Updates abound!

Oh, knitting blog (and the odd reader who may or may not be perusing this), I have so many exciting things to tell you about! I'll keep it short and sweet though and get straight to the point, though.

1. Knitting News
I started the last of the need-to-be-knitted-ASAP socks of the sock queue, and I'm making pretty quick progress on them. They're Rhiannon knee socks that are destined for my sister's best friend's sister, Mandy, who is awesome, and very much deserving of such cool cabled knee socks.


I'm finding the cable charts way easier to memorize than the lace chart for the Millicent knee socks I just finished, even though the snaking side cables are worked on a different number of rows per repeat than the main cable which can be tricky to keep track of. More proof that cabling comes a lot more naturally to me than lace knitting, I guess.

2. Face News


Check it out! My super-fancy new glasses finally arrived! Aren't they awesome?? I've wanted a pair of white framed for awhile now, although I'm not really sure why. They fit well, I love them, and feel like it was totally worth it to splurge on literally the only thing I am guaranteed to wear every day for the foreseeable future.

The coolest thing about them, though? Definitely the back/top. See?


3. Best Souveneir Ever News
After hanging with Jon's family last week, we went to New York to visit Tamar and whisk her away to the house her family owns in the Hamptons (yes, THOSE Hamptons. How badass is that?). Our many adventures frolicking along the seashore will most likely be detailed by my esteemed guest blogger, Jon , so stay tuned for that. The reason I'm bringing this up is that at the beach house, we stumbled across the following book:


Quite a title, right? Intrigued, we starting reading it and found out that it was a Cold War era novel written in the most heavy handed style possible in the mid '60s. Let's just say that it really should have had a subtitle along the lines of "Or, Why ICBMs Totally Suck and Endanger the Free World." This just about sums up the tone of the book:


Seriously, though? Grab a copy of this if you ever get an oppurtunity. It has characters named Skipper and Pixie! And sometimes the characters use the term 'balls' as an exclamation of skepticism and/or disbelief, which Jon and I totally have adopted wholeheartedly. Here's an example of how best to use it, in case you're interested:

Me: You know you really need to watch your portion sizes.

Jon: My portion sizes are fine! I don't eat that much....

Me: Balls, man! In the last three hours, you've eat four sandwhiches! Unless you're in the Olympics, you can't possibly be that hungry.

Jon: Touche.

4. Cat News
Last but not least, I have a video for you! During his last trip to the vet, Fatty was deemed truly deserving of his nickname and we were warned that he was in danger of becoming diabetic if he gained much more weight. So we decided to take action! We've spent a good portion of the summer acclimating Fatty to a harness, and then holding him out on our landing, in order to prepare him to start being walked on a leash. Recently, we've made great progress on that front.

So close, and yet so far away

The millicent socks should be done, and technically, I guess, they are. Sadly, in their current state, they don't actually match. After finishing the lace cuff on the last one, I triumphantly started the lace cuff of its mate and merrily knitted away at it during the long drive from Michigan to Maryland.

Then, I ran out of yarn. No biggie, I thought to myself, I'll just knit as far as I can and unravel the first sock to match.

Yeah...I totally left it back in Michigan. Lame.

JUST IN: New glasses fulfill promise of knitting content

Yep, thanks to my newly competent corrective lenses, I have knitting news to share! I finished off the first of the Millicent knee socks I've been making for Sam. Take a gander:


I'm going away this week, visiting Jon's family and our dear dear friend Tamar (currently the Reader of the Current Time Period in Jarthen land), so many hours in the car should make finishing the other one no problem at all.

Actually, I think I'll be able to start the last of the pressing items on the Sock Queue of Doom on this trip, since there's actually not that much to do with Sam's sock. I knit the first up to the lace section and stopped because we were driving and I didn't bring the pattern (yay foresight!). so I started the second one and knit it all the way through it. All I really have to do, then, is work the foldover lace cuff for the first sock and weave in all the ends.

Proper eyewear = spike in awesome knitting content?

Only time will tell, but I'll go out on a limb and say, probably! So here's what happened: a few months ago, Jon broke my glasses (this has happened to several pairs already, but these were really awesomely sturdy glasses - they fell off a giant statue unscathed once! - so I had high hopes) which meant I had to start wearing my backup pair. What I didn't realize was that my backup pair sucked some major ass.

First, the glasses themselves didn't fit right at all. I have kind of a tiny head and the glasses fit weirdly about the ears and would fall off if I looked down. This lead to slight feelings of vertigo and much panicky clutching at handrails while walking down stairs like an old lady. But that's just a slightly annoying thing. The real problem was that the glasses, which had the same prescription as the ones that fell prey to Jon's clumsiness, were definitely not strong enough. I couldn't read powerpoints from the back of classrooms or recognize people on the street (which may or may not have lead to some awkwardness here and there). Lately, Jon and I have started playing this game whenever we're driving around:

Jon: "I can read that sign now, tell me when you can, ok?"

......10 second pause.......

Me: "Ok, I can kind of read it now."

Jon: "Oh man. That's sad."

Obviously, it's been clear for awhile that I need new glasses. Stands to reason, since I haven't actually gotten an eye exam since before I studied abroad which was...oh...about 5 years ago. I bet you're probably shaking your head right about now, tsk tsk-ing at me for not getting it done sooner. Well, for awhile it really wasn't that big a problem, more of a minor annoyance, and besides I'm not exactly rolling in cash what with being a grad student and all.

Then I won the NSF (YEAH!! WHAT, WHAT!!), which will effectively double what I'll be making next semester. Perfect, I thought, I will just get through the summer and get new glasses with my first paycheck! But then the eye strain from wearing crappy out-of-date glasses that fall off all the time started giving me migraines, so I caved. See?¹

These do not fall off. Oh, happy day!

HELP! The giant grandma/hipster prescription sunglasses are eating my face!

In any case, having appropriate corrective lenses should allow me to fitter, happier, more productive² knitter - or at least one with fewer headaches. I'm already making wicked fast progress on Sam's knee socks.
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¹The cute little rectangular black ones? Yeah those will eventually be bumped down to backup pair status. I totally splurged on a fantastic (and substantially more expensive) pair with better quality lenses, but they are backordered and won't arrive for awhile. I figured I'd earned it, what with being a badass researcher who won an NSF and all. Besides, it's close enough to my birthday to claim them as my birthday present to myself. Ah....rationalizations abound!

²The other really exciting thing that happened recently? I got to go see Radiohead!! I'm a massive Radiohead fan and I've never gotten the chance to see them (Jon has, though, and has been known to go on and on about how awesome they are live). We had to drive 3 hours for it, and I couldn't make out a damn thing happening on stage since I was still wearing the old crappy glasses, but it was amazing nonetheless. They totally played all the songs I wanted them too! It's as if the band and I had a weird half-blind mind-meld or something. Seriously, though, I was kind of a giddy little schoolgirl about the entire thing.