Weekend Highlights: Duluth

Despite a bit of a hectic past week, I've managed a bit of progress on my UFO pile - one languishing FO bound off and finished, and a handful of ends woven in on other projects. However, those projects are not the ones I really want to talk about. Instead, I give you the ones that joined Amoeba and I on our weekend trip to Duluth.

First, Duluth and us in it. As much as I love Chicago, I have such a fondness for certain parts of Minnesota - it is an amazing place, particularly because a few hours' drive brings you here:

It's worth noting that there were many, many photographs taken near the lift bridge, but I spared you the pipes and lichens. If pipes and lichens (but mostly pipes) are things that you are interested in seeing, let me know, but I'm assuming I'm fairly alone in this fascination. But bridges! I'll always show you the bridges.

On to the knitting:

As soon as we got into town we plunked ourselves down in a Caribou Coffee so Amoeba could finish their sweater. (Coffee was an important step, too, but the Caribou stop was really all about the sweater.)

Pattern: Beagle, by Nora Gaughan; Yarn: Berroco Vintage in the color Chana Dal.

Post-coffee, we wandered out to do a little photo shoot for Amoeba's sweater and my newest completed design, which is currently-but-maybe-not-foreverly named Dovetail. Here's more of Beagle, and a glimpse of the behemoth that is Dovetail:

Pattern: Dovetail, by fecknom (unreleased); Yarn: Berroco Vintage.

I'm on a mission to post more frequently, both to hold myself accountable to taming that obnoxious UFO pile, and to generally flail about projects, new designs, and yarn. I hope you'll read along.

In other news...

...I am thankful for some wonderful people!

We have learned this week that large envelopes move through the Russian postal system FAR quicker than packages. According to the package experiences of others, when my friend put a generous assortment of zines in the mail in early November, I expected to see them in early January, at the earliest.

Boy, was I surprised this week.

Zines! Thank you, L!

Aside from the sweater and zine highlights, it's been a rough week here. It's been a busy and stressful one at work, and I've been thinking a lot about a couple of friends/families that are dealing with some tough stuff right now. I'm oscillating between keeping my thoughts with those folks, and thinking about being far away from my family as the holiday season starts. To top it off, Friday night decided to make itself into an aggravated little monster.

I'm incredibly lucky, though, and I try really hard to not lose sight of that. I've been blessed to catch up with a few friends this past week. I'm also talking to this human whenever I get the chance, and those conversations, in all their 6000-mile width, make everything so much easier.

Nestling In

I've been finding it hard to work up the energy to leave the house on the weekends. I operate too much inside my head and I'm conscious of the fact that this could be considered a symptom of culture shock. However, I think I'm going to cling to the idea that I like being holed up in my residence, inside my little den of creativity.

Yes, I should be outside. I should be appropriately dressing for the weather to go watch a Rotor football match. I should be walking around my neighborhood. I should be shopping for tennis shoes. I should be grocery shopping and planning meals for the week. Hell, it's my favorite month. I should be outside pittering around like the amateur photographer I fancy myself to be.

The alternative is that I could stay here, and knit my shawl, and watch the X Files. I could read, or listen to books and music. I could learn to play new songs. I could not interact with anyone until I presumably chat with my love on Skype later.

From the outside, it probably does look like culture shock. But: I did this in Minnesota. I did this during every school break at Oberlin. Why shouldn't I do it here?

I think today, for a change, I'm settle on the medium of going for a walk with my camera, and settling down with my shawl at a cafe. Warm and relaxed, but at least out of the house.

What day is it?

It's been a day and a half since I left Minnesota, but it just feels like a really long day.

Flight number one: MSP (MN) to JFK (NY): uneventful.

Flight number two: JFK to SVO (Moscow): eventful.

• Taxied around for at least an hour before takeoff; I'm not sure why.
• Consistent and mysterious stomach pain. I thought I was intensely hungry for a long time, but they eventually brought us food, and that didn't help. Tried several methods of distracting myself; none of them worked well.
• Had hopes for a few hours of snoozes; nodded off for about 15 minutes.

I also realized on flight number two that Whitney Houston's Greatest Hits, which I bought whatever night that was before I left (which oddly seems like ages ago, but the departure from Minneapolis seems like a matter of mere hours) contains only a remix of "I Wanna Dance With Somebody". That sort of remix that is different enough that you have to have the original version, too. Needless to say, that's been remedied in the last few minutes.

It didn't hit me that I was really leaving Minnesota (and Amoeba and family and friends)(and Amoeba) until yesterday or today. I've still barely begun to process the fact that I'm actually in Moscow right now, and that the airport didn't just spill out into some part of Minneapolis that I'm unfamiliar with.

Basically, I need to figure out how to make myself a safe space to be who I am in this room that I'm living in (which is the living room of my хозайка's apartment). I'm not sure how I'm going to do that yet.

I think I'm going to start by dancing around to Whitney Houston, though.

Preparing for Takeoff.

So I'm moving to Russia tomorrow.

I'm working with a company that teaches English on a 10 month contract. I'll be in Volgograd (which used to be Stalingrad) most of the time. Also, Moscow, but mostly Volgograd. The Moscow part, which is a CELTA crash course, comes first. So tomorrow I'm being all transatlantic and flying to Moscow.

Theoretically, since this will be the longest time I've spent living outside of Minnesota without visiting, the packing process should be the most intense packing experience of my life so far. (They say packing for anything longer than two weeks is the same as packing for two weeks, but that's a complete lie.) It has been that intense, but oddly enough, it has also been one of the least stressful. So, in true fecknom fashion, I give you five things that didn't help the process, and five things that did.

