booooooom

So now it's off to minneapolis for a week and then mexico on the 25th.

on the 26th I join the crew of the Robert C. Seamans and sail to Tahiti.

be back in mid january.

have fun knitting

as nyline says-
stay out of work. stay out of trouble. stay out of jail.

t minus...oh god.

it is 2054. in 13 hours I will be turning in my final draft of my research proposal and shortly after that I'll be on a bus to boston and after that on a plane to minneapolis and after that (on the 25th) I will be on a plane to puerto vallarta in preparation for sailing to tahiti.

eeeeep.

looking forward to bumming around boston for awhile with siv before I have to fly out.

had an amusing interlude today in nautical science:
our captain said "yeah, so not so long before we sail out on next sunday, huh?"
us: "...saturday...?"
captain: "...nnnope, sunday."
class: "uh...saturday the 25th is when we were told to be on the dock..."
captain: "...huh. that's interesting. we never leave on saturday."

so SEA is working on getting our whole boat lodging for the night, either on board or somewhere. aaah, excitement.

I managed to knit 5 hats and teach 7 people to knit. the red hats are slowly taking over. muahahaha.

well.

so I guess, dear blog, that this is goodbye until mid-january, unless I get ambitious over the interim week before I get on the boat.

once again I'm playing the "why doth technology hate me" game at the MBL WHOI library.

arg.

it'll be working, and then sometimes the pregnant pause between when I click "scan again" and when the happy green light sweeps across the page leeeennnggthhheeennnnns and then it decides it's no longer connected to the computer.

and I found a great article but it's in a volume that's checked out. who lets people check out journals? whaaaat? sigh.

ah well.

home friday night! on boat friday after that! AAACK!

notes to self.

sooo...yeah. notes to self.

#1. self, if you're knitting with handspun thick-and-thin bamboo yarn... do not (repeat; NOT) try to kitchener stitch the ends together. your yarn will fray and dehisce; indeed, it will dissolve before your very eyes, causing them to weep tears of frustrated agony. you will rip 3 rows to finally, on the third try, make it all the way through the ends without fraying.

#2. self, do not try to kitchener while sitting in the common living room where people will ask you questions constantly about things both related and unrelated to knitting.

#3. self, after wiping the tears and sweat from your face and brow, do not NOT NOT think to yourself "I should block this." you shouldn't. you're working with bamboo. go ahead. submerge it in water and just try to squeeze the water out. yeah. that's right. instant gross fuzziness. now you've got a sopping wet blob that you want to block, but it'll be mildewy before it's dry.

#4. self, invent a time machine. go back. hit me over the head when I contemplate doing numbers 1-3.


oh, and hey, have you heard? the solution to global climate change isn't in cleaner energy and more efficient use of resources- it's in putting a giant mesh screen around the earth to reflect solar energy. or about moving the earth out of orbit using H bombs. or about shooting sulfur particles into the atmosphere.

I'm serious. people have published papers on this. nobel prize winners have published papers on this.

be afraid. be very afraid.

rockin' the MBL WHOI library

and once again I have ensconced myself in the MBL WHOI (pronounced mumblewhoee! but standing for Marine Biological Laboratory Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)

and once again, I have spent several productive hours doing nothing but going oooo...articles...and oooo...I can access them, because I have the power! (in the form of a little happy swipy card. mm. swipey card.)

supposed to be writing my revised introduction and a materials and methods to my paper, though. I'll get there eventually. playing with the fount of knowledge is more fun, though.

started knitting a scarfy thing out of some more of michelle's fab yarn. can't take more Zissou hats just yet. need more boring public policy classes before I can manage that. I think I'm going to cheat and kitchener the ends together in a pseudo-moebius scarf. I'd attempt a real moebius but that, I think, would kill my brain.

two weeks left until I go home. three weeks left until I get on the boat. eek.

ROP!

ok, ok, so the nautical science's prediliction for three letter acronyms is getting to me. today is the first installment of Random act Of Poetry; acronym so chosen because "rap" means burp in norwegian but "rop" means call/cheer and I'd rather think of having a cheer of poetry than a burp of it. and "roap" looks like a frog with indigestion.

so. without further ado: TS Eliot's "The Hollow Men" (1925)

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

I love this one. I think I remember using this as a contrast basis for my paideia paper on Ellison's Invisible Man freshman year of college.

blarg.

boston is an entertaining city, especially when it's halloween weekend. I saw several entertaining (and very cold) people while we were walking around. I think the winner for "most likely to regret this the next morning" was the man in the giant penis costume, who, although he was quite drunk and probably should have been hauled off in one of the passing police cars for a night of detox, never managed to get either a taxi or a police car to stop. If I'd been in the police car, I probably wouldn't have stopped either. I have a feeling things like that end up in lockers and posted on precinct walls for months afterward.

I scared ro's boy and his roommates and ro's brother when they decided to put on Gone in 60 Seconds. Ro and Maggi and I were going to get our naut on (do our nautical science homework) but I'd forgotten to bring my almanac so I decided instead to read my articles to start a framework for my character for our policy class; however, when I looked over and saw the credits rolling I decided that since I'd be distracted anyway I might as well give up and watch. I kept the articles on my lap, though, so I could pretend I was studying. one of the boys said "we could watch a movie with a plot, you know," and although we all started responding, I responded fastest with "but with these cars, you don't need plot." then they were confused when I went back to my homework after they put in Fast and Furious after the movie ended. they accused me of being a car elitist, to which I agreed. Gone in 60 is an ok movie with amazing cars; Fast and Furious is a bad movie with bad, boring cars.

I also can't wait for the new bond movie. just for the Aston.

I have finished the first Zissou hat. so far, the reactions have been mixed- they're excited about it, but think it rather unfortunately resembles...well, it's been dubbed the condom hat.

I think I'll be revamping the design.

I tried submitting a post by email again on friday, but failed. it was about me being willing to surgically remove my uterus with my teeth. I'm less willing to do that today; ahh, the wonders of advil. and cocoa.

tried the email posting. failed miserably.

I may be giving Mimi a run for her money, but all that's behind me, because....

right now, at this very moment, I am sitting in the Marine Biological Library of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

and I have a card with my picture that lets me into the building whenever I want.

3am on a sunday? sure, no problem.

I am in nerd heaven. holy (reverent) shit, am I in nerd heaven.

death to microbes

at least the ones that are making me sick. I blame my house. 10 girls, all sick to varying degrees. whee. when we all woke up this morning we were worried that we weren't going to be able to do our debate on the cape wind project. unfortunately we regained our voices.

my head hurts. blarg.

stage one of the massive 'steve zissou' hats has begun; looks like the world is going to gain a bunch more knitters in the next few weeks.

I love NRK urørt.

I'm designing a tshirt for our class. hopefully it'll go over well. Maggie's almost finished with her Jayne hat. I finished Tara's. and Lisa, you now have a Jayne hat. gimme your address and I'll send it to you.

I'm going through bookstore and coffeehouse withdrawl. guh. I can't breathe. stupid lymph nodes.

I need to get back to work. yay verily yay.

because I just fried my brain on tomorrow's presentation, and need salvation before starting my summary.

Your Life: The Soundtrack
Opening credits:	Folk Dance from Romeo and Juliet- Prokofiev
Waking up:	Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll- The Killers
Average day:	Blow Me- Turbonegro
First date:	Overtid- Momosoma
Falling in love:	Wheel of Fortune- Dead Man's Chest Sdtk
Love scene:	Margit Hjukse- GÅte
Fight scene:	Chewin' Fingers- Gluecifer
Breaking up:	Ultrasonic Sound- Hive
Getting back together:	A Winter Tune- Eilif Svensson
Secret love:	Church on Sunday- Green Day
Life's okay:	The Imperial March- John Williams
Mental breakdown:	What's Another Day- Maria Mena
Driving:	Ut- De Lillos
Learning a lesson:	Shoop Shoop Song- Rockapella and the Nylons
Deep thought:	Symphony #3 in C minor op 78 "Organ" -Saint Saens
Flashback:	Allegro from Oboe Concerto #1 in Bb Major- Empire Brass with Bill Kuhlman (handel)
Partying:	Fullstendig Oppslukt av Flukt- De Lillos
Happy dance:	Skip Under Lide- Lumsk
Regretting:	Incomplete- Pamyua
Long night alone:	Åsgardsreisa- Lumsk
Death scene:	I Got Mad (Tatu Remix)- DJ Otsta
Closing credits:	Venelite- GÅte
Take this survey | Find more surveys Bzoink - The Original Survey Site

"these are not the pants you're looking for."

for your random nerdy fun o' the day, courtesy of matt.

