Sick

On Monday, I fell into the Charles River, submerging my head, albeit briefly, into its murky waters. On Thursday, I had the beginnings of a sore throat. Coincidence? Probably. This isn’t the first time I’ve been submerged in the Charles River, and I seriously doubt it will be the last. The other occasions (I’ve been thrown in twice before, and this was my second time falling in) haven’t resulted in any illness.

The sore throat, however, has escalated into a proper cold. It’s funny how these things happen: on Thursday, I almost thought I was imagining it, but on yesterday, at a conference in Connecticut, it became more and more evident that this wasn’t just going to be something I was going to shrug off. Plans to go to the gym on my return to Cambridge were shelved, and I’ve had a very lazy sick day, today.

On the bright side, I have made it out of the house (if only to visit the public library and mail a birthday card), I hosted a small, impromptu brunch (even making everyone scrambled eggs!), I’m nearing the end of Digging to America (which I have a sneaking suspicion is going to end in a completely predictable way), and the cardigan for my soon-to-arrive cousin is nearing completion. The knitting and seaming is done. Next weekend I’ll visit Windsor Button to pick up buttons for the closure and sew in the ends – then I’ll be done. I’m really happy with how it looks. Weather and health permitting, I’ll take some progress photos tomorrow.

With the cardigan close to finished, I’ve also been working on my Lenten Rose Socks. These have suffered a reasonably serious setback. After turning the heel, I tried them on, and could barely get them over my foot. My intention is to give these socks to Rinske, either for her birthday if I can finish them in a speedy fashion, or for Christmas, if I don’t make that deadline, and I can’t imagine her feet are smaller than mine. I unraveled the completely, and started over with a larger needle size, and loose thoughts in my mind. I’m still not at the point I was before, but things are going much more quickly the second time around!

Shetland Triangle Done

So, the Shetland Triangle (aka The Road Kill Shawl) is done:

It has actually been very close to done for a long time – it spent a lot of time blocking on the floor – but this week I finally took the pins out, took care of the ends, and wrapped it up and sent it on it’s way. For the most part, I’m very happy with how it turned out. I probably could have bound off a little more loosely, and I just sort of made up the finished size when I stretched it out, which, in hindsight was probably a mistake, but I still love the pattern. I love it when you get curved lines on something you just knit back and forth on. Physics in action, and all that.

Swimming in the Charles

I went rowing this morning for the first time in, well, ages (probably something approaching a month). I knew it was going to be a shaky start from the moment I put the boat in the water and started putting the oars in. I’m always a bit shaky reaching over to put the port oar in the water (note to self: port = red; starboard = green) but today I really struggled to find my balance while doing it. However, I managed to find my rhythm once I was on the water, and by the time I’d turned around and was on my way back I’d got confident enough to try to minimize the amount of time my oars spent hitting the water on the recovery. What a mistake! I should know better than to have any confidence while rowing. I promptly capsized. Luckily it was a beautiful day out (not cold), and I was relatively close to the shore when I went it, so I was able to take the boat to the side of the river and climb back in that way. On the bright side, having a boat full of water stabilized it significantly, and I had a much nicer row back to the boathouse. That said, I won’t be capsizing on a regular basis, if I can help it.

Of course, capsizing meant that I was left with wet underwear, so after I’d showered I headed into The Gap and fixed that problem. I also had to buy a new pair of jeans. My last pair of jeans had served me well, but on their most recent washing developed a couple of largish holes in unfortunate areas. I’ve also put on some weight in the past six years (more on that in a bit), and it really was time for me to go up a size (or, as it turned out, two). I ended up buying a pair of Joe’s Provocateur’s and I love them. They’re super comfortable (that they actually fit me probably helps), they’re reasonably flattering, and I don’t need to shorten them! Hooray! (So far as I’m concerned, any jeans company that makes something that fits short people has earned my custom).

Yahoo! Photos is in the process of shutting down, and I recently transferred all my old photos to Flickr (I seem to have gained a month of Pro membership by doing this). Aside from the pleasure of rediscovering photos I’d long forgotten, I was given a stark reminder of my weight gain. It’s not that I haven’t realized that I’ve put on 30 lb/14 kg since 2002, it’s just that I’ve sort of avoided doing it anything about it. Behold, the wake up call:

February 2002: I’m in the long, blue dress and weigh 100 lb/45 kg

August 2007: I’m in the brown and cream dress and weigh 130 lb/59 kg

I know that 30 pounds doesn’t sound like much, but when it’s nearly a third of what you used to weigh it’s a problem. Clearly, I plan on doing something about it. I’ve been trying to increase the amount of exercise I’m getting, and have been concentrating on eating food with a decent nutritional value. Reasons for losing weight?

