A Revelation

(EDIT: FORGET IT, ALETHIA! I’M POSTING THIS WITHOUT PICTURES. I’LL ADD THEM IF YOU EVER ACTUALLY SEND THEM! :P Pictures of knitting/spinning will come when I take them)

(this post has been written since Monday (by that I mean LAST MONDAY, the 23rd), but somebody *cough*ALETHIA*cough* didn’t email me lake pictures…)

This past weekend, I went with Alethia, her other half (henceforth to be known as Fuzzy), and another friend to Fuzzy’s house on one of the Finger Lakes. I was especially excited for it because we’re not getting to go to my favorite place in the world, my mom’s family’s house on Birch Island on Lake Winnepesaukee (of What About Bob? fame).

It was glorious. We waterskied, wakeboarded, and tubed:

PICS

PICS

PICS

We took the Glen Walk, which is basically walking up a stream that goes down several waterfalls which we had to climb up.

PICS

PICS

And somewhere along the way, I realized something – I think I’ve obtained a quality that I’ve admired in other people for a long time: I would describe myself as laid-back. I can pin down this transformation to the past year or so, but no more precisely. I’ve always loved and admired people who could be spontaneous, easy-going and fun-loving, and up for anything. I think, at least to some degree, I’ve obtained that.

I won’t hesitate to say that I used to be rather uptight. About lots of things. Stupid things. I mean, I still am a it – but I’ve loosened up a lot. I’ve never embarassed easily, but if somebody teased me, I used to get all defensive and irritating, but now I’m better about that – I can laugh at it. Or, I used to have a firmly preconceived notion in my head that I didn’t like hiking. But when we went for the Glen Walk (I capitalize it because it just seems to sound like that when people say it), I was more open-minded for some reason and instead of realizing halfway through that I was enjoying it, I had fun pretty much the whole time.

There are other examples that I won’t bore you with, but this realization is certainly a bit of a self-confidence boost.

The secret to this transformation? I think it is that I’ve confined my minor obsessiveness to less obtrusive aspects of my life – namely knitting. Also beasting sudoku puzzles and such…but mainly knitting. ;)

Now to knitting – the Mystery Shawl continues! I chose chart B for Clue 2, and I’ve gotten through the first few rounds finished the entire clue in one day, although I’m guessing this will be the last one with which I’ll be able to do that:

P.S. Other developments during the LONG period between writing this post and getting the rest of the pictures for it:

• My spinning wheel (Lendrum DT) has been named Lenny
• I’m attempting to spin sock yarn I finished a skein of sort-of sock yarn which turned out to be 207 yards and a bit heavier than sock weight – I might be able to get a pair of socks out of it…
• I’ve developed a slight obsession with socks due to the Knitter’s Magazine contest
• My summer is essentially gone – summer in the sense of sleeping in and lazing about, that is – music camp for a week, seven-week internship, week-long trip, then school again…

PROM?!

Yes. Indeed.

There was a corsage. No date, but a corsage nonetheless…(not my idea)

And a trippy limo.

We went for hibachi. It was incredibly tasty.

People looked like dinosaurs trying to catch riceballs.

And of course, the classic ‘onion volcano.’

Alethia’s other half had fabulous socks.

So fabulous that my incipient sock needed to pose with one.

Why yes, I did knit in the limo. Not surprising.

I also danced. And eventually enjoyedd it. THAT was surprising. Apologies for the horribly edited photo – I had to brighten it a bunch.

One fabulous hat to top it off

Delirium

It finally got up past 60 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, and I had an epiphany – I’ve had cabin fever since about November. Seriously, when you’re used to feeling a certain way, you take it to be the norm. But then the Sun comes out and I feel like a plant – just soaking up endless energy! I feel so great, and just need to be outside. So yesterday, despite the gusting wind, I went rollerblading for about an hour. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the greatest workout since I’m not very good at it and couldn’t go so fast.