The top 15 "Star Wars" lines made by replacing a word with 'pants.'

1) I find your lack of pants disturbing.
2) You are unwise to lower your pants.
3) Chewie and me got into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.
4) The Force is strong in my pants.
5) I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.
6) Your pants, you will not need them.
7) I sense the conflict within you. Let go of your pants!
8) In his pants you will find a new definition of pain and suffering
9) Pull up! All pants pull up!
10) A disturbance in the pants. I have not felt this since near my old master...
11) The pants will be down in moments, sir, you can begin your landing
12) I want them alive. No pants.
13) Away with your pants, I mean you no harm!
14) Lock the door. And hope they don't have pants.
15) Looks like someone's beginning to take an interest in your pants.

aha.

apologies for being incommunicado. it's always entertaining when the internet companies decide to fight over who's paying whom and cuts off the internet to any subscriber to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute's internet system. which means, in this town, practically everybody.

it's back now. obviously.

went out for sushi last night with the entire crew of the Seamans (except for two), which meant that a horde of 18 students descended on this tiny hole-in-the-wall sushi place. very good, though. I had sashimi and gyoza and some edamame and some sake and mochi ice cream. mmm.

still miss bibim bap.

this has not been a good year for chargers. first I lose my mp3 player charger somewhere in canada, then I leave my phone charger at home in WA, and now the replacement mp3 player charger that I picked up (having been promised that it would work with my player though it (the charger) is generic) doesn't work. gr. trying to track down a real charger is becoming difficult. ah, well. eventually...

lots of reading to do before lunchtime barbeque. and cleaning.
started Jayne Hat the 3rd.

I may have locked myself into knitting (or teaching people how to knit) 20(ish) 'life aquatic zissou' hats. I should probably find a picture; I've never seen the movie.

east coast style

so I've moved into my little cottage thing which I share with 9 other girls and have set up a schedule for cooking and cleaning (tonight was a lovely little veggie stirfry. I'm plotting a sweet fruit salsa-y thing and gado-gado for when it's my turn.)

the redeye was entertaining. I sat next to a chad-clone and he was entertaining until he fell asleep. we sat on the tarmac for awhile- apparantly finding burn marks on wheels is a bad thing. landed in Boston and wandered around dazedly until coffee was found (huzzah!) then sat out on the sidewalk for about an hour (was supposed to be, anyway, until the bus that was supposed to arrive at 0915 arrived at 0950, which sent me into exhausted panic stuff) and then slept on the bus. ran into two guys, one on my trip, the other going on the atlantic trip, and we had a lovely evil long walk after we got off the bus in Falmouth. here's what we did:

walk out of bus station; spot bike path. "hey, wasn't the school practically on the path?"
we proceed on bike path.
we cross a road. no sign. "let's keep going."
we proceed on bike path.
still proceeding.
yep, still proceeding. it's hot, and we have all our luggage. I'm wearing crappy shoes.
we realize we're about to hit ocean. oops. we turn onto road.
we walk along road until we hit a streetlight, and road construction.
we turn right, after asking several motorists just where the hell woods hole road is (which was 28th st- or, the road we crossed first.)
we walk along road, turn left into school, up the hill, and register, then walk down the hill into our houses and fall over.

here's what we should have done: proceed on bike path. turn right on road. walk around bend and into school.

oh well. at least it was nice and sunny, not cold and rainy like today.

ah, but today...

today, we took a tour of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI)/MBL library and got our picture taken for our cards. ooo.

then, we got to take a tour of WHOI's Oceanus ship and see all the fun toys you see in National Geographic or Discovery Channel stuff. giant winches, all sorts of fun beepy electronic things, entertaining montages (i.e. the little joystick, very technical-looking that is used to steer the ship; in front of it, however, is a little plate that says <---to left to right--->. I have a picture of it, but not yet on the puter.

then we walked into the other slip and got to salivate over the Corwith Cramer, which is the ship that the atlantic crews use. (ours is the Robert C Seamans). Still. all gloriously terrifying in its beauty of lines and canvas and scientific toys.

then three of us went to the pie in the sky coffeehouse and got coffee. mmm.

but in non SEA stuff-

almost done with the sari sweater thing, although I have to buy more yarn if I want sleeves.
started Elsebet's wristlets on the plane.
there are some knitters here, but it seems like most of them left the yarn at home.

super jealous of all the WA skoganites, because there's viking day this weekend and I'm going to be up at dawn for some nautical science thing and then later some kayaking. whoo!

I like my Chacos, but they're a tad...fiddly.

I think that sort of concludes the randomness. Wait, no. I hate books with pseudo science written for a lay audience. Although that's not entirely true- some of the James Rollins stuff is nice entertaining fluffy reading. (buckyballs in the blood? queen of sheba? what? carnivorous pseudosentient trees?) maybe it's just that we've been forced into reading Michael Crichton's State of Fear. reiteration after reiteration after reiteration...I mean seriously, once you've had 100 pages to convert one character away from blind ecoactivism/terrorism, you really don't need to spend another 200 pages converting two other characters. that's when you use the literary equivalent to a cut scene. blarg. the graphs and footnotes are also very annoying, both because they disrupt the page and because it's impersonating a scientific paper. and I hate being thrashed over the head with the same 'stunning revelations' every 30 pages. it's the same problem I had with the Da Vinci Code.

ok. thus concludes the randomness.

oh, and I love my jacket.

"I am the monarch of the sea..." (too much indy.)

sooo....I'm down to seven days before I fly out to MA. ...sooo I should probably get packing, eh- which is sort of ironic because I haven't unpacked fully yet but oh well. yeah.

I started knitting the front half of the sari yarn sweater. luckily I have a ways to go yet before I decide whether or not I'm playing with the pattern.

my ticket home from tahiti is...get this...three times more expensive than my tickets from seattle to boston, from boston to chicago to minneapolis, and from minneapolis to tahiti. combined.

ouch.

hooray for airlines with monopolies. maybe I should just try to sail home. I'll just go Kon-Tiki style. yeah. that'll work.

ouch. I can't think about it. I get twitchy. back to knitting-

I ripped apart my stash yesterday to get at a circular needle for mom. now I want to figure out how to make it look not-exploded. maybe I'll just stuff it all in the windowseat. yeah. good plan. no. I'll figure it out later. hah.

my brain's in a hyper-writing mode. I can't keep up with it; but now I have about seven pages of chaotic marit-code that hopefully wll remind me enough of the scenarios that I haven't put down yet on paper. they're stuck in distilled- no, more like a redwine reduction- they're stuck in reduction mode. brief sketchy descriptions and confusing lines of dialogue. whee. james joyce would be laughing his head off if he could read them- he'd then say I have no call for mocking stream of consciousness. ah well.

look! Buffalo!

this is the buffalo I made mom drive past slowly while I leaned across her to get the picture. she made a few entertaining noises and then accelerated very quickly away when (she says) it looked at her funny.

apparantly she doesn't think the audi is buffalo-proof.

waha.

hm. I may have to change my standard set of random sayings. 'waha' now looks like it should have al- as a prefix, and it alone just looks funny. anyway.

