I said I would post pics of the actual setup once I got a chance, so I finally got around to getting them all uploaded. All the pictures can be clicked for larger views.

The basic problem that I needed to fix is that the bed of the Explorer is just a couple inches too short for me to stretch out all the way and sleep (I’m not quite 5′7″). I needed a sleeping platform that would lift me up over the barrier of the back seats (the part that sticks up when they are folded forward). There are a ton of really cool projects online for how to do this all stylish-like (search for “truck sleeping platform” if you’re curious) but I needed something really easy and low-tech because I can only hold two numbers in my head at a time and I get frustrated with a project if I have to, like, plan it out ahead or anything. (Just one of the reasons that Preston and I don’t work well together on projects like this.) I also wanted my platform to break down really easily so that I could still fit passengers in the truck if I needed to. So I created two simple boxes, sized so that, when stacked up, they fit into the very back of the truck with all the passenger seats available.

The legs are just 2×4s, cut to be the same length as the height of the edge of the bed in the front (you’ll see in future pics). The top is 3/4 inch plywood. Note that the top box has two layers of plywood on top. That’ll make sense in just a minute. Each leg is attached from on top of the plywood with two screws. The odd leg arrangement on the top box is to accommodate the wheel well on that part of the bed. The platform fits over the top of the wheel well, increasing usable space a little bit. Clothes and books fit nicely under the box, and the space under the second box is used to store the Thermarest and sheets and what-all when the boxes are arranged all compact-like. Laying the bed out is as easy as putting down the back seat and setting the top box down in front of the bottom one.

At this point, it’s only about 4 feet long, which obviously won’t do. And that’s where the second layer of plywood comes in.

There are hinges on the front of the top box that allows the top layer of plywood to swing forward and rest on the edge of the back seat. That’s why the legs of the boxes need to be the same height as that barrier. I’m actually using that edge as another set of legs to support the hinged piece of plywood. I know it’s hard to tell in the following picture, but the platform is now 6 feet long, and plenty long for me to rest comfortably and kick the covers around and what-all. The driver’s seat has to be tilted forward in order for the whole thing to fit, so I can’t drive with the bed down, but I don’t have to break it down completely. I can just fold up the hinged piece and have plenty of room for the driver’s seat to be comfortably arranged.

Because I am very lazy, I didn’t want to deal with sanding down the plywood, but I was worried that it would poke a hole in my thermarest, or scratch me up in my sleep, so I covered it with a warm, fleece cape that I made years ago and never use. Looks almost legit, doesn’t it? Also helps keep clothing and other items that are stored under the bed out of sight and looking a little tidier.

So then I roll out my Thermarest, throw a sheet over it all, and my pillows and sleeping bag on top of that, and it’s one of the more comfortable places I’ve ever slept, once I figured out how to manage parking spots. This one you pretty much have to click on to see the details.

I specifically designed the platform to be narrow enough that the other passenger seat could be up without breaking down the bed. That passenger seat is where my spinning wheel rides, buckled in for safety.

Then, I don’t have pictures, but the floorboard in front of the spinning wheel was where the food and cooking supplies (backpacking stove and nesting pots) went. There was plenty of room to keep a week’s worth of food in a box there. Coupla jars of rice goulash that I canned up one weekend and used to make burritos, a bag of mixed oats that I heated up for breakfast, some dried fruit, some pb and honey to put on tortillas, some canned fruit, a handful of biscuits that I made at home before I left, and let’s not forget the coffee singles! That left both front seats for whatever I needed to have out (books, my backpack, whatever), or to drive around with a passenger.

It was totally freaking awesome and I will never again be really all that stressed about being able to make the house payment Seriously, I could totally live this way semi-long-term and I would love to travel around the country with this setup. It would take a little more planning to get it to work for two people (and I’d probably have to stick with a drop spindle and leave the wheel), but it’s definitely do-able. If I was going to do it longer-term, i would make a couple simple adjustments to the platform:

1) Add braces to the legs. Any of you with any carpentry skill at all are probably cringing at the sight of those 9 inch long legs spindling around with no support but a couple of screws, and you’re right. While I didn’t have any middle-of-the-night disasters, the legs had started to work loose after two weeks, and there would have been a collapse eventually, when one just tipped sideways. Just a simple 45 degree connector from each leg to the plywood would make it last a lot longer.