But remember the Ripstik I blogged about getting for Chanukkah? Well, today I took it out – at first, I could do approximately nothing. I couldn’t even stand up without clutching someone’s shoulders. But after a bit, I could start myself and coast down the slight incline of our street. It’s pretty nifty, and I think I’ll be playing with it more, hopefully eventually being able to keep myself going on a flat surface…

Oh  yeah, and Friday, I leave for Providence, RI for 2+ days – my music school is sending ten kids to do an improvisation demonstration. I’m really excited – I get to ride a huge bus with only 15ish other people for six hours with my friends!

Seriously. Euphoric delirium. Despite the still-bruised legs and butt and a 5-7 page history paper due next week…

P.S. I started the collar on the sweater…it’s chugging. Slowly. And not helped by my knitting ADD at the moment…

…because sometimes I feel like I have no life.

80% Barack Obama
78% Bill Richardson
76% Hillary Clinton
76% John Edwards
73% Chris Dodd
69% Dennis Kucinich
68% Joe Biden
66% Mike Gravel
45% Rudy Giuliani
41% Mitt Romney
38% John McCain
34% Tom Tancredo
30% Fred Thompson
29% Mike Huckabee
25% Ron Paul

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Teehee. I thought I was a little bit more moderate-leaning, but clearly not.

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Science/Math Nerd (Absolute Insane Laughter as you pour toxic chemicals into a foaming tub of death!) Well, maybe you aren’t this extreme, but you’re in league with the crazy scientists/mathmeticians of today. Very few people have the talent of math and science is something takes a lot of brains as well. Thank whosever God you worship, or don’t worship, so thank no deity whatsoever in your case, for you people! Most of us would have died off without your help.
Musician
Social Nerd
Literature Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Drama Nerd
Anime Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

No surprises here…although the artistic might’ve been a bit higher if there had been fiber art/crafty type questions. (EDIT: WordPress doesn’t seem to like the coding of the results for that one, but they’re presented in descending order, and yes, anime IS zero)

These quizzes were actually kind of interesting, to tell the truth.

In other news…

My sister’s hamster Java died awhile ago :(. Today she went to Petco to get a new critter to be a pal to Tesla (teensy hamster so named because she’s really hyper). She was going to get a guy and name it Edison to have a theme going on, but the lady there knew her and her devotion (obsession, really) with animals, small critters particularly, and she offered her the option to take home (for free) a 3-week old albino hamster that isn’t even weaned yet, but had been brought in without its mother. Addie’s so excited. She has to feed this little girl (we think it’s a girl) goat milk twice a day for a week or so, and I think it’s making her ambitions of becoming a vet come alive a bit. All fifth grade girls go through a phase where they want to be a vet, I think – but I don’t think my beloved sister is going to come out of it…

No pictures of the new critter yet, but trust me – she’s TINY. Literally about an inch and a half long. Anyways, one more quiz. This one creeps me out, no kidding…

What Is Your Name Supposed To Be? Your Result: Rachel Rachel- Hi Rachel, you probably the odd one out in your group, the different one. But thats good! You have your own taste and vibe, and your probably really cool! Thats why your personality name, is defenitley Rachel!
Carly
Alyssa
Brooke
What Is Your Name Supposed To Be? Quizzes for MySpace

How weird is THAT?

Ski trip!

I’m back from the ski trip, and it was awesome! As all ski trips inevitably are, of course. I had (term stolen from Yarn Harlot) camnesia for most of the trip, coupled with an unwillingness to bring the camera on the actual slopes with me, so there are but a few pictures…

We stayed in the charming Garnet Hill Lodge, in a building called The Birches – so named presumably for the birch trees surrounding it.

There was fine dining there (the highlight of which was the deserts…homemade pies…strawberry shortcake…)…

The first day of skiing was pretty grungly (word invented by my sister), because it was a ridiculous 45 degrees outside…wet snow is icky. But then it got a TON colder, so they could make snow, and conditions rapidly improved over the next three days, although the last half-day we skied (yesterday) was obscenely cold (something like 5 degrees, I think, with a windchill below zero), almost to the point of unpleasantness unless one was constantly moving and had plenty of breaks. I did some snowboarding and skiing, and am well-bruised now. Mostly from the snowboarding, but there was one memorable skiing fall off of a funbox. Why do I let my brother convince me to try these things?

On the way back, I saw this in a convenience store, which I found amusing:

Confused?

