A New Love

Yeah, that's right. I've found a new love. Not that the boyfriend wasn't enough, but this is the kind of love that comes in robin's-egg-blue bags and keeps you happy for hours and days and months and years.

No, it's not Tiffany's, silly! It's Pins and Needles, my new favorite store (that I happened to just wander into for the first time this afternoon)!

Long story short, I have wanted to knit SockPixie's February beret (which can be found here) for a looong but didn't have the time during the school year to pore over the pattern, and didn't own the correct size needles OR have the necessary yarn lying around. So after realizing that I've been home for 6 weeks already and have accomplished absolutely NOTHING, I've decided to knit it, whee!

Of course, there was still the problem of not having any of the necessary supplies. I was about to order some good-looking stuff online when my mom reminded me of this cute little shop in town that specializes in knitting and needlepoint supplies, so I dropped in this afternoon. It was such a pleasant experience! The woman in the shop was incredibly helpful, especially for a baby knitter like me, and helped me pick the right yarn for the gauge called for in the pattern.

Isn't it delicious? 

I settled on a Dream in Color yarn in a turquoise-ish color called Superwash. It's hand painted so it has this nice, subtle shading to it, and it's super soft!

The woman in the store then taught me how to wind the yarn into its own little self-contained spool, and even let me open a pack of needles to test my gauge! It was actually awesome she did that because I needed to go a needle size down from the one called for in the pattern. AND she said they are always available to help if I get stuck, which will definitely come in handy as I am tackling an I Cord and grafting live stitches (eek!) for the first time. Needless (needles?) to say, I am very happy with this new find.

Look! My own tamed yarn-ball!

Also I lied a bit, I guess. My friend has lent me three seasons of 30Rock, and after a brief watching hiatus I am back at it in full force. In the past two days I've watched two-thirds of the third season and finished a scarf I've been working on. Now, I know what you might be thinking. Berets? Scarves? Aren't these winter clothing items?

Well actually yeah, I guess they are, technically. But to be fair the scarf is lace, so it would be perfect for cooler days like today! Where it is only in the low 70s! I'm actually wearing a light scarf right now. Anyway, check it out:

The pattern is from knitzofrenic-- I found it and decided I had to knit it, even though I didn't have a recipient in mind, but after a couple of weeks of my mom walking past and cooing every time she sees it I am sure it will have a happy home while I'm at school.

This scarf is super easy to knit. Seriously. This was only my second lacework project but it's essentially four rows repeated over and over and was painless to memorize. I didn't look at the pattern past the first five or so minutes I started working on it-- it's that simple! There's no gauge either (because it's a scarf), so I was able to use some of the random yarn I have lying around the house/have inherited from my great-grandmother. The scarf is still super curly in the picture because I still have to block it, but it's going to turn out beautifully. 

Confession I

Okay, I have a secret that I need to tell.

I know I've billed myself as a knitter, and I am, really! I love to knit. I find it relaxing, and I'm constantly learning how to do more things.

Secretly, however, very secretly, I HATE to purl. Purling is like the ugly duckling of the knitting community. Actually, it's more like the evil twin. Knit stitches are easy, nice, and tidy, but purling is unruly and many kinds of difficult. Not only does it take much longer for me to purl than knit, I never remember between projects which way to wrap the yarn so that the stitches aren't a pain to work with on the knit side.

Actually, I guess I have two confessions to make. Also secretly, I've never actually learned how to properly hold knitting needles. I'm sure that knitting and purling both become much quicker and easier enterprises once the fingers, needles, and yarn are fully in place and ready for action. I, on the other hand, am a mostly self-taught knitter. I learned when I was in middle school and didn't yet have the smarts to look on the internet-- I learned by watching my friend Louise and just copied her motions without paying attention to the technique.

Looking back on it, that was a dumb move. Not that I ever knit with other people, but I'm afraid that if I did I would be judged right out of the room. Their thoughts would go something like this: "Oh! What a silly girl! Her fingers kind of look like spiders. Fat, ugly spiders. Are they getting caught in the yarn? Wait, spiders don't get caught in their yarn. Spiders weave things, not tie knots. That seems awfully silly. I wonder who taught her that awful technique??"

And I would be all embarrassed, and my fingers would probably freeze up like they do when I'm nervous, and it would be a complete mess.

