On Mistakes

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes.  They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

--from Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card

As a kid, school work came fairly easily to me.  I could usually get a B on my first effort, which left me free to go outside and play.  In high school I worked harder on the first effort and got A's, which left me free for drama club, odyssey of the mind, scholastic bowl, and other geeky fun.  It wasn't until college, where there weren't grades, that I was expected to go back into a project and turn in a second draft, or sketch, or sewing sample.  I was also expected to take risks and experiment.  If done correctly, true risks and honest experiment lead to failure, or at least unexpected results, half the time or more.  That means going back and trying again with new variables.  At the time, I hated making mistakes.  I saw them as failure.  If I had done better or known better, I would have gotten it right the first time.

After college in my professional life I still hated mistakes.  They felt like failure and I beat myself up over them.  This is a tough attitude to live with in technical theater.  In theater we experiment.  We also adjust the work on our little part once we see how it fits into the whole.  We get to a finished product in steps, and we definitely correct our errors.  So every time I got to dress rehearsal and got "notes" on my work, listing all the little problems that needed to be fixed for the next night, or changes that would make the costumes look better under the lights, or help the performers wearing them, it felt like failure.  If I was better at this I wouldn't get notes.

Luckily, I have come to understand mistakes better.  They're not failures.  They are part of a process, and only 1 step along the way.  The best thing about mistakes is that they can be corrected. It has taken a long time, but I now take joy in identifying the mistakes so that I can correct them.  I had to let go of the idea that a first attempt is the only attempt.  It is the first step, and it's purpose is to give me everything I need to get to the second step.  At work, I make things differently now, with the idea that each step is not being done to finish, but to put me at the best advantage for the second step.  And in aiming for a good process rather than an immediate perfect result, and being ready for mistakes, I make fewer.  Go figure.


I've been trying to teach my students this, while keeping in mind that I wasn't able to learn it yet when I was them.  I definitely see myself in my honor students, for whom high school was easy.  Unfortunately, school isn't life, and it turns out that being able to recognize and correct one's own mistakes has much more bearing on successful adult life than being really good at multiple choice test.  That's been a real let down, let me tell you.


I knit this cardigan years ago, but thanks to weight gain and an accidental trip through the washing machine, it has gotten rather tight.  It's a favorite, my first sweater where I started the process with dirty wool, and then washed, dyed, combed, spun, and knit.  So I'm not going to give it up, even if the buttons do gap.

But boy does that look crappy--and it makes me look fat.  My friend Becky had mentioned a knitting blog that went step by step through sewing grosgrain ribbon behind your button placket to keep it from gapping.  You see this all the time in store bought cardigans, especially the vintage 50's ones.  It finally clicked that I could go back and do this to a sweater even though it was already finished.  And boy was it worth going back in and fixing that, even years later.





This is the inside of each button band--buttons on the right and holes on the left.  I used a wide (about 7/8") grosgrain behind the buttons, then removed them and re-stitched them going all the way through the sweater and the grosgrain.  I used 2 narrow bands (1/4-3/8") on the buttonhole side running down either side of the vertical buttonholes.  Both were whipped in by hand and none of the stitching shows in front.





Much better!  Whether you call it fixing a mistake, or taking the next step in a project, the improvement is well worth the time it took!  At some point I'm going to go back into a number of my cardigans and do the same.

If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough!


--Miss Havisham in "The Well of Lost Plots" by Jasper Fford

I Did It!

I finally finished James Joyce's Ulysses. I had started reading it for the first time right after college but only got about a quarter of the way into it before setting it down and not picking it up again. I finally downloaded the audio book about a month ago and read the whole thing right through. The reader, Jim Norton, was great. I can't imagine the work it took to be able to read that book out loud and make sense out of who is talking at every moment. The book is written to cover 24hrs of time, mostly following Leopold Bloom through Dublin on June 16th, 1904. Once he falls asleep in the wee hours of the morning of the 17th, the narration is taken up by his wife Molly, who lays awake after being woken by Bloom crawling into bed. The funny thing is that it takes over 28 hrs to read. I guess that's to cover the extra time we spend with Stephen Dedalus before he meets Bloom.



I was going to say that next time I go to a bookstore I will be looking for a good study guide to see what they have to say, now that I have read the book for myself, but as I checked back at audible for the reader's name, etc, I just discovered that they have a companion study guide available for download for free. Have I mentioned that I love audible?

I'm thrilled that I finally read this book. In the long run, I think I benefited from stopping when I did, and picking it up again in my mid-thirties. Having now read so many more Irish books and plays, and generally having read and experienced more over the intervening 15 years, I understood so many more of Joyce's references, and of the general attitude of the characters.

There have been several accusations against the book as obscene. It was banned in the US in the early twenties. That ban was overruled in the 30's by Judge John M. Woolsey who declared that the book was not pornographic and therefore not obscene.

I'm just as awkward talking about or defining obscenity as many judges are. There are, of course, the famous statements about how ducks look and walk and quack, and after stating that he may not be able to define pornography, Supreme court Justice Potter Stewart went on to famously say, "but I know it when I see it."

It seems to me that there is an element of easy thrill to pornography. It's supposed to be a short-cut. If getting a thrill takes as much work as leaving the house, meeting someone, getting to know them, romancing them and putting real effort into treating them properly and prioritizing their well-being, for as long as it takes until it is appropriate for the relationship to be fully consummated, then you could have just gone out and done that. To me, that fact that the book is 28hrs long, and the dirty bits might cover an hour or 2 of that time total, is proof enough that the book is literature and not obscenity. It take way too much work to get all the way to Molly's soliloquy at the end, when she contemplates past lovers and considers future candidates. More time and effort than some modern relationships, or so I've learned from television.

That said, there were several points when I thought, "Wait, when was this written?" as the particular language which judge Woolsey described as "Saxon" is more blunt and coarse than I expected. Apparently I have been guilty of nostalgia,and have re-painted the past in gauzy white. Not only did my generation not invent sex or drugs, we also didn't invent those words I first heard on the bus or on the playground. Even so, when compared to the other literature of the 20's and earlier, it must have been a real shock to read those words in a novel. I was startled a hundred years later.

The novel was a lot of work, and I am now plunging into a study guide, and an audio download of a "Bloomsday" performance from a few years ago, but it was worth the work. I can see why it is often heralded as the first modern novel, or the first novel of the twentieth century.

And may I say again, I DID IT!

I've Finally Done It

After years of planning and writing patterns down and then chickening out, I've finally put up a group of patterns for sale on the internet. Anyone can now knit or crochet a recycled t-shirt rug just like the ones I sell on Etsy and use in my home. You can buy one through the Etsy link in the left side bar, or through Ravelry by clicking this button: Why all the hesitation and procrastination? Well, I hate selling stuff. I still remember everyone who yelled at me when I worked retail, and that was selling stuff whose workmanship or undiscovered mistakes were not my responsibility. Now I'm putting stuff out there that I made. I am now directly responsible to the buyer. The biggest thing that gives me pause about all of this is that I know that some women can be really nasty, especially about buying things and especially about a perceived slight. There are women out there who will try to take down a dyer's entire business because they bought 2 different hand dyed rovings and felt they weren't a close enough match. I don't need that. I'm not sure what's wrong with us as a gender. It seems like a man who felt he hadn't gotten what he paid for would yell once, or punch once, or (in the case of the internet) post one angry comment, and then forget about it and go on with his life. Whereas a woman who feels cheated, at least one of the nastier ones, can spend weeks, months, or years stewing in that emotion and actively working to take down someone's entire business or even their life.
This idea isn't new to me. Look at all the stories of teenage girls whose boyfriend was "stolen." Read "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. No really, go read it. It's a great book. I'll wait here.

* * * * *

That one shows that it's especially bad to cross a rich white southern woman with nothing else to do.

So how did I finally overcome all this adversity and post the damn pattern? Well, I've now sold 8 handmade items on etsy and no one has demanded a refund. Over 30 people have knit the 2 free patterns I posted here on the blog and linked to from Ravelry. A few have asked me questions and all seemed to be able to finish successfully with the answers. One found a mistake in the pattern and pointed it out in the nicest way possible. No one died. No one even yelled at me. I hate being yelled at by strangers.

So I've taken the plunge. Four people have already marked the pattern as a favorite on Ravelry and 5 have viewed it on Etsy. We'll see if anyone buys.