I think I had something else to say, but I can’t remember, so that only leaves my tag from AJ to post seven interesting/unusual/weird/random things about myself. Here goes:

1. I lovelovelove puzzles of almost any type. My favorites include NYT crosswords, sudoku, killer sudoku (sort of a cross between sudoku and kakuro), kakuro, and logic puzzles.
2. I can’t STAND pompous people. As a corollary, if someone even implies that I’m bragging/stuck-up/anything of that nature, I am very offended.
3. I don’t get embarrassed very easily – I do, however, laugh at myself a healthy amount. I suppose that here I should tell the story of one moment that embarrassed even me. Back in the horror days of Hebrew school, I used to carpool with my friend. One day, leaving temple, I saw her dad’s car, so I walked down, assuming she was following me, and jumped in. It wasn’t until I had closed the door, buckled my seatbelt, and greeted her father that I realized that it wasn’t her dad’s car at all, but had a man in the front seat that I’d never seen in my life. I muttered something to him, leapt out of the car, and ran back up to hiss at my laughing friend for not stopping me.
4. I tend to be very shy around new people. With my friends/family, I often can’t shut up, but if talking to someone for the first time, I find it very difficult to start a conversation.
5. I like making turkey and mayo sandwiches and adding those little hot cinnamon candies. It tastes really good. I also dip my fish sticks in cottage cheese with paprika. Yeeeah.
6. I can be a little bit OCD sometimes. I’m particular about where I sit (but only in some situations), and occassionally about symmetry. For example, if I’m sitting in a car at night, I hate it when a car goes by in the other direction and the headlights shine more in my left eye than my right.
7. My favorite color is green – almost any shade of green, but especially sage green or olive green.

I now tag…*drumroll*…

1. Rainberry Knits
2. Gonzomama Knits
3. Spin, Knit, Purl, and Be Happy
4. The Adventures of Jaxypants and the Yarn Dragon
5. The Happy College Knitter
6. Zeitgeist
7. a Friend to knit with (who posts the most amazing cookie recipes ever)

Blah, Blah, Blah…

So on Monday (MLK day), my friend Saedi and I went snowboarding before the swim meet. We were soooo sore afterwards, and I could barely lift my legs afterwards.

So what did I do, you ask?

I bought a snowboard today! We had a blast, and I was using my mom’s snowboard (which is significantly better than my foam piece of crap) and I made a ton of progress (I only fell 5ish times on our last run, as compared to at least a dozen the first time we left the bunny hill). And my mom offered to pay for half of it – plus the store was having a sale! So I’m only going to have to pay $125 or so, which is pretty good for half a snowboard. I’m pretty excited to try this thing out, and irritated that I have to miss the next two ski clubs because of swim meets (and I missed the last one – darn close meets!). I can’t WAIT until swimming ends…

Anyway, here’s a pretty close-up picture of the board. By the way, the main part is really a dark navy blue sort of color, not black like it came out.

Aaaand…*drumroll, please*…An FO! I finished my Manos sweater, and only used about half of the KILO of yarn! I hear that stuff felts really well, so I shall be playing with that. Anyways, here are some pictures for you all:

As you can see, the variegated yarn pooled a bit on the sleeves, but not enough to bother me. Originally, I thought the whole sweater had come out too small because the sleeves were tight, but I realized that if I wore a thinner shirt underneath, it was perfectly comfy. I wore it all day today. :)

And finally, my WIP! Another raglan, this time out of some fuzzywuzzy Nashua alpaca. I’m hoping for it to be a close-fitting sort of thing that you’d wear over a cami – anticipating it getting nice and soft and cushy when washed. So we’ll see. But here are a few pics. The bluish one is actually more of a sage green, but it changed a lot in the photo…

a wordy post

I. Introduction – I have so much to say in this post that I decided to organize it 7^th grade English-style. This is how they used to make us organize our essays. Anyway, I’ll try to include lots of pictures to make it interesting, and thereby keep resolution IV-b-ii.

II. Regarding Knitting

a. FO: Camera sock

That’s my speedy cute little newish camera.

