1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
*Visited the West Coast (San Francisco, CA)
*Visited the emergency room (for myself)
*Took cooking classes (donuts and pasta)
*Baked delicious homemade bread (French, Italian, Rye, Challah!)

2. Did you keep your 2009 resolutions, and will you make more this year?
I generally don't make resolutions because I'm not good about keeping them. This year I want to continue to exercise regularly, but that's more of a plan than a resolution.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Two friends had beautiful little girls.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
I didn't leave the country this year.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Publications. More energy. New apartment?

7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Taking some advantage of opportunities of living near NYC (i.e. taking the cooking classes).

8. What was your biggest failure?
A lack of motivation for research and being productive with writing and publishing.

9. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Ah, yes. On inauguration day, the first day of the semester, I slipped and dislocated my elbow. Then I relocated it (haha... sounds like it was lost). Spent the day in the emergency room. Had a partial cast, missed an ortho appointment due to bad weather, and a bunch of PT.

10. What was the best thing you bought?
iPhone. I love it so.

11. Where did most of your money go?
Living expenses, student loans, other debt.

12. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
Just as happy, probably a pound or two heavier, about the same money wise.

13. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Research, knitting, fun and relaxing stuff with my sweetie.

14. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Wasting time surfing the internet. Ravelry, I love you, but you are a huge time suck.

15. What was the best new book you read?
I read a bunch of stuff by James Hynes. Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day changed my views on baking bread.

16. What was your favorite new TV show of the year?
Community. Eastbound and Down.

17. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
Don't fear yeast. Try new things. Eat and be happy!

January 15, 2004: Sorry for no post yesterday. I was busy preparing the first exam for my class and I had a long meeting with a fellow grad student. I wore pseudo-skully today and yesterday because it has been well below freezing here! I got many great compliments. The secretaries in the psychology office are very impressed with my knitting. I have a modeling pic...

January 10, 2005: I hadn't posted yet today because I didn't have much to say, then as I was getting ready to eