MAYARN

the real me?

I've taken the Myers-Briggs personality test several times in several different forms. I'm not sure why I've done this because the answer is always, always the same: Idealist. And every time I get this answer, I'm not sure what to do with it. Except to think: "Um... mostly, yep."

You Are An INFP

The Idealist You are creative with a great imagination, living in your own inner world. Open minded and accepting, you strive for harmony in your important relationships. It takes a long time for people to get to know you. You are hesitant to let people get close. But once you care for someone, you do everything you can to help them grow and develop. In love, you tend to have high (and often unrealistic) standards. You are very sensitive. You tend to have intense feelings. At work, you need to do something that expresses your personal values. You would make an excellent writer, psychologist, or artist. How you see yourself: Unselfish, empathetic, and spiritual When other people don't get you, they see you as: Unrealistic, naive, and weak

What's Your Personality Type?

Perhaps THIS is why I'm having a heck of a time finding a job in New York???

bear 3 at 31

Pattern: Henry the Bear by Jess Hutch from Unusual Toys for you to Knit and Enjoy
Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted
Needles: US7
A Gift For: Friends who are having a baby boy in July.
I Learned: The more of these I make, the more I love them (if that's possible) and the better I get at sewing the faces. This is probably the best one I've ever done.

Steve's childhood friend Steve and his wife Mindy, who is pregnant with their first child, visited us this weekend. We did a gift exchange of sorts, where we gave them this bear and a Led Zepplin onesie for their baby-to-be, and they gave us a housewarming gift of soap and lotion and a birthday gift of delicious homemade brownies.

Yup, I turned 31 on Sunday. So far, a whole 1.5 days into being 31, I think this is going to be a weird age.

When I was in my 20s I was very aware (and defensive) of my specific age. For example:

When I was 24 I would tell people how old I was, consciously hoping they found me mature, focused, and impressive for a 24 year old.

When I was 27 I would tell people how old I was, consciously hoping they found me accomplished and impressive for a 27 year old.

When I was 29, I would tell people how old I was, consciously hoping they found me youthful looking, young-at-heart, and impressive for a 29 year old.

Now that I'm 31, I imagine being in a conversation in which I'll have to pause and try to remember  the answer to the question, "how old are you?" Somehow, that number doesn't seem as important anymore. I don't have to defend my age like I used to, saying "I'm 24, but I can do this thing or that thing! I can do it all! Just give me a chance!" Yes, it could be that I'm more comfortable with aging. Or, it could just be that I'm losing my memory bit by bit, and this year the bit that went was the bit that knows how old I am.

Well, 31 and up, I'll never outgrow knitting Jess Hutch toys. They are the perfect gift, I think, in that they only require a small amount of yarn, they knit up fast, whether you are using an easy-to-wash fiber doesn't matter much, and they are too cute for words.

where to start?

Well friends, it's been almost a month since my last post. So much has happened in that time, there's no way I can catch you up on everything. I'm not even going to try.

How about just a smattering of news:

1) We have a wedding date! And it's in our face and coming right for us: Septermber 2, 2007. That's right, 2007. But we found the perfect place and that was the best time to have it in that place, so... yeah. I am all a tizzy.

2) But I bought a wedding dress! It is pretty! I got it at the infamous Filene's Basement "Running of the Brides" ( I did not run with the brides, however. I went calmly at 6 pm, after work, and there were still thousands of dresses and pretty much no crowd at all). However, since I am bad at making decisions and commiting to things, dress hunting in general was quite the process and I'm just coming down from it so I don't want to talk about it. Moving on...

3) I am knitting a chuppah. In three months. Maybe. I'm hoping I'll be able to get some help.

That's the trellis scarf from summer 06 IK in a bamboo/silk blend (it's over 3 feet long as of today). Now imagine four of these lined up next to eachother and strung up on some poles. Do you think I can do it???

4) This probably isn't new to anyone, but I just discovered crafty alien tonight. Have you seen these adorable felted creatures? I love me some knit toys, and these are blowing my mind! So. Cute.

5) Ugh. I'm tired. I'm not going to take an official blogging break, but I'm probably not going to be around here much in the next couple months. Extreme wedding planning and all, you know. I'll probably pop in now and then with chuppah updates. We'll see...

