Five things you don't know about me

I have been tagged! Hashbrown tagged me- thus increasing my blog coolness dramatically. I'll try not to let it go to my head ;)

Let's see...five things you don't know about me. I'm very pleased that my best friend Amy has started reading my blog. That will make this process alittle more difficult (in finding things you all don't know) and also kind of fun.

1) I was born with an "outie" belly button. I got teased. I remember swinging from the monkey bars in Kindergarten and being called "balloon belly". So, when I was 5 or 6 I had surgery to give me an "innie". I miss my outie- I kind of wish I hadn't gotten the surgery.

2) I have always loved smelling stuff. Well, more specifically, the combined sensation of smelling an object and feeling that object against my nose. As a child I always smelled my fork (without food on it)- well, I still do that sometimes. Honestly though I think it's more the feeling of the cool fork against the skin under my nose- something about it is comforting for some reason. As an adult I've become less conspicuous, but David still catches me at times.

3) I love thesauruses, phone books, and road atlases. They make me happy. As a teen I regularly read through the phone book for fun. For my 13th birthday, an adult friend told me, "Abigail- you are becoming a teen, a rebel! What do you want?" I asked for a Rand MacNally road atlas.

4) I don't like being wet when it's not appropriate to be wet anymore. I love to swim, I love baths, I love showers- but, once those things are over I really hate being wet for any period of time afterwards. This was something that often kept me from showering as a kid.

5) I grew up high on soccer. I loved it, and played every fall and spring in Parks and Rec from the age of 4. When I was in high school I made the junior varsity team, which felt great. My nickname was "Bigfoot"- a nickname I earned after making a goal over everyone's heads from the halfway mark on the field.

And, a bonus: As a child I had a milk-bottle-top collection. I have no idea how this started. You don't need to try and figure out what I mean by milk-bottle-tops, you were right the first time. I collected the colored plastic tops that came on plastic milk bottles. My Aunt Hester mailed me the ones she saved for me, which added some purple to my usual blue 1% milk bottles. In my more serious years as a collector, I even managed to buy some antique paper ones.

Looking for Beauty

I'm not sure how much I've talked on this blog about my difficulty settling into Gainesville. David and I have been here 1 year and 9 months and I admit that, even now, I am counting down to the time when he'll be done with his schooling and we can leave.

When we moved here we knew we would stay atleast 3 and 1/2 years for his program, and thought that if we liked it, we would settle down here. I hoped we might settle down here. I have a hard time with transitions, which is kind of ironic given that before Gainesville, David and I hadn't lived anywhere for longer than 10 months in the 5 years we've been together. David and I both really want a place to settle into. To feel home, to feel a sense of community, a feeling of connection with the land and people around us.

Knowing that we are leaving here in alittle under 2 years means that I never quite feel it's worth it to plant seeds. The result is that I often feel caught in my own little world and don't feel connected to much outside myself. I want to have that connection, I really do. Something about Gainesville just doesn't feel home to me though. I like it here, I really do. It's a great town, but somehow it just doesn't feel like home.

I certainly have been trying to find ways to connect. I get together with Silvia once a week for knitting (well, we try for once a week ;), which I really enjoy, I try to get together with other friends now and then, I have work (although I work alone, which often feels isolating). Starting my Masters really has been my first large way for me to bring new energy outside of Gainesville to my experience here. I'm just not feeling it in Gainesville, so I'm bringing in some outside help. I also find that this fall my mom is planning to move to FL and spend the winter! Awesome. She is retiring this spring and selling her house. It will feel good to have her here.

What I'm finding is that since I often have such a negative feeling about my home here, I don't put much love into this environment. I keep things relatively tidy and kept up, but I don't put that extra sparkle into things. And yet, I really value that in other people. Some people put that sparkle into their homes, their yards, even their clothes and blogs.

