Quick update!

Lots of exciting things are happening over here, and faster than I had thought they would!  I had a job interview and was hired on Friday, looked at apartments on Saturday, and turned in the application for a really great place today.  The knitting has been nonexistent, but lots of other things have been getting moving.  Stay tuned for updates!  In the meantime, here is a lumberjack yarn pirate to stand in for your regular programming.  Because every lumberjack needs a lace hat.

Leaving home

In my last days in Japan, I'm finding that I'm so exhausted that it's hard to focus on all of the good things.  So much of what I've seen remains unknowable, from kanji and vocabulary to the meanings of gestures.  I still feel so much frustration at missing the nuances of things, and I doubt that that will every really go away.

Yet, there is comfort in the everyday.  The hiss of the electricity on the tracks as the trains go by.  The ducks in the culvert at midnight.  The road home, that has taken me from summer dresses and handcloths in my bookbag to cold hands and white clouds skittering across a winter sky the color of a bruise.  My host family joking at the dinner table: my otosan kissing a leg of crab and offering it to my okasan.  I will miss all of this.

A few days ago I met with a professor of mine from Oberlin.  Over coffee, we talked about Japan and Oberlin and my impending graduation.  I talked about stainless steel and silk yarn; going to fashion school; not being ready to leave in so many senses of the word.  She told me that last week, a biochemistry professor was in a terrible car accident in the snow.  It's strange to be familiar with the utter whiteness of that road, to know the way by heart, and to also know that someone was hurt doing something that I have done before.  I don't know the professor personally, but I've been keeping her in my thoughts and hoping for her safe recovery.

And then there's graduating.  When I think of it, I think of the night my friend Emily and I sat in Tappan Square in late May, clothed in bare feet and pajamas, and talked about how scary it is to leave home.  Home: Oberlin, the place of unsettled dreams and unrelenting cold and living in every nerve-wringing moment before exams, of freshly plowed snow and bad coffee and staying up too late drinking wine with people you love.  Even though when you remember those times, that stress and fragility has become soft behind the sharp outlines of the dances you went to, the shoes you wore, and which boy you liked and never told.  You remember grades, but only in that you remember the physical imprint of studying six hours a day while it snowed outside and that one score of 76.5% gnawed on your thoughts all the while.

I've recently found out that although I got close to being accepted into one of my fellowship programs, I was not offered the position.  It's been an exercise in reevaluating: who am I?  Where do I want to live?  What do I want to do?

I've been in the bubble of Oberlin for so long, with expectations of grades and graduation and thinking about what will get me a good job, that it's hard to take a step back and think about what I want to do, instead of what I think other people want me to do.  Because as far as I've been able to figure out, very rarely are people's expectations of you as strict as your expectations of yourself.  I have a lot of thoughts about where I'll actually be going and what I'll be doing.  And although it's scary as hell to suddenly lack plans right after graduating, it's also strangely freeing.

So in the last few weeks I'm here, I'm hoping to take a breath.  There's always more things to do, but there's also always more time, and right now I just have to get through ten days.

Goals

These are pictures of my sock yarn stash taken about two years ago, right before I went to college.
Out of all of the yarn pictured, only 6 sock amounts are left. Considering that this was 16 pairs worth of yarn, that's pretty incredible. Some of the yarn is sentimental, but some of it just hasn't told me what it wants to be yet. And then there's the stuff that has told me what it wants to be, but I haven't gotten around to knitting it yet.


One of the things that's come along with my change of major is a radical shift in goals. I've always known that I want to live in Japan, or take a fellowship in Indonesia or India if the opportunity presents itself, but now I also know that I want to pursue a career in textiles. I think that there's a way to combine the two, but it will take a little finagling and a lot of patience.

Part of getting to where I want to be involves getting organized. I'm a pretty cluttered person in general, but it drives me crazy when I can't find my yarn or needles because I don't have a real place to put them. A few weeks ago, I caved in and went to Wal-Mart to buy a set of shelves for my sock yarn, and I gotta say it's really nice to be able to walk in and see all of it sitting there, just waiting to be turned into something beautiful.

I think another really helpful part of getting organize will be to document my entire stash. I've started with the Stash Appreciation Wednesdays, and it's been surprisingly helpful - my Ravelry stash has gotten significantly bigger and prettier in the last week or so. It's nice to have it all written down so that even when I move and my boxes get pushed around and I can't even find the cord to my rice cooker (still haven't found that one) I still know that I have 6 skeins of Malabrigo worsted, not 5.

So what's next?

1) Get my butt in gear for my private reading. I'm planning to knit an Egyptian stranded belt/scarf (sounds weird, but it's awesome so far), a Cowichan-inspired sweater, and a Norwegian stranded pair of socks or hat, depending on my time frame. It's been a struggle finding books, but I've landed on a pretty intriguing topic: historical stranded knitting traditions. Although I realize that I can't create a genuine Cowichan - because it is a knitting tradition embedded not only in materials and construction, but in culture and place - I would like to try to knit a garment that is inspired by it.

2) Organize, document, and start to knit down some of the stash. Right now it feels a little bogged down, and although I'll have to get a bit more yarn for the private reading, I'd like to reduce my sock yarn stash. I don't tend to buy sweater amounts because they are so expensive, but I think that at this point I actually need more sweaters than I have the yarn for. I just need to learn that getting a sweater's amount is ok rather than just buying sock yarn.

3) Start applying for programs abroad - there's an intriguing intensive language scholarship in Japan sponsored by the State Department next summer. Next year I also want to apply for the Watson and Shansi fellowships, as well as the JET program. And, eventually, FIT in New York City for textile conservation.

4) Start playing with yarn and making up garments. Even when it's hard, even if it's just for fun.

5) Learn to weave, spin, and sew. These are biggies - if I really want to be a textile conservator, I want (and probably need, let's be serious) to understand the construction of all types of fabrics, not just knitted ones.

That's a lot of list, there. Here's some pretties for reading until this point:


Mal sock... how I love thee.

socks on the porch and totally impatient

Nothing much new to say. I've been in a weird sort of in-between state the last month or so, just getting used to being out of school, just getting used to a new job. Still, though, with all this newness I can't help getting itchy feet - especially when I start thinking about the next year or so. Do I tough out a chemistry major and focus on Japanese? Do I try to go abroad my senior year and forget the chem altogether? I can't say that I'm ambitious, but there are so many things that I want to see and do... I just have to figure out how to make those things fit reality.

For now, though, I'll try to focus on the stuff I can control. Buying milk in glass bottles from the market. Going to work late at night (for some reason, listening to music and working at night both enhance my productivity and enjoyment... weird). Checking out books from the library. Playing with yarn (my favorite!).

I'm so impatient for answers. Maybe I'll go play with kittens before going back to the lab, 'cause they don't have to think about the future.