It's not what you think....

I purchased my first Barbara Walker book recently, and it arrived in the mail today. Having been an avid knit-blog reader for years, I'm well-aware of who Barbara Walker is in the knitting world, and have made at least one thing derived from one of her patterns. So imagine my confusion/amusement when I accidentally bought one of her books without noticing it. It took Amazon's handy suggestion feature, as well as a trip to Wikipedia to confirm, before I accepted it.

The book? Feminist Fairy Tales. Nothing (externally anyways) that has the least to do with knitting. This isn't so much a thesis-intended book, as one I came across in my readings that seemed worth checking out as a "for fun" book. 'Cause, you know, nothing to do with my thesis whatsoever, fairy tales and feminism...

I finished a pair of mitts for my grandmother. While she was out here for my little sister's graduation, she noticed I was wearing a pair of garter stitch mitts and suggested something similar would be good for her arthritis. I've been starting and restarting a pair for her for a couple months, and finally just went (impending departure is a good motivator, apparently.) I settled on the Nalu mitts, done with Rowan Tweed DK. I'd like it if they were softer, but haven't washed them yet, so that may help. I wanted to finish them before tomorrow, since I'm going down to my parents' house for the last time before I go. This way, I don't have to be responsible for getting the mitts to my grandmother.



Because I go soon (12 days), I realized that there are various things I wanted to make before I go. The mitts were one, but I also make a pair for DB each year because he's SO hard on them. I know I'll never EVER knit him a sweater or socks, so mitts let me express my knitterly affections without hating him and whatever it is I'd make for him. The first Christmas we were together, I made him a pair of convertible mittens that he never wears because they're "too hot," so no more fingers for him. But his hands are so big that I could fit both of mine into ONE of the mittens I made for him, but he still stretches them out when he wears them.

So my current project is making the second and third of Queen City mitts for him. I doubt I'll have any problem getting them done before I go, at the rate I've been doing mitts.

July? When did that happen?

Well, it took me about two weeks to get my camera back. And now I'm just....apathetic about taking pictures of things. Maybe tomorrow. I need to block the shrug I made (but probably didn't mention on here) before the wedding in a week. So this is just a quick apology and explanation on the off-chance someone's out there.

It's summer. It's summer when all I'm doing is waiting for fall. I have to struggle to get thesis work done because my schedule is so unstructured that I can't convince myself to get started working. And I'm broke, so I can't just go to ye olde local coffee shoppe to get work done there. I've been knitting, but much of that has been messing up, restarting, and re-restarting, so it's not very exciting. So here's the deal: I'll update very sporadically for the next month. I'm sure I'll post some about the wedding (especially pictures of THE Shawl in action), and what's going on with that. If nothing else, I will get pictures of DB in a tuxedo. But other than that, there's just not much going on. But when it's closer to the move, and of course after the move itself, then hopefully I'll have more to say.

Oh, just fyi, I did send off my lit. review and proposal. So until my advisor gets back to me about everything, I get to actually act like it's summer and I don't have schoolwork. For a few days.

Modern Feminist Fables

I just woke up and was thinking about this, so if this is incoherent, blame the general lack of coffee.

I've been reading through Bill Willingham's Fables in preparation for writing my thesis (which I'll start working on, really, once I finish the lit. review. One day.) Marking places that I want to go back to, to discuss, or just noting important characters whose fairy tales I don't know. But one page threw me off. In the 4th trade book, "March of the Wooden Soldiers," Snow White is pregnant. She goes in to talk to Dr. Swineheart (anyone know what he's from? Grimm's "Three Surgeons," maybe?) to make sure the pregnancy is progressing smoothly and whatnot. It is.

Fine. But here's what threw me off. She has made extremely clear to both the doctor and everyone else she's talked to that she is unhappy about it. She doesn't like the father (at least, not consistently). She is insanely busy running a town. The pregnancy is arguably a product of rape: both her and the father were drugged, unwillingly had sex, and he later lied to her about the sex until she found out she was pregnant. Dr. Swineheart's response is something along the lines of "We live in the 21st century now. There are things that you can do if you don't want this pregnancy."

They're in New York City. They've been there through major political and social movements. In almost every other way they've kept up with what's been going on in the world around them--using computers, changing laws about slavery and child-selling, etc. So why is Snow White's response to Swineheart's comment threatening to fire him? She hates that she's pregnant. She watched the women's movements, if not participated in them (not specifically indicated in the books, but they were at least aware of what was happening around them.) But won't even hear the suggestion of abortion.

Now, for a fairly progressive comic book series, this seems like a weird choice by other author. Because that's what's at issue. Her choice. She doesn't think about it, she doesn't choose not to have an abortion. She spouts off something about "duty and responsibilities" and more-or-less willfully buys into the female roles she's otherwise wholly shirked. I mean, she divorced Prince Charming many many centuries before No-Fault Divorce existed. She works in the most powerful position in Fabletown (which, at the point this page occurs, it's been twice implied that she won't for long, in part due to the pregnancy.) These are not religious Fables. Is her reaction to the suggestion indicative that she hasn't really changed, at least in this one way, or that the author has some personal message he's spouting through Snow White's mouth? Something to figure out before I start writing.

