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!

Random Intermittant Post

I saw this on I'd Rather Be Knitting and felt compelled it use it as a procrastination tool...

The Big Read is an National Endowment for the Arts program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.)

*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we LOVE. (I don't know how to underline...so I am going to color blue the books I love...

Share this list in your blog, too, if you like.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas in French
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery in French
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Ronald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo in French

I've read 41 books...almost all of them in high school in college I'm sure...since it's not like I have time to read anything that isn't a textbook anymore.

When pimping becomes fun...

So...it's been a while since I've posted. But I have a rather fun story for all of you today. First I'll start with a little bit of medical education so that it all makes a little more sense and seems a whole lot less random.

Sometimes people's arteries dilate and form aneurysms. When the aneurysms get big, they are prone to rupture or clotting. Rupture is bad because you can bleed out pretty quickly, and clotting is bad because part of the clot can break loose and then something farther down the artery loses blood supply. So when aneurysms are found and they get big enough to be concerning, the patient will typically have and operation to repair said aneurysm. There are a few different options for repairing the aneurysm, most of them involve some sort of synthetic artery substitute. One brand of substitute is made of fabric...this is where the pimping became fun :P

Attending: So Moriah, what's the difference between woven fabric and knitted fabric?
Moriah: *looks like Christmas came early* Well, woven fabric involves many separate fibers that are placed around each other such that they form a mesh of sorts. Knitted fabric is a series of inter-locking loops.
Attending: *looks slightly startled by the rapidness of my response* Yes, exactly. Now, how do you think they make these knitted grafts?
Moriah: Hmm...probably some sort of modified sock-knitting machine.
Attending: *looks slightly baffled* Close...technically the machines were originally used to make pantyhose. So, how do you think they add arms to these knitted grafts?
Moriah: I have a pretty good idea about how to do it as far and knitting is concerned, but I'm sure they do it a little bit differently in this case.
Attending: *clearly feels better now that I haven't completely stolen his factoid thunder* They have little old ladies who sew them on! Isn't that amazing?!?!?
Moriah: Yeah, that's pretty cool. *misses having time to knit things...like socks*
*Some time later*
Resident: You seem to know a lot about knitting...
Moriah: Yes, well, it's one of my hobbies. I used to knit all the time...knit all through lecture last year, but I haven't had much time to knit during this rotation.
Resident: Wow...that's pretty cool. Ok, you're gonna sew now. *hands me the loaded needle driver and forceps* Watch me and I'll show you what I want you to do.
Moriah: *does happy dance in her head*

Today? Inherently awesome...almost as awesome as when a different attending let me remove a patient's appendix (have no fear...he was in complete control of the situation the entire time).

I'm loving this rotation for the most part. I have days where nothing is going on and there's nothing for me to do and I kinda want to stab myself in the eye...but most days are lots and lots of fun....hard work, but fun.

Things I Learned on Overnight Call

1. My brain starts to turn into mush after about 22 consecutive hours of consciousness.
2. Stream of consciousness pimping from my resident is an excellent way to keep me one my toes
   
3. Nothing helps time fly quite so well as a trauma
4. If you want a consult to be done quickly...don't ask me to do it
5. Call beds are surprisingly comfortable, although this may have had more to do with the fact that I had been up for 23.5 hours
6. I actually know how to manage acute cholecystitis (gallbladder infection)
7. I can run very well on 2 hours of sleep...until I get a chance to sit down and then I'll probably face plant on the nearest horizontal surface...kinda like I did when I got home at noon and tried to check my email
8. Pagers completely boggle my sleep-addled brain
9. I love the patient that is happy to answer all my questions when I come in to write his post-op note at 1AM, and I love the nurse that gives me a hard time about how exhausted I look and then starts laughing with me when I tell him how long I've been up.
10. Sleep is precious and AMAZING!
    

The Crocheting Surgeon

Today I scrubbed in on an incisional hernia repair. The attending placed all the sutures through the fascia (the tough part beneath the muscles for you lay people) and then placed mesh over the hernia. He then set about trying to pull all of these loose threads through the holes in the mesh, he started out with some small pointy clamps but then one of the nurses asked him if he wanted a crochet hook. I'm pretty sure my eyes bulged out of my head. The nurse came back with this crazy crazy small hook and the attending set to work...he kept getting caught on the mesh and I couldn't help snickering to myself. Why, you ask? Because I couldn't help but get the feeling that my fiber arts skillz would have made me much much faster that both the attending and my resident. But I was a good little med student...I did not give them pointers, I did not laugh, I stood there holding my scissors ready and waiting to cut any knots that might need trimming.

