on the steps of the library, in a diner, and people are standing and sitting near them when talking in the videos.
The opposite of the neon lights though, are the questions written up to camouflage with the rest of city signage:
These are the most beautiful. The mimicry is spot on, and to see these in the city would be such a sweet, private moment of being disarmed. They remind me of my favourite Steve Lambert work:
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