The Joy of Children

This week I've been voluntarily exhausting myself by teaching a summer camp for 19 children, 17 of which are boys, ranging in age from 7 to 12. Um yeah, hopefully you can see a bad idea when you see one, because I sure couldn't. Oh, the majority of them are great kids and have gotten really into the projects we've done, but there's always a few spores who spark a mold invasion.

Did you know that boys love to throw things? Anything, anywhere, anytime. When I was a child, I don't remember ever picking up a marshmallow and thinking, "Hey, this would make a great projectile!" If they can't throw it, then it must be destroyed. If we are doing something with balloons, then I hear, "Can we pop them??" Or, "Are we going to blow anything up today?" Or, "Can we crush it when we're done?"

To rub it all in, there is also a preschool camp going on outside my room where adorable 4 year olds sit complaisantly around a parachute or go on fieldtrips to the library. (My kids made fun of them . . . "They're going on a field trip to the LIBRARY! Hahaha.") After my class, there is some sort of odd girly-girl camp where they teach girls how to do manicures and be good wives, probably. Oh, I made fun of it at first, but now I'm just jealous.

2 more days, and then Sarah's wine camp begins.

Summer

Ahh, the beginning of summer and time for the air-conditioning stand-off. This is my first summer in three years back on the east coast, and the fact that it isn't 105 degrees has me wondering why anyone has their air conditioning on at all. Wimps.

Not too much knitting has been going on, since I now have the time to tackle all those other projects I've been thinking up. I finally painted my ikea desk thing, which I've been meaning to do since September. There was also some experimental clothes sewing, but we're not going to talk about that disaster . . .

Next week I teach science camp (an art historian teaching science camp, what's going on??), but in the meantime I continue toiling away in the land of slides. Ahh, boringness, I love it.

Missed me?

After finishing my first year of grad school you didn't really expect me to hang around, did you? Two days later I set off on a 1100-mile tour of everyone I know on the east coast, from Alexandria to Williamsburg to North Carolina's outer banks to Charlottesville. Since I didn't make my usual 2,000 mile drive to the Southwest this year, I really needed some road time.

In North Carolina (Emerald Isle specifically) I frolicked on the beach with a park ranger friend and drank extremely large margaritas at a very tasty Mexican restaurant with a flirty waiter. I also got in some thrift store shopping, which involved a tense moment outside the fitting room with a transvestite. (The story is not as interesting as I'm making it seem, so let's just leave it at that.)


In Alexandria I saw my elementary/middle school/college friend who has just returned from two years in the Peace Corps in Mongolia. In addition to smelly sheep vests, she brought this with her:


That's mussik, still in her drugged-on-the-plane state. Right before she decided that my head was the best place to sleep.

I then had to visit my own kitty, who is much too furry for her own good.


I also visited my former college roommate, her husband, and their 8-month old boy, who I can tell was much appreciative of the sweater I knit him. Unfortunately (or fortunately), he has extremely tall parents who have passed their size onto him, and he'll probably outgrow the sweater before cold weather. (And that's why they should have more children!)


(Knitty stuff: Pattern is from Weekend Knitting, yarn is Scooter (some kind of cotton from the sale bin at the yarn store), on size 5s)

Quick project

To celebrate my newly acquired freedom, I did what most people do: I brought out the sewing machine. I've been thinking about this design, from the new Denyse Schmidt Quilts book, for a while, so I sliced up some fabric scraps. I do have one piece of advice for anyone that makes these: it doesn't work so well if you fold the card in half and then sew the fabric on. Not that I would know that from experience or anything.

Of endings, birthdays, and dinosaurs

One word cannot possibly illustrate the relief I feel now that my first year of grad school is over, but I'll try: whew! The French exam has been successfully failed (I think), papers have been turned in, final parties have been attended. And for those of you who may have thought to yourself, "Geez, Sarah sure complains a lot about all that reading she has to do," I present to you this:

That would be my photocopied reading for 4 classes (it doesn't include many, many books.) Let this be a lesson to all of you, particularly those who think grad school would be "a good idea" or especially "fun."

In other news, I celebrated my "golden" birthday recently (25 on 25!) and received not one but TWO handmade gifts! The first one came all the way from Mongolia.

This was knitted by the world's most unlikely knitter, and it is what I believe to be her first finished project ever! How special am I? I think its something like camel hair, which makes it just about the coolest thing ever. My second handmade present came from my boyfriend's mom, who cross-stitched me this:

("Welcome friends" for non-Spanish speakers.) Also, one of the coolest things ever. When your boyfriend's mom starts cross-stitching for you, you have to feel special.

And finally, I did some handmade gift-giving of my own. This dinosaur went to live with someone who has the exact same birthday as me! Rwrrrrr...

(For the knitters, the pattern is from xtreme-knitting.com, link above. Size 6 Susan Bates really short circulars, on the squeekiest of all yarns, Red Heart.)