I decided today was a poofy-shirt day, so I dug out my ren fest poofy white shirt and put it on.
bad idea. matt was the last one to wear it, so it smells like him. now I've gone all boy-mopy. siiigh.

did I mention that my secret pal rocked even though I disappeared right after and she couldn't get her last package to me (bad me, no biscuit) but that I did get it? a lovely the-only-good-language-is-a-dead-language tile and meditations for women who knit too much, which so far has been making me laugh just about every time I pick it up.

I have now knit the back of my recycled sari yarn sweatery thing. it's making my head hurt, because the first time I looked at it I went...no way is the front going to be the same as the back. my boobs are not fitting in that. and then I pinned it to a different sweater, and now I thing it might. but I'm also thinking that maybe it'll stretch funny and look weird and that I should play with the pattern anyway. bah. anyway, here it is.

just when you think it's safe...

...the internet finds a way to freak you the hell out. a reenactment:
so I'm bumming around the internet, just chilling and enjoying the fact that it's free and there's good coffee and it's washington state (woo!). I stumble across a mention of Felter's Grove and went...huh, it's like the band from high school, Fetters Grove. so I decide to google "Fetters Grove," not expecting a response, but (tada!) it pops up with a bio of a different band. I read, confused, and apparantly Blake has poof appeared with a band called Middle Rhythm Session in florida. woo! maybe they'll make it big and then I can wander around going "hey. I know that guy. I have pictures from a jam session in the school caf." and paparazzi will hound me begging for copies.
on second thought, maybe they should just stay successful in florida.

Hey! Knitting!
I started on a "sweater" in a lacy open pattern from Drops in a recycled sari yarn. I have now learned: do not make mistakes with recycled sari yarn. you will not be able to rip it back. ever. (that was on a crocheted project; it might be better with knit. then again I might just be delusional.)


Wristlets out of...um...gimme a minute...no, it's not going to come. my one experience of SWS, a cousin of Single Sock Syndrome. I finally got over it and gave them to Aunt Helen. pattern is out of my very own brain. still unsure of the wisdom of making wristlets out of this stuff- it's got a huge color repeat. in fact I'm not even sure it does repeat. oh well. they look nice together and they made all the counselors at sup sugoi hosu very jealous that I wouldn't knit them a pair. I would, but...not 11 pairs in one week. that approaches Dr Who Remix insanity. Wristlets go fast, but on iittle needles and when you're trying to make your bobbly lace pattern go one way on one hand and one way on the other...twitchy. mit thumbhole, although I think I'd do these again with a more substantial over-the-knuckle presence.


And now, cabley wristlets out of bamboo yarn (A.M.) from Michelle (I have too much fun on that website.) these were given to my no-longer-secret pal Suzie. Another pattern from my brain, although I have since learned that yes, maybe, row counters are a goood thing when working with a variable-thickness yarn. one of my repeats is a tad long and when I realized it I decided- nah. it's not going to be that visible, it'll be ok. (I was in the middle of binding off, ok? forgive the laziness.)
ok, so I should have fixed it. I know this. it gets to share in the shame of the Dr Who Remix.
what shame of the Dr Who Remix, you say? oh.

Behold my shame.

The Dr Who scarf, remixed. it's...well...you can see. I've progressed with seven bands of color since it was last posted (I think) but...I'm in the middle of one of the 57 rows of one color bits and it's just too depressing. the knitterly black hole, as it were (I got the Yarn Harlot's Meditations for People Who Knit Too Much from my secret pal). I also got a tile that says "the only good language is a dead language" in english and latin and has a list of dead languages in the background. glee!
Lars, I do swear that you will eventually have a scarf. ...you may be in the home, but...you'll have a scarf.

oh, and I learned, on our drive through the country, how to make my mother very twitchy and nervy. it's quite simple: ask her to drive slowly through a buffalo herd so I can take pictures of them out the window/sunroof. at the point illustrated below she decided I was insane and accelerated.

...um, for some reason blogger doesn't want to upload that picture. use your imagination.

I am now officially terrified.

sd card slot is apparantly recognizing itself now. yay.
opened a box of rice candy to celebrate.
looked - with a slight frisson of childish excitement- for the 'free children's sticker' inside.
extracted - with a slight frisson of terror- a statue of liberty tattoo.

is nothing sacred anymore? where is my cartoon car? my cuddly happycat sticker? the weird doodle-cartoon of a cat in a tutu driving a racecar? (don't laugh, I had it on a discman until it was stolen.)

...there is something wrong with my computer. it pops up a "windows- no disk there is no disk in the drive. please insert a disk into drive ." thing and if I click cancel it rebirths itself. same with try again and continue. gr.

watching Zilch the Torysteller- with an ASL interpreter. funniest. thing. ever.

oddness.

beginning the process of unpacking and getting my stuff organized so I can prepare for school in october. working on my travel arrangements now. creepyscary.

I'm in this whole little zone where little things have been making me twitchy- not escape from the small children twitchy, but the weird little heart-scrunch that you can't tell is a good thing or a bad thing. y'know? things like putting my key in the door of my parents' house in tacoma and feeling like it was mine and I'd leapt years in the future, checking the mail today as I wandered down the street to the starbuck's with my laptop (back from shop! gleee!) and feeling like everything was an overlay, an image projected onto a scrim to mask reality, lying awake last night before waking up to period-and-cramps-with-a-vengeance and it's just a weird day. weird. I don't want to be 23 yet. I think I want to be just buried in research- nice, safe, cuddly research- right now. I woke up crying a little because I was dreaming about our Jterm human dissection and anatomy class and that we got to meet our donors roger and nora and they got to tell us what was going on in their lives and how they'd come to the decision to give us such a gift. trying not to cry now.

damn reproductive biology and endocrinology.

aaand a troupe of four uniformed tweeners just walked into starbucks and holy crap did my brain do the special effect blurry time/space slide into japan. and then I blinked, and it was gone.

four o'clock is clearly the starbucks rush time in tacoma.

I'm worried about mom. there's a ton of work to be done in the house and it's enough that she's not gotten the chance to rest since...since ever, I guess. at least since this time last year. and I want to help but it seems like I can't, really. Dad's now a costco/ikeaholic, which is amusing.

Maybe I'll go for a bikeride tomorrow and everything will seem less...weird.

got to talk to matt last night, which was good. I got delegated into dinner because mom slashed her toe on the light table and dad was redoing my field dressing on her and so I was pretty distracted, which I feel bad about, but he said he'd call today maybe so that'll be good.

a beautiful puppy was keeping me company outside earlier. I want a puppy. well, dog. maybe I'll start a doginic- a clinic where you can come in and choose a dog from a variety of breeds and just play with it for an hour. or sit and just bury your hands in its fur for awhile. or romp and play "big 'dog' little dog" for awhile. there's a little house finch out there now eating some crumbs that the guy sitting by me spread out there earlier.

OH I got to blow glass in Coeur d'Alene on our last leg over here. curse my prediliction for attraction to expensive and equipment-intensive art. bronze casting? iron pouring? forgework? now glass? sigh. at least there's knitting, although that means I have to remember to start wearing gloves so I can look at pricetags before I touch things.

should probably grab coffee for road and papers and pack up and head home. when I can make my SD slot recognize cards I'll have a ton of lovely pictures to put up.

da da da daaaaa

my life is in my car.
my car is driving to tacoma.
my brain and sanity are lost somewhere along the road.
are we having fun yet?

spent a week with matt running around minneapolis. (yaaay)
pirates of the caribbean still rocks.
I didn't want to demand my 6 bucks back from Snakes on a Plane (every time I think of that title I get this image of CMOT Dibbler standing in a street saying "Snakes! Snakes onna Plane! Inna bun!" and I laugh, and avoid explaining to everyone around me why I'm chortling.) ...if you want to know, check out terry pratchett's discworld series.
yay for the zoo. hoorah for confusing silly little prairie dogs.
yay for sharks 3d at the imax.
yay for legoland at the mall. (drool drool salivate drool)
yay for the mpls sculpture garden.
slightly less yay for the walker, in its prissy ucky refusal to show minnesotan artwork.
yay for yarn. mmmm. yarn.
yay of absoluteness for the renaissance festival. twice. oh yeah. and yay for boy in kilt.

