I took quizzes! February 22, 2007
Not the Psych ones I’m supposed to take, Harry Potter ones!!
I might add that my score was 19/20, so I only got one wrong (and it was about how many Educational Decree’s Umbrdge pushed through the Minestry so it’s acceptable to me)
I may take the diagon alley one later but right now I should work.
FO! February 16, 2007
I have defeated my FO(e) and finished the Tiger socks!!!! (Please forgive my photo avalanche, I’m really excited about these socks)
Tiger socks posing delicately with my statistics textbook. Did I ever mention how weird it is as a non science/math type to have a hardcover textbook like this (I have two this semester which is the first time I’ve had this kind of textbook in college)? I feel really weird that I own these and I can write in them (I won’t because I like a high resale value, which equals books, yarn, and other good things)
They’re being cute here, which they don’t really need to be but hey! Who doesn’t like cute socks. Anyways, the reason that these socks are even done is because between Tuesday morning and Wednesday night I watched 9 episodes of Heroes. Yeah, I’m a good time manager, a very tired good time manager. Granted except for Paradise Lost (a.k.a. the epic poem from hell), I’m all caught up (or I will be before I go to bed). It’s really sad because I should like it, because I am an epic poetry nu but I really can’t get into the flow of Milton’s language very easily or well. I am hyper focused right now but it is also 12:30 (I cheat the system by starting the post just before midnight so it shows up as the day before I finish writing the post) so I will go to sleep because I really, really need the 6 hours I’m gonna get if I’m going to do whatever mad partying I have lined up for tomorrow night, right now all I have is Theology ‘Untapped’ (it’s funny because we’re on a dry campus) at 8 which is every bit as lame as it sounds. Yeah I have a rockin‘ social life, me and my theology group on Friday nights… Anyway I plan on doing more Heroes watching and knitting before Monday, if I can get through 5 episodes I am caught up and I get to join the party watching it when it’s actually on TV… Woah, I haven’t watched anything when it was actually on TV since Big Brother this summer, or else the Olympics a year ago. I can hardly believe that the Knitting Olympics were a year ago, it was such a good time. I am sad that the Harlot is disinclined to make the Knitting Olympics a bi-annual event. She’s planning on sticking with the Winter Olympiad, which is not to say that next summer no one will make a knitting Olympics but it just won’t be the same. And it was my first knitalong that I actually almost finished. Anyway back to my knitting, in honor of the FO I started one of the many ideas that had been floating in my head, instead of missing a few minutes of our Buffy double header (I watch a LOT of TV, ok) to get my Weasley sweater that has been languishing in my stash drawers for over a year. And what you are thinking did I start?
Tiger Mittens.
RAWR!
My Valentine… February 14, 2007
is Spiderman! A good thing too, because he was on the valentines I bought at Target anyways. I like that I have Beast as a runner up, I could definately see myself having a goood time with him. k this is gettin weird… exit stage left!
Oy, enough with the penguins already. February 12, 2007
I have had a horrid time of a weekend. Not that there weren’t many high points, but the fact is that when one has a few catastrophically bad things happen to them then those low points can drag down an otherwise excellent weekend. We’ll just treat those two items separately.
the bad mostly came from the fact that it is audition season and I, as usual, was not prepared for the first set, which means that I was not called back and therefore a bit sad (well if sobbing is a bit sad). I’ve racked up quite the score of rejections (I actually have a score of consecutive rejections, which sounds cool unless it happens to you) and I don’t really care about these plays, and I am not that great of an actress, and I wasn’t prepared, but it still really freakin’ hurts. A LOT. And I feel stupid for arguing with my monologue (I don’t like the character anymore) and saying a poem instead (I just felt every actor in the virtual room cringe). Which leads me into my belated poetry reading submission, the poem I recited for my audition, by Emily Dickinson.
But gallanter I know,
Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe.
Who win, and nations do not see,
Who fall, and none observe
Whose dying eyes no country
Regards with patriot love.
We trust, in plumed procession,
For such the angels go,
Rank after rank, with even feet
And uniforms of snow.
On the bright side, I did a lot of knitting (by my standards) this weekend. I made a lot of progress on the previously undiscussed Tiffany Mittens, for my friends Tegan for her birthday, which was over a month ago… but I stink at colorwork right now (I think you need to do miles of it before you can get even, loose tension and anything resembling speed) so I’m really okay with them being late, as long as it’s still winter (my Minnesota standards) when I finish them. So here’s a picture of the progress so far:
I’ve just started the main hand motif and I foresee this going a little bit faster than the more complex brown and orange wrist part, at least I certainly hope it goes faster. My tension problems should also even out because I certainly had a few.
