Squeee!

A few squee-worthy announcements:

I was accepted into the University of Maryland's MLS program.

I was accepted into Indiana University's MLS program.

I bought an iMac and it arrived this morning.  BEST reason to get out of bed EVER.  Also, I now love my FedEx man.  (When I orderd my iPod last year, neither I or my roommates were ever home when they tried to deliever it.  I had to sign for the package, which is fine, but I was not willing to presign for it and have them leave it on the floor outside of my door - anyone could have walked off with it.  To make a short story not as long as I could (ok, that sounded better in my head.), FedEx ended up giving my cell phone number to the driver, who called me and gave me a 20 minutes head's-up so I could skip out of class early.  Same guy delievered the iMac this morning, and thus, I love him.)

Oh, and details for those who like to know such things:
24" display, 2.8 GHz processor, 500gig hard drive, 2gig memory, nice graphics card.. the works.

It is pretty and shiny and I love it.  Best of all?  I shall not need Vista! Really, my hatred for Visita is irrational and at least partially unfounded, but it remains as is.  I refuse to change for those who have come to accept Vista as the latest OS for their computer.  Me?  I just bought a computer that is at least a few hundred dollars more expensive then a comparative system running on Windows.  Cause that makes sense in my mind.

Anyway.

Also, I finished a sock that I was knitting for a friend.  Because I loved the colors of the yarn so, I took the leftovers and knit a blanket square. 4", starting with one stitch and increasing one stitch every row until I have four inches, then decreasing every row.  Most boring knitting ever, and I loved every second of it.  I'm hoping I get a similar amount of yarn left over from the second sock, so I will have TWO squares.  I know, the excitement is killing me as well.

I ripped and re-started the second Rotating Rib sock.  Still no idea if I'll have enough yarn, and yes, I realise this is a reason to knit toe-up but I hate knitting toe-up and please see above, re: irrational hatred of things I should not (necessarily) hate. But, I did three fewer repeats on the leg this time around and am willing to go back and chop off three repeats from the other sock as needed.  If I don't need the yarn for the socks, maybe I can make another square.

The square making?  It is a sickness.  I know understand Ann and Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting.

No pictures yet, for I have yet to attempt to contect my digital camera to the shiny new computer.  That, and the printer, ought to be connected, but I'm having such fun downloading my Absolutely Must Have Programs, such as AIM (well, actually, Adium) and Opera.  Next, FireFox, for I strongly feel that every computer should have three web browsers.  And now I am just happy that IE is NOT one of my options.  Take that, crappy web browser that is dead and sucks!  (Again, the hatred.  I apologize, but really people? Do you LIKE Internet Explorer or do you just not have a choice or what?  I am confused.)

I just realized that I have a number pad again!  Number pad, I love you.  You make typing addresses and such so much easier.

Oh, back to the squee-worthy stuff:

I seem to have gotten my knitting mojo back.  Apparently, all it took was that square.  I've finished more than two repeats (out of 17 that makes up one half, so really, I've done like, nothing) of Print O The Wave and it is pretty and I love it. (Does anyone else sense a theme here?)    I have, on occasion, knit the same row three times before figuring out that the mistake must be in the pattern row one down, and so tinked all the way to that row to fix the problem, oh, three or four times now, but I am content.

And apparently, I am a process knitter, for I am knitting for the sake of knitting lace that is pretty, not something that I'll ever use.  And that is ok.

Ok, back to moving things from one computer to the other and playing with my new toy.  And eventually, I suppose I ought to go to class and take a quiz.

A List, of Sorts.

I'm currently frustrated with EVERYTHING I am knitting and thus, attempting to decide what else to work on.

Eagle's Flight sock? Oh, right - I LOST IT. I am still attempting to find yarn to knit a mate for the first one. Anyone have Opal 4-Ply Uni Solid in color 1263 just sitting around, waiting to be useful? Let me know.

Rotating Rib: I don't know if I have enough yarn to complete these. Which - wha? The cuffs, they are only 6" long. Sure, it is a rib, and that uses a little more yarn, but really? I got past the heel and then realized that I think I used the wrong sized needle, because something was off with the size. So, I ripped and am starting again, this time with a larger needle. I am also holding out hope that this will magically increase the amount of yarn so I have enough.

Sizzle: The knitting is finished. Now, I just have to seem it. I started the seeming ... and something went wrong. The two sides appear to be different lengths. To which - wha? So I put it in time out.

Print O' The Wave: Oh, yeah. In a fit of "I have nothing to knit, oh no!" I started Eunny's Print O' the Wave in some of this. So far, so good? Maybe? I think I missed up the invisible cast on on the 38th (And final!) try. Not sure if I'll have 80 stitches with to knit the other half. We shall see. Also, this requires reading the chart, and thus, is for tv watching. I'm not sure about class, but I think it might require too much counting. Maybe if I printed the chart WITH the repeated section four times? I dunno, but not so much with that right now either.

