The Bog of Lost Scholars

31 March 2005

Not-So-Recent Reading

Filed under: The Castiron Reading Journal — Castiron @ 19:29

Stuff I’ve been reading since Christmas:

Stevermer, A College of Magics and A Scholar of Magics. First is still wonderful; second is very enjoyable, and I need to reread it.

Dumas, Count of Monte Cristo. This is my perfect airplane reading book — it’s long enough that I don’t finish it on the first leg of the flight. It’s got adventure and intrigue. Granted, it’s also got gender ideals that annoy me. (Like that whole bit where Mercedes ends up going off to the convent to die broken-hearted while Dantes eventually sails off into the sunset with a younger woman. Someday I want to write the novel or folksong where the woman says, “Damn straight I didn’t wait in solitude and chastity after you got lost at sea/put in prison/apparently disappeared from the face of the earth and the hot rich guy showed up on my doorstep! I’ve got a life too, bucko!”) But generally I can ignore that and just have fun watching various nasty characters getting their comeuppance.

Bond, Paddington Bear. I reread this while at my parents’ over Christmas; it’s cute, but it really hasn’t aged that well for me.

Susanka, Not So Big Solutions for Your Home. A collection of articles that Susanka wrote for Fine Homebuilding magazine, about designing homes and spaces to fit the needs of families.

I ought to love this book. I like Susanka’s ideas; I’m unlikely to ever be in a financial bracket to bother hiring an architect to design a house for me, but if I were, I’d definitely want someone who works like she does (how are you going to use these spaces? do you really need extra room, or do you actually need a better-arranged space? what activities do you need space for? how do you like to feel in various parts of your house?). I enjoy reading about home design, and I like her writing style.

But when it comes right down to it….you can tell that these were originally magazine articles, with a limitation on word count. I kept waiting for Susanka to go into further detail on a topic or give another example — but nope, end of chapter, on to next, and it jars me. There were two chapters dealing directly with the kind of house I have, and yet after reading them I still didn’t have a good feel for what options I might have to upgrade my spaces. Given my current standards for what stays on my shelf, I’m probably going to return this to the store and just get it from the library if I ever want to reread it.

28 March 2005

High Speed Sweater

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 17:59

My new land speed record for knitting a sweater: eleven days.

I’ve had these skeins of Caron Bulky Boucle for at least fifteen years now, and I finally decided it was time to either knit them up or toss them. One sweater and one hat are the result.

The sweater’s a little on the snug side for me, and in retrospect I could’ve made the sleeves longer after all, but it does fit, and I love the colors. And thanks to the recent cold front, I’ve even gotten to wear it once before summer hits.

9 March 2005

Three Crafting Myths or Semi-Myths for the Frugal Crafter

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 17:49

“Make it yourself — you’ll save so much money!”

Let’s dispense with that myth right now. It’s not always cheaper to make something than to buy it; it really depends on the item. Sure, I can make shorts for my son in an hour for $2.50 in materials; new shorts at the discount store usually cost me $4 or $5. I can sew myself a nice vest for under $5 in materials; it’ll be unique, and a similar vest in the store would be $10 or more. On the other hand, if I want a nice cotton sweater, for the cost of the yarn, I can get a sweater from Land’s End that’ll last as long. I might still prefer to make the sweater myself (because I want to make an unusual stitch pattern, because the storebought sweaters don’t fit me well, because I just want the challenge, etc.), but I’m not saving any money. Same with socks — for the price of enough black sock yarn to knit a pair, I can get ten pairs of good enough socks at Target that’ll last me years.

And all these examples are ignoring the cost of my labor. I’m doing this for fun, so I don’t care that I’m putting $10 or $100 or $1000 of my time into the item. If I were doing this to really save money, it might make more sense to get a second job!

2. “Buy the best materials and supplies you can afford.”

It’s true that better materials often pay for themselves in the long run, even if they cost more up front.

That said, if you’re making something trendy or strange, do you really care if it falls apart in the wash in six months? Will you really want to wear this weird Halloween costume after this Halloween? Can you really see yourself wearing that crocheted bikini in twenty years?

Besides, there’s quite a range between “shoddily cheap” and “$50/unit”. I have several sweaters and vests knit from plain old Red Heart acrylic yarn that are over fifteen years old and still look good. I have vests made from cotton that I paid maybe $2/yard for; they still look fine after ten years and numerous washes. (I’ve also had pricier materials turn out to be relatively low quality. “Best” does not necessarily mean “most expensive”.)

3. “She who dies with the most fabric/yarn/patterns/floss/scrapbook paper wins!”

Stash is fun, no doubt about it. Buying it, sorting it, dreaming about it; thinking about the exact project you plan to use this yarn for, fondling that nifty fabric while waiting to be inspired by a project for it, sitting back with a cup of tea and your box of patterns — this is a large part of the fun of crafts.

But I had an epiphany several months ago. After going through my fabrics, yarns, kits, etc., I realized that I already have on hand enough stash to make projects for the next fifteen years. Fabric? I’ve got six outfits — outfits, not individual pieces of clothing — waiting to be cut out, and enough cotton fabric for ten quilts. When it comes to cross-stitch, if I start working through my leaflets today, I probably still won’t have stitched them all up by the time I die; the kits alone will take me at least five years to make. Over the years I’ve sunk thousands of dollars into supplies and patterns, much of which I haven’t touched and may never use.

There comes a point where it stops making financial sense to buy stash just because it’s nifty, or on sale, even if you have something specific in mind for it. My new rule for myself: if I can’t in good conscience start the project the moment I get home, I don’t buy the material/kit/pattern.

