What’s your Pride and Prejudice Awareness? April 20, 2009

For my review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies I’ve had to cut up my review depending on how familiar the reader is with Pride and Prejudice (especially the Book and Miniseries) and Jane Austen in general, I call this my “Comprehensive Pride and Prejudice Awareness.”  A reader very familiar with Austen’s work will deal with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies differently than a reader who hasn’t and I want my review to address that fact.  This brings us back to the CPPA, which takes into account everything I can think of that might expose people to Pride and Prejudice or Jane Austen, with a bit more weight for Pride and Prejudice because the review is Pride and Prejudice specific.  My score’s pretty astronomical (I’ll tell you guys what it is when I post the review), but even I don’t hit every single point.

I was so amused by the whole idea of the CPPA that I thought I would share it with you guys before posting the review (tomorrow, hopefully). Enjoy! Let me know your score in the comments!

Um… I’m alive, and I took a quiz April 14, 2008

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Book Tag March 17, 2008

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 (or more) pages.

Charles Dickens, Bleak House

2. Open the book to page 123 and find the 5th sentence.

The ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed, I think they were even more so.

3. Tag 5 people.

Let me know you read this blog, and I’ll tag you.

So, I is stupid. February 25, 2008

Yeah, basically, I, who somehow manage to publish two “weekly” columns can’t seem to hit the publish button on the blog, meaning that posts haven’t been posted and the like (not that there have been many posts).

The main reason for this post is the new page tab you’ll see at the top of the layout. It contains links to everything I write that isn’t this blog. I’m sure most of you will see both, but hey it’s like an online compendium of my writing and is useful for me when I need to track down writing samples.

So my life is the usual, busy, homework-y, boring as regards my social life, nonexistant as regards my romantic life. I’m sick right now, so that sucks, I’m even too sick (really too tired on account of being sick) to knit. I’ve mostly been playing my DS. I beat Spiderman: Friend or Foe, which was really good, especially because the DS version used the DS’s 2 screens in a cool manner for the most part, but I was really disappointed in the lack of Daredevil and Elektra who are in the console games, but not the portable versions. I want another game to replace Friend or Foe in my choices (and because I have a grand total of 6 games that I can play on my DS, which is lame), and I’m trying to decide whether the DS version of Ultimate Spiderman is significantly better than the Game Boy Advanced (GBA) version. I have no clue about either, but I saw the game for $15 at the Target at home so it may come with me next time I’m there. Really I need to wait 2 days until I’m Birthday Girl and then maybe I’ll get a new toy. Before I got too sick to knit, I did do a bit of knitting:

Secret of the Stole ii is chugging along at a slothlike pace, mostly because I haven;t got a ton of time to work on it. I should really try to print out all of the charts soon, so I’m not left in the lurch when I don’t finish with everybody else.

My Kaylee socks are also chugging along. I brought them with me to the endorsing convention I went to on Saturday, but the crud I have now had started to steal my energy by then so I mostly played my DS (which is true of all of he last few days, I beat Spiderman: Friend or Foe in 3 sittings)

Hey there blogosphere! February 25, 2008

So… well I haven’t been blogging much, I’m really busy. The good thing is that much of the busyness is writing, so if I’m not blogging much, at least I’m still writing. You can catch me over at The Chum on “Saturdays” for The Knitter’s Guide to the Galaxy (my events column) and “Wednesdays” for Profiles of Fictional Knitters. The days are in quotes because I’ve been horrible at actually getting stuff written for those days by those days. Then I’m pretty active on Ravelry and Twitter (I update there at least once a day), I write for the school paper (because apparantly this is important if you want to work in publishing) and then there are classes, one of which is Creative Writing, for which I write a lot. I really meant busy when I said busy.

Anyway, dispite my non-bloggin of late I do like to at least use my blog to commemorate milestones in my life, and I reached a major Milestone in my knitting life this last Friday when I finally finished the Weasley Sweater

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Sorry for the cruddy shot but I’ve got no time for more. Anyway I’ve been working on this Sweater off and on for over 2 years, I got the Encore DK from my mom for Christmas 2005 and immediately started on the sweater as my “interim project” well three interims on and I’ve finished it. It’s nice, but the acryllic means that my loose guage allows it to droop, a lot. It is warm though and will be nice to throw on as a sweatshirt like thing.

Well, that’s it for me for now. Maybe I’ll have more to say another time.