See you 'round the blogospehere!

this and that

• I am in the home stretch of this, my last full time semester in graduate school. My last paper is due April 30. I walk in graduation on May 14. I have another class to take this summer, but that should be a fun one for me: writing the first novel. Or not so fun. Hard to know for sure. In the past I've had lots of pieces of ideas and lots of pieces of writing, but I've never tried to think up a bunch of pieces that go together to make a larger piece. A novel. Um... we'll see. But after that, I am DONE. It went by really, really fast.

• Spinning is going well. Of course I don't have as much time for it as I like, but that's the story with all my hobbies right now. No pictures. I'm boring.

• Remember Runagogo? 100 miles by April 1? Yeah. I got to 70 or so miles of running and 32 or so miles of biking by mid March (which is technically achieving the 100 mile goal, but not my personal goal of running 100 miles) and then I quit. I felt pretty guilty and beat myself up about it at first. But, then I remembered what my dear friend Erin, who has done numerous marathons and triathlons, and is doing her second Iron Man competition this summer, once told me. She said: sometimes your body needs to take a break more than it needs to work out. So eventually, I gave myself a get-out-of-jail-free card and just let it go. So what I didn't make it 100 miles? I made it 70-ish in 2.5 months and that's pretty good.... I'll pick up the running again soon. Like after April 30.

• Wedding planning. Why does this have to be so much torture? Calling random venues and asking questions about money? This is hell to me. Although my ability to call strangers on the phone has improved as I've gotten older, it's still high on my "fear" list. Steve is super busy lately too, but he is trying to help pick up the slack on this. We are slow, but we are getting there. And I'd say the ideas we have so far are pretty kick ass. Keep your fingers crossed that we can pull this off before the end of 2007. (Yes, i said 2007.)

• Just as I started to write this post I realized that I have not posted an FO in 2007. SHAMEFUL! Then again, I'm gonna give myself a get-out-of-jail-free card on this one too. I have about 5 or 6 WIPs right now. And I'm going to be riding in the car a lot this weekend, so hopefully I will be able to remedy this situation soon.

• You going to M$W? ME TOO! Yet another reason to push through these papers to the other side of April, where sheeps and wools and bloggy friends await. I. Can't. Wait...

Homework help

Update: My friend Cecilia sent me this video. There is a crafty documentary coming out! Totally relevant to what I'm doing. Check it out...

Between long bouts at the wheel (loveitloveitloveit), eating birthday cake, and watching The Prestige, this weekend I have also had to do homework. This is an unavoidable fact of life for me at the moment and I can't express how happy I will be when I finish this program and have my master's degree in hand. However, homework isn't all bad. My most recent school project is of great interest to me in many areas of my life; I'm hoping it interests you too and that maybe you can help me out.

Attention class!

I am writing a paper about alternative craft/DIY publications and how they reflect and influence the current "alternative craft movement" (whatever that means; I'm working on defining it). In this category I include CRAFT magazine and ReadyMade, but I am also looking at Croq. Have you heard of this zine? I just found out about it today and discovered that they carry it at Magpie (a cutie-pie store owned by the Bizarre Bazaar and Craftster people that is literally a few blocks from my house). I'm about to run out and grab a copy, but I wonder... are there any other publications like this that I should know about? Are there any crafting magazines—online or in print, general or craft-specific—that you like to read? Furthermore, what are your thoughts on this "craft/DIY movement" business? Is is really a movement? I mean, really. What's the deal? I feel like there's something special going on here, but I can't put my finger on what that "special" is. Do you know what I mean? I think the media struggles to define it too because most of the articles I find are either dismissive of it, talk about "trendiness of knitting" and other nonsense, or also struggle to define exactly what's going on here.

So. Crafting as it relates to publications, social movement, politics, conservation? ....discuss.

Where knitting and magazine design meet

In my grad school program I have been required to spend a decent amount of time analyzing magazines—layout, editorial, design, advertising, etc. And when a magazine goes through a redesign there is even more fodder for analysis. I must say, I enjoy this sort of pondering. Do regular people care why a magazine was redesigned? Not really. They just want the columnist/comic strip/designer they know and love to still be around after the logo turns upside down and the text layout moves from two columns to three. And maybe they want it to look good too. But who cares about the reasoning behind the changes?

Well, I care. Or at least I wonder. Why redesign? What is it going to accomplish for the magazine? 

Of course I'm thinking of Interweave Knits. What are they thinking? I don't mean that in a "What the f*** are they thinking?!?!" sort of way. I mean it 100 times more nicely than that. Because I got the spring issue in the mail yesterday and if you've seen it in person, you know: Big changes! Some of them good, some of them "meh," some of them… um, well, I'm not sure yet. Where to begin?

