On Spring Cleaning and August

One of the unique aspects of being a college student is knowing just how much longer you will live somewhere. I am going back to school next week, where I will live in the same place until December 15. Then I will live at home again for a month, before living in England (assuming I am accepted to the program) until late May, when I will go back home. I know how long I will maintain each of my residences for the next three years. This knowledge gives me an interesting perspective. Everything I buy or own I will be responsible for moving in three years when I graduate (assuming I don’t end up going to graduate school or working locally, and I don’t plan to). Everything I pack for school will have to be placed in storage, or carried through Penn Station when I take the train home.

As a result, owning things seems less appealing than it did when I was younger. Keeping that doll forever seemed like a grand idea when I was ten, but now that I’m twenty it seems like a chore. Having tons of clothes is great in theory, but then you realize you will have to be able to lift that suitcase over your head and into compartment above your head on the train at 3 in the morning (the alternative being getting off the train at midnight, when commuter trains get a whole lot sketchier), and you only ever wear the same 4 pairs of jeans (because the cafe food diet caused you to experience a rare Freshman -15, and after tuition you can only afford 4 new pairs of pants when the old ones start literally falling off as you walk) and the same ten or so t-shirts (there are more than ten shirts, but five or so are invariably and impossibly missing in your 5′ X 15′ living space), so really owning more than that seems insane.

This summer, my goal has been to clean out my bedroom completely and thoroughly for the first time since… well, it’s been a while. Rather than reorganizing the twenty years of stuff I have accumulated into different boxes to be moved to different parts of the house as was done when I was younger, the idea of shuffling whatever I keep to another abode in three years has made me want to downsize.

I have been working my way through years of clothes the past couple weeks when I’ve been home. Today, I got through the closet. These will be joining several more bags of clothes I have donated in the past few weeks:

That is how I spent my morning. It’s a lot like Spring Cleaning, except it’s August.

Since it is August, these were in the garden today:

That was my day. Aside from that, I just finished knitting a small purse, just big enough for a phone and a wallet, and I am now working on a cell phone case for a friend’s kid.

On the Great Influence Tom Baker Has Had on My Life As an Artist

When I was 15 my father informed me we absolutely had to watch the new show on the network formerly known as Sci-Fi. Bored by the lack of internet at my grandparents’ house, I decided to watch the American premiere of the new Doctor Who. It. Was. Awesome! After my father spent all that time convincing me I would like the show, and I spent so much time insisting otherwise, I was hooked. Waiting a week for the next episode seemed like an absurd request. I wanted to see every episode ever.

My father started getting me DVDs of the show from way back in the day. I marathoned the Key to Time stories more than once. I started to like Tom Baker’s Doctor almost (perhaps more than) David Tennant’s. He was silly, eclectic, ridiculous and a genius. And he had the most fantastic scarf in the world.

Oh, how I love that scarf. It was absurdly long and wonderfully colorful. I wanted one.

Naturally, the Fourth Doctor’s scarf is not something sold in stores. There was no imitating that item. Unless… I made one.

So I did. I decided I should learn how to knit, and make myself the most glorious scarf in the world. My mother took me to the craft store where picked up some yarn and needles. When we got home I talked my mother into teaching me to knit right away. She spent an hour fiddling with the yarn and needles, trying to remind herself how to do something she hadn’t done in decades. As soon as she had the basic stitch figured out, she showed me what to do.

I spent hours mastering the basic stitch of knitting. As I worked on my scarf, knitting quickly became more than a means to an end. I started knitting just to knit. Knitting became a part of who I am.

Tom Baker’s Doctor and that ridiculous scarf inspired me to learn to knit, and now I never want to stop.