2) Cut the cape down to the right size. You can’t see it in the picture, but it is oddly-shaped (you know, like a cape) and it was hard to keep it from bunching up awkwardly under the platform.

3) Add some way to attach the top box to the lower one when they are stacked in the back. It has an annoying way of tipping over when going around corners. If I was really using that as a shelving system while it was stacked, the constant tipping would be inconvenient.

3a) Add some sort of lower shelf to the top box, so that if I want to use it as a shelf, all the stuff can stay with it, whether it is stacked or extended. This could be as easy as attaching another piece of plywood to the four legs at floor level.

As far as the overall set-up, separate from the platform, I would invest in some sort of curtain set-up, and a sunshade for the windshield. The night that I spent in the Walmart parking lot, I felt like I was sleeping in a display window, since the platform is pretty much level with the bottom edge of the windows. For the most part, that wasn’t an issue this time, since I was sleeping in places like the private property that belongs to Wilderness Awareness School.

But obviously, if I was driving across the country, it wouldn’t always be possible to park in beautiful secluded cedar groves. And I would invest in some sort of system to keep the mosquitos out with the windows open. Some sort of velcro system and screen. Pretty simple fixes, all in all. I highly recommend it.

I am so excited about this!! I think it’s brilliant, and if I saw this flyer, I would totally sign up. But since no one else is doing it, I decided I’ll just have to do it myself. Click for a bigger image, where you can actually read all the text. Feel free to repost anywhere you like. And here’s a higher-resolution version to print out and hang up anywhere.

I’m so excited!

It is purely a testament to how well this model works, and nothing to do with my skills, that this week turned out really well. Overall, I felt really out of practice. It’s been almost a full year since I’ve done any work with WAS, and it took me up until Wednesday afternoon to remember that *Blindfolds Are Magic*. I remember now that that used to be my number one trick in previous years. When you can’t get a group of kids to calm down and focus, just put blindfolds on them. I’m guessing this works with adults too. By Thursday at lunchtime, they were willing to take the Lunch Challenge, and a group of eleven 6- and 7-year olds actually chose to spend their whole lunchtime blindfolded and silent. Can you even imagine!?

And I remembered also, that sometimes you have to let kids fail at an activity before they’re willing to learn how to make it work. If the challenge is for them to all line up alphabetically without talking, and I can see that there’s no way it’s going to work, it’s so hard not to help. But if I just tell them where to stand in line, then they haven’t learned anything except that they aren’t capable and they should rely always on adults to tell them how to figure things out. If I let them fail at it, and then we talk about why it didn’t work (that part’s the key), then they’ll be able to do it themselves the next time. And when I say “talk about it”, I really mean that. Even this group of six-year olds can tell me exactly what went wrong (“everyone was telling everyone else what to do, but not doing it themselves” “No one would agree on which side was the beginning, even though it didn’t matter” “some people were pushing”). I don’t need to lecture them on what they should do differently, but have a genuine dialogue where everyone gets a chance to say what their experience was, and I maybe subtly highlight some key points (“so, are you saying that next time everyone should agree on where the beginning is before they start trying to get in line?”)

So the way that I got them to *want* to try a blindfolded lunch was to try a silent-but-not-blindfolded lunch first. The goal was to make it all the way through lunch without talking. If you’ve worked with kids, you know how unlikely this is. One kid makes faces at another, the other giggles, a third kid hisses at the second one to be quiet, a fourth kid sees a bug, and soon all hell has broken loose. I was actually surprised that they made it ten minutes the first time, but someone couldn’t help remarking about the cricket they found in the dirt. So the next day, when the subject of the silent lunch came up again (they were trying to earn the chance to make a fire on Friday), I offered the blindfolds (introduced as part of a fun game earlier in the day, so they were already familiar with them) as a way to make the challenge easier. If your friend is making faces at you, you won’t know. And so we spent a really nice 25 minutes sitting in the grass, in the dappled shade, spread out from each other a ways (far enough that one kid couldn’t “accidentally” bump into another kid), eating our lunches and feeling the breeze. When I told them that it was time and they could take their blindfolds off whenever they were ready, one kid took off his blindfold and looked around in wonder. “That was so beautiful!” he said. Another one chose to leave hers on for another 10 minutes or so.