drove to moorhead.
drove to bismark. had a-maz-ing food at the east 40 chophouse.
drove to billings.
drove to spokane.
now we're going to drive east (for something different) and go to the coffeehouse/glassblower's shop in coeur d'alene and have coffee and blow glass. yep.

and then we'll drive to tacoma. yaaaay.

onagasaehyo!

aaaah. after wonderful week at the lake, I am back in the city staying at a friend's until I can wake up eaaaarly tomorrow and go pick up my fiance at the airport. early. guh. then maybe off to renfest. and get my fish from the wright's to teri/lisa. ovid gets to be pampered! hehe.
at the lake I have:
~read three books.
~knit and designed matt's hatt. it will be presented to him at the airport. if he doesn't react with the appropriate level of response, he IS being left at said airport.
~watched a season and a half of Coupling, a few episodes of McCallum, and two episodes of Slings and Arrows. (BBC overdose, what?)
~sewn the most cushy cuddly overgrown baby blanket ever (I have reaffirmed my hatred of slinky fabrics that defy decent pinning and speed of sewing. bah. retroactive thanks to my mum for apparantly-evil halloween costumes.)
~knit half of a scarf to be felted and embroidered with the very last tailings of the wristlet yarn.
~finally-FINALLY! mailed off package to said secret pal. hope she likes it.
~did a bunch of writing- albiet mostly in my head, but that's ok.
ok. time for sleep. the mullin's funny little baby ewok dog is barking at the wall- it's very entertaining. yay! tomorrow I get new glasses!

behold the power of....hm...

aaaaah. silence. brief silence- I have to go back to my cabin in...seven minutes.

I have now learned that korean candy is either really good (approaching hi-chew standards (yes, I know...blasphemy)) or scary beyond all reason. and if you freeze the little debbie analog graham cracker marshmallow confused s'more thing it's much better.

I picked up this customize your own mug thing. was very confused when all the "colored inserts" had bible passages on them until I read the fine print on the side. international christian outreachwhatsitthing- it's now been obliterated by the pictures (ranging from oytun to just a few days ago) on one side and comics on the other. yay.

i lied- my yarn is 197 yards. any suggestions now?

what is it about languages? I mean, seriously- I couldn't remember the katakana alphabet to save my life while I was actually taking japanese; why, then, does it insist on intruding and confusing my brain to no end when I'm trying to read/write in korean? gah. Murasaki stopped by for a visit and she and Min Chang were speaking japanese and then I got really confused.

once again, we have demonstrated that small drama queen girl plus "IknoweverythingduuuuuuhgoshIthoughteveryoneknewthat *flips hair*" equals complete and utter chaos. I hate living with the munchkins. just when I have no energy to fix things they start falling apart, and they're not yet old enough to understand that they don't have to be bestest best friends, and that's ok.

got cookies from my grandfather. mmm.

any suggestions for about 100yds of sportweight wool in a lovely grey/white/cream? I found a fun shawl pattern but it calls for 400 yards in a different weight.

onayusama! (my poor transliteration of 'hello'...I think)

so I have learned enough korean script to be able to read the fun little buttons that pop up (for example, blogger right now is in korean but for my blog's name and the little hints at the bottom telling me how to bold/italicize osv)...but only inasmuch as I can then speak, out loud, something I don't understand. ah well.

my computer is off in lala land. haven't yet called the company itself (that's next on my list) but so far, it's found the fifth dimension. wah.

I found the secret stash of hot cocoa. life is better.

finished northern lights wristlets. yaaay! broke one of my lantern moon dps. buhou. snif.

house? what house?

or, looked at it from a different perspective, brain? what brain?
yep. house has sold. we have to be gone by sept 1. matt's going to be in town from the 2nd to the 9th and I'm now back up at camp.

not much is different. lots of small cute kids running around. lots of not-english being spoken. however now when the computer bleeps at me it does so by bleeping and popping up a window all in korean script, at which point I blink at it and go...uh...click? so far it's been working out. oh, and I don't understand a word of Korean.

grad schools make my head hurt.

final touches of knitting happening on SP's box. muahaha. I don't know why I cackled evilly there; I don't have much of a brain right now.

got some amazing yarn to knit Tubey from Knitty.com with. ok. off to eat-

ta-dah

so I have returned to civilization (albiet briefly) and my house is an alien creature. it's now on the market and there's rented furniture and "appropriate linens" and did you know you're not allowed to have books in the house? there's only two rooms in the house right now that have books, and the basement really shouldn't count because they're arranged by color and not by subject and paperbacks are also not allowed. my room is the other room with books; not sure why.

if you've ever been to my house, you should be looking for the alien pod people by now.

and there are two huge bouquets of calla lilies as decoration. yep. calla lilies. one on the dining room table and one on the endtable in the living room. ...where's the funeral? oh wait, we're selling a house. my bad.

anyway. haven't updated in a while but have obviously survived the last insane week of camp. much hilarity and overtiredness and general camp-ness. managed to not finish any of the knitting projects I had brought along.

dr who? knit another three feet. yay, only eight more to go? ish?
shawly thing? knit a row, got horribly confused, consulted mom, forgot advice, set back in bag.
the saami shawl? got taken out, breathed the brief light of day, was banished because of complete nonportability. (apologies for the confused metaphor.)
shruggy thing? ignoring pattern; it says I should have 10.5 inches of pattern and 68 stitches across after a certain number of rows- I'm definitely not even to 68 stitches (I checked and it IS mathematically impossible) yet and I have way more than 10.5 inches. in progress; not quite to body yet.
started a pair of wristlets in a gorgeous blended wooly yarn in desperation because I needed to finish something. if i had a working computer I'd post a picture as proof that I can actually finish things.
crocheted another pair of slippers.

opened my package of funwithyarn goodness today. mmmm. off to knit.

whoooo...

funwithyarn update tonight! eeee! fun yarn and planting trees. mmmmm....

almost the end of free weekend. ah well. the kids are watching movies, I'm finishing cleaning our downstairs workroom, (and watching funwithyarn like a hawk), and in a few minutes I'll probably drive back into town because I forgot an s-video cable. again. sigh. nicely relaxing day, though, and clean clothes, which are always go.

mmm...funwithyarn. I don't think I should be allowed on this website. ok. time to get back into town.

finishing touches on secret pal mondo-package yay. guilt level is dropping.

tomorrow is fun with postage and errands! whee!

1. What is your favorite season?
fall, by all means.

2. Where is or would be your favorite place in the world to take a vacation?
whuf. at this moment, I'd love to head back to northern norway and chill on skoddevarre or raipas.

3. If you could have any job in the world and not worry about finances (everything would be taken care of), which means you'd be doing something you actually like, what would it be?
evig student (eternal student)- minus the requirements

4. What is your favorite project to knit or crochet?
wristlets, exploratory scarves or crocheting slippers

5. What is your favorite food - whether it be a main dish, dessert, snack, whatever?
pad thai or salmon onigiri

6. What is your favorite way to relax and unwind?
book, hammock, shade, slight breeze.

if you've got a few minutes you should head on over to skogfjorden.blogspot.com, because...well...you should.

and I have fought the computer again and failed. next step: hunt down an S-video cable. I don't know why they have to reformat my harddrive if all they have to do is replace an LCD screen...but...I do know that if I don't back it up, they will format it, and then I'd have to just go completely insane and then I'd never get weekend passes. sigh.

note: elsebet and dagmar are not allowed in barnes and noble together. ever.
at least without alarm clocks.

but now it's bedtime. happy first-day-of-married-bliss to Laila and TRB (tall redheaded boy, otherwise known as Dominic. they're so cute.)

whoooo overtired

proverbial good news and bad news:
I don't have to be at the badestrand (beach) for this week and maaaaybe for next week (if I can swing it), which is good, but relinquishing my control of the badestrand is difficult, especially when things aren't running efficiently but you don't want to say "well...I did it this way..." even though that way is better because that's not very polite nor condusive to happy relations.

