I’ve recently become re-interested in knitting.  I say RE-interested because I tend to move away from knitting for about 2 or 3 months, then move back into it for another 2 or 3 months. But for now…it seems to be sticking! I’ve begun plans for Christmas gifts - and unlike last year they will get done! (Or so I tell myself)

There’s a few things that keep me interested in knitting:

• New Yarn
• Ravelry
• Interesting, and/or, nerdy patterns
• Quickness.

New Yarn

I love the feel of…STUFF! The softer, the better! I have a habit of wandering through clothing stores, or yarn stores, and just GROPING (yes, terrible word…but eh?) the yarn. When I find one my sense of touch approves of, I usually buy it.  This is why I *MUST* stay out of yarn stores! I’d buy half of them at any given chance.

Ravelry

Ravelry is an AWESOME community of knitters - ranging from teens to elderly! It’s great to see all these knitters and their projects, and their finished stuff.  It’s a great resource for patterns, and just to read something when I’m completely and utterly bored.  As far as I’m concerned…life is good over on Ravelry.

Interesting and/or nerdy patterns

I get bored easily, I’m sure it’s not ADD since I can control my boredom, but if it’s something like knitting and it’s just doing the same thing over, and over, and over, and over (well you get the idea) again, I’ll usually just put it away and say “I’ll work on it later!” and usually never get to it, frog it, and use the yarn for something small and easy like a scarf.  I also hate gauging, with a fiery passion, so the less chance I’ll actually *NEED* to gauge (like a scarf for example lol) the happier I am.

However, one exception to this is if it’s a nerdy pattern.  If it’s nerdy, even if it’s stockinette in the round (i.e. just KNITTING) I’ll keep at it.  Hopefully there’s not two things to go with it ;).

Quickness

As previously mentioned, I prefer patterns to be quick and easy! I’m an “instant gratification” type of chick, and I like it that way! The only thing I plan to take my time on is my school and family - so knitting better be at, roughly, the speed of light!

What do you say? Do you have restrictions on knitting, or are you the masochist knitter who has to work in lace weight yarn on size 0 needles?

The olympics are coming up, and with this people have found SOMETHING wrong with them, so they feel they have to fight it.  We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t fight everything, every step of the way…now would we?

I know, I’m much more a “I don’t care, it’s not affecting me.” type of person, I don’t see any reason to really help anyone outside of my immediate social circle. I’m of the belief “if they don’t want to change, why force them too?” or “You’re a bloody CONQUERED NATION” now let me explain

“If they don’t want to chnge, why force them too?”

This is mostly directed at the drug addicts, crack whores, etc. out there who live on the street, or are constantly going back to abusive relationships, or whatever the reason is.  If people don’t want to change, they aren’t going to! If they see no reason to change, they won’t.  You can help them to see it, but if they do see the reason, but still don’t change…then what can you do? You can’t keep funneling reserves to them in hopes one day, down the road, they’ll change.

“You’re a bloody CONQUERED NATION!”

I’m not a racist, really I’m not. I try to judge people based on what they show me, not by their skin.  But the natives are one ethinicity that can piss me off faster than anything else in this world.  I’m not going to be gentle about this, I promise.

The natives, the ones who are all “Omg you stole our land, we deserve reserves, and this, and that because you stole our land! lolololol” should really just shut up. Natives are a CONQUERED nation! It happened when Rome was in power, it happened when britain was in power! Why should MY tax money go to feed THEIR lifestyle? “Oh we gave them smallpox and liquor!” well they gave us tobacco and cancer, can I claim reparations if my mom dies of lung cancer for smoking? No? Why do they get to claim reparations from me then?

Why are we giving them land and money? We’re FEEDING their negative lifestyle that they push onto their children, giving them stuff without them EVER working for it is creating the vicious life cycle of drug, alcohol, physical, and verbal abuse!

Why do we give them preference? When I was looking to applying to vet school they offer 20 spots for each prairie province, plus 2 for “native people”. WTH?! Why do the natives get special preference?! They’ve had a hard life?! So bloody what?! Many people have had a hard life! You don’t see them have spots HANDED to them! When you apply for stuff, why do you delcare you’re native? I don’t declare I’m scottish and irish - a couple of the most abused ethnicities out there btw.

