A Bitter Knitter

"Give me a word, any word, and I show you how the root of that word is Greek." (My Big Fat Greek Wedding)  Today's Greek word is Thesaurus .  Not a dinosaur, the word "thesaurus" comes from the Greek word for a store, treasure, storehouse, or treasury, now meaning a treasury or storehouse of knowledge.  That wonderful information comes from the Oxford English Dictionary Online.  (One of the things I'm going to miss most about graduating... no more access to the OED online with the campus subscription.  Deep, pitiful sigh.) Today is Saturday the 8th of May.  A week from now, I will participate in the graduation ceremony marking the completion of my BA!  The only things standing between me and my diploma are a geography final on Monday, border studies final due Tuesday, and three linguistics papers due Thursday...  Not a ridiculous amount of work, but nothing at which to sneeze either, but all the end of the semester work is why I haven't...

I don't generally post on sequential days, but, behold! a second post in two days. Red-Headed Sister and I spent mid-day at the park. We fed the ducks and geese,  blew bubbles,  Sorry, photo vanished... and played on the swings.   Then we came home and watched movies.  Of all the photos I took today, this one is my favourite: Sorry, photo vanished... I got nothing done for school, but it was an excellent, relaxing day, and I did get the heel turned on my Monday Sock .  See? The foot of the sock is my least favourite part... alas.  But that's what's next.  Tomorrow Husband & I are headed out to Mom & Dad's--Husband is helping Dad fix the fence (they hope to finish it all tomorrow, I believe), and I've got laundry to do and need to revise my presentation.  My Most Wonderful Linguistics Professor is going to let me rehearse my WAIL presentation for her on Tuesday, so that means I have this weekend to make revisions and get...

Let's see... when I last posted ten days ago, I had just finished three hats for niecelettes and nephewito.  While I have multiple projects in progress (ahem... hibernating...), I was in the mood for something new, and by new, I mean things I haven't done yet.  So here's what I've recently cast-on: Item Number One: My first ever pair of toe-up socks.  I'm calling them Summer Fog Socks , and they're made using the Wendy's " Summer 2008 Socks " in " Lavender Topaz ," making these also the first ever item not knit in a solid colour yarn, and is the finest yarn I've worked with yet, with the smallest needles.  Size 0!  The socks are biasing, but I won't know until I get farther along if that's going to be a problem.  Other Ravelrians agree to the leans-to-the-right bias, but there was no clear consensus as to whether it will block out or not.  But I'm contemplating switching the pattern for the other sock to use a k2tog whe...

April.  The fourth month of the year. It is designated as, among other things, Autism Awareness Month , Frog Month , National Kite Month (reminds me of Charlie Brown ), and ... Stress Awareness Month.  Fitting.  Ask any college student. I'm plugging away.  Keeping very busy.  (Would probably be less busy if I didn't go on Facebook.  Oh, well.)  I got my grant proposal and scholarship applications sent in and my prof and I got the big grant proposal done electronically... it was just waiting for signatures to go off in physical form.  Cross your fingers when you get a chance and wish us luck on all of them! My poster is done and ready for my presentation tomorrow, I just need to plug through some more audio files so that I have more than four examples...but I spent all day editing video and I'm kind of burned out.  The forum on undergraduate research is tomorrow afternoon.  My prof has actually cancelled class in favour of the foru...

Time keeps marching relentlessly forward and then races past, bringing April closer and closer.  Deadlines for grant proposals and papers are looming nearer...  I really should get off Blogger and get to work on my poster, because (insert severe sarcasm) thanks to furloughs (and spring break) I have to print it by Thursday of next week, even though that presentation isn't until the 6th of April.  Sigh... But we're hoping to videotape our speakers on Tuesday for my presentation at WAIL.  BIL's scarf is progressing slowly, but I'm hoping to have it done by the 1st weekend of April as well, for BIL's birthday.  (Act surprised, Sid!)  But I have finished the unbloggable projects I mentioned... hope to get those mailed off tomorrow.  Pictures soon! And, thanks to the turning and tilting of the planet (which corresponds with the passing of time) we are coming up on the Vernal Equinox on Saturday.  It's really been lovely the past few days....

