The Knitting Revolutionary

Of major works

On Thursday, I went in to uni, and printed out four copies of The Thesis.

The uni grounds felt surreal. There's a concert coming up called Metal for the Brain and there were carnie-roadie-types crawling about the place, trailing large pieces of white canvas around and occasionally assembling them into marquees, the mysterious black and silver boxes on wheels holding magical technical music-making ingredients. I wandered through them all, my three copies tucked under my arm, my feet just knowing where to go, my mind strangely numb. I ran into my least favourite person at uni, who made unintelligible and insincere noises of congratulation at me as I walked past.

The printer wasn't working properly, so I ended up with a fourth copy which is now sitting on my coffee table at home, looking innocuous and boring. If I ever can't get to sleep, I'd say about 3 pages should do the trick. Mum and Dad crashed at our place last night on their way to Adelaide, and brought me a box which has been sitting in their home for ... fourteen years, once it came home from the art show? I didn't bother doing the maths, but I pulled it up onto the table and prepared for half an hour of showing off. It held my year 12 major work, all thirty two pieces of it. Well, thirty three if you count the chessboard, or thirty seven if you count the custom made partitioned box.

There was probably the same number of hours in each major work. A year long art project, a year long research project. There were tears and disappointments in both, and at the end of both, a sense of relief. Both involved a mentor, but other than advice and encouragement, both were entirely my own work. Strange to think that at 17 I had the dedication required to undergo such a project, and strange that at 32 it was just as difficult. Different though in so many ways as well... six hours of straight painting I must say was far more enjoyable than six hours of straight factor analysis. I'm hoping that as I enter the workforce and reclaim my evenings and weekends that I might get a little more time for artistic pursuits once again. Here's hoping :-)

I was a bit numb when I wandered back home after handing in. I had to be at work in an hour, and wasn't really keen on going in early to plunge myself into a big bin of files and paperwork, so I stopped at the letterbox and found that my postie had done his best to cram several letters and two bulging, squishy packages into the tiny space. And I knew *exactly* what they were, too. Ah!

Soft, softer than any cloud of dreams and even fuller of possibility, a baggie of golden-brown llama fibre. Hairy and prickly and oddly sheened, Icelandic fleece the dyed the colour of a sunset.  A delightfully sparkly green nylon roving, blue-faced leicester from a sheep named Mimi (*giggle*) and some corriedale in garden colours - is it that different from merino? And finally, some north ronaldsay fleece which has been washed, but still smells of lanolin and sheep, literally drenched in memories of learning how to spin. This was all from Sarah, who was my fibre swap pal, and it turned a very exciting day into an even more special one.

An extra bonus hiding amongst the fibre-filled baggies - oh! The chocolate. Not just regular chocolate, but exotic stuff. Raspberry and rosehip in organic dark bitter chocolate. And chai flavoured chocolate. I sat at the table thinking about thesis, and recentring myself with sweet chocolate in my mouth and divinely soft fibre underneath my fingers.

If the whole point in life is to create something, then I am living. I am truly, wonderfully, intensely alive.

And a white picket fence, please

---begin conversation---

He, lazing in bed thinking about making me a coffee: "your chess set is just way too big to fit in our lounge room"

Me, lazing in bed wait for coffee to magically appear: "buy me a really big house, then"

He, without even skipping a beat: "k"

---end conversation---

*squeaks with laughter*

That's all folks

I finished the contents page on the thesis just now, and I'm about to go in to uni to print it off and bind it up and say goodbye to it for a couple of months.

I must say I thought I'd feel much more jubilant, but mostly I feel disappointed. I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't finish it a week or two early to I could get a very nice person to look over it for me, and of course faffed around with it until the last minute, finished writing it yesterday, and did the contents page this morning. Myeh. Such is life, I suppose, but I hate feeling disappointed with myself. Smug self-satisfaction is *so* much more fun. I feel disappointed in the work itself. I don't think it's distinction work, it's probably credit, or I may just scrape in with a 75 distinction. I don't think it's worth much more than that, especially now that I look back on it, my research wasn't broad enough, and I think I chose the wrong followup statistical analyses. I know it'll be fine and I won't fail, but I suppose this year I reshuffled my priorities, and study got a bit shafted.

So, I feel relief that it's over, a bit disappointed about the lack of quality, and just a tiny bit bitter about having missed out on honours. I could go on and on for pages, but angst ain't what this blog's all about. This is just me, reflecting on how different today is from what I thought it would be. It seems such an incredible anticlimax.

Phoenix agrees. But she generally does - she's good like that. Hehe!

Grr

... I've spent the whole last 4 years of study wishing I hadn't left things to the last minute.

Maybe I need that last minute adrenalin rush to motivate myself. *sigh* ...on the other hand it's hard not be disappointed in myself once again.

So here I am, wrestling with the last 1000 words of the thesis. I should have it knocked over by about 4pm. Not really much time for draft-tweaking, huh? And don't talk to me about limitations. I could go for about 3000 words.

*goes back to it*

TV night!

... and Gray's Anatomy is about to start!

It's trashy!

It's implausible!

It's WONDERFUL!

