Micro – revisited

Well, I got a 89% on the last exam. That doesn’t bring my grade up to an A, still hanging at a B+. I missed some stupid ones, like always.

We just covered vaccinations in class and now are covering diseases. If you need to know anything about vaccinations, ask me. I would be happy to share my knowledge. One disease you might want to consider thinking about, if you do not vaccinate is Congenital Rubella Syndrome. We saw pictures of babies that were born with this disease. It was sad. It is a disease that affects newborns whose mom was not ever exposed to the disease until she is pregnant.

I was also amazed by the charts on how vaccinations have brought diseases down from the 1960′s to current. We are very lucky to live in a country that has developed and implemented these programs. A lady next to me in class is from Africa. She has told stories of her people in Africa and the diseases she has seen, first hand and the crippling side effects of the diseases.

Two other things I need to comment on as I have read other blogs and other online communities.

1. Rape is not okay, no matter what your profession is, no matter what you are wearing, no matter if you are intoxicated or whatever. If you are a stripper at a night club or at a party, you do not deserve to be raped. Being in these types of professions and environments will increase the risk of being raped, but that does not mean it is deserved. I hate that mentality.

2. Faking your own death in an online community is just dumb. Don’t do it. Don’t go there. I feel bad for all of the people that have recently lost a loved one who thought they were losing an online friend. I was in chat room with the “deceased” last night and it was incredible all of the lies and bs she was saying. I don’t know if she did this to get out of swaps or to get people to send her $$ or what. Man, if you join swaps and find out you can’t do them, just say so.

It isn’t the first time I ran across this online. I am surprised she didn’t come back and say her kid broke into her account why she was away and concocted the whole story…heard that one before years ago on a birth board.

I do have another (big) test next week…it is never ending, huh? I have 3 more weeks and then finals. WOW…putting that in writing makes it so real. I am going to do something craft tonight…stay tuned.

Bruise, glasses, and yarn…oh my!

Here is the yarn I dyed. It is an odd bunch of colors. It is shades of oranges/rusts/browns/grays with turquoise. I have no idea what it will look like when I knit it into socks. I actually kind of like it, even though the colors are muddy…guess I like mud.

My bruise on my side is big, about 2 inches in diameter, which I think is kind of big. It doesn’t ache, only hurts if I touch it or lay on it. I did do a google search (why?) and found out that bruising your liver can cause it to be susceptible to bacterial infections. This was good to know, but hopefully that won’t happen. I am counting on the fact that I have several inches of “protective tissue” (aka fat) that probably saved my life. I seriously am not kidding about how close I was to having a major problem here. I swear if my mini blinds had any type of point on them I would have been “stabbed.” Give thanks for blunt ended mini blinds.

I woke up at 7 am this morning to Madeleine mangling my glasses. She has done this before, but this time it was so bad…so bad. One lens was on the floor, the arms were twisted around the other direction…they were bad. I looked at Tony, please, save them.

Snap, twist, click…he had them all put together and turned the right way. Yes, he is my own personal eye glass technician…wink.

So, it is time for new glasses. I guess I need to find an eye doctor as it has been 4 years since my last exam.

I don’t have anything else to really add, except that I hope Deneen is feeling better soon.

There is something else I wanted to talk about….well, maybe tomorrow.

Off Day

My test didn’t go so well. Tell me, why does a professor let you look at past test. Then, when he tests you, he makes this test all tricky. I hate deciphering trick questions. What ever happened to just asking a straightforward question to get a straightforward answer? UGH…

There was a written part (which I hate) it asked about a baby that came into the hospital with suspected meningitis. People around me kept being rude and it was distracting me. Somehow my thinking got off and I answered the question talking about tuberculosis. Hello? How freaking stupid is that? Double UGH…

I go into lab class and am staining my specimen and my lab partner is about 7 minutes slower than me. This annoyed me so I partnered up with another lady at my table. Our table had 6 people at it when it should have only had 4. It was crowded and as I was tired.

My lab partner (not the lady that was working with me) kept asking me, “What do I do next?” “How long do I put this stain on?” Etc…this was right after we watched the teacher do it.

Then, the lady that was working with me looked over at the burner, which my arm was IN….warmth…heat….hot…aw…yep, I was on fire. Not bad though. Actually, I exaggerated. I only singed my arm hairs and it was a small row and not all the way to the skin. In fact, I didn’t get burned at all. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, I ran my arm under the sink and washed off the curly q’s. I thanked the woman for saving me from being lit on fire. I finished my lab.