Lazy Sundays

I think I need to actually, physically write out my weekly goals, rather than just typing them up here. The physical act of crossing them out is important, apparently, as otherwise things simply do not get done.

Yesterday, while not generally an exciting day, was a good one. My dear boyfriend has a group he goes to every other Sunday, where "they" bring in about 5-10 pages of the books "they" are writing, critique them, get and give feedback. The group meets at ye olde local coffee shop, so I frequently will bring whatever I'm working on, set up shop, and try to get something done whilst "they" do their thing. I tried to get some writing done on my lit. review. Really, I did. Right now, I feel like I need to scrap what I do have and start over. Also organize my research in some fashion, so I can break different bits of research into different sections. (The reason I put "they" in quotes is because in reading over some of what I want to reuse for my lit. review, I found that I can be fairly vague with the subject of sentences--I've had professors point this out. I'm trying to keep an eye on this problem with the thesis.)

After the group, we went over to the house of a couple of our friends (one of whom is also in the writer's group) and played Cornhole for a few hours because it was nice out. I promise the link is safe. I think I won a game and lost a game. Like I said, not a very exciting day. But when most days are spent reading lots of books at home, being outside is an event in itself. To try to spice this post up a little, I leave you with some nudity. This is the statue I had to walk past in Seoul to get to my busstop to head to school. This picture was taken probably 5 months into my stay, and I didn't really notice it until a week before I took the picture. That's how oblivious I can be. Any art majors have any clue what this is meant to represent?

An intensely blah day

Yesterday was a very frustrating day. I found out on my way to the bus stop--I swung by ye olde local coffee shoppe to break a twenty in case the bus driver wouldn't accept my student card anymore--that the authentication stuff I was going to Denver to do couldn't be done there. No, it has to be done in D.C. So three weeks minimum before I'll get it back. I'm worried if I don't get my paperwork in quickly enough, I'll lose the job. It might not be that serious. But then, it might. I don't know. But I spent a ton of money trying to get it done as quickly as possible, so we'll see.

It's really glum outside today, so after yesterday's anxiety, I'm just in a weird mood. In Colorado, it tends to only really rain in May and June; most of our precipitation comes in the form of snow during the winter. So it's hard to get annoyed when it does rain, as we usually need it. But it still gives everything a weird level of light. Makes me generally apathetic about whatever I'm working on. Like the Dude. I don't know what it is with this guy, but I just don't care. Even on the easy bits, I almost have to argue with myself to keep going. Given that I want to get him done by the time I leave, it shouldn't be this hard. Maybe I need a break from knitting? It wouldn't hurt my thesis any. Anyways, this is as far as I've gotten on him since I started:
I should probably take this mood and get some work done on my thesis, instead of fighting with myself about knitting. I'm working my way through the first chunk of The Madwoman in the Attic, by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar--one of those texts that if you're doing feminist literary analysis, you're going to read. Given that everything I'm analyzing in my thesis is written by men, the sections about women writers are less-than-useful, but there's a fair amount on recreations of binaries (angel and monster) that may be useful. One day, I'll actually sit down and start writing the review itself, instead of just clogging my brain with loads of books and articles and ideas.

Another week, another list of plans

Last week, I had this list, and this is what got done (I don't know how to do the nifty crossing-out thing people do with lists and posts, so blue is completed.)

• read Peter Pan
  
• read Through the Looking Glass
• read The Wizard of Oz
  
• acquire and read Ozma of Oz
• read at least three printed articles (but preferably everything printed)
• write lit. review stuff for all articles (re)read
• find articles about bildungsroman and women/girls (I was told very briefly in a class years ago that novels about girls cannot be considered a bildungsroman or coming-of-age/development novel. The intent of the genre is an escape from family and home. Girl's novels are about the submission to the family and home. Now I need to see if someone actually made this argument somewhere.)
• spin a tuft
• make at least 4 more coffee sleeves
• check with Korea about documents by the end of the week, if not heard back
• get boyfriend measured for tuxedo (for the wedding I made the shawl for)
• buy yarn for a yoga bag for one friend, and appropriately sized needles for various upcoming projects
• block and maybe actually complete one day Camden

Some of those solved themselves, such as checking with Korea. I'm not sure about the coffee sleeves anymore. We'll see. So this week's list:

• Type up/salvage the lit. review information for all articles
• Towards that extent, collect all articles in one place
• Go down to Denver to get CBC apostilled.
• Send off apostilled CBC
• Read Through the Looking Glass
  
• Finish back of the The Dude sweater
• Make mittens for Grandma before moving on to the rest of the sweater (I figure a piece of the sweater, then another mini-project, should keep me entertained.)
• Spin a tuft
• Read at least three books for thesis

Shorter list, but some of those are actually huge tasks. This may become a weekly thing until I move, or at least finish the lit. review stuff. I'm shooting for the end of June.

Because I really like having a picture of something on a post, I'm going to start sharing my years-old picture from my previous visit to Korea. I'll try to find the ones that have humorous explanations behind them, or at least a good story. For today, you get the only bathroom I decided to take a picture of (which, in Asia, shows a great deal of self-restraint.)

