Many Worships

This semester is certainly keeping me busy!  A lot has happened since I last wrote, which is why this blog is so late.

Two weekends ago I drove down to Nashville to meet my parents and trade cars with them. I was glad to have my car back after a month, and the drive was actually fairly pleasant. I listened to a book on tape while I was driving, and I enjoyed seeing the trees which were turning for fall. My parents had a longer drive, and I know doing it two days in a row was rough, so I am very grateful to them for meeting with me there.

My classes this semester are still going fantastically, and it's funny that they are not my biggest concern most of the time. Part of that is probably because I really enjoy them, so I'm comfortable with the time I do spend on them, and the other part is that I simply have so many other things going on. In preaching class, I'll be giving my first sermon in just over a week, and I'm looking forward to it, despite the fact that I'm struggling with the text. Here's praying that the Holy Spirit will make an intervention in time. (from my discussions with other preachers, this is a frequent prayer)

Aside from my schoolwork, my biggest commitment continues to be my job as sacristan. I love nearly every minute of it, and I think I'm learning a lot in the job. Last week was Trinity Days, which meant a lot of work for a beautiful worship service. I may have sent nearly 100 emails on Monday alone. I finished my twelve yard long banners in time, and they added beautifully to Gloria Dei. We had a lovely eucharist service on Wednesday put on by Bexley Hall, which made me think back to my times at Saint Andrews in college. I was a crucifer and lector for that service, and I was honored to be asked to help lead. Thursday we had a service that included a fire bowl - my first experience with that - and it turned out wonderfully. It always makes me happy as a sacristan when I plan and plan and then the opening song begins and everyone walks out in the procession, and then I cannot do anything more. When it all goes well, as it always does, I am proud to have been a part of that work.

After the busy-ness of the Trinity days worship, I was able to just enjoy the rest of it. We had a lecture about Pentecostalism for our main lecture, and it was really interesting to consider a tradition so different from ours and see what there may be to learn from that. I also went to the student/alumni football game and got some knitting done. Thursday evening, I was invited by my friend Mechelle to participate in the rituals of Rosh Hashana which was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Altogether, I got to experience a lot of faith over the weekend!

On Sunday, I was finally able to sit down with Bonnie, my MIC supervisor, over lunch and plan out my year at All Saints. I will preach several times, teach sixth grade confirmation, attend church council meetings, continue to assist at worship, and begin a pastoral care relationship with one of the congregants there. I am looking forward to all of this, although I am also a little nervous. I hope that I will continue to be able to grow in my abilities as a pastor during this year here.

This week, I'm feeling pretty well on my feet, and I'm looking forward to next week as an ease in my time as sacristan, since it will be Bexley Hall's worship week the whole week. And then the week after that is fall break, which is hard to imagine! That will be an especially good week, as I will be having my endorsement interview on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday I will be heading to Oklahoma to spend some time with Silas, including celebrating our third-year anniversary! I cannot wait for that.

It's a busy semester, but it is full of good things, and I am looking forward to the rest of it! I'll write here again soon.

In Which I Have a Lot of Knitting

Wow....

How did October get here already?

First off the college catch up:
Classes are fun (bet you don't here that from many people), they're pretty much the same as they've been.

I've had time to read a lot more than I thought I would so I've been reading a bit of Shakespeare. I don't think I'd read any of his comedies before and I really like them! Always learning something new.

With it being fall and a little colder up here than it is in Texas, I've had oppurtunities to wear stuff I've made, and I love it. Unfortunately it's also given me a bad case of startitis.

I'm currently working on five projects and I've ordered three more which are being shipped to me now. That's more projects on the needles than I've ever had before.

I'm still working on Joe my blanket, but it's gotten so big that it just lives on my bed now and can't travel anywhere.

I'm also working on an unnamed scarf that I started before college. It's a beautiful gray lace scarf and I love the feel of working with it.

I recently started a shawl in a pretty blue-green for a knit-a-long. I have to purposely drop stitches in it and I love it. It's named Anne.

I also ripped out a fingerless mitten I had made a year ago and am changing it into a lace neck scarf.

Then I wanted to learn how to do circular knitting with the magic-loop method so I ripped out Juliet, my pretty cotton yellow gloves with cables up the arm, and restarted them with magic-loop and it's working out much better.

See? I told you I've got startits! I started all those new projects within days of eachother.

