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.

A good beginning to the summer

Sorry about the month-long absence! It's been crazy around here - first finals, then prelims (which I just turned in yesterday! Woo!), then a week or so of zombified recovery with much sleeping. This summer looks like it'll be great though, basically no set schedule and plenty of time to catch up on the analysis/writing up for publication (!!) of all the data I've been collecting. I even found a ways to run stats via a remote desktop from home! And of course, sweatpants + SPSS = nerd heaven. This also means I've got way more time to knit, and that I'm actually making progress on some stuff, so expect more regular posting in the near future.

But before we get to all of that, I should tell you about Tamar's visit! She and her boyfriend, James (who is also awesome), came to visit a couple of weeks ago, right after finals were over and right before I had to kick it into high gear to finish prelims. So, perfect timing. We spent a lot of time playing warcraft and eating various pizza-related products, but probably the most entertaining part of their visit for those of you who weren't there was when we went to the playground in the park next to my apartment building.




See, when Tamar and I used to live next door to each other junior year at Oberlin, we lived in a building called Firelands which was campus-owned off-campus housing for upper-level students. It was actually a converted old folks' home with random bars you could grab hold of in the bathroom to prevent you from falling and being unable to get back up, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, one nice thing about Firelands was that all the apartments in it had a teeny stove, meaning you could cook in the privacy of your own home instead of in a group kitchen. Being the inexperienced college students we were, few of us (apparently) knew how to operate said stoves appropriately, meaning that fire alarms were constantly going off. During said fire alarms, Tamar and I would often scamper over to the swing set across the street and play on it until the firefighters let us back inside. So, in a weird way, this was kind of nostalgic for me.

Although, I should note that in all that time, I never noticed the fear that Tamar had of swinging which she ever so cogently describes here:

Jon's Birthday - Take 1

Today was Jon's 23rd birthday! I wanted today to be super-special and awesome for him, so I basically let Jon call the shots. I told him that we could do whatever he wanted. His wish was my command. True to form, we ended up celebrating this momentous occasion by sleeping in until 1 in the afternoon and then watching a lot of bad TV. Apparently, he just wanted a nice, relaxing mind-numbing day as opposed to a fun-filled one that would entail getting dressed and going out in public. The costs were just too great.

That's fine by me though. I feel that Jon and I are compliment each other in a lot of ways (I'm a compulsive planner, he flies by the seat of his pants; he loves to vacuum, I like making spreadsheets for our joint budget), but that one thing we have in common is that we're both extremely introverted. I don't mean introverted in the pop-psychology sense meaning that we're shy people who don't like to talk about themselves. Clearly that can't be the case since I'm blogging about myself, and I don't think anyone familiar with Jon's habit of getting drunk and dancing like a fool in order to be the center of attention would call him shy. We are not mousy, reserved people by any stretch of the imagination.

No, I'm talking about introversion in the classic Eysenckian sense. Eysenck conceptualized introversion and extraversion to be one's desired level of stimulation. Extroverted people need constant, high levels of stimulation. They tend to bore easily and become adrenaline junkies. The thought of bungie-jumping sounds awesome to them. Introverts, on the other hand, really can't handle that much stimulation. We're the kind of people who are perfectly content to spend our weekends curled up on the couch watching movies and find the urge to go sky-diving utterly incomprehensible. For me, a good day is one in which I do not have to change out of my sweatpants (and therefore leave my apartment). So, instead of going to a club or a bar or something cool and young and twentysomething-ish, the climax of Jon's birthday was this:

(sorry the picture's so blurry, but you couldn't really see the smoke with the flash on)

Yep. The high point was breaking out a fog machine that Tamar gave us at Jon's birthday party last year and blowing a couple of rounds of weird smelling smoke with it. That party, by the way, was arguably the best and lamest party ever. It essentially consisted of said fog machine, a lava lamp, and a bunch of really nerdy kids. But, Jon's declared this the "best birthday ever," which is what I was going for, so mission complete.

Well, almost. I've extended Jon's birthday to tomorrow as well because he hasn't gotten his presents yet. Because, you know, I've got the authority to do that sort of thing. I was uncharacteristically incompetent and waited until last Thursday to order said presents. I paid the extra money for faster shipping, but we slept through the delivery this morning, rendering the point moot.

Speaking of presents, I ironically got one in the mail today! My armwarmers from Tamar:

I picked out the yarn, though I can't for the life of me remember what it was, when I was visiting her in New York over Christmas. Apparently they've been done since before I even started her socks, but she didn't actually mail them to me until last week. They were worth the wait. She's the Armwarmer Queen. And I'm totally digging the swirly stitch pattern.