I also had some time on the tiger socks, this is still the second one. Could you imagine knitting socks for a three legged person? Second Sock Syndrome is bad enough! 
Anyway these also got some TLC, because I have more knitting friends who make me want to knit more often because they are as well. One is making a massive garter stitch blanket for a baby cousin, and it’s hard to compete when you’re doing something on 0’s or in colorwork either of which goes more slowly. I shouldn’t think of this as a race but I have trouble not doing it. The good thing is that the baby blanket knitter is knitting almost constantly on it so there is more light in the movie rooms for her, and therefore me, to knit by.
Also I learned how to play Settlers of Catan. This probably increases my ratings on the nerd scale, but when you’re in the 90th percentile already increases are hardly relevant. It was really fun, there was scheming and I didn’t play well because I didn’t really understand how to start the game. like really looking at the board and stuff. So now I want to play again so I can really play. Although apparently I did really well because I was a point away from winning until the last few seconds of the game (when my Longest road got stolen 
). Anyways that was really fun and I feel bad because the sad stuff all happened today and Friday, Saturday, and some parts of Sunday were really great but the bad stuff is what I feel right now so it’s, like, poisoning the jelly of this blog or something.
In Harry Potter news I have nothing to share about major themes, titles, movies, release dates, or plans for them. I did start the series of rereads by beginning the only audiobook I have with me (Chamber of Secrets) today. I’ll work on that one for a while, hopefully, cause there’s very little chance of me getting the rest until I go home which won’t be for a while.
augh… February 9, 2007
I went to the symphony tonight, which means I lost 4 hours of my day and I’m hurrying to make up the said four hours. Hopefully I’ll make a longer post tomorrow.
Stupid Great Conversation Class and it’s stupid field trips…
Jane Austen is a frickin’ Genuis February 8, 2007
If you are here for knitting content you can be on your way because I ahve none, today my powers have been all about the Literary side of my nature not the Fibery one. I had to give up an English Class today and the result of this is that I decded to read for an abnormally large number of hours (even by my standards)
I just finished Mansfield Park, which I read because I have been reading the complete works of Jane Austen since the summer of 2004 and I am now very very close to finishing the cycle. I’ve been on Mansfield Park for a year and a half now and when I got bit by the Austen feaver in Bath (I really loved Bath and it is high up on my list of places to visit if I ever go abck to England) I decided to pick it up there. I started Mansfield Park during my disasterous day in Oxford, about which I will never speak again. Suffice it to say that when I am upset I buy books, the more upset I am the more books I buy. I bought three Jane Austen books in Oxford (they were on sale though). Anyway I didn’t like it much that day, in fact I very soon retreated into Harry Potter Land (I read Half-Blood Prince again, remember) and neglected Manfield Park until today when I realized that if I wanted to finish off the Jane Austen novels with Persuasion as I have always planned on doing because many, many people said that it was the most wonderful of her books, I would need to finish Mansfield Park before next week when we read Persuasion in Great Conversation. So that is a large part of what I did today. Granted I also had four classes to go to and I cleaned up and colored the first really good pictures I’ve drawn of the main characters of my novel (the one I didn’t finish for Nationl Novel Writing Month) They and an explanation of who and what they are will be at the end of this post once the internet is done being stupid. Now about the genus that is Jane Austen because I feel like bring a real Literature nerd right now.
So I wasn’t really connecting with Mansfield Park at all. I felt like Fanny (the main character) never did anything and that there were only two interesting characters in the whole of the book (Edmund and William), and I hadn’t even met one of them (William) yet. I probably only liked them because they were nice to Fanny. Anyway once the plot started picking up at eh begnning of volume two I was at least drawn in enough that I kept with the book, Fanny started to develop some sort of personality at that point in the story anyway and then the plot got really really tangled. Everything was going every which way adn Fanny was in Portsouth and William* was gone and all there was was the question of whether Mr. Crawford would change enough for Fanny to love him and whether she was ever getting back to Mansfiled Park (the house the book is named after). I had no hope for the plot at this point, there were too many loose ends and there seemed like no way that Austen could rescue everthing. What I didn’t count on was Jane Austen’s felicity for catastrophy. She places scandal and chagrin in exactly the right places at the right times to make everything wrap up neatly and maintain perfect harmony on each character. Until the last 70 pages of the book I thought I would never pick it up again after I finished reading it and now I want to read it again to get a clearer picture of the characters and ake sure that my interpretation is correct. Because I noticed something really cool. I was very sad at the lack of love scencs between the ture lovers at the end of the book (if you don’t know who they are go read it already!), but as I wass thinking about why Austen would make that kind of choice I realized that it was completely in the gloriously repressed nature of the characters to not show any affection in public but cherish an inner passion that burns as brightly as anything. I mean here are two characters whose primary connection is that they don’t show their emotions to many people and the primary confidant for each is the other. They are by their nature private and therefore Austen let them ahve their privacy. Man alive, she is so cool. I wish I could be just like Jane Austen in my writing, but not in the dying a 47 year old spinster part. I don’t think I’d like that part very much. It might be worth it for the genuis though, cause I would never have thought of this plot or been able to write characters like that. My worship at the various shrines to Jane Austen throughout England was very well placed indeed.
