Cèilidh Nam Freumhan

Category: Learning & Study Journey

  • Practice is Passable

    Practice is Passable

    Normally, I don’t post something the day I actually do it. But today, I was especially frustrated because I don’t feel like I’m making progress.

    I bought some chipboard so I could try working with a more professional material. I’m still using printer paper for now, as I want to get this down before I start using my nice paper.

    I made six signatures with five sheets of paper each. I wanted to make sure the stitching was visible, so I got out the waxed thread that came with my upholstery repair kit and threaded a bookbinding needle.

    The waxed thread is very difficult to manage. I couldn’t keep tension, and I think it’s just too thick for bookbinding. I got to the third signature and realized I wouldn’t have enough thread for the other three, so I decided to just sew on the cover and call it good.

    And of course…I was about 1/2″ short.

    Then I got out some embroidery floss, which is too thick for the bookbinding needles. I was able to thread a curved needle, which seems like a great option for this type of binding. However, I haven’t worked with a curved needle before, and I kept dropping it.

    I made sure I had plenty of thread this time. So obviously, it got tangled, and I had to start over for the fifth time. (I left out some retries because they’re really not important in the grand scheme of things.)

    I finally got four signatures plus the cover secured. Yet even though I blamed the waxed thread for the tension issues, it was me all along.

    Thus, the cover lies flat, but only because the stitching is so loose.

    I started this blog because I wanted to share the learning process, which includes days of frustration and failure. Though I suppose nothing is truly a failure if you manage to learn something along the way.

    Maybe I’ll do a Tunisian crochet thing next…even though I know I have tension issues there, too!

    Practice makes passable for now.

  • My Interests are Taking Over My Desk

    My Interests are Taking Over My Desk

    I believe I have mentioned before that I find a topic, obsess over it for a while, then totally forget about it.

    Right now, it is Baldur’s Gate 3.

    I bought the game right after it came out, along with a Steam Deck, played for about three weeks, and then my Steam Deck sat untouched until about a year ago. So obviously, now that I am obsessed with Baldur’s Gate 3 again, I started playing it on my PC instead. The Steam Deck is busy with my other game.

    I have been reading the D&D Player’s Handbook for the past week so I can get a better idea of how to set up my character in BG3. I also bought Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide because there is some lore I am lacking.

    Have my notes evolved into yet another commonplace book? You bet they have.

    In a week or two, I will probably be able to rattle off any number of feats, backgrounds, classes, and spells. In two months, I will be focused on something else entirely. It’s just how it is with me.

    This is, of course, happening right after I bought a new desk with about twice as much real estate as the old one. My monitor is pretty big, so before, there wasn’t room for much besides a keyboard and mouse.

    Naturally, I am already covering the new desk.

    I started more Jewish studies, so that notebook is sitting on top of the related binder and my current book. Then there is my garden compendium. I 3D printed two desk organizers. Of course I also had to make room for my cat Post-It dispenser.

    And more pens. Always more pens.

    I also have a hankering to make some notebooks, but I am waiting on a Teflon bone folder, which should arrive tomorrow. Given the current state of my desk, what I clearly need is more notebooks.

    In the meantime, my paladin has work to do.

    Photo by Stephen Hardy on Pexels.com

  • Why Did I Start Making Study Guides?

    When I was working on my master’s degree, I also had to learn how to use Chicago/Turabian citations. Before that, I’d had classes that required MLA and APA, but Chicago/Turabian turned out to be a whole different beast. No matter how hard I tried, I always seemed to lose a point or two because I’d gotten something wrong.

    When it came time to write my thesis, I decided I wasn’t dealing with that anymore. Every time I accessed a source, I wrote down everything about it: title, author(s), publication date, publisher, and anything else I might need. Then I wrote down the correct format for the first footnote, subsequent footnotes, and the bibliography.

    That meant that when I was actually writing, I could just write. I didn’t have to stop every few minutes to figure out how I was supposed to cite something and potentially lose my train of thought. And when the paper itself was finished, dealing with the citations was a whole lot easier.

