Na Na Na Knit!

So I've become less enamored with magic loop at the moment. It worked beautifully all the way through the heel turn. However, when I started picking up stitches and tried to start the gusset decreases, it didn't work so well. Maybe it was because I was trying to start the gusset at 4 am, but I'm more suspicious it's because of my needle. I think it's not long enough (30 inches!) for the amount of stitches I have on it right now, so there is no room to maneuver, making it almost impossible to knit on it. Has anyone else experienced this problem with magic loop? Or am I just doing it wrong?


I've resorted to picking up the stitches with my trusty double points to do the gusset, and then I think I'll switch back afterwards, cuz I really liked the magic loop up until now.

In other news, I wrote 3 papers this week and finished my huge programming project. Wooh. I'm really burnt out, but unfortunately I still have to finish my other group programming project, I have a exam on monday, a 15 page paper due thursday, an exam friday, and a gigantic ridiculous take home exam due next weekend. Sigh.

So, if you remember from my previous periods of high-stress, I tend to buy yarn when I'm stressed. Well this week has been the pinnacle of the semester stress-wise, and I'm pretty proud of myself, actually. I only ordered that ball of yarn from Two Waters that I mentioned yesterday, and today I placed an order at Webs for some plymouth encore *on sale* for $3.49/ball... I bought some blue and grey and plan to make a Ravenclaw scarf with it. I know it's a long way off till winter (especially in Louisiana) but straight stockinette always relaxes me, and I've been in the mood to knit something harry potterish... so there ya go. Hopefully I can survive the next two weeks without breaking the bank too much.

By the way, I don't usually do this, but I have to sing some praises. Everyone needs to shop at Two Swans... the lady that runs the shop is the sweetest lady ever, and always writes hand-written notes on her invoices. We've actually had a conversation going between me writing in the comment boxes with my orders and her replying on the invoices, and she is extremely nice. I'm all for supporting great yarn websites and small businesses w/ nice people! Go take a look!

I'm in the midst of writing a paper (2nd of 3 due this week) so I'll have to make this post quick.

I finished the leg of lakeview sock #2 and when I finally get some semi-free time I'll start on the heel flap (hooray!). No pictures for now, sorry!

I was asked where I ordered the gryffindor sock yarn ... I ordered it from Two Water's etsy shop. I'll post about how I like it whenever it arrives, but I'm expecting good things, and the dyer, Lorraine, was very friendly and good about getting back to me about my custom order too.

I've had to keep an eye on myself of late, I have a long list of yarn I want to buy and I keep getting impulsive urges to order something everytime somebody updates their shop. Must...refrain.... so far I've done a good job and only ordered that gryffindor yarn!

The week from hell has begun. Have to finish my programming final, two group programming projects, and 3 papers. All this week. Ouch. Finals week itself (the week after this week) shouldn't be all that bad... I have an exam on monday in Weather class that won't be too bad (not even cumulative) and an exam in Roman history on Friday. I also have to write a 15 page term paper for Greek class, but after the 3 papers of this week that shouldn't be that bad.

In other news, I dressed up and acted cultured last night -- we went to see an opera! Madame Butterfly to be exact... it was pretty cool, and we had really good seats.

Here's some knitting progress I've managed to do among all the schoolwork (or in place of, hehehe)



The sock is striping nicely, but doesn't match the first sock one little bit. The only similar thing about the two is that the stitch pattern is the same... they're pooling *completely* differently. Oh well, they'll have character :-)
Anyway, I placed a custom order for some gryffindor striping sock yarn... but not from Sunshine yarns!! The demand for that yarn is way too cutthroat, I never get on the boat in time. So I'm trying out another dyer on etsy, I'll let you guys know how I like it

I decided that when I pay off my credit card completely (it got pretty full after I had to buy textbooks) I'm going to buy myself a new pair of birkenstocks to wear with all my new handmade socks.... you know you're a sock knitter when you start buying shoes *around* your socks :-) That should probably be in the next couple months... I quit my job so I have to depend on my daddy for income now ;-)

Kat is having a contest to see who has the weirdest place they've knitted. I haven't knitted for relatively very long, so I haven't been very many places with my knitting, but here goes my list:

5.) in my dad's office after class was over (he works at the university I was at while mine was under water) - one of his coworkers knits too, and we used to squeal over eachother's knitting

4.) while I was at work - I was a student worker in a business office for a while... sometimes there was *nothing* to do... I taught one of my coworkers how to knit!

