Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

I hope you all had good Christmases (or whatever holiday you choose to celebrate this time of year). Mine was pretty good...it's a bit sad watching my Grandfather decline so quickly, but it was good to be home and spending time with family. I managed to get a pretty good knitting haul. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised that my parents got me some yarn (my mom seemingly abhors the concept of a stash). I also got a fair few books and some needles. As far as the yarn, my parents got me some Risata that I have been pining for as well as some Swish DK. More yarn came my way thanks to the lovely Alicia. She saw these and thought of me...I daresay she was right...it's like a colorway made especially for me...and it's even lot 1, I feel special :P She also got me a super cool needle gauge from 7 Yaks Designs. (Sorry for the blurry pic...it didn't look that bad on the camera I swear.)

In other news: I'm so excited words cannot describe. I feel like I'm a real knitter now! Now I'm trying to decide when I want to wear it...out to dinner and the movies with a couple friends on Thursday...or out with more of them on Friday...silly I know. What am I working on now? Well, I struck a bargain with my aunt; she makes quilts (she made the one on my bed here) and the one I have is about 15 years old and is really beginning to show it. She will make me a new quilt if I make her a hat, flip top mittens, and a scarf. So I poked around on Ravelry for a million years and chose this hat, which I have now cast on for. I plan to knit coordinating mittens based on this pattern. And a scarf/neckwarmer using this pattern. All of this using the same yarn I used to make my sweater (I can hardly believe how much I have of this stuff).

Now...New Years. I made some knitting resolutions last year. Let's see how I did.

• Finish my Warm Up America Afghan (including sewing it all together)
• Check. Got this one done some time around the end of September. Only took me a little over two years! :P
  
• Knit my Doctor's Bag
• Check. Finished up in April I think. I know I've used it a lot already this year...although I do want to reinforce part of it with fabric before I start using it regularly again.
  
• Knit for charity
• Not so much. I thought I would knit a lot of things for the Sharewood auction. But the auction came and I had nothing to give them.
  
• Knit primarily from my stash
• I look at the things I've knit this year and I've knit more than half of them from stash...but I bought so much yarn this year I accumulated more that I used...so I feel like I didn't really do this.

What are my resolutions for this year? I plan to include some more personal ones as well...accountability and all that :P

• Knit from stash as much as possible
• Avoid buying more yarn unless absolutely necessary (this yarn diet will also prohibit sock yarn...because I have plenty of that for the time being)
• Knit another sweater (I'd like to do NaKniSweMo again...perhaps with Francis Revisited. This will necessitate buying yarn...because I don't have a sweater's worth of anything anymore)
• Get in better shape/lose weight (I'd like to look at least halfway decent in pants again. I'm thinking a good goal for the year would be to get back to what I weighed at the end of Freshman year of college [about 40lbs less than what I weigh now] but I've love to make it to what I weighed at the end of high school [closer to 60lbs]. I think my high school weight is too ambitious a goal for me short term given how difficult it is for me to find time to eat well and exercise regularly...but it's definitely the goal long term.
• Knit some baby clothes for expecting friends (I've got a couple due around March that I really need to get cracking on)
• Be the best medical student I can be, read as much as I can, take a more active role in caring for my patients, do more procedures (when reasonable of course), and generally get as much as I can out of the experiences given to me.

Alright. I'm off to knit a little bit and relax. Happy knitting to all and to all a good night!

Close...

But not quite...

I'm a little bit farther on the sleeve now...but that's how far I had gotten as of midnight 11-30-08. Good effort I say. Not having the crazy Psych attending who kept me in the hospital until all hours would have been helpful but I learned a lot and that's what really matters.

I also bought yarn...some of it for Christmas presents...but mostly because it was pretty and I needed something to make me feel better after my three weeks from heck on Consult Psych...little did I know that Inpatient was going to be a whole new kind of painful. My attending has a very hands-off approach...which makes me feel totally useless and unwanted. I wander up and down the hallway of the locked ward talking to the 66 year-old guy with the teddy bear and the bajillion suicidal people and then go eat lunch for a couple hours go walk up and down the hallway some more and leave way too early for conference because I just can't stand it anymore. Innywho...here's the yarn: Lots of Happy Feet from Plymouth Yarn Co...courtesy of Webs.