Lately I've been trying to bring some of that into my life. Knitting is a big way I seek to nurture beauty around me. Last week I got a haircut for the first time in over a year- it looks cute :) One of my clients' parents couldn't stop commenting on it- alittle too much actually. Made me wonder what I looked like before! ;) But, I'm also raking the leaves in the yard, cleaning the stove, trying new outfits, etc. I think I've underestimated the power of those little touches before. I'm a fairly all-natural, non-materialism woman, but that doesn't mean that an extra touch isn't a lovely thing. Maybe those touches bring alittle bit of that "home" to a house- to a person.

I don't know how much I want to bring home here, since I won't be staying. But, I would like to dabble with that feeling of home and atleast know how to bring it to my heart.

Normally I would end this post right now, but I want to add that just at the time when I've been trying to nurture beauty around me lately, the wildfires have been burning. It's making it awfully hard to open to my environment and feel open and peaceful with my home. For those of you not in Gainesville, there has been a steady plume of smoke for the last week sitting over Gainesville. Tuesday was the worst. I could hardly see the 25 feet across the courtyard where I work. Ash was falling over everything- leaving an eerie snow-like blanket.

I don't know if the the timing of the smoke with my trying for beauty is a message or just an ironic challenge, but either way it's awfully difficult to live with. I think I'll go turn our air purifier up. Atleast the inside of our home can have some smoke-free space, for which I'm grateful.

"A History of Psychology"... Who knew?

I mentioned awhile back that I decided to skip the intro to research course for my Masters. I already took a Bachelor's level course and don't really want to spend my time looking at all that intro stuff again. However, I do want to make sure I'm successful in the next courses. This fall I'll be taking a qualitative research course- then I presume I'll take the quantitative research course in the spring.

I spent some time emailing back and forth with the main advisor at Temple. I couldn't quite decide if I was nuts to consider moving straight into the qualitative course. I asked them to email me the syllabus. My thoughts upon reading it? "!!!! uh !!!! what the... !!!" Then I realized that my stress was about the AMOUNT of work in the course, not necessarily the difficulty of the concepts. Actually, I already knew most of the "learning objectives" for the course. I went back and reread a couple things in my research book and felt I could do this.

So, then I emailed the professor who will be teaching the qualitative course. He is so very, very nice. I have known him before through my good friend and mentor, John, but hadn't experienced him in this role. He was very helpful. He was confident that I'd do fine with the course, given my background, and was totally willing to aid me in any areas I needed help in. Also, he suggested some passages for me to read this summer in the new edition of the research book (which I then purchased), as well as a chapter or so in another book - "A History of Psychology", by Thomas Leahey. I put Leahey on ILL at our county library and have been holding onto it. However, the due date is tomorrow so I finally am doing that reading this weekend.

I'm really enjoying it. I don't know how much I expected to like it. Actually, I'm pretty sure I thought I would find it boring. It IS boring, in it's way, but it's also very thought provoking- something I've been needing lately in my work. Very cool. So, these thoughts aren't necessarily aiding me in my day-to-day clinical work, but it just feels good to have some mentally challenging material to "broaden my horizons", so to speak. Next I'll try to get into some of those chapters in the research book.

Knitting news for April

It's been some time since I've posted about knitting. Well, it's been some time since I've posted. I'm finding it difficult to make myself sit to blog. Silly really. I second guess myself into thinking I have nothing to blog about. Silly.

However, there is knitting news.

I finished the Barn Swallow socks from Autumn House Farm, "Herdwick Fine" yarn.

This is cool yarn. I hadn't heard of it before, but saw it when I went to Rosie's Yarn Cellar in Philadelphia for my audition. Well, I didn't audition at Rosie's, ...you get the idea. I also got a skein of "Bracken". If you go to their link you'll see that they really do have amazing colorways. I've been happy with the yarn itself too- although I admit that the vividness of the colors is what I fell in love with. The yarn itself has nice stitch definition. I used my usual size 0 needle for the cuff and size 1 bamboo for the sock itself, and am pleased with the result. I do seem to recall that the yarn didn't feel quite as stretchy as some other yarns, but it is 100% merino, so that may be why.