8 year olds with power tools. oooh, man.
child: "why can't I use the saw?" (10 inch circular saw, that is)
me: "*cringe*....because I'm mean."
child: "oh. Why can't I use the drill on my own?"
me: "see previous statement."
child: *blink* "...what?"

I can't remember if I talked about my new fish or not. I got another fish because I fell in love with him and his coloring; a more typical goldfish body than ovid's (I think he was a fantail or an oranda) that was bright orange with a black dorsal stripe from his forehead to the tips of his caudal fin. I brought him home two weeks ago and named him Cicero, because he was sort of cranky and flourishy when he swam.

Cicero has succumbed to the triumvirate. he was fine, and then he was sitting on the bottom being very inactive. my book said he was either going to be fine because he just had indigestion or he was going to die of some obscure disease. I was hoping for the former, but...sånn er livet. at least he gets to stay at camp now.

my secret pal rocks. she sent me yarn and coffee and chocolate, which as far as I'm concerned are the fundamental building blocks of life. forget carbon and oxygen and all that jazz. the temptation to not finish the Dr Who behemoth (7.5 feet now!) is rising almost faster than I can beat it back; especially with fun new yarn to play with and weaving stuff that is sitting in a box calling to me and that I'm only holding back because I never have time to set it up. it always comes down to sleep or setup. sleep or setup. sleep pretty much always wins because sleep is...sleep. and speaking of which...that's where I'm headed.

natta.

waha.

so we're mildly obsessed right now with Raske Menn's "worlds history in 5 minutes" and it has inspired me to update in its style.

I love my cabin. my girls are great. yaaaaay! (hou)
even though the evening program last night was way hectic and stressful the kids loved it. yaaaay (slightly buhou)
taekwondo really does help your life perspective. (hou)
the best activity plans always come just late enough at night that you think you can do it and still get to bed at a decent hour...but then take 2 hours to do. (both hou and buhou)
murphy's law hates me. I left my laptop sitting on the table in our staff lounge; realized that it was in the lounge as I was crawling into bed and it was raining and uck so I decided it'll be ok. it'll survive. got to the staff lounge this morning and it was sitting on the couch. I grumble- soft surface plus heat equals bad- and set it on the table. I decide to check my email quickly (I've got a few minutes before breakfast) and open the screen.

*pause for dramatic effect, supply your own sound effects/music*

the LCD screen is cracked and broken. dead. kaput. one of two things happened;
(my usb port is on the left side; I don't have a lefty mouse so I put the mouse across the top of my keyboard to use it on the right. I have a retracty travel mouse, so there's a hard little plasticky thing midway through the cord.)

A)someone decided to close the laptop and move it to the couch as they washed the table and decided to close it all the way despite the resistence of the hard plasticky thing

B) someone decided to close the laptop and move it to the couch as they washed the table and then proceeded to sit on it absentmindedly.

regardless. I'm mostly over the pain now, more into the pain of "don't think warranty covers/ not sure if insurance still exists/ ohgodthisisgoingtobepainfully'spensive..."

but. Oyvind is here, which is definitely a yaaaaaaaay. (definitely hou.)
my goal is to have the DR who scarf done by end of next month. this month, I mean.

mom's getting me a package of fun happy weaving stuff. yay!

definitely buhou.

ok, first I must apologize to my SP because I have been horribly lax in updating this and in thanking for the postcard. in my defense...this past session has been hell. suffice it to say that we had 14 girls between the ages of 8 and 11 all with the attention span of a drunken moth with ADHD for 2 weeks. but it wiiilllll be better, because I have purchased a hammock.

That's right. Ei hengekøya. ei? eller er det en? vet'ka.

curse my latte. tastes so good but makes not sleepy and reaaaally should sleep.

but yaaaay elsebet's here so I'm not the only lifeguard and I finally might get to do stuff that I really want to do as opposed to stuff that I like to do but not constantly.

and yaaaay I have a new fish. his name is (for now, anyway) cicero. I think it's going to stick. It's sort of a ridiculous name for such a small fish (I think he'll ultimately prove himself to be an oranda because his forehead is all bubbly although the label on the tank said fantail comet, so I'm not sure) but that's what makes it perfect, because marcus tullius cicero is sort of ridiculous. y'know? so now I've got ovid and cicero, although for now cicero might be ibsen since that's the theme of camp this year.

have laid aside the confusing shruggy shawly thing for now and am plodding away at the Dr Who scarf remixed. hopefully done by end of this two week session. inshallah.

arg I just remembered that while I moved all my stuff out of stavanger and into molde I neglected to unpack it and all that jazz. buhou. buuuuhouuu.

I don't understand how june bugs survive all this suicidal divebombing of screens and walls. bzzzzzzzzzuzzzzzzzzuzzzzTHUDstaggerstaggerbzzzzz...bizarre.

bought an amazing coffeecup at the bemidji craft faire today. it's very pretty. and huge. huuuge. and Lars and I saw the best sticker ever on a stop sign today. I'll post the picture of that and the tree named Jenn tomorrow if I get a chance.

here's an amusing thing: my list of stuff from my last posting.
a: move into a different cabin
b: finish putting my beach together.
c: repaint the sign.
d: sleeeeeeeep
e: get my 'hooray you graduated from college' drink from my not-boss
f: sleeeeeeep
g: plan for what will be essentially 7 hours of activities about viking archaeology.
h: recharge for the next round, which begins on monday.

soooo...in 2 weeks; a, b, d, f, and h were accomplished. g was sort of accomplished. I've actually now accomplished 'a' twice by moving back into molde.
so list for these weeks?
a: repaint the sign
b: not go crazy
c: reformat movie to put on website
d: organize extreneous crap for eventual removal
e: get my run-pilates workout schedule going
f: plan g again.
I'm sure there's more but that's enough for now.

I think I should drag myself off to bed. the coffee's wearing off, my sentence structure is starting to get odd and the languages are warring in my head and I'm not quite done with cleaning out my cubby and restoring some semblance of order before chaos descends again and I still have to make my bed. yep. breakfast tomorrow morning (this morning) at 9. woo...

hou? bu hoooooouuuuu!

done with first session!

whoooooooof. now it's on to the weekend, where it's time to
a: move into a different cabin (hooray! no living with the babies! I love them, they're cute, they're koselig, but...when they wake you up four times in one night (including once at 5am) because they're homesick...it's not good for the bloodpressure.)
b: finish putting my beach together.
c: repaint the sign. (lifegaurd? guess I should have proofread the girls' english more than the norwegian...)
d: sleeeeeeeep
e: get my 'hooray you graduated from college' drink from my not-boss
f: sleeeeeeep
g: plan for what will be essentially 7 hours of activities about viking archaeology.
h: recharge for the next round, which begins on monday.

whee!
am confused about this shawly-shruggy pattern thing that I'm knitting. it says I should have 68 stitches after increasing 2 stitches per row over 21 rows after starting with 40 stitches. at this point I should have 10.5 inches of knitting.
it's not working either in my head or on my needles. eh. can't think about it at this point.

so my secret pal rocks my world. I think I sat and stared at my little book of michaelangelo sculptures for a long time slowly drooling before getting to the point when the brain goes "wait...that's...that's the dorsal radial vein...in marble...fzzzt"

talked to the boy today. i miss the boy.

ok. am tired. must sleep.

back to civilization. sort of.

wa-ha. I have returned. (that's return-ed, not returned. my sense of drama demands it.) moved my stuff into my cabin (mostly)
planned for my language classes (sort of)
gotten a new fishtank for ovid (who is now named ovid ibsen) that probably won't be used until next weekend but who knows, we'll see...
and will shortly be putting out the lines for the beach. whee.

tomorrow the kids come and then whooooo we're off on a wild world of norwegian fun. I made a bouquet of roses for the kids in my cabin. once the world settles back into its routine I will be posting more frequently, although my english will probably fail miserably.

hooray for barnes and noble.

oh look, I'm in a bookstore. surprise, surprise...