I love TV night, where everything stops to ooh and ah at imaginary lives. Hehe!

Now, as per Adele's request, here's a piccy of the gorgeous backyard tree making our place look as though it's covered in confetti..

And the garden just keeps producing lovely surprises... like real life, every day brings new joys.

Walking places, and thinking about the future...

Despite the fact that I do a fair bit more walking here in Canberra, winter and too much good food is taking its toll and I just keep gaining weight. Erk. I really don't want to have to buy a whole new wardrobe, but it's starting to look a bit dire. But walking around here is pretty nice, I see so many birds, mostly natives, which are a constant source of delight to me, and one of the best things about being here.

I was walking to work and saw all these savage little spiky weeds popping up everywhere, like tiny little spears, and couldn't help but go over and poke one to see how sharp it was. Turns out they're actually quite soft, I have no idea what they are but they look cool and a bit scary all over the grass around the place, like a tiny army of pixies is trying not be noticed, but forgot that their spears are sticking up. Hehe!

I'm trying to do just a little bit more of walking and gymming and stuff, but I'm getting tired. I even skipped knitting last night in leiu of vegging at home with a tummy full of butter chicken. Hm. Goof for the soul, not so good for the thighs. LOL! Two weeks to go and I still haven't actually started the discussion section on my thesis, so that's what's on the study menu today, and I'll try to squish in study for next week's exam in somewhere else.

So, walking and thinking. Yesterday during our last ethics lecture, something occurred to me. I'm going to have to close down this blog once I become a clinical practitioner. Canberra's a pretty small place, and I'm not sure having a public blog is going to be appropriate. There seems to be a lot of ethical minefields in psychology, and living in a small town is one of them. And Canberra's a pretty small town. I know that plenty of other people have public blogs (M-H) and plenty of people have anonymous blogs (Jejune). Different reasons for different people.

This got me thinking about knitting group. What the hell's gonna happen if a client joins my knitting group? I suppose I'd have to terminate the professional relationship - it'd be way too complicated having a client there, where I quite openly chat about life, the universe, and everything (LU&E), along with what designs I like, how my family is driving me crazy, stories of ritual self-humiliation, and what my partner's been up to lately.

So what's a squeak to do? I think I'm gonna have to run the blog underground, which is a pity since I only recently shunted myself over to typepad from blogdrive, so it'll mean another blog address change. But anyway, what I'm doing here is giving you all the opportunity to contact me and ask for the new identity-free address once I've got it, and what I'll be doing is getting everyone who wants the new address to send me an email to sudokuthesis-newblog@yahoo.co.uk, and I'll send you the new blog address when I've set it up (not sure when that will be). Once I start my internship I'll move to the new blog and we'll see how it goes from there. Oh, and of course I'll be open to any suggestions for keeping the thing fun and lively while not ethically putting my foot in it. :D

Springy springliness sproing!

Spring here has been an absolute delight. I prefer Sydney as a city. I find Canberra mostly too conservative, a bit boring, hardly any free entertainment (is Tropfest the only decent free thing we get here?) though I must say finding a knitting group as mad-hardcore as SSK was a wonderful surprise, so I'm calling it quits on that point. Hehe. Anyway, one thing that Canberra has that Sydney doesn't that I'm really enjoying now that it's spring is real seasons. In Sydney, ya sorta get hotter and colder, and that's summer and winter. But here... well there's been explosions of life and greenness everywhere, and I've been floored by how lovely an experience it's been.

So what I've done is just photographed a few little bits and pieces of lovely surprises that keep popping up in the garden here - the person who lived here a couple of years ago has planted lots of amazing stuff, like trees which were bare and are now not just budding, but flowering, and bulbs which keep popping up all over the place, like little surprises every time I look at the garden. Yay!

It's all about the food

... more visitors!

Ayla, Mish and Adele came to stay for a few nights, we spread them between our place and Chas-n-Amanda's loverly abode, and squeaky fun was had by all. We went out to brekky to my new fave place, Belconnen farmer's markets, and the food was (huge and) seriously delish. And hey, I'm sure we enjoyed the visitors as much as the feasting. Hehe!

Nyeh, I'm not in it. You've seen enough pictures of me to last a lifetime on this blog. Anyway, this cafe is an organic type place, and the food was really good, happy to say that next time any vegos come to stay, they even have the tofu option instead of eggs. Mmm!

The only photos I took at Chas's cookup were revolting, except for this one, which was the happy happy G n T of joy! How cute. Wasn't deliberate. Promise. :D

But... while I'm on the subject of food, it's Monday, I'm frantically working on an essay at the last minute and we've just had the yummiest hamburger ever. The cool thing: me and David made them ourselves. Soooo good! Rocket, baby spinach, slivers of shallot, beetroot, bacon, coriander and grated carrot. Oh, and the burger itself, which is beef with spices, finely chopped onion, red capsicum and chives and all sort of luscious goodies. Doesn't get any better than this! I make the patties with the nifty Tupperware burger press, which if you have a pressing need to buy one (oh I'm sooooooooo funny), contact the lovely Margie, who's still doing the Tupper thing.