I knitted it a sock. Because that’s what I do. You can’t see it, but I even grafted the ‘toe’ with Kitchener stitch.

b. WIP: Manos Raglan

I got a kilogram of gorgeous Manos del Uruguay at Stitches, and I finally started the sweater. That’s just a sneak peek. And I think I’m going to have at least a third of the yarn left over, so I can play with felting it! I’ve seen amazing felted stuff out of Manos.

c. Bobby’s – I got nominated for a Bobby on Ravelry for Most Unusual Project. The voting starts on January 14^th, so please vote for me! There’s a lot of other cool stuff, and you can vote more than once!

d. I have a new idea for a design. I haven’t even started knitting one yet, though, so it’ll be awhile before a pattern emerges. If it works out, though, I do hope to write it up.

III. Regarding Life

a. Animals now outnumber people in our house – that’s right, our family now consists of five people (mom, dad, brother, sister, me), a dog (Erie), a cat (Pixel), a hamster (Java), two fish (Dimaggio and The Babe), and two birds. They’re zebra finches, called Tweedledee and Tweedledum, after the Lewis Carroll poem, and they’re cute. Addie calls them the Beeperbirds.

Erie. She does this when she thinks we’re not looking.

Pixie, doing what she does best – looking down on people.

This is Java. It’s really hard to take pictures of twitchy animals.

This is Tweedledee.

The lighter-colored one is Tweedledum. Even though I turned the flash off, they both hated the camera, so these pictures are less than marginal…

b. Snow sports

i. Skiing – Ski club starts this coming Friday, and it’s supposed to be 54^o on Tuesday. On the bright side, ski club conflicts with five swim meets, so I almost hope it’ll be cancelled because Coach is going to kill me if I actually miss that many. Ski club was paid for before I even decided to swim, though, so if it comes down to it, ski club wins, except for the League Meet. Also, we’re going to Gore Mountain over February break, which should be AMAZING.

ii. Skating – Yesterday a bunch of friends and I went ice skating. It was really fun and we took some pictures. But I’m not posting any because they all suck.

c. I can SEEEE! That’s right. My glasses are back! Huzzah! And no, I’m not angry at all about this. I just thought that was a really cool picture.

IV. New Year’s Resolutions (overlaps with II a bit)

a. Break out the spinning wheel again. I barely spun at all in 2007, and I have this lovely Lendrum!

And a wonderful stash of fiber. So I want to spin more and actually use the yarn I make. To make cool stuff like this hat, which was the original inspiration for the Mutant Bunny Hat. Ignore the stunned look in my eyes and focus on the handspun hat, please…

b. Use>Buy: I want to use more of my stash than I accumulate. Here’s my stash now.

And to make me feel better about myself, here’s my mom’s:

And there’s actually more than that, I couldn’t back up far enough to fit it all in one frame without falling out the window!

c. Health

i. (continuing from last year) Only eat when I’m hungry. I think this is a good practice for everyone, honestly. It really makes you aware of how much you actually need to eat.

ii. Stay in shape! I love being in shape. I want to keep exercising (running, biking, swimming, whatever, combination) all year and beyond! Buzz Lightyear-style.

d. Blog

i. For myself – it’s like a diary. Both in the sense that barely anyone else reads it, and that it keeps track of my life.

ii. For other people – but, I want to make it interesting! I’m going to try to take more and better pictures, and write coherently about interesting things. Feel free to make suggestions to this effect.

V. Conclusion – This is a concluding conclusion which concludes. It’s quite conclusive. Oh yes, and apologies for the slightly screwed-up formatting. Pasting from Word into Blogger doesn’t quite work perfectly.

Many things

I’ll start with the icky news, then if you read it, you get a reward with happy stuff.