What follows is my review of the redesign of Interweave (the magazine, not the patterns. But the patterns are gorgeous, no? I'll save that for another entry). I know writing a review like this is not my normal MO, but maybe I'm thinking about changing that? Maybe…

70 pages later...

My camera is sorely neglected, thus making this blog a rather word-heavy romp through, well…not much. I haven't made any time for pictures (nor have I taken the time to remember to bring my camera with me places) and I haven't really made time to write here either. However, this doesn't mean I haven't been writing. Quite the contrary.

This morning, in the shower between moments of partial and full awakeness, I tried to figure out how many pages of writing I will have produced for my classes when this semester is over. The figure I came up with was in the 70 pages range. Seventy. Pages. And we're not talking papers, people. We're talking two magazine articles and three pieces of creative nonfiction.

This semester has been difficult for me, not only because for the first time I am juggling a full-time job and full-time school, but also because I have had to write like I have never written before. I've always considered writing to be one of those things that is at the core of who I am. Yet, like many "writers," I am also often living in the shameful conundrum of rarely devoting much time to writing. I've always written in my journal and I've toyed with a short story here or a novella idea here, with a personal essay on the side. But rarely have I written—for myself—as I have this semester, with goals and direction. Goals and direction are good things. This semester has taught me that I can get down to the business of being a writer, not just a blogger or a journaler, when I put my mind to it. SO…while it will be nice to end this semester with 70 pages of words on my desktop for me to admire, it's even nicer to learn these lessons about myself and about writing. I'm still not sure where they will fit into my career or future, but I finally feel like maybe I'm getting somewhere.

Anyway… I started writing this post about how I haven't used my camera in a while because lazy camera attention is the reason I don't have any pictures of this weekend. Kate and Betsy were here, and Jess and I took them to a couple yarn stores where we procured, as one drunk dude on the T called them, "bales of yarn." We also ate lots of food in an Irish pub where Jess crawled under the table in an attempt to retrieve my hopelessly lost earring. (Now that's love.)

I love meeting up with my blogger friends! I have written about this before, but there is something unique about these relationships, not to be compared to any other relationships in life.

Next time—the knitting! I have lots of school work to do this Thanksgiving weekend, but I am damn determine to finish Sesame before heading back to work Monday morning. I am so close—I think I can do it! Do you???

....

....last week on the train home from class I saw a girl wearing Mariah. I stared at her for probably longer than was really appropriate; I am sure she noticed. But did she know why I was staring at her? Did she wonder: is that girl looking at my sweater? And, if so, did she take that as a compliment? She should have. Still, I'm sorry for staring, random-train-girl—I couldn't help it. I love that sweater.

.... last night I made it out of class in time to meet up with Jess, Casey, Steve, Kyle, and Erica to see Cut Chemist and Lyrics Born. If not for Casey's excellent concert scouting skills, I would have never gone to a concert like this on my own, but I'm so glad I went. A funky good time--though I am suuuuuper tired today.

.... sneak in a stitch or two, 20 minutes here, an hour there, 5 minutes somewhere else, and somehow you end up with an almost-finished sweater. I'm not sure how it's happening (I feel like I never knit) but I'm so glad it is...

.... it's veteran's day and now that I work at a university, that means I have the day off. And that makes today a good day. Even though I need to do homework now, I am soooooooooo happy to have this extra day butted up against the weekend. Happy Friday!

Pre-Rheinbeck ramble

You guys. I haven't knit in almost two weeks. I kinda love being busy like this, but I hate the no-knitting-time side affects. However, this will be remedied for at least 24 hours when I head to Rheinbeck this weekend!

Yay! So. Excited!!!!

I couldn't go last year because of a friend visiting (actually, the same friend in the previous entry), so even though I still have gobs of homework clinging to my shoulders, I am going because I I know I would regret it if I didn't. But after this weekend, it's back to the grind and to hopefully get my head a bit higer above the gobs and finally find time to fit knitting into my life again. I can't wait.

And finally, for lack of pictures or anything amusing llike that, I will do this meme. I saw on a few blogs so I'm tagging myself and joining the fun.

1. FIRST NAME?
Maya

2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
Actually, yes, sort of. Maya Angelou.

3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY?
I can't really remember. Maybe crying from laughing? I've been holding it together pretty well lately.

4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
It changes all the time. When it's good, it's very very good, but when it's bad, it's horrid. (name that poem!?)

