Ugh!

I’ve been on a terrible creative backslide right now…and I have absolutely nothing to show for it.

As soon as school ended, I began working 40-50 hour shifts, and it’s been eating my soul away. It is nice to have a paycheck that is twice the usual size, but I don’t think it’s entirely worth it.

My wrist started hurting on day six of an eight-day workweek, and so I had to stop knitting for awhile. It’s better, but now I’m too exhausted to even think about picking up a project.

I’ve been trying very hard to  keep myself in line; keep the house clean and keep Matt and I fed as well as working out. It’s a full-time job for sure. Once I get the routine and the habits down, it won’t be this hard, but right now I don’t have any spare time. When I do, I just want to plop on the couch and do NOTHING. Which is kind of okay, because I deserve some “nothing” time…but I also really want to being doing something fun.

I am finally starting to feel the pay-off from working out so intensely, and I love it. I have these things now, that you may have heard of? Called muscles? Yeah. It’s cool. I can do push-ups (and not just the girly ones!) This, plus 40 hours of standing a week has been wreaking havoc on my leg injury though. So now I’m at a weird, wobbly point where I have to keep working out if I  want to make my almost-sorta-kinda-there changes in my body stay put, but if I go too hard, I could be in big trouble. So I’m sitting here online, worrying, rather than doing.

My hours are going down next week, and then I get a short break, plus a week-long vacation in August. So hopefully you’ll be seeing some fun new things from me soon.  Right now, though, I’m just an exhausted, cranky zombie.

So Close! So Close!

I have maybe 50 words left until I finish my 22-paged beast. But I can’t finish it. It’s not finishing! WHY WON’T IT FINISH?

Free as the wind blows…

I attended my last class of the academic year today. It was rather bittersweet, as it is almost like the end of an era!  We formed a really tight group as we raced our way through hellish academia this year (we’re all trying to complete a four-year degree in two years) and next year we’re kind of splitting up a bit. One of our group is lucky enough to be attending a full semester of school in Tokyo, and I am splitting off to work on my other degree (philosophy), while the other  two girls are heading in the directions of their respective minors. We’ll still have a class or two together, but I will sincerely miss our weekly study groups, and that general feeling of bonding that you get when you go through hell with someone.

We’re planning on having our study-meet for the final on Tuesday, and possibly making it an all-nighter. Both of the girls’ birthdays are on the day of the final, so we’re having parties both Wednesday and Thursday to celebrate. I’m looking forward to finals being over for so many, many reasons!

I gave my Language and Gesture presentation on Wednesday, despite my suffering from a sinus infection. It went surprisingly really, really well. At first I thought no one was interested because no one asked any questions afterwards and it made me kind of sad. But later my professor told me that he’d never seen a student (especially an undergrad!) come in with such a thoroughly planned out experiment that was carried off in such professional terms. I was a bit stunned, to say the least since I never feel professional. As if that wasn’t enough, I was approached by another faculty member who specializes in Gesture and she wants me to send her a copy of my paper and she wants to help me write a grant to get funding for a full-fledged version of my experiment. All the while, I’m sitting there just wanting to collapse because I had a bloody fever.  Also, while I’m tooting my own horn, Matt came home from work last night to tell me that he’d given a girl from my department a security-escort accross campus, and that when he mentioned me she went on and on about how awesome my presentation had been. Which was cool, because I had really admired her experiment too. So I’m feeling pretty content with my work this term!

And enough self-congratulations…here’s the FLS!

It’s hard to photograph in this stage, but I just separated the sleeves from the body and have done one lace repeat since. I think I’m going to like the different colours. This yarn definitely needs to be washed and blocked before it looks really good, so just imagine it looking slightly prettier, not on my bed, with better lighting, and without strings hanging everybloodywhere and I think it looks nice!

One week from now

I WILL BE FREE!  I have an astronomy assignment due tonight. I have a paper due sometime -ish. The date isn’t really set in stone. I have a phonology final on Wednesday. And then I am frakkin’ done with this term.

Because life won’t let me get by easy, I have a massive sinus infection. I worked yesterday and it was HELL, so a very sweet co-worker offered to take my shift tonight so that I could rest a bit. I went to the doctor this morning (which is rare…I usually wait until the symptoms are really pronounced, since most doctors don’t like diagnosing sinus infections right away) and got antibiotics and good allergy medicine. I’ve already gotten the first two doses of antibiotic down and I am feeling loads better.

Unfortunately, I had to give my research presentation for Language and Gesture today before I had gotten that second dose. I felt like I was just up there going “um. so. like. yeah” over and over again. But apparently I still did really well, and I met with a faculty member afterwards who wants me too send her my paper when its finished so that maybe we can expand my study (!) and see about getting grants for it and everything (!!!!!!!!) so that was pretty damned cool.

But enough of that.

I frogged my Rose Red. A while back, I made myself a promise to be a better knitter and make better FOs. That included frogging things that gave me that niggling “this isn’t right” feeling, actually ripping back to fix mistakes, etc… I loved the kidsilk haze, and I loved the Rose Red pattern, but for some reason or another, they just didn’t go right together. So I’m going to wait until fall maybe to knit Rose Red with a nice winter yarn. I don’t know what I’ll do with my Kidsilk Haze. I don’t even know if I can use it after frogging it – it looks pretty downtrodden.

I started on my FLS though, and the rows and rows of garter stitch have been soothing medicine to my aching head. I wasn’t even able to open my eyes for a little while, but I could still knit because of wonderful garter stitch.  The Karaoke that I got is funky. I knew it would be, because I got it on sale in a huge batch. It’s not smooth and silky like the other stuff, and the skeins are filled with knots. It’s still pretty and nice to work with, but a teeny bit disappointing. I also am thinking about changing colours once I get to the lace (which I am currently putting off right now), since the colours are SO bright and I am not sure if I want to be completely covered in a rainbow of silk wool. I have a lovely bit of charcoal grey Karaoke hanging about, and I think it would make an excellent contrast (and also be slimming!) for the lace part. I have a store-bought cardigan that is a dark grey with shiny silver and bright colours woven through around the edges and stuff and it’s just gorgeous, so I think this will work. But then I will have a massive amount of broken Karaoke hanging around…hmm…