And now a meme:
Things I've Done (In Bold)

1. Started my own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than I can afford to charity (This has more to do with the fact that I'm dirt poor than my being particularly generous)
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo (here...I'm the first one)
11. Bungee jumped (NEVER)
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched lightning at sea
14. Taught myself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown my own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train (But I slept on the commuter train at least once daily for the last two years!)
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught myself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied (But I have a small mortgage's worth of debt! YAY Med School!)
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had my portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had my picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life (Give it time folks...I've only been on the wards for 6 months)
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Rode an elephant

On Sweaters

Well...it's about half way through the month of November and this is my current progress: I have no idea when it got that long (it's at my waist)...I was just freaking out the other day about how I was barely into the lace. Now, admittedly, I did spend approximately 20 hours in the library this weekend knitting and reading (not necessarily in equal proportions)...but I didn't think it would make that much of a difference. I also bought buttons...aren't they pretty!I love the iridescent quality they have...but then again I tend to like shiny things like that. So, right now I've used up about 2.5 balls of yarn (about 575 yards). I'm thinking that I'm gonna finish up the ball I'm currently using with lace and then decide whether or not I want to knit more lace before the garter stitch on the bottom. At this point I'm figuring that the sleeves are gonna use a lot more yarn that I think...because otherwise I can't quite figure out how I'm supposed to use just over 1000 yards. I'm also leaning toward making long sleeves...not only for yarn usage (I have about 1600 yards of this stuff total), but also because I tend to prefer my sleeves on the long side. Well, that's not entirely true, I seem to prefer either 3/4 length or half-way-down-my-hand length...not anywhere in between. But enough about NaKniSweMo.

Now, I don't know how many of you out there watch Grey's Anatomy. I feel like everyone does...but I'm a medical student and I feel like most of us feel duty-bound to watch it every week. But they are currently playing out a rather horrible version of the boyfriend-sweater curse. I noticed it this past Thursday and and started freaking out about how Izzie was a victim of the curse...and then had to explain to my two non-knitter classmates who were watching it with me what the sweater curse was, I suspect they still think I'm a bit crazy. Although I kinda doubt that the curse is meant to kill the recipient...but you know what I mean.

Speaking of spending 20 hours in the library this weekend...yeah I know that wasn't what I was just talking about but my brain is getting fuzzy...bear with me. One of my fellow classmates, who spends just about as much time in the library as I do, has been giving me a hard time about virtually living in the library. Admittedly, he seems to be of the persuasion that because I am on Psych I don't have to study. This would be true if I hadn't been completely stupid and chosen Consult. Seriously, I am regularly in the hospital until 6:30 or 7:00...Psych is supposed to be a "vacation rotation"!! The attending I'm with is brilliant and I'm learning tons from him, but it's kinda making me hate the rotation. My first day was by far the worst day of medical school so far. I was given two tasks for the day, do a Mini Mental on this patient, and find out more about what's been going on with her and her past psychiatric history. I was in and out of her room all day trying to do the exam, she wouldn't stay awake long enough for me to do it. I spent hours combing the records in the computer and the ones sent from the nursing home to find out who to call for more information and was greeted with dead-ends all over. I expressed my exasperation to the social worker who helped me get the records from one of the hospitals...but they didn't come until after 5PM. I met with the attending at about 4:30 and was basically forced to admit that I had managed to do nothing all day, though not for lack of trying. The records came from that one hospital before he was done with me for the day so it wasn't totally useless...but it was damn close. I actually almost cried...that's how frustrated I was. I will make sure to warn all of my fellow medical student about the horrors of Consult at Baystate. Now...I'll stop being a baby about it and just be grateful that I'm learning so much from this guy...even if he does think that it's perfectly acceptable to keep me in the hospital till 7PM on a Friday for no apparent reason.

Happy knitting everyone!! Good luck to all my fellow NaKniSweMo knitters!!

NaKniSweMo Begins!