    A few months ago, I found myself thinking, “I wish I’d had something like this way back when…” And then the lightbulb went off. Why not make it? If it made my life easier, maybe I could save someone else from suffering through the same thing.

    As it turns out, making the templates took more time than learning Chicago/Turabian in the first place.

    I had to jump straight into the deep end with Scribus, the open-source design tool I’d found. I have to admit, I said some fairly offensive words to Scribus during the process, but luckily it’s not a person I’d have to apologize to later.

    I can’t say that I’ve beaten Scribus, mastered it, or even reached anything resembling ease of use, but I at least remembered to save my completed pages as templates so I don’t continue to tear out my hair.

    Photo by Eli Sommer on Pexels.com
  • I Like Knowing Things

    I Like Knowing Things

    One of the things I’ve realized this year is that I don’t really collect hobbies.

    From the outside, it probably looks like I bounce from one thing to another. Gardening. Bookbinding. Norwegian. Citation templates. Herbs. Cocktails. Ancient history.

    They’re all over the place.

    To me, though, they’re all the same hobby.

    I like understanding how things work.

    The garden has made that clearer than anything else. Before this year, companion planting was something I’d read about. Soil composition was something I’d heard people discuss. Medicinal herbs were mostly names in books.

    Now I get to watch it happen.

    I’m seeing why one bed dries out faster than another. Why some plants seem happier next to certain neighbors. Which herbs attract pollinators and which ones don’t. Which vegetables struggle through a heat wave while others barely notice. It’s no longer just biology in a textbook. It’s biology happening in my backyard.

    That’s probably why my garden is organized the way it is. It isn’t the most efficient layout, and I’ve certainly spent more time weeding because of it. But separating plants by water needs, companion planting, shade, and other variables lets me see what works and what doesn’t. I’m treating the garden as one giant experiment.

    The same thing happens with my other projects.

    I didn’t start making notebooks because I thought notebooks were too expensive. I started because I wanted to understand how books are made. Every mistake teaches me something, and every notebook gets a little better than the last.

    I originally started learning Norwegian because I had a reason to. Somewhere along the way, though, the language became the reward. I enjoy the grammar, I enjoy listening to it, and I was ridiculously proud of myself for using it in Oslo, even if it was only a little.

    The citation bundles might be the clearest example of all. I don’t enjoy formatting bibliographies. I enjoy solving problems, and I kept thinking about how much easier graduate school would have been if I’d had something like this on my desk.

    Maybe that’s why all of these projects seem connected to me, even if they don’t to anyone else.

    I’m not really collecting hobbies.

    I’m collecting understanding.

    woman surrounded by books and studying on her bed
    Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com
  • How Many Notebooks is too Many?

    How Many Notebooks is too Many?

    I first learned about commonplace books while reading the second book of A Discovery of Witches. It sounded like such a cool idea.

    I immediately found an unused notebook in my inventory and started carrying it around.

    I had been told that one simply writes down anything interesting. Unfortunately, I wasn’t finding anything interesting at first, and every time I wrote something down, it felt forced.

    A few months ago—maybe a year, time has ceased to have meaning—I started a bullet journal again. Instead of writing down things I needed to do or making trackers, it slowly turned into a commonplace book.

    I started devoting entire sections to things I was interested in: four pages on whisky, seven pages on Gàidhlig grammar, and assorted bits of trivia that appealed to me for reasons known only to my brain.

    Eventually, I had to start making separate notebooks. I simply had too many interests to fit into one.

    As far as I can remember, I currently have notebooks for:

    • Baseball
    • Gàidhlig
    • Norwegian
    • One for a game I am playing but refuse to admit to publicly
    • Religious studies
    • Gardening adventures (which covers enough topics to qualify as several notebooks by itself)

    And I still have many blank notebooks waiting to be filled.

    So how many notebooks is too many?

    Like the question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

    Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com
  • Middle Age is Realizing You Can Just Learn Weird Things

    Middle Age is Realizing You Can Just Learn Weird Things

    I think a lot of us are taught that life follows a fairly straightforward path: go to college right after high school, find a career, and work forty or more hours a week until retirement. I never really followed that plan, and for a long time I felt like I had somehow done life incorrectly.