3.) in the doctor's office waiting room (when I got mono last fall)

2.) movie theater

#1 weirdest place.) while I was evacuating for hurricane Katrina. Traffic leaving New Orleans was at a stand still (it took me 2 hours to go 5 miles!) so I sat and knitted while I "drove"

I knew it had to happen eventually. These sad little half-socks have been sitting in my knitting bag for a while. I stopped knitting on the jaywalker a long time ago because I couldnt' get it over my foot, but I didn't have the heart to rip it quite yet (I'm soft, what can I say?) and I started a new project. Then I started the pomatomus socks, and knowing full well the pattern calls for a size 2 needle I started them on 1's because that is all I had handy at the time. Well, you know how that one went. It can go over my foot, but just barely. Time to suck it up and rip.


So I ripped. I also finished lakeview sock #1 and started #2 over the weekend. I was tired of dpn's, and risking change in gauge I decided to do sock #2 on magic loop. I'm not very picky as long as it actually fits (and you can see how much luck I've had with even that lately). Also, it seems this sock is destined to have a mind of its own. See the difference in the pooling already? Good thing I'm not anal like some and have to have the stripes matching perfectly, because these socks are not going to match one bit.

Ok, so if you have dial-up I don't recommend staying around for this post, there are tons of pictures.
So I was emailing with Candace the other day (hi Candace!) and the topic of New Orleans came up. As most of you have probably gotten from my posts, I live in New Orleans and go to school here. I decided to post some pictures I have that my friend and I took at various places around the city. Most of these pictures are from around New Year's or a little bit afterwards. Note: this is about 4 months after the hurricane.


In some areas, the surge of water was so violent that it actually picked houses up off of their foundation and moved them around. I've seen some pretty awesome pictures taken with Google from above that show quite well the way houses floated around, but I don't have any offhand. Anyway, the house pictured above is sitting in the middle of what used to be a street.

There is a couple of hotels/office buildings in the downtown area, with all of the windows blown out. While I haven't noticed whether they've been repaired since then or not, I noticed there are still some hotels that have gaping holes in the side of them around town, so some definitely haven't been patched yet.

There is a rather crappy picture of a group of houses in the Garden District that burnt to the ground (it was taken while I was driving by... I was driving... and snapping photos... sshh) anyway, one of the signature architectural things about New Orleans is the latticework found on most of the historical buildings -- if you look closely at the photo, the laticework is one of the only things left standing. I drive by those lots a lot, and nothing has been done to them at all since I took that photo 3 months ago.

Here's a view of the streetcar tracks that run along St. Charles avenue. Unfortunately, the streetcars are still not up and running, and the route is falling into disrepair... I'm hoping they'll do something about that soon, because as a college student without a car the streetcars were one of my main modes of transportation (and it provides transportation to a lot of the poorer population in the area so that they can get to work and school).

There's a lot of houses that look like that one ^^

There's a boat that floated up into someone's yard (and onto their car)


It seems that everywhere I go, writing such as that ^^ is on every single building in sight. After the storm, the military came through and systematically searched each house and building for bodies/survivors, and marked on the house in some code what they found. While some people who have been moving back in and cleaning up their house spraypainted over it, it is still on the majority of the buildings.

This photo is rather interesting, because that lightpole fell the day I was driving around. I don't know if that tells you anything about how things are still falling apart, but that is actually on St. Charles Ave. (one of the major streets in the city) and they had the street blocked off as we were coming back from lunch because apparently it had just fallen over.

Some things are back to normal however, and that is particularly the french quarter. I like that photo ^^ because it looks kind of like a postcard, AND I took it out of the window of a car. :D

the donkeys are back!