No more of this. December 12, 2007

Ok, so I had a whiny blog post all worked up about how I was self censoring myself for one reason and another and that’s why I’ve been all blog silent, but… that’s a lie, I’m just lazy. Now it’s finals, I’m procrastinating, and on 3 hours’ sleep. I’ll skip right to OTN: Gift Edition
I’m making three gifts for people before I leave school in a week. One is for my jury accompanist, one is for my Secret Santa, and the last is for my Economics Teacher.
My accompanist is a lovely girl who is on Hall Council with me and has fantastic blue eyes. I just happen to have some Knit Picks Pallete in exactly her eye color so she is getting wrist warmers so her hands can stay warm while she plays. I’m toying with doing a beaded edge a la Mrs Beeton, but we’ll let time decide on that one. Here is the progress on the first of her Wrist warmers (can you spot the hidden knitting?):
I want to give them to her on Friday, when my jury is. I think this may be possible, except for one thing.
My Secret Santa loves purple and recently lost her scarf. I have some purple yarn and I cast on for My So Called Scarf, after knitting on it almost all weekend here is my progress:
About two feet, and not bad, except that the Secret Santa exchange is also on Friday. Granted there is probably enough time between my jury and the exchange to knit the rest of the scarf, but I really don’t want to take that much risk, and my Mom reminds me that knitting things always takes longer than you think it will.
My Economics Teacher is pregnant, and as is my tradition I am knitting her baby booties. The closest thing to a gender neutral yarn I had was bright red, so I cast on, worked, didn’t like the shape I was making, frogged and cast on again with more stitches, it looks good now:
I have until next Tuesday on these, which is plenty of time, I hope!

Threes November 12, 2007

So blogger seems to be working for the moment and I have stuff on my mind. You know that means I’m totally blogging. I’m stealing Sheri’s three thing gimick because I think it might be a good way to generate some content, and I like stealing. By the way, I totally intend to finish my recap of things I’ve done, but they take a long time to do on account of the pictures.
Three Decisions I’ve come to:
1) I am no longer doing NaNoWriMo this year. I have been doing it in secret, thinking that that would take the pressure off, but I realized that I don’t have the drive to do everything I would like to do as it is and I think that in the end I would much rather knit in November and maybe write in January or February when I’m perhaps more sick of knitting.
2) I really want to knit, a lot. I haven’t managed to knit since Thursday and that makes me so sad. I wish I could just knit all the time.
3) I need to re-organize my closet. I just knock stuff over in there all the time and then it forms this big mass of clothes, makeup, and various other things on the ground near my desk and is very distracting.

Three Things I am Looking Forward to This Week
1) Pie! The Hall Council (of which I am a member) is throwing a Pie Eating Contest. I like pie, and I get to help make the contest pies (we’re buying non-pudding pies for everyone to eat as well)
2) Good Music. There are a lot of good concerts coming up this weekend (notably the Jazz bands). I love the times when going to such a music intensive school pays off like this.
3) Stitches for Peace. That’s my knitting group. I look forward to it every week, but that totally counts.
Three Things I am Not Looking Forward to This Week
1) Writing. I am having writer’s block like you would not believe at the moment (note my lack of chum column) and I’m just having so much trouble producing anything (this blog entry being an exception because I’m whining).
2) Anything related to Opera. A major theme of this semester, I was in an opera (Carmen), and took the related class and I hated the opera, and continue to hate the class. I have to perform this stupid aria (Must the Winter Come So Soon from Samuel Barber’s Vanessa) that I hate and has stupid lyrics (like all of Barber) and I can barely sing and I have to be around people I mostly don’t like and I have to go to this stupid show in the Theater department that I don’t want to go to because I hate the St. Olaf Theater Department because they are clique-y and treat non-clique people like crap. RRRRRAGH (ok that’s the major source of anger there).
3) Using Northfield Public Transit. I need to go to Target and gather some things for my swap partner (and ingredients for Gingerbread) and my Car enabled friends have not picked up on my less than subtle hints that I want to go to Target so I must brave the smelly public buses on my own.

On the Needles:

Well except for charity projects, which I haven’t taken pictures of because I’m cool like that, all I’ve been working on is my Curved Shawl from Victorian Lace Today. I am totally in love with the pattern but it is somewhat slow moving (it does grow every row) and I keep needing the shawl for things, like my aria performance on Tuesday. And then having to make due.

I was in a silly mood on Thursday and used Magnets to hang it on the refrigerator like a piece of art. You can see the cool circle-y holes much better both because the refrigerator is white and because I was able to open up the fabric a bit with the magnets. I love this shawl, but what do you guys think?

