Summer!

I haven't posted in quite some time. I have been busy sitting finals, sleeping off finals, rereading Harry Potter and watching Firefly (I am with Randall Munroe, if that wasn't a mortifying oversight Joss Whedon and/or the casting director should really jump in the lake) and consuming other media on which I will never be examined BECAUSE I CAN, going to Galway with my class after results (I got to pet dogfish and rays!), and sitting in the glorious sunshine.

I don't see how I'm meant to organise the next stage of my life when all I want to do is lie on the grass reading. Anyway, it would be a sin to be inside when the weather is like this. My efforts to go running have been thwarted by things like stopping to lie down in the park so that I can't see anything but the clear blue sky, and think about how beautiful the world is. I do stuff like that. Don't hate.

I feel slightly guilty about the lack of crafting I've been doing, as I've booked a table at a crafts fair midway through June. It will be my first time selling at a crafts fair, so that's an exciting milestone! Unfortunately, it is too warm outside to knit, and my sewing machine needs to be plugged in, which means crafting and being outside are at crossed purposes.

I did get some study-knitting done though, before the weather and my levels of obligation took a turn for the amazing.

 

 

 

 

The green are acrylic left over from a scarf, the two darker blues are Sublime Merino DK, and the light blue is Debblie Bliss Rialto. I used different patterns from a stitchionary I got a while ago - it's a fun way to test them out. I think my favourite new stitch is the seersucker stitch, which I used for the dark blue gloves. (While it doesn't come across well in the photo, in real life that yarn is the most perfect shade of TARDIS blue, and I really should have used it for something nerdier, but I was halfway through a glove by the time I realised. Pity.)

I also study-knit several headbands, but I keep forgetting to take decent photos. I still have to weave in all the ends of my study-knit goods, because weaving in ends is my least favourite thing.

My start of summer present to myself was lots of Debbie Bliss Cotton, which I am using to make this top. I love the look of it in ecru and beige in the Ravelry Project pictures, but I was limited in my colour choices by wanting something machine-washable.

I also got cubic needles! I've never used them before, but various forums (is it too grammar/language-nerdy to say "fora"? It feels like it is) have been talking them up. I get to use them in a few inches, exciting!

I have also been having baking and cooking adventures. I made oreo truffles using this recipe for the party the department held for fourth years the evening before we got our results, and they were well-received. (And the next day I found I had a First. Coincidence?) These brownies are also tasty! Projects involving making or altering clothes are being shelved for the time being, because in this weather I can't imagine wanting to be anything but naked, and that makes it difficult to make wearable clothes. But yesterday I went for a cycle and picnic in Phoenix Park and brought my SLR camera! So that can be my weather-appropriate project.

LOOK AT THE SUNNINESS OF THE DAY

Aaand we're back.

I finished exams!  They could have gone better, but could have been a whole lot worse, so I shouldn't complain.  I also broke my one-post-per-fortnight rule, but my laptop broke the day before my last exam and I only got it fixed yesterday, so I think I can be excused.

To reward myself for finishing exams, I made this hat:

Check me out, taking photos outside where there's light instead of in my room where there's not.

I don't have a good photo face.  I've decided to stop trying.

The pattern is Tori by Erin Kate Archer.  The pattern calls for bulky yarn, but I really liked the striping of it and couldn't find any nice variegated bulky yarn.  I used Louisa Harding Grace - so lovely and so soft.  It's worsted weight though, so it didn't come out as slouchy as the original, it's more of a beanie, which I wasn't going for.  I am happy with it though (and I don't usually wear bright colours but I am trying NEW THINGS).  The pattern is lovely and it knits up quickly (I made it while letting my brain melt watching horror films), and I might keep an eye out for suitable bulky yarn to make another more suited to the harsh winter months.

My follow-up indulgence was my Amy Gloves.  I'm using 4-ply yarn (Debbie Bliss Rialto), instead of 3-ply as suggested by the pattern, both because there's a wider selection and I'd imagine it to be snugglier.  I finished the left one the other night, but decided there was just a little too much wiggle room.  I've ripped it out and am reknitting the whole thing on slightly smaller needles (2.75mm), so it should be a better fit.  I'm glad to be redoing it, the lace pattern was just a little wide and sloppy for my tastes as it was.  I find lace on large needles just looks gappy.

Red toenails are Summery for me.

I'm nearly finished my friend's hoodie.  This photo was taken before I'd sewn up the sides.  I didn't think through the pocket properly.  I intended to pick up stitches, but realised that that left me with the yarn on the wrong side, so I pulled a length of yarn to the back to pick up at the front and then kept on knitting at the front.  Then to attach the top I sewed the last row, pulled the live stitches through using a crochet hook and bound them off on the back.  Not ideal, but I'm satisfied with my minor feat of engineering, and it's a lesson in planning ahead for next time.  I also grossly underestimated how much yarn I'd need, and when I went in it was clealy a different dye-lot.  Oops.

In PLAN news, I still want to make myself a hoodie, though I'm now thinking of making something light and summery, maybe in cotton.  I also want to make a big snuggly cardigan because I can't find any I like in shops.  I also want to make a skirt out of fabric I've had for ages now.

