Bits and pieces

Not only was I too tired-of-brain to blog yesterday, I was apparently too tired to actually post the entry I cobbled together from across the web. So here it is now. Enjoy!

Bitch, Ph.D. has a tremendous and insightful post on nice guys and bitchy women.

"Getting students to do great work is the easy part. Getting them to write it up is the hard part." --Organizer Person
"Well said" -- Advisor

Two finds from this week's Christian Carnival:

Jami has a nice meditation on why parents should let children help which seems to be relevant to the advisor-student relationship as well as the parent-child relationship. Anyway, I appreciate my advisor's "letting me help" in this way; I'm old enough now to know that it's sort of a fiction, but it's a useful fiction.

Rolling Stone has an interesting article on "The Young and the Sexless". The author seems bemused, but makes a rather successful effort to be fair and understanding. Christian Carnival also links to Jeremy's commentary on the article, which links to Jeremy Lott's commentary on the article.

And, from The Yarn Harlot's post on beginning spinning, some thoughts that apply to beginnings in general:

Cassie wrote about the new spinners urge to save good stuff for later, when you are a better spinner, and how she didn't really get behind that theory a whole lot. I couldn't agree more.

While (clearly) I have no issues with hoarding lovely fibres (and clearly, neither does Cassie) until their day comes, I also think that there is a great deal to be said for learning to spin with the best materials you can afford.
Nobody needs to be hindered by things that are barely usable, and nobody needs to feel that they are a crappy spinner (or just more crappy than they actually are, since we all suck in the beginning and it is only the length of time that we are sucking for that is really variable among learners). Good fibre makes good yarn.

Good things inspire you. Good things get you to try harder. Good fibre actually helps you spin. Beautiful fibre gives you something to live up to.

Crap fibre depresses you, frustrates you and encourages you to give up and (in the less determined) could cause a fledgling spinner to wander off entirely, thinking that they obviously aren't meant for this...given that they keep turning out crap yarn. Even the best spinner is going to end up with crap yarn if you start with crap fibre, except at least they are going to know why they apparently suck so hard.