Eurotrip!

So pretty much right after graduation, a bunch of kids in my class are going to Scotland to complete our Scottish Exchange (we’re staying with the people we hosted when they were here). We get the option, however, to postpone our plane tickets, home, which a couple friends and I have elected to do for a week since we’re basically only in Edinburgh on the ‘official’ trip and it seemed silly not to explore other parts of at least Britain when we’re so close. So we’re getting Eurorail passes and plan to romp around Scotland, Ireland, and England for about a week after everyone else leaves.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I need cool suggestions for stuff to do! I don’t know specifically what cities we’re going to, and I don’t think we’ve planned really besides for we know we all want to go to London. So suggest stuff! Go!

Some FO pics probably tomorrow…

Long Time No Blog

Hi again! I was so good for awhile there, posting a couple times a week, every day sometimes. Well, I guess no good thing can last forever. Anyway, I’m back for today, at least.

We just got back from a pretty fun ski/snowboard trip during which I got to hang with some music friends and have my ego smashed by a slow-talking snowboard teacher. Fun times.

But! Knitting is happening! Secret Knitty Design Prototype #2 (aka my mom’s test knit) is in the works, and although we’ll be cutting it close, I’m reeeally hoping to have the pattern/pics done for the March 1 Knitty deadline. A couple other designs are floating around in my head, as well and may or may not begin to clamor for release once this one is finished. We shall see.

But what you all really wanted to see was…

A scarf in flight!

Yes, it is really done. I was reallyreallyreally sick of it at the end, too.

Specs:

Pattern: Trellis Scarf (rav link)

Yarn: Some inexpensive (we’re talking under $10 here if I remember correctly) alpaca I found at Stitches East a couple years ago…can’t remember brand or anything.

Needles: a pair of mismatched US5’s (one broke in the middle)

Finished Measurements: 8″ wide x 65″ long (point to point)

Ravelry: project page here

I was very distressed to notice when I finally finished this that the bound-off end wasn’t pointy like the cast-on end. Fortunately, as is so often the case, everything was fixed when blocking, and, from afar at least, the scarf appears symmetrical. My new blocking wires also proved invaluable in making the edges nice and straight as you see them there.

Nonetheless, Pixie (cat) was resolutely nonplussed:

And finally, a sneak preview of a very almost-FO (if you’re really curious, it’s already on Ravelry…):

I love that button…

That went way too fast.

STITCHES! Yeah, we went. Again. I think that’s the fifth or sixth year in a row. And guess what? This year, Rick Mondragon (flamboyantly gay and rather gross editor of Knitters’ Magazine – no, I’m not a homophobe, I promise – he is just gross, making really sick jokes and stuff) actually remembered me, despite my having been in the student fashion show every year I’ve been there and even winning the $100 Editor’s Choice one year! *sigh*

Well, can you guess what I showed at the fashion show?!

Yeah, I FINALLY finished that mystery shawl. And it’s gorgeous!

The color’s best in the first one. Specs:

Pattern: Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl – Mandala

Needles: US 3, Addi lace needles (wonderful contraptions, them)

Yarn: Helen’s Lace by Lorna’s Laces, about 2.2 skeins or so

Now I’m starting other gift knitting, despite the temptation of the two (yes, only two!) projects’ worth of yarn for myself I got at Stitches:

Manos silk blend for a scarf like this:

And Habu for a simple pullover thing:

Yeah, apparently that’s enough. Incredible, huh?

Classes? Heck yes!

Friday: Argyle Socks in the Round with Suzann Thompson – really fun and a pretty nifty technique to make seamless argyles, although a bit tedious. Product:

I gave it to my mom as a glasses case because she forgot hers and was using a sock that she brought to wear on a foot…and I knew I was never going to make the other one of these because the proportions are all weird and it would never fit anybody. Plus, the gauge is a bit wonky.

Saturday: Lapland Hand Garments with Susanna Hansson (who is a wonderful teacher and hilarious) – seriously cool and gorgeous technique, but really frustrating for me because of the tiny needles making my hands and wrists really sore and giving me a headache. I didn’t get very far on this project:

But it was supposed to look like this:

And now back to the frenzy of homework, college apps, and hopefully finishing that Intel application in time…

P.S. This was the assignment from my glass teacher for missing class:

Even though it was a total lie. :D

And so it begins.