So, I leave you with a picture of the snow taken at 4am from my balcony. I have no idea how this actually turned out cause there's not a lot of light at 4am and I was shivering, but oh, do I like it. It was calm and peaceful and you could hear the snow. And then you could hear the old beat up pickup truck attempting to get out of his parking spot and failing miserably, but that's one of the joys of living next to a parking lot, no?

Apparently, the universe has a sense of humor

I'll admit that I'm fairly lucky and rarely get pimples or break out.

So I had to laugh when I finally got a giant red zit right smack on the end of my nose - I'd been waiting for that to happen, since every one seems to have a "giant zit that no can ignore!" story.

And then... while staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, I found my first gray hair.  On the same day I got my first giant zit.

Getting older is so much fun.

Lost: One Sock in Progress

I lost my sock, people. Sock, the rest of the yarn, and a set of bamboo double pointed needles. I AM NOT HAPPY ABOUT THIS.

I know for sure that I had the sock with me in class last Monday. I have a memory of shoving it (gently) into my bookbag at the end of class, but not of zipping up my bookbag. Then, I took my bookbag to work on Tuesday and pulled out two books and the newspaper, but not the sock. I suppose the sock could have fallen out while doing so, but ... I think I would have seen that happen, as my bookbag was hanging on a coat rack at the time.

I didn't realize my sock was missing until Wednesday, when I went to leave for class and checked to make sure that I had something to knit during class. I haven't found it in my shoe box of an apartment, so I'm thinking I lost it.

I went to Lost and Found on Thursday, but explaining what a sock in progress looks like to the clueless girl behind the counter? Was not easy. Tomorrow, I shall return again, with the completed sock and say "It looks like this. Just without a toe. And 5 needles. And a ball of yarn (hopefully) attached."

I looked around at work, no luck. I think they have a separate lost and found, but I'm not sure if anyone would have .. found it. It would have been under the coat rack and that's not a regularly cleaned place.

What does one do with a completed sock, when one has literally LOST THE YARN for the second sock? I think I wrote down the color for the yarn, but not the dye-lot. Also? Am not checking for I do not wish to learn that I did not record the color in any way, shape, or fashion.

I'm thinking I shall have to beg for someone else's remains of said color of yarn. And hope that dye-lots are not too far apart. I think I might weigh the completed sock so I know about how much yarn I would need, plus a bit for casting on and grafting the toes. Think I can do that at the post office and take a picture without getting in trouble?

Um, so, about that blogging thing?

Given the number of times in the last week that I have idly wondered why I felt so ill around 11:30pm only to realize that I had eaten a handful of cereal back around 11:30am and NOTHING SINCE, I'm also not too suprised with the lack of knitting.

Well, the lack of knitting OUTSIDE of class, that is.  Sadly, taking notes does not lend itself well to knitting, nor does class participation.

I'll be back when I can remember to eat more than one meal a day and can get myself back onto a sleep cycle that does not involve falling asleep in the AM and waking in the PM.

Sad, but true.

I realised tonight that tomorrow, I will do the dishes because there are no more clean spoons and all the dirty spoons are at the bottom of the pile in the sink.

And how else is one supposed to eat ice cream, I ask?  Or at least, serve it, because the ice cream scoop is currently somewhere in the midst of that pile as well.

Why I Will Never Fall Asleep before 3am for Spring 2008

(picture at the bottom for those who wish to skim.  Not that I blame you.)


This semester is going to kill me.  At the very least, it is going to kill my sleep cycle.

I only have class three days a week.  Three days in a row, even.  A three hour class on religious conversion in the Early Modern world of the Middle East on Monday.  An hour class on research methods on Tuesday, followed by a frantic dash  across campus to my car to meet a classmate and drive 1.9miles to the local YMCA for an hour and a half of rock climbing.  And a three hour class on ethnicity and class on Wednesday.

There's also a web-based class, for which I have five exams and two papers.   Oh, and attending five events held at my place of employment.  No, I see no problems with saying "sorry, can't work then.  Instead, I have to spend my paycheck on tickets for that event."  (just a tad bitter about that one, huh.)

There's also that pesky little thing called my "undergraduate honors thesis."  Which is due April 18th.  People, I HAVE NOT YET STARTED.  I have to write 40? 80? however many pages by April 18th.  Good news is, binding margins are 1.5" on the left hand side.  I shall love that half an inch, I imagine.

I think ten pages a week until spring break is TOTALLY reasonable and doable and yes?  No?  Should I just go cry in a corner now and forget all about it?

