I’m doing intarsia in the round, first time ever. I’m not as good with color as I am with texture…

This year has vanished so quickly. I have a week and a half before fall classes are over. I took two semesters of organic chemistry and labs over the summer; that was fun and stressful. I’m in biochem, nutrition, biostats, and genetics right now; all my classes are going well and it’s been a good semester. 

The only thing I’ve knit recently is a hat for my Halloween costume; I was a dinosaur, so I sewed spikes onto a shirt, a tail onto a pair of pants, and knit a hat to match. The entire ensemble was assembled in just a few hours, so it’s not as neat as it could’ve been, but it was a fun Halloween.

I’ve been working a bit on Arundel; I’m finally going to finish it…I’m amazed that I’ve never finished my other two mostly-finished sweaters. A mission for break, I suppose. 

Well, in August I moved to Austin, started some amazing classes, started dating an (I thought) amazing boyfriend, and had a great first couple months. The BF and I had some rather jarring ups and downs toward the end of the year, but I got A’s in all my classes. Besides some frustrating health problems (apparently, in addition to not being able to eat gluten, I cannot eat anything without vomiting, getting really dizzy, and experiencing general pain throughout my whole GI tract), it was a good semester.

Over break I experimented a bit with double-knitting and made a scarf for the BF.

It was stash yarn I’d gotten in Massachusetts, some very soft alpaca, and I didn’t have enough for a full-length scarf, so I got two skeins of a different yarn in pretty similar colors and then switched the stripes. I thought it was a neat effect.

I really like the vertical stripes.

The BF was ecstatic upon receiving this scarf; his whole family thought it was amazing, and he wore it everywhere. He gushed things like, "I really hoped you’d make something for me, but you always say that you don’t finish anything, and I was afraid to ask you because I thought you wouldn’t want to make me anything. This is the coolest gift I’ve ever gotten!" etc, etc.

On January 15th, though, I got a call from his ex-girlfriend’s roommate, telling me that the BF had been cheating with his ex-girlfriend since…well, the entire time we were dating. 

He still has the scarf. He’s still saying he loves me and he can change, too, but I stopped listening to that BS a month ago.

I finished my Team Zissou Hat:

And I made another GAAA square:

I also made a doily this weekend. It’s currently drying in the 105F sun. Texas is too damn hot.

I leave for Austin on August 21. I have two weeks of work left, then I’m going to Amherst, MA for a while to see my brother, and as soon as I return home I’m moving to Austin. I will only live in this house for 13 more days. I can’t quite believe it. I cannot imagine how everything will change. It’s like trying to imagine a non-carbon based life-form. It’s simply impossible, unfathomable.

For the summer, I’ve been working in the R&D lab at Daisy Brand (sour cream and cottage cheese). I love my job. Food science is intriguing, and it’s much less toxic than the organic chemistry lab I worked in last summer.

I’m taking physical chemistry, genetics I, persuasive & argumentative writing, research methods, and computing for biomedical engineers next semester. P chem scares me a little. I loved physics, and I’m great at chemistry, but after a cursory look through my text I do feel a tad nervous.

Woo. Life is zipping on by. I’m 18. I’m working full time. I’m starting at a huge university–so different from community college. I’m moving out in two weeks. I’m registered to vote. I’m excited, and I’m scared.

I wrote my speech for graduation today. I kept it short and limited it to four bits of advice: follow through on your dreams, think for yourself, broaden your mind, and try to be happy.

I’ve been knitting more.

My feet always seem to end up in my knitting pictures.