Rainbow Stripes

I had to do it: I had to knit the Noro Silk Garden Stripey Scarf.  Of course, my photos are nowhere near as gorgeous as those on Jared's blog, but as long as the scarf is beautiful, I don't care!

I knit this in the last month as my break from work.  Work has basically been writing the first chapter of my dissertation at break-neck speed in order to have it done by Feb. 1st for a fellowship application.  I would either teach in the morning or start writing right away.  After dinner, I burned through House M.D.'s past four seasons and knit this scarf - and other sundry items which I will post shortly. 

It seemed to work: the deadline gave me fuel for writing all day, and knitting and TV gave me relief at night.  But, I wouldn't want to keep this schedule up forever.  Which is a bit problematic, since I need to cough up three more chapters, and an introduction and conclusion, sometime next year!

One thing that has also helped, for those of you who write and get writer's block, is a little web site called 750 Words. It's basically a private place where you can type up 750 words everyday (or more, up to you) and have it be about total hogwash - whatever you need to dump from your brain.  It's private, protected, and you can unload your thoughts without thinking about how literate it sounds or how others may judge it.  I've used it a couple times at sticky points in my chapter, just to blab about what I wanted to write but, for the life of me, couldn't put into what I thought were "acceptable" terms.  Try it!  The site counts your words for you, gives you "badges" for writing (although I don't care about those so much), runs stats on what you're writing (pie charts etc.), and - for some reason this is freeing for me - it isn't stored on your computer, in fact, you can just forget about it once you're done (although the site does save your writing for you on your account).

As of now, I'm on a break from work after finishing the chapter.  J is coming for a visit next week and we are planning a dinner party, visit to NYC, and other fun items.  Stay tuned!