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCHMEAT?
Right now it's pastrami. But it has to be perfect, lean, mild pastrami.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
of course!

7. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL?
Yes. I've kept it since I was a wee one. Used to write on paper, still do sometimes, but I also keep giant word doc journals. I mean, really big, full of whining. Oh, and the blog. I am a crazy journal-er.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Yes.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
Ummm... probably not, but I can't say a definite no.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
Frosted mini-wheats. Fiber!

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
I never thought about it before, but yes.

12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG?
Yes.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR?
Peppermint. Creamy/minty--yum!

14. SHOE SIZE?
6.5-7

5. RED OR PINK?
Red

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
Inability to focus and my completely disorganized approach to most things in life.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
The MOST?? That's too hard to say. Right now I miss all my family and friends in Michigan. I miss a couple freinds from high school/college with whom I've lost touch. I miss knitting.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU?
Everyone on the Internet? That would have to be a big NO.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS, SHIRT AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
Jeans, black cowl neck shirt, shiny brown/black loafer things, argyle socks. I am in a black phase.

20. LAST THING YOU ATE?
banana.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
co-worker small talk

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
green, of the grass variety

23. FAVORITE SMELL?
too many! Eucalyptus, that Crabtree and Evelyn hand lotion I love, coffee, cumin...

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
Steve

25. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO?
Height, face proportion. As in, all the features fit together well.

26. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON YOU STOLE THIS FROM?
I like bloggers!

27. FAVORITE DRINK?
lately it's sparkling H20.

28. FAVORITE SPORT?
Swimming.

29. EYE COLOR?
Green/gray/blue-ish.

30. HAT SIZE?
small I guess. Who knows their exact hat size anymore?

31. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
no. but i'm going to the eye doctor soon. Got a bit of eye strain going on over here...

32. FAVORITE FOOD?
beets

33. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
How can these even be compared? I don't watch scary movies, so I guess happy endings.

35. SUMMER OR WINTER?
Winter

36. HUGS OR KISSES?
hugs

37. FAVORITE DESSERT?
Rice pudding is the first thing that comes to mind...

38, 39 deleted.

40. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING?
"The Liars Club" by Mary Carr, for school. that's all I got right now. No time for pleasure reading anymore either. :-(

41. WHAT’S ON YOUR MOUSE Pad?
no mouse pad here

42. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV?
no time for TV either. God--my life is boring!

43. FAVORITE SOUNDS?
Pure silence, river flowing, birds. Aren't I zen?

44. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
Beatles, obvs.

45. THE FURTHEST YOU’VE BEEN FROM HOME?
England

46. WHAT’S YOUR SPECIAL TALENT?
I knit while spinning a burning cactus plant on the tip of my nose and singing "Stairway to Heaven" in an operatic voice.

47. WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Manistique, MI. I guess this techniclaly makes me a U-per.

48. WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
Nobody, I zoinked it from some random blog

See you at Rhinbeck I hope!!!

thinking fast in a medicinal haze

I haven't decided about Rheinbeck yet--I have a feeling it will be a last minute sort of thing. And I haven't knit much in the last 5 days. Seriously--what has happened to my life? I feel like I'm living in someone else's body/universe. Especially since I am currently sort of under the weather. I am trying to fight it--and ignore it--though I'm not sure either approach is working.

In lieu of knitting content and becuase my brain is so fuzzy, how about a little meme? Taken from Maurene. Yes.

think fast survey.

don't think about an answer... just put the first thing that pops into your head down.

1. my ex is still:
probably crazy

2. i am listening to:
printer hum, jack hammers

3. maybe i should:
go home?

4. i love:
walking as a commute

6. i don't understand:
how people do it

7. i lost:
my checkbook (but then I found it)

8. people say:
it's hard and it is

9. the meaning of my display name is:
Maya yarn. Mayarn. Self explanitory.

10. love is:
a many splendored thing.

11. somewhere, someone is:
not sick

12. i will always:
write

13. forever seems:
inconceivable!!!

14. i never ever want to:
enter an eating contest

15. my cell phone is:
a pretty, pretty blue color

16. when i wake up in the morning:
please don't talk to me.

17. i get annoyed when:
I can't knit!

18. parties are:
better than bars

19. my pet(s) is/are:
Katy, though she isn't really mine

20. kisses are the best when:
unexpected

21. today i:
made it

22. tomorrow i will:
read, read, read

23. i really want:
a bed in my office