the middle knitter

I have successfully made it back from Vietnam! The trip was amazing, and there will be photos posted soon (but not nearly as many as there were for Rome, because I did much less sightseeing this time). This trip was less about sightseeing and more about experiencing the culture. I learned a lot on this trip--about Vietnamese culture, food, language . . . I also got a lot of perspective. I think everyone from a developed country like the US should be required to spend some time in a developing country like Vietnam, just to realize how big the world really is, and how much we take for granted. Vietnam is a bustling, vibrant country full of beautiful people, and it was such a pleasure to spend a month there.

. . . on the other hand, next time I go away for a month, I have got to make sure there are better spam control methods running. Coming back to 2000 spam comments is unpleasant in the extreme. Most of them didn't actually make it through the filter to get posted, but I still had to delete all of them. (Twice, actually--once in my e-mail, once here on the site.) The moment I get back to school, I'm upgrading to the newest version of Movable Type and installing some sort of spam control. (Probably some sort of captcha. I know some people are annoyed by them, but they're very effective, and much less annoying than, say, having to create an account and log in in order to post a quick comment.)

Now that I'm back, it's just about time to throw myself hard into my senior year of college. I'll be writing an honors thesis and taking way more credits than I ought to since I'm determined to graduate with honors and with a minor in Religion. I'll also be applying to the Peace Corps--and even though they tell me that's a huge hassle, I'm extremely grateful that I'll be doing that instead of studying for the GRE and applying to grad school.

This summer, I started off with a big surge of amigurumi (which you will all get to see soon, but not yet, because it's going to go up for sale on Etsy soon), but quickly slipped into a pattern of just making socks. Have a gander. (Warning: pasty ankles!)

Eyelet rib socks, made almost entirely on the train home from school, out of some Knitpicks Essential in Coral that I got on clearance. (I have mixed feelings about Knitpicks Essential. On the one hand, it's insanely cheap for sock yarn. On the other hand, it doesn't wear very well--it gets pilly and worn out pretty fast. I keep knitting with it, though, because the price is right.)

Red Heart socks! No, seriously! I can't tell you how weird it was to stumble across this Red Heart sock yarn in Hobby Lobby. It's 70% superwash wool and 30% nylon, with aloe added. The Yarn Harlot posted a while back about Lion Brand coming out with a sock yarn almost exactly like that, so I guess it's just Red Heart trying to keep up. It works for me! These are anklets, because I only wanted to buy one ball. The yarn isn't as soft as Knitpicks Essential, but it does seem a bit more durable. The color is "Toasted Almond". (I love yarn names that make me hungry.)

Finally, garter-rib socks in Knitpicks Risatta (which is an extremely pleasant yarn, though these are a gift, so I can't say yet how well it wears). These were done two-up with a short row heel, and I like making socks that way, although I made the heels too pointy. Ah well.

I'm back at school now, with an extremely full schedule. I'll try to make time for updates, but at this point I think we've seen how well that goes. Ah well.

When I was in Vietnam, we met this Australian guy who told us he knew "just enough Vietnamese to get into trouble". That's me with this blog. I've spent the last three or four hours trying to upgrade Movable Type, and I managed to screw things up pretty dang bad. We're semi-functioning now, only I haven't managed to make the Widgets work yet, which means that the sidebar is completely gone. I'm working on it.

It's a good thing I started this before school really got going.

EDIT: It's working now. I'm drinking a glass of wine and going to bed. I'll figure the rest of it out in the morning.