Off to Savannah

This weekend, Husband and I will go to Savannah. He has a work appointment there on Monday and I'm just along for the ride.

I am so tired. We're still short handed at work, though Complaining Employee is getting better. I thought we had a breakthrough yesterday, but today, interacting with her has just been draining. And we interacted for only an hour max today, in person, e-mail, and phone.

She's a perfectionist and very rigid. This week, the New York Times had an article about perfectionists (pasted below). I gave it to her yesterday, when I thought we had moved past some difficulties, and she laughed, saying yes, she is trying to get beyond it.

And then it flared up again today. I have to deal with her tomorrow, but then it's off to Savannah.

There is really no focus to my blog. It's a lot of knitting stuff, some news articles I find interesting, and stuff from my life. However the really hard, stressful stuff is not here. In the last 12 months or so, I have had some of my highest highs and lowest lows. That stuff I share with only a few people. It's self preservation. I don't know how long I will keep up this blog. It may be for years and I don't want to look back and see that hard stuff in black and white and relive it. I think Crazy Aunt Purl has the right idea -- hold off on posting on things until you've moved beyond it.

And so this blog has a lot of knitting. It's become more and more important to me, I think in proportion to my need for a way to deal.

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Unhappy? Self-Critical? Maybe You’re Just a Perfectionist
By BENEDICT CAREY Dec 4, 2007.

Just about any sports movie, airport paperback or motivational tape delivers a few boilerplate rules for success. Believe in yourself. Don’t take no for an answer. Never quit. Don’t accept second best.
Above all, be true to yourself.
It’s hard to argue with those maxims. They seem self-evident — if not written into the Constitution, then at least part of the cultural water supply that irrigates everything from halftime speeches to corporate lectures to SAT coaching classes.
Yet several recent studies stand as a warning against taking the platitudes of achievement too seriously. The new research focuses on a familiar type, perfectionists, who panic or blow a fuse when things don’t turn out just so. The findings not only confirm that such purists are often at risk for mental distress — as Freud, Alfred Adler and countless exasperated parents have long predicted — but also suggest that perfectionism is a valuable lens through which to understand a variety of seemingly unrelated mental difficulties, from depression to compulsive behavior to addiction.
Some researchers divide perfectionists into three types, based on answers to standardized questionnaires: Self-oriented strivers who struggle to live up to their high standards and appear to be at risk of self-critical depression; outwardly focused zealots who expect perfection from others, often ruining relationships; and those desperate to live up to an ideal they’re convinced others expect of them, a risk factor for suicidal thinking and eating disorders.
“It’s natural for people to want to be perfect in a few things, say in their job — being a good editor or surgeon depends on not making mistakes,” said Gordon L. Flett, a psychology professor at York University and an author of many of the studies. “It’s when it generalizes to other areas of life, home life, appearance, hobbies, that you begin to see real problems.”
Unlike people given psychiatric labels, however, perfectionists neither battle stigma nor consider themselves to be somehow dysfunctional. On the contrary, said Alice Provost, an employee assistance counselor at the University of California, Davis, who recently ran group therapy for staff members struggling with perfectionist impulses. “They’re very proud of it,” she said. “And the culture highly values and reinforces their attitudes.”
Consider a recent study by psychologists at Curtin University of Technology in Australia, who found that the level of “all or nothing” thinking predicted how well perfectionists navigated their lives. The researchers had 252 participants fill out questionnaires rating their level of agreement with 16 statements like “I think of myself as either in control or out of control” and “I either get on very well with people or not at all.”
The more strongly participants in the study thought in this either-or fashion, the more likely they were to display the kind of extreme perfectionism that can lead to mental health problems.
In short, these are people who not only swallow many of the maxims for success but take them as absolutes. At some level they know that it’s possible to succeed after falling short (build on your mistakes: another boilerplate rule). The trouble is that falling short still reeks of mediocrity; for them, to say otherwise is to spin the result.
Never accept second best. Always be true to yourself.
The burden of perfectionist expectations is all too familiar to anyone who has struggled to kick a bad habit. Break down just once — have one smoke, one single drink — and at best it’s a “slip.” At worst it’s a relapse, and more often it’s a fall off the wagon: failure. And if you’ve already fallen, well, may as well pour yourself two or three more.
This is why experts have long debated the wisdom of insisting on abstinence as necessary in treating substance abuse. Most rehab clinics are based on this principle: Either you’re clean or you’re not; there’s no safe level of use. This approach has unquestionably worked for millions of addicts, but if the studies of perfectionists are any guide it has undermined the efforts of many others.
Ms. Provost said those in her program at U.C. Davis often displayed symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder — another risk for perfectionists. They couldn’t bear a messy desk. They found it nearly impossible to leave a job half-done, to do the next day. Some put in ludicrously long hours redoing tasks, chasing an ideal only they could see.
As an experiment, Ms. Provost had members of the group slack off on purpose, against their every instinct. “This was mostly in the context of work,” she said, “and they seem like small things, because what some of them considered failure was what most people would consider no big deal.”
Leave work on time. Don’t arrive early. Take all the breaks allowed. Leave the desk a mess. Allow yourself a set number of tries to finish a job; then turn in what you have.
“And then ask: Did you get punished? Did the university continue to function? Are you happier?” Ms. Provost said. “They were surprised that yes, everything continued to function, and the things they were so worried about weren’t that crucial.”
The British have a saying that encourages people to show their skills while mocking the universal fear of failure: Do your worst.
If you can’t tolerate your worst, at least once in a while, how true to yourself can you be?