I would just like to point out one thing to the natives who bitch and moan about their TERRIBLE plight of having reserves, and stuff for really cheap, and money handed to them: JEWS!

YES! JEWS! They have had it WAY worse than you bloody whiners. So suck it up buttercup.

Whatever.

As I’m sure many of you know - because I’m assuming many of you actually have to use a calendar to get by on your day to day shenanigans - Valentine’s day is fast approaching.  This day has EXTREMELY split views on it - and I think it can be see directly down the middle.

Most people either hate or ADORE valentine’s day - if you’re one of the few neutral folks…gtfo, you’re not helping my point any.

But I digress! I find that people who are single around this time of year hate this holiday, and people who are flourishing in young love well…love this holiday.

Me? I think it’s a very WOMAN holiday, not so much love! What do all the adds tell you? “Buy HER that, buy HER this, blahblahblah engagement, debt, roses, money, chocolate, credit cards, teddy bears so forth” amiright? I think I am.

This holiday has gone from “cherish the one you’re with” to “buy her diamonds, or she’ll think you don’t love her.” What about the man? Sure diamonds are man’s best friend…and I think a dog might not be the best idea for a gift, but why can’t you get him stuff? Why can’t we women surprise our men at work with chocolate and flowers?

Oh that’s gay? …well that’s gay.

I throw out this to you women who demand equality - yet also demand valentine’s day be all about you - go out and do something for your man this year.  Buy HIM something, take HIM out! Maybe not diamond, or teddy bears…but hey! Who doesn’t love chocolate?

Knitting has never been a huge part of my life, I didn’t grow up watching my grandma and mom knit and chat like I see so many people I have.  In fact, any “hand knit” item I have from my grandma was actually made on her knitting machine.  E for effort gram, e for effort.

My grandma can *BASICALLY* knit, i’m talking knit and purl, nothing fancy. Maybe a few knitting in the round patterns, but nothing more extensive than a stockinette stitch hat.  I had to practically BRIBE her into teaching me how to knit, she hates it that much.  But after watching her do a few rows of garter stitch, I was hooked. After my scarf I moved onto hats, then fingerless gloves, socks, sweaters - anything that could be knit I wanted to know how to do it.

This was in about grade 11, so about 5 years ago.  At that time a friend of mine was just breaking out of a simple single crochet scarf onto bigger and better things - well…smaller and better, she was crocheting for a new little sister that was on the way. I love her dearly, but she just couldn’t teach me the basics of crochet, she new her moves, and that’s about as far as it ever got.  So I picked up a hook, some cheap yarn  i never planned on using for anything but practice, and learned to crochet.  I’m entirely sure I learned improperly, because when I try to recreate patterns they look like a giant muck of garbage, but when I just look at what the person made, I can usually recreate it.

But where I’m going with this - I find, and most knitters / crocheters can probably agree on this, when you find yourself with a spare minute or two and you pull out the yarn you find yourself brought into an almost trance like state (especially if you’re doing something pretty easy).  This is probably why I was hooked, my mind is like a 2 year old on crack some days, wandering from topic to topic in a mad array of zig zags, but when I pull out the yarn and the needles it slows WAY down and I can actually focus on my thoughts.  I can work through any problems I have, or plan for stuff that’s upcoming…meditation I guess.  While old monks in tibet require tea and years of practice, I find a good knitting project and some ambient sound helps the best.

-Nonsensical Salute

Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again.

Dorothy Day

Smoking has always been a fairly trendy topic - every couple of years someone attempts to revive a petition or something else to try and make things better for the non-smokers and to essentially force smokers to quit smoking or stand at least 30m away from anything and anyone.

But my question is - what is the beef? People tell me that smoking is a dirty, filthy, habit that makes you stink and makes people around you gag - which I guess could be true, but could also be said of eating when I watch some people do it o_O;.

I look at my mom, who’s been a smoker for longer than I’ve ever been alive and people tell me they wouldn’t know she was a smoker - she doesn’t smell, she doesn’t have bad teeth (well she has coffee stains, but not nictoine stains) and she doesn’t have the yellow fingers, or any of the signs of BEING a smoker aside from the fact she’s currently smoking in front of you.

Maybe because I’ve grown up with it, I’m more accepting of it.  I feel bad for the people standing in -30 degree weather because a few people got fed up with them. I know a lot of people are just like “Well they can quit if they don’t want to stand in -30 degree weather!” Yes and the crack whore down the road can just quit crack and get herself an education to get herself out of that lifestyle, and we’ll all have golden toilets to crap on! Life’s not as black and white as “Quit, or suffer.” Very few people have the will power to just quit cold turkey like that.

A friend of mine, her father had been a fairly big part in trying to ban smoking inside buildings, such as pubs, restaurants, so forth.  He got what he wanted, but now whenever he walks down the street he says it feels just like walking through a club with all the smokers.  Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

One of my courses this year is STS, or science, technology and society.  Basically how does science and technology affect society, also how can society affect technology and science? My prof for the class is basically a load of crock when it comes to teaching - he just sums up the articles we’ve read - but he has given us articles that are definitely food for thought.

Two articles we’ve been told to read recently are kids of my generation and ahead versus my parents generation - hell even my boyfriend’s generation (and he’s only 5 years older than I).  They basically say that people my age and younger have been immersed in a digital era where everything is instantaneous - twitter updates to my phone, a phone in my pocket at all times, instant music downloads, internet at the speed of light, games that only take seconds to load, etc.  We’ve learned to have 6 msn conversations going, while watching tv, while listening to music, while studying and we’ve learned how to deal with it.  We have no need for slow, methodical, sequential order and I have to agree with this.  I know for myself I’m able to sit in HUB, one of the busiest buildings on Campus, and read my notes and know WHAT i’m reading even if I’m interrupting my reading every 10 minutes to check twitter, or facebook, or whatever I have going on at the time.

Because of this, however, students are finding school to be too slow, too boring, so they do what they’ve learned to do best - tune boring stuff out.  I feel teachers need to update how they’re teaching.  I’m not suggesting we make class so fast it’s like an epileptic seizure waiting to happen - but we need to update how we teach people.  I think older teachers either need to adapt, or retire, because the reason kids act so ADD nowadays is because they’re BORED.  Granted they were probably never taught how to deal with the boredom appropriately, but it’s still THERE.  They need images, movies clips, action right here, right NOW!

On the other hand though, parents could teach their children to deal with the way people teach. I don’t know…what do you think?

I don’t promise this blog will actually GO anywhere - that’s far too ambitious for me - but it’s a nice sort of thought, isn’t it? Maybe I should begin like anything new - tell you about myself up until this point.

I live in good ol’ Edmonton and go to the University of Alberta (hence the name) I’m currently in my second year of a “I don’t know what the hell I want to do with my life” degree. I hear many people are apart of this degree - it’s a popular faculty. I’ve settled on education for now, but who knows what’s going on next semester.  I figure I’ll major in Biology and minor in French - easy grades I hear.

This is the year I promised myself I wouldn’t procrastinate, I’d get the syllabuses (syllabi?), mark down my tests, when projects/papers are due, and get in the over achieving keener groove! Start out mellow, stay mellow.  If I get it done in it’s proper steps I won’t be all “OMG! A 20 PAGE PAPER IS DUE TOMORROW! /stocks up on energy drinks”, right? How many of you have decided this too? Yeah? How many are going to follow through with it? Yeah…that’s what I thought too.

It’s not like we’re BAD students, we PLAN to be good, we know HOW to do well, we know HOW to plan ahead of time. Do the whole “write the paper, leave it for a few weeks, revise it, leave it for a few weeks, revise it, leave it..” and so forth…but how does anyone expect us to do that the night before?! We don’t, we do it the night before, leave it for our 20 minute power nap (if some of us are that lucky) do a shoddy revision job, then hand it in 20 minutes late to a glowering TA.

And they say University preps you for real life. I don’t see how, I don’t feel like I’m anymore of a critical thinker, time manager extraordinare, than I was back when I was coasting through highschool on my high 80’s. Maybe it just takes time? Maybe by 4th year I’ll have settled into a “I’ll do a 3.5 this semester!” groove rather than have these starry eyed visions of a 4.0 in each class.

For now though, I have lunch to eat and a ridiculously huge history paper to research.  Will the paper be researched today? …if you said yes, go back and re-read the post.