Okay maybe I've exaggerated my predicament a bit, but still. Learning knitting technique is on my list of things to do. Eventually. Right behind the illustrious activity of learning to purl.

There is almost nothing as good as a cold glass of milk.

Seriously. A glass of milk so cold that as you pour it the outside of the glass starts to sweat, and you want nothing more than something sweet to go with it. And really, that sweet thing is what knocks your glass of milk totally out of the water. Think about it-- imagine eating a piece of tart, or a heavy-duty brownie, or a red velvet cupcake with your tall, delicious, creamy glass of milk.

Which brings me to an announcement-- I'm baking this summer! Here's the sample plate I brought in to a local market:

Don't they just look scrumptious? This plate has sour cream cupcakes, chocolate sour cream cupcakes, heavy-duty brownies both with and without nuts, and a tart with black cherry jam, and they're only some of the many goods I bake. I don't ship orders (yet), but if you're in the tri-state area feel free to contact me for orders and we'll work something out.

And now.... back to the kitchen!

You know it's finals time when...

... you wish you had to go to the bathroom so you could take a break and stretch your legs, while at the same time you wish you never had to eat or sleep or pee again just so you could plow through your work and be done with it.

I know, I shouldn't be updating das blog with two exams and a Spanish paper still looming over my head, no matter how long it's been since I last posted, but I'm resting for a few minutes between essays. Give me a break.

I think this work is making me go a bit crazy.

This finals period we have two weeks to do our self-scheduled exams rather than one, like in the fall semester, and it's definitely killed my productivity streak. Last finals week I was so productive-- yeah, okay, I didn't finish until essentially the minute everything was due, but I still worked all the time and got about eight more hours of sleep a night than I anticipated coming into college. Seriously! Winter finals week was the longest stretch of me consistently getting enough sleep all last semester.

This semester, not so much. The beginning of finals period had me unstressed and feelin' good-- surely I could do in two weeks what I did in one last semester. Granted, I had a significantly higher amount of work, but not enough to fill up a full two-week's worth.

Wrong! Working all last week didn't pay off because I still took the time to watch a movie almost every night. And go to a birthday party. And lay awake at night because I thought the creepers from the horror movies we'd been watching were out to get me. But irrelevant. I'm still not going to be finished anywhere near early, and it will be a Christmas miracle in May if I finish everything fully, thoroughly, and perfectly by Friday at noon when everything is due.

Wish me luck, dear readers! See you on the other side of this week.

I Wish I Were a Chef.

It's partly why I am living in an apartment next year-- I want to be off the meal plan so a) I can cook all the time and b) I don't feel guilty about cooking all the time because I don't have to be on the meal plan.
My school offers ExCo, or experimental college, courses, and I'm taking a cooking class with my boyfriend that's being offered. The class is geared towards people who have never cooked before in their lives (which we didn't know when we signed up for it) and I don't agree with many of the things the instructor has told us-- fresh vegetables, for example, are definitely NOT the same as frozen vegetables in texture or taste, as she's claimed-- but this coming Monday is our last class and we get to pair up and cook part of a meal for the rest of the class.

The boy and I decided we'd do an appetizer so all three pairs aren't cooking entrees and just had the bright idea to do stuffed mushrooms. As a result, I've been browsing my favorite food blogs for the past hour-point-five and want nothing more than to have my own kitchen again.

Looking at food blogs is on my top 10 lists of favorite past-times, though every time I look at them I get the crazy urge to cook something immediately. This wouldn't be a bad thing if I started browsing before dinner or lived somewhere with a kitchen. And since neither of those apply to me, especially at the moment, I'm left with my desire to cook overriding the lethargy caused by my icky cold.

Maybe if I continue to blank out on what my major should be I'll end next year by declaring a major in the study of food blogs. Staring and drooling and cooking for the rest of my life wouldn't be so bad, right?

Catch Up (Continuation).

And now for the second part of my ranting catch up post from the other day!

2. My School's Unqualified Health Center Staff.

I've had a really bad cold for the past week, so I went in to the Health Center to get myself checked out. The nurse happened to be in, so I saw her instead of the nurse practitioner, and she told me that because I didn't have a fever or any signs of strep there was nothing she could do for me. Which is fair. The next day, I went in for a developing case of pink eye.