    As I have gotten older, though, I have realized that the things I didn’t do made me different in a way that I actually appreciate. I have always been curious, and I finally feel like I have given myself permission to simply learn things because they interest me.

    So these days I find myself learning crafts, bookbinding, languages, gardening, and even some homesteading skills. There is always some new rabbit hole waiting to be explored.

    Not always having steady work has certainly been stressful, but it has also taught me that life is about more than giving decades of yourself to an employer who may never appreciate you the way you deserve. There is value in creating things, learning things, and following your curiosity.

    At this point, if something sounds interesting, I want to try it. Some people may think that is strange, and perhaps it is. But I enjoy it, and I like the idea of keeping my mind active and open to new experiences.

    Maybe I am making up for lost time. Or maybe I am finally becoming the person I was always meant to be.

    Either way, I think Hannah Montana had it right:

    “Life’s what you make it.”

    Photo by Paweu0142 L. on Pexels.com
  • The Case for Overcomplicating Things

    The Case for Overcomplicating Things

    I have a tendency to overcomplicate things. At least, that is probably how it appears from the outside. But for me, I usually have to do things the “hard way” if I want them to work at all.

    For example, I grouped my garden into separate beds based on companion planting, water needs, shade requirements, and a variety of other factors. That left a lot of space in between them that still isn’t completely weeded and is taking a massive amount of time.

    But all of that was necessary if I wanted to see what works and what doesn’t. I already know that I can’t plant anything close to the quince-from-hell, and that apparently I can kill peppermint where I intentionally planted it, but not the peppermint that insists on growing literally everywhere else in the garden.

    I have notebooks for language learning. I keep lists of cocktail ideas. I have spent an unreasonable amount of time designing printables. I make tables, draw diagrams, and write down things that many people would simply trust themselves to remember.

    I don’t think the complexity is the problem. I think it is how I learn.

    I need to do things in a way that helps me not only learn, but remember what I learned and how I learned it.

    Paying attention applies to just about everything I do instead of blindly hoping for success.

    I have always felt the need to break things down and figure out how they work. I have never been able to simply memorize phrases and words in other languages because I need to know why something is spelled one way with one pronoun and differently when the pronoun changes.

    I enjoy creating systems. I love finding patterns. That might mean I have more notebooks than most people find necessary.

    Some days I will spend hours writing down Norwegian grammar rules and lists of reflexive verbs. Other days I will spend hours drawing diagrams of different baseball pitches.

    What looks complicated to others simply feels interesting to me.

    The goal was never perfection.

    It was understanding.

    And if understanding occasionally requires a little overcomplication, I think that’s a trade-off worth making.

    Mass communication complicated issues Karl by libraryofcongress is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0
  • Building a Language Compendium

    Building a Language Compendium

    I hit Norwegian hard before my trip and ultimately got burned out. One thing that came out of it, though, was an idea I really liked: a language-learning compendium.

    Obviously, I started with basics like articles, gender, common verbs, and conjugations. But I also wanted to add things that I knew would help me personally.

    For example, I struggle with vocabulary recall, especially when I’m nervous. What I ended up doing was asking ChatGPT to give me short readings at my current level. I would write down words I didn’t know, look up their meanings, and add them to the compendium. Writing them down helps force them to stick in my memory.

    I write everything in pencil first, then go back over it in pen. Studies have shown that handwriting notes helps retention, and after years of trying different methods, I know that writing things down works better for me than typing.

    Right now, I am diving deeper into grammar, like modal verbs, and writing down common phrases and usage notes. I still burn out from time to time, but I am really enjoying the process.

    I am also not sure why I am studying so hard, since I keep second-guessing whether I will ever be able to move to Oslo.

    But I know myself.

    I just can’t stop learning.

    Even if other people think what I’m learning is useless.

    book open to basic Norwegian grammar rules
    Basic grammar rules and commonly used verbs.
  • The Night They Put Lime in My Sazerac

    The Night They Put Lime in My Sazerac

    A few years ago, I decided to start making my own cocktails at home.

    There were several reasons for this. First, paying $15 for a cocktail is ridiculous. Second, too many bars serve inconsistent drinks. And third, there is nothing more disappointing than ordering a favorite cocktail and getting something completely out of balance.

