Here it is, finally, after two long years! My first published article in a conference proceedings volume.

This is following the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics 15, which took place in summer 2008. Apparently this is the first volume, with 14 articles. I have no idea how many volumes there are altogether, but I think it’s nice to be picked among 14 articles covering historical changes in English syntax.

Besides, pink and red is a beautiful combination. Here’s the table of contents:

Mine is the article on prevent. My professor’s is the one on the TIME corpus. The editors wanted us to cross-reference to our articles, but neither of us saw any point to it…

It’s kind of funny now, considering that I’ll probably never take up my postgraduate studies again. Having an article published and some conference presentations under my belt might even be a hindrance in my CV when I apply to jobs elsewhere than in the academic world. So I’m not exactly underlining it, it’s just there. Something I did.

Well, there is a student in England who’s working on prevent and other verbs of prevention. She’s enthusiastic and has been asking me for help a lot, apparently thinking that I’m a lecturer at the University of Tampere. Whatever, it’s not like she’s my competition anymore.

As more time goes by, I feel more certain that it was never meant to be. I simply don’t feel at home in the field of research. There were too many external issues that I couldn’t stand at all, unrelated to the actual work. And I could never convince myself I was doing anything useful. It’s no help if others think it’s useful if I don’t believe in it myself.

I’m not supposed to be a thinker. I’m supposed to make things happen. I’m happy with my life like that, and I think that’s what counts the most. Why pursue something that doesn’t make you happy? I believe we only have one life, so it doesn’t make any sense at all to waste it when you know what makes you happy and what doesn’t. I’m lucky to have found what I enjoy doing.

I finished crocheting the Peter Pan slippers for my dad. I call them the lol-slippers, because, well – look at them!

They’re huge! They’re shapeless! They’re absolutely ridiculous!

I laughed out loud when I finished the first one. I can’t wait to see the expression on my dad’s face when he uncovers these. I bet he’ll need a minute or maybe ten to figure out what they are.

Good thing though, I used nearly three 150g skeins of Novita 7 veljestä on these slippers, yarn which I didn’t have any other use for. I think the mismatched colours go well with the general ridiculousness of these slippers.

If for some completely strange reason you now feel the urge to make a pair of your own, I used the pattern by Gabriela Ordenes, Peter Pan’s slippers. They were easy and fairly quick to make, one of those brainless-projects-for-watching-tv.

In other news, my yarns are even better organized now, thanks to Deniselle‘s generous gift of these pretty canvas bags:

She got these by attending some religious happenings or events. The black one has a slogan which has the idea that people have even chances of finding happiness. (I’ll get a better translation as soon as Deniselle wakes up, she’s a better translator than I am.) And the white one on the right has a cool drawing of a church from Leppävirta, with the slogan “strength from the stream of mercy” (again, horrible translation).

Aren’t they really cool? Deniselle asked me if I wanted them on the spur of a moment and was surprised and amused that I jumped at the chance. I had been wanting some canvas bags for my yarn, and I got these for free, with pictures and text too!

I’m a very unreligious person, but I think for that reason it’s wonderfully random and funny to have religious yarn bags. Amen.

I finished my One Row Handspun scarf (by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. I used Novita Puro, colorway Revontulet (“Northern Lights, Aurora borealis”). It took me a week or two, I wasn’t really counting but I was quite fast.

The pattern is very simple and allows for brainless tv-knitting, yet it creates this nice ribbing effect.

Puro is 100% wool, loosely spun plies, so it feels soft and warm. Some of the colour choices are quite weird and not really my cup of tea, so I had no other choice but Revontulet. Even so, I wish there were more yellow and orange and less red and blue. My ultimate dream would be to find yarn that only had yellow and orange, changing softly as in Puro! One can always wish… Another problem was that I had to use two different colour batches for the 4 skeins, but I don’t really mind it so much.

I also like the blue/green/pink Tundra, but I don’t have any ideas what I’d do with it. Puro is quite expensive and I already have more yarn than I can knit or crochet in the near future. If only I was richer, I’d fill my small apartment with much more yarn. Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not rich.

I had a slight problem with the skeins escaping my yarn bag, so I got a brilliant idea. I stuffed my souvenir conference bags with yarn and hung them up on show!

That’s my old yarn bag, still full after delegating some of it into the conference bags. I like the Liverpool conference bag  (from Corpus Linguistics 2009) with the grey, white and purple. And here’s my ICEHL conference bag from summer 2008:

I realized I should have more hooks on my walls. Anyway, now I can have my souvenirs out from the dark closet so I can look at them more often and they’re useful too!

Right now I’m crocheting another scarf in the Skunk-Punk style with three different light blue yarns for my cousin, because my mittens turned so ugly and she likes blue more than I do. I also started on another knitting project, the Heelhead Scarf, with the result that I can now knit cables without an auxiliary needle!

I’m so happy to learn new things with every project. On the one hand, I like having a brainless project which I can work on while watching tv, but on the other hand, I don’t want to repeat something I’ve already done before. The skunk-punk blue scarf has been boring because of that, and I wouldn’t have gotten it this far without tv! There’s my justification for having more than one project under way at a time – you can always do something, depending on how you feel at a given moment.