I've had a lot of experience with pink eye-- I used to get it all the time as a kid and even still get it every once in a while. I know the signs so well that I can tell before it starts getting gooey that I have it and am going to need antibiotics, and every doctor that I've been to about it has reconfirmed my ability to recognize the signs, has given me antibiotic eye drops, and sent me home with a warning that I'd be contagious for 24 hours after starting the drops. So when I went to the Health Center I didn't expect them to know me and my weird ability to spot pink eye, but I expected them to be knowledgeable and be able to help me. Which is why I was so disappointed when the nurse practitioner obviously had no idea what she was talking about.

She started our session by having me describe my symptoms to her-- my eye was bright red, it was a bit sore near the eyelashes, and was oozing yellow goop that had glued my eye shut while I slept. Normal for pink eye, right? Apparently not for this nurse practitioner-- she kept insisting that people tend to get these symptoms either before or after colds, which meant that my cold had just relocated itself to my eye. And then, even though pink eye is highly contagious, she told me to go to classes.

First of all, excuse me? My chest cold decided to take up residence in my eye and show pink-eye-like symptoms? And secondly, I'm contagious!! Don't unleash me on the unsuspecting student body!! When I had the flu they told me to not go out of my room if I didn't had to, but I'm pretty sure pink eye is even more contagious than the flu and they're telling me to go to classes?

It kind of pissed me off but I ignored it because she gave me the antibiotic drops I needed. And though I wouldn't have thought it possible, but my opinion of her actually continued to degrade when I went in the next day for a follow-up appointment. My eye's condition had improved dramatically, so I wasn't expecting anything but inane chatter. I made the mistake of asking if I was still contagious-- again, every doctor has told me that after 24 hours on the drops it's not contagious at all-- and got a speech about how I was no longer contagious to myself because of the antibiotics I was taking, but because it was a viral infection due to my relocated cold I could be contagious to other people for up to two weeks.

Seriously? Stop with this relocated cold business. What I have is very obviously pink eye, and is improving with antibiotics, which treat bacterial infections and NOT viral infections. 

Don't these people have to go through SOME kind of training before being released on the population as a someone apparently knowledgeable in the medical sciences??? Don't middle schoolers know the difference between bacteria and viruses, and that antibiotics treat the former and NOT the latter???

Suffice to say, I'm overjoyed that my mom's family is full of doctors, and if worse comes to worst I know I can always get the care I need. You'd think, though, that the school would be able to hire people who know what they're talking about without spending more money than they already are.

Right now, I'm just upset that there's no way to comment on my experiences at the Health Center to let the school know directly how I feel about the services they're offering.

Catch Up.

Okay, first of all, I'm not going to burden you all with excuses for why I haven't been posting. Let's just leave it at "I've been really busy!" and say that I'm back. Sound good?

I just tried posting these next couple of things as one post, but it was overwhelming even to me so I'm going to split it up over a couple of days. This first one will be my mini-rant on Blogger's new templates, and up in the next couple of days will be my maxi-rant on my school's unqualified health center staff.... enjoy! & it's good to finally be back.

1. Blogger's New Templates.
Thank you, Blogger. Thank you for finally saying that you are doing something about your outdated template something while not actually doing a whole lot to fix it. Congratulations to your advertising team-- I was certainly enticed to check out your new and improved template designer. But did you notice that my blog template is the same as it always has been? Yes? Well, Blogger, it's because I'm disappointed with your new system.

When you promised that you had updated, I expected something at least as versatile as Twitter's system-- while everyone uses the same layout with Twitter, I was able to use one of my own photographs for my page's background and play extensively with the color palette. Yes, Blogger. While you are slightly above Twitter on the "letting inane people speak their minds" continuum, their design interface beats yours. And that sucks.

I'm an artist, Blogger! I would like to use my own creations over someone else's uninspired stock photography! I understand that this whole production is in draft form but it's apparently good enough to be released to the public-- shouldn't you have made sure that the background pictures lined up correctly before releasing? The top of the picture automatically lines up with the top of the blog, and how much of the picture background is visible depends on how big the viewer's internet window is-- my laptop screen dwarfs most other laptop screens and I STILL can't see the most interesting parts of most of the images available. What's up with that??

At the end of the day, Blogger, I do appreciate that you're making strides to improve our experience in this bottomless pit called the internet. I really and truly do. I just wish that your "new and improved" options lived up to their potential.