4 March 2005

GTD Phase 1: Collection

Filed under: Dejunking and Organizing — Castiron @ 18:03

The first phase of GTD is getting all your undecided to-dos into one area. When you’re first starting out the program, that means everything in your world that needs something done about it; later, it just means new things that’ve shown up to be done.

This is fairly easy at work. My office is reasonably sized, and there’s a lot of piles already started to serve the purpose. Stuff to be filed, stuff that’s not very urgent, stuff that I need to deal with eventually — most of that’s already in my In area, or is easily moved there.

But there’s a few things I need to add. For example, there’s a big lateral file cabinet by my desk that I don’t use at all. The smaller file cabinet that I do want to use is back in a corner out of reach. That’s something I need to add to the In box — a sheet that says “rearrange file cabinets”. (I don’t have to think about what I want to do about rearranging them now; that’s next round.) Still, there’s not too many of these to deal with.

Home is a whole nother can of worms. If I tried to pile everything that needs doing into my In box, 1. I’d need a room for my In box, and 2. my son would get into it and shred it before I got around to the processing stage. Plus, I have too damn much stuff; I can’t collect everything in my house in one afternoon. So I’ll have to break the house down and do it in pieces — process or partially process one room, then go on to the next.

(This is definitely one area where I find Allen’s book lacking. Oh, he refers to home projects, but only like someone who’s never had to deal with a screaming baby while trying to get supper on the table [because ordering out isn't in the family budget]. The only way I could ever clear off a full day for the GTD process would be by taking a day off from work, and I have other uses for that time, like actually doing some of these tasks I need to do. And at that, I’m better off than the many friends of mine who are homemakers and who are not going to get an eight-hour period at home without children demanding attention, at least not before 2016.)

3 March 2005

Getting Things Done Again

Filed under: Dejunking and Organizing — Castiron @ 13:30

On a recent business trip, I had a free evening and needed some exercise. The hotel had a swimming pool and an exercise room, but as usual, I hadn’t brought my swimsuit or suitable exercise clothes. So I took a walk around the hotel neighborhood instead. But this time, I also made a note in my trip packing list on my Palm. Next time I take a business trip, whether it’s in a few months or a year, I’ll look at my packing checklist, and I’ll be reminded to pack the swimsuit and shorts — while I’m at home standing by my closet!

This is at the heart of David Allen’s Getting Things Done system: set up your personal systems so that everything you need to do is in there somewhere, and so that you’re reminded of things you need to do when you can actually do them.

I’ve frequently read Getting Things Done, but I’m still so-so at applying the program. Over the next few weeks I’m going to start the program again, and if possible blog my progress.

The gist of GTD: 1. Collect everything that needs doing, 2. Process the stuff you’ve collected — that is, decide what it is and what you want to do with it, 3. Organize the stuff so you can find it or be reminded of it at the appropriate time, 4. Review the stuff regularly so you’re reminded of what you want to do, and 5. Do the stuff.

Even with my spotty implementation, GTD’s been helpful, but I’ve never really gotten everything into the system or gotten thoroughly into the habit of doing regular reviews. Thus the compost heap on my desk and in various catchalls in my house. I still get a fair amount done, but with a full-time job and a disabled kid, there’s many things I really want to do that I won’t ever do unless I get better organized!

So we’ll see how it goes. I currently predict that I’ll be able to get the system working very well at work, but it’ll take a lot longer to get it going at home — I have far fewer things to handle at work! And while Allen talks a little about home and personal projects in Getting Things Done, the book’s focus really seems to be on business folks. (No one outside Corporatia or Administratia ever uses “leverage” as a verb, or calls something “mission-critical” rather than just “critical” or “important” or “necessary”.) We’ll see how I can translate the system for home use.

2 March 2005

Travel Crafts

Filed under: Crafts — Castiron @ 13:29

It’s a first — I have finally taken a trip where I actually worked on all the craft projects I brought with me. In off times at Southern Presses, I’ve finished the Mill Hill Christmas Rose ornament, crocheted a few squares on the black lace blouse, and stitched several threads on the pentacle. A nice change from a typical trip where I bring six projects and work on two!

(I’ve figured out one reason that the pentacle can be discouraging to work on, besides the fact that it’s on 18 count black Aida: in the section I’m in, many of the threads are black, navy, and dark blue, so even when I’ve stitched quite a bit, it’s hard to tell. When I did a small section in red, my progress was much more obvious.)

1 March 2005

I Like O’Hare.

Filed under: Random Ramblings — Castiron @ 16:38

Okay, I thought maybe it was just the particular terminal I was in, but now that I’ve been in another part, I have to ask:

Why do people hate flying through Chicago O’Hare?

It’s a wonderful airport! I spent a three-hour layover walking around the United terminal. There’s amazing art exhibits — I saw pictures of weird furniture sculptures from the Suite Home Chicago project, thought-provoking photographs of families around the world from Material World and from the Seeking Sanctuary photo project, a great kids’ play area that made me actually wish my boy was with me, nifty painted benches done by an art group’s apprentices, and drawings and photographs by extremely talented high school kids. I saw the dinosaur skeleton sculpture near the Field Museum store. I saw a flying cow artwork. I saw people from all over the world and all sorts of cool outfits. It was a delightful layover.

Yeah, it’s noisy and there’s a lot of people. So? And yes, when we left we waited on the tarmac for 40 minutes before we got to take off. But that’s happened to me at other airports too (and in this case, being in the middle of The Count of Monte Cristo, it wasn’t until half an hour after we left the gate that I noticed we hadn’t taken off….). Overall, my experiences flying through O’Hare have been quite positive. I like O’Hare.

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