The Curriculum Of Curiosity | September Recap & Fall Learning Plans
If you checked out my last post, you know that I’ve recently come to the revelation that I can learn literally anything I want at any time (hello self-education era). The plan is for this to be a long term situation, or a lifetime of learning if you will.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been carefully curating exactly what topics I want to focus on this fall. In no specific order:
Poetry
I’m specifically focusing on two topics - Sylvia Plath, and long form poetry.
A few years ago, I bought The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath. I was drawn in by how she views life and success, as many of her views are similar to my own. I’m going to re-read the journals, and also listen to the audiobook for The Bell Jar. I aim to finish this by the end of September. As a white woman, I don’t feel qualified to speak on the racist undertones in The Bell Jar (especially since I haven’t read it yet), however I want to awknowledge that they are there. To study the art, sometimes we need to separate the artist, or separate the character from the author. I’ll touch more on this after I listen to the book.
Along with studying Plath, I’m also going to be studying long form poetry - specifically this book that I just thrifted a few days ago.
Contract Law
Last month, I finished my 8 week contract law course through Harvard X. I took this free online course to help familiarize myself with contract law for the book I’m writing. American contract law is similar to Canadian, however I plan on finding a Canadian course to take as well.
Ed X has a ton of free online courses that you can take, on a lot of different topics. I listened to the courses during down time at work, and they were really well done and easy to get through.
brown Bread & Homemade butter
Our bread maker died last month while making a particularly thick loaf of brown bread. It was my first time ever making brown bread, and the machine started smoking halfway through. Thankfully, we were able to save it by transferring the dough to two small loaf pans. The bread turned out perfectly, and it left me wondering if I could do this without a bread machine.
This fall, I’m going to learn everything I can about making brown bread. For those of you not on the east coast of Canada, I don’t mean whole wheat, I mean actual molasses brown bread.
While searching for a recipe, imagine my surprise when I discovered that this was an Atlantic Canada thing. Brown bread rolls are the ones everyone fights over at Thanksgiving. It’s the bread that makes you show up to your local bakery at opening to buy before they sell out.
In the next two months, I plan on learning the history of brown bread while trying different recipes until I find the best one.
Also, what goes better with brown bread than homemade butter? I’ll be making that too.
Sewing
This topic kind of snuck up on me, and I’m definitely in a hyperfixation with it, but it’s a lifetime skill that I’ll have forever, so I’m rolling with it.
Kris and I went to an estate sale last month, where I bought some Christmas linens. The handmade fabric placemats reminded me of something my nan had (I also recently inherited ruffle fabric placemats from my nan). This reminded me of other ruffle placemats I had seen online, and I began searching different websites for similar items.
To my dismay, I quickly discovered that the kind of placemats, table runners, and other linens I wanted weren’t super affordable. That’s when I got the bright idea that I could make it all myself, and thus the hyperfixation began.
After a week of reading reviews, watching TikTok videos on sewing, and agonizing over this purchase- I bought a sewing machine. Since buying it, I’ve had two people in my life say “well I have an old one you could have had” - so maybe I should have shared my hyperfixation with the world. Regardless, I’m excited to have a shiny new one with a user manual that will help me figure this out, since I haven’t touched a sewing machine since middle school home ec class. I’m sure you all remember the pyjama pants and shorts we made in middle school. I’m pretty sure mine fell apart shortly after making them.
This is the sewing machine I ended up buying. I will do a review on it once I’ve tried it for a while:
My planned sewing projects for this fall/ winter include:
Hemming Mason’s Halloween costume
Ruffle placemats
Stockings for Christmas
Scrunchies
Christmas ornaments
A lining for my Boat and Totes
Other
Those are the main topics for this Fall, however I’m also working on improving my health, so I’ve been reading some books on that. I’m going to save the full deep dive for winter/spring once I’m done with these topics.
If you’re in your self-education era, I would love to chat about what you’ve got on your list for this fall!
D