Hobostripper wrote recently about making God human in the strip club, and that’s how she knows she can do anything. I know I can do anything because I can get eleven 6-year old kids to *want* to sit silently for 25 minutes. And both of us, Tara and I, are teaching people how to be human. Hopefully, if they learn how to be truly present in the world, and in their bodies, and in community, now, then they won’t need to be taught the hard way later, when someone like Tara has to take away all their cash in order to show them what’s real.

I took two weeks off from one job in order to do another job. I’m spending this week and next week working summer camps for Wilderness Awareness School. I remembered intellectually how much I liked it, but I had forgotten how really emotionally rewarding it is. And also how challenging. But that’s actually a story for another time. I’m only three days into the first week, so I don’t feel like I can sum it up yet. The story for today has to do with where I’ve been parking my truck at night. This is a very interesting topic to me, because I’ve been sleeping in my truck rather than trying to set up various couches to sleep on.

Two weeks before my first summer camp week, I had a chance to sleep in the back of my Explorer for the first time, and learned that the back is too short for sleeping comfortably. With the back seats folded forward, the bed is 5 feet long. I thought I’d be able to make it work by laying diagonal, but it only took one sleepless night without being able to straighten my legs to convince me that I needed some sort of sleeping platform if it was going to work for two weeks. The weekend before I left, I created a system of two boxes, about 10 inches off the floor of the truck. I’ll post a picture later when I remember to take one. I can organize my clothes underneath it, and sleep on top of it, which leaves me room for my banjo and spinning supplies (including my wheel!) in the other side of the truck. In fact, there’s actually room for me to sit in the rear passenger seat and (with the front seat folded forward) my spinning wheel sits on the floorboard, so I can actually sit in the back seat and spin! Here’s a not really great picture off that setup.

So my grand (and somewhat naive) plan was to simply sleep in my truck in the parking lot of the county park where I’m working the first week. I knew that the park had hours that they were closed, but figured who would know? Here’s the beautiful spot where I planned to hang out for the week.

Alas, I had not considered that it was the local sheriff that comes to make sure everyone is out of the parking lot before they lock up the gate at dusk. So my first night, things didn’t go quite as planned, and the copper ended up with my license plate number in the system. That meant that my Plan B (to find a busy 24-hour parking lot at the base of the hill) was a no-go. I was worried that my plates already having been run, I’d be really conspicuous anywhere in town. As always Google came to the rescue, although this time it was guided by the nimble hands of Preston, who I called at 10pm to look up the nearest Walmart. Don’t get me wrong, I am not even a little bit excited about Wal-mart, but they do encourage people to sleep in their parking lot (brilliant marketing). So Preston graciously gave me directions to the Walmart 10 miles away, even guiding me turn by turn past the closed freeway on-ramp that mapquest suggested. And that is how I came to find myself waking up here on Tuesday morning.

It was an interesting night, in the company of a couple of RVs and a couple of folks who seemed to be just driving acroos country or something, and a couple of people who definitely seemed to have set up camp in the Walmart parking lot semi-permanently. It made me wonder about Walmart’s official policy on homeless people. I assume they don’t just let them stay there forever, so I wonder how they decide who gets the boot and when. But anyway, it was fine. I figured I could stay there all week if I had to, but I had a couple of back-up plans to try still. By Tuesday afternoon, I had exhausted all my plans, and none of them had worked out. Resigning myself to another evening at Walmart, I stopped off at the local tea shop to use their wi-fi. The girl working there recognized me from the day before,
“You’re back,” she smiled.
“Yes, I’m working up on Cougar Mountain for the week and you’re the closest wi-fi connection,” I explain.
“Oh cool. I live right at the base of Cougar Mountain,” she says.
“You wouldn’t happen to have an extra driveway that you wouldn’t mind letting someone park in, would you?” I ask, mostly joking.
“Absolutely!” she says, without even missing a beat.
And they (she and her boyfriend) totally literally have an extra driveway. They live in a duplex that has three separate driveways. So this lovely place is where I’ll be staying the rest of the week.