Yep. School.

But first, an aside for mystery shawl progress! I believe these pictures are quite impressive, considering they were taken in a moving car. :)

And…back to schooly stuff now. We got back from our vacation in Acadia National Park yesterday (hence the moving car pics), which was fun but really tiring. I’m oddly content with school starting – usually I’m in agony that the summer’s over, but I guess one perk of not really having a summer because you were working full time is that you never really got used to lazing about and the transition back to school isn’t painful. I will now make a nerdy list two nerdy lists. So – in no particular order…

Things I’m looking forward to:

1. Tennis team
2. Seeing my friends every day again
3. Ski club with lots of friends…including a certain someone
4. Being a senior and generally ruling the school
5. Scottish Exchange!
6. Interesting classes, almost all of which I’m taking because I chose them!
7. Having a driver’s license, meaning I can actually get places even if nobody will take me!
8. Stitches East!!!

Things I’m not really looking forward to:

1. Bitchy tennis teammates, except for two of them
2. The crapload of homework I’m bringing upon myself by taking four AP’s among other things
3. College applications and decisions
4. Finishing my (20-PAGE!) report on my project from working at the lab this summer
5. Driving, especially if chauffering siblings

Ta ta for now!

Road trip journal

YET ANOTHER REMINDER: Pleasepleaseplease enter my contest!! Remember that you have a chance to win even without donating – just by spreading the word! Although the prizes are more probable and better if you donate to this totally great cause…

Here I shall document my road trip around New England to visit various colleges. Pretend I posted them as separate daily entries…

Day 1, Sunday: The trip from home to Williamstown was uneventful, besides for about ten pages of history notes being taken, and my not having to drive because of taking said notes. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), I think I have enough work to last for all the hours of this trip, and so won’t have to drive. But won’t get to knit much either. Also, on the trip up, the possibility of making the Knitters’ Pilgrimage to Webs was raised…and I am excited.

We checked into the motel, where a very nice Swedish guy recommended a restaurant and showed us a map of the town – which is pretty much the campus. I didn’t realize that, but it’s kinda neat, methinks. We went to dinner at Spice Root, a nice Indian place. My mom got carded when she tried to get wine! It might’ve just been because it’s a college town and all, but it was still pretty funny. The food was really good – I had my Indian standard, chicken tikka, and something new and interesting – ginger lemonade. It was actually pretty good – the ginger wasn’t too overwhelming, just enough to make the lemonade taste a little different. On the walk back to the motel, we stopped at ‘the ephporium’ (the Ephs is the name of the Williams sports teams for some reason…) because we saw a sign outside proclaiming ‘gelato,’ but it turned out to be some Haagen Dasz in a cooler…ah well. However, in there, I saw this, which was amusing:

Notice how they all recommend classy stuff like ciabatta, and then Lara recommends Ring Pops. I’d like to meet Lara…

Day 2, Monday: We spent the morning touring Williams – mascot: a purple cow! That’s pretty nifty. It was a really appealing place – apparently, the food’s excellent. Oh yeah, and it’s really rigorous academically and gorgeous and all that, too. This afternoon, we went to Amherst – we took a tour and went to an information session. The info session repeated a lot of what our enthusiastic tour guide told us, but was still really interesting. Amherst’s main appealing points for me were their membership in the Five College Consortium, so you can take classes at any of the other four nearby schools (with free bus service) and you can also get books out of their libraries; and their open curriculum – there are no course requirements! The food, however, didn’t get quite as good reviews. So I don’t know if I’d be able to choose between those two right now – b/c you can get library books from like a gazillion different colleges from Williams, too…and they have a cool mascot…and good food…

Amherst: option of courses at other schools, slightly closer to civilization, open curriculum

Williams: better food, purple cow, better chance at single dorms, one-month intensive study during winter term

They have pretty much everything else in common, including a fierce rivalry, school colors, total enrollment, general rigor, campus-wide wifi, etc…

More significantly – we went to Webs! It was pretty amazing – it’s huge! I saw a bunch of new yarns and stuff, but the coolest thing was that they have pretty much every color of all the yarns they stock, which makes for a great selection and incredible-looking displays. However, I resisted almost all temptation (and believe me, there was a LOT) and only bought one $2 pattern. Huzzah!