To explain the icky news, I need to impart some good news, though. We finally went skiing today! Sort of. For the morning, I snowboarded, which I think I did a total of once last season, so I was pretty rusty. By lunchtime, I was finally getting the hang of turning again. Sorry, no pictures – you think I trust myself not to fall on a camera?! But on the lift up for our last run before lunch, I was fixing my helmet and had taken off my glasses. As I put them back on, one of the lenses popped out and fell down to the ground. We (my mom and I) spent about 15 minutes searching for it – I do have Transitions lenses, so it was dark-colored. But we didn’t find it. I wasn’t really comfortable snowboarding without good vision, but I’m a pretty competent skier, so I figured I would just ski for the afternoon – I had brought my skis as well.
However, when I went to put my skis on, it turned out that the people at the shop had adjusted the bindings entirely incorrectly. They were literally about 3 inches too far apart! And the irritating thing was, I didn’t even get new boots, so they shouldn’t have done anything at all to the bindings! I just left my skis for a tuneup.
Annoyed but not to be defeated after working so hard to convince Mother Dearest to take us, I put on my skiboards and had fun for the rest of the day. On the way home (1.2 hours or so), I could fortunately work on My So Called Scarf, which I don’t need to see too well for.
When I got home, I put on my old pair of glasses. Good news: I can see! Bad news: Old prescription now makes me dizzzzzy. Not so fun.

Anyway, done with my rant. On to cool stuff! With pictures! Which you’re not allowed to comment upon if you don’t prove that you read the above woes and misery. :P

My So Called Scarf goes.

As does the bunny hat! I really like how this is coming out, so I think I’ll write up the pattern. By the way, mine’s out of Blizzard and pink malabrigo (held double to match the gauge of the Blizzard). Here’s an incipient ear (one out of three…). It’s double-sided, so the back of this is the brownyblackgrey color, as you can kinda see in the next picture.

It’s a very soft hat, and I’ve told my sister that she must wear it every day. She looked a little worried…

Fun in the SNOW!

We’re right in the middle of the blizzard that’s still blowing through! So Alethia came over and we sledded yesterday night and this morning. I have a veritable potpourri of pictures thereof, to be followed by some knitting-related schpiel…

Here we see my beloved brother trying to fit into a toddler sled and going over the skateboard jump we set up on the hill next door. This, as you can probably tell, was last night.

And here I am going over the jump as well, with a very strange look on my face. Now for some from today, with actual light…

And Alethia, seeming to defy the laws of physics…

A surreal, but pretty neat picture of me.
And now come some cool pictures of my sister.

She always asks why I randomly take pictures of her…isn’t it obvious? She’s so photogenic! And by the way, she’s wearing a beret I made a few years ago out of a kit from Morehouse Merino.

My multiple WIPs plod along. I’ve nearly finished the heel on the socks made out of that green yarn from Chanukkah. My So Called Scarf is more or less on hold. I’m working on Alethia’s Almost Fingerless Gloves (a birthday present, which was not done by her birthday…), and then I’ll do Addie’s (the sister) mutant bunny hat – a Chanukkah present, which wasn’t done by Chanukah either. It’ll be my first time using malabrigo, and I’m SO excited. I’m pretty much in love with that yarn. It also includes Blizzard, which, even though it contains acrylic, I really like. I promise some pictures of all this knitty goodness…at some point. Ta ta for now!

Life, Loot, Love

Life goes fairly well. Our school gets 2+ weeks of holiday break, which means 4.5 more days! Half day this coming Friday, then FREEDOM! Boy, am I ready. Except there’ll still be 2.5 hours of swim practice almost every day through break. Except now there’s a purpose. Our past two meets, the girls team won 48-46, and BOY was it intense. They both came down to the last relay, in which I anchored the B-team. The first one, the whole meet came down to the B-team relay, which basically meant down to me. No stress, right? I was so scared of screwing it up for everyone, I beat my time trial time for 100yd freestyle by 10 seconds and nearly puked afterwards. Which was good, I guess. The time, not the puking.

Anyway, getting some sweet loot for Chanukkah, including:
-$25 iTunes card, with which I bought Flood by They Might be Giants, Surprise by Paul Simon, and a few other songs.
-A knit commission from my mom – I said I wanted a new pair of mittens from Anna Zilboorg’s Magnificent Mittens, with angora linings. She made me a pair of these several years ago, but I outgrew them.
-A Ripstik (above)- which is like a skateboard, but more dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. I’ve been ogling them for a few years now:
Nifty, no?
-An amazing bag that my mom and grandma collaborated on to make for me. My mom picked out the fabric and cut it, and my grandma did most of the sewing. It also included a new set of doodads (complete with Altoids tin to hold them) and some sock yarn! See more pictures below.