They invited me in for a beer last night and we chatted for quite a while. She’s an herbalist and just got her massage license. He’s a dental hygienist for money, but he’s actually a rock climber. Really nice couple, and I’m stoked to have such a great place to sleep. I’m writing this while lounging on the sleeping platform in my truck, and I’ll post it after work tomorrow from the tea shop.

Now if I can just figure out how to keep my truck cool inside without letting in eleventy billion mosquitos… I wonder if they make screens for truck windows.

p.s. I’m at the tea shop now and wanted to update that the spot is still super cool, I had one of my long-standing nature mysteries answered for me this morning (just where do ospreys find all those huge sticks to build their nests with? Now I know), and as soon as I shut the computer so that it was lighter outside the truck than inside, all but two of the mosquitos left out the open window. With no lights on, I hung out on my bunk for an hour or so playing my banjo. Really nice. Life is good.

So a snake-handling faith-healer and a Presbyterian minister walk into a tent revival meeting…

If you don’t get why that’s the setup for a hilarious joke, you might not get the rest of this post, and possibly you won’t understand why I spent a week of rock climbing and camping in the desert feeling like an uptight Presbyterian surrounded by people speaking in tongues and writhing in the aisles. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I would be working as a camping/climbing instructor for a group of sophomore girls. You can read in that link about my intentions to just model enthusiasm and competence, rather than try to “teach” anything. Things didn’t turn out quite as I had planned.

All the instructors get together for two days before the trip starts to plan the trip and make sure we’re on the same page as far as boundaries and rules (can the girls have their own snacks, do we eat meals together, how do we decide who’s turn it is to clean up the kitchen, etc.). The rest of the staff is all amazing, well-qualified, and fabulous. There are 6 instructors (2 to a team) as well as 2 rock specialists who will be there for part of the time setting up climbs and monitoring big picture site safety. 5 of the instructors and one of the rock specialists are women, one of the instructors identifies as genderqueer, and one of the rock specialists is a man.

The first sign of conflict happens in the first day when one of the instructors points out that the male rock specialist is going to have to really be aware of the fucked-up ways that all these sophomore girls are going to want to interact with him. He is an attractive rock climber in his late 20’s with a South African accent. He says he’s aware of that, and will be careful to be appropriate, but “at the same time, I won’t emasculate myself”. You could watch the hackles go up on the hardcore feminists in the room. This women’s empowerment stuff tends to attract fairly hardcore types (not necessarily feminists, but hardcore climbers, hardcore survivalists, just really intense alpha personalities in general). In this group, 3 of the women had worked together extensively before, two of the three were in a committed relationship (with each other), and all three considered “smash the patriarchy” to be an apt description of their basic platform. Wow. Try being the one man in that crowd, and find a way to not be emasculated.

Instructor teams had been decided for us, and we broke into those teams to get to know a bit about the person with whom we would be sharing responsibility for the physical and emotional safety of ten 16-year old girls in the desert for the next 5 days. I will call my partner Ashley, in part because that satisfies a childish and petty desire to call her something that I think would bother her, but mostly just to avoid using real names. Ashley and I are really different people. She’s a radical feminist, a lesbian in a committed relationship with another instructor on the course, a recovering alcoholic with tendencies toward anxiety and obsessive behavior, and has been running girls’ empowerment and wilderness courses for around 6 years. By the end of the course, I came to respect many things about her, and I learned a lot about different styles but, like the Presbyterian at the revival meeting, there was so much about her style that made me really uncomfortable.

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When I was in high school I went through a rebellious phase that involved regularly attending the local Assembly of God church and trying to bait my mother into debates about whether evolution was a supportable scientific theory. I went to church every week, and “got saved” (at least three times, cuz I was afraid that it wasn’t sticking), and went up for altar calls, and spoke in tongues at summer camp one year, and had a mad crush on the youth pastor (who later dropped out of the church and hit on me). At that same summer camp where I first spoke in tongues, we had a particularly charismatic motivational speaker. One evening, just as he was building up to a great climax, he suddenly stopped and focussed intently on someone sitting on the other side of the stage from me. I couldn’t see who he was looking at, but I heard the speaker say, still holding the microphone up to his mouth, “Is that your wife?” He was pointing at someone that I couldn’t see, but since we were all high school kids it’s unlikely that the boy was sitting next to his wife. I couldn’t hear his response, but he must have muttered that she was not. The speaker, notching it up a level both in volume and pitch, asked, “Are you going to marry her?!” The boy, probably wishing he could sink down below his seat, must have muttered something non-committal.

“THEN GET YOUR ARM OFF OF SOME OTHER MAN’S WIFE!!” the speaker yelled.

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After our first day of rock-climbing with the girls, we all stood in a circle to offer appreciations to each other. As you felt called, you could say something that you were really impressed by or thankful for from the day of rockclimbing. The girls said things like, I really appreciated how everyone cheered for me when I didn’t think I could go any further. After several appreciations, one girl said, “I appreciate Rob’s accent” and all the girls giggled. Ashley stepped forward into the circle, animated and pissed.

“There are girls here who rock-climbed for the very first time today, and ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT IS THAT ONE MAN!!” And she says “that one man” in the same way you might say “that turd that the cat knocked out of the litterbox”.

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I thought Ashley’s point was a good and valid one. In fact, I supported her intentions throughout the trip. But her approach made me so uncomfortable, with its roots in emotional manipulation, that I had a rough time playing along. Her approach was all about the emotional build-up, creating a scenario where the participant really starts to see how fucked-up they are, how undeserving, how sinful, (or in this case) how intolerant, how middle class, how brainwashed by society. And when you have people genuinely freaked out, you offer them an amazing solution, you throw out the altar call, you tell them what they need to do to be all right. If this had been church camp, we would have told them that they need to accept Jesus as their lord and personal savior. Since this was about girls empowerment and breaking down cliques within their class, we told them that they should eat lunch with the Asian students and stop acting stupid around boys.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally in support of breaking down cliques and not acting stupid around boys. For that matter, I’ve got no problem with folks practicing Christianity. I just don’t think that emotional manipulation is a very effective way to create long-lasting change. And I think it’s dishonest and, well, manipulative. Everything about Ashley’s approach to the week was about creating a situation where the students would be out of their element and vulnerable. They would not be allowed to go into their tents until bedtime; they would not be allowed access to their personal snacks except at one regular time after dinner (this is a big issue when half of the students are from asian countries and the only food we are offering is mac and cheese and pb&j); everyone must wait for everyone to have food at each meal before eating; there will be no downtime or time for personal reflection or journaling; we will run one “trust exercise” after another during times when we aren’t climbing or eating; etc.

There is no doubt that these are effective ways of creating community and breaking down barriers. When you make people emotionally vulnerable, make the group the only possible means of support, and create a situation where people will feel physically unsafe (like rock-climbing), you will have a rock-solid group of supportive girls after three days. But will you have a rock-solid community after 30 days, when they are back in their comfort zones with their pre-existing means of support?

Obviously, there are a lot of charismatic Christians out there, so this must be an approach that works for people.  The emotional build-up and catharsis of it must be effective for people, but I never found it so. That’s why I kept having to get “re-saved”.  The effects never lasted much longer than a few weeks past summer camp. Pretty soon, alone in my bedroom trying to pray, I would start to wonder what was the point of speaking in tongues anyway? If I didn’t even know what I was saying, could I possibly mean it? Why would God care what language I pray in anyway? And actually, while we’re at it, why would God even care if I pray? It’s not like he doesn’t know what I’m thinking, right? And why would God care what I’m thinking, since he already knows what I will do with my whole life? And that doesn’t even really make sense, so maybe this whole thing doesn’t make sense…and pretty soon I had headed down the dark tunnel to sin and iniquity, or at least to wearing too much lipstick and hanging out with the stoners.

