socks on the porch and totally impatient

Nothing much new to say. I've been in a weird sort of in-between state the last month or so, just getting used to being out of school, just getting used to a new job. Still, though, with all this newness I can't help getting itchy feet - especially when I start thinking about the next year or so. Do I tough out a chemistry major and focus on Japanese? Do I try to go abroad my senior year and forget the chem altogether? I can't say that I'm ambitious, but there are so many things that I want to see and do... I just have to figure out how to make those things fit reality.

For now, though, I'll try to focus on the stuff I can control. Buying milk in glass bottles from the market. Going to work late at night (for some reason, listening to music and working at night both enhance my productivity and enjoyment... weird). Checking out books from the library. Playing with yarn (my favorite!).

I'm so impatient for answers. Maybe I'll go play with kittens before going back to the lab, 'cause they don't have to think about the future.

Summer at Last!

Long time, no see!

Since I last wrote, I have finished finals, celebrated the graduation of several good friends (including the lovely Bethany, who I am going to miss like crazypants), and started my summer internship at NTI, a benchtop nanotech development company.

Labcoat + goggles = skillz of a super hero! It's great to have something to do, even if a lot of it is prep work and cleaning up after reactions. Next week, as a short break from work, Ondrea, my friend Val and I are going to a Dave Matthews Band concert in Cincinnati... I am super excited!

Lately, I have been pretty obsessed with the color green. Last summer, I had a sudden and inexplicable hankering for bright green yarn. I've been trying to find it ever since, but have always come up empty - or, more often than not, with a green that's nice but not quite what I was looking for. Well... this last weekend, Angela and I went on a trip to Trader Joe's and French Creek Fiber Arts, where I found my green - twice!


In edamame, one of the most delicious beans on the planet, and....


....the most beautiful, electric, slightly variegated green yarn ever. Om frickin' nom.

I can't stop photographing this yarn... holy crap.





Geez, what an attention whore.

when things don't quite work out

I started these cabled gauntlets in January of 2008, in the midst of a Fair-Isle lull. I was watching six hours of Lost every day, and occasionally slipping downstairs to watch people swing dance in the basement of my dormitory. This was my portable project, the one with only one color and one pattern, for when I wanted to knit but didn't want to lug around my increasingly heavy bag filled with size 3 Addi circulars, 12 different colors of Shetland wool, and my battered copy of Knitting Classic Style. So cables would be comparatively easy, right?

But it became neglected as the months went on. I found mistakes, both in the pattern and in my own knitting. And, once I finished the first one, I realized that the pinky finger popped up unpleasantly. The gloves, in short, did not fit like a glove. And the long, gauntlet cuff? How, exactly, was I supposed to fit those under anything? Back into the UFO pile it went.

I finished the Fair Isle sweater in mid-July, and although I always meant to pick these back up and finish them, it just didn't happen. But today I pulled out my bag with the needles and stitch markers and mess of yarn, and I found a big glaring error in the middle of one of the hands, and decided, like hell I am going to fix these. Not during finals, and not ever.

So I cut off the fingers, and wound the yarn. Gulp.

So they - sorry, it, a big hank of purple spaghetti, is soaking now, and visions of a pink-and-purple striped v-neck are dancing in my head. (Plus, said v-neck uses some other dk-weight cashmerino I have left in my stash. Boo-yah.)

After almost four years of knitting, I find myself back where I started: one project on the needles; mind swirling with ideas of what's to come.

shades of pink

Oh, spring semester. At the beginning, everything is so promising, yet so cold: the landscape is covered in ice and snow, and the plows come out in pre-dawn to pour salt on the sidewalks. Classrooms are warm respite from the wind, and we sit, well-dressed and awake and ready for the challenges of the next 15 weeks.

And then spring comes, and the ground thaws and even when it rains the world turns to glowing shades of green against the bricks and sky. And we put on our flip-flops and pretend to study outside so that we can smell pollen and wet dirt and get our butts muddy in the grass because really, it's not warm enough to shed our coats.

The end of spring semester is the most frustrating, beautiful time - when all we can do is cram our heads with stuff that we'll forget in the first few weeks of summer, but all we want to do is sleep in the sun.

Lately I've only been working on Zetor (which I've taken to calling Zetorina, with an -ina as a special marker of its pink, frothy nature). It's this time of year that I remember why I love pink. The way it looks in lace, carefully curled up next to my chemistry textbook in my bag, or in sakura branches like fingers reaching up towards the sun. There are only two weeks of school left, and Zetorina is probably 4-5 repeats away from the edging and bind-off.

I'll be sad when it's finished.