Thoughts on Peter Pan

My thesis is currently constantly in the back of my mind, creating an odd connection of children's literature, feminism, and sexuality to everything. I reread Peter Pan through these lenses, and am exploring a couple different sides. This is rambling, mildly incoherent, and will probably be done with several other books as well.

The Crocodile is referred to by gender once in the book. She is female. The Crocodile is forever after discussed sans gendered pronouns, inexplicably. The greatest threat to the greatest pirate is a woman who marks time. In context of the main book I'm looking at (Alan Moore's Lost Girls), this in itself is fascinating. In Lost Girls, Wendy tells the story of James Hook, a pedophile with an arthritically curled hand. (On a side note, James Barrie's hand was curled by a sort of paralysis brought on by writing, and in Lost Girls, he wouldn't be the first author of a children's novel to double as the antagonist.) She overpowers him by basically pointing out that she is too old for him to have any interest in her. The subsequent "Splash" page is of him being eaten by the Crocodile. Such wit, this book.

With the exception of Tinker Bell and the Crocodile, all female characters are or can be read as mothers in some sense. Wendy is mother to the lost boys, her mother eventually becomes one as well. Jane, Wendy's eventual daughter, and Margaret, Wendy's granddaughter, are expected quite literally from birth to play mother to Peter. The Neverbird mothers Peter to the extent of putting her own eggs in danger (and finds his idea of using a hat as preferably to her nest). Tiger Lily, who brings up a glorious amount of colonialization issues, mothers her tribe, although she is the only girl/woman with whom that term is not explicitly used. While most of these characters do not exist in Lost Girls, or exist in a different form--Wendy puts on clothes to "become" Tiger Lily, thus reducing a character to a fetish to be put on--those women portrayed have almost every sexual act reduced to "mothering," including Annabel (Tinker Bell).

Tinker Bell sacrifices herself for Peter, if not mothers him. She is also a caricature of how women were portrayed in much literature--she can either hate with her entire being (and she only hates Wendy/women) or she can love with her entire being (and she only loves Peter/men). I know there's a lot of writing on fighting between women.

One of the things that I was fascinated with the first time I read Peter Pan was the purpose of forgetting in Neverland and outside of it. Neverland is imagination, and each person has some bearing on what is in Neverland based on their imagination, but there is a strength in believing in the imagination that is more available to Peter than any other character--see the make believe dinners that it seems only he can gain sustenance from, and the reviving of Tinker Bell after she is poisoned. Wendy is able to keep imagining and believing in Neverland, even if she cannot go back to it, as an adult, although even she is not sure if it ever existed. Both within Neverland and without, she is the keeper of memory. She tells the lost boys and her brothers about their parents when they start to forget, and her daughter of Neverland when every other young character has grown up, gotten jobs, and forgotten. In Lost Girls, she is telling her story to two other women--I haven't decided yet what, if any, role that plays in her characterization. It matters that she is a storyteller though.

What allows her to change is her strength of memory, while what allows Peter to remain the same is his strength of forgetting. From the beginning, he is the severest form of ADD, forgetting Wendy and the boys as he is flying with them towards Neverland. It is this forgetfulness, in a particularly Romantic style, which allows him to never experience, and therefore never grow up. It is simultaneously the Romantic dream and fear embodied in a boy.

I've often thought Hook was a better interpretation of Peter Pan than most film versions that attempt to stay "true" to the story, in part for the use of forgetting.

March 18 Goals

Almost every year, someone in my family gets me a day calender for Christmas. And almost every year, I've stopped pulling off the dates by February and instead use it for scratch paper whenever I need some. Which is why on May 28, I am just now removing March 18. At least it's for this year.

I have until I leave the country to write a thesis proposal and literature review for said thesis. This gives me, at this point, three months to write maybe twenty pages. 20. I once wrote about 65 pages in three weeks, and still managed to knit in my free-time. It's a little tough to get myself moving on this process, despite the fifteen or so books I need to read in order to write the lit. review. If you include source books, about thirty. So I make lists on the months-passed day calender sheets. In one week (ie, by next Saturday), I hope to:

• read Peter Pan
  
• read Through the Looking Glass
• read The Wizard of Oz
  
• acquire and read Ozma of Oz
• read at least three printed articles (but preferably everything printed)
• write lit. review stuff for all articles (re)read
• find articles about bildungsroman and women/girls (I was told very briefly in a class years ago that novels about girls cannot be considered a bildungsroman or coming-of-age/development novel. The intent of the genre is an escape from family and home. Girl's novels are about the submission to the family and home. Now I need to see if someone actually made this argument somewhere.)
• spin a tuft
• make at least 4 more coffee sleeves
• check with Korea about documents by the end of the week, if not heard back
• get boyfriend measured for tuxedo (for the wedding I made the shawl for)
• buy yarn for a yoga bag for one friend, and appropriately sized needles for various upcoming projects
• block and maybe actually complete one day Camden

So them's the plans. I will almost guaranteed add to the list, and have little expectation of finishing everything, but it gives me things to focus on. This may become a consistent listing if it seems to help.