Now I've ordered three kits. One is a kit of knitted ornaments that I'm going to decorate my room with for dead week and finals week. The second is a knitting bag that will teach me how to make linings and and use interfacing. And the thrid is a kit for a hat and gloves to teach me fair isle (knitting with two colors of yarn in one row), which was one of my goals at the begining of the year!

All this knitting will keep my hands busy and warm all winter.

Alright, tired of hearing about knitting?

In other news my classes at the Colvin Rec Center are going really well and I'm imporving greatly in both boxing and yoga. My boxing class has dropped from 20 people to about 8. It means we get to learn a lot more in each class because Jeremy, the teacher, only has a few of us to correct.

The other big part of my life here at OSU remains the Canterbury center with the Episcopalians. I love going to a church that has such a small congregation, because everyone knows each other; and I still love the two-three nights a week I spend at Canterbury, the people and conversation are great.

I also went on another tour of the library this week and found a fantastic study spot! It's on the fourth floor facing big arched windows so during the day it's really sunny and really beautiful. I also checked out a couple of books on e. e. cummings and I don't have to give them back till the end of January if I don't want to! How cool is that?

All of these things are keeping me very busy, and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow when I don't have any pressing responsibilities until the play in the evening.

"When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way."

In Which I Spread the Love

So summer has already happened.

I have so many interesting things to say, so I'm just going to stick to interesting knitting and school. I think.

Why knitting and school you ask? Why, because those are two things I love and this is technically a knitting blog.

First though, an interesting story - this Tuesday I was leaving my mom's hairdresser and I tripped off a curb. This is not that unusual for me (I'm not particularly graceful), but I twisted my ankle bad enough I though it might be broken. One condescending doctor and an x-ray later, it was determined that I didn't break it but it was swolen bad enough that I got a nifty brace and crutches. I only used the crutches a couple of days, but I've been wearing the brace awhile and was hobbling for several days after.

I and several of my friends have spent this summer trying to get ready to go to college this month and I've been having a great time. Apparently I chose a difficult color scheme for my room because wherever you go it is hard to find eggplant purple bedding and other room stuff. I have bought and returned several items and I think I might actually have everything I need now. I'm still knitting my handtowel, but I should be done by the time I move in without any trouble at all. In an attempt to be organized I've taken a schemeatic of my room and written down where everything I have will be going so that move in day will be a little easier.

I can't wait until next Monday when Dad and I get to start packing. He and I are both good at making many things fit into a small space so I am not worried about making it all fit at all.

I've bought my school supplies, which I seem to do differently than everyone else. I need a spiral notebook and a folder for all of my classes. I like these to match and have a pretty design on them. I didn't think that that was asking too much because I knew there were brands that made matching supplies. Of course none of the stores seemed to think that people would want this because they seperated all the notebooks and folders, so I had to hobble around (see above story) back and forth comparing to try and get 5 matching sets.

It took 4 stores.

Enough about school (I can't wait!!!), I also have fun summer knitting stories.

Early this summer I finished my orange sweater, fondly known as Pete (go Pokes!). Pete is a bit oversized so I will be able to layer it really well, and it will be a fantastic study sweater because it is rather cuddly.

I have also been working on more washcloths, my blanket, and at least one handtowel.

I have enough washcolths to take now, and the first handtowel will be done before I get to college, but the blanket will not be ready till almost winter I think.

My blanket is also yet to be named, although I've been given plenty of suggestions. My dad says I should name it a guys name so I can shock people by telling them that I sleep with ____ (random guy's name), my brother said something along the lines of Shada, but I'm really not sure what fits yet.

I got back from New Orleans last week and I had an amazing time. There were 4 youth there including me. On the drive down I informed them that if there was a knitting both there like there had been in the past we would be visiting. Come Saturday, I found the booth. I sat everyone down and gave them needles and yarn and began to teach. The two guys, Andy and Jacob and Jo our youth director picked up knitting quite fast and even seemed to enjoy it. Huzza for knitting!

I introuduced them to some of the traditions of knitting and recomended books on the trip down and now I've done all I can and I hope the knitting bug takes hold of at least some of them.

Now I think this blog is long enough so I'm going to go watch some Stargate and knit!

"Get back and let a man do the Popcorn!"

