My Lesson Teacher...

Today was a super trying day. Everything was going pretty well going up to arts block. I had a test in AP chemistry, and I did pretty well. All my other classes went pretty well, considering. Then I got to arts block.

Now I go to a pretty amazing school, New World School of the Arts if any local people wanted to know. It gives all of its classical vocal students free private voice lessons. The private voice teachers become an integral part of the New World experience. The whole choir program becomes like a second family with your voice teacher being the cool uncle/aunt that you are super close to and helps you grow as a musician and as a person. You would think that is an over-romanticized relationship that doesn't really mean anything in the long term, but it most definitely does.

Today I have found out that I will be switched to one of the college teachers against my will and without my consultation. Now I promised not to complain about school and life in general, so I decided to make a blog post dedicated to my amazing private lesson teacher and our awesome relationship.

I have been with my voice teacher, Ms J, for two years. I have had her since freshman year, and she has seen me grow, and transition between bass and tenor and come out of the closet and truly accept myself as a person.

Several years ago, one of the private teachers that mentored a couple of the kids that go to my school died, and they were completely grief stricken. At that time I didn't fully understand. This was mainly because I had only had my private lesson teacher for a couple of months. But now I completely understand the bond that you develop with someone who teaches you music one on one. Of course I am not losing Ms J forever, and I can still fight to get back with her, but it definitely a reality check for me, and it makes me notice the relationships I have with the people I meet through music. I just hope I can make the best of this situation.

This most definitely isn't the end to this, I know it isn't. Three of my friends lost their private teachers to this college teacher, and I know they will not sit by and let this happen. Granted this isn't a abhorrent injustice, but we will try our best to fix it. We are not simply voices you can move around at your pleasure.

This Week in Austin's Life-Episode One

The first week of my junior year of highschool is over. It feels like I have been in school for months, but it has only been 5 days...this is going to be a very long year.

So what happened the rest of the week school-wise is that everything sort of settled down. There was a lot of changing classes and a lot more people are in online classes than ever before. In my online class there are 70 people. They are still trying to find a place for us, but the college starts on Tuesday so we are going to be stuffed around and eventually we will find a place for us.

Yesterday(friday) we had our assembly, which is basically our version of a pep rally. We get all decked out in our class colours, and have some friendly competition and trash talking between classes since we don't have sports teams and don't compete with other schools. My class colour is pink, which is weird because I didn't want pink at all. I hate the way I look in most pinks, it just makes me look more red than I already am, but for some reason all of the macho-straight guys were like all "YEAH I WANT PINK WOOOT", and it was chosen by the majority of the freshman class of 2014. So I was all decked out in pink lipstick and my giant class shirt that I got before I lost weight, it was quite a sight. I can't imagine how the freshman can respect me seeing me like that, but whatever.

Otherwise everything went ok, choir is ok, I am going to make a separate blog post about how it feels being section leader. I am excited to work on new music with my private lesson teacher and maybe making some recordings for you guys...maybe.

So as far as knitting I have have had a very busy two weeks. I have been on a little of a hat kick lately and I have knitted three hats so far, the last of which I finished last night.

Here is the last one I finished with making a weird face in front of the webcam. Look at that weird strand of hair just being all like "I GONNA BE WHO I GONNA BE".

This one is made of a recycled yarn, and it named my Metro-rail Hat, it is kind of awesome.

and this is my wurm hat. It is a really pretty yarn, a hand dyed uraguayan yarn.
I also made a pair of socks, it was just some austermann step vanilla socks. The one thing about them is the sweet tomato heel that was invented by the amazing Cat Bordhi. They were pretty nice, and it was my first time using step. I can't wait to see how they wear.
I also finished my Age of Brass and Steam kerchief/scarf/thingey and it also completely matches the hat I finished yesterday, except it has little stripes of the blue and is mainly brown. This is a super pretty scarf and I can not wait to wear it.

Originally started as a crocheter, my mom taught the basics, and I always felt like it was suited super well for afghans and I have made about five afghans so far. And of the five, two of them have been themed colour wise towards my school life. Now I am going to make one that is a statement of myself. I am going to make a gay pride afghan. Now for the uninitiated this is going to be a rainbow afghan. I had thought about doing a ripple afghan, but I finally decided to make granny squares so they are bit more portable.

It seems as though I can't wait for a lot of things, but that is mainly because I am always looking forward to the future

First Day of School!!!!!!