    The final push came on my birthday.

    My spouse and I visited a local speakeasy that I had enjoyed before. It was a charming place: Prohibition-era cocktails, a small intimate room, and a password required to get through the door. Unfortunately, this visit was memorable for all the wrong reasons.

    My spouse asked the bartender a question about one of the top-shelf bourbons. The bartender pulled the bottle down and slammed it onto the bar without saying a word. From that point forward, things only got worse. Our cocktails arrived in the wrong glassware, and they weren’t made correctly. At one point, my Sazerac arrived with lime in it.

    A Sazerac.

    With lime.

    Some crimes cannot be forgiven.

    On the way home, we stopped at a liquor store. I bought a few bottles and decided that if I wanted a proper Sazerac, I was going to learn how to make one myself.

    It turned out to be one of the better decisions I’ve made.

    Around that same time, I had watched far too many episodes of Bar Rescue. For all its drama, the show taught me something important: balance matters. A bartender who pours extra liquor into your drink isn’t necessarily doing you a favor. Every ingredient is there for a reason. The goal is not to taste the alcohol; the goal is to create something where the ingredients work together.

    The more I learned, the more I noticed inconsistencies when I went out. At one upscale restaurant in town, I watched a bartender make two copies of the same specialty cocktail. They came out noticeably different shades of green. That should never happen. A cocktail should look and taste the same every single time.

    These days, I have a growing collection of bar tools: jiggers, pour spouts, bar spoons, mixing glasses, strainers, and pretty much everything else a home bartender could want.

    And before anyone says it: a pony is not a jigger.

    A pony measures 1 ounce and 1/2 ounce. A jigger measures 2 ounces and 1 ounce. I will die on this hill.

    I use those tools, too. Every pour gets measured. Every recipe gets followed. Consistency matters.

    For what it’s worth, I make a heck of a Sazerac.

    Historical reenactment.
  • Too Many Interests, Not Enough Lifetimes

    Too Many Interests, Not Enough Lifetimes

    woman writing in a book while holding knitting needles with a water canner next to her.
    This is not an actual photo of me – credit to ChatGPT for the image generation.

    I have spent years feeling inadequate because there is so much I want to learn that I eventually become overwhelmed and end up touching none of it.

    At the moment, I am studying four languages. I am still in the phase where my brain immediately reverts to French because it was the first language I learned outside of English.

    There are currently four commonplace books in my bag. One of them is completely blank, just in case.

    I carry a pen case full of stationery tools I “might need,” along with a Kindle Scribe.

    I want to write a dissertation on the Scottish Highlands around the time of Culloden. Or perhaps another period of Highland history. I still cannot decide.

    I want to learn to knit so I can make beautiful sweaters and shawls.

    I am trying to grow my own food and learn how to can it, partially because gardening fascinates me and partially because apparently some part of my brain is preparing for a zombie apocalypse.

    I want to make paper and ink.

    I am going to spin my own yarn someday and dye it using plants I have grown myself.

    I am designing a planner that actually fits the way I think and work instead of settling for something mass-produced.

    I am binding notebooks by hand because it turns out I genuinely enjoy it.

    For a long time, all of this made me feel like a failure. I constantly felt behind. Surely, if I were more disciplined, more focused, or more organized, I would already be proficient at half these things.

    Eventually, though, I realized something important:

    You cannot dedicate your entire life to mastering dozens of subjects simultaneously.

    Some seasons of life are for language learning. Some are for gardening. Some are for theology, history, sewing, bookbinding, or note-taking systems.

    Some days I spend hours studying Torah. Other days I spend six straight hours documenting Norwegian vocabulary and grammar rules in my learning compendium like a Victorian scholar who has just discovered Scandinavia.

    And honestly? That is fine.

    I have stopped trying to force myself into becoming a hyper-efficient machine optimized for productivity and mastery at all times.

    Now I mostly try to ride the wave of whatever is currently lighting up my brain.

    The interests eventually circle back around anyway.

    You do not have to learn everything at once.

    You just have to stay curious enough to keep returning to the things you love.