Burridge Lake Aran Blanket, Hourglass Sweater, Tangled Yoke Cardigan pics

Here's the pic as promised of the blanket I'm working on for the in laws for our home made Christmas. This is one of the side panels, there is a different panel that is in the middle and then this panel shown here repeats again. You can see why I had to start this in the dead of summer....it's going to be quite a long project. I am very tempted to keep this for myself, the only thing stopping me is that I don't know what else I could give them for the homemade Christmas!



Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Fitted Knits. I redid the neckline again last week and now officially love it!










The Tangled Yoke Cardigan sans cables. It's ok, but I don't love it like the Hourglass Sweater!

Freebie Tix

For the second time in one year, I've won tickets through work to go to a Pat's game! We're going to tomorrow's game against the Eagles and we also have tickets to a tailgating party before hand. Last time, with extreme luck on my side, I won tickets to the Patriot's Jets play off game. It was so much fun and I seriously had the best Italian sausage I've ever had.

Both tickets are right around the 30 yard line, but pretty far up but the way the stadium is set up you can see everything from anywhere so it doesn't really matter.

I am super stoked that the T runs a commuter rail down there just for the game, it doesn't normal go there but they run it for special events. We're leaving work early to catch it, the other option is parking which is an arm and a leg ($30+ to park in someone's front yard and you have to get there very early to find it and deal with traffic on the way out).

So in conclusion, Go Pats and Italian sausage with everything here I come!

Falls, Trips, Cardigan Completion

First of all, I want to talk about completed the Tangled Yoke Cardigan sans Tangled Yoke. I finished it yesterday, I mean weaved in ends finished. Not just finished knitting. Buttons are on, it's done. I like it...this is the second sweater that I deem wearable, not counting one I made for Hubbleson that I wear more than he does. The only slightish problem I noticed yesterday was that one side is a smidge longer but I after I sewed the buttons on no normal person will be able to see this. I think what happened is that when I bound off for the button band I did one more tightly than the other. The buttons I chose were from Windsor Button; I brought along my less conservative (in dress, not in my politics my friends) and more youthful counterpart S. Between her, the shop clerk, and a random person I queried while in the store I decided on mustard colored buttons that have a swath of gray in them. I would have gone with the reddish stained wood buttons if the peer pressure hadn't gotten to me; I believe the random lady in the store called the look boring. It looks really nice and it's nice and warm, which feels disgusting now but will be nice later.

So the buttons were purchased last week, my less conservative/more youthful friend and I parted ways and I was walking throught the Common listening to my iPod clearly not paying attention because I tripped down two stairs and was suddenly on all fours just outside the Common hurrying to get up and making sure that no one saw what had just unfolded. It didn't appear anyone had, so I had time to assess the damage. My new red leather shoes now have scuffs on each of the toes, my hands had a little road rash on them. My iPod was very close to falling into Beacon Street and had a nice chunk taken out of the plastic carrying case. I got up and I saw stars...so I thought I would just hang out pretending to be adjusting my iPod until that passed. I crossed the street and my knees were throbbing....I had two bruises, one on each knee that are still healing. They didn't swell or anything but they were painful, now they are in the gross yellow and purple stage of healing.

And lastly, our trip to VT. M's aunt has a camp on Lake Champlain so the whole family was getting together for a BBQ. We have been up to VT four times since June so we decided that we were just going to go up for the day and not stay over. It was a gruelingly long day, but in the end we were both glad that we came back and could sleep in our own bed. We left at 7am on Saturday and got home after 11pm. 8 hours on the road for 5 hours at the BBQ, but it was fun and nice to see everyone. M's dad was the only one who dared to take a dip in the lake which was full of algae and rocks. Our parting gift was a 2-3 lb zucchini that another aunt grew in her garden. Oh, and I saw tons of little baby frogs and what I believed to be a gardner snake (is that what they're called or is it garden...boy do I feel like my mother) going after the little frogs. Thankfully the frogs were very quick and escaped the flicking tongue of the snake. It was interesting to watch though....from a far.