Today was the first day of my junior year of high school at New World School of the Arts. It feels so weird saying that. I know it is always an adjustment when you go through these sorts of things. I don't like how we put these arbitrary distinctions. I still feel like Austin the teenage singer/knitter/nerd. Alas, I am still forced to act differently and be put under weird pressures. Even though it is going to be stressful, it is definitely going to be worth it.

So last year I started this blog out by complaining rather obnoxiously about my schedule being unfortunate. I am going to try to never to complain like that again. With that being said, I make no promises for my occasional rant about things that upset, but I will try to think about what I say before I post.

So now for the actual meat of what happened today on the first day of school. It was completely and totally wonderful. I loved being able to see all of my friends that I didn't get to see over the summer. I had to wake up at 5:30 this morning so my mom could drive me to the Metrorail Station(the above ground electric rail system in Miami) and I wasn't super excited then, but it hadn't hit me yet. I struggled through the commute and then I got to school. All I can say is that I really love my school when we get all pumped up. The walls were covered in orange paper(the senior class colour) and there was blasting music and shouting people. It was a whole sensory experience. I hope to have pictures eventually, but I will have to ask a couple of friends for permission, so we will see.

Now time to talk about my schedule and the classes I will be taking. So first up is Marine Sciences, which would totally amazing if I had the class in person, alas!!! I do not, but online classes are easy. I am sure I will learn a few things. Next up is Pre Calculus, I do not have any comments for that. Then I have AP Chemistry with my absolute favorite teacher. This will be the third year that I have her for science. She is one of the few teachers to get my weird science humor, and my completely unfounded questions, like if we could synthesize Kryptonite, like the actual polyatomic ion. This was actually useful, because it started a discussion about the octet rule and exceptions to that.(sorry for being esoteric) Then I have AP United States History. The teacher is a really cool midwestern guy in his late 50s who has a bunch of classic rock posters on his wall, he is my kind of dude. Lastly we have English 3, which basically focuses on american literature. I will have to pull through. Over all this is an amazing schedule and I cant wait to start learning.

After my academic block I have all of my vocal classes. All I can say for this year is eeeeeek!!! I have actual responsibility for choir. You are reading the blog of the tenor section leader. Other than that I will probably have more updates on my choir experience later.

Recording my thoughts and experiences is one of the main purposes of this blog, and since school occupies a major portion of my day, I do plan on talking about my school happenstances when I find it interesting or relevant  Since the majority of people who follow blogs of knitters are of a demographic(that being above 20 females), I expect a couple of responses to posts like this:general nostalgia for highschool life; endearing comments on how things like this won't matter to me when I am older. Unfortunately I am still pretty young and I haven't experienced to much, or maybe fortunately, so I expect my frolics in the weird world of teenage-dom to be entertaining.

The End of the Olympics

So it has been a couple of days since the closing ceremonies and I thought I should recap all of my feelings and thoughts about the Olympics and the Ravellenic Games in this blog post.

So I finished my shawl on friday and I probably should have posted about it then, but that would mean that I would be a good blogger and we wouldn't want that. Here is a picture of it right after the last row:

It came out really nicely, right after that I headed up to West Palm Beach and was kind of at a loss as what to work on. It was a super weird feeling, but it was definitely a good weight to have off my shoulders. Here is picture of it blocked:

It came out pretty huge, it was even bigger than the murphy bed that I usually block all my lace projects on, which is pretty huge. It is going to look very pretty up on my wall once I decide where to put it.

So now that I am done with the yarn crafting I should probably talk about the actual Olympic games with the athletes and stuff. So as a whole I am very sad to see it go. So many gorgeous men in skimpy underwear. It is certainly a sad day. It is also super inspiring seeing these people have spent their entire lives training for this one chance. Alex Day, a youtuber, put it very eloquently. It is like watch a show of people's greatest moments one after another. That seeing all their hard work come together. It is very interesting seeing how they act and thinking what it must be like. 

Olympic-ing!!!

I haven't really been following the Olympics that closely, well besides the men's diving and gymnastics, but I have been doing some Olympic yarn crafting so I decided that I should post about my Olympic crocheting since this is a yarn blog, and I am kind of held to it since it is in my name.

