It’s not something that wasn’t expected. I have many expectations for myself, but very little abilities to actually accomplish them. My to-do list is always laughed at by my chronic illness. It’s more unexpected if I accomplish all that I have planned.
This time, it is my TBR. I had the plan to read 60 books this year, which is actually a modest goal for me compared to other years. However, as luck would have it, sickness and the world made me forget I was planning on reading Wheel of Time in its entirety. Not to mention how I was planning to compare the newest translations of the Bible I had recently secured. So, now I’m around 35 books – and less than 10k words – behind my goal for the year.
However, I did just finish the NRSVue translation. Tonight. Just now. 2 days after I started writing this post, I finished the culmination of months of study. It feels great, but still doesn’t feel like enough. Does it ever feel like enough when you plan to make something the base of many facets of your research? Maybe if you’re not a perfectionist, but the feeling of the imposter syndrome is strong in me. I need to feel like I know everything about a topic before I will even pretend to know anything. I’ve also added yet another translation that I didn’t have yet to my collection, so I guess I’ll just never feel “finished.” And, I guess that’s going to have to be okay.
The last few weeks have been a rolling tidal wave of sickness after sickness here. The lack of productivity is an issue to my overachiever brain. However, I did manage to make socks for my cold toes in the plummeting temperatures.
Normally, socks wouldn’t take 2 months to make, but I am adamant these are taken over by the magic of the fae. The yarn would not meet gauge, no matter what I did or how many times I tried. Add that to the distractions of work and knitting sweaters for my kids, instead of following the pattern I was intending when I bought the yarn, I went unconventional to modern concepts: World War spiral socks. These were the socks made by women during wartime to send to the deployed troops. They do not have heels, which allow for flexible sizing – and cushion the blow of struggling with gauge, apparently.
Now, I love a good historical pattern. I could not find a specific one for these, as they are almost all formulaic, as is expected in many vintage patterns. I personally based my calculations only on a picture I found, and sort of counted my way through. To get around the gauge issue, I just measured my foot and then did the math using the gauge I ended up with at the end.
The pattern, if you would want to make a similar (toe-up!) version is as follows:
TOE CAP:
CO 12 on each needle. (I use Judy’s magic cast on, on a 40″ circular needle). Knit around row once. Then, follow the pattern
ROW 1: k1, m1l, k until 2 left on needle, m1r, k1. Repeat for 2nd needle.
ROW 2: Knit around entire row.
Repeat these 2 rows until you get the number of stitches needed according to your previous calculations. Keep in mind, it needs to be a multiple of 6. (Example: My foot is 8.5″ around at the ball, and I did 60 stitches for the yarn I used, because my gauge was 7 stitches per inch.)
I personally switch to DPNs around here, because they’re easier for me to deal with moving forward. When you have reached your desired number of stitches, knit around for 13 rows.
BODY: The following pattern is in groups of 6. For experienced knitters, you’re doing 3×3 ribbing, that shifts over one stitch every pattern change.
Rows 1-6: k3, p3
Rows 7-12: p1, k3, p2
Rows 13-18: p2, k3, p1
Rows 19-24: p3, k3
Rows 25-30: k1, p3, k2
Rows 31-36: k2, p3, k1
Repeat this as many times as you need for the length of a sock. (I chose 3 repeats for a crew length.)
CUFF:
When the body has reached the length you would like, continue to the next pattern repeat. Continue this for 13 rows (for instance, if you end on k2, p3, k1, your cuff ribbing will be k3, p3.)
Cast off using a stretchy cast off option.
These socks work incredibly well for family knits. The same socks that fit me as loose house socks have already been worn by my kids as leggings, and tighter socks. The fit range of one pair is unmatched by socks with heels. I personally will be making more of these for the kids, too. They are a very good mindless knit that do not require attention of length measurements. The perfect pattern to load up a drawer of comfy house socks for winter. I hope you enjoy them!
I treat every Fall Equinox as my New Year. I do not resonate with the concept that it has to happen in the middle of winter, and I detest summer. As Autumn is my favorite season, it only seemed natural that I would use it as the beginning of life changes. I’m also a really huge planner person, and always like to have planners and lists of what to do. This served me better before I graduated, but I have since lost the ability to focus on timing for things. I’ve spent the last month or so attempting to get myself organized enough to meet some goals that I wanted to do before the end of the year. Like moving. And renovating an RV.
This is when I found the concept of the 12 week year. I’m still only part of the way through the book, but I find it is very similar to what I had already planned on doing: quarterly goals that get finished and then move on to the next set of goals. However, I just don’t think that 12 weeks is enough for me. I am an over-planner. My lists are always … ambitious, to say the least. So, I really do need more than 12 weeks to accomplish everything. Then, I remembered that, as a life-long learner, I’m incredibly good at fitting my projects into semester time frames. 16 weeks is really the sweet spot of time, if you ask me.
THAT’s when I found the concept of personal curriculum. It’s always nice when people do the setup work for you. Now, I already have a self-study habit. I own a lot of books, almost none of which are fiction. That’s because I am an annotator. I write lengthy takes in my books while I study them. I don’t find this as satisfying in a digital book, although I also do it in those. There’s just something about a book with a large number of annotation tabs that just makes my heart happy – especially if they’re in rainbow colors.
Since I am trying the personal curriculum trend, on top of the 12-week year concept, today just seemed like a good day to start. With more thought, I’ve managed to break my year into 3 16-week semesters for this experiment. This gives me more time to work on projects, and also time off between them to get in the right head-space for the next one. These semesters may not work for you, Dear Reader, but the breaks in between also coincide with weeks that I personally need a bit more time, for personal life things.
The tentative semesters are currently as follows:
Sept 8 – Dec 28
Jan 5 – April 26
May 4 – Aug 23
Why yes, I am a little late for the first one. However, that’s kind of irrelevant since I already started working on things related to it. Not the educational parts (shipping has been so slow!), but the “Home Economics” (aka cleaning my entire house so we can move) part at least. Oh, and I started working on a Bible read-through September 1st. It was originally supposed to be a 365, but I’ve ramped it up to finish in my first semester. I am working on a personal project to compare all of the translations of the Bible to see how the messaging compares dependent on the intended readership. This is entirely a project that should take less than a year to read through each translation, after I stopped to think about it.
So, I have decided I am going to mutate these two ideas into one and attempt UltimateProductivity^TM. A year, split into 3 semesters, that also includes my goals for the environment around me, and some breaks. I hope that if I give myself an end date for every project, that maybe I will manage everything at the same time. I could also be biting off a lot more than I can chew. We will see!
Welcome to Tylwyth Teg Cottage. I plan on this being a home for my research in all forms, from books to mythology and history, to historical crafts. I hope to use this as a place to post self study research, and track transition through the next stages of my life. Please follow with me while I overhaul some parts, and learn more about the world and myself as I traipse through this path.