The research methods class, while also promising to be very boring and good lord, that woman talks a lot, seems like it will help me with my thesis.  The class is designed for honors students to have help with the research part of their thesis, or even deciding on their thesis topic.  Hopefully, that shall provide a nice kick in the butt to get working.

There's also the whole "applying to grad school" thing.  Because I decided to apply rather late in the game, I didn't have time to study and take the GREs.  I found four highly respected and ALA accredited programs that do NOT require GRE scores from students with a certain GPA (or higher).  Universities of Illinois, Maryland, and Wisconsin and the Indiana University.  My first pick is decidedly Illinois, and of course, that's the only one that's complete as of yet.  Of course, that's also the school with the earliest deadline and such. After that.. I don't know.  Maryland is close to TheBoy and rent, for a not-nicely-located-to-class studio apartment will be some $800 a month.

Illinois?  Three blocks from campus, hard-wood floors, fire place, dishwasher, utilities included, and I can have a cat?  $550 a month.  For a one bedroom.  That I wouldn't have to share.  And includes parking.  AND a washing machine and dryer.  That's just from scanning Craig's List, people.  Imagine what I could find if I tried!

Of course, there's that part about whole writing essays and trying to pimp yourself, at which I suck.  "Accept me because otherwise, I will live in a cardboard box.  Also, I can read."  That's pretty much what I want to write, but somehow, I don't feel the admissions committee is going to love it.

In summary:
Four day weekend = awesome
Three day week, with classes starting at 2:30pm = not getting up before noon
Thesis = the death of me
Applying to grad school = pimpage of self, at which self sucks

Time for a kitty picture?


(This is Kit, known as the World's Most Opinionated Cat.  I'm surprised her mouth was shut in this shot, because she was NOT happy with the camera in her face.  Hence the squinted eye.  And the tail, which was most decidedly twitching.)

Back to Our Irregularly Scheduled Knitting

So, knitting.. I've been doing a bit of that of late.

First, I finished a hat in a few days:


Odessa, by Grumperina. I used left-over Andean Treasure from knitting Blaze. Less than one ball later, I have a warm and fuzzy head covering. Only problem, it doesn't cover my ears. I'm considering picking up and knitting a longer ribbed band, to hopefully cover my ears. So far, I've just been wearing the hat.

I omitted the beads because I didn't have any and I wanted a hat NOW. I love the different orientation the stripes take, just by the increases and decreases. It was a fun, quick knit and I got to try out my new KnitPick Options kit. (Which, by the way, I LOVE. LOVE.)

And then.. the first of the Eagle's Flight Socks:

I've even cast on for the second sock. I really like this pattern - it is a six round repeat, and half of the repeat is simply knitting or purling the stitches as they appear. I tried something different on the heels for this sock - I like the results.


It is a little hard to tell in that picture, so I highlighted the changes with blue in this one:Looking at all of my purchased socks, I realized that many of them had a weird y-shape in their short-row heels. I figured that they knit a normal short row heel as normal, wrapping and turning as they worked towards the middle. When I had about 1/3 of the stitches wrapped, I started working back out the normal way - double wrapping, then picking up and knitting the two wraps and double wrapping the next stitch. I did that for four stitches total - two on each side, and then started decreasing again - single wrap and then turn around and head back to the other side again. I re-worked the four stitches I had worked earlier, then continued normally again.

I realize that doesn't exactly make sense, but I'm not sure how else to explain it. Has anyone seen this type of heel before? Instructions for it? Once you understand how to knit a short row heel, I think it makes sense.

But that results in the y-shape and helps the heel really cup around your heel. It isn't that much more work, but the sock fits a bit better. A few socks I've knit with short-row heels ended up a little tight in the heel/instep area, and this seems to fix that problem. All in all, I'm looking forward to wearing these socks.

I realize that there are holes in my heel. I've only recently realized that you're supposed to knit the wraps as you work back out. I've tried it a few times, and never liked the look. So I tend not to do so. I recently got a copy of New Pathways For Sock Knitters, so I'm going to try those instructions and try that. But the holes are a result of the way I personally deal with the wraps, not the addition of my "y." So don't like that keep you from trying it yourself.

Look at the pretty scalloped edges that the pattern creates at the top, too:

What I did over my Christmas Vacation...

Anyone else remember those annoying essays you had to write in elementary school, about what you did over summer/winter vacation? Now that I'm older, I actually have interesting stuff to write about for such an essay.

First, we redid the kitchen floor the Sunday before Christmas. My mother visited for Christmas, driving up from VA, and one of her pet peeves with my father is his promises to do something and then... not doing it. When they bought the house 30 years ago, he promised her a new kitchen. So far, the floor is the closest he's gotten to delivering on that promise and it happened a year after she moved out.