In Which I Love School and Ice Days

So, last week I finally started school for my last high school semester. I'm taking three classes at Tarrant County College: English II, Philosophy, and Early American Lit and this semester should be fun. On my first day in class I was sitting there after knitting Kevin's tardis all through the Obama inauguration which we watched in Philosophy, and my teacher began to explain what we were going to be learning this semester. While he was talking I began to realize how much I like college.

I'm not necessarily talking about living in a dorm and meeting new people and all that fun stuff I'll do next year, I'm talking about the classes themselves. I plan on majoring in Psychology but I want to take so many other classes that have nothing to do with that while I'm there. I just have this sensation that there is so much knowledge out there and so much of it interests me that I want to take as many of those courses that I can while I'm at OSU.

I am in the honors college at OSU so I went on their website to see what honors classes they offered that I might be interested in. It was so cool! They had a logic course, an ethics course, some lit courses, and even a Jane Austen seminar. Doesn't that sound cool? When I first got the information about being in the honors college it said that my first two years(four semesters) I would have to take two honors courses a semester. Since I've finished most of my core classes already I was pretty sure I would have to contract a lot of those classes, but now I think I'd rather like to take these classes that will teach me something interesting as well as my regular psychology courses.

So I may be one of those few people who just likes learning for the sake of it, but I've got four years ahead of me to do all the in class learning I can - after that I'll just have to go on teaching myself things like I've done recently with poetry and even the more complicated knitting techniques I've learned recently. (such as knitting socks! I still love knitting socks!)

With that lovely segway into knitting I do want to mention one of my favorite days in the past few weeks was on Tuesday when school was cancelled due to non-existant ice. I stayed in my pjs all day and knitted on my pretty purple slippers that are so far without a name. As much as I love school, it was nice to have one more lazy day before I really get busy, now when I look at my new slippers I can remember that those lazy days do come every now and then.

In other news, I breifly mentioned Kevin's tardis earlier. I made up a pattern for his birthday and finished it in just about a week and I must say I'm very proud of it. I even learned how to duplicate knit and embroider words in order to be able to do it. I'm probably going to make one for myself with the leftover yarn soon.

Speaking of yarn I have ordered the first color for my blanket I plan on finishing before college. It will be dark purple, pale yellow, and blue black. Hopefully soon I'lll be able to save enough money to buy the yellow and black and I can actually start knitting it.

Well that's all for now. I really should get to sleep, I have one more busy day this week.

"Finally facing my Waterloo"

In Which I Knit Socks

So here I am again.

My last post to this blog was in November and a lot has happened then. So much has happened that I actually did not pay attention to any of my emails, ravelry, or any blogs that I follow for almost the whole month of December. Now that I've caught up with everything and gotten through the crazy that has been these past two months I felt it was time for an update.

Apart from my grandmother getting the stomach flu on Thanksgiving day and passing it on to my dad who then passed it on to me (this was the begining of the crazy), then finally starting to work three days a week, and all the other stuff that goes along with Christmas including spending 7 hours at church on Christmas eve. I have actually gotten a lot of knitting done. I have had my first ever Christmas knitting, been knitting to get rid of my stash, and am now working on my knitting new years resolutions.

Chirstmas knitting always has a good story with it. I've heard of many from other knitters which include such fun things as sleep depravation and finishing hats to go in stocings in the wee hours of Christmas morning. My story is this - I was only making Christmas gifts for two people, my Mom and my Brother. For my brother I choose to make a Jayne hat and a set of juggling balls. For mom I was making a wrap she picked out. I started both of these projects very early on so I was sure that I would have plenty of time. Due to this feeling of not needing to rush I worked on my Christmas projects sporadically and worked on other projects in between.

The week before Christmas I suddenly realized how little time I had left and how little yarn I had left for mom's wrap. I ordered more online, hoped it would show up soon, and set to work on finishing Kevin's gifts. A long doctors visit that was mostly waiting gave me time to finish the Jayne hat and start sewing up one of the juggling balls. A few nights later I was up at midnight watching Legaly Blond and finally filling the juggling balls, they went under the tree the next day.

During that time my yarn that I had ordered showed up I opened it on the Tuesday a week before Christmas and suddenly realized it was the wrong yarn. I had accidentally ordered the yarn I had used for the Jayne hat. I frantically ordered more and it didn't show up until the Saturday before Christmas. I frantically worked to finish the last sleeve and was up until 1 a.m. on the 23rd sewing it up it was wrapped on Christmas Eve.