These girls have been indoctrinated in the marketing of women’s empowerment from early on. It’s a pervasive part of our culture to give lip service to women’s equality in order to
sell shampoo, or tampons. (”Shouldn’t you be leading a carefree life?”) These girls know how to talk the talk, they know all the right answers, just like I knew how to explain to people how speaking in tongues is a valuable gift from God. But I didn’t believe it, and I don’t think these girls believe it either. And all you get with the emotional approach is people who feel it for a while, but there’s no intellectual commitment to it. The fervor fades. They’ve never seen anyone living it in the long-term.

On the last morning, I offered that if anyone wanted to get up early enough to climb a nearby bluff with me and watch the sunrise, I would be willing to wake people up for that. All but one of the girls agreed, and we woke up at 5am to hike up the hill in the dark and watch the sunrise. We sat, scattered in our own spots, while the sun came up over the far-off and flat horizon, past the freeway and the powerlines receding into the distance.

Afterwards we talked about the things we had seen and heard, and mostly about the things we thought about while we sat. Many of the girls had very interesting things to say, but the one who, unknowingly, had a message for me was the girl from Korea who said, “I mostly didn’t think about anything, I just wondered how the sun would rise. I have never seen the sun rise before.”

My mind was blown. Can you imagine never having seen the sunrise? Not even being sure *how* it rises? I felt really ashamed of how much I take for granted. I didn’t admit to them that mostly what I had been thinking, while we sat, was that I wish something good would happen. All there is is the sunrise and some cliff swallows calling, and I wish something really *exciting* would happen. Her thought made me realize, how freaking exciting is it that the sun rises every day!? How amazing is it that I have the opportunity to sit here on a windy desert cliff and watch it in silence with a group of people whose minds are blown by the simple fact that it is happening!?

And that was the most real thing that happened all week. And I was glad that I had a chance to share with them a real experience, one where a regular person chooses to get out of bed before dawn and experience the real world. Because that is what I believe in. I don’t particularly care about smashing patriarchy, or about who you share your lunch with. But I do care about creating connections, between people and people, between people and earth. If I had to choose something to smash, it would be civilization, and the idea that people need to be coerced into caring about each other and the world, and the fact that people don’t care enough about the sunrise to have ever seen one. I believe in the sunrise.

Next week, I will be heading out to the desert with a group of sophomore girls for the second year in a row. I wrote about it last year and I hope for it to be as good this year. Mostly, I am really looking forward to some camping and being outside. I am hoping to go into it with the idea of just modeling excitement about being there, and less intent to actually “teach” anything. I think I am moving further and further away from the idea that kids need to be taught. Mostly, they learn exactly what they need to if you can just create space where adults will step back and let them learn. And also model that the “cool” thing to do is to learn new stuff. The more I learn about skateboard culture, the more I realize that these kids are incredibly motivated to learn new things and strive to attain goals. No one has to force them or grade them or ground them if they don’t practice for a certain number of hours every day. And mostly that’s because people that they like and respect have modeled for them that skating is cool and worth pursuing. People who make money on skate-related products do so because they utilize the voices of those role models to encourage skaters to keep pursuing their goals.

I think educators could learn a lot from those marketers. And I realize what a crazy thing that is to say.

So anyway, I’ll be out in the desert camping and climbing for the next week. Possibly there will be stories when I get back. Also possibly there will be pictures of knitting and spinning that I will be working on during the drive. Also possibly there will be pictures of the garden that I started this morning.

So y’all have maybe noticed that I’m not posting frequently these days. Mostly that’s because for the previous few weeks I was looking seriously for a job, but there wasn’t really much else happening and I didn’t think anyone wanted to read:

Day 14 of Unsuccessful Job Hunting:
Still no job.

Day 15 of Unsuccessful Job Hunting:
Still no job.

Day 16 of Unsuccessful Job Hunting:
Still no job.

etc…

And then, last week, I got a job! It was totally unexpected. Another one of those positions I have a knack for getting where I’m not entirely qualified. And I didn’t think the interview went that well really. But call me he did, and I started last Monday. I’m working at a local skateboard/snowboard shop as the Web Store Manager, which is a cool job and will definitely challenge me. It’s also full-time, and there’s quite an adjustment to go from not working or only working part-time for the last two years to a regular full-time gig. Once I adjust, I’ll no doubt have time to update from work, but until then posting will likely be sparse.

