My Mornings Are Foggy

Like, really foggy.

Really, really foggy even...

Which is just weird.  Fog doesn't happen here very often.  I'm told that the weather we're having is an Oregonian's Heaven, but I have yet to understand why.

With the gloomy weather outside, I thought today would be a nice time to highlight the more often ignored side of Autumn.  No one wants to admit that Autumn isn't always full of bright colors, pumpkin pie, and apple cider, but sometimes it really does just look like this:

... and with that, I'm going to climb back into bed go to class.

What's that?  You expected to see knitting on my blog?  Oh dear.  Uh, give me some time, and I'll see what I can scrape up from the depths of what seems to be the remains of a previous knitting life.  (Carole tells me that we get an extra hour this weekend.  Maybe I'll use that time to knit - wouldn't that be nice?)

I Finally Got Batteries!

...too bad I don't actually have any knitting to show you.

I'm still on the first sleeve of my Expedition and I'm slowly knitting away at another test-knit for Stephen West, but neither of those are worth showing at this stage.  (I'm almost done with Stephen's project, but not quite yet.)  It's pretty, but I may have chosen the wrong yarn for this project.   ...more on that later.

As I don't have anything to show you knitting-wise, I figured I would take more pictures of trees.  Doesn't that sound fun?  Well, you're getting them anyway.  Too bad that most of them (the trees) turned ugly before I got batteries in my camera, but there are still a few nice ones hanging around.

Today is in the 60s again, so I thought I should take advantage of the weather to walk around campus for a bit.

That tree on the left I think is one of the prettiest on campus.  Every fall it becomes so incredibly vibrant.  I'm going to miss it next year.

Some nice contrast.

And every night on my way back home I walk under a maple tree lit up by a little lamp by the sidewalk and I think it looks really cool glowing in the light.  Last night was really windy, but I sort of like the way the picture turned out anyway...

And there you have it.

P.S.  Does anyone know why sometimes you can click on my pictures to see them bigger and sometimes you can't?  These ones don't seem to work, which is really a shame - that tree in the first one really is beautiful-er close up.

Because it Seemed Like a Good Idea

Greetings again!  No pictures this time, just links.  Sorry!

So, I'm sure most of you are familiar with my sister because I link to her blog on a regular basis.  She's a fantastic knitter and she has that snarky, sarcastic sense of humor that I love.

She and I, we get along pretty well.  She makes me laugh and I continue to be her dorky little brother.  See where this is going?

No?

Well, over the summer she and I got to talking about starting our own podcast because, well, where else are you going to find a duo that covers different ages, genders, knitting styles, and climates?

So, months later, here it is: Our very first podcast episode!  It's actually so new that it's not up on iTunes yet, and our shownotes blog is still a work in progress, but I thought I'd let you all know anyway.  If there are any podcast listeners among you guys, I'd love to hear what you think.

(I must admit, I had no idea my Minnesotan accent was so strong!  I mean, people tell me so on a daily basis, but I sort of just thought they were crazy...)

I hope you enjoy it!

Uhhhhh...

Sadly, that's about all my mind can manage to produce right now.

I apologize that my presence has more or less disappeared ever since I got back to school, but I suppose that is the nature of a degree in which there is always more work to do.

...and there is.  I've just planned what pieces I'm going to have to prepare for most of my grad school auditions and I need to get them prepared ASAP because one of the schools needs a preliminary tape by December 1.  That doesn't give me much time.  I am currently buried beneath a pile of grad school stress, not the least of which is due to the fact that I have only scraped the top of my applications at this point.

Note to self:  Must. Start. Applications.

Knitting-wise, I finished the back and fronts of my Expedition and ...and haven't touched it since then.

(Oddly enough, I very vividly remember smiling when I took this picture)

I need to get back to that if I ever want it to get finished.  These things don't knit themselves, you know.  (That was more for me than for you.)

After accidentally taking a nap outside of our mail room while reading the biography of Milarepa today, I decided it was time to get off campus for a bit and I traveled to my long-lost LYS.  (Well, it was there all along, I just hadn't managed to get there since I got back to school.)

As I had a comfortable sum of store credit for knitting that lace shawl for them, I thought I would treat myself to a bit of unnecessary yarn purchasing.  You see, I don't really "stash" yarn as I normally don't buy it unless I already have a purpose for it.  I already have more than enough yarn to knit with for quite a while (and a large queue of projects either already in the works, or waiting to be started with yarn I already have), but I was starting to feel guilty about not visiting the wonderful women at my LYS, so I went.

I got four of the 8 colors needed to knit Kirsten Kapur's Staccato sweater because I fell in love with it long ago and then re-fell in love with it when I discovered it in my queue a couple of days ago.  Here's a question though - is it completely awful to knit mine in the same colors that she used for her son's?  As you all know, color choices and I just don't go well together, and I love the ones she chose and would rather not F it up, ya know?  Anyway, my LYS only had four of the colors, so I'm going to have to search around for the other four before I start it anyway.

I also picked up a pair of Addi lace needles so I don't have to knit poor Fernfrost on my knitpicks harmony needles anymore (I felt that poor Fernfrost, in all its cashmere glory, deserved something a little better)(that is, whenever I get back to knitting poor Fernfrost.)

And then because they didn't have Knitted Lace of Estonia , or the color of Blue Sky Alpacas Suri Merino that I was looking for (which doesn't even exist, so I'm not surprised), I picked up a copy of Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting (you know, in case I ever actually knit something fair isle.  It may happen sometime, you never know).

And that's that.  (and it's even more exciting because I still have more than half of my store credit left.)

Oh, here's a tree for you, because I think it's really pretty when the sun starts going down and shines on it.  It's right outside my dorm.  I would have taken more tree pictures, but my batteries died and I don't have any more.

It's prettier in real life, I promise.

Also, on the off chance that anyone reads this in the next two and half hours and has any desire to listen to an orchestra performance, I have my first concert of the year tonight at 8pm (central time).  You can listen to it through iTunes I think from this website.  I can't guarantee mind-blowing amazingness as it's the first concert and there are a lot of new players who need to be kicked out or strangled until they learn how to play in tune learn how to play as an ensemble, but we're working on that.  We're playing Sibelius' Finlandia and Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.  There is also the Nielsen Flute Concerto being performed by last year's concerto competition winner.  Oddly enough, I'm auditioning in just a few weeks with the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto for this year's competition.  Wish me luck!