(no subject)

The line between "I am tough, I am Canadian, I can handle the weather" and "It is actually cold enough that I could give myself frostnip" is a bit thin and blurry.

Last night I had to wait nearly a half hour for the bus, not wearing gloves.

This morning, I went through my knitting basket and found the mittens that I made two years ago and did not quite finish because I ran out of wool -- a lovely color of blue-faced Leicester, just missing one thumb. They are, regardless, fantastically warm.

(In other knitting news, I finished a sweater! I am not sure if it is just slightly too small for me or I just need a bigger button to hold it together. I will be sad if I cannot wear it, but it was kind of meant as a practice sweater from the beginning.)

(no subject)

Librarianship is a pretty good fit for someone who has dabbled in eight different crafts, five different language, nineteen different hobbies, etc. The good thing and the problem is that you can justify just about anything you want to do because it will make you a better librarian when actually, it is unlikely to serve to advance your career in any way (not that I'm trying to advance my career in any way.)

Today I was doing my knitting program and one of the kids complimented my knitting-teaching skills, to which I immediately thought, No, Elizabeth Zimmerman is a good knitting teacher. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is a good knitting teacher. I'm just this dork who can't even figure out where you're supposed to put your hands for Norwegian Long-Tail Cast-On.* You know, come to think of it, I haven't been to Sock Summit or one of those high-profile knitting retreats, and everything I know about knitting comes from my mom, my grandmother, books, or YouTube, so I don't know that much about what good knitting teaching looks like. So, if I WENT to one of those high-profile knitting retreats, it would make me a BETTER LIBRARIAN.

Hahahah. (I also think that learning Chinese would make me a BETTER LIBRARIAN, but I would be a professional polyglot if I could...)

*I do not normally teach people Norwegian Long-Tail Cast-On! I usually teach beginners just the knitted cast-on, because that's so close to what you do when you're knitting anyway, and it gives you a pretty good edge. Norwegian is my other go-to cast-on, and one of the kids saw me using it and wanted to know how it worked...