Tomorrow, we’re heading to Hanover and Dartmouth to tour the college and visit my cousin who goes there – we’ll probably take him out to lunch.

Day 3, Tuesday:Dartmouth was nice – about three times bigger than the ones we’ve seen so far, but it was nice to catch up with my cousin. We took him to a little place in Hanover for brunch/lunch, and he gave us an informal tour of the campus, during which we got a bit lost and ended up in the business school when we were looking for engineering. Fortunately, it was a nice day, so it was fine. Dartmouth is pretty in a much more majestic sort of way than the others – the buildings mostly match, there’s a big green, etc. Oh, but funny story – Dartmouth was founded originally to educate Native Americans, but for the first 200 years or so failed miserably. Then when they got this new president they dedicated all this money, and now apparently have a bunch of native students. With these millions of dollars of endowment, they wanted to create some kind of monument to this. With all that money, this is what they managed to do:

A pile of rocks in front of the admissions office.

Between splitting with my cousin and going to the info session, we got to wander around Hanover, such as it is, a bit. We went to a great Barnes and Noble and I got Maximum Ride 4, of which Alethia and I will have joint custody – she’s been looking for it for AGES. And by ages, I mean the week+ since it’s come out…The info session was not so fascinating, though – I’m glad I had knitting.

Then we drove up to Portland. We’re staying with relatives there and visiting Bowdoin (for some reason, pronounced BO-den) tomorrow. They have a pretty lighthouse there:

Day 4, Wednesday: Bowdoin was really cool! Apparently, they’re rated top in the nation for their food, and the campus was really pretty, in a more Amhersty way. Also, they’ve got Mathematica on their computers! Nerdfest! Honestly, I have no idea how I’ll ever decide on a college – all the ones we’ve visited so far seem too good to be true – like little utopias, where everyone there is taking classes and such because they want to, and they all actually care. And the general atmosphere is so cool.

On the way back, we visited Spunky Eclectic’s brick and mortar store – fantabulosity. I came out with some roving (I’m picturing socks) and very nice silk lace yarn (shawl):

And hanging out with relatives has been cool – my grandma, uncle, and two cousins are here (the aunt’s out of town, getting in tonight).

The story of the day – I have a much stronger kinship with cats now. My little cousin (third-grade) was giving me the grand tour of their yard after my mom and I went running, and she somehow convinced me to climb one of their trees – she wanted to see how high I could get. I was pretty good at climbing trees when I was smaller, and I was still pretty good today, except maybe thirty feet up, one of the branches I had used to get up broke. I saw ways to get higher, but decided against it – I didn’t even know how I was going to get down. It took awhile, my mom and cousin coaching, and my uncle’s reassurances that at least it was a nice day and he could send up some food for dinner, but I eventually got down. I didn’t, because there were pine needles everywhere, but I felt like kissing the ground. Seriously. For a bit there, I was worried we’d have to call the fire department or something…

We’re staying in Maine tonight, too, then driving back down to Boston to see Haaahvard and MIT – neither of which I can really see myself attending but I want to see anyway.

Day 5, Thursday: Well, we made it to Harvard and had a great tour there – I liked it a lot more than I expected – they’ve got so many sweet study abroad programs and such. But I’m really bad at Boston, and so we didn’t make it to MIT in time for the tour. We’re going to check that out tomorrow before heading home.

We also visited two knitting stores in Cambridge – we’ve decided that we should try to see as many knitting stores as we do colleges…teehee.

Day 6, Friday: Home! Final score – colleges beat knitting stores 6-5. We visited one more store (Colorful Stitches in Lenox) on the way home, but since we saw MIT this morning, colleges still won. MIT was pretty cool, but I still can’t see myself going there. I just like the atmosphere of the small liberal artsy places better for some reason.

