Toads and Quilts

From the way I complain about my colleagues stoic nature, (I can't believe I said colleagues) you wouldn't know that I'm currently taking the BEST CLASS EVER. This would be Museum Education and Interpretation, in which graduate students are encouraged to act like preschoolers and get muddy. A few weeks ago we took a field trip to the Delaware Art Museum where we created cardboard houses using massive amounts of glitter, and today I hung out with 3rd graders at the Delaware Nature Society. We caught a toad! It looked like this:

I didn't take this picture, of course, but I did get to hold a squirmy toad. (I snatched him up when one kid shouted "Hey guys I found a snake I found a snake!!" (It was a black stick.) Of course after holding him, I dropped him back into the marsh (the toad, not the kid), and wiped my hands off on my pants. In the distance I heard an 8-year-old boy say "EWW I can't believe I touched a toad! I'm totally using my hand sanitizer when I get back to the bus!" Then I took my hand and laughing maniacally, rubbed it all over his face. (All right, I didn't, but the story would have been SO much funnier that way.)

In a completely different vein of events, this weekend I interviewed quilters for an awesome project, Quilters' S.O.S. (Save Our Stories.) There are currently about 500 interviews online of all types of quilters, all who have amazing stories. I interviewed Eileen Lauterborn and Julia Pfaff, both who put me to shame with their creativity. Then I rubbed a toad on their faces. Ok FINE, but can you tell I really want to do that to somebody? I was inspired enough to finally finish my group quilt, started last summer at Carlsbad. A group of us crafty girls got together and swapped squares, so I can't take credibility for all of them. Here's my quilt out on a lovely afternoon walk:

The Internet

I spent 20 hours a week scanning and photoshopping slides of everything from Italian Renaissance architecture to 1960s Playboy shots. Well, at least I'm supposed to . . . when I can't look at another column, I frequently wander off into the internet. If you, too, find yourself with the need to procrastinate, here are some particularly fun sites I've found.

Last.fm
If you're not on your home computer, you can type in musical artists that you like, and the website will give you suggestions for music you might also like. You can also do the same thing to make a personalized radio station! (You will have to download a small player.) You can also browse other people's radio stations, such as my current favorite "Female Fronted Metal." (Seriously.) If you have iTunes, you can download a plug-in that will track the music you listen to the most, and every week the site will give you recommendations based on what you like. It's great!

The Superficial
Celebrity gossip! This blog is obviously written by a man, but it is hilarious. Check out the video of puppets reenacting the Naomi Campbell assistant-beating scandal. Awesome.

Magazine Price Search
I just bought a subscription to "OK" magazine (can you tell I'm into celebrity gossip right now?) for $4.07. That's right, 51 issues for 4 bucks. I also got a subscription to Vegetarian Times (which has really good recipes, by the way) for $2.99. I like to browse around, drool over magazines I want, and then realize that I don't have time to read the four I already get.

What Should I Read Next?
This is sort of like Last.fm, but for books. To be honest, it gave me some really weird suggestions - but the best thing to do is make a list of your favorite books. Then, the site will compare your list with other people's, and you can look at those which have the most matches. At the very least, it will remind you of things you really wanted to read but forgot about.

Craftster
Even if you're not a "craftster," this site has so much on it it can keep you occupied for hours. Basically, people post pictures of things they've made; there are sections on painting, interior design, ceramics, bookmaking, knitting, crocheting, quilting, cross stitching, clothing, gardening. . . and a lot more.

In other news . . . Spring in Delaware is not a happy gradual change with birds chirping and squirrels dancing around. It's a battle. One day, it will be 70 degrees. The next, you'll wake up, put on a t-shirt, and walk outside into snow. Then the next you'll be walking around Philadelphia in 39-degree pouring rain, and a bus will splash you like you're in a movie. This is stupid. I'm moving to New Mexico.

I won't be working in Arizona this summer, because the museum would not hire me for the second time. Although, now I won't have to make $75 a week and live in a chicken coop and go outside to the bathroom. It's for the best.

Spring Break = Party

[Edited to add: Pictures of Baltimore, Williamsburg, and Philadephia are now up on webshots - click the link on the sidebar.]