Kaffe Fassett, the freaky power of blogs, and the Rectangle of Malabrigo

A few weeks ago, I went to see Kaffe Fassett speak. It was a quilting event but KF's talk was about color and he had slides of his knitting, mosaics, quilts, needlepoint, everything.

When I got there the first person I saw was Brandon Mably and I just went up to him and introduced myself (like he had any idea who I was). I mentioned that I read Franklin Habit's post about the knitting workshop BM did and how it just opened Franklin's eyes to color.

BM didn't quite remember who Franklin was (as if I know who FH is -- ah, the power of blogs that make you think you know complete strangers), but when I mentioned Chicago and the Franklin's 1000 knitters photo project, he remembered. He said that he doesn't always know how effective he's been, so it's nice to hear this kind of feedback.

I think this was also a freaky example of the power of blogging. I told him that Franklin's blog post made me want to take his workshop, if he ever comes back to Atlanta.

Then I posted all of the above on FH's post on BM, just to complete the circle.

So, it's now November, I've brought in the house plants and turned on the heat at home. I'm still working on Sister's Top-down Raglan Cardigan in Manos del Uruguay in Eclipse, using Cosmic Pluto's pattern. Love the Manos! I love the way they dye the yarn different colors like ever two inches. The colors are so deep and vibrant. One day Husband and I went to the Silver Comet Trail to exercise. I was in the throes of work stress and didn't walk as long as I usually do, so I got back to the car before Husband. Pulled out the Top-down Raglan Cardigan and sat on the bench and knit, reveling in the gorgeous colors.

The body is too loose and short, so I'll have to rip back and re-knit. But with a yarn this beautiful, it's no hardship.

And I'm still carting around Brother-in-Law's vest, in KnitPicks superwash worsted, in the color Truffle. Which is a mid-brown with a hint of grey. Not inspiring at all, but it's for a guy. No man-stripe across the chest, like I did for my brothers' vests. Instead, I'll use a contrasting color stripe in the ribbing around the neckline, armholes, and bottom hem. Probably a green or blue. Yes, still not exciting. But it's my portable project, stockingnett in the round, so I don't look at it while knitting anyway.

Plus I'm begining to sew together Husband's afghan, using single crochet.

But I want to start something new! I only have 3 projects on the needles. That's got to be an all time low.

So I pulled out some of KF's quilting and knitting books. I want to make something using my stash and his motto of "When in doubt, add 20 more colors!." I have at least 5 skeins of Malabrigo in purple, blues, yellow, and green. In many of KF's patterns, he mixes colors by holding 2 strands together, or inserts one row randomly using a different color yarn. This adds another layer of color, in case 20 colors wasn't enough. Go look at his knitting and you'll know what I mean.

The Malabrigo is kettle dyed, meaning the yarn goes from light, medium, and dark within the same skein. So I'd get the color mixing without having to work so hard.

So I'm leaning towards making a shawl using KF's Super Triangles motif. As he said in his talk, it uses a ton of colors, but you're knitting with only 2 colors per row. So I'm thinking a shawl using different colors every row, leaving the loose ends out as fringe.

Some people hate the Atlanta traffick. I use it to daydream about knitting, quilting, and pottery.

Another book from a favorite blogger

Monday night I stopped by a book store on the way home and saw that they had Crazy Aunt Purl's book "Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair." It was $16 even. When was the last time you bought something that didn't involve fractions of dollars?

When I got home at about 10pm, I read it straight through and was done by 12:30am. It was very much like her blog, not surprisingly. The biggest difference was there was that the book was a narrative of her divorce, use of knitting as a way to keep the hands busy and not calling up the ex, and recovery into a happier, fuller person. What was new to me, was the info about her romantic life, which her blog doesn't really address.

Her blog is more about the things she's doing to improve herself and her life, her friends, her knitting, and other random events in her life.

I really like CAP and think I like the blog better. There's more to the blog and no need to streamline it in order to fit a narrative.

Years ago I heard about blogs but didn't really know what they were. Then I heard that editors were reading blogs, looking for potential books. And now this week, I have two such books.

I think I like CAP more as a blog and not a book. Her charm, wackiness, wit, and wisdom, especially about letting go of her insecurities that so many women can identify with, doesn't come through in the book.

By contrast, Jane (Yarnstorm) Brocket's "Gentle Art of Domesticity" works very well as a book. Much of Yarnstorm's appeal are the pictures and the book is full of them. This book doesn't try to be a narrative and the different themes in her blog are organized by chapter in her book.

I haven't read very much of it yet. It sits on the side table and will be something I dip into a few pages at a time when I have time.