Email Check!

K

While I'm checking my email, I just wanted to inform you that I have started and ripped out approximately 2 projects in the last 12 hours, and that I am about to start another. Unless I realize that it's 12:31 in the evening and I am insane. And really don't want to do biochemistry.

The only thought I keep in my heart is if I pass this class, I never take another chemistry class again.

Wow. Think about that. I know you won't have that. But maybe I can achieve my lifelong goal of not doing chemistry.

A

Running Entry

K,

Biochem week=doom. As we all know. But, just as a quick running update until I take pics and put them up, I finished the blue merino sweater, I finished (excepting the liners) the entrelac gloves, and I found yarn for the beloved Latvian mittens I am, no strike that, was dying to make. Now I have my supplies:

Roros-tweed brodergarn!

Yup, I stopped by Syvilla's. In case anyone else wonders, Syvilla Tweed-Bolson is the LYS you've always wanted. Kind of. I mean, since she is mail order and sells mostly traditional Norwegian yarn from her basement you can't 1)visit all the time and 2)get whatever. Pretty much just Norwegian yarn. This time, when I called her up to visit and almost missed her, but I found her! I forgot to bring money with me though, and so she sent me off with my yarn and was like, "Oh, come back sometime with the monies." Anyhow, running entry, I've got some super thing beautiful perfect spaelsau yarn (traditional Norwegian sheep) and the Latvian mittens are off and running. Now I just have to find out how to get rid of the color jog.

Lots of studying. I had a mini-mental breakdown yesterday. And I studied the wrong material.

La la la! 4 more weeks until I am done with the semester!

A

dying

A,

Is there a reason why dying yarn would lead to courser, dryer wool? I don't understand what's going on.

K

Knitting Saves Lives

Oh, Amy, I love your picture. That's the type of picture that should go into a knitting magazine. It looks warm and cozy and . . . your right arm must be cold.

How was the football and tailgating? I've officially been now to 1 1/2 football games. Both of them were highschool games. One of them wasn't even my highschool. Here is a conversation I had with Jessie, my study partner:
J: Did you go to the football game last night?
K: No.
J: Why not? We beat the second best team in the nation!
K: I am not sure I understand why people get so excited about sports.
J: It's fun! You have team spirit.
K: You know what's fun? Watching fights in hockey. I like hockey.
J: I wouldn't have expected that.

I was sitting in on a group meeting during the start of the game. They started it off with fireworks. The game, not the group meeting. I was rather impressed, but I think that if I had gone, the resulting game would have been a disappointment compared to the initial fireworks.

I've decided that I am relatively lazy. Incredibly lazy if compared to you. Though perhaps only relatively lazy when compared with the rest of my peers. I need to decide by tomorrow what group I'm going into. And . . . yeah. I'm totally going the education route. Of course, I may change my mind by tomorrow since I've been changing my mind about five times a day. But if I write it maybe it will stick. I'm just not really caring about chemistry right now. I think perhaps I enjoy more so the mental exercise of accomplishing a homework set than the practical application of doing anything for real. Well, it's not really that either, I don't know. All I know is that I am now knitting during all of my classes, and I used to reserve knitting for the classes that I didn't care particularly much about. Maybe it's just that I love knitting. Who knows.

How did your exam go? Do you have off for thanksgiving? I'm pretty sure I won't be having turkey this year. It's not exactly worth it to cook a turkey for two people. I was invited to a tur-duk-en feast with some of the other graduate students, but I don't think I'll be able to make it with James (he gets out of work late) and I wouldn't want to leave him on thanksgiving. So, we'll see.

I sent out my RSVP to Elisabeth's wedding this morning, so I am officially coming back to Wisconsin!! It will be good to come back.

I have to go to class now. I was going to post pictures of my completed alpaca mitts, but I'm in my office procrastinating, and the camera is at home.

Enjoy your heated mattress pad. I may buy more yarn today.

Karen

ps. Oh, I forgot about my title. I'll get to that later.

Genetics Test Tomorrow

K,

Not only a test, but a final! Today, actually, but remember, I like to divide my days by sleep. It's not a new day until you've woken up! That's why I don't have 365 or 366 days a year.

But I just felt like sharing my life...tomorrow (today) I am going to a football game and officially tailgating with Lindsey! And Kris! The wonders of my life do cease, but then they come back again.

This is what happens when I try to take pictures of myself. I am on my knees because there was nowhere to put the camera where I could stand and you could see me.

Things to note:


-I could get rid of that bunching at the armpit with some short rows.
-Even when I add on two extra inches for sweater length, I still need some more. I've already added about another half inch, and will work on some more this week. I think about another inch and a half should do it. The trick is that I'm quite callipygous, and if I stop the sweater at the slope of m=approaching infinity on my buttox, it looks quite delicious and well-proportioned. Too much before or after and my buttox takes over the view. I can't quite explain it, but it's the reason I want to knit my own sweaters...to get the sleeves and the body the correct length for my enormity.
-I've inherited my grandmother's propensity for pictorially chopping the top of peoples' heads off.

I didn't do a sagittal view for you, but trust me, we need about another 1.5".

In other news, the tomato didn't quite make it, even with all the attention (heavy sarcasm) that it has received from it's owners. I deeply enjoy the juxtaposition of the informative tag with the actual tomato.


I just want to point out that I am not one of it's owners.

My body is now growing accustomed to sleeping 4 hours a night. Though today while I was making dinner I felt like somebody was punching me in the chest, and then realized that was my heart beating. So maybe it's still got a little ways to go. Or maybe I should stop blogging and frikkin finish studying for my test.