You know me, I'm always looking for an opportunity to get drink large amounts of alcohol, hookup with hot guys and possibly dance on a table. That's why I spent my Spring Break visiting Colonial Williamsburg and historic sites in Baltimore and Philadelphia. J flew in from the desert, and for our first adventure we spied on colonial look-alikes in the Burg. If I can't be knitting, I might as well watch other people knit. And if I can stand in horse poop while doing it, than all the better!The next adventure involved touring a Coast Guard ship in Baltimore, the Taney, as well as a submarine (the Torsk) and a "light ship," which I discovered is a boat/lighthouse hybrid, and not just a small, lightweight ship as I thought. There was also some Cheesecake eating - brownie sundae cheesecake, which is even better than it sounds. If I ate any type of "extruded" meat, I would have been all over this guy: Finally, we took the train to "Filthadelphia," as someone likes to call it (although seriously, there was a couch in the giant piles of trash alongside the train tracks.) After battling massive amounts of schoolkids who were almost all taller than me, and some tourists who had apparently never been through a metal detector before, we got in to see this:Yes, that's the back of the Liberty Bell. No one ever gives this side justice. If you had a broken lamp in your house, would you display it broken side out, even if it was rung on George Washington's birthday? I guess the crack is endearing, but I'm all for the underdog. We also visited Kosciusko National Memorial, staffed by a man who hates his job, and possibly the worst NPS site I've ever been to. I went through the whole site, which is a tiny house, and I really have no idea who Kosciusko is or what he did. At least I get to check it off on my National Park map.

Now its back to school once more - only about 6 weeks remain, and I'll have half a master's! If only society valued partial degrees.

Irony and a Sweater

(Click on the picture to make it bigger if you can't read it.) Now, you might be thinking, "Sarah seems to be complaining all the time about how much reading she has, but obviously she has way too much time on her hands." Au contraire! Actually, I have LESS time on my hands, which is precisely why I'm spending it making my tea bags talk. In fact, this very night, I was supposed to be writing a paper. Seriously though, who wants to do THAT?

I also finished another sweater recently. And no, I'm not that fashion deprived to know that I'm not supposed to wear it with a black shiny shirt. Its just too cold for proper modeling.

(And comments, people. That button is there for a reason. I don't do this for my own health. Well, maybe I do. But still.)

Two Blogs, Now One

If any of you are avid readers of the "rangersarah knits" blog, as I'm sure NONE of you are, I'm sorry. It got deleted. BUT, the good news is that I have fully merged that blog with this one, so the posts still exist, they're just burried among all of the non-knitty posts. The knitting blog was created with the assumption that all you avid readers of Ranger Sarah don't care about knitting and didn't want to hear me say things like "dpns." Then I realized that I'm obsessively organized, and it really bothered me having 2 blogs. Seriously. You should see how worked up I am about the fact that my Pompeii readings have to be in the same pile as my ones on museum education.

So, from now on, when I knit something, you'll see it here in all of its dorky knitterly glory. And you'll LIKE it.

My hair is so abused

I'm a cameleon. These are only a few of the colors my hair has been in the past year. Currently, it's the orange. One day, it's going to fall out. But really, that won't distress me - it'll only be starting over.

Nature Girl

Lest you think I have disappeared, I should write about something. You probably don't want to know about how the ancient Romans "cleaned" their clothes with urine and sulfur, so I'll tell you about something just as exciting. Henna.

Yes, henna. Apparently for centuries, women have used henna to dye their hair and skin naturally, without any of the chemicals that dry out and bleach hair. Unfortunately, henna looks like baby diarrhea and smells like moldy hay. The process involves mixing up a greenish brown paste, trying not to get it on your skin, because it will, in fact, turn it orange. (With a great sigh of relief I realized that it does not turn bathroom fixtures orange.) Next you put on some gloves, and if you're me, are proud of yourself because you've created a squeezy pastry-type bag out of a sandwich bag. And then, if you're me, quickly realize that it would be so much easier to glop your muddy mess straight onto your head with your hands.

After fully saturating your head to the point where it looks like you have bathed in the banks of the Rio Grande (which consists of muddy quicksand - don't ask how I know this), you wrap your head in plastic wrap. And leave it for FOUR hours. If you're lucky, like me, you have a roommate from Pakistan who actually knows what you're doing when she walks in and see you watching Grey's Anatomy with a saran wrapped green head, and doesn't look at you suspiciously as she runs and hides.