How to Feel Rich Without Actually Being So

If you follow celebrity gossip as religiously as I do (and you SHOULD), you may have heard that billionaire Brandon Davis was taped telling Paris Hilton regarding Lindsay Lohan, "I think she's worth about seven million, which means she's really poor. It's disgusting. She lives in a motel." (I just realized, "Paris Hilton" is totally the name of a hotel too!) If $7,000,000=poor, then I really should be dead, having succummed to scurvy because I could not feed myself on my meager pennies.

And what does this have to do with anything? Well, it has to do with a class trip I took to Longwood Gardens last week. Longwood was previously owned by the Duponts, who pretty much owned everything in eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware at one point in time. Although Dupont probably didn't make fun of people who had $7 million, he did built a 175-room mansion on his 2500 acre estate, which is basically the same thing. Luckily for us, however, Longwood gardens (not the same thing as his house) is now open to the public, so everyone who has $16 can feel rich too.

I began my exploration by walking out of my huge conservatory to observe my multiple fountains. (Although they suck because they don't shoot 240 feet into the air and dance to music like the ones in Las Vegas. The Duponts have no taste, really.)

I then strolled through many well-groomed trees (some with Christmas lights still on them!), and toured the inside of one of the many homes on the property. I saw the Italian Water Garden, and a large pond that had actual fish in it. I was a little disappointed. For a place with a $10 million budget, I at least expected baby sharks and clown fish. I wandered on back to my massive conservatory and saw THE COOLEST BONSAI TREES EVER. Mr. Miagi has nothing on this:

My favorite room overall was the "silver garden," featuring mostly cacti and the biggest agave I've ever seen. I find it ironic that after living in New Mexico for two years, I had to come to Pennsylvania to see a giant agave. I guess rich people think its a fun challenge to raise non-native plant species to giant proportions. (Come to think of it, I DO have a 50-foot saguaro on the porch. . .)

And finally, I was forced to engage in some predicable tourist behavior: taking close-up flower pictures. They make you sign a form when you go in saying that you will do this. True story.

Warm Hands

Now that its mid-May, I thought I should knit myself some fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm while I type all winter. Oh whoops, that's what I thought 3 months ago. What I thought in mid-May was "Those stupid gloves on the floor are really annoying. Maybe I should finish them so I can put them away in a drawer and forget I have them." Anyway, they're an alpaca-merino-silk blend, which in all truthfulness, should make you drool. And if it doesn't, well, you were obviously born without your yarn gene, and I feel sorry for you. (Edited to add: Click here for the pattern)

Maryland Sheep and Wool

Sheep are cool. This Saturday I headed to Maryland Sheep and Wool, for some serious sheep gazing and yarn grazing with my knitting buddy, reluctantMANGO. I saw lots of sheep, of course:

I also witnessed my first livestock auction, which was AWESOME, by the way. See that guy with the camo hat? He bought a lot of sheep.

And yarn? Oh yes, yarn. Knitters are crazy about yarn. There's a very popular sock yarn out right now, "Socks that Rock," which runs about $20 for an amount to make one pair of socks. $20 for a pair of socks, you say? That's crazy! Well, 800 skeins of yarn sold out in one hour. AHH!

We have socks!

Oooh, one step closer to my dream of only wearing hand-knit socks. Check out that short-row heel, baby! I know you're jealous. And no, I won't knit you socks. These are comprised of somewhere around 8,460 stitches apiece. And I have child-sized feet. And I'm a big dork for actually calculating how many stitches are in my socks. (Knitpicks Simple Stripes, size 2 needles.)

Aloe drink

A few weeks ago I discovered culinary heaven. A combination farmer's market/Mexican/Korean grocery store in the same building as a cell phone store, Caribbean restaurant and sword merchant. (The Newark Farmer's Market - a horribly deceiving name.) The prices there are so cheap, that I have a hard time spending enough money there. They have a $10 minimum on credit card purchases (I'll ignore the fact that that's illegal for now), so I wandered trying to find things to buy. $1.00 for five pounds of potatoes, $.25 bananas . . . it doesn't really add up. I get to the register, and my total is $9.21. "Can't I just use a card for that?," I ask. Nope, the non-English-speaking checker tells me - I figure it would just be easier to buy something else than to argue with her over 80 cents. So I reach for the closest thing. This.

Aloe drink. See the floaties? Should I drink this? Ingredients: Pure water, aloe vera gel, fructose, honey, cirteic acid, calcium lactate, vitamin c, stabilizer, natural flavoring content of aloe vere gel - 10%. (All those ingredients are spelled like they are on the bottle - aloe vere gel? Cirteic acid? There's no such thing. I checked.) If they couldn't even spell the ingredients correctly, should I drink something that has the potential to kill me? I did see someone else buy it. The outcome is still pending.

Lest you think I'm slacking off on my knitting, I'm not. I'm just writing a paper this week. Accompanied by an almost finished pair of socks.