• My cholesterol is borderline high. It’s mainly my “good” cholesterol that puts me there, but my cholesterol hasn’t always been too high (although my good cholesterol has always been high).
• I’m worried I won’t fit in the cox seat come next spring. It’s a tighter fit every year.
• I’ve noticed that when I eat too much I fall into a kind of stupor. I think my body diverts blood from my brain to my stomach.
• I plan on spending some time lying on the beach in December and January. I’d rather not feel self-conscious while I’m doing it.
• I’d really like to feel better about how I look.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

Barbecue, Soup, and Knitting

Last night, I went to Kendra and David’s apartment for food and games. They made a delicious eggplant parmesan, and I supplied dessert. I made strawberry shortcake (from Cook 1.0), and in the process got a bit nervous, as shortcake was described as quintessentially American. What was this Australian doing making shortcake for a bunch of Americans? I’m not sure that it was perfect (I may have over-pureed the berries), but it was pretty good. I’d do it again. David and Kendra hadn’t warned me ahead of time, but they also had some Tim Tams, and we ended up demonstrating Tim Tam slams to everyone else (well, David and Kendra demonstrated. I just provided commentary). So we ended up with a quintessentially Australian dessert, too.

Following dinner, I headed over to Anna and Chris’s place, where they had had pre-party dinner, and had moved on to pre-party drinks. Sadly, we didn’t make it to the party (or at least I didn’t; I think Jason and Anna might have), but it was really nice to catch up with Jason, Chris, and Anna. Despite not making it to the party as intended, it was still past 2 in the morning when I crawled into bed. Needless to say, when my alarm went off at 9 this morning, I was less than impressed.

The first duty of the day was helping with a graduate student barbecue. Officially, I was on set up duty (getting food and drinks to the barbecue location, setting things up, getting the grills started), but I ended up staying for most of the grilling, filling in where extra hands were needed. This meant I spent time putting hamburgers and hot dogs on grills, delivering meat to tables, and separating frozen hamburgers. By time the last burger went onto the grill (around 3, and when I left) I stank of smoke and had burger meat all over myself. I couldn’t wait to get home, shower, and nap. Luckily, this is just what I did.

I also found some time this weekend to work on my latest knitting project, a wrap-around cardigan for my newest cousin, who will arrive early in the new year. The doctor is pretty sure that my newest cousin will be a girl, and I really hope he’s right; I’m knitting the cardigan in pink and orange.

The pattern I’m using is for EZ’s surplice baby jacket, which is hidden in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue of Vogue Knitting. This is my first time knitting from an Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern, and I love it. It’s amazing what you can do with a bit of garter stitch! The choice of yarn has also worked out very nicely. I wanted some sort of stripes, but I wanted a little variation within them, which lead me to order two semi-solid colors of Koigu Kersti. I love it when things end up looking even better than I had planned.

I’ve actually knit quite a bit more than this, but these are the most recent photos I have.

While I knitted, I listened to Digging to America, Anne Tyler’s most recent novel (so far as I know). I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Anne Tyler; I find her books a bit hit and miss. I’m enjoying this one so far, though. Based on what I’ve heard so far, and the back cover blurb, the novel’s about what it means to “belong” in a country, even when you’ve lived in it for a long time. Particularly pertinent for me, having lived in the US for almost 7 years (although not continuously; I’ve been in Boston for 5 years now). For the most part I feel like this is my home; in many ways I’m more comfortable here than in Australia (and just the other day, someone mentioned that they just don’t think of me as an international student, presumably because English is my first language), but I’m also regularly reminded that this isn’t the place I grew up. It’s mainly small frustrations: having strangers understand what I’m trying to communicate, remembering to use American-English vocabulary (I’ve no idea what will happen to me if I ever go back to Australia on a permanent basis, and there’s a whole lot of words that I’ve forgotten which is the Australian-English version, and which is the American-English), having a good intuition of how people think, tentatively checking if things that are acceptable in Australia are acceptable here. Of course, this is what makes the world interesting, and Boston is international enough that I’m not really that much of a novelty.

This evening, I turned my attention to food. I’ve been thinking a lot about pumpkin soup recently, and, with a bit of searching, found a recipe for which I had all the ingredients. To be honest, I didn’t quite have all the ingredients; I was a little short on stock, but I made up the difference with water. The final product was fine, but I probably won’t make it again. It was a little watery (I wonder why?), and not nearly as orange as I would have liked it to be.

To finish the evening, I made Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins from The Muffin Bible. At the moment, I have quite a bit of fruit that needs using up, and this was my effort to make some sort of dent in it. I’m continually impressed by this book. It has a huge number of recipes, there’s nothing formulaic about them, and everything I’ve made from it so far has been excellent. The Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins are no exception: I can report that they’re delicious heated with butter (the only way I’ve tried them so far).

Idlewild

I worked late (for me) last night, and today found myself alternating between sleeping, reading The New Yorker, and listening to The Lay of the Land while working on a cardigan for my newest cousin, who will be arriving early in the new year (more on this later). We’re well and truly out of summer and into autumn in Boston, and much of today was rainy, so this wasn’t an entirely terrible way to spend a day.

This evening, I made a bag of microwave popcorn, hooked up my computer to the TV, and watched Idlewild (which I picked up from the library on my way to work yesterday). While the plot was nothing special, and full of clichés, I really enjoyed this movie; more for its singing and dancing than for anything else. It was fun, and an ideal way to end a lazy Saturday.