I did end up having to drive for a bit, but it was mostly highway and cruise control, so it was okay.

P.S. If anybody watched the iPhone keynote, or probably any other Apple introduction of a new product, THIS should be most amusing.

ROAD TRIP!

REMINDER: Please enter my contest. Or at least spread the word! There’s going to be a mystery prize drawing for everyone who mentions it on their blog, even if they don’t donate! So post and link me to it!

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog post…
I’m off for most of this week, driving around New England and visiting colleges. I’ll hopefully remember to take pictures and notes so I don’t mix them all up…seeya!

EDIT: I was tagged! By Survival of the Knittest, to be exact. It’s the ’seven weird things’ meme again. I’m never good at coming up with interesting stuff for this, but here goes anyway.

1. I have recently been realizing that it is possible to be good at something but HATE it. Examples: standardized tests, history
2. I should be doing my monstrous pile of break work right now. MONSTROUS!
3. ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ is playing on Pandora right now…
4. I have an HP laptop, but REALLY want a Mac – despite being slightly screwed over on the whole iPhone thing (I got one soon after it came out, then they cut the price, and now there’s a new one coming out soon and I’m thinking I should’ve waited for that or just gotten a new iPod and a cell phone that’s smaller and I could put in a ski jacket without worrying…alas).
5. I just found a knitting needle, row counter, pen, battery, and the back to my booklight inside the couch.
6. Last night, I went to bed, and slept until I woke up. It was very exciting. In a sleepy sort of way.
7. I have a bad habit of when I make cookies, eating so much dough I make myself sick. It’s just so tasty!!

EDIT again: I forgot to tag more people! Here goes…

• 10 feet high
  
• Zeitgeist
• The Happy College Knitter
• Froomla
• mariknits
• yarny girl
• anne is an artist

Rhode Island Trip

WARNING: I AM POSTING THIS WITH A LIMITED AMOUNT OF SLEEP. YOU HAVE BEEN DULY WARNED.

Anyways, now that that’s over with, and I’ve been dizzified by the new WP new post page layout…The trip was amazingly fantabulously phenomenalorious! I’m going to try to include everything I can remember here, because the whole experience smells of college essay material to me…so bear with me if stuff seems completely irrelevant…although that could be due to the fact that we got back at after 4AM…(essentially, feel free to skip to the end with pictures, because this post is mainly for me to remember everything I can)

So basically, this trip served a dual purpose. One, for my teacher, Alice, to bring her advanced improvisation students and demonstrate some of her program and teaching techniques. Second, we were doing this at a free outreach program in Providence, RI for underprivileged kids which is run in part by her former student, Jessie.

We all showed up at the music school at around 8:30 Friday morning, insanely excited and high on adrenaline. We actually did get going by around 9:00, as planned. There was a moratorium on sugar for the ride down, instituted to prevent crashing before the concert that night. Plenty of sugar was snuck on or feebly justified, however – resulting in a rather hyper batch of teens and pre-teens on a pretty small tour bus for about seven hours…interesting times.

The concert that night went really well. All transitions were smooth, but more importantly, everyone played really well, and the audience got so into it! It was really cool, although we were all still feeling a bit awkward, being pretty much the only white people there and not knowing many people.

That night, my friend Clare, my teacher, her two kids, and I all stayed with Jessie, aka ‘Monty’ – we did manage to be asleep before midnight, which was mildly surprising. Her house was SO cool, too – she had a music room with foam and stuff all over the walls and ceiling, so it’s so dead that if you practice in there, you’d sound amazing anywhere else because you had to work really hard to get any kind of good sound. Pretty nifty.

Saturday. Everybody taught five classes, two in the morning and three in the afternoon, with a 1.5-hour lunch break. In the morning, Clare and I assisted my teacher with improv classes. These kids had barely ever improvised before, and trust me – it’s terrifying the first time you do it. But most of them got into it by the end, which was really cool to see.

