I hadn’t purposefully coordinated my new wave boredom-combating efforts with the New Year, but maybe it happened subconsciously. My recent efforts:

• Yoga Club. This is a University of Chicago student organization that offers MWF drop-in yoga classes, $5 for students and $10 for non-students. I went for the first time last Friday. For whatever reason, I didn’t feel like I was getting much out of it physically then. But yesterday I went back and it was really good. I think I am going to keep it up. It’s good to have some directed, social physical activity in addition to my solo walks.
• Regular reading. Last quarter I borrowed a bunch of books from the U of C library, but I didn’t read very many of them, and didn’t read in general as much as I would have liked. I think part of the problem is that I always pick up a bunch of academic books when I go there, discovered through overly ambitious stack browsing, and it’s just not realistic for me to slough through that much dense material when it’s not associated with a class. Most of the fiction books I am interested have already been checked out by other people. This quarter I have discovered that you can make IIL requests through the Chicago Public Library’s website! So I am attempting to keep up a steady diet of mixed fiction and non-fiction books.
• Knitting. My manager Lynn introduced me to Ravelry. I’m not sure how much I’ll get into the site — I am not the most disciplined nor prolific knitter, so I’m not hat interested in documenting my projects. But it is a good place for inspiration, so good that I am already inspired to pick up some yarn and start on the waffle-knit raglan sweater of my dreams. Maybe I’ll even check out the Knitting and Crocheting Circle at the Blackstone Library some time.
• Photography. Not much going on with this yet, especially because it is so cold. But I renewed my Flickr Pro account today and posted a couple of photos of my new family of succulents and Kuma, my roommate’s ferret.
• Movies. I need to take more advantage of Doc Films, and AMC’s A.M.Cinema ($6 tickets before noon! And the 6 bus stops a block away!). I am already happy with my recent discovery of ITVS Community Cinema. They show free documentaries every month, with a panel discussion afterwards. Last month I saw Helvetica, and today I am going to see a screening of Tulia, Texas.
• Project Gutenberg volunteering. Go massively distributed proofreading! Admittedly my enthusiasm for this activity is directly correlated with how interesting I find the book I am working on. But it’s nice to have a volunteer thing that I can anywhere, any time, and for as long as I want.

tags: books, knitting, movies

It is getting cold in Providence and for some reason I didn’t bring a scarf to school. So I’ve started knitting again. To make it more interesting I decided I wanted to learn how to emulate the waffle texture of thermal long underwear. My main requirement, since I was making a scarf, was that the stitch would be reversible and wouldn’t curl like stockinette stitch does. After trying out a bunch of different methods, I’ve settled on a pattern based on this thermal sweater. Here it is:

Thermal Waffle Knit Scarf
Cast on 24 stitches (or any other multiple of four, depending on the size of your needles, yarn and how wide you want the scarf to be).

Row 1-2: Knit all the way through
Row 3-4: K2, P2 to end.

And that’s it! If you like this kind of textured stitch, you might also look into seed stitch, waffle seed stitch and this thermal long underwear stitch, which I have yet to try out.

tags: knitting

Since I listen to so much C-SPAN on the weekends and at work, I’ve been listening to more music while I’m in my room. I’ve recently started listening to Alligator by the National. I’m not usually that into country rock (although I guess I do like My Morning Jacket), but I really like the way the National sounds. They remind me a bit of Eleventh Dream Day.

Progress on my sweater is slow but steady. I’m still increasing 8 stitches every other row, which means that each round keeps taking longer to finish. I’m looking forward to getting to the main part of the sweater when I won’t have to keep track of rounds and can just knit totally mindlessly. I think I want to take some pictures of my work soon so I can look back and see how far I’ve come once the sweater is finished.

I biked to CVS yesterday between classes. I used my helmet and my new bag for the first time. Both worked well, although right now it wold be nice if the helmet had ear flaps to cover my poor so-cold-they-sting ear lobes. Now that I’ve taken the basket off, and learned to always remember to put up the kickstand before I start riding, it hasn’t been making any weird noises at all. I love my bike! I can’t wait for it to get a bit warmer, so me and McComas can go biking on the trail near here. No cars or huge hills!

I’m already looking forward to making a trip to Whole Foods this weekend before Mummy comes for more oatmeal, cereal and tea. Hooray.

tags: biking, knitting, music

Guess who just picked up a stitch that had run down six rows, without a crochet hook?

tags: happy, knitting, work