The saddest part of this whole story? Aside from petting my Doctor's bag everyday on the shuttle to and from the hospital this is the only remotely fibery thing going on in my life. I have not knit a single stitch since orientation on the 7th. Ah well...better get back to my reading, I have a conference on lung cancer tomorrow and I need to be prepared! Happy knitting everyone!

Happy Birthday, Blog!

Today is my first blogiversary. I started this blog due to a combination of a desire to talk about my knitting and my extreme boredom at my summer job. Over the past year I've found many other blogs that I read on a regular business and made a few friends. In the future I hope to have the time/money to participate in some swaps and get to know more of my fiber-loving comrades.

I got my Pay It Forward Exchange gift from Alicia! They're beautiful aren't they? There hasn't been too too much going on on the knitting front lately. I spent most of my 5 weeks off reading for pleasure and hanging out with people that I never seem to get a chance to see anymore. But I do have a some progress to show you. First of all, I managed to finished sewing The Afghan together. I still have approximately 1 million ends to weave in. Sadly I don't have any knots to tie so I can't practice my surgeon's knot on it. I've made a fair amount of progress on my Dorky Socks...not that far from finishing it but I don't think there's going to be much knitting time on this rotation. I also plugged ahead a fair amount on the Lacy Scarf. I really like the way that it's coming out...and I love all the compliments I keep getting on it, even from people who don't knit!

I'm sorry to say that the likelihood of my updating frequently looks like it's going to be pretty small for the next few months as I will have very little knitting to show you. There's only so much surgery I can talk about before I might start grossing people out :P

Things that I have learned so far on my Surgical rotation:

• The OR is my crack...seriously
• ENT is awesome
• Head and Neck is even more awesome
• Holding retractors can be a lot harder than you might think
• My very asthmatic body doesn't like it when I try to sprint up three floors (each story about 15-20 feet) to get a scope and a light source for a STAT page for ENT to the MICU...the best part of that whole situation being that they ended up not needing us.
• Surgical rotation is the best diet I could have ever asked for, the combination of never getting to sit for more than 3 seconds and rarely getting to opportunity to eat is doing wonders for my weight.
• When they tell you to go home...GO!
  

Too neat for my own good

63 As a 1930s wife, I am Superior Take the test!

I saw this on Lick My Sticks and Ponyknit and was way to entertained to ignore it. I am apparently way too neat for my own good since that's the only way I figure I got a score that high. They didn't have a box for "is a doctor"...I'm sure that would have been about -100 right there. Almost done knitting The Afghan...pictures coming soon!!

I Survived!

I did it! I finished the Step 1 and I lived to tell about it! However I haven't knit much of anything in the past month or so...so I have nothing to show you. I'm working on finishing up The Afghan and getting a few small projects done over the next month. I've already managed to finish a book for pleasure-reading...something I haven't done since the last Harry Potter book came out. I do have a couple pictures for you...because I wanted to document some things. First my hand is healed (has been for a while now but I finally bothered to take a picture)!I also went through all my syllabi and put just about all of them into recycling. Here you see in the first stack (on the left) all of the syllabi from first year plus my anatomy coloring book, in the middle all of the syllabi from this year, and on the right the four books I used to study for the boards (these books covered everything in the first two piles)And this is the recycling bin...I think I may have participated in the killing of a small forest as a result of picking up my syllabi...Happy knitting everyone...hopefully I have something to show you soon!!

1/2 M.D.

I have completed two years of medical school. This of course prompts me to immediately ask where the the last two years of my life have disappeared to. I'm not really feeling anything profound at the moment...this is perhaps because I still spend all day studying for the boards. *sigh* Not much knitting going on at the moment because I can't knit and write/underline/take notes at the same time. A little bit less than three weeks left...then I can knit and get nerdy about surgery to my heart's content. In the meantime, I have my entire first year of medical school to re-learn. Happy knitting!!

Is it May 31st yet?