PS - notice the cyberpet on the sidebar? I've decided the blog needs a mascot. Who doesn't need a mascot? It's named after Dani, my Soul Twin because purple is her favorite color and penguins make her babble incomprehensibly with joy. I shit you not. I once saw her bounce up and down like an autistic child and lose her capacity for language while watching that part of Mary Poppins when the cartoon penguins sing and dance with Dick Van Dyke. Anyway, it's an homage to her. Try feeding it fish, it's fun. I promise.

Spring Break! Girls Gone....Lazy!

I'll get to SPRING BREAK in a second. First, guess who got their present.....


....Tamar the Other! She says they fit well and are much-appreciated. See her cat in the first picture? Sniffing her feet with that intensely inquisitive expression? That cat has a thing for feet.


See? She can't help herself. The first step is admitting you have a problem, Wuzzle.

Ok, back to SPRING BREAK!!!!! So what am I doing for SPRING BREAK, and why in god's name do I seem to keep hitting the caps lock? Well, dear reader, I am using the cap lock to denote my UNBRIDLED EXCITEMENT and doing ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING! I lied and told the professors I was doing research with that I was going to be out of town and that email was going to be spotty at best. Which, of course is patently untrue. But goddamit, I held focus groups and coded transcripts straight through Christmas break...which meant it was no break at all...which meant I'd been working non-stop for six months. So I thought a little deception was in order.

My real spring break plans are:

1. sit on couch until couch-sores develop
2. watch a lot of mindless TV
3. eat a lot of ice cream
4. knit until my hands turn into twisted, gnarled little claws

Man, this is gonna be sweet.

Homework - 0, Socks - 1

I finished Tamar's socks!
Aren't they lovely? She picked out the yarn and the pattern, and I have to say she's got a good eye. The really short color repeats in the yarn kept it from pooling, which kept it visually interesting without competing too much with the rather subtle lace pattern. I can't really do the socks justice here as my feet are smaller than Tamar's. Hopefully, they'll be a bit less lumpy on her.
Yarn - about 2 1/2 skeins of Lane Cervinia Calzetteria (70% wool, 30% nylon; 150 meters) in color 904. I didn't particularly like knitting with this yarn, because I could feel the nylon in it, but I think it'll hold up really well. I do, however, like the ball band.
I know it's blurry, but look closely! It's a woman hanging out with some sheep in what looks like mountains in the beginning of The Sound of Music with some sort of basket attached to her like a turtle shell. This wouldn't be that remarkable if it was Austrian yarn, but it's apparently Italian. I find it very amusing.
Needles - I worked the ribbing on size 2 addis, and the rest on my trusty size 3 addi turbos. Don't leave home without them!
Pattern - the Monkey Socks from Knitty, with virtually no modifications besides going up a needle size

I have seen the future, and in it I am a crazy cat lady

So, with that in mind, I thought I'd get a head start on my Crazy Cat Lady-hood with this post. Because, guys? I'm kind of an over-achiever and I really enjoy getting head starts.

Now I had this epiphany earlier when I was working on Tamar's monkey socks, which are coming along quite nicely:

Look how much I got done at the psych conference! I finished the first one and then got all the way through the leg of the second one. See, I'm not usually the kind of girl that knits during events. I've never knitted in class, and typically reserve my public displays of knitting to airplanes and movie theaters. But, I was totally zonked for a lot of the conference, and ended up taking my knitting with me to the symposiums The repetitve nature of knitting helps me focus sometimes, and also kept me awake.

The conference, by the way, went well. I dressed like a fancy-schmancy adult, and my poster was well-received. I think I may have even networked a little bit, but I'm not entirely sure. I'm new to this kind of thing.

"But," you ask, "how does being a young, professionally dressed, psychology-conference-attending go-getter make you destined for a life of Crazy Cat Lady-hood?"

Good question, dear reader. I'm destined because this has been the highlight of my week so far:
Yes, the sight of my cat grooming Tamar's sock set me all a-tizzy today and I took a bajillion pictures of it. Jon looked at me like I was crazy. This cat, though, she's something else. Every morning I have to find all the skeins of yarn and single handknit socks she stole from my knitting basket in the wee hours of the night in a haze of catnip and good taste. In all honesty, she's kind of a klepto with some major drug dependency issues.

And because every Crazy Cat Lady has to have multiple cats, I give you Fatty:
Who is apparently embarking on a career as a bookend. Is it coincidence that he's chosen this esteemed occupation just as his namesake has applied to library science programs? You decide!