Anyway, since I've returned to school, things are getting more and more normal, but that is only in the area that I'm living (one of the areas of high ground in the city, and one of the only areas of the city that didn't have heavy damage/flooding)... the rest of the city is laying stagnant and in some places looks exactly like it did 6 months ago, with debri everywhere and completely abandoned/uninhabitable. Some of the photos I've seen from the 9th ward (one of the worst hit areas) are absolutely mindblowing. Whole blocks of houses are literally completely gone, and who knows where they went. In the blocks around where levees and canals broke, it looks like someone set off a nuclear bomb -- completely swept clean of houses and nothing living in sight.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post some pictures, they don't really give a very good representation of most of the city because most of my photos come from the area that didn't really get any damage (can you believe it?)

In knitting news, I finished that Lakeview sock I have been working on for months! But only one! The next one has yet to be started... sigh. I'll post pictures soon, but I have a gigantic programming project I must work on now.

I am taking a brief moment away from writing my paper on the Roman economy during the first and second centuries A.D. to write a quick little update. I am about 2 pages into the 5ish page paper due in about 6 1/2 hours... but we all know that 5 is only a "suggestion", that really the paper is finished when you've finished saying what you wanted to say (which normally takes me 6 or more pages to do). I've been listening to classical music, which really helps put me in work mode for some reason... it's also comforting in a way, and reminds me of home. The week from hell has barely begun, and already I'm burnt out. I think I may ask my professor if I can write on next week's paper instead of the one for this wednesday, because I also have a huge programming project I must do for thursday that I haven't begun. Not to mention the test I have tuesday. sigh. fortunately my professor loves me, and knows I am a good student. hooray for being the teacher's pet!
I have another appointment with the psychiatrist tomorrow, too. Maybe she'll actually give me advice this time around. It's kind of funny, everyone I know has been asking me about my appointments cuz they want to go too... I think everyone is stressed out right now.

In 4 days I get to go home for 4 days of relaxing... lets hope I survive the week. I don't see much sleep in my future. OH! Speaking of sleep... I went to bed at 2 AM last night -- around 7 AM the fire alarm went off. It wasn't just the low-pitched alarm that sounds during a drill, it was also the shrill and rather painful squeal of the detectors inside our room as well. So I got to sit outside for half a hour in the freezing cold (ok, it was probably in the 60's, but dammit that's cold when I was just passed out in my nice warm bed!) Anyway, apparently some drunk asshole pulled the alarm... grrrrr. I went back to sleep for another couple of hours, but it just wasn't the same after that :o( Ah well, I knew this was going to be a trying week, that just adds to the fun :)

And because I feel bad I haven't been posting any worthwhile pictures:

there's an extremely pleased camel I managed to photograph on a trip to the Audubon Zoo.

I really wish instead of war-mongering and planning on bombing Iran, our government would address issues within our own country. I don't blame other countries for hating us so damn much, our administration is full of a bunch of war-happy hicks and they are ruining our image. Instead of spending who knows HOW much more money on MORE war, why don't they fix New Orleans? Ya know, I drive around New Orleans every day, and everywhere I go I see abandoned and burned out neighborhoods. What I DON'T see is progress, because there is no will for people to move back because of their lack of faith in the government actually doing something to rebuild the city. And why aren't we doing anything about the violence within our own country? Or the ghettos and the rampant drug problem? Why don't we let other countries do the bullying for once, and let us focus on fixing our own messed up country? Some days I just want to move to Sweden and pretend I never was associated with this country :-P it's rather embarrassing!

edit: Well I realized why some of you haven't been able to comment -- my commenting settings were set to only allow registered blogger users. I'm sorry! I didn't mean to discriminate! Now everyone is allowed to comment :o) This is a free-speech blog!

Well, I finished the first repeat of Chart A on the pomatomus sock, and I may work on it a little bit later as part of my "relax time". No pictures, cuz it doesn't look any different from the picture I posted last time.

