Inevitability

It really is the way of things that whenever you think something is going to go smoothly it staggers along like your mate who got too drunk at the bar and insists on singing karaoke half naked instead of packing it in for the night.

This was me with designing the iPad version of my book. The actual design part, piece of cake, but the getting it to load properly was a whole different animal. For those of you who don't know how an iBook is assembled I'll give you a brief rundown. First you create a Folio, then add articles to it. Sounds simple, right? Well, it is. Except when the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite refuses to load anything, including identical files which it had managed to upload earlier. Adobe InDesign also has the brilliant feature of letting you edit files that are already in a document and relinking to the changed bits. Not so much with the DPS, it just ignored those changes and went right on it's merry way........and I just had a thought. There was Solar flair activity last night interrupting electronics. *FACEPALM*
I knew that, I wanted to go out and watch the Aura Borialis which virtually never can be seen over Pennsylvania and I was so focused on getting this done that I forgot all about it! And instead staggered through a night of immense frustration because I just wanted to get this thing done.

That moment of stupidity over, here is the book. Or as much as I can show you since I still have to research my publishing options and decide what to do with it.

I'm also finally knitting something that isn't designed by me for the first time since probably around late October. It's a Holden Shawlette in some Just Our Yarn that I got at my first Maryland Sheep and Wool, so sometime in the last decade. It's almost done, just need to do the lace, which shouldn't take that long. Famous last words.

When your thesis advisor has a meltdown

So for the past three months I have been making great progress on my thesis project. Designed 7 patterns, made samples out of everything, some in hand spun yarn, got really nice photos and laid everything out in a book. I even made life casts of my hands and feet so I could mount everything to the wall. After a recent department review from which I got an email saying that showing the garments "cheapened" my graphic design work and that I was to relegate my showing to a book on a shelf......boring! Not to mention all the work this project was, over 200 hours to date. Now at my University it is not required that I exhibit to complete my degree, so when my adviser gave me pretty much the same speech from the email he'd sent me I told him that I'd rather not exhibit. That is when he LOST IT, just went off like a Roman Candle, screaming at me about how that was just fine and that it solved all his problems. I didn't know a student who is really passionate about their work and getting it done, in fact a lot more ambitiously than other students was a problem. Then after freaking out at me he had me escorted out by security after I'd already gone back to the room where we normally have class. I hadn't raised my voice at him and had tried to continue to have a civil discourse, but that was too much for him. I have never in my life seen such unprofessional behavior from a teacher. I immediately reported him to the department head and had a meeting with the Dean of Arts and Sciences the next day just so I had all my bases covered. The only resolution I have to this point is that this person is no longer my adviser and I will be working with the head of the department for the rest of the semester. As of right now I'm still not exhibiting, which is sad. I was looking forward to it and my work would have looked great, a lot of people are still trying to talk me into showing, but a mediocre showing of my work is not worth it to me. Hopefully some or all the patterns will be out soon, I'm going to look into publishers or go the independent self selling route. Either way there are a lot of beautiful new patterns coming from me soon.

Just a little spring