For Christmas I was given among other nifty tools a yarn meter, so I immediately went to work measuring all my yarn and planning projects for it. I now have great plans for using up almost all of my yarn before I go to college in order to make it easier to travel and store (it's much easier to store nothing than a whole lot of something).

Then the new year came and I made some resolutions. I read the Knitting Daily and one might notice the banner on the side of my blog saying that I was a Fearless Knitter for 2008. I believe I lived up to that name too, I made my first sweater and it fits, and I tackled my first Christmas knitting as well as other things. Now I also have a banner proclaiming myself to be a Fearless Knitter in 2009 and I began to wonder how I would live up to that name. I came up with three ideas. I decided that in the course of this year I would conquer my fears of socks, lace, and colorwork.

I began eagerly last week with socks. I can now proudly say I have knitted a sock and am knitting it's mate and have plans for more!! The rest of the resolutions will hopefully come to fruition in the course of this year.

That's all I have for now, I'm off to finish my second sock!

In Which I barely write about knitting

Woah, I haven't updated this since September.

Let's blame it on schoolwork shall we?

Let's see, what have I been doing since September? Hmm...

Well for the headlines: Due to my Government class I hate politics more than ever; Due to the people in my History class I worry for Humanity; I'm passing Spanish; I barely work anymore so I don't have any money to spend on yarn, books, or other things; My youth director moved to Longview, TX and at her goodbye ceremony I cried in front of most of the people I know at church; When I do read a book nowadays I devour it and am done in a day or less; And I finally found some bright orange cotton so I've begun making washcloths and I plan to knit a black linen hand towel or too go to along with them.

So that's the basic Idea of the past two months.

Latley, life has been fairly routine. I knit as much as I can and for some reason two girls in my history class whose names I don't even know seem to think that because I knit before my history class I want to talk to them for some reason. Mostly I make polite responses and hurry into class as soon as Professor Rye shows up. This is the first semester that perfect strangers in school talk to me because of my knitting, it's kind of weird. People talk to me about it in government and spanish too, but I actually don't find them annoying so it's pretty cool.

In other news, I'm still really enjoying reading poetry and I have begun writing a poetry journal in which I copy out some of my favorite poems and then write a couple of lines about what they mean to me or why I like them. I've also written a couple of poems, but they're a long way away from being able to be seen by anybody. I also have read a few new good books lately. As I mentioned earlier I devour books when I get a chance to read them. For instance, earlier today I read not one but two new books I got from the library at 1pm. While I admit that neither of these books were very long, I still am surprised that I finished the second one.

In talking about books I would like to make an observation about book trends of the last few months. We all know that the final Harry Potter has been out for awhile and those people who don't really read outside of that series were looking for new books to create a fandom for. For many of those people they picked the Twilight Series which are vampire romance stories. Now I am very happy that people my age are reading, in comparing my life and education experiences to those who don't read much I think my love of books has really been an advantage, but I don't get all the hype with vampire romances. To me it seems like trying to mix two very different genres. I like both science fiction and chick-lit books, just not squished together. I think that's just weird.

My mom recently read a different vampire romance and did enjoy it, and I am by no means shunning all those who love twilight, but I occasionally begin to feel how I'm pretty sure Mom feels whenever someone tells her that if she would just give Jane Austen a try she would really like it. People in my youth group have read Twilight, people in the tap class I barely belong to have read Twilight, my neighbor was one of the first people to read and recommend Twilight to me. But I still haven't read it and I have no intention of reading it or even of seeing the movie unless someone else pays me to go see it, and even then I'm bringing my knitting. So just to let anyone who reads my blog and wants to know, I will probably never read a vampire romance because I just really don't like vampires.

So that is my rant about books for the time being, I'm going to go start another book and try to figure out the measurments that I want my new felted gray beret to be. (More on that in another post.)

I'll write again soon!

"Tell the folks at home what you're doing, Roger"

In Which I Get Yarn

It's been a big week as far as knitting goes.

After anxiously waiting for yarn on Thursday and Friday, sitting watching the mailbox until the mail came, I settled in to do the same thing on Saturday morning. During the week the mail comes to our house around 10:30 so I wasn't planning on waiting too long. I had just started a really good book and was willing to wait.