These are the first real socks I've knit for myself. Hooray! (Well, my first pair were for me, but they were made out of acrylic worsted weight. I live in FL. Therefore they don't count ;) Unfortunately I made the socks a little too small for me. I'm always making them too big, so this time I overcompensated. My fault, not the yarn's. The sock feels quite warm though- I'm not sure if I'll be wearing them in the summers here. They'll be nice in the fall/winter.

After I finished these socks I went on my mission for David's sock yarn. You've heard about part of this process here. So, I made an order with Lisa Souza, having heard great things about her sock yarns.

(Sock! "Emerald City" on top, with Hardtwist "Seafoam" on the bottom.)

I haven't tried out the Emerald City yet, but I must say that the colors are just what I was hoping for- very vibrant, full, and gorgeous. Also I've seen and felt the socks of other knitters' who used the Sock! and it felt wonderful.

Now, the Hardtwist. I don't know about it. This is one of her newer yarns, and I got it because I heard people say that it was spongy and had nice stitch definition. People on one forum referred to it as a Socks That Rock yarn with Lisa Souza colors. That sounded fabulous. Really, I was looking for a yarn with excellent stitch definition and something sproingy because I want to use this yarn for my first cable project.

The color is PERFECT! When I ordered it, I didn't realize how perfect it was. David's favorite color is "seagreen". You'd be surprised at how elusive "seagreen" can be. I've been trying to figure out what he means by "seagreen" for awhile now and try as I might, I haven't figured it out. I ordered the seafoam even though the picture on her website was, in David's words, "too blue to be "seagreen". HOWEVER! The minute we got the yarn David got a sweet smile on his face and I felt at such peace. I could tell that finally we had found "seagreen". The yarn we got, in person, isn't quite as blue as on her site. Thank you Lisa Souza!

Since that moment, this yarn and I have had some issues. First, I wound it up. Well, I wound up half of it. The other half is now in a tangled mess on the mantle- I'm trying to believe that it will de-tangle itself by the time I need it. Still, the seagreen-ness calmed and nurtured me as the sun glanced in upon it.

Then I was off to swatch. This yarn is much thicker than my usual sock yarn. I started with a size 1 Crystal Palace bamboo needle. ARGH! The yarn would barely move and it was torture to knit- too much friction. I moved up to a size 2 bamboo. STILL! Then I moved to a size 1 metal (Knitpicks Options). Better. Still difficult, but better. I put aside the part of me that just wanted to plunge ahead even if I didn't have the right needle. I made another order from Knitpicks for their DPNs. (I really like their DPNs by the way. Very smooth and nice.) So, I'm now using size 2 metal Knitpicks Options DPNs. This is giving me a fairly tight, but not too tight fabric.

I've tried a couple cables on the swatch at this point, and I think I get the idea. Now I just need to decide what pattern to use. This gauge (I'm getting about 6 st/1 inch) is making it difficult to find a pattern I like for cabled socks. I may just make up my own. Now wouldn't that be putting myself into this sock. Feel the love honey?

While all this was happening we went on that trip to visit David's friends. On the way I started the first pair of socks ever where I didn't know who I was knitting them for. I always start with a specific person in mind and put that person and our relationship into the sock. However, this yarn, much as I love it, didn't seem to fit anyone I knew. Still, I started it and had finished the cuff by the time we got to Macon, GA. As David and I sat in a circle talking with these guys who have been a big part of our past I knit and knit and knit. I got more knitting done in that 24 hours than ever before. I basically finished the leg in in fewer than 24 hours- something I've never done before.

I had a truly wonderful conversation with Matt, one of David's friends. He seemed particularly interested in my knitting and we got talking about relationships, life, feelings, etc. As we talked I knit. After we talked I knew. These socks were for him. I measured his feet. I'll show you some pictures eventually. I'm partway into the foot of the first sock now. (My pace slowed considerably after we came home.)

I started the second sleeve on the SKB yesterday and the shawl progresses slowly. That's about it for now on the knitting front.