In this case, even I, Knitcrit, can't find a reason to be critical

Ladies and Gentlemen, my first book contract, from one of the best academic presses in the country, has arrived!























Delighted doesn't begin to describe it - and because I actually managed to negotiate in an uncharacteristically savvy fashion, I seem to be on my way to getting a counteroffer from another one of the best academic presses in the country, which means, I think, hope and possibly also pray, that I may be able to dink a few things in the contract a bit more in my favor. But even if I can't, this is the document that will basically get me tenure and which will also bring a project I dearly love and believe in to a wider audience.

Also, on an unrelated note, unbloggable gift knitting has led me to conclude that I hate duplicate stitch and will never use it agian.

I would knit this if I weren't pregnant

I recently discovered a semi-new zine called Metapostmodernknitting. It's run by a group of friends who are librarians at some fashion library in LA, and many their patterns are inspired by/ knock-offs of designer pieces. I like this one a lot.

Knitting something for myself in my current state is stupid, right? Then again, if I started it now, at the rate I knit it would probably be finished by the time I get some semblance of my old body back.

Dollhouse perhaps not deserving of being sent to attic after all

Okay - "Man on the Street" was a very good episode, and the first to give me hope for the series as a whole. Many spoilers ahead for those who haven't seen the episode yet.

The ideas the episode explores are grounded in characters and relationships rather than in a bad, philosophy 101-esque allegory - in particular, I think this episode offered some thoughtful exploration of the question of whether or not people ever genuinely connect with/love one another or whether they just love/connect with what they want people to be. Pretty much any of the developing relationships on the show toyed with this issue in one way or another, with the romance between Ballard and Mellie being the most obvious.

Through the assignment in which Echo is engaged at the start of the show, the episode also invites consideration of fantasy, and whether or not there's any such thing as an innocent or victimless fantasy - and thank god the episode didn't offer a preachy answer at the end.

Plot-wise, the reveal of Mellie as a doll (it was obvious she was a doll) was much better than I thought it would be - first, Adelle pretending that Mellie was a normal civilian cast doubt on what seemed to me to be Mellie's obvious status as a doll, which made the reveal of Mellie as a doll more exciting than it otherwise would have been. Additionally, because Mellie had been set up at the start of the episode as the "real girl" that Ballard is missing out on as he pursues Caroline, it's satisfying to see that in reality, she's no more real than Caroline, which calls into question the very categories of fantasy and reality. Whedon did the same trick with the categories of "good" and "evil" in Buffy and Angel, and if Dollhouse also turns out to be a meditation on power, I won't be disappointed.

That an FBI agent would trust, shag, and confide in his pasta-baking neighbor all in one episode we shall overlook and forgive in light of the strength of the episode as a whole.

Finally, in terms of the potential of the series to go somewhere interesting with both plot and characters, it is excellent that we can't know if the "person on the inside" is an actual person, Adelle's creation, or Caroline/the emergent Echo herself. That is quite interesting - much more interesting than Alpha, though it's good to have him/it in the mix, too. The idea that the DollhouseS could have some larger purpose also has potential.

And of course, finally, the fact that this was actually a true ensemble episode helped it along a lot. Hope that trend continues.

For the first time since the series started, I am interested to see what happens next week.

If the baby is not really cute, at least its hat will be

I am so pleased with my newborn hat.

















So cute. And probably the first thing I've designed that I really like. Good omen?


















Stats and (loosely speaking) pattern (and yeah, I am almost certainly not the first person to come up with the idea of putting a leaf on top of a hat):

gauge: 2 x 2 inch square is 15 by 22 in stockinette (15 st wide by 22 st high)

Makes one newborn hat; bottom band circumference 12 1/2 inches (ustretched); 5 inches from bottom of band to top of hat (excluding i-cord and leaf).

Supplies:

1 ball green Mandarin Petit by Sandensgarn
1 ball white Mandarin Petit by Sandensgarn
4 #1 dpn

Cast on 108 stitches with white. Knit 2 Purl 2 rib for 8 rounds. Knit 4 rounds. Join green, knit 3 rounds (to avoid ugly "step," use jogless jog at end of first green round). Join white, knit two rounds (to avoid ugly "step," use jogless jog at end of first white round). Join green, work one round in k 1 green, k 1 white. Knit two rounds in white. Knit one round in k 1 white, k 1 green. (I carried the yarn up) Knit in white until piece measures approximately 3 1/2 inches.

















Decrease top as follows: *k 15, k 2 tog; repeat from * until end of round. Yeah, I know there are three stitches left over after your final k 2 tog. Feel free to figure out a better starting stitch number if you are anal and want to make a PERFECT baby hat. Otherwise, k 3 remaining stitches in round. That said, look at the decreases. I bet you can't tell where I fudged.


















(and no, I didn't hide the fudge decreases with the leaf)

K one round.

*K 14, k 2 tog; repeat from * until the last repetition, at which point you fudge slightly and K 15, K2 tog, and then K remaining stitches in round (I think from now on 3 remain).

K one round.

*K 13, K 2 tog; repeat from * until last repetition, at which point you fudge again: K 14, K2 tog, and then k remaining stitches in round.

K one round.

Continue decreasing as indicated as described above (also continuing with fudge factor on last repeat) until you complete a round in which you only K 2 tog. At this point I think I had five stitches left. Work white in i-cord for 1 round. Join green and work i-cord for approximately 8 rounds. Make 1 stitch using the method of your choice for a total of 6 stitches on the needle. For the excellent double-sided leaf (no purl side! reversible!), Use "Just a Leaf," an excellent Ravelry free pattern by Hink.

Weave in ends (duh).

mmmm. yarn.

Knitcrit: (fondling recent purchase in the unseasonably warm March New York sunshine) I love the colors of yarn I picked for my new project.


















Todd: I love the way you look at yarn. It's like Homer Simpson looking at a cheeseburger.


I've started a little something for my own baby to take the edge off the other projects - It's going to be a newborn baby hat somewhat like the one I knit for a friend's baby a while ago. I'm thinking white with light green stripe near the brim and then green stem and yellow flower on top. If it's a boy, hell, it's my boy, and yellow is a manly color.

The original hat pattern is in a worsted held double, so I did some math to take the gauge way down to fine cotton (7 st/inch) - hopefully it will all work out when I get to the decreases at the top. For proportions I consulted The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns by Ann Budd, but I was not convinced that her proportions were right - this just could be wishful, fearful thinking by someone for whom discussions of baby head circumference have recently taken on a whole new meaning, but isn't 16 1/2 inches kind of big for a newborn's head? Right now what I've got on the needles will be about 14 1/2 inches (unstretched) and that seems much more in keeping with what I've found online about newborn head size. I'd hate to be wrong on this for many reasons, but if I am, better to find out sooner rather than later. How big are newborn heads?

And we was both jumpin' up and down yelling "Kill! Kill!"

The main reason I remain anonymous on this blog is because I like to have a corner of the world where neither students nor colleagues can find me. Even with this cloak of anonymity, because I am untenured and also not stupid, I don't generally indulge myself in posts of the "Venting about IDIOTS at work" genre. Sure, the chances of being found are very, very small, but why risk it?

But I have to say that recently I was at a meeting with a member of my department whose presence generally makes me believe that, given the right weapon and conditions, I am in fact capable of disemboweling another human being. Now, one of the best things about being an academic is that most of the time, one does not have to deal with the idiocy, attempts at social climbing, and generally aggressively careerist tendencies of one's colleagues. Perhaps an aggressive colleague might impact one's ability to get tenure, but in this context I am also fortunate to be at a school where the faculty is unionized, and this means that the tenure process is completely transparent. In other words, it is not possible to be struck down because someone on the anonymous tenure committee doesn't like the way you dress. So most of the time I am capable of ignoring the idiots; sometimes I am even able to laugh at them.

