Half an FO

Okay, okay, it's not technically an FO, but I felt so proud that I had to share my single sock.

Here it is, the middle of Socktoberfest, and I've got one sock that's taken me 7 weeks to knit.  Lame, right? Whatever.  I know the trials and tribulations this sock has seen.  The night classes in the college of business as I curse myself for putting off all my electives until the last term of school.  Protip: most majors don't offer all of the fun electives in one term, so space them out or else you'll be stuck in the College of Business, where the terms are made up and the professor is always right.

Anyway, angst aside, the sock fits slightly better than my last pair! At least, it's not sagging around my ankles, and the afterthought heel looks great, even though it's a bit tight... I have so many heel issues.  One day, I'll find the perfect heel.  I have faith.  Next time, I'm going to pick up a couple more stitches along the edges of the heel.  I only picked up two this time, and hopefully two more on each side will give me the ease that I need.

I think I'm going to do an afterthought heel from now on whenever I have variegated yarn like this.  I just think it looks so much better! I wish I had done that for my Kaffe Fasset socks.  Maybe one day I'll come across some Kaffe Fasset yarn again and get another chance. :P  I'm not going to try and look for some, though... I have too much yarn! (I know, this isn't a real thing, but I'm going to complain about it anyway and say I'm going to not buy any more but... just you wait.)

It's the middle of the night, but I've had coffee to get me through my aforementioned business class. So I'm a little hyper.  I hope this post doesn't come across as mentally deranged.

Treat Yourself

Yesterday, amid a ridiculously stressful situation my Dad told me that I needed to "take a few deep breaths and treat yourself."

Well, today I stopped at the organic market down the street from my school and bought this stuff:

It seriously WAS a treat.  If you've never had fromage blanc, I highly recommend it.  I tried it at a farmer's market about a month ago and all I knew it as was "sweet goat cheese that you eat with dessert." It's so delicious!

Then, I started thinking about all the other treats that I give myself.  It seems like everyday I do a little thing to "treat" myself - not something big or expensive, but just something that I'd like to do.

1.) When I bought groceries last week, I bought a bouquet of flowers for $6.  Yep, those flowers are a week old! I have a ton of special tricks to stretch cut flowers :P

2.) A bit of expensive chocolate that has witty writing on the label... Isn't it true though!?

3.) I also like to describe the sunrise to myself as I walk to work.  When I travel to work I leave the house before sunrise, and watch the sunrise as I drive east to work.  My favorite was Tuesday, where the dark clouds slowly moved north, revealing the orange and red sky.  It was like watching the curtains get pulled aside at the start of a ballet.

4.) Reading blogs on my phone in the in-between times during my day.  Walking to class, in the elevator, whatever.  By the way... blogs that only display previews in their RSS feeds are obnoxious.  Why do people do that? It means that I essentially can't read your blog.  I was good enough friends with someone or liked the blog enough I would click through, right? Apparently not. I just skip right over it and never read it.

5.) Of course, there's also knitting time. I don't know what I would do if I couldn't knit and watch my favorite TV shows.

What do you do to treat yourself, Internet? I want ideas!

An Update

It's midterm week here at school, and I actually have midterm exams! Two in one day, actually, on Monday.  On top of this I still have work and my grad project and my second job and a mountain of tiny things that I can't believe I'm still doing like going to the gym and washing my clothes and showering.  Yes, it's so bad I'm wondering things like "It's Saturday, I bet if I put my hair back in a ponytail no one will notice that I didn't shower today and then I could use that time to fill out that job application."

So now that I've got that "I'm a grad student pity me" rant/excuse for not being more active out of the way, I can show you my knitting stuff! Most of my knitting has been in class, meaning the only thing I can really work on is my plain old stockinette socks - which I've made progress on, but now I'm at an impasse!

The only thing I have left to do on it is cast off and work the afterthought heel - and both require actually looking at what you're doing.  So, instead of sitting down at knitting club and doing that, I sat down at knitting club and cast on for a new project! A scarf for Dan. 

It's going to be in a herringbone pattern made from knits and purls.  I managed to not actually knit herringbone three different times during the two-hour meeting because my head just isn't on straight. So, I added making a chart to my to-do list today.  Maybe then I will have 4 patterns that are pretty much publishable instead of three...