I'm starting an internship in the developmental biology lab on Monday.  Exciting!

Invertebrates...

Putting the "endless" in "endless forms most beautiful".

Silly exams.

Bunch-o-thoughts

I have two spot tests after Christmas (which count for 50% of their respective modules, so I think it's a misnomer). Before Reading Week we had Invertebrate Form and Function, and after we had Vertebrates. Every week in the museum room there'd be a demo set up of specimens relevant to that week's lectures, porifera right up to mammalia. (Everyone in the class has griped a bit about the fact that we spent so long on jellyfish and sped through mammals in less than a week. I know invertebrates are terribly important, but I have a pretty strong bias towards things which have a proper vertebral column.) For the test, we'll be shown a sample of pictures of the specimens and have to identify them. Depending on how complicated and order a given phylum is, this can require giving Phylum - Subphylum - Class - Sub-class - Order - Sub-order - Genus - Species. And there were over a hundred specimens out in the final week of term. Sometimes I am confident, sometimes I am not. I've been flip-flopping on the value of it as well.I like the notion of being able to be all "oh yeah, that's X and it's related to Y and possesses these properties which enabled this other thing to evolve or stem from this ancestor!" but in a broader way than "You can see that the gill slits are much reduced and the eyes are lidless but have a thin membrane covering them and only the forelimbs are developed which is atypical of the Order." For such a simple and obvious concept, I do find evolution to be wonderfully beautiful and elegant, but it can be hard to transfer that into a motivation to learn that THIS dead thing in a jar has three toes in it's forelimb but THIS one has four. Or maybe I'm making excuses.

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I didn't make many Christmas presents this year. For the most part I couldn't think of ideas, and a present the person has no use for isn't any more considerate just because I made it myself. I am finding it hard to think of projects lately, which is a minor problem to the point of not counting, but it makes me uncomfortable. Usually my issue is lack of time rather than lack of ideas, so I worry I'm getting boring, and it's a shame to lose a hobby. But I want to make myself socks and a jumper and turn some old t-shirts into different things, so maybe I'm not doing too badly. Going to go wool-shopping sometime this week.

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Whenever people gripe about Christmas I feel childish for liking it to the extent that I do. Yes, it is materialistic, it is manipulative, it is hard on people. Yes, people shouldn't have to have twinkly lights up to remember to call loved ones. But if it does remind them, what harm? For my own part, I like having everyone together. I like that all my family come home, and I like that there's a set time where friends will make the extra effort to meet up. I don't think it's a reminder to show you care, just of the very fact that you do. I like cheesy cracker jokes. And I like thinking of a present I think someone will like, a token of appreciation of friendship or affection or something. I like giving presents, and it's odd to do so for most of the year. Also, the twinkly lights are awfully pretty.

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I can get myself very angry, and the world is very beautiful, and I need to find a balance on how much store I set by these things. I don't have much patience for people sitting around discussing grand political ideas and what kind of world would suit best, and then when they get into the finer points of such a world, oh do I wear out. Because I'm sure it would be lovely, but people are hungry and lonely and falling by the wayside in the real broken world in which you're having this conversation. I like discussing Concepts, but more ones like racism or sexism or blah which are real things towards which I can change my attitude -> my interactions -> the world a teeny-tiny bit. Sometimes I get so frustrated with abstract ideals I could cry because you could be doing something, organising something, changing something, but it's not my place to tell people what to discuss. But maybe it's rude to have a conversation one person can't join in on. And then when it comes to the doing, organising, changing, there's so little I can do. So much is wrong. And if I forget it I can become complacent, and if I only focus on the bad it's easy to become overwhelmed and stop trying for the same reason and just be an unproductive little ball of ANGRY. But the world is also achingly beautiful, and the point of getting angry and then doing stuff is to try and make it beautiful for everyone. But I also don't want to focus on the good alone and see the ugly through rose-tinted glasses. And good things don't negate the bad, or vice-versa - some people were mean to me in secondary school but people are nice in college! Unrelated! - but when there's more of the bad it's easier to feel a little helpless. "Today I helped an eight-year-old kid with their homework and we told each other stories and played chasing in the yard, five years later they ran away from home because it wasn't safe for them." "I bought a sandwich for a homeless man a month ago and we had a chat and he froze to death one night during the snow." I'm not sure where I'm going from this, because there's nothing I can conclude. Nothing to be done but keep going. Making on person day brighter for an hour or two a week is so much more than nothing, even if it feels so tiny. The world is so huge and wonderful and tragic.

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I don't know what I would like to do when I'm all grown up. I think I would be happy to work in a lab, there is a wonderful joy in finding things out and how amazing would it be to be the first person finding them out? At the same time, so much time that I could be helping people directly, just so I can feel a thrill of discovery? I don't mean to imply the latter option would be a sacrifice, I like working with people and I like feeling useful. But if my job is trying to fix things, it might burn me out to doing outside volunteering, in which case it makes more sense to go into research and keep up the auld volunteer work. Who knows.