One more thing to note: it is not a heated blanket. That would be an entirely different world. A heated mattress pad mimics natural heat by having heat actually come out of the bed. I can't stress that enough. As heat rises, this is immensely important for the person lying on top of this pad, as opposed to under a blanket. With a blanket you'd be losing most of the heat as it left the blanket and went into the room around you. With a heated mattress pad, you capture it. Also, it feels damn good on your back after 6 hours in a dissection lab.

Frikkin stupid clinical genetics. I'll karyotype you!
A

Happy Vet's Day

A,

What is even going on? Why has it taken me so long to post anything? I took a look at this page, and you're about the only one contributing. I can't let this happen.

I did enjoy your clean floor; I have a freshly cleaned floor as well. Elisa came over to visit this Saturday, and it gave an excellent reason to clean. She was hanging around in town doing some work and then was projected to be done by six, giving me plenty of time to tidy things up. Except that she was done two hours early. Oops.




Sheldon is naked in this picture but will soon have a shell to hide in. This is an approximation of what he will look like in his new shell:



Pretty sloppy-looking right now but it will be finished soon. I do not doubt this, because he's been so much fun to knit already that I don't think I'll stash him away and forget about him. The shell actually looks far more exciting in person than online. I was surprised and delighted.



I'm using the royal baby alpaca from the local alpaca farm to make my mom some mittens for Christmas. It is blissfully soft and gorgeous yarn to work with. It doesn't seem at all like Christmas should be approaching though. You're right, it's still getting up to 85 and feeling like summer. This is the point at which I gloat. Yay for Arizona.

And now for something completely different.



Not having taken any pictures in Las Vegas, James ended up finding the camera in his pocket at the airport. So we posed with the giant airport creatures. I also posed with some slot machines to recreate my anguish at losing $2 to the slots. However, this picture is horizontal and I wasn't up to the task of orienting it the proper way on the computer. Too much work.

I'm going to work on appropriating some dinner now. Take care Amy. Cozy up to your electric blanket.

K

Passing

K,

Have I told you that we have a saying here called, "P equals MD?" "P" being a pass. There are also the options of "near honors" and "honors," but I like to ignore those. And guess what? Amy is passing! This is always a good thing. After the last two weeks of hell, from biochem to anatomy, is over, we've now got two tests this next week, including a final. But whatever, cell biology and genetics won't kill me. I need to start studying. However, first I got distracted by this, finally, a non-fibrous distraction.



Clean floor. Vacuumed, clean floor. Floor with less stuff on it. Less hair. Less wool. And I'm doing laundry. You know that's impressive. That took awhile.

The blue sweater, which I believe has never surfaced on this blog before, surfaces magically. The camera is back, so I'm just going with it. This really doesn't show much besides the fact that this sweater is almost finished. What you maybe can't tell is that I lengthened the sleeves and the bottom severely. If you've got the yarn, you might as well.
My daily easy knitting in class: creating an angora lining for my handspun mittens. Angora from a Goodwill turtleneck.

Also attempting to create a cashmere liner (also from a Goodwill sweater) for the near completion entrelac gloves...but have gotten distracted from this somehow. Will get back to finishing these eventually.


And dang, do I need a hat. It is getting cold, and I can't take many more days of fly-away hair and cold ears. But I just don't enjoy doing hats. But I need them. I wonder if I'd enjoy hats more back and forth? I doubt it.


In the non-knitting category, Roving needed a little touch-up. He got a couple seams re-stitched (I'm not as good of a hand-sewer as you, Karen) and he got a bit extra stuffing, so that his head isn't so droopy.
And one of the the most exciting pieces of news? A big box came in the mail for me.

A big box that contained a heated mattress pad. These are possibly my favorite things made on earth that are completely technological, besides phones and cars. I love this, because you put it on the bed, and you're warm all over while sleeping! Leave it on during the day, close the door, and your room warms up! You're room in the cold, cold basement during an Iowa Winter! And yes, that is Winter with a capital "W." You know what I'm talking about. I hear it's still about 85 where y'all are. I'm jealous. My mother sent me this in the mail. Yay for moms!

So really...nothing much exciting knitting-wise went by in the last two weeks. Too much studying. This week is more sit and study, so we'll see what gets further along. I'm in that mode where I don't want to be knitting liners, I want to knit crazy new fair-isle mittens and wrist warmers, but I need to keep those out of my mind, or else I'll never get those liners done.

Or perhaps I should keep it all out of my head so I get medical school done. I had a nice weekend. It was the first time in awhile where I haven't felt twitchy in my brain. I don't know how to explain that twitchiness...I suspect it's a mental disorder from being in medical school. I hear it alluded to by other students as well. It's not quite clinical insanity...but it's not normal.

Back to the grindstone. I need to make mention in an up-coming post about a doctor who spoke to us last Wednesday. He was amazing. He makes me want to 1) research with him 2)go into his specialty 3)emulate him. He does sleep disorder research in neurology. To give you an inkling of why I like him? I quote:

"I got inducted recently into the ANA (American Neurological Association) and it's really cool, because they give you this tie with a brain on it!"

Because that's the most important thing about getting inducted somewhere really prestigious and hard to get into. If you get a tie with a brain on it in the deal.

Studying hard, hoping you're still alive,
A

Pajama Pants Sighting

K,

Where: Medical School

Who: 1st year medical student

Reason: Unknown, though speculated because he came from anatomy lab and just didn't change clothes

Pattern: Red Plaid

Over and Out,
A