Klingons do not procrastinate. It is a tactical delay.
--Lt Commander Worf

It's January 31st. A full month into the year. A bit late, in other words, to be posting about New Year's resolutions, or plans, or whatever you prefer to call them. Yet there is a benefit to the delay in that I can report on progress so far.

What I did post to Twitter and FB on January 1 was this: #in2010 I will run a half-marathon, read 40 bks, & stick to a budget. Also: knit a lot, librate a lot, entertain cats a lot, etc.

The second half was a silly statement of the obvious. As for the first three:

I will run a half-marathon...
Running is the area in which I have been slacking the most, given my motivation to run in the dark is almost zero and my usual path spends most of the winter unevenly snowed over. However, I have joined a gym and engaged in a few sessions of that strange activity known as cross-training. Once it gets lighter out, I'll get back into the swing of things. Last year I ran my first 10k in October after beginning running seriously for the first time (successfully) in August. (I have a long pent up future post about how much I used to hate running and how shocking it is that I've come to love it.)

Given how unlikely I once thought it even this time last year that I would ever run more than about 3 miles at a time, I'm confident that I'll meet this goal. The real challenge may be selecting the course. I have been thinking about the Valley of Fire half, since I enjoyed visiting that state park last year, but I am beginning to come to my senses about the hilliness of the course and will probably choose one flatter and closer to home.

Read 40 books...
I may need to increase this one, as I finished my eighth book of the year today (with only one of these having been started in 2009). Granted, two of them were short (Michael Pollan's Food Rules is more a pamphlet in book form), but it's great to have some momentum going. Part of it stems from digging right into the pile of free and nearly free books I picked up at ALA Midwinter. Quite a lot of the books over the next couple months will be for the history of Boston course I'm taking, but I'm hoping to slip in some purely fun reads as well.

Stick to a budget...

This is another one where I have fallen off the wagon, and need to get back on. The only major debt is my library school loan, puny by some standards, but I'd like to start saving more than I am. The only way I've ever been successful at that is keeping track of spending, so I'm planning to spend some time researching budget software for Macs.

As for knitting, entertaining the cats, and generally being a librarian stereotype...
..those are all falling into place with no trouble. Imagine that.

Now that I'm back from Austin, done with arranging and hosting the amazing Sabrina Pacifici's visit to SFALL, and done with the joint faculty-library presentation panel that I wasn't sure I'd be able to prep for with the other two things going on, I can catch up. Or at least that's my ambition.

Over the long weekend, I'm planning to post my raw notes from the SXSWi panels I attended--if I can read the chicken scratch my writing turned into on the small notepad. Yes, my notes, save for the one panel by which I'd lost my writing utensils, are analog. I confess though I popped it open from time to time, I found using the laptop too distracting. No laptop in the classroom for me, though I found that knitting through most sessions--the most extensively I have done this--definitely kept the fidgety portion of my brain occupied and helped focus my attention.

Last week I was welcomed as a contributor to Out of the Jungle, a blog that I respect and admire, and am excited and honored to join. I will likely post more coherent and discussion-inducing (I hope) thoughts from some of the panels there. My ulterior motive, of course, is to lure more law librarians to attend next year's SXSW.

Finally! I finished the Star Trek socks last night and delivered them to their recipient tonight. (Four months after Father's Day when they were promised and a week before his birthday...so I could have planned better, or even just knit faster!)

(If you're not a knitter interested in, er, replicating this pattern, skip the next paragraph!)

I used a standard 60 stitch top-down sock pattern as the base. After the cuff and ten rows of stockinette, I worked in the Starfleet emblem from the middle 26 stitches of Samantha's Baby Trekkie washcloth pattern, starting the pattern at 17 stitches from the beginning of the round on one sock, and 47 stitches from the beginning on the other. (It's designed so the emblem will lie on the outside of each ankle.) To get the emblem in garter stitch, the emblem was purled and all stitches on even-numbered rows were knit. Then I knit another ten rows in straight stockinette, and worked the heels and feet. It felt like one of my more adventurous knitting undertakings when I started, but it was really pretty easy.

If I make them again, I will definitely work the emblem, heel, and toe in a contrasting color. Probably black with a stripe of command red, science blue, or engineering yellow. The yarn is Knitpicks' Essential in Ash. I'm not 100% crazy about it--there are some very slight imperfections to it that seem more noticeable in a solid color--but it's a great yarn for the price, very soft, and machine washable.

I've been casually following and enjoying Knit the Classics over the last few months and thought I'd mention it here. Participants in the blog read a classic novel each month and knit (usually, but other crafts are welcome) an item "for" or inspired by a character. At the end of the month, the most inspired project wins a prize. Fun concept. I've been only casually following because the recent books have been unfamiliar to me, and I haven't gotten off my duff to join in.

Perhaps I'll be inspired by one of the following books that have just been elected to be read over the next few months:
November: Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
December: Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
January: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

This post was prompted by the recent A Guide to Knit the Classics post, a quick primer for KTC newbies.

August's Library Journal has a great article about creating and maintaining collections of knitting books, dvds, and websites.

This isn't relevant to my library, of course--although I personally find knitting a great relaxation technique--but for my fellow knitters, there are some great concise reviews. I've heard of many of the titles, but there were a few that were new and sound interesting.

In 2.0 news, I just checked my place in the Ravelry waiting list, and there are fewer than 3000 people ahead of me waiting for an invitation to sign up, so I should get mine in the next couple weeks. Ravelry is a new 2.0 tool geared for knitters and crocheters that we can use to organize our stashes and patterns, but also connect with others who are working on the same project, and who knows how many other ways. It was recently scoffed at on a tech geek site, which is silly, because most of the knitters I know ARE tech geeks/bloggers/2.0-philes of some sort. (And quite a few of my Sweet Stitchin' Betties are librarian tech geeks/bloggers/2.0-philes!) Perhaps it's no coincidence that knitters and librarians have similar perception/reality problems with their image.

Coming soon: pictures of the Star Trek socks I'm knitting. I'm nearly done with the cuff of the second one.

Among the things I'm looking forward to next week at AALL are exhibit hall breaks spent knitting with other members of the AALL Stitching Special Interest Section. In addition to knitting, crocheting, and embroidering together, this year we're putting on a auction to benefit the Friends of the New Orleans Public Library Restoration Fund.

If you're interested in handmade goods for yourself or as a present for a loved one, be sure to stop by the SCCLL-SIS table in the activities area. The silent auction begins at Monday 7/16 at 9am and closes during the refreshment break on Tuesday 7/17 at 2pm.

Below are my offerings, a mohair neck wrap and a long, decorative rainbow ribbon scarf:


There is sure to be a variety of interesting and beautiful items reflecting the different interests and skills of the group. Bid early and often!