FO: Swirl Socks

The pattern is Swirl Socks be Sulafaye, knit as a Christmas present for my brother. I have such bad luck with Christmas knitting and finishing on a deadline. Though at least he will have his knitting within the year. My poor mother is still waiting for her shawl that I started in 2006.

Easy knitting for the most part: my standard sock with the one stitch cable stitch pattern. Ended up a bit muddy, so I want to try again with different yarn. Now all I need to do is mail them out with detailed care instructions and a dire threat that if he doesn’t follow my detailed care instructions, he will end up with felted socks that don’t fit.

I never thought I’d see my brother in a yarn store, but I wanted him to like his socks so I let him pick the pattern and dragged him along to find yarn. Surprisingly, there was actually very little dragging necessary and I left him fondling the sock yarn while I picked up needles. He was doing what all knitters in a yarn store do: touching everything and going “Oooo, pretty!” even though he’d already found his yarn

Apparently there is at least a little bit of knitter in my brother.

Three Year Plans

While I was in highschool, my long term plans looked something like this:

1. Graduate highschool
2. Graduate college
3. The rest of my life

That’s a 6-8 year plan, but after #2 is finished, it gets a bit tricky. “The rest of my life” is not really a manageable goal, nor does it offer any insight to what I can expect my life to look like for a while.

My plan ran out last May and I’ve been drifting in #3. In October, I had a 2 month plan (get to December) and in January I had a 5 month plan (one semester of part time student teaching, then re-evaluate current life goal). These plans were not terribly effective. They hung over my head with the constant option to quit and they didn’t help with any visions of the future.

Right now, I’ve made a three year plan and, while I really don’t like my three year plan and might in fact hate my three year plan, I do think it’s a good thing to have a long term goal to work towards. I think it’s better to feel committed to what you’re doing than always thinking about that option to get out. After the third year, I’ll have that problem with “The rest of my life” again, but that’s something I don’t think I’ll be able to avoid. Hopefully by that time, I’ll have made other plans.

Why I Left Facebook

There are two main reasons behind my move away from Facebook: it was turning me into a creepy stalker and I don’t actually find it useful.

Both of these points have roots in the main problem; Facebook is a way to waste time.  This meant I would log on, look through the news feed and click around my friends’ profiles idly, even the ones I had no real connection to.  While Facebook was the reason I knew when your birthday was, it’s also the reason I know you’re engaged or that you’ve just failed your last midterm or that you hate your job.  We haven’t talked in 8 years?  Doesn’t matter, I’m poking around your photos anyway.

As I surfed over to my next time-wasting website (Ravelry, if anyone wants to know) I’d think “What did I actually accomplish?” and the answer was always a resounding “NOTHING.”  In college, Facebook was useful for events, birthdays, photos, groups and occasionally finding the contact info for your lab partner 2 hours before the project was due.  Now, I really only find it useful for photos and that usefulness is mitigated by the amount of spam I get from those stupid applications.  Final conclusion?  Facebook is pretty useless.

So what did I do about it?  I’m not quite willing to delete my account (who knows when it might be useful again).  My vision for my use of Facebook was a bit more like a phonebook: me and my contact info and nothing else.  So I got as close as I could and severely limited the access to my profile, shut down my wall and locked up my photos and videos.  If you found me now, you could see my basic info and friends list (and how much does it bother me that you can’t lock down the friends list?  A lot.)  I set it up to email me for the things I care about (photos, birthday reminders) and deleted the bookmark.

The only thing I’ve noticed so far is that my cycle of wasting time on the internet is five minutes shorter.  I don’t feel disconnected because I didn’t actually care about your status to begin with.

I’ve got some dreams to make true

In graduating and moving to a new city and new school and meeting new people, I’m asked the same question over and over:

So, what do you want to do with your life?

I usually explain to them about what I’m studying, how I’d like to become a teacher and work with deaf kids in a mainstreamed setting and this is always met with interest.  But I have another dream too.

I dream that I have a healthy family, a loving husband and a safe home.  I dream that I am financially secure and can support my family.  That I raise my children to be happy and strong and that I die before I realize death is coming.

Of course, that’s really not what people are asking about, so I keep it to myself.  But that’s what I want to do with my life.

Growing Up

I have never felt so old as watching the college kids move in this weekend.  Listening to them make plans on the bus and watching the boxes disappear into buildings has made me realize; somewhere between graduation and now, three months later, I grew up.  Of course, I was considered “grown up” well before then, but I had never before labeled myself “adult.”  Until now.

I know how much debt I’m getting into.  Though I know it was a mistake, I was not fully aware of the loans I had taken out in order to help pay for college.  For the most part, I let my parents deal with the finances.  Call me spoiled if you want, but that’s the way it was.  I’m paying my own way now, and I am acutely aware of how much I’ll be paying off after graduation.

This means I’m getting thrifty.  I need to pick up some new work clothes for the fall since I’m woefully short on business attire and I’ll be doing so at the thrift store down the road.  I don’t go out to eat.  I try to minimize my expenses as much as possible.  Laundry gets washed in the tub.  Plastic bags are washed and reused.

