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!
  

Speed Blogging!!

Alright...it's been a while since I've given you much of anything to look at...which means that I have a ton of pictures for you. But since I am fast approaching bed-time I will try to be as fast a possible.

So, during my first week of class I pushed to get all of my PIF Exchange done before I became so bogged down that I forgot to sleep. That resulted in 4 washcloths due to a relative lack of creativity on my part. My thinking was that everyone likes nice soap...and one can never have too many washcloths...so it was basically a win-win. These were the end result:
They were all done in Sugar 'n' Cream in either the Jewel or Patio Pinks colorways. The lacy-cabley one is the Lacy Mock Cable Cloth and the other is just the simple bias-knit washcloth pattern which I didn't actually look up a pattern for. Now...I would like to remind you that I bought the yarn for these before classes started...and that I did not know what colors my syllabi were going to be for my first set of classes...but somehow I managed to do this:
I'm not going to lie, I was a little bit scared.

Then last week I started working on some fingerless mittens for my Mom to go with the Reversible Cable Scarf that I made her. I used Carissa Knit's Cabled Fingerless Mitts pattern as a starting point. I added some seed stitch on either side of the cable to match the scarf and changed the ribbing a little bit around the fingers (my Mom and I have kinda short palms and I didn't want these to get too long). So after a week of knitting through class to stay awake I present another FO.

Classes have been going well. I had my first test last Friday in Pharmacology. I wasn't very pleased with the class because it was structured horribly...but I'm pretty sure I passed the test and that's all that really matters. Had an awesome time this weekend in Amherst with Alicia and our amazing blog-free friend Enid. They threw me a little bit of a surprise birthday party...and locked me out of the apartment to do it *glares* I love those two so much!! No tests this week...but I have my Psychopathology Midterm coming up on the 10th. I know you all want to be me right now :P Hopefully I'll be back with more knitting soon...at the very least I'll be by later this week to show you my birthday haul. Happy knitting everyone!!!

Pay It Forward

The projects are done and packed, the packages are sealed...all that's left for me to do is go to the post office tomorrow and send them on their happy way! There are so many things I want to say about the projects but I'll wait until the recipients (Mommy+Knitter and KnittingNurse) get them so as not to ruin the surprise.
Now its time to go back to making fingerless gloves...because it seems like everyone wants a pair. But hey...it gives me a reason to continue my Japanese Death Star knitting...I mean using DPNs :P

Classes are going well so far...I've been getting lots of knitting done in Pharmacology since it's about the only way I can stay awake, but Neuroscience and Psychopathology are incredible and interesting and generally awesome. Almost as awesome as my med school friends who took me shopping with them at Downtown Crossing on Friday. I forgot how much I miss these people. *sigh* Time to go back to studying though...I have a test in Pharmacology on Friday...eek!!!!

First Day of School

Today was my first day back at school!! It was great to see everyone again...although a little weird to keep hearing them refer to us as second years. I'm trying to get my desk organized and all my syllabi unstapled so that I can actually read them. But I did manage to get a fair amount of knitting done today. I finished my second DK Dashing shortly after they finished talking at us for the day. I waited until I got home to weave in the ends since I wanted to use my tapestry needle (using a cable needle to stab the end through a hole was really not very effective). Overall I must say that I am extremely pleased with the final product.
I also got started on one of my PIF items on the way home today (no pics because I want them to be a surprise). I really like the way it's turning out so far...but I'm also only bout 7 rows in. Speaking of PIF, I spent yesterday helping Alicia move...good times. Well...except for the part where my bumper got in a fight with a retaining wall and lost. Good thing is the parentals weren't really upset at all.


Right now it's time for me to finish re-configuring my desk so that I can actually get my binder and my keyboard on the desk in front of me at the same time. Posting's going to be slow from this point forward but hopefully I'll be able to keep going at a respectable rate. Happy knitting folks...hopefully I'll have something pretty to show you soon!

Simply Dashing...

So...since I have become familiar with the art of DPN knitting, it is clear that the very next thing I would want to do would be to knit something with DPNs. This, combined with my severe project ADD/cast-on-itis has led to this:

My very own pair of Dashing! I'm knitting them in some acrylic DK weight stuff I have from my grandmother's stash...so amazingly soft!!! I think the second picture is closest on color and I apologize for the fuzziness of the pictures (they looked a lot better on my camera). I would also like to point out the latest JAMA in the background...med school has taken over my life in so so many funny ways.

Speaking of med school...I saw this in KnittingNurse's blog and I just had to do it. I must admit, although I loved Arthur...I will not miss going down into the basement of the Tufts M&V building to discover all the wonders of a cadaver on an almost daily basis. This also reminds me that I am one week from starting classes again...and that means that I'll probably be blogging a lot less. Hopefully I can finish at least one of these up before I start back...don't see why not since I did most of this today.

$5875.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating

Mingle² - Dating Site

PS - If there's anyone still interested in PIF I have one more slot left!!! Better get it while it's hot!!!

I Did It!!

Today at work, I taught myself to work with DPNs!!! I feel so accomplished!! For me the main thing was using the knitting cast-on instead of my usual backwards loop cast-on. I also let my mini-tube hang out with the bamboo! Now I can knit all sorts of cool stuff!!!
I also have a couple more slots open for the PIF Exchange if people are still interested. Let me know!!

PIF Exchange

I saw this on Alicia's (look I got the second "i" in there this time and EVERYTHING!) blog and I really like the idea. It will be good to have people other than my family to knit for :P It's based on the movie Pay It Forward with Helen Hunt; I've never seen the movie but I'm familiar with the concept. For those of you who also haven't seen the movie this is how the PIF Exchange gonna work...

(I copied this from Alicia who copied it from Alaina who copied it from Jodie etc)"Here is how it works! I'll send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange! I don't know what that gift will be yet, and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week...LOL... but you will receive it within 365 days, that's a promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog..."

So if you're one of the first 3 people to leave a comment and I'll make you something pretty! Can't wait to see who it'll be!!!