So, like I said, I was at a meeting for an academic program at our college that is near and dear to my heart. I have been mulling over how to constructively make changes in it in order to attract more students, but this is tricky because the people who have been running the program a while differ from me in their ideas and outlook and I don't want to capsize the boat from too much rocking. I can't risk being too specific here, but suffice to say that the faculty member whom I'd happily disembowel was at this meeting even though s/he is not part of the program for which the meeting was called. S/he has a long history of emailing everyone in the department whenever he or she accomplishes anything. In other words, things that normal people would just add to their CV this person makes into press releases. The latest thing in his or her life - as we all know from a recent email - was a fellowship to participate in a conference supported by an online idea sharing site called ted. This website is actually a fun place to browse - it's kind of like NPR lite. Edutainment with self-help icing and a dollop of management gurudom in the style of The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. In other words, it's not an academic resource.

So anyway, after attending this conference, my colleague, who runs two different self-help style seminars and is the kind of person who identifies as a "visionary" or "reformer," has decided that now s/he is going to take our college by storm. In an effort to spread the gospel of ted, s/he made us all watch a ted-based video of a popular writer on religion in America who is not only a dilettante but who is also someone whose ideas about religion (hint: core idea is that all religions are about "love") are, I truly believe, at best impotent and at worst ideas that contribute to rather than help end religious violence. HIVES. This popular writer gives me HIVES and there I was at a meeting listening to my messiah wanna-be colleague stomping into the meeting like some latter-day godzilla, representing the academic program that I have quietly been trying to change in a stunningly idiotic, impotent and actually dangerous way.

Did I mention that s/he now carries a new backpack with the ted logo on it?

So as I sat there quietly in the aftermath of the video, feeling the veins in my forehead pop out and telling myself that this was not the time and the place to take a stand, I felt the fetus begin one of its thunk-thunk-thunk-on-the-uterine-wall sessions. Normally the fetus is only active in the evening, so this sudden mid-day foray into uterine gymnastics was unusual. It could have been a response to the sudden rise in my blood pressure and adrenaline levels, but I prefer to think that that's MY child in there, ready to tear its way out of the womb to assist in the takedown of the messiah-complex colleague from hell. With apologies to Arlo Guthrie, I have chosen to believe that at that moment, the fetus and I were both jumping up and down yelling "Kill! Kill!" The two and a half months of morning sickness are now officially forgiven.
_____________________________________________

Thanks to everyone for the good wishes on my pregnancy, by the way. And I am still knitting pretty things but none of them are postable because they're all gifts for blog reading friends due in May. An update on the ongoing Lilyfield mitten tragedy is in the offing, though.

enh.

Well, I can at least say that the pilot episode of Dollhouse, Joss Whedon's new show, didn't disappoint me. After months of reading variations of the same interview and looking at two different reviews of the pilot before it aired, I figured what I would see was what happens when Joss Whedon does what he has to do to "bring in viewers." It's obvious that the first episode was created to beat potential non-Whedonites over the head with all the Mysteries! And Wonders! To Be Revealed! If You Please Please Tune In Next Week! Rather than a slow, intelligent, sexy rolling out of characters and issues, I felt like episode one was primarily written to get us all on board with the mystery of the main character's Mysterious Past, with almost no significant attention given to the more interesting mysteries clearly embedded in the show's concept, e.g., the question of what we are beyond the sum of our memories (which is so very Samkhya) and the potentially deeply satisfying critique of a consumer and self-help culture that encourages us to buy and think our way free of our horribly scarring or otherwise unsatisfying pasts. I do not feel seduced by the world or the characters of Dollhouse because they are all trying much too hard to tell me that they have interesting things to say, which, as we all know, is never sexy. Plus, the show was completely devoid of any redeeming humor. And Eliza Dushku is...well, very pretty, but I'm not alone in wondering if she was really the best choice for the lead.

I worry about Dollhouse only because historically Whedon has been at his best when developing interesting questions within the context of evolving relationships with fundamentally sympathetic characters, and he is at his worst when all the characters march relentlessly towards some supposedly great climax in the season finale (think Buffy season 7 or pretty much all of Angel).

But of course I will keep watching. I didn't really get Firefly when it aired (much of this had to do with the fact that Fox made Whedon et al air the episodes out of order in an ill-advised effort to hook viewers) and when episode 1 of Dr. Horrible aired the internet was full of moaning and groaning about how it wasn't "dark" enough, and then of course things were good and grim by the third episode. So let's keep our fingers crossed.