A Word About The Future

Lately, I’ve been downloading some classic science fiction from Audible. I finished “The Robots of Dawn,” by Isaac Asimov and am more than half way through “Player Piano,” by Kurt Vonnegut. Both stories were written in the mid-twentieth century and set in the future. Vonnegut’s is in a near future that could be now, and Asimov’s is in a far flung future in which humans have colonized multiple planets and built “humaniform” robots who can do much of the hardest work and are kept in check by the three laws of robotics.

Asimov predicts a world with interstellar flight, advanced robots, and sexual morays vastly different from those of mid-twentieth century earth. Vonnegut predicts a much closer world in which efficient machines have taken over most human jobs, so that only the very intelligent are employed as engineers and managers, only a tiny proportion of the population has the chance to go to college, and even secretaries and barbers need a PhD to be qualified for their jobs. Everyone else must join the army or work on a road crew and settle for government pay.

The thing that amazes/annoys me is that neither one of them, in all their intelligence and imaginative capacity, conceived of a future world in which women could fill roles beyond wife/lover, secretary, or homemaker. There are no women taking significant roles in the work force or in the course of history in either novel. Are the 1950’s really so far away? Both these men were very intelligent, but boy did they get it wrong about human potential. I mean, I don’t have a single robot to my name, but I’ve had a significant job since finishing college. My family relies on my income just as much as my husband’s. In fact, I’ve been gainfully employed in my field since before finishing high school. I also have a high (erroneously labeled as “genius level”) IQ and a physics degree, both of which would have placed me in a desirable position in the world of either book. But no, women figure in both books as objects of attraction for the main characters, secretaries, or wives whose sole function seems to be party attendance and social climbing. In Player Piano, most housework is finished in seconds by automated machines, but still the women do not work. Yes, most of the populous is underemployed in this story, but the men are still sent out to do something.

I’m hoping that both authors changed their minds over the course of the next fifty years. Both lived long lives but are now dead, so I’ll have to take this up with them in the after life. (Both were secular humanists, so I’m not sure we’ll actually be able to contact each other in the after life. Maybe there are day passes to other eternities?) I won’t stop reading their books, but I sure do find science fiction stories written by women to be a relief after this stuff!

Why I Love My Work

The other day, I spent most of my work time online, first researching depression era feedsack dresses, and then at a motorcycle parts page, among other things. The best part is, I wasn't screwing around--that's what I was supposed to be doing! Both were research for "Grapes of Wrath" coming up in the fall. OK, so that explains feedsack dresses, but motorcycle parts? As you may recall, Rosasharn is pregnant throughout the book, so we'll need to make a pregnancy pad for the (hopefully not pregnant) student who plays that part. I like to use open cell air filter foam for padding, as it has a nice texture and memory, but more especially because it dries quickly after washing or sweating. The motorcycle place sells sheets of foam so that if you have a vintage bike you can't get new filters for, you can create one. I love the spirit of that all on it's own, and am giddy with the idea of further re purposing the foam for a pregger pad!

Recommended Reading

There's been some news lately about banned books. There is even a list of banned books circulating on the internet, erroneously claimed to be a list of books Sarah Palin asked to be banned from her local library. While that is inaccurate (after all, she couldn't have asked to ban any of the Harry Potter books back in 1996, before they were written) the list itself is taken from a compilation list of books that have been banned in different places at different times. It's a compelling list--some of the best books I've ever read are on it.

So I'm reprinting the list here, and I'd love to encourage all my friends and family, and anyone else with a blog who comes across this, to do the same thing I'm doing. Print the list, and in some way mark which of the books on it you've read. I'd love to know what you thought of them, individually or in general. I know a lot of my fiber friends love novels, as do college pals, theater friends, family, and everyone else I know who checks on my blog. Drum up some readership in the comments with a link to your post, I'd love to see it!

Here's the list. Books I've read are in green.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes s
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective*
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower**
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

*I never read all of "Our Bodies, Ourselves," but I did read the chapter on lesbians in my aunt's copy when I was a teenager, so that has to count for something.

**I've read the Bible a few times now, but I haven't read this particular translation.

My best criteria for whether something is a good book is whether it changes me, and many of the books I've highlighted here did just that. They're intelligent, they're challenging, not one of them is gratuitous or immoral. Interesting that only worthwhile books get banned. For instance, there isn't a single vapid romance novel on this list. I think I'll start reading the rest of the list.