...although it comes to my mind, albiet slowly and sheepishly, that I've forgotten my camera at home. the memory card with all my happy photos is in the camera. bother. oh well.

I started knitting a pair of cably wristlets for my secret pal in this newfangled yarn I got from the lovely Michelle at funwithyarn. it's Ingeo, which I gather is some sort of extruded plant goo that's nicely recycleable- or -ed and happily vegan. (I have to confess that I don't really care about its being vegan. I like wool, and I really don't think sheep mind being shorn, as long as it's not me doing the shearing because I have no idea how one shears a sheep and honestly, I have enough trouble shaving my legs and remaining nick-free. I like leather. I have a whole backpack made of leather. yay, norway. anyway. I do have friends who are vegan to varying degrees, which made me happy when I heard of this ingeo stuff.)

and actually I have to confess that I more went "ooo....pretty..." to the colors and then went "uh? ingeo? what?" to the actual fiber-stuff. anyway. yes. the wristlets!

began knitting. not so sure about the ingeo stuff now. it's...interesting. I had a horrid time with getting a decent tension and while the ball feels great, the three-quarters-done wristlet feels kinda...strange. almost like plastic. the cables have nice definition (it's a fine-to-bulky weight, so they look a little funky at times, but still good) but the feel is making me sort of twitchy. yeah. so that's project one right now, although it looks as if the wind is blowing towards making it project one-to-rip-out. sigh.

project two: am consulting a higher power about my miracle yarn shoalwater shawl. my yarn supply is dwindling in my accent colors and I'm staring another two and a half pattern repeats in the face going...uh...crap. I know I bought enough yardage to finish, but did I buy enough to finish without making unbalanced color bands? curse the storvick OCD.

I've decided that the drawback to learning to knit without using patterns is that you look at a pattern and go, hey, that's cute, but what if I make it x or add a y or work this pattern from this sweater into that hat and before you know it you don't know what's going on and you gently put the book/pattern/slip/whatever back on the shelf, bring all the UFOs to your mind, and tell yourself "no." or at least that's what you say you do, and it's what you believe you did, at least until you get home and realize there's this thing in the bag that you didn't remember purchasing. it's a strange twilight-zoney thing.

lots of munchkins in bnn today in varying stages of awareness and dress. there's an adorable escapee from the napping woman on the sofa who is now naked but for a diaper because who wants to wear a clingy jumper on a day like today even if it's got purple butterflies on it, a burgeoning bookworm in one of those front-baby carrier-pouch things who is staring at all the books mom's standing in front of with this look of fierce concentration, or at least concentrated drooling, and an angel claire type who is definitely going to be trouble as soon as dad takes little brother off to the bathroom and mom blinks.

stopped at petco for some water goo to make Ovid happier when he enters the land of northern minnesota iron water and there was a guy with a newfie ooold puppy and a baby newfie puppy. they were so cute. big newfie was going grey all down his chest and little newfie could manage about four bounds before tripping itself/walking into a case/bumping old newfie/simply going splat. it would then look up at the nearest human and go "....buh?"

sigh. now I want a newfie. ok, I've wanted a newfie since mom and I were biking on the path and saw a pony in the distance- a pony that turned out to be a dog upon closer inspection. still. ah well. eventually. maybe.
look! my Jterm class. we so crazy... hehe.

hello, blog. long time no see.

you know how in cartoons like Tom and Jerry there will sometimes be a flurry of activity set to music like Flight of the Bumblebee? that's been my life for the past week +. since my last post I have:
1) taken a jazz history final
2) driven to rochester and taken the GREs
3) finished my bronze globe
4) finished the triage on and the finishing of the bronze hands
5) finished my alabaster sculpture
6) written a 7 page paper on the art of caesarea maritima
7) taken a written comp vikings history final
8) given a presentation on the art paper
9) finished cicero's pro caelius speech and handed it in
10) taken inventory in the sculpture studio
11) begun packing
12) gotten food poisoning during baccalaureate and the day before graduation
13) gradumatated from college whee!
14) packed
15) drove home
16) been to doctor's ("oh, rosacea. welcome to the greater part of the population. it'll go away in at least six weeks." so yay, I get to keep explaining "*sigh* no, it's not a hickey." even when I leave for camp. boo.)
17) started preparing for graduation party. which is today. in...two hours. eeeep.

fie on goodness, fie!

Camelot's stuck in my head again because Rob and I were talking about whether stealing darts from the small unparented children was a vice or a virtue. bah.

only eleven hours and twelve minutes until I never have to deal with my history of jazz prof again! ever! *cue triumphant brass and full hallelujah chorus...go!* but for now...ooh, how I want to just...just....gr. *cue Ms. White impression...go!* (you know, the one from Clue. "I hated him...so much...it was like...it was...Flames. Flames, on...on the side of my face...breathing, heaving, breathless breaths")

but I have found a wonderful evil timewasting turn-off-brain game. it's called CuberXtreme. it's very addictive and deceptively evil. you look at it and go "oh, it'll be nice and easy and cuddly...wait...what...how?...?!aaaa!" I heartily recommend it. you can find it here.

and now I have to go study. again.

one more day of school!

as promised, the kanji wristlets. (and Chad.) also, because I'm random, a picture of skiing with my dad in canada. I really really really want to go telemarking right now. and be in norway. actually I want to be in norway telemarking right now. not that there's any snow up there now. spring snow, sure. not great snow, no. maybe in svalbard, but that's waaay up and inaccessible. although I could always just call tove and beg. mmm...tele...mountains....norway....finnmark.....










broke out my molds today...looks like the casting of the ball went well but the hands fared not so well. big shrinkage hole and my texture was basically destroyed by hasty repairs in mid-investing...we'll see what dale says tomorrow.

now time to write the one page paper I forgot about that's due tomorrow. honestly- what's the point? last day of classes, and a paper is due? what? bah.

one more day of classes! ever! ...at least until grad school. or at least until the SEA semester this fall if they love me. hm.

I have discovered podcasts. (well, downloaded, anyway).

Finished kanji wristlets. Chad was most pleased; I'll have a picture for you as soon as I clear it with him.

having issues with my "most important women in jazz you've ever / never heard of" CD- funny thing about wartime/early recording/women recording in that it really didn't happen much. or if it did...it happened on LPs, none of which I can turn into a CD because while I do know how to...
...I'm really just not willing to put in the effort. Not for this class. Not for this professor.
Although if you want a quick way to blow about 30 bucks on Rhapsody Online...be slightly OCD on projects of this sort. ah well.

warning: old and crotchety rant.
so for the past several days (if not weeks) the campus cafe, which is supposed to close at midnight with fryer food going closed at 10pm and oven food going closed at 11pm (which leaves you with blended slushies/shakes, espresso based beverages, whatever's left of the bagel sandwiches/sushi/bottled juices/yogurt parfaits etc (which is usually sad and sketchy), soda based beverages, cookies, and nachos. makes sense. whee.
however:
lately they've been closing the kitchen at ridiculous times. like 9pm. today at nine: no food of any sort from kitchen. not even nachos, which (as we all know) can be made in 30 seconds by a single-celled organism with access to a microwave. tissue paper-chips-cheese-nuke-throw in basket-done. With four students and a manager working (even if they're two people short) you should be able to manage nachos. they closed blendy drinks at 1030. so...no kitchen. no blendy drinks. and 2 and a half hours left before closing. gr. so bitter. our post-taekwondo testing tradition of nachos and coffee/soda was broken. sad.
end old and crotchety rant.

going to knit a DNA scarf in Noro Transitions. someone tell me I'm crazy.

the merry wives...

Went to Merry Wives of Windsor opera today. Twas interesting. I know the guy running lights so I was prepared for the ...unique (read bad) style, but was pretty unprepared for the costuming. I kept getting distracted from the singing by the lengths (ankles? girls? Elizabethan? I don't think so...) but it grew on me and all was well until the elves appeared. Wearing essentially burgundy burlap sacks. You can't be light and flighty and elven in burlap. Well, you can, but it takes years of training- which a few of the girls had, which made things worse because they were believable and all I could think of the rest of the cast was "man, they look so uncomfortable in those..."
But still. entertaining show.