Life has been pretty crazy, I'm getting majorly stressed out and I've been crying practically every night this week... as you can tell, I don't handle a ton of stress very well, and it's been hella stressful around here. I went and talked to my boss today at work and she let me take some time off until I get all of my stuff finished, so that will help me a bit cuz it's one less thing to worry about. I went to the stress therapist lady yesterday, and it wasn't very helpful. The appointment started 20ish minutes late, and then majority of the time was spent with her asking me questions about my background and medical history... the only advice she really gave me to leave with was to "take deep cleansing breaths to relax" which I already knew how to do from dance class. My dance teacher tells us to "breathe through your feet". I have another appointment with her on Monday, so hopefully we can actually address my stress issues this time.

Another thing I recently found out, which just adds to my stress/grief, is that one of my extremely close friends is addicted to painkillers (like Morphine) and does Heroin when he can't get painkillers. That really really really disturbs me, in more ways than the obvious one. For the past two years he's been struggling with some extremely serious medical issues which have kept him out of school. This semester he is finally healthy enough to go to college, and things were looking up for him. Then I found out about this addiction, and how he's dropped all classes except for one and he's moved back home. That really breaks my heart, because now he's slowly destroying himself after spending so long battling all of his illnesses. For an *extremely* brief summary, he basically got some sort of auto immune disease that killed both of his kidneys... he was on dialysis for 9 months until he got a kidney transplant, but then he had a bunch of complications including the autoimmune disease attempting to kill his new kidney. When he finally got (relatively) well from that, the kid developed lymph node cancer. So then he had to go through chemotherapy and the whole bit. So now he's finally got a functioning kidney, he's cancer free, gets to go to college, but he has an addiction to painkillers from when he was in the hospital with the cancer and has to do Heroin to get his "fix". sigh. Did I mention that he is only 18 now? His kidneys failed when he was 15. That guy has been through more than anyone should experience in their whole life, let alone before you're 20.

There will be a happy, knitting related post soon I hope, sorry about all of the depressing posts of late -- it's been a rough semester.

I'll leave you with this happy picture of Molly napping:

Poor eeyore is being used as a pillow

Well, I had a wonderful weekend full of chocolate, pajamas, Harry Potter, and World of Warcraft. It was so nice to just sit at home** doing whatever I felt like and not have to worry about anything (but that will soon change). Thanks to everyone who commented/emailed me with suggestions about relaxing. I'm going to the stress therapist tomorrow, so hopefully that will help too.
**With home being southeastern Louisiana, we get quite a few critters of the reptilian and amphibian sort in our back yard. Mind you, I don't live in the backwoods or the swamp or anything (I'm a city girl), but seeing lizards and frogs in our backyard is a common occurance. This little guy decided he really liked my mom's wind chime:

When I first went outside to snap some pictures of him, he was brown. Over the course of our little photo session he changed positions in order to get a better look at me AND he decided to turn a nice shade of green for me:



While I was at home I wound my Cherry Tree Hill supersock in "Indian Summer" into a pull ball and started the Pomatomus socks. I'm really pleased with the way they're turning out so far, it's a really clever pattern and easy to follow (and I don't usually go from charts!)

I'm also extremely pleased with the color... it isn't pooling much at all as far as I can tell, and the colors are so rich. I'm not a big fan of yellow or orange, so this may have to qualify for my Project Spectrum project for the month... it has a significant amount of orange mixed in with the red and magenta.

I'm also extremely proud of myself, because I branched away from double pointed needles and decided to give the magic loop method a try! So far, I am in love with this method, it is so simple! I think I'm knitting faster, because my problem with DPN is that I always stop after each needle and admire my handywork (heehee) and its a pain in the butt to transition from needle to needle. With the magic loop, that cuts my needle transitions in half! hooray!

Anyway, this next week or two is going to be absolute hell. I'll need all the good destressing vibes I can get!
-this Thursday: programming assignment due that I'm not sure how to do
-Monday: paper due
-Tuesday: midterm exam
-Wednesday: another paper due
-Thursday: programming takehome midterm due

add on top of that two ongoing group programming assignments that are not going right at all, work (which has been extra stressful recently), and the fact I'm burnt out,and you get a very unhappy Erin. Wish me luck!