One required LING 300 class leads to... A linguistic depth of study and minor, and to... Not going into elementary education after all (not just for that reason, but it is part of it), which leads to... LING 480: Field Methods, which leads to... Getting involved with creating a tri-lingual click-and-hear dictionary, which leads to... Submitting a paper to WAIL (the Workshop on American Indigenous Languages hosted at UCSB), which leads to... Getting my paper accepted for WAIL (April 30th & May 1st), which leads to... Submitting an application for a grant (Due April 1st) and to... Presenting my research at a forum on "Advancing Undergraduate Research" at CSUSM on April 6th and to... Submitting an application for a much, much bigger grant (also due April 1st.  Go figure), which means... A whole lotta work and research to do, in addition to the usual homework load. So, as you can see, it's all my LING 300 professor's fault.  If her class hadn't been so...

Saturday was a triumphant day--I finished knitting my first ever Pair o' Socks !! Yes, here they are... a matched set: They fit divinely.  Way better than store-bought socks.  Y'all had no idea that your socks really didn't fit well, did you?  Well they don't.  So now you should all be dissatisfied with the fit of your store-bought socks and learn to knit socks that are tailor-made for your feet. I finished knitting them at a women's conference on Saturday.  It was fun... me knitting, the woman in front of me knitting, a woman in the row in front of her and off to the left was either knitting or crocheting... and that was just in my little section.  I wonder just how many of us there were? These socks are my 8th finished knitted item (counting paired things as one item).  I'm simply pleased as punch with how they turned out. Other than that I've currently got a couple of unbloggable projects on the needles right now, but I'll let you kno...

Very little knitting has occurred since my last post as the semester is now in full swing.  However I have cast on for the second Creta sock (the one in taupe) and did get a few rows done on BIL's scarf .  As it turns out, I'm going to be keeping the taupe socks and giving the multi-coloured ones to Older Sister. The main reason for this post though is to show off my Valentine's day present.  (I'm going to take this time to mention that I am married to the best guy ever .  Y'all may contest that and argue that you have good guys, too, but mine is the best.)   This is my present: seven sets of four inch double pointed needles in Harmony wood from KnitPicks.  Here's a close up of one of the sets: (Sorry... picture vanished) (I believe that you can click on the pictures to embiggen them.)  Aren't they pretty?  And they're only four inches.  The one's I've been knitting with are seven, so I'm excited to not have to slide the needles...

Well, after being a coward for many a month I have finally bit the bullet, so to speak. I have braved the knitting right of passage of turning the heel . I am now officially a SOCK KNITTER! I have in fact knitted two socks! And here they are... drumroll, please...   See? Socks! With lovely turned heels:     And I am loving knitting socks.  There is something almost poetic about how you are knitting in a tube, and then you knit a flat panel, and then you follow a few steps and TA-DA!  You suddenly have a turned heel!  And then you make the gusset and it suddenly looks like a SOCK!  (Well, missing the toe, but you get my point.)  It's like magic... Now there is something that needs to be explained. You see there is only one of each sock.  Mmm hmmm.  And yet I have two feet.  (Last time I checked.  Hold on... Yup.  Still got two and only two.)  There is, in knitting, a phenomenon known as Second  Sock Syndro...

I have almost reached the end of the semester... grades are in for two classes (same professor): both A's! Yay! I'm working to finish the last class...  I've written 13 pages toward a paper ("Discrimination: A Catalyst for Indigenous Language Death in the United States")  and have four or so to go... I didn't anticipate the paper being that long, but it is, and I'm pleased with it thus far.  (No page limit... that's just how long it needs to be to say what I need to say.)  I still have a seizable amount of work to do before this class is done... tomorrow will be busy.... I also got letters from all my second graders... so cute.  Many of their drawings made me chuckle--several literal second graders drew me with  my crutches!  They performed their musical on Tuesday and did a fantastic job. But amidst the chaos, I have finished one unbloggable project ... it's for the cohort gift exchange tonight... but the other is progressing rathe...