So I am crocheting The Midsummer Night's Shawl by Lisa Naskrent from an Interweave Crochet Summer 2010. It is so pretty, and it has been as long time since I have crocheted anything challenging. I am constantly challenging myself with knitting, but never with crochet. When I set out on this Olympic journey I knew that this had to change. I started this journey several months before the Games started, back when they were still the Ravelympics. Things have definitely changed since then. I am still as determined as I was then.

I started it the day of the London Olympics, in this beautiful alpaca lace yarn from classic elite, two hours after the London Olympic ceremonies started but 5 hours before NBC would be show the opening. There is a 6 hour delay for the Olympics that are 3,500 miles away, when stuff gets from the mars rover in 14 minutes. It was still a wonderful ceremony though, James Bond and the queen were quite adorable. All in all it was a good start to an awesome Ravellenic games.

Now I have done an awful lot of traveling not to London, so I decided that this was my little piece of Olympic swag that I should take with me everywhere

Here is it on a road trip to West Palm beach, where we would enjoy some cuban pastries together.

here it is with my eeyore pillow pet and some rainbowish socks on the way to new york city on the awful train ride

and here is a crappy cell phone picture of it, finally at home and in the final stretch of the Games, and I cannot wait to finish and block it and put it up on my wall

So Far in New York

Last time I posted was Wednesday morning and I have done so much since then. This is going to be my catch up post.

On Wednesday we went to see my mom's favorite day time television show, the Chew on ABC, being taped. It was some fun, it is a cooking show and it is pretty short and heavily edited but all in all it was fun and it made my mom happy. After that we walked around time square some and headed back to our hotel.

I didn't mention this but our hotel is right off broadway! It is super convenient being right next to all the action. After resting for a while we headed to the subway and took it to my long awaited reunion with one of my favorite yarn stores ever, Knitty City. Which like any great yarn store has a wonderfully punny name. Every Wednesday Knitty City has a men's knitting night. Last year when we came to New York, I didn't know that they had these, and we had already bought tickets to a show. I was disappointed that I didn't get to go last year, so I made sure to go this year. It was so wonderful, the staff there is so nice and the men were super interesting. Plus I did some major damage in the yarn department.

Thursday was quite an adventure as well. My brother is a rising senior so we decided that we needed to visit some colleges while we were up here. We embarked on the subway to Pratt, an arts and architecture school. It was really interesting seeing the campus and walking around Brooklyn. I would never go there, mainly because I have artistic skills of a squirrel, but it was still fun.

Later that day we had tickets for the show "One Man, Two Guvners". It had to be one of the best shows I have seen in a really long time. It starred James Corden, who any whovians would recognize as Craig who befriends the eleventh doctor. He was fabulous in this show. Like any good musical theater nerd I watch the Tonys almost religiously every year. Although this year I wasn't as impressed with the shows like last year I was riveted to the tv when I saw James comes on screen. I told my parents that we had to see it. It was so good. I can not express my amazement for this articulately. Thus I must resort to key board smashing ASGGDAGHJDASGHADSGDF it was just to good.

In New York

So every year my family and I(that being my mom, my brother and my dad) take a trip the first ish week of August. For the past couple of years we have gone to new York, both new York state and the glorious New York city. This year we are doing the same.

Everything is the same except this year we took a train up to New York. I'm a big fan of the amazing engineering frets that trains are and how amazing a network of trains can be to a civilization. Now the train system in the US is awful. We are the only first world country without a high speed rail and it took me 26 hours to get to New York from Miami. This wouldn't be so bad if the trains were spacious, well air conditioned and stocked with quality food, but it was most definitely not. This was a gruesome torture that I would not force anyone to go through. It only lasted two days and now I am in New York City.

We got into Penn Station at 7. It was glorious finally being out of that little hole. We trekked the mile to our hotel and settled in. I donned my star wars graphic tee and we went to a fabulous restaurant called Thalia. It was fantastic Spanish italian fusion. I had an awesome octopus and shrimp ceviche salad, and it was a ton of food.

After dinner my mom and I went to a convenience store to get waters and some chapstick and right next to our hotel is this great little Italian place and usually they have some one outside handing out cards and talking to people. A young and attractive gentleman was outside tonight and upon seeing my shirt he said "I take your light saber sir and raise you a sonic screw driver". I was floored. I could not handle the awesomeness of this guy. I just stood there gaping in awe of his nerditude. It was so fantastic I could only utter a "I am so mad jelly" and my night was made.

It was a fantastic start to an amazing New York trip 2012