It’s hard to say much about a place like this. It’s very magical and very foreign.

So I returned from my long weekend of tracking at the Oregon Dunes (which was Awesome! stories and pictures to follow soon) to learn that I am unexpectedly unemployed.

*rant* Why is it that employees are expected to give at least 2 weeks notice, while employers think it is totally acceptable to give no notice at all? I would never think of just not showing up and leaving an employer to scramble to cover my position. Why do they think it’s okay to leave me scrambling to figure out how to pay my house payment? */rant*

So, what have I done with the last few days of unexpected free time? If I was a Very Responsible Person I would have spent that time working hard to secure meaningful employment. Those of you who know me, you know where this is going.

That’s right. I started a new knitting project. This is a top-down hat (pattern here), because I’m not sure how much yarn I have left, so I want to be able to adjust the height of the hat to accomodate that. This is the first batch of yarn that I spun myself that I’m using to knit something. It’s just a cool as I hoped it would be, and I love the feel of it. It was one of the very first things that I tried on Kathy’s spinning wheel, so it’s definitely thick/thin and has varying amounts of twist in it, but I think it’s great. I’m going to modify the pattern to incorporate a spiral pattern to match these wristwarmers that I finished on the tracking trip.

The picture doesn’t really capture the spiral pattern, and even in person it’s fairly subtle. It’s just a series of k3 p1 and the purl bump ends up off by one in each subsequent row. There’s no pattern for the gloves because I made it up. I cast on 25 stitches, decided I needed to decrease a little for the wrist, then increased again for the heel of my hand. I knit it in the round using 4 double-pointed #8 needles and for the thumbhole I just turned the work instead of going all the way around for about 8 rows or so.

If you have a ravelry account, you can see more about my Works In Progress and even see all the stuff in my yarn stash under the username deandail. If you do not have a ravelry account, you better sign up for one right away or everyone will know that you are not one of the cool kids. If you do not knit, and don’t understand why you would want a ravelry account, well then, you are definitely not one of the cool kids.

And also, while I’ve been working on knitting, and taking pictures of my stash, and browsing everyone else’s stash and blogs, I felt like I wasn’t really immersed enough in the knitting, so I have found a whole category of knitting podcasts on iTunes! For free! So far, my favorite is “Cast On” by Brenda Dayne. It’s so good, it’s even in the Philosophy category! So now I can knit and listen to other people talk about knitting AT THE SAME TIME!

But then I was feeling sort of guilty for not really Accomplishing Something Productive, and I thought “hey, making curtains is productive right? I mean they help insulate our single-pane windows and save us money, right? This would be a Productive Thing, right? Right?”

So I finished Preston’s curtains. He’s going with a tropical theme in his room. He’s planning to hang a retired surfboard and that Hawaiian shirt (on the left of the window) on one wall, and incorporate various other tropical sort of elements into his room. I saw this fabric at Goodwill for $2 and thought that it might be a little too childish, but we both love them now that they are up. When the light shines through them from the outside, the whole room turns blue and you feel like you are sitting at the bottom of the tropical lagoon. Except that you can breath.

I had also finished the curtains for my room a week or two ago and forgot to post the picture (which is crappy, but you get the idea).

Also, lest some of you worry (hi Mom!) I am also looking for a job. Basically, the last job boiled down to a major misunderstanding where when I said, “I would like to be a wilderness mentor and I’ve never worked with anyone disabled before” they heard me say, “I would like to be a companion for your developmentally disabled daughter and would like nothing better than to sit around and watch movies with her”. I never gave them my Nanny’s Manifesto because shortly after I wrote it, it became clear that it wasn’t relevant to them. They were not looking for a nanny, they were looking to buy a friend for their daughter, a role I might have been willing to play had they let me know that’s what they wanted. So whatever. Let me know if you know of any ways to make money while sitting around listening to knitting podcasts and designing curtains.