During the lunch break, we finally had a chance to get to know some of the kids, many of whom were really cool. One guy showed us all these poems he had written, many about city violence and how sad it made him – amazing to see such a ‘tough guy’-looking kid have such a soft side. Then there was a five-year-old girl named Amy who basically attached herself to me and told me her life story, everything from her loose tooth to her family’s house burning down and somebody writing on the wall ‘I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.’ Talk about scary. And we all played cards together and got to talk until the pizza got there. It was seriously cool. Here’s Amy:

Is she not adorable?

In the afternoon, I assisted with two more improv classes and also helped teach a fiddle tune. Then we and a few of the kids from the program went out to dinner at this Asian place. I had chicken and broccoli with white rice, which was really good, but HUGE. I didn’t finish. After dinner, we were originally going to go to the zoo, but since it was raining, we went to United Skates of America, where I rollerskated for the first time in forever. It was weird, really different from rollerblading. Then we had an epic game of lasertag in which I came in second to last. It never ceases to amaze me how bad I am at any kind of game like that – lasertag, paintball, any similar videogame, etc. But it was really fun. However, all of us having fun resulted us leaving Providence not at 6:00ish, like we’d planned (which would result in us being home at the completely reasonable *eyeroll* time of 1:00AM), but instead around 9:00PM!

The ride home was the only unfantabulous part of the trip. I can’t fall asleep except on my stomach, so I was on the floor of the bus, but Alice’s son kept sitting right on top of me, and this other kid WOULDN’T SHUT UP. So I didn’t get much sleep on the bus ride. We all slept over at the school, so I got another maybe four hours there. But all in all, the sleep tally isn’t too high.

Seriously, though – the trip was amazing. If you’ve seen the movie Music of the Heart, it was serious deja vu to that.

In fiber-related news, my mom and I are both participating in the Earth Day Yarn Swap, and my buddy loved her package! I sent her some bamboo yarn, a pretty stitch marker, chocolate, and tea. Apparently, her daughter was also pleased:

I haven’t received my package yet, but I’m really excited! It’s my first swap, unless HAT ATTACK counts. But that’s just a hat. This is yummy yarn and goodies!

Ta ta for now, then. Keep your eyes open – a contest approaches, as soon as I get up the energy to write the post for it! While you wait, check out the fun contest here.

Don’t even THINK about it…

Only in New York, right?

Anyway – the trip was pure fantabulosity. And, as promised, I have many pictures. Not as promised, I haven’t yet finished the raglan. But there was knitting accomplished on the trip! More on that later.

First we went to MoMa…that floor was sooo cool…

And I was easily amused in the store…

A face…on a fly swatter.

And salt and pepper shakers that WON’T fall over, no matter WHAT you do.

That night, we went to the opera. We had horrible seats though, because it’s so expensive, so the actual show wasn’t that amazing for us. Also, we got back into the hotel past midnight, and because it does take a certain amount of noise to unpack even just enough to go to bed, we got complaints about being ‘rowdy teenagers’ and crap. Ah well.

The next day, we arose bright and early and went to the Tenement Museum, which is really cool but I had already seen, so was pretty boring for me. Then we went to South Street Seaport, which was really fun. We checked out random stores, had lunch, and I found this thing:

Alethia’s hat had to be involved somehow. Here’s a movie of it:

It was sooo fun. For dinner that night, we went to Ellen’s Stardust Diner, where the waitstaff sing and jump up on tables and stuff, so that was fun. Then we went to Blue Man Group, which was AMAZING! I got my ticket autographed…

The last day, we spent the morning wandering about Manhattan, and then we went home. Here are some other pics from the wanderage:

The bottom right is actually from the opera.

And my foray into lace was a success! Here’s what I accomplished, along with some other boring and not picture-worthy knitting (yet) over many hours of bus ride. Granted, I also played MarioKart and did other less productive and wholesome things, too…

The only obscenity about this lace is that it involves knitting SEVEN stitches together at several points.

Needless to say, I’m completely exhausted, but still have to teach and then volunteer at the school auction tonight. Then tomorrow, I have an interview for a summer internship (hope I get it!!), I might go snowboarding, and then I have rehearsal for the violin improv trip I’m leaving for this Friday. Does sleep come into the picture anywhere?

P.S. My Google Reader had 56 posts when I got home, and I’m still crawling through them – so I might not have read everyone’s latest yet.

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)