10:30 came and went as did 11:30 and 12:30 by around 1:00pm I decided to take a break from my vigil and eat lunch. After lunch the mail still wasn't here.

I had a birthday party to go to that night, and deciding that I should leave the house before I went stir crazy I went to Target to buy a gift and my mom came with me. On our way home we ended up behind a mail truck and I thought it would be rather funny if that particular mail truck was headed to our home and had my yarn on it. We continued following it and sure enough it did stop in front of our mailbox. We sat in the car behind it and I watched to see if there was a large padded envelope with our mail.

There wasn't.

Rather sad, because I knew I would have to wait until Monday at that point I went home and finished up some flowers I was knitting for the party that night. Later, about an hour before I was going to leave, the doorbell rang. I went downstairs wondering who it might be and to my surprise it was the mailman back again with an envelope full of yarn for me! I probably could have hugged him at that point, but he was already going back to his mail truck.

I was even more surprised when I opened the package and saw that it was my sweater yarn which had shipped a day later than my purse yarn, but I was ecstatic. I quickly cast on for a swatch (yes, I was very good and actually swatched for my sweater) and was happy to quickly get gauge. I had decided that I had good gauge at just a couple of inches in, but I wanted to finish the whole swatch and wash and block it so that i could see how it would do.

Of course by this time it was time to go to my party, where I didn't get a single chance to knit. After the party a couple of people and I went to IHOP because we know one of the waiters working the graveyard shift there and I got about another inch done while we were there. I got home around 1am and finished up the swatch, washed, and blocked it so it would be ready by the time I went to church the next morning.

At church I cast on and began the whole sweater. It was so exciting. In the past week I've gotten almost the whole sweater back done which I noticed is much faster than I used to knit.

Of course after a week of being very single minded about my knitting I've become a bit distracted. I am trying to finish up my bag D.C., which I also finally got more yarn for, I want to knit a change purse because I got this handy card holder which is replacing my wallet, and I was commissioned to make another bookweight that I want to have done by Friday when I see the lady who wants to buy it again.

Oh well, all is going great in the world of my knitting and I'm even finding time to clean my room (mostly knitting induced mess, I didn't know I had this much yarn!)

Check later to see how the sweater(Nebulous) and D.C. are going - I promise pictures next time!

"Tell the folks at home what you're doing, Roger."

Weekend Notes

What a weekend.

Friday after my Spanish test I went shoe shopping with my mom before she and my dad left for Tulsa. Once they were gone I put in Stardust and got to some good knitting.

Earlier I had started Mom's triangle bag named Origami and was really excited to get back to it. I am making it out of cascade wool in a beautiful, bright red and black which are perfect colors for her.

Saturday I was gone all day at explorer competition and left the house so fast I actually forgot my knitting :( there would have been a couple of good knitting opportunities too. We did well anyway and despite my intentions to get at least a couple of rows done when I got home, my cat demanded all of my attention and I was quickly asleep.

Today was much better in having time for knitting, and I am now halfway done with the first flap of Origami. This obviously means I am a quarter of the way done with the whole thing not counting blocking, sewing, and felting (not necessarily in that order)

Today I knit before church, in Sunday school, waiting for a couple of friends to get here, while watching Sweeny Todd for the first time since it came out (woot), during lunch at Olive Garden, and on a large tree that had fallen over the creek in our botanical gardens.

I felt much better about missing so much on Saturday.

On another note, I've stopped carrying my Doctor's Bag because I just can't seem to live with the minor things wrong with it. (I need to get cobweb out of it...) I will let it sit for awhile and one day I might pick it up again. It took me long enough to make it.

Because of my lack of a handknitted bag for myself that I can use as a purse, I have bought the yarn for the Boot Bag from Bag Style and will knit it as soon as I am done with Origami. I plan on having it done before I go to Washington D.C. this summer because it seems to me to be a rather professional looking bag and good for carrying into places like the FBI whilst I am there.

My final piece of news is that I finally bought a skein of Raven yarn from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. After much consideration I bought the Grawk colorway because I love the colors in it and it's description as a mischief maker who likes to be the center of attention. I plan on using it for a pair of lace up opera gloves for the Northanger Abbey KAL/RAL so I hope I get the yarn soon. I can't wait to see it in person, and I hope it is as gorgeous as I think it is.

I'm signing off now,
Rose

"Act One Finale" Urinetown the Musical