Now that’s just hilarious.

So I get home today and bring in the mail. First I notice my official acceptance letter from Yale. MAD cool. But I also see a package from Bennington, one of my safety schools. What were they sending me? I opened it, and inside…*drumroll*…a luggage tag, a pin saying ‘Bennington 2013,’ some info about field study term and…

…

A cookie. A homemade chocolate chip cookie in a ziploc bag. Is that not the most hilarious thing you’ve ever heard? I mean, maybe I’m just sleep-deprived from pit rehearsals ’til 10PM every day this week, but I laughed for…awhile.

Anyway, now some knitting!

I told you I was making Alethia a Thorpe. Well, her payment was to work her photographic magic and take me some awesome pictures of that hat and the beaded wrap thingie I’m working on:

It’s made from Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn held triple.

She insisted that I model it.

But then I insisted that she model it, it being her hat and all.

And I wanted to play with the camera…

And like the fabulous giftee that she is, she’s worn it (around school, not just to school) every day since I finished it.

Now for the shawl/wrap/stole/whateveritis:

Obviously not a fantastic photo, but you can see the stitch pattern realy well.

And, being silk, it has incredible drape to it, but that was difficult to photograph.

Right now, this beast is about 1/3 done. The silk is a bit frustrating to work with since it doesn’t stretch, and the beads are incredibly tedious to thread on, but I love how it’s coming out. It’s definitely more of a ‘product’ than a ‘process’ knit.

Love at First Sight

I have a vehicle to bring to college!

Meet Consuela (I like giving things Spanish names – my phone is Federico, for instance):

Isn’t she gorgeous? It’s nigh on impossible to capture the gloriousness that is this red color. And fenders! Does life get any better?

I.

Love.

Every.

Single.

Inch.

Is it obvious? Oh, and she has a friend, too:

A TIP (Thorpe In Progress) for my glass teacher. Recognize the yarn?

Also, the beaded shawl/wrap/thing is looking really good, but I don’t have any good pictures of it.

As far as school, senioritis is a pretty constant thing now – it used to come and go. I’m pretty much doing the bare minimum to maintain my GPA (which is, granted, high…) at this point, which isn’t much because I started off the year really strong so I can slack off without my yearlong grades really suffering. I’m 8-0 for colleges so far, though! Besides for the Yale deferment, which totally doesn’t count, since it’s not an actual decision. Maybe 8-0-1, if you insist…

Various WIP’s

A major bout of senioritis hit me today, so when I got home, I played Tetris for 20 minutes, printed my English essay, did a super-half-assed job on my Spanish homework, and then set out to take some artful pictures.

First, we have a giant doily:

Okay, yeah, not that artful, but it was the most color-accurate. And yes, this is Hemlock Ring, which despite it’s apparent intricacy, is deliciously mindless once you get past the center section.

And next (love this pic)…

Lots and lots of beads to thread. The idea here is to make myself a shawl to wear to the prom.

P.S. The knitting around here should be quite productive in the near future due to the aforementioned senioritis as well as an extremely knitting-friendly schedule this trimester (literally four periods that I can knit through almost all the time).

P.P.S. I got accepted to Middlebury today!

Thrums!

Excuse the cell phone picture…

But look at the lovely malabrigo and wonderful fuzzies! :D
It’s nice to be really happy with all my current WIP’s and even the next project I have lined up. Makes for great knitting mojo…

Holiday Frenzy!

Guess what? I wrote my (hopefully) LAST college essays today! If I don’t get in early at Yale, I’ll have to do the safety ones, which won’t be fun. So I HOPEHOPEHOPE that those were the last ones. Now I just have to finish Alethia’s Dartmouth peer rec.

Anyway. On to fun, crafty things. Yesterday when we got home from school, my little sis and I decided to make ourselves duct tape dress forms. She wrapped mine a bit too tightly, so by the end I definitely would have passed out if I tried to panic or run anywhere. But they’re pretty nifty, nonetheless.

Here we are, goofing off for the camera while working on them.

(The shirt said ‘Bill Clinton for First Lady’ – I thought it was funny, even though I supported Obama all along…)

After the first part:

And guess what mine’s stuffed with…?

Big surprise, no?

And she’s finished! What should I name her? Suggestions in comments.

Also there’s been a holiday knitting frenzy! Check this out:

For more than just snippets, check out the Ravelry pages for these lovelies.

Keep on the lookout for elf costume photos. At school, the last day before break, all the seniors dress up as elves. I’m planning a fairly…nonstandard one, shall we say. ;)

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!