My main resource for my Jazz History final project is, I have just discovered, going to be most annoying to read. Anything that spends 20 pages detailing the difficulty the author had in making the switch from calling female swing musicians and their groups "Women Bands" to "All-girl bands" to just plain all-girl bands is painful. especially when she was forced to make the switch in empowerment at the request and insistence of the bandmembers themselves.

Tomorrow I'm off to the Science Museum with Erilynn and Kirsten for some BodyWorlds fun. whee!

Found out La Rana has Hansa, and now I am happy. mmm Norwegian beer.

finished a kanji wristlet; just have to rip out a bit so I can make the edges "not all...rolly" as per Chad's request then knit the other.

secret pal stuff

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
I love knitting with anything that feels great. Wool is probably my favorite, or a wool blend. Knitting with fuzzy stuff can be fun too. I don't like the fake-sticky-plasticky feeling yarns. never tried ribbons.
2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
at the moment? whatever they're currently knitting and a big plastic baggie.
3. How long have you been knitting? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
I've been knitting since 2001. I'd consider my skill level to be intermediate-advanced unless I'm supposed to be reading a pattern. then it's closer to intermediate. (I learned from friends in norway who learned from their grandmothers of the "look at it and knit it" school.)
4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
I have an amazon list, but it hasn't been updated in forever. I'll get on that, I guess.
5. What's your favorite scent? (for candles, bath products etc.)
clean woodsy scents- actually pretty much anything not overly powerful or sweet
6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?
Hi-Chew is my current favorite- it's amazing taffy kind of like starbursts but better. it's japanese and hard to find though, so I content myself with interesting chocolates and peanut M&Ms.
7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?
I crochet, I make my own knifehilts, sew sometimes, I weave fringes on shawls, and I would dearly like to spin but all I've done so far is rough "spinning" with the kids at camp using downweighted drop spindles.
8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)
I like pretty much everything except really drawly country and really hard rap
9. What's your favorite color? Or--do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can't stand?
I tend to not like baby pinks and pastels, but anything can be great when paired with the right colors, so there really isn't a color I can't stand. I tend to wear more saturated colors and fall colors, I guess.
10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?
I have a fiance and a fish.
11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?
yes, yes, yes, and not really.
12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?
I like knitting wristlets and mittens and scarves/shawls- thought I have a few sweaters/vesty things that once I muster up the courage I'll try.
13. What are you knitting right now?
a pair of wristlets, a Dr Who scarf, two shawls and a scarflet, and another jayne hat
14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?
yes
15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?
both, actually. circulars for scarfy/shawly/hat things, straight for everything else. I love bamboo, plastic's ok, and aluminium is okay but it makes a lot more noise when you drop an aluminium needle than when you drop a bamboo in class.
16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?
my mom has both and I can't remember if one of them is stealable. so...no?
17. How did you learn to knit?
moved to norway, lived with two knitters in my dorm, and they were able to make knitting stick in my head
18. How old is your oldest UFO?
if you count the lost other photography glove as a UFO, then 5 years.
19. What is your favorite holiday?
hm...17. May, and Halloween, I suppose.
20. Is there anything that you collect?
interesting random music, interesting rocks for inclusion into jewellery, chopsticks (for hair or food)
21. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?
I don't really know- probably a good encyclopaedia of stitch techniques and their abbreviations. I don't have any subscriptions.
22. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?
armholes. better thumb making techniques.
23. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
I haven't yet, but not for any reason other than I've never done it before.
24. When is your birthday? (mm/dd)
05/29

factum esse.

finally. it's done. my globe is ensconced (that looks wrong, but I'm at the point where the part of me that cares is overruled by the rest of me.) in investment. my hands are rather harrowingly encased in investment. they separated as I was pouring. much panic. wailing, gnashing of teeth, etc. but- I think (hope/pray/beg/plead/sacrificing may be in order) I may have saved it. one, at least, will pour for certain. sigh. anyway.

around 300 pounds of investment later...they're done.

I thought I had until thursday to invest the models, but came to find out at 1100 this morning that nope, they need to be done by wednesday morning. Josh and I have been working on and off all day today from 1100 and we just finished at 0100. thank you ron the security guy, you saved our lives. (he let us stay in the building an hour after we were supposed to be kicked out. I suppose looking desperate and being covered in plaster and white goo adds to your case.)

also moved around 5000 pounds of various powdery things today. two pallets, one of plaster and one of silica. coerced matt into helping. ran the cart over my heel. it looks...interesting. purply and gooshy. we'll see what it looks like tomorrow.

now, it's time for shower. then finish the caesarea presentation roughcut and the 40 or so lines of cicero to translate (though...I might just ask Shari if we can translate it in class. we'll see how long the coffee lasts.).

as my baritone prof said:
"well, you can sleep when you've graduated. well, you're a bio major. you can sleep....well, you can sleep when you're dead."

absolutely nothing to do with knitting.

I heard of this through Gretchen. the original is to be found here.

A brief history of Bath.

LOCAL PAGANS: Oooh, hot water comes from the ground! It is a divine miracle! We devote it to our goddess Sulis, who brings wisdom and health!
ROMAN TROOPS: What ho, this wellspring is indeed a wonder of nature!
LOCAL PAGANS: It is sacred to our goddess Sulis, who brings wisdom and health!
ROMAN TROOPS: Hmm, that is like our goddess Minerva, who brings wisdom and health. We claim this spring in the name of... *drumroll* SULIS MINERVA!
LOCAL PAGANS: *headcolumn*
ROMAN TROOPS: And now we're going to build a big-ass shrine, temple, bathhouse, steamroom, strip mall, brothel, and maybe a Starbuckus Maximus over there.
LOCAL PAGANS: We can't wait until you guys get angl0sax0red in a few centuries.
ROMAN TROOPS: What?
LOCAL PAGANS: Nothing. Hey, is Russel Crowe with you?

hehehe.
also, fun with chemistry. lots of fun. the words "imagine a hand grenade dropped in a bathtub" and "cesium, the emperor of alkali metals" are used. quite possibly too much fun.
...nah.

my O-chem prof told us a story about how they would steal bits of sodium from the store room and drop them out the window onto the snow by the sidewalk in winter when people would walk by. they get to have all the fun.

do you know where your towel is?

Okay. It's May. Officially.

Yikes. (run away! run away!)

I have cabled! whee! and thanks to big poofy pretty yarn, I finished a wristlet over the course of two classes. see?

I've also plotted out my pattern for Chad's wristlets. I can do fair isle kanji...right? suuure.

Still trying to find a yarn that Matt will wear that I will knit that isn't "skritchy."

Roommate and boy are watching Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. time to flee before I get distracted by it.

farwell 432- the capital city of procrastination

whee. time flies? sure. japanese quiz check. latin, mostly check. not even the caffeine was able to combat the effect cicero has on my brain at a certain point: oh well, that's what half-blocks are for. map quiz tomorrow shouldn't be a problem (thank you, 8th grade geography).

I started knitting these wristlets in a gorgeous gorgeous yarn from Michelle who is my new favorite person (newly replacing gretchen, who told me about this and oh man, am I in her debt) (whee, link-happy!). My first ever attempt at cabling. cable-ing? cableing? ah, the 0100-induced inability to spell...at least my paper is done. So far, so good. Picture tomorrow.

knit another three color bands of Dr Who the other day. siigh. so unending. nono- bad attitude. Yay! I knit another three color bands! only 36 left to go! er...yay?

still haven't touched the saami shawl or the other things, but finished the slippers (gave them to my mum, whose sanity is in dire straits what with the explody-house-of-fun, but at least she'll have happy feet.) Mom, don't fall down or up the stairs while you're wearing them. I probably should have made soles for them...oh well. my leather is buried...somewhere...at home.

anyway. time for sleep.

woops

Sat down to write about the gorgeous new yarn I just got and realized I have yet to take my japanese quiz that's due tonight.

soo...while I do that, you'll have to content yourselves with checking out http://www.funwithyarn.com and looking at "calm" and "santa fe." yeah. drooly.

it's a cow day.

