All State and The GSA

This has been an exciting week for me. Of course I haven't gotten much yarn crafting done, but then that would mean that I am shirking(what a wonderful word) my school responsibility. But fear not, I have some interesting tid-bits for those who are interested, all  ten of you.

So last week on Friday we had our big club fair, and I of course participated, I signed up for Math Honours, Spanish Honours, FBLA, National Honours, and finally the Gay-Straight Alliance at our school. Last year I went to a grand total of one GSA(as they call it), but that was only after I came out. Club fair is always fun, we get an extended lunch and there is music playing and everyone is pretty happy
here is a picture of the board we made

So I have a couple of qualms with the idea of a Gay-Straight Alliance. I am a huge proponent of advocacy for my own minority, but I what I don't understand is why we need an alliance between straight people and sexual orientation/gender identity minorities. There isn't a Black-White Alliance or a Female-Male Alliance. Of course the oppression of LGBTQ people is very different from racism and sexism, it is still oppression. Just some thoughts, I am still in support of our GSA as an opportunity to educate people and as a haven for people questioning. We had our first meeting on Tuesday, and it was very interesting. We had to elect officers, and the person that people had been wanting to be the president of the club wasn't there. She is a wonderful person, but she really isn't a people-person. So I had been thinking who would take her place, and nobody had stepped up to the plate, excluding two people who not have done a good job, I decided to run for president and I kind of won. Pretty exciting stuff eh? I have so many ideas and plans, the big one culminating in doing a Pride show, like how they do those African American Heritage Shows during school. That is my plan, and you will find out how it goes.

Ever since middle school I have been doing a state wide honour choir(I have been getting a lot of honour lately) called Allstate. And we had our auditions yesterday on Saturday. It was really fun, I think I did pretty well, but we will see how well.

I really didn't get much done yarn crafting wise, but I will try to have something for you next week

HAPPY ROSH HASHANAH GUYS!

It is the Jewish New Year guys, it isn't just a day off for the kids of miami, or a teacher planning day. To celebrate, I ate some challah, which was delicious, but very beside the point of this blog entry. Every year I take this time to thing about how my year is going, despite the fact that I'm am not one bit Jewish. It is a good reminder to check how your beginning of school year goals are coming along. So that I what I am going to do.

First I should start off by talking about what my goals for this school year, since I did not have the clarity of thought to make a post about it five weeks ago.
1. Start reading more real literature
2. Crochet more for charities
3. Make sure to be on top of homework, junior year is not the time to slack off.
4. Be a leader for the tenor section you are now leading.
5. Excercise more/do that 5k
6. Learn more and lessen other's suffering

Now that I have gone on the record saying all of these things, you guys better keep me to it(I have almost no idea who "you" are, I just write and I expect some of you are reading this thinking, "who cares about your goals for this year, you are 16, barely a blimp on the earth" and this exactly right"). I guess I should talk about my goals
1. I kind of did, I read a lot of really good books like A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway, and I read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which the leftist in me loved. But other than that it has been pretty sparse, I have started a couple of history books, Before the Mayflower  and A History of Women in America, but they weren't really my style, although I have learned a lot, but they didn't pull me in like the Hemingway did. Today I went to a cute strip mall in Pembroke Pines, an hour and a half north of me, and picked up The Scarlet Letter partly for my english class, and partly because it looks like an important read. I also got some Carl Sagan books. Now I am an unabashed science nerd, and I thought it was weird that I haven't read any of his books, so I picked up Cosmos and The Pale Blue Dot, and I can't wait to crack into them.
2. So when I first started school I was working on some baby hats for premature babies. I have always thought that this was an amazing way to spend my crocheting and knitting time, but I have yet to find a charity to give them to, and I am spending my lunch on Wednesday talking to my Activities Director and Community Service Supervisor for help with it, so I might update you more on that then.
3.This is going pretty well so far, but I will only be able to tell as we get into a groove.
4. Being a leader isn't really my thing, I am definitely an academic. I enjoy sitting and finding out things until I am completely absolutely sure, I never like going on the seat of my pants and being confident. I had a really hard with being confident in front of other people, and I still do. I think it is because I care so much what they think of me, which can sometimes be a good thing, but in this case it really isn't. I have had a hard time so far of keep the tenors in check and helping them learn their parts. I wasn't really blessed with a very focused section, but I think we are getting onto a roll.
5. I have always wanted to be fit. I have always been a little overweight, and after freshmen year, I had become very overweight, I guess the super greasy pizza twice a week wasn't to good for me in the long run. So at the beginning of sophomore year I started dieting, and I had lost about 30 pounds by january and it was super great, and since then I have lost another 10, but not as quickly as I wanted to. Granted I grew a couple of inches during the summer, but I still want to lose more. A couple of weeks ago I started the Couch to 5k running program. It is pretty great, I am basically going on a every other day I do one of the workouts in consecutive order, so I am on week 5 and on Wednesday I am doing the third workout. It is hard sometimes coming home after a long day at school and exercising, but I always feel really good after. I also kind of love running by my house, there is a road with a bike path that goes down to a cute little marina.
6. This is basically the entire goal of my life. It is a quote by Neil Degrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist. It is a very good summation of what I would love to be known for.