Slide in November 6, 2007

My Dear Blog Readers,
Well I have been absent haven’t I? I am deeply sorry for that, I can hardly believe that I was last attempting to get you caught up at the end of September and here it is November 5th. I just got back from V for Vendetta (remember, remember the fifth of November), which the school showed, and gave me one of the much missed Alan Moore headaches (really, I do miss blowing my mind every few weeks). I’m astounded about how well the story holds up by being written in the 80’s and all, though, Alan Moore did
I should have been blogging, it’s been a hard few months and blogging is so cathartic for me, but I haven’t been and blogger is refusing to cooerate with me and post pictures so I’m stopping in ot say “Hi” and I hope everyone is well and I will live on to fight blogger another day (though I am considering moving this whole mess over to wordpress if someone will tell me how.

coming soon! September 24, 2007

A proper blog post? Perhaps, the internet has foiled my every plan to blog so far, but, like the phoenix, I shall rise again.

Rapid Fire Catch Up Blogging, Part the First September 19, 2007

So today is my half birthday, I’m 20.5 now. I celebrated in high style last night (Tuesdays are a complete no go for me as far as doing anything non-scheduled goes, so I went with Monday instead). I would tell you what I did, but looking at my last post reminds me that I haven’t been keeping up with this whole blogging thing much this summer, so I’m going to spend the next few days firing a few bullets of news at you, I’ll do my OTN section today (not that I have every intention of sending it to Lime and Violet, oh no) but the summer will have to go over several days because I was pretty busy and took lots of pictures. I’ll tell you what I did on Monday on Friday when I can catch up on what I’ve been doing since I got back to school, and I am likely to actually do it this time because I’m going to type most of it now (I’ve got the time and there is no way I can do homework, but we’ll get to stress on Friday). Anyway, summer. It was pretty fun. I talked a little about everything, so I’ll just go month by month and fill you in.

June

• Sound of Music had already started, but it continued for the whole of this month (seriously, we struck the set on July 1) and I had a lot of fun, but I did get a little sick of the cast towards the end there

• I started work! I totally missed my kids (I nanny in the summer) and I was stoked for an exciting and fun summer. The kids were more in the mood for a laid back, lazy summer so we butted heads a little, but the being around people who weren’t my family for the whole day was really great!

  • Also, they spent about half of June playing Pokemon (see picture, taken at the pool). Pretty much solid. As long as they were active for a couple of hours every day their Mom wanted me to let them do what they wanted for a while. I got so crazy sick of watching them play that by the third day I was all, ‘give me a gameboy, I’m gonna catch ‘em all’

• I did a bit of shopping with my friend Nat, we saw Voldemort (if you can’t see it there’s a Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix poster behind that glass)

• The family I work for got a new pet, Bonnie the bunny.

• I took Amy Singer’s ‘Learn to Love Lace’ class. My Tuscany shawl has remained untouched since that day. (Amy is posing with my Sockpal’s Pomatomus)
  

• Both projects were abandoned, mostly because I was frantically knitting on the Minisweater, because I needed it to make my Dress for the Ball Scene in Sound of Music more 40’s.

  • I actually did finish the minisweater, though I seem to be without pictures of it at the moment (no way is my grungy body being photographed today, perhaps later)

• My sister and I made secret plans (they totally didn’t pan out, but it would have been way cool if they had)

• Mom got an iPhone
  

• We began to prepare for the Harry Potter book by making awesome Luna hats (she wears it to the Gryffindor/Slytherin game in Order of the Phoenix)

OTN

So, I have been knitting, a little, kinda. The Weasley sweater continues to be a mass of Green heather (I’m trying to make a glob of green heather seem more interesting than usual in the picture):

I’ve knit on it the most lately, because it’s fairly mindless, but I need to go in and check to see if I’ve been doing the decreases correctly, because I think I might have messed up significantly several times, which would mean ripping back, which I’m not afraid of, but would kinda suck.

I started some fingerless gloves for the girl I nannied this summer. They are black and have lace over the hands because she is totally goth like that (she has about half a sense of fashion right now, so she’s only partially committed to the goth look). The gloves are mostly done, I had these plans to finish them today, but I watched 4 episodes of Project Runway instead, because it was totally that kind of day. Anyway, one is done, the other is almost to fingers, but the thing about gloves of any kind is that there are 10 ends and not a particularly large amount of fabric to sew them into, and I have sewn exactly 0 ends in so far, so I’ve got 20 to go.

I guess I’ve done about a row on Tegan’s Tiffany mittens, so they look pretty much exactly like they did last time I took a picture of them. I have figured out a good way to make them fit though, because they are quite large, but we didn’t want to over felt them. My hands are a bit bigger than Tegan’s so I’ll wear rubber gloves and the mittens and have fun with some hot water, and when the mittens fit me I’ll stop and then leave them to finish blocking.