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…

Snazzy Beret

When I decided to spin again, to ply that lovely purply stuff, I needed to free up a bobbin. So I balled up this multicolored silk I spun up ages ago – it was just singles, and not spun particularly evenly or anything, but for some reason it said ‘beret’ to me…I don’t even wear berets very often, but whatever. When yarn talks, a knitter listens. So I found a wonderful (free!) beret recipe, which I modified a bit to conform to my vision, and voila! A snazzy multicolored beret! The only snag with this quickie project was that the first time I bound off (it’s top-down), it was too tight and wouldn’t fit on my head. Undoing a silk bindoff is NOT FUN. I repeat – NOT FUN. It took half of the second Indiana Jones movie to do, the silk was so sticky. Then I redid it with two needle sizes bigger and all was well. Well, I supposed you’ll be wanting pictures, eh? Ask and you shall receive…

I’ve been wearing this thing most of the day – it makes me feel very Bohemian. Is that supposed to be capitalized? It always makes me think of it like Bohemia is a place or something…(yeah, yeah, RENT…)

Also, I decided to join the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl group on Yahoo! It’s free, and her designs are great, so I figured it would be a good place for my first mystery shawl and also my second lace project – first big one. I have decided which chart I’m using for Clue 1 – chart A. I’m putting that up here as much to stop myself from changing my mind again as anything else, though…

Here’s the yarn we found for it:

Lorna’s Laces. Mmmm…

Yay! Loot!

Sorry it’s been so long – I’m finally resurfacing from finals. I have one left, but it’s no big deal. I’m basically done! Gloriosity!

So.

We biked. Around Lake Tahoe. It was intense. I don’t have any pictures from the ride yet, because we used disposable cameras and I haven’t finished it yet. But it was breathtaking. It SO made the 7-mile climb starting at mile 80 worth it when you came around a corner and saw this incredible view of this gorgeous lake. Here’s my helmet:

And here was me:

And then after we finished, I ran into a parked car. We had these giant buffalo on our helmets (because the rest of our chapter is from Buffalo…) and I was trying to copy our coach and duck under a rope hanging maybe five feet high while on my bike, and I veered to the side. Only there was no space to veer. So I crashed and left a big scratch down the side of a black SUV. The people were standing right behind it loading the trunk, too – and they didn’t notice until I called to them!

Me, lying on ground beneath bike, trying not to sob: Excuse me – I’m really sorry, I just ran into your car!

Them: Oh, it’s a rental – we won’t tell if you won’t. Are you okay?

Me: *sigh of relief and pain*

I was rather scraped up. But my bike computer still only said 99.75 miles when we got back to the hotel, so I rode in circles on the sidewalk until it said 100. You can’t work all day not to get that satisfaction! Here was my bike shoe after:

Yeah.

Oh, and another story from that. One guy on our team is a pastor, probably about 60 years old. His wife has lymphoma, and she actually had a relapse during our training. During the ride, he crashed going downhill at twentysomething miles per hour. The medical team had to pick him up – he even cracked his helmet. But after they fixed him up, he got back on the course and finished – 7-mile climb and all! He had been talking earlier about how he talked to teens and was disappointed to find that when he asked them who their heroes were, they were inevitably some actor or athlete – someone who makes a lot of money and lives glamorously. I told him after the ride (and I usually don’t say stuff like this out loud, so it took a bit of courage, mind you) that he was more of a hero than any of those people. Because it’s so true.

Oh yeah, and my birthday is tomorrow! But my dad is out of town, so we did the ‘family celebration’ yesterday. We went out for hibachi, which was fun – but it was a bad day for it. It’s obscenely hot. So we pretty much sweltered in front of towers of flame wondering when we could return to the air-conditioned car…but the food was good! And then we went home – my mom had made me strawberry shortcake! – and I got the family presents. Got some sweet loot:

• iTunes card
• an iPod shuffle! (for running and such) And a ‘puck’ case for it.
• three shirts – a biking one and two T-shirts, one biking-related (this one if anybody’s curious)
• A Life is Good keyring – to which I promptly transferred my (lonely – I hopefully get car copies when I pass my road test!) key and other paraphernalia
• A book of short stories about time travel
• KnitPicks interchangeable needles!!! As well as stitch markers and a new set of cable needles – the two knitting artifacts I never fail to lose.
• that reference thingie that tells you how much yarn of various gauges you need for stuff
• a book of Japanese knitting patterns…I’m going to need some help reading those…but they’re pretty neat.

And then tomorrow – on my birthday, when it’s supposed to be over 90 degrees – we’re biking 40 miles. We signed up awhile ago – we knew we’d be in shape from the century ride. But I’ve done basically nothing athletic all week because of finals. And we just got our bikes back (they had to ride back cross-country in a truck) today…so that should be interesting…

And finally, I’ve resumed the lace scarf I started on the NYC trip, and I’m almost done with the Prom Socks. Pictures will come…at some point.

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