I am done...I am so done it's not even funny anymore. I realize that most of you are really excited about the super nice weather that we've been having lately but it has been MURDER on my willingness to study. I'm still managing to get a fair amount done...with much effort. But I really need it to be after boards so that I can stop freaking out about the hellish 8 hour exam that's looming in front of me and start enjoying life again.

Today was my last day of my Physical Diagnosis class. I have mixed feelings about it. I really liked getting together with all of the people at my site every week and I usually enjoyed the various specialties that we saw in the morning; but I'm glad that I won't be losing my entire Wednesday every week anymore. Irony: there's only like two more Wednesdays left in the semester.

Yesterday I got my first lecturer comment on my knitting. I was happily knitting away at a square for the The Afghan when pretty much out of nowhere the lecturer asked me what I was knitting...from clear across the room. She's the course director for Reproductive Pathophysiology and an OB/Gyn. Apparently last year the class made a whole bunch of hats for the babies in the NICU and such. Awesome moment...awkward...but awesome.

I also decided to use a different pattern of my lacy scarf. The Tiger Eyes just weren't doing it for me anymore. So now I'm using the Swirled Scrolls Scarf pattern. I like now it's turning out so far. It's complicated enough that I'm not bored out of my mind but not so complicated that it makes kidneys look like nice easy simple organs (hint: they are so totally not). I think I might be disappearing for a little while. In part because my brain is slowly becoming saturated with all things medical school to the point where I don't even want to listen to myself think...so I will try to spare you...unless something totally awesome happens of course at which point I'll be sure to fill you in. Wish me luck on all the studying that I have to do between now and May 30th! Happy Spring! Happy Knitting!

So much news!!

First, Alicia tagged me for a little meme that's running around:

1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) Post the rules.
3) Share six non-important things / habits / quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people.
5) Be sure the people you tagged KNOW you tagged them by commenting what you did.

My things:
1) I cut my pasta. Whenever I get spaghetti or anything else that is long and floppy I cut my pasta (using a grid pattern because I'm that OCD) so that the pieces are smaller and I don't get sauce all over myself
2) I always carry a tuning fork in my white coat...I'm pretty sure I haven't ever used it on someone who isn't one of my classmates or a standardized patient
3) I have a lot of stuffed animals on my bed. I make my bed every morning and they go back on the bed the SAME WAY every single day...and it's a very symmetrical arrangement too
4) I color code my class notes by learning objective. This is part OCD, part studying tactic, and part three-year-old being easily entertained by my amazing technicolor syllabi
5) I died my hair black once. I thought it was awesome. My mother was horrified at how pale I looked; but this was probably due tot he fact that I was wearing a black shirt at the time and (unknowingly) mono
6) I eat the food on my dinner plate in the inverse order or how much I like it. For example: Broccoli, Mashed potatoes, chicken, stuffing. No matter what else is on the plate...stuffing always goes last.

I tag Dorothy, KnittingNurse, and LadyLungDoc.

Second: I won the lottery!! Sadly not the money kind but I did pretty awesome in the lottery for my third year rotations. I'm off to Lahey Clinic for Surgery and Medicine and Baystate Medical Center for Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and OB/Gyn. I also got the family medicine rotation I was most interested in...but I think I would rather do a Neurology rotation during that time. The only one open right now is Neurosurgery at Baystate...the irony is killing me...but I think my mother might try to kill me if I went to Baystate for that rotation too (Baystate is really nowhere near my house and I'd be living in glorified dorms across the street from the hospital)

Third: Knitting! I promised more pics of the Doctor's Bag...and I'll show you those shortly. But I also have two socks now...I am so proud of them! I started to make a pair of ankle socks with the remaining yarn, but I'm pretty sure I don't have enough to do it on US2s so I need to rip back and try with something a bit bigger...and fewer stitches. I also made a hat. Stephanie's Unoriginal Hat to be exact. The pattern say it's for a women's small head. Now I realize that I used slightly smaller needles because I live in the US and don't have much choice...but I didn't think my head was that big...apparently I was wrong. Now for the Doctor's Bag. Here is it with just about all my stuff in it (I usually keep my purse and a small textbook to study during downtime in there too). Just in case you don't realize how much stuff is in there...here it is all laid out on the coffee table. I also wanted to show you my general over-achiever-ness: the feet that I put on the bottom. I personally think they're pretty awesome and it just goes to show that deep down inside I really am a gunner (sorry for the profane language :P)And, or course, the arty button shot:

What's on the needles now? Well I've decided to make a concerted effort of crank out the squares for the Warm Up America Afghan. They're not exactly the most exciting knitting which means they aren't terribly great at keeping me awake during class but I need to finish that sucker like it's my job. And for a little bit more exciting knitting I've cast on for the Tiger Eyes Lace Scarf. I haven't even managed a full repeat of the lace pattern yet but I'm already loving the way this yarn is working up in the pattern...I can't wait for it to be done so I can wear it all the time for no good reason.

IT IS FINISHED!!!

More pictures to come...when I find the time to take them...Happy knitting!!!

I has a sock!!

I finished my first sock...and I'm just about done with the cuff of the second one. I have also suffered my first knitting-related accident. This will perhaps remind me that talking with my hands while holding US2 needles is a bad idea...ow.
But enough of that...On with the sock! Nothing too terribly special, just a simple sock with a flap heel and a poorly grafted toe. But it's my sock...and I am proud.
Also...I saw this add in the paper today and almost died from the cuteness...so I felt compelled to share it with all of you:

Because everyone likes a contest...

Yet another contest guys...go on and check it out!!

Hello. My name is Moriah...

...and I am a yarnoholic. Seriously. I went to Windsor Button today with my friend from school because she wants to start knitting socks...and I walked out $41 and change poorer. But it's all pretty!!! And now I can't think of any yarn that I want to buy so hopefully I can be content with working through my stash for...well a couple years until I have an income again. My haul:Some Malabrigo, because it's delicious; some Comfort Sock because it's sooooo soft; some Sockotta because I loved the colors. I almost bought some more Cherry Tree Hill Supersock, but I realized that it was handwash...which is completely impractical for socks (for me anyway)...and at $23 a hank I'd kill my mom if she felted them.

I've been progressing on the embroidering on the Doctor's Bag...and I have some pictures for you. It's by no means finished but I figured I could show you some of what I did. First, I would like to show you my dad's somewhat ancient sewing machine...it's from when he was in the Air Force in the 70s and weighs approximately 4000 tons. I had way too much fun with the sewing machine...quilting may be in my future...but not for a long while. I put a little ring in the corner so that I could attach my keys to something and not lose them. And I sewed some elastic onto one of the short sides to hold my tuning forks and my reflex hammer. Here's a shot from when I finished getting all the pieces seamed at the bottom. And here's a pic of what it looks like right now...not terribly impressive since it's all floppy but I'm happy with it.

I've been working on my sock to...I even have pictures of it!! I'm using Yarn Harlot's generic sock pattern from Knitting Rules. I'm using the Cascade Fixation that I won from Miss Me...I'm loving it! It's very cushy and I think I'm going to love these socks when it comes to my Surgery clerkship and I'm standing all day every day for three months. I just started the heel flap and I'm vastly entertained by the difference it the way my stockinette stitch looks in the round versus flat.
Things are getting very interesting at the moment as far as scheduling for next year is concerned. For those who are lucky enough to not be fully immersed in this: Medical school is four years in the US, two are all classroom all the time like college on crack, and the second two are in the hospitals on what are called "clerkships." I'm just about to finish up my second year, so we're doing all of the scheduling for next year. Tufts does a series of complex lotteries to first determine your schedule order, and then determine your hospitals. We got the results for our order back just before spring break. I'll be doing Surgery (12 weeks), Pediatrics (6 weeks), Psychiatry (6 weeks), Medicine (12 weeks), an Elective (4 weeks w/ 2 weeks off!), and OB/Gyn (6 weeks). My top choice for hospitals as of this moment is Surgery and Medicne at Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Pediatrics and Psych at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, and OB/Gyn and MetroWest in Framingham. I haven't decided exactly what I'm doing for elective yet so I don't know where I want to go for that. For those of you who are wondering why I'm not going to more well-known hospitals like Brigham and Mass General; I don't go to Harvard...Harvard has all the famous hospitals...Tufts and BU get to split everything else in the city. I'll keep you all posted as I find out more/want to procrastinate. Happy knitting...and think spring!!