Class, Cousins, Christmas, Cats, Cable

Ok so in today's post we're going to cover:

• Presentation
• No TV
• Burridge Lake Aran Blanket
• Visiting cousins
• Boigie in a Shoebox

Can you tell I'm in presentation mode? I just finished presenting on somatization disorders and I'm glad I'm done. Two more medium sized assignments to do before 8/17 and then I'm officially done with everything that's graded in this class. Next semester, I have Advanced Health Assessment which I'm dreading for some reason. I think because it's one step closer to having to do clinicals again, and I hated them in undergad. What if that happens again? I don't think I'm truly in danger of that happening, what I hated the first time around was the really down and dirty stuff about nursing, bathing people, feeding people, getting them to the commode or on the bedpan, you're phone ringing every two seconds for something that should have been diverted to the medical assistants, who instead, were sleeping in the housekeeping closet. LAst time, I wished I had more time to understand the diagnosis and the treatment plan for the patient but I was too bogged down in the aforementioned things to even have a slight grasp on the big picture. This time I won't be doing inpatient, I'll be in clinics and the whole focus is on the diagnosis and treatment plan. But alas, I am still approaching it with trepidation.

In other yuppy related news, Hubbleson and I decided to 86 the cable! I say yuppy because it seems that people tend to play up not having cable as if it is a way to measure their superiority over other people. This, however, is not the reason we did it. We kind of fell into it...RCN must have mentioned to us on some bill that they were switching to digital earlier than the rest of the nation but somehow we missed that so one morning M went to watch TV and there was only a cryptic message only visible on one channel that said 'RCN is now digital'. He called and found out that the converter-free cable ship has sailed and the Y family was not on it. After 15 minutes of ferocious messages back and forth we decided to do a pilot study of surviving without cable. We rationalized that we have Netflix and there are many episodes free online should we really start jonesing for some TV. So far so good, it only kind of sucks when I'm the only one here and on nights like this, where Hubbleson has once again tweaked something with our settings so that no matter how many buttons I push I can't get the fricken DVD player to work. These desperate times call for things like, knitting while listening to a podcast. It's like I've come full circle back to the early 19th century or something. I figure only good things can come of not having TV, I already feel more apt to go out and do things, we can watch more movies together, and we will be more productive with other household related things.

In my knitting life, I have started the Burridge Lake Aran Blanket in earnest. I can't find a good pic of the finished product without having you have to open up adobe, so you'll just have to hold your horses on that one. The blanket is for the in laws for our homemade Christmas. Which I sincerely hope that they stick to, they tend to go whole hog for Christmas and sometimes I feel we just buy things just to meet the quota and match how much you think the other person is probably spending. Luckily, the consensus this year is to only exchange homemade things. This blanket is very complicated and very large so I'm probably behind already.

I see that next on the list is "Visiting Cousin". Midway through my phone crisis of last week (it up and died suddenly on me), several phone messages filtered in from my cousin from DC by way of WI. She was in town for the weekend and wanted to see if I was free to get together for lunch. We were able to meet up on Sunday, M and I took her to Fanuiel Hall to get a snapshot of Boston since she could only stay for lunch. It was great to see her, my tech savvy husband suggested I bring wedding pics on my iPod cuz we still haven't gotten around to ordering them (it's 500 pictures, people!). It was really nice to catch up with her, that's probaby the most we've gotten to talk since we both still lived in WI.

Lastly, Boigie, who tips the scales at 18.5 pounds as of Sunday, was trying to cram his wiggly waggly self into a shoe box. He attempted to get in, it wasn't working. He got out, rearranged the tissue paper, tried to fit in again. Still a no go, he then repositioned himself horizontally in the box, still didn't work. Reposition tissue, repeat! It was quite a site to see, I feel I've been there myself with a pair of jeans I was sure fit last time. Maybe if I lay down while trying to button these....