I was one of the 3 people in class that actually did the stain correctly and I had the “pink rods.” yay…me.

Things seemed okay at home, until I tripped in my living room. The back door was open at a 45 degree angle. I was holding Madeleine as she really wanted to use the bathroom and the back door is perpendicular to the bathroom. The back door has hanging blinds. The bottom of the blind caught me and stabbed into me. I fell on it with all of my weight (which is a lot.) If that blind had any type of point to it, it would have stabbed me right in the liver. Instead it was just a blunt trauma and gave me a nice bruise. Madeleine is fine. The blind didn’t bend or break, it seems I got the worst of it. UGH.

I decided to kettle dye some yarn as I saw a conversation on the wooly wonder forum. The sock yarn turned out “okay.” It was lighter than I wanted and I realized that I shouldn’t have “stirred the pot” as much as I did. Next time I will know to just let it sit in there. I decided to overdye some other sock yarn I had and I think I felted it, so maybe the pot was too hot? I decided to try my hand at dyeing roving in the kettle and half felted it. I don’t know if it is salvageable. It didn’t dye all the way through, either. UGH.

I have decided with the day that I have had that I am not going to try to knit or crochet anything. I still look back at today and think of how 2 times (fire and blind in belly) that if it was just a little bit more to the right (my arm) or a little bit more in me (the blind) I could have ended up at the ER today.

Maybe the stress of school is getting to me? I would like to help out at Sierra’s school tomorrow, but something tells me it is going to be a mental health day.

Excitement and procrastination

The summer school schedule of classes came out today and I just found out the Anatomy class I need to take is only a 7 week course, (M thru Th from 8:30am to 2pm.) Yes, that is a lot of class. I figure it will be a test a week type class, but I am ready. I was just about to get all “party-on” and excited that I had a summer. Then, I read that there is a Physiology class offered the 7 weeks after the Anatomy class. If you remember my rant a few months ago, the registration computer system screwed me out of the right Anatomy class and that put me behind a semester. Well, if I take (more like…if I can get into) the Physiology class this summer I can apply to the nursing school this Fall and start the nursing program Spring 2007, instead of Fall 07.

Who wants to bet the computer won’t let me register for the Physiology class because I haven’t yet completed the Anatomy class?…darn computers…

Insert happy dance! I am absolutely thrilled by this. No celebrating now, though. This is all dependent that the registration process is smooth as silk and there aren’t any snags. (We yarn people hate snags.)

Oh, and now I need to get back to studying. Wish me luck. You already know my biggest fear (sleeping in and missing the test.) Oh, also my second biggest fear, that my brain turns into a black hole and all knowledge is “lost in space.”

Freecycle and other misc stuff…

Thank you freecycle! Today we went and picked this up from a fellow freecycler. WOOT! Sierra is thrilled (and Madeleine, too.) In fact, I asked Sierra what she was going to do tomorrow morning and she kind of rolled her eyes up like she was thinking and then said to me, “play outside?” She was out there until it was dark and I had to call her in off of the slide.

I am hoping my landlord doesn’t have a problem with this. It doesn’t say anywhere on the rental agreement that we can’t have a swing set on the lawn. He is a really nice guy and likes kids.

He is letting me tear out those bushes in the wooden planter you see next to the slide to put in a garden.

I guess this is pretty “braggy” but man, the kids were so happy. It kind of makes up for our dryer breaking last week. We did go get a new one today (Lowe’s doesn’t have bad prices!)

I am almost done with one sleeve on the Angelica tunic, but I think it is too baggy and I might run out of yarn I allotted for the sleeve, so I might frog it at the end of the week and try again. I have decided I want to make another Angelica tunic when I am done with this one, with a yarn that has more stretch.

Thank you for all the nice comments on the bag and the ribbed sweater.

You won’t see anything finished from me in the next few days as I have another big test on Tuesday. I find it funny that whenever I have a test, I call it a “big” test instead of just a test. I am getting a B+ in Micro, (and really that is only because of stupid errors) so I am trying to do well on this next test so I can pull my grade up to a low A. It is a very hard test, though. The test is on antimicrobials and the immune system. There is a lot to know.