1. My penchant to take too many books. I bought a nook, which I love, thinking that this would help cut down on the number of printed wordy things that I'm taking. I think the percentage of my luggage that is books still hovers around 10%.
2. My experience last Thursday. It should have been the beginning of the end of the packing, but I got far too distracted and lost about a day's worth of focus.
3. Wanting to spend time with Amoeba. This is the first time I've had a partner to move away from, and I've been pretty conscious of how much time this process is taking, and that that's less time with her. Never did get to the Half-Price Books in Highland Park...
4. My computer, which already had a faulty CD/DVD drive, surprised me when Firefox decided it was never going to open again.
5. Gender norms in Russia. This has been occupying a large percentage of my thoughts for quite a while now. I'm not going to be surprised if I'm the only queer person at the intern training, and I know among Russians I'm going to have to be closeted. However, I'm facing ten months of living in a culture where gender norms are much, much more rigid. I was stressed about what clothes I could bring that I'd feel comfortable in that wouldn't alienate me from those around me. I'm worried about how the jewelry and shoes and purses and pretty accoutrements of femininity will feel on my body. I'm also worried that I'm going to pull back too far into the safe space I'm creating for myself (with all them books) and not fully enjoy the experience of living in Russia.

Now to the fun list. Things that have made this packing experience awesome. The last few weeks have been so much fun, I added five more things.

1. I started packing and thinking about packing about six weeks ago. I wanted to be fully packed a month out. Which meant I was mostly packed three weeks out, and only have had to think about details for the last two weeks.
2. There is an epic list involved in the process that was #1.
3. I invested in a luggage scale, which has put my mind to rest about overweight baggage fees.
4. Learning that there's a high likelihood that I'll be taking a train (with compartments!) from Moscow to Volgograd. Which means after I land in Moscow, my luggage can get heavier, as long as everything still fits.
5. Purchasing the Batmac from Amoeba. (Backstory: she illustrated a children's book that she wrote, and decided it wasn't really feasible on a 13" screen and bought a desktop. Now she has an iPad, too, and doesn't need her laptop for portability reasons, either.) (Other backstory: there was an external hard drive named Robin, and a jump drive named the Batarang.) Computer problems: solved!
6. Taking breaks by spending time with the fabulous people I met this year.
7. Searching for children's books to bring. It's been a while since I've spent much time reading picture books to myself, and rediscovered many books I enjoyed as a small person.
8. I read Dr. Seuss's 'Great Day for Up!' for the first time. It describes my life really well.
9. Dancing around to songs from Glee!
10. Zines. I bought many zines today, and plan to steep myself in queer stories while in the company of my happenstance airport associates.

959 Sequins and Sunny

Day One: Saturday

me waiting for the bus

Amoeba waiting for the bus






Day Two: Sunday













Aids Project



flamingos on bikes









banjo serenade!

Wilde Roast Cafe dancing rainbow cake



I have no shame. I love Chipotle.

I hang out with these guys a lot.

new friend!

a bridge in Loring Park



waiting for the bus again

still waiting

Saturday evening sky

Found online, on Alan Wilfarht's Flickr photostream.

Found online, on the vita.mn photostream.

Sources: Alan Wilfahrt's flickr stream, vita.mn

Precursor to Pride

To continue with our chronological order, I can't tell you about last Friday until I tell you about the preceding weeks. Pretty much, it was filled with various clothing/craft projects that largely consisted of rainbows.

While wandering through a fabric store, Amoeba and I spotted this ribbon. Add the buckle, and some assistance from my mother, and we have this belt!

It's called a 'parachute buckle'. Like it wasn't cool enough already!

Then, while I spent an obnoxious amount of time sewing 959 sequins onto some fabric, Amoeba was inspired to sew 50 onto a tie.

Onto Friday:

For Amoeba and I, Pride didn't really start until Saturday. We spent Friday afternoon and evening about an hour north of the Twin Cities, in Harris, MN. The primary reason for the trip was a wedding. Casey, the bride, is one of Amoeba's friends from her old church. She hadn't seen her in about seven years; I had never met her. As it turns out, Casey and her husband Chris are wonderful people, and wonderful wedding planners. 15 minutes and classy. I was impressed, and delighted to meet them.

Here, we are, having parked Zorro (the car) outside of the local American Legion.

Amoeba also took me to the Franconia Sculpture Park. It's an artist collective that has residential and work space for artists. Art in a field! So exciting. Here's what captivated me:

Recent Adventures: Photo Recap

My friends, my friends. Друзья!

It's getting to be the end of June, the end of Pride month, and I haven't managed to post anything yet! So, before I throw sequins at your computer screen, let me give you the non-Pride related photo recap of weeks past:

First off, I'm going to pretend I'm a knitblogger by showing you some socks I've made. They started out as a Cookie A pattern (Devon), but then I realized I didn't want lace near my heel. So I ripped back and recast-on for these puppies.

Pattern: Gentleman Socks, by Kristi Schueler. Yarn: Malabrigo Sock in Botticelli, a gift from the lovely Cory Ellen at indie.knits.

/knitting content.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

First, this showed up in the backyard. It felt like spring for about a week, and then it was summer.

Then Linden's brother graduated from Macalester. So, to celebrate, Amoeba and I took his sister out for bowling and drinks.

The ceiling at Midtown Global Market, the night I was confused about which week Game Night was.

Amoeba's birthday: bowling and (mostly) gluten-free pizzas with friends.

Amoeba bought a hat! Twins won; Ethan's 3 for 3 this year at Target Field.

Donated blood and convinced Amoeba that the Red Cross was probably experienced enough to find her veins. Turns out they did! She was dehydrated and lost consciousness for a few seconds, but I'm still very proud.