Ok so blogger is being stupid and when it decides to let me upload pictures there will be two. My novel is about superheroes so be forewarned I shall be approaching sillyness when describing them.
Charlie a.k.a. “Flyboy” Charlie is a flier whose natural state is in the air. His specialty is the birds eye view, his term for the airbourne tactics at which he excells. Charlie is very talented, very good looking, and a generally nice guy.
Tracy a.k.a. “Tele” A Telepath from birth Tracy never really got a handle on her powers until she came to school. The experience of being an uncontrolled telepath ahs left her socially challanged and unable to come out of a very thick shell.
I swear I will eventually get to talking about Harry Potter and the large number of exciting things hapening about him right now, but not tonight.
*William is a bit of an obsession for me at the moment becasue he is one of the very few exceptions to the Taken or Dead rule which states that an eligable and attractive male character will very shortly become either attached to the object of his ardent affections or a corpse. William is a rare exception to this rule and he’s a sailor, not quite as good as a pirate but he seems dashing enough for me.
Simply too much February 7, 2007
I have returned. I have returned from London, from Jet Lag, from Wisdom Tooth surgery, from the effects of the medications for said surgery, from the shock that the single greatest force on my life in the last 8 years is coming to an end this July and from my FO drought. I’m gonna do a quick round up of these several things and then I’m a gonna go knit away.
LONDON!!! I’m gonna type up my class journal and embellish it with various things I bought and/or took (because they were free) and then post it one entry per day for as long as that takes, but I will do that elsewhere and put highlights up over here. I did enjoy London and I showed the socks many things. Note that I say socks. This is not because I took my Violet’s ribbon yarn finished the socks I was making with it and showed both f them London. Oh no, not me! I went and lost another go.knit bag (I am now 0 for 2 on not losing go.knit bags as well as recovering lost go.knit bags and have given them up permanently) with my new knitpicks needles in the sock and a part of my Ribbon yarn in it. This was the bag that I won from Knit.1 last spring too so I was very upset about it. So I went crazy due to lack of knitting (I did bring my lacewings shawl, which is a whole other story) and eventually (after a failed attempt to find the place) made my way to loop where I met an extremely cute but destructive little girl and bought some tiger striping opal yarn and some size 0 bamboo needles and set off. I was really excited about the Opal because I’d been wanting some ever since Wendy knit these last spring, so now I get to make my own tiger socks and more because I decided to make the tiger socks short socks and the point is to use a lot of yarn. I want tiger mittens but I’m not sure how to go about making them because knitting mittens on 0’s is not real appealing to me
Before it was lost I took a picture of the violet sock with Big Ben:
And then when I finally got my new sock started I took pictures of it too:
Oxford
Very bad picture at the grave of Shakespeare
and the First one is done.
That’s me with Chiwetel Ejiofor. He was in a production of The Seagull, which is one of my favorite plays. was really excited about seeing him because of a Big Damn Movie that he was in (and another one, actually) and I got my picture but as you may guess from his expression he was less than pleased to deal with fans that night. Which was sad but what are you gonna do about it. I still got to meet him and I’m pretty pleased with that.
OK so it really sucks to get your wisdom teeth taken out. The drugs are pretty nice but the pain and especially the swelling are most unpleasant. I do like the attractive bruises though, you can make up all manner of reasons for having them, so far I’ve come up with: I fought the Hulk, a vicious hellbeast attacked me, Aliens, you should see the other guy, and getting my wisdom teeth taken out. The worst of it was that I was just incredibly tired for a week and then yesterday I just knit for 2 and a half hours and listened to Lime and Violet and when I was done I had this:
And then I tried to sleep but failed and was up for a lot of the night and now I have all kinds of energy, which is great because I like being a more high energy person than the other thing. The sad thing is that now I have spent all my knitting time blogging and it is time for bed. Pyjama Time!! I’ll say lots of things about Harry Potter tomorrow, hopefully.