I do really enjoy this section though as I am learning a lot about antibiotics, vaccinations, and how your immune system works and I am highly fascinated about it. I feel like the more I am educated the better I can make decisions in my own life. I also get a little bit pissed off at things like the fact that Sierra and Madeleine had erythromycin put in their eyes as a baby when they were both born C-section. The reason they put the antibiotics (which they use to use silver nitrate) in a baby’s eyes is to protect against the bacteria, Neisseria gonorrhea, if the mom has a gonorrhea infection (you know, an STD.) This bacteria can cause newborn eye infections and blindness. Well, first off, I didn’t have gonorrhea and secondly, neither children went through the birth canal. UGH. It is no wonder that we are seeing more and more resistant strains of bacteria.

Felted Purple Bag

I finished the purple bag. There are a few errors. I wish I would have corrected them before I felted.

the first one is that apparantly I miscalculated for the strap of the bag and it is a little bit off center. I fixed this by putting the tie around the top. I also should have done a few decreases on the top of the bag to pull it in a bit, instead of let it go out. If I was really daring, I could just cut the straps off and fix handles to it in another way.

The other big error is that I crocheted, round and round and round, instead of joining and then working up the next row. Because I did it this way I got a noticeable join seam that I didn’t think would be noticeable after felting and apparantly I am wrong. When I placed the tie around the top of it I should have done it so the join is in the back, but the problem with that is the top flared out more on that side, so it really should be the front.

This is fine if the bag were for me. However, I offered to make a bag for a swap that I didn’t participate in. One person had a family emergency and couldn’t send out a bag and so I offered.

I am thinking I should make that person a new bag and keep the flawed bag. Would you want a flawed bag? I am all for contructive criticism.

Antarctica Sweater

Okay, it isn’t called that, but it is pretty thick and so warm she could survive in Antarctica with it on.

Pattern: Yellow Ribbed Sweater from Rebecca baby & kids No. 8
Yarn: 5 balls Crystal Palace Iceland in colorway Tidepool #7247
Needle: 10 1/2

This pattern was a little bit complicated in how it was written, I will assume this is the style for all of the Rebecca patterns. I think once you get the hang out how it is written it is okay. I would suggest to read ahead a bit as if you don’t you might miss parts like “at the same time inc for sleeve shaping at each end 1 st. on every 6th row 6 times…” It is little parts of the pattern like that, that are kind of thrown in at the end and if you don’t read it you will already knitted past what you were suppose to do.

This sweater would make a great weekend project! In fact, I could have finished this months ago, had I not ran out of yarn. By the way, I used up every little tiny bit of yarn that there was. I used exactly 5 balls of the Iceland yarn or 500g. The pattern called for 400g. The only change to the pattern that I made was I made the sleeves a hair longer. I did use a different yarn than suggested, but I had the correct gauge.

If you need to make an incredibly warm sweater and fast, I highly suggest this, since it is a thick yarn it works up really fast and the yarn is really soft because of all the lanolin in it.

Sierra did wear it a little bit today and since she can see some purple in it she is okay. It was a little too hot for her. This might be the sweater we leave at grandma’s house because it is always real cold up there.

Oh…and I didn’t block it…is that bad? Would it be less clingy on her if I blocked it?

Bag in Progress

This is a bag I am making and, obviously it is in progress. It is going to be big and I am going to felt it. I still have a lot more white rows to do and then purple top (the bottom is purple) and then purple straps. I don’t know how I will be doing the straps, I guess when it comes to me I will do it. It is really big, I could probably lay Madeleine inside it right now. I didn’t swatch or do measurements or math. I am RISKY and will be taking a walk on the wild side.

Thank you Canada!

Yay! I received the ball of yarn I needed to finish this sweater. Funny thing is I only thought I needed a little bit to finish. Wouldn’t you know I needed the whole entire ball of yarn?

In fact, I may not have enough yarn to sew up the seams. I suppose if I have to substitute to do the seam, it won’t be that noticeable. I am just thrilled I found the ball of yarn I needed. I was hoping to seam it up tonight. I haven’t been feeling too well and missed school today. I am going in tomorrow to make up what I missed. So, here is where I am at…all the knitting is done.

New Nephew

Here is a picture of my newest nephew, Jamin Luke. I knit that hat up in record time. I snuck Sierra into the hospital so she could see him.