Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Emphasis on the crazy.  

 

This morning I had my last final exam of the semester at 8am.  I was done by 8:30.  And so began my summer!!!!   I have some pretty crazy plans for this summer, mainly, going to Italy.  I'm leaving on May 31st (that's this month!!!) and I will be gone until July 16th.  In the mean time, I've been making plans for what else I want to do, particularly what I want to read and what I want to knit.

I want to finish all of these books plus On the Road, Old Man and the Sea, La Sombra del Viento and maybe an Italian novel.  Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, Festival for Three Thousand Maidens,
The Village of Waiting and Mango Elephants in the Sun are all memoirs written by return Peace Corps volunteers and To Touch the World is a collection of essays about the Peace Corps experience.  I have a list of about 10 more books about the Peace Corps that I want to read at some point but I think I should read the book I have first. It might be a little unrealistic for me to get through all of these books this summer.  It's a good thing I don't usually get too disappointed in myself for not meeting my goals.

I was going to make a list of all the things I want to knit this summer but that would probably end up being even more ridiculously long and impossible than my reading list.  I do know that I want to knit The Old Man and the Sea cardigan by Mel of Single Handed Knits and I would like to knit through as much of the yarn that I already have as possible.

It also sounds like the ISA office on campus will be open for the summer so I will hopefully be working there a bit before and after I go to Italy.

This summer is just going to be full of fun things for me!

Peace Corps Update

So I think I mentioned awhile ago that I applied for the Peace Corps and then I kind of just stopped talking about it.  I'm kind of afraid that if I talk too much about what's going on with the Peace Corps and really let on how excited I am about this possibility that I'm going to jinks myself or something like that and I'm not going to get in.  But I thought I should just give a little update about where I am in the Peace Corps application process. 

Over my spring break, I had an interview and shortly after that I received a nomination for the education program.  A nomination isn't a guarantee that I'll get in, but it's a pretty good sign.  So what's going on now is that the medical people with the Peace Corps are looking over my health history form to see if they need anymore information from me and I've sent in a couple of copies of my fingerprints for a background check.  Seeing as my health history is a couple of broken bones and a pair of dental implants, I'm not really expecting that they'll need much more information from me.  The background checks can take between two and six weeks to finish and then after that and my health history have been cleared, all my information will go to the head administrative team and they will look through it, maybe contact me and ask me a few questions and then they will make the final decision. 

I'm not expecting to hear from the Peace Corps for at least another month or two, but I'll keep you posted!

Featherweight: The Remake

In the past couple of months my Featherweight cardigan has gone from this

 

to this

 

 

and ended up like this.

 

 

I should say that I am ten to fifteen lbs lighter that I was the first time I finished this sweater so it did look a little different on me when I took it apart, than it did in that first oh so lovely picture.  It was pretty large, especially around the arms but then the bind off on the bottom and the neck band where too tight so it kind of clung to me in those areas.  I also knit this for the first time when I was at a point in my knitting where I felt the need to knit everything exactly as the pattern says.  So I knit the body of the sweater for exactly as long as the pattern said, when I would have felt more comfortable with a longer sweater. Basically, I felt uncomfortable in this sweater so I never wore it.

 

Anyway, I reknit the sweater and made it exactly how I want it and it looks awesome and I love it.

 

Next up is....finals week and papers due. I don't have time for knitting.   

KWLA Festival

Friday, during my Spanish American Civilizations class, the professor passed around a piece of paper to get volunteers for the KWLA Festival (I'm pretty sure that stands for Kentucky World Language Association and it's basically a festival for any student (high school or lower) of any language to come and practice and show off what they know).  The Festival was today, from 8am to 2pm so I really was not all that interested in volunteering, but when the paper got me ( I was the last person to get it) there wasn't a single name on the list and I felt bad that no one else wanted to volunteer so I went ahead and put my name down.  So today, I got to lead 4 rounds of Spanish Jeopardy, 2 beginning level rounds and 2 intermidiate rounds.  It was a pretty fun day but I'm pretty sure I don't want to be a high school Spanish teacher.  I don't think I have the patience to work with some of these students.

 

Although it was an early day, this gig did come with some pretty sweet perks.  I got free lunch and $20 worth of gift cards! I think my professor is also giving me some extra credit for helping out.

Keep on the Sunny Side

Cloudy Side:  It's really cold! Definitely not Spring weather.

 

Sunny Side:  I can still wear my hand knit sweaters!

 

 

Tuesday I wore my just finished Hoaloha

 

 

I got more compliments on this sweater than I think I've ever gotten on a sweater.

 

Then yesterday I got to wear my Aidez. 

 

 

I'm glad I got to wear my sweaters again but to tell you the truth I wouldn't mind if it was too warm to wear them again.



Some times your natural hair color is your best hair color

Before anyone freaks out, this isn't some horror story about how I tried to dye my hair and it turned out bright orange or pitch black or anything terrifying like that. 

 

 

 

On my 21st birthday, I decide I was going to do something crazy, partly because I was all excited to be 21 and wanted to do something exciting and partly because I was really early for my tutoring session. So I stopped by the Walgreens and took a look at the hair dye.  I didn't want to go too dark because I have really light sick and I didn't want to look like a witch.  I didn't want to go too light because I have really dark eyebrows and I didn't want it to be totally obvious I dyed my hair.  So I picked up a box labeled medium brown. 

 

 

I was so excited to go home and dye my hair,  I even took before and after pictures.   

 

 

 

 

Can you tell which one is which?  Because I can't.  That's right, I dyed my hair pretty much the exact same color as my natural hair color.  Morals of the story:  1) My idea of "crazy"  is really not that crazy and 2) Sometimes it's best to just not mess with your natural hair color.

Sweaters

This past week was Spring Break for me.  I was packing to go home for the week and I came across two sweaters, one that I knit about 2 years ago and one that I knit this past summer.  I've never really like the way these sweaters looked or fit on me. 

 

 

 

 

 

 Since I've knit them I've just kept them around, tried them on every once in a while and hoped that one day I'll put them on and love them.  But that has never happened.  So I did something crazy.  I ripped them out.

 

 

 

I decided that it was better for me to rip out the sweaters and re-knit them into sweaters I will actually wear.  I'm starting with the purple sweater and I'm actually knitting the same pattern...sort of.  I am going to change a few things to add just a little more shape to it.  I also managed to get another skein of the yarn at a pretty good price so I can make it longer.

 

 

I've also just recently finished another sweater.

 

 

This is my Hoaloha sweater.  It was a mystery knit along run by Mel of the Single Handed Knits podcast.  Mystery knit along means that I really had no idea what this sweater looked like when I started it.   I was a little nervous about it at first but I figured that if I didn't like it, I could always rip back and knit a different sweater.  But I did end up really liking this sweater. I do need to add buttons to it and then I'll post some pictures of what it looks like on me !