This is was my progress after two days of knitting/studying at the same time...hooray for endless garter stitch. I now understand why people like have a "mindless stockinette" project. This is up to the row before the eyelet increases (essentially the entire yoke), which I have since completed after much math consternation. Seriously...I can do calculus...why was that so hard? Oh wait...that's right...I've never been very good at simple math. If anyone else out there is making the February Lady Sweater in the large and would like my incredibly OCD even and symmetric spacing for the eyelets leave a comment and I can email it to you...I'm good about sharing info like that :D So far I'm really liking the sweater. I have to admit I'm a bit surprised at how high everything is on me right now but I think/hope that it will all work itself out as the sweater gains weight and has something to make it stay under my arms.
In other news, my Halloween costume was a hit! I was even given an unofficial "Best Costume" by a good 5 people at the party (I think there were maybe 20 people there). A good friend of mine who's been having trouble conceiving announced that he and his wife are pregnant which is awesome...looks like I have some baby clothes to make!! Perhaps it's about time I bought the BSJ pattern. Good times were had by all though. And I continue to astonish people with my knitterly behavior...I was in the library knitting/studying today and one of my classmates (who watched me knit the hat and went to the party) was asking me if I was knitting next year's costume...I told him that I was knitting a sweater simply for the purpose of having a sweater. He actually laughed at me! :P

Yesterday was also lots of fun...after a good long morning/afternoon of studying I went out to dinner with several classmates/friends and saw the director for my current rotation at the restaurant celebrating his daughter's birthday. She was adorable and the director was great as always...right down to buying us a bottle of wine...now that was definitely unexpectedly generous. We "countered" with a piece of chocolate torte to his daughter with a candle and singing for her birthday...mostly as a thank you, but we realized much later that we are also the biggest group of suck-ups in the history of man...4 of the 7 of us at dinner are on that rotation right now...AWESOME. All in all a good weekend. Now I need to get ready for bed (when did it get to be so late!!!) so that I can get up and study lots more tomorrow!! Happy knitting to all and to all a good night!

HAT! ...and other ramblings...

I made a hat! And it fits my head!! I apparently have a very large head...too much stuff in my brain I guess. I'm relatively happy with it as an FO. It is reasonably good looking and it will serve its purpose well. I have to admit I'm not much of a hat person so that is kinda affecting my level of excitement about it...but here it is my Meg Griffin Hat:Looking at this picture I'm just now seeing how lopsided my glasses are...I should probably try to fix that a bit before Friday. Although in all honesty I'm not sure how long these glasses will stay on...see...I'm one of the fortunate few who does not have any significant visual acuity problems, my glasses are for reading purposes only. This means that when I'm wearing them I generally can't see things more than 3 feet from my face with any real clarity...which is bothersome because I actually have pretty good vision.

In other news, I'm enjoying my week in the nursery a lot. The babies are adorable...and they do hilarious things like sneeze so hard they send a jet of poop all over myself and my resident...and then the little guy peed on me too. Some of the moms are a little bit militant/crazy but that's to be expected...I mean they just carried these little guys around for 9 months and who the hell am I to want to look at their precious little bundle of joy? I say that with some degree of irony...I mean I get that mom wants to protect her baby from the medical student, but how does she think the doctor learned how to do this...magic? The doctor wouldn't send me in if she didn't think I was fully competent to do the exam and no harm the kiddo. I'm by no means saying that I'm entitled to learn from/on these babies...I'm just saying there's no need to be nasty about it when I introduce myself. Last night I was on call in the NICU...which was interesting. Premature babies with giant nasal cannula attached to their face are quite possibly the cutest/funniest looking things ever.

What will I be knitting next? I think I'll just bide my time until November 1st to start my February Lady. I have a fair amount of studying I can and should be doing so it's not like I'll be lacking for things to do. Happy knitting all!!

Craziness

Clearly I am crazy...there's really no other way I can explain this. I mean what medical student in their right minds would make such a commitment?! But I did it...I signed up. What on earth am I talking about? I have selected the famous February Lady Sweater (as discussed in my last post), I have measured myself...rather than just guessing what size I should make, and I have swatched. I got gauge on my Harmony US8s, and I've selected the Large size to accommodate the mammaries and I will now wait rather impatiently for November 1st so that I can cast on.In the meantime I will be busting my ass to finish my Halloween hat...how on earth did it managed to be a measly 5 days from Halloween? Uncalled for I say! Better get to it! Happy knitting everyone!

