Doctor, doctor!

Now, those of you who know me well know that sometimes I have a little penchant for worrying that things are wrong, that I might be getting horribly sick with some sort of strange disease. As far as I know, though, I've never visited Dr. Knit and asked her any questions about my knitting health before. But you see, I cast on for another Clapotis, and that had me kind of worried, so I thought I'd pay a visit to the good doc:

Lazuli: Doctor, can you help me?

Dr: Sure, what are your symptoms?

Lazuli: Well, I think I have Clapotitis. I've just finished my first one, and I've been getting tons of compliments on it. Heck, I just showed it to my knitting group this past Wednesday. And then on Thursday I started another one! And I've already reached the straight rows. (Points to the evidence to show the medic)

Dr: Well, that doesn't look so bad. I mean, the colors are kind of pretty. If I had that yarn lying around, I might cast on again too! I'd say another week - probably two or so - of knitting, and you'll be over that Clapotitis just as fast as you can bind off and wear the new one!

Lazuli: But that's not all! I have other things going on too!

Dr: Oh?

Lazuli: Well, I started a sock. The Lombard Street socks. But you see, they're too big on size 1s, and the pattern calls for size 2s. I mean really? Size 2s for a sock knit with fingering weight yarn? They must be kidding.

Lazuli: So they're too big, and I'm going to have to start over.

Lazuli: Also, you know how it's gotten cold out finally? My hands are cold. I mean, yes, I have these old "voodoo" wristwarmers from Knitty, but they're kind of boring, and mine covered in cat hair. So... I printed out the pattern for Fetching. I think I'm going to start that in the next day or so, too.

Dr: Having cold hands is never a good sign; I think this looks like an excellent solution.

Lazuli: But the problem is, I shouldn't start on Fetching until I finish my parrot socks! they need to be done by the end of January to count for the Socktopia contest!

Dr: Oh, my. You've got Startitis! Well, it's not that bad a case. I've seen worse. Give the needles to a few projects, and once you have those fun new WIPs and maybe a few UFOs, it'll go away soon. I'd say in a day or two, at the rate you're going. Oh, and don't forget to turn in your last incomplete paper from that class a year ago! Then you can knit guilt-free.

Lazuli: Well, the paper's pretty much done, but I'm not sure about guilt-free. I'm meeting on Friday with the professor for I'm TA-ing and even more scary, I'm meeting with my advisor on Wednesday to discuss potential dissertation topics - a prospect which probably has me a lot more nervous than I should be. Yikes! What can I do about that, doc?

Dr: Knit!

... I pick up the needles and begin to fidget, productively...

Interfaith holiday cookies

As I mentioned in my last post, Coffeeboy and I have been working on making holiday cookies. Yum! Actually, these were done on... Monday (?) night; I've just been slow about updating my blog.

Un-iced cookies

Turning into... iced cookies!

Between baking and icing, these took a long, fun, worthwhile evening!

Santas, trees, stars, and dreidels!
So they're not totally interfaith... we don't have any pagan symbols for Solstice or images for Kwanzaa or, well, you get the point!

This December has been a strange month. I have all these illusions of free time that I'm forgetting are really quite insubstantial. I'm only auditing one class, so it hardly feels like the semester is ending. I've been trying to get myself sorted out for finishing two incompletes I have, both of which require writing 15-20 page papers. I'm not feeling terribly inspired by either of them, since they're not in my major area of interest and have little to do with possible future dissertation topics. Thus, I'd much rather be digging around in potential dissertation topics right now than working on the incompletes! Nevertheless, I've been working on both papers a lot, leading to things like forgetting to blog about cookies, falling behind on holiday knitting, and the like.

In between sorting out what I'm actually writing my papers on, there are all the holiday events: parties, concerts, shopping, family arriving later this coming week, etc. Every time I think, "classes are over! I have two weeks to work on papers before we go away at New Year's," I forget just how little working time there will actually be in these next two weeks!

Regarding commenting: I've read if you hit "preview the comment" (or whatever it says) that's one workaround that lets folks comment. I suspect the real issue, though, has to do with signing up for a Google account to replace one's old blogger account.

Hanukkah starts tonight! Have a happy Hanukkah to all those who celebrate it!