PICTURE DAY!!!

So today was picture day a New World School of the Arts. The first couple of weeks it seems as though most people try to dress better, maybe to try and form a habit of looking good in public or just for fun because they like the nice clothes. As the years drag on the amount of effort people put into their clothes decreases. By the end of the year it is surprising that most of the students are still wearing clothes, but they still manage. It is really for the best that they have this most important day in the fourth week of school. So I suppose that you are extremely curious as to what I looked like for the pictures, but I want to keep up the suspense.

Today was also my mothers birthday, and I have been crocheting a lace shawl for her. It isn't going to be done for a while, so she will just have to do with her five other lace shawls.

I am also super excited because last week I was given a copy of Tamino's Aria from the Magic Flute by Mozart. It is my first, what I call, "big boy aria". As young singers, there is a book called 26 Italian Arias and Songs, and they are super useful for teaching someone to sing classically, but most of the arias in that book are early baroque and are from operas that aren't performed anymore. They aren't as challenging as an aria from Mozart or Wagner or any other operatic juggernaut. But now I am working on it, and in my private voice lesson(still the same teacher, the dean totally blew me over, but I will just deal with it) I had a major break through technique-wise. Now I am ready to perform the crap out of that aria. For anyone curious, here is an amazing performance of it by the amazing tenor, Fritz Wunderlich.

I suppose I should get back to picture day. So for me, dressing up used to be a major drag, but I was never really comfortable in my own skin, and I still can feel pretty uncomfortable. Now, I love dressing up. It was so much fun picking out my clothes for today. I ended up wearing a black and grey pin stripe button up shirt. It is actually my brother's, but since I have lost 40 pounds I have been able to fit into most of my brother's shirts. And here is a picture in the computer lab of the school.

and you can see my English teacher in the background, and by the way, I got a hair cut on Friday, I really like it, and the humidity doesn't ruin it when I step outside my house.
For the picture they basically were just rushing us along, I barely got time to smile, I guess we will see how they came out later.

My DNC Hat

So I am a pretty hard core Obama fan, and leaving all politics aside, I really enjoy watching national conventions. I really enjoyed the RNC too. There is something really wonderful about the polictical process. How we can completely change leadership every few years peacefully. I just need to remind myself even though the politics can get petty and rather ridiculous I would rather this than a totalitarian state any day.
Regardless the hours of speeches, both wonderful and awful, make great knitting time.

I haven't watched to much of the conventions, homework and sleep tend to get in the way. But I did watch Michelle's speech and I watched Bill Clinton's, and they were amazing and I started working on a hat. To be precise, this one. It is a very interesting pattern, it has a wonderful random stripe of garter stitch on a stockinette body, it makes it asymmetrical and interesting. I started it on tuesday while I was watching Michelle's speech. It was a super fast knit, and it was really interesting having the little bit of garter stitch.

Here is an instagram picture of it

It is made out of Ultra Alpaca by Beroco. I have a couple of thoughts on the yarn. First, lots of guard hairs, which is kind of weird since it is only 50 percent alpaca, but I can totally deal with that. Second, it is a really light worsted, which is what I like. That makes it nice on my hands at the gauge I like, so thumbs up for that. Lastly, it is pretty soft and nice, so overall I like the yarn.