Thoughts on Practicality

As we all know, the February Lady Sweater has taken the knitter-verse by storm. Everyone and their grandma is making one (over 2000 projects and in over 6000 queues on Ravlery). I have to admit that I am very eager to make one myself. It's simple and lovely and professional and knitterly all at the same time. I can actually see myself wearing it on a semi-regular basis...although probably not while I'm wearing my white coat but only because that horrible piece of polyester is a marvel of heat conservation. I dream of making this lovely garment! (Actually I have no idea if I dream about it...the last dream I remember having involved a somewhat exciting trauma coming into the ER and my getting to do something other than stand in the corner and get in the way...yet another sign that med school is slowly destroying my brain) The point of all this being that I'm just not all that excited about knitting my Pimlico Shrug. Even the thought of knitting on the giant rectangle that turns into a garment after some clever seaming and endless amounts of ribbing makes me want to find something else to knit. Although when I put it that way is it any wonder I don't want to knit on it? So after a little bit of double checking and some serious consideration I think I'm going to rip my 1.25 repeats of the lace pattern for the Pimlico Shrug and re-assign this yarn to the February Lady Sweater. Because after all...what's the point of knitting something for myself if I a) won't enjoy the process and b) won't get much use out of the end product.

In other news, I am chugging along on my Halloween hat...no pictures because I'm lazy. I'm almost done with the endless stockinette...another inch and a half or so...then the decreases. The second Dorky Sock has been cast on...I think I knit all of 2 rows of the ribbing before I decided to do something more entertaining. My Lacy Scarf is in limbo...I'm also questioning the practicality of this knit...and seriously considering ripping it back as well. Not sure what I would do with the yarn instead...but I think actually knitting a pair of socks from it might not be a bad idea...some relatively simple ones so that I don't need to cart a chart around with me. As you can see...lots of thinking and not a whole lot of knitting. But I have another shelf in 2 weeks...so that's not likely to change all that much in the near future. What are your thoughts? Am I the only one falling out of love with her projects? Happy knitting all!!

Pilgrimage

I made my pilgrimage to Yarn Mecca...and I returned with 5 delicious balls of this:I am now faced with a bit if a conundrum as to what exactly what I want to do with it. Anyone have any suggestions for approximately 500 yards of DK weight superwash merino? I was hoping for a short-sleeved cardigan or something but I think my bust is not going to let that happen (one of the few times I will lament the reasonably ample assets God gave me). I'm sure I'll figure something out...in the mean time I plenty else to knit...and I can continue to pet it...mmmmm...merino...*drools...not on the yarn of course*

What about my knitting? I've made a fair bit of progress on the hat...a good 5 inches of stockinette so far...another inch and half or so before I start the decreases...this hat may very well be finished by the end of the weekend. No other progress since I NEED to get this hat done where as everything else is a labor of love or one sort or another. Back to the studying...shelf exam in three weeks!! Happy knitting all!!

All Hallow's Eve

There comes a time in a girl's life when she is invited to a Halloween party. If she is a crafty girl of meager means she will often look to her closet for inspiration...and her local Walmart for yarn to complete the costume.

And so it came about, after being invited to "the biggest med school shit-show ever" by one of my good friends that I was in need to a pink hat. You see...being rather poor I decided to see what I could make into a costume from what was already in my closet. I had jeans, a pink t-shirt, and brown shoes...I decided to go as Meg Griffin from Family Guy. (Shameless hyperlinking included for those who don't know who that is) All I needed was black rimmed glasses and a pink hat. I rummaged around my room a bit and found my own black rimmed glasses, and looked at my stash (via Ravelry...God Bless Jess and Casey) and realized I didn't have anything of a suitable color pink. So off I went to my local Walmart to get the cheapest most obnoxiously pink yarn I could find. After a little bit of trial and error I settled on a pattern and got to work. Right now it looks more like a ruffled triangle...but it's gonna be a hat I promise. Since it's just stockinette for the first 7 inches or so I can knit while I'm reading...which is always a bonus. I *should* be able to complete this by Halloween...barring disaster of course...and after that I will have to find something else to do with all this hot pink sport weight yarn...perhaps some baby hats. Off to continue studying about how to treat the illnesses of the little ones. And remember folks; babies are not just little adults!

Being Productive

As of right now there are many reasons why I love my Peds rotation...not the least of which being the amount of knitting that I've gotten done in the past week. I finished a sock, made a couple tribbles, and started on my Pimlico shrug. Seriously.

That is the first of my Dorky socks...I love them. As for the shrug...well I opted to go for a different pattern for the body of the shrug...mostly because I found the written pattern to be way too much effort for how simple it looked. So I give you my first repeat on the shrug:
Just a simple Diamond Eyelet pattern from Super Stitches Knitting...but I'm loving it to death so far. I was basically looking for something that was interesting to look at, wouldn't look silly upside-down or on it's side, and wasn't too complicated to knit...So far this meets all those criteria.