My dad bought himself a Scooba, because he hates to clean the kitchen floor. Saturday night, we put Scooba to work and he did an awesome job cleaning a kitchen floor that had not been cleaned in a year. Vacuumed yes, but mopped? Nope, no way in hell. Scooba did such a great job that my father decided Scooba should have a new floor. (My mother, she did not find that funny because she does a better job than Scooba and she never got a new floor.)

We'd invited my best friend and her mother over for Christmas Dinner that night, and to exchange gifts between them and Mom, as she had to drive back on Christmas day. They were due to show up around 6:30 or so.

First, we ended up in Lowes around 8:30am, to purchase industrial floor tile, paste, wall coving, etc. Then we had to rip up the old flooring:


You can see why we all hated that floor. Ugly, ugly color, and it had worn completely through to the subfloor in a couple of spots. It came up pretty easily, and often in one piece. Then we placed screws along the seams of the plywood that was the underfloor, to make the floor surface more level. (I say "more level" cause that floor is not going to be level unless they completely redo EVERYTHING.)


In this picture, you can see the entirety of the kitchen, and why my mother wanted a new one. On the left side, you see the built in oven. On the right side, towards the bottom, you see the fridge. Doorways into and out of the kitchen are next to each of those, and then two blank walls finish the "box" of a kitchen. Because of the doors, you can only place the table in the far corner from which I took that picture. I think it would be easier to have two people in my current hallway of a kitchen than it is to have two people cooking in the kitchen at home. In other words, it sucks. Also, that's all the storage space available in that kitchen, and the only counter space is above the dishwasher. And no, I don't know why the dishwasher is missing its front panel.


My dad placed the first few tiles, and I ended up doing the rest as he cut the edge tiles to fit. My sister took over my camera and took a couple of action shots. The title is industrial tile, and you'll find it in grocery stores, schools, hospitals, etc. That particular color actually goes fairly well with the rest of the house, if not the kitchen. But then, we need a new kitchen, so whatever.


The final project, with new plastic wall coving, new title


Here you can see the other two walls of the kitchen and HOW USELESS OF A DESIGN it is. Also, the microwave cart that we bought around the time we first got a microwave. I think we used to store the doors underneath the cart. Here, I was standing in the one doorway. The fridge is on my right. At the end of the wall that the table is against is the other doorway, perpendicular to the oven.

Tina and her mother showed up around 6:30, as promised. However.. no one had started dinner yet, because we were still working on the floor. In the end, we didn't tile under the fridge that day, but went around with wet paper towels and mineral spirits, trying to clean up the glue that oozed up between tiles as we walked on the floor and then got tracked everywhere. Tina ended up throwing out those socks and my mother had to spend some quality time with the mineral spirits and her shoes.


(On Christmas Day, after my mother left, my dad and I tiled behind the fridge. Tina and her mother came over for dinner AGAIN, that day. And again, they found us on our hands and knees in the kitchen, covered in sticky stuff.)

I still haven't taken a picture of the current sock project...

...so you get pictures of a project finished awhile ago.

I started another pair of Monkeys back in the beginning of November and finished by Thanksgiving.  As they're meant to be a Christmas gift (along with Bayerische), I finished them and then.. then they sat.  And looked cute, and very green, but I figured I ought to come up with a way to wrap them up.

I looked for sock wrappers or sock gift tags and found nothing.  (Google, how could you fail me?)  So I ended up opening a Word document (something I'm avoiding because it is the end of the semester and thus, I have papers to write.  The logic, it is perfect) and created my own.

See?

I am brillant at photographing white stuff.

I was all excited cause I even got to pull out my box of crayons and color in the holly leaves and berries.  (Also, I was being Productive and yet, not writing Papers.  How could that be a bad thing!?)

Also, I drew the lines in the holly leaves by hand.  

They are for TheBoy's mother, because she really liked the Monkeys I knit for myself, I really wanted to knit another pair of monkeys, and she gave me a Christmas present last year that I was totally not expecting, and thus, failed to give her something in return.  So I knit a pair of socks, with color suggestions from TheBoy (Green.  Just ... green.) and I'm gonna wrap them and sneak them under the tree and hope I don't see her at all from Christmas til January 14th, when classes start.  (Of course, that's assuming she doesn't figure out that the handknit socks are from the ONE person she knows that knits and that TheBoy doesn't out me.)

(I really like parenthesis.  Can you tell?)

I don't do well with the whole "Oh, you shouldn't have!" response to gift-giving.  Maybe so, but I did, so can you just enjoy the darned things and we can move on and I can not be embarrassed anymore?

And my typical random picture that was pretty and I wanted to include, for no really reason at all:

Sunset at the barn a few weeks ago.