A last thought, I really love instagram now, it makes pictures of my knitting so pretty and it kind of hides how bad my Iphone pictures are. The technology has definitely gotten better, but it could still be better quality, oh well, I am not an expert photographer, so you will have to deal with partially grainy pictures of my knitting, sorry.

Mini-blog My just finished Hat

This is a mini-blog about the hat I just finished. Now I rarely get to blog about stuff in real time so here it is.

I suppose I couldn't smile in the picture

Here is another picture
Here are some of the stats on the hat
It is made out rowan cocoon, in a dark tealey blue(I assure that is not the colour way name) on a US size 7, 4.5 mm, which was a much too tight gauge, and my hands hated myself(if that makes any sense grammatically) but it was pretty short. It is a one by one garter rib which was a lot of fun. It is super hairy, so  I am going to have to pick a lot of guard hairs off my clothes when I wear it, oh well.

Now on to my next hat, which I have no idea what I am going to do...so yeah...

This Week in Austin's Life:Knitting Edition(Ep 2)

So this was a very interesting week. It started off with tropical storm Isaac canceling school on Monday and just making my entire weekend very rainy. We all know that just means more knitting time, and boy did I do a lot of that.

So now on to what I knitted during the week.
First is the hats. I have been on a big hat kick recently. For a long time I shied away from knitted hats. I had a lot of trouble getting a good size and gauge, but now I have a pretty good stitch count and decrease method for worsted weight hats, which is totally awesome, so I can turn out a hat for myself in a day or two with a little bit of knitting during classes.
"Hat" is a pretty general term, so I guess I should be more specific and say beanie. I like my hats to be pretty fitted and not very slouchy. Any bigger and I feel like a Rastafarian with a silly beret.

These are the ones I have knit so far.
The first one, from left to right, is a waffle stitch beanie. I actually dyed the yarn myself with kool-aid. It was so much fun, but since I had dyed it a while ago, the yarn didn't smell like the sugary drink, which definitely isn't as fun.

and here is a picture of me wearing it
Next is the famous wurm hat, adapted for a aran weight yarn. It is such a nice yarn, it is Rio de la Plata. It is kind of sad because it is discontinued, but my LYSs has a load still, and for some reason people havent grabbed all of it up. The colour way is almost like a blue camo, I love it when yarns pool like that, plus it looks great with my TARDIS shirt.(speaking of doctor who, I will have to talk about that later)

After that we have my brass and steam hat(in reference to my matching shawl/scarf/thingey). It is a one by one garter rib hat, that you can't really see very well because I am an awful photographer. I can't wait till winter when I can be all matchey-matchey with my hat and shawl.
Lastly, of the hats, we have my metro-rail hat that I have already talked about, and I really would not like to bore your brains so I will stop talking about it.

Now onto my current projects
One of many hat is the The Hat in which I would like a cocoon(because I couldn't think of anything more clever) and it is made out of rowan cocoon. It is a little bit hairy, but it is incredibly soft. I am knitting it at a pretty tight gauge in a one by one garter rib, so it is going to be perfect for the deadly winters in Miami.

Last week I got the yarn for a rainbow granny square afghan.

And of course I had to call it the "Granny got Pride" afghan. Now, I know what you are thinking, "could this kid get any more gay?" and the answer is yes, yes I could, and I am. As you will see in the next post I make.
I have made about four squares so far. I am not exactly sure how many squares I should make, I am still working out the logistics of optimum square placement.

I have been getting an especially large amount of work done on my Southeast Village Sweater, which is a super wonderful free pattern. It is actually pretty interesting because it is on of the only men's sweaters I have knit that has shaping for the torso. Now some sweaters do not need shaping for the chest because they have ribbing, but this is super useful since it is going to be a pretty fitted sweater. I have finished the back of the sweater and I am more than half way done with the back. I hope to finish it before the winter, so I can survive the freezing temperatures of the Miami-Dade chemistry lab.

so that is pretty much a week of knitting(and crocheting). It is pretty crazy how much you can get done when you work with worsted weight yarn. I forsee a lot of hats in my future. Of course I can't predict the future because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but I can determine the probability of every molecule's position and momentum in my head, and thus predict that I will be knitting lots of hats.