What makes me feel so much older than the college kids though, is that 10:30 is bedtime now, not the time to go out.  It seems the older I get, the earlier I go to sleep.  Freshman year it was 2:00 at the earliest, sometimes much later.  By senior year, I was asleep at 12, sometimes earlier.  After running after preschoolers this summer, being asleep by 10:30 was late.

While waiting on the bus with the girls behind me making plans for later that night, I knew it was time to be the adult.  Get out of t-shirts and jeans, learn to talk on the phone, pay your own way.  Grow up.

Poem for Thursday

This Thursday, an old nursery rhyme.

Moses supposes his toeses are roses

But Moses supposes erroneously

For nobody’s toeses are posies of roses

As Moses supposes his toeses to be.

Graduation Goodbyes: Addendum

It’s now been almost two weeks since graduation and I find myself better able to take a step back from the goodbyes, since I’m no longer caught up in the act itself. My original post on the topic didn’t say too much; I was too upset by what seemed like the end of my life as I knew it to say anything of value. Now though, I feel I can add actual insight to the issue.

Let me start by saying that saying goodbye at graduation is the hardest part of college. The classes and tests are easy: you study, you pass (or fail). While some tests may make or break whether you graduate or not, you didn’t sit up nights making up religions and talking about life with them. If you’re like me, it’s the people who made college worthwhile, so it’s the most difficult part of the whole four years to say goodbye one last time to them.

While I certainly found it easy to slip into the thought that graduation was the last time I would see my friends and after leaving I had lost them, I know now that this is not the case. With all the technology available these days, it is NOT the last time to see or speak with them. There’s instant messaging, phones, email, the internet. After saying the last goodbye the night of graduation, the next day I was chatting over AIM with the people I missed. And I already have friends actively planning to visit me later in the summer, even though it’s only been two weeks since graduation. While I know that it helps that I’m living on the East Coast and most of my friends are in neighboring states, I also know that the people I know on the West Coast are also planning on visiting and I will be visiting them when I can. It’s much easier being away from your support system when you know it won’t be forever.

You can hold onto the friendships that matter.  And while it’s the hardest time saying goodbye on the last day, it’s not as bad as you think.

Poem for Thursday

I saw you last night in the gathering,
But could not move to take you in my arms,
So I put my lips next to your cheek,
Pretending to talk privately.

— Rumi

Graduation Day Approaches: Saying Goodbye

I’ve arrived at the end.  Graduation is Sunday, my parents arrive on Saturday.  Today is the day for goodbyes.  I need to write about it because it’s a big part of the coming weekend, but I don’t want to and I’m having trouble putting thoughts into words.

I’ve already been through one: the last few moments alone with my boyfriend and it was hard.  From now on, there will always be someone else there, be it family or friends.  I know it will only be harder from here on out.  I don’t really know how the next couple of days will go.  I need to clean and pack and then say goodbye so many times and I’m not any good with goodbye.

It hasn’t really hit me yet, that after Sunday I’m on the road to another state and there are some people I may not see again for a long time, if at all.

“To leave a friend is like a death and calls for grieving.”  Madeline L’Engle said it first and I don’t have any words to add.

Let me be, I’m grieving.

Sock Theory

I’m going to be silly for a moment. I’ve been meaning to post about my socks for some time and since I am steadfastly ignoring graduation on Sunday, now is the time.

I have a theory. My theory is that bad days can become good days with the help of a collection of special socks. Much like a boring class can be overcome by using a pen with feathers coming off the top or ink that changes color, special socks help add an extra bit of sparkle to your day. I have been gathering special socks for about a year or so and I’ve gathered quite a pile of them. Some have names, some aren’t finished yet, some have actual bits of sparkle. So without further ado I give you:

From Left to Right:

My collection of Christmas socks: Snowman Sock #1, Santa Sock #1, Snowman Sock #2 and Santa Sock #2. Snowman #2 is cooler than #1 because he has sunglasses. Snowman #1 is cooler than #2 because he’s more comfortable.

Unicorn Sock. Appeals to the six year old in me. They are much brighter blue in person.

Garish Sock. Half of the strips are sparkly. All of the colors are ridiculous.

My Lucky Socks and my Halloween Socks. My first set of special socks. Work when I need luck and when I feel a desire for very bright orange. Unfortunately, there are holes forming in Halloween Socks so I need to fix them before I wear them more.

Courage Socks. So named because they have actual bits of sparkle in them and because I wore them once when I needed to be courageous and I thought some actual bits of sparkle would help.

Fire Socks. My dear fire socks, my first socks knit by hand. Very soft, fit like a glove for my feet and so comfortable. Also, they look really good with jeans.

Still on the needles, Cyber Socks. Named as a reference to the Doctor Who villain Cybermen. They are a toe of pretty, a body of soft and a sock that will never die. Cobbled together with remnants of the pretty yarn from the fire socks and really soft yarn that I can’t remember the name for. They will be finished very very soon.

And lastly, not appearing in this picture socks, Bunny Sock. The bunny peeks over the top of my shoes. I never thought I would say that socks are cute, but these one’s are.

So those are my bright socks for gray days. Do you have any special socks?