a total hodge-podge

Oh my goodness, I haven’t posted here in over a month! I’ve just been so, so busy with the teaching and the tutoring and the research and the illness and whatnot that what little free time I usually have completely evaporated in November. I spent literally every single day of Thanksgiving break writing lectures, coding data, and preparing conference abstracts. I did take a brief break to make some delicious food for Thanksgiving, using the same menu of recipes that we used last year (and wearing my very seasonally-appropriate maple-leaf cardigan):

So, there’s not really much of anything to report on the knitting front. The only “progress” I made has been ripped out…I cast on for a vest in the first week of November, following along with everyone else in celebrating “Vestvember”. I’d planned to make a vest version of Stripes!, using my leftover Noro and a skein of Cascade Eco wool:

Alas, I ended up knitting almost the entire thing, only to abandon it, with plans to rip. Why? Well, for one, I decided to take several people’s advice and go with zero ease. And I’m realizing that I just don’t DO zero ease. I like a little breathing room! The other issue is that a gauge of 4 sts/inch, at least on someone as petite as I am, is really pretty darn chunky for a vest. So, my one project for November has been set aside, although I do have plans to take my adapt my original idea into something I’d like a lot better, using the sock-weight version of Noro for a vest with better drape. Wait and see!

Oh, and speaking of Stripes!, I wore it in one of my 365 self-portrait shots early last week:

Wearing Stripes! is not news, in itself, since I wear that sweater ALL THE TIME, but that photo spurred a discussion about a hypothetical Knitting Olympics (which you can read, if you click on that photo). Having become pretty much oblivious to everything that’s happened since I started reading for comps (I’m not really exaggerating much on that one), I hadn’t even realized the Olympics were coming up at all! But they are. So, if you inclined towards the combination of Olympics and Knitting, it’s time to start thinking! Just a PSA for y’all.

One last thing that actually IS news, is that we’ve adopted a third cat! We just picked her up yesterday. Her name is Nina, and she’s 1.5 years old, but very very tiny. We saw her several weeks ago in the adoption center at Petco, and couldn’t get her out of our heads. Here she is:

I have no idea when I’ll be able to post next. I give my last lecture tomorrow, but then there’s review sessions and exam grading and whatnot keeping me pretty busy right through to the end of the semester. To anyone who has been patiently waiting for me to write up patterns for a few of the things I’ve been promising to write up patterns for, my deepest apologies…I promise I will start tackling those once I get a little time after the semester is over. I hope December is treating everybody well so far!