Other things that I love about my Peds rotation:

• The kids...seriously...I love little kids, and somehow I'm finding the sick kids unbearably cute...although this probably has something to do with the fact that when I'm done I get to give them back to Mom and leave the room
• My intern wears a bow-tie...need I say more?
• I'm generally kept pretty busy during the day without being overwhelmed (little secret...compared to surgery I feel like I'm not doing anything all day)
• Any time I'm asked to look something up I can generally find an answer in under 10 minutes...no more searching for hours for statistics that don't exist on incredibly rare diagnoses!!
• I got home at 2PM today...nice change from the 5AM to 7:30PM life I was living before. And it's not like I didn't do anything today. I pre-rounded, went to a conference, did walking rounds with the attending where I presented my two patients, wrote a progress note on one of my patients (we weren't sure he was definitely going home today) and wrote the discharge note on the patient I knew was definitely going home, went to another conference, and then wrote a discharge summary on the other patient in case he did actually go home later today...I like that I can be efficient and get my work done and not have to find something to make me look busy.

Things I don't love so much about Peds:

• There is no OR...I miss the OR horribly. At this point I'm thinking Pediatric surgery as a career...hopefully I'm smart enough to get into one of the 30 spots in...6+ years.
• I have a lot of weekend call (I was on call all day yesterday and I'll be on call again on Friday).
• I got home at 2PM today...there was nothing else for me to do...the gunner in me is distressed by this.

I hope that all of you are enjoying your knitting as much as I am. And for those of you who enjoy the cooler weather I'm happy for you. I'm not so happy that the house I'm living in is currently approx 60F. I just checked the thermostat...I am not lying...that is the current temp INSIDE my house. One of the other girls supposedly asked for the heat to get turned on...but I'm not too optimistic (UPDATE: I have heat!! The only problem is that one of my floormates either doesn't understand ow thermostats work or wants us all to die in a fire...I felt like my room was getting way too hot, when I looked at the thermostat in the signficantly cooler hallway it was set to the max of 90-something and the current temp was 72...I turned it down. I mean...I don't want to die in a fire...I think that's reasonable). Ah well...that's what sweaters and afghans are for...right? Happy knitting everyone!!

PS - I don't want to sound whiny about the temp...I know that there are many people who can't afford to heat their homes and they survive in much lower temperatures throughout the winter. And that doesn't even cover the homeless people throughout the country who sleep outside in the dead of winter. I know that I am relatively privileged...but that doesn't make me any less cold...and I have a mild form of Raynaud's so I don't have a very good tolerance for cold.

PPS - One of my readers mentioned in the comments on my last post that she lived in these houses once and she had a hard time getting the heat turned on when it was below freezing. This is why I am not optimistic about the heat coming on when it's *only* dropping down into the low 40s overnight. However, it is my understanding that living conditions in these houses have improved significantly over the past year...we have internet and stoves now!! We also supposedly have cable for the TV in the living room downstairs...but I haven't watched any TV yet to confirm that for myself.

Changes

There's been a lot of changes happening around here lately. Not the least of which being that I finished my surgical rotation. I had my oral exam on Thursday which went well I think. I had three relatively simple cases that I knew my way around fairly well. Then on Friday I had my written exam (aka "The Shelf") which was painful but I think I did pretty well. Nothing quite like 100 multiple choice questions to make you feel like you haven't learned anything despite all the studying you've been doing. I spent most of the rest of Friday knitting (OMG!!!), or eating/hanging out with friends I haven't seen in an eternity. Friday was awesome because I knit almost an entire hat (no pictures because I forgot to take them and now the hat and my camera are on opposite sides of the state). Saturday I packed...just about everything I own. Not all my yarn though...much to my mother's chagrin I'm sure. And I finished weaving in all the ends on The Afghan!!! It only took me three months :P And today...I drove across the state and moved in to the awesomeness that is student housing at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. Here's a picture of my home-away-from-home for the next three months: As you can see The Afghan is proudly displayed. That little basket between my bed and my nightstand is all the knitting that I've brought with me. I have my current WIPs (Lacy Scarf, Dorky Socks, and Tribbles) as well as yarn for another pair of socks, a Pimlico Shrug and a pair of fingerless mitts. I also have intentions to visit yarn mecca...I even have a gift certificate, but I want to wait a bit until I figure out how much money I'll be spending a week to see how much I can reasonably budget. I should probably do some reading in prep for the wards and such tomorrow. Hope you're all doing well!! Happy knitting!