Four hours later, I hopped (well, not really "hopped," just stepped) into the shower and rinsed off the mud, which of course splattered all over the shower. Luckily, as I mentioned before, henna does not stain tile or porcelain, but certainly gets everywhere. With great anticipation, I dried my hair and looked at myself in the mirror. What had been a faded hot pink was now a sunset-orange, much more obvious on the previously dyed portion than on my dark roots, which I had been trying to cover up. It certainly looks more natural than before, but smells "natural" too, if by "natural" you mean "moldy hay."

Academia

Last week I presented a paper at my first academic conference. For some reason, in the academic world, this is a "big deal." The building itself was very imposing; lots of dark wood, chandeliers, and this:
I attended one session on advertising, which included one paper on alcohol print advertisements in Thailand, and another on teen fashion magazines. Who would have thought that the subject of semiotics would come up so often? Truly, when it came time for questions, I fell asleep with my eyes open under the giant moose. (This was right after I noticed that the fashion magazine girl was significantly shorter than I am.) The highlight of this particular session was when clearly American people started pronouncing "advertisements" with a British accent: ad-VERT-is-ments. Instead of making them sound more intelligent, it only made them sound like an American actor in a Shakespeare movie from the 1940s.

After eating a stale cookie, I went across the hall to my presentation room, which was considerably less impressive than the wood paneled room with the moose. So I decided to have my picture taken in the moose room instead. Its much more exciting.


I read my paper first, and then two other girls presented before questions were asked. My session had some ridiculous title like "Building's building /rebuilding." (That wasn't it, but it definately used the word "building" more than necessary and didn't make sense.) I didn't really understand the other papers, or how they related to mine. One was on surrealist collage novels and had something to do with a bullet and a phone book, and the other was on a frontispiece in a book about architecture. Unfortunatly for the reader, she printed her pages wrong and ended up reading only half her paper - I'll assume that's why I didn't understand. At the end of the session, people continued to think too hard and attempted to relate the surrealist bullet in the phone book to a cannon ball puncturing the 18th Century farm house I wrote about. That's sort of like saying that cows and cheetahs are actually related because they both start with a "C."

Anyway, in the end I considered myself a "winner" because I had at least 5 laughs during my reading. Wether those laughs were directed at me or my writing I do not know, but in either case I have won another battle against seriousness. Maybe next time I'll wear a funny hat.

Camera Case

Here's a quick little case for a digital camera done in Gedifra California Color, color 3173 on size 5 dpns. I love how the sherbet colors melt into each other - although the yarn was so stiff it actually made my hands hurt to knit with. I certainly wouldn't use it for anything bigger than this. The body was knit in the round, then I bound off half the stitches for the flap - just made it up as I went!

Life is Funny

Remember the time grad school tried to suck your soul away? Yeah, me too. That was funny.

I am embarking on a campaign to disrupt this epidemic of seriousness. Examples of late have included taking a hot pink pillow to class (result: people think you're sick) and randomly getting onto the floor to demostrate a particularly difficult yoga pose (result: people think you're sick.)

Today, I have decided to reply to the spam and internet scams which constantly come to my email. I received an email telling me that I have won 2 million pounds (British Currency) through some non-existant "random drawing of foreign email addresses." In order to claim my winnings, I was to contact Mr. Norman King. And contact him I did!

Dear Mr. Norman King,

Wow, you can imagine my surprise when I opened my email and saw that I
had won millions of pounds! But then I started to think about it, and
I realized that I do not want millions of pounds. You see, I already
weigh about 425 pounds, and I feel that more pounds would be a
horrible burden. I find it difficult to get out of bed in the
morning, as moving my massive bulk takes more than the feeble strength
I can muster. My children are embarassed to bring their friends over
to play and my husband has long since moved into the spare bedroom.
Wait, were you making fun of me?? How can you offer to give me MORE
pounds? I am already teetering on the edge of depression and think
constantly of ending my miserable, miserable existence. And now, you
threaten to push me over. How dare you, Mr. King, how dare you. You
bastard.

Sincerely,
Ms. Winner