If the wind is from the south, it's a pig day. Today, we are fortunate, for it is a cow day with winds from the north. whoo.

ready to invest my hands and ball as soon as I gate them. that'll have to wait for thursday. have to get creative with forging, though- Jack and I were playing with it and the blower leapt to its death. The prospect of repairing it is...dim, to say the least.

but! I finished the slipper! sort of unique and odd-looking but hey, what can you do?

I think I'm going to add some trim around it- it still looks not-quite-right.

knitting and GREs and crapfourweekstograduation, oh my...

ha-ah! I'll make up for the lack of crafty stuff in the last post by overloading in this one.

'tis a joyous day indeed for I have finished my hands! huzzah! now all that needs to be done is to gate them...and invest them...and burn them out...and cast them...and clean them up...

ok. still. rejoicing is still in order. see?














and now, for something completely different.

Saami shawl: fringe needs to be finished, ideally by June- but if I work on it for too long my fingers start to feel like they're bleeding internally.

To make me feel less ashamed for its long period of dormancy: proof of my dedication (read insanity) in the form of a Dr Who scarf.

And look! a Jayne Hat for Lisa. and a slipper that I'm kind of sort of not really following the pattern for which is really notsogreat of an idea because I've crocheted a grand total of oh three things. a shawl/scarfy thing, an mp3 carrycase, and a baglet.

I know. Doesn't look very slipper-like. Ah, well. We'll see. The first one I tried would have maybe fit an eight year old. With wonky feet.

we didn't start the fire...

Drove home this weekend to get some summer clothes and to give Kates her hat. Learned several things:

1) people give you weird looks when you stop and climb up to the "welcome to X" sign and pose in front of it in a funny-looking (but cunning!) hat. silly people. It's a Jayne hat, and it's Canton...though I am no hero of Canton.

2) a mini bag of popcorn + microwave preset popcorn button = (see below.) poor Katy. So distracted by the Jayne hat that I don't think her basement will ever be the same.

3) Barnes and Noble is the best store ever because they have blackberry green tea frappachini and books and cozy chairs and asiago pretzels and because they're open on Easter Sunday, unlike everything else. See? a little cluster of happy cars sitting in front of the happy store while parking spaces in front of Byerly's and Target and all the other stores in the little strip mall-let languish untaken.

4) mini-breaks always go far too quickly. Matt's lizard laid an egg. Ovid survived me forgetting to close the window and my room getting a bit chilly. I am sorely tempted to get a spotted puffer fish. that, however, requires another tank. sigh.

I have another inch knit on my next Jayne hat (lisa) and knit another row on my shawl...it just takes so long! I don't think I want to know how many stitches I have now. too many. Maybe I'll work out a system where I knit a row, then go crochet something to give to someone random just so I don't have to feel like I'm in a time warp and that I can actually finish projects. whoo.

it's Gretchen's birthday today. Happy Birthday Gretchen.

finished things!

Look! Jayne hat done! Kates, I'll get it to you...sometime? P'raps I'll drive up this weekend. Hooray for four day weekends. Oh, and Easter. That too.

Finally fixed up my pattern and submitted it to Knitty.com. We'll see how it goes.

Worked on my stone for too long again. Now my wrists hurt and I have no desire to work on my wax models. arg.

Jayne hat and Jazz

Studying for Jazz History listening exam. Hopefully this one will go better than the last.

but look! Jayne hat!
and now I must flee to go eat and get ready for taekwondo. Gave blood today and feeling funky now so might not accomplish much at tkd but that's ok, I suppose.

Fish!

I reversed the background to the shiny blue from the mirror that I had on Ovid's tank earlier- the contrast is much much better. I'd go so far as to say that the contrast is sexy, which might lead people to the wrong impression- but how can you resist blue vs orangy-gold and black? complementing color families whoo!

Don't worry. I've only had the fish a few days- I promise, in a few more I'll stop going "fish!" and staring at it and inflicting photographs of it on you.


My paper on the chronology of viking art is half done. If I hustle I can get it done in time to turn it in early and get a preliminary grade. I haven't had a professor who actually pays attention to papers and demands quality writing in so long. We'll see how far I get in an hour and 45 minutes.

About two inches of hat done. Nice to be knitting something that doesn't take much attention so knitting while staring at notes on Duke Ellington and bebop and Lady Day is possible. The goal is to finish the hat and then go crazy on the Dr Who scarf. (Maybe that should be go crazy with, I'm not sure). Then finish something that's not actually knitting but if I don't get this fringe done it's just sad. I've been working on this saami shawl since 2002. eep.

learning has occurred.

well, at least some learning has. I could get one of the buttons to show up, the other doesn't, for reasons that elude me but whatever, it's technology- I'm amazed it worked at all. Had to change my layout away from the pretty one but maybe next weekend I'll be able to figure it out again. also going to try to figure out why the finished product looks different from when I write it. hm....

A jazz history exam and a first draft of my viking chronology of art paper are due monday, so that takes priority. ...sort of. I did spend most of Saturday going "fishy!" and playing outside.

Speaking of fishy, I've decided to name the fish Ovid.

My viney thing is taking over my desk, but I'm just happy that it's not dying. This is the first year it hasn't lived by a window.

Another thing to add to list of things-on-needles: Swatch for Jayne Cobb Hat for Kateswiegehts! whee!


must...resist...urge...to...continue...

and another monster is born

Having been inspired by my mother finding knitting blog upon knitting blog upon spinning blog and being continually frustrated with the difficulties in putting pictures on my previous blog, I decided to begin anew. Also hoping that it will force me to finish the various projects on needles, in bags, on the floor, in the closet...eep. Also because I feel that I need yet another outlet for randomness and inanity and insanity. So...blog.

hello, blog.

Today, I bought a fish to go in my early-birthday-present fishtank (thanks to Matt). It's a Calico Ryuking, and it looks like this:

(apologies for the snapshot. flourescent lighting leaves much to be desired when you're shooting a moving object with a macro lens, and flash photography + aquarium = no.) still. fish.

hello, fish.

it doesn't have a name yet, and as of yet has pretty much just been referred to as "fishy!" generally spoken in a highpitched voice. Matt now has "land fish" living in his room, otherwise known as an emerald swift and two green anole lizards. (the swift is also a lizard of some ilk.)

Fish has left the "aaaaaahwhat'sthat what's that what's that" stage and is now in the "food? not food. food? not food. food?" stage, although that might just be goldfish standard behavior. not sure. I haven't had a fish since I killed my pickle jar guppies in...grade school? junior high? A long time ago, anyway, and my other experiences with fish behavior have mostly been over fall semester.

What? Knitting? oh yes. I have at present in my dorm room about 6 projects on needles or in the dreaded skeins-of-yarn-inna-bag stage. I have two Fiber Trends Shoalwater Shawls in various stages of development- the one that's been languishing on the needles longer is the Classic Elite Yarn Miracle alpaca/tencel (left) and the one that I started because I needed small and portable to take with me to the TCI is an Artyarns Regal Silk (right).

I've got one scarf in Dale Tiur (mohair/wool) based off of the Dale pattern Gerbera (upper) and then another Dr Who scarf (lower) in mostly Rauma 3tr. Strikkegarn (wool) that will be done by graduation, I swear. Honest.

And then there's the wristlet I'm thinking of submitting to Knitty.com, which means I have to take my "knit until done" and turn it into a legible pattern. eep.

I think this has gotten long enough. Besides, pizza-and-boy calls. Next time: my other works-in-progress, ranging from my sculpture to my saami shawl.

If you haven't read Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books (The Eyre Affaire, etc), then you should do so.