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New Addition…
We got a new addition to our apartment last week. Blogosphere? Meet Olive. The apartmentmate got her last week, and we all fell in love instantly. She’s about four months old, and seriously one of the most energetic, friendliest cats I’ve ever met. And this face! The only real problem is that she’s VERY hard to photograph. Between how dark she is, and the fact that the only time she’s sitting still is when she’s fast asleep… it’s pretty much impossible. Except, sometimes I get lucky.
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Tempted by Sweater Knitting
Pumpkin lattes are out, and that always triggers a pavlovian response in me. Because of course, pumpkin latte time is sweater time. Never mind that it’s currently 90 damn degrees out as I type this. Facts? Who needs ‘em? So I’ve been in a sweater state of mind for about two weeks now. My knitting box is starting to look attractive again, I’m itching to pull everything out of storage, and every time I look out a window I’m half hoping that the leaves have already started to turn. But of course, they haven’t. And they won’t for a while. And if I ACTUALLY put on a sweater, I’d be…
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Burnout… Already?
I’m… …feeling: exhausted. Beyond exhausted. Utterly annihilated. My schedule is turning out to be a lot more brutal time-wise than I had expected it to be. I keep thinking to myself, “What’s the matter with me? I had this kind of 7 am to 10 pm schedule in high school, and it seemed so easy then!” I suppose everyone was right: it really does get harder the older you get. So anyway, that’s why it’s been a bit quiet. I’m hoping I’ll have adjusted a bit better by the time this coming week is over though. We’ll see. …working on: getting the apartment in order. What free time I have…
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18 Pieces of Advice for Your Freshman Year of College
It’s that time of year again, a new group of starry-eyed, excited and – lets be honest – a little scared freshmen are about to flood campus with their under-bed boxes packed to the brim and their half-weepy/half-releived parents in tow. I enjoy this time of year so much, watching as all these fresh faces navigate their way from terrified and trying to hide it to truly feeling at home here – watching a whole new generation of people fall in love with the campus that has meant so much to me over the years. As these college newbies flood in, I can’t help but think about my days in…
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Chocolate Chip Scones
I honestly haven’t been doing much baking since I landed in this new apartment last year. The oven has baffled me. Because I’m a pretty good baker. Since I learned to drive, I’ve spent every christmas helping my grandmother – who is the best baker I know who doesn’t own a bakery, her older sister being the only person to come in at a tie with her – make our family kolachi and cookies and generally learning the “tricks of the trade.” After ten years of this – and I don’t mean to sound cocky or full of myself even though I’m about to – I know what I’m doing.…
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Arts on the Square
Saturday me and the boys drove down to Scranton (NEPA’s largest major city center) to attend the 2nd annual Arts on the Square, which is essentially a gigantic craft fair that wraps all the way around Scranton’s Courthouse Square. The event is organized by ScrantonMade, a group that does an amazing job promoting the arts in the area and which has made some amazing strides in the last couple years. I hadn’t known about the event before a few weeks ago when my favorite etsy store, Tiny Galaxies (who’s owner I just happen to know and love to pieces – I promise the fact that it’s my favorite is unrelated…
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Motivation
Just a (very) quick update to let everyone know what I’ve been up to. This week I’ve been… …planning: for the semester! I’ve let myself get very caught up in course planning this past week. My schedule is a little different this semester – one of my courses is a longer class period than I’m used to, so I’ve got quite a lot of lecture shuffling and schedule adjusting to do on top of the usual revising I do every year. …working on: a few more text-heavy posts for here. They always take me a little bit longer to write because of the obsessive compulsive drive to revise anything eight…
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Sheeptastic Egg
Today I have an egg I did a while back with the intention of gifting it to my LYS owner, but alas, it was not meant to be. It just turned out with too many mistakes. I ended up with some dye leakage underneath the wax for some reason – you can see it in the middle of the photo above. That pattern was supposed to mimic the look of a knitted fabric, but something happened somewhere along the way. Maybe my wax application hadn’t been thick enough (although my grandmother is able to use the thinnest lines I’ve ever seen and they stick through several dye baths), or… well,…
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Filling Empty Wall Space
I’ve been on a home-dec kick lately. Or rather, I’ve been on a home-dec kick on PINTEREST lately. Because actually decorating the apartment requires money – at least a little – and money is exactly what I should not – no, CAN’T – spend right now. But anyway, I’ve been specifically concerned lately about our surplus of empty wall space. There’s just a lot of white, blank walls in our apartment, and it’s starting to get to me a little bit. So I’ve been looking for ideas about how to decorate using as little money as humanly possible, and Pinterest (of course) came through in spades. I figured I’d share…
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Mani Monday: Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe
So last week I helped my mom take our big galoot of a labrador, Rusalka, to the vet for her annual check-up. She’s a lab, and she’s highly excitable and STRONG. It always helps to have an extra body on hand for these things, particularly if the vet ends up with an emergency and we end up having to wait a little bit longer than our usual five minutes. Well, guess what happened? The vet ended up with not one but TWO emergencies around our appointment time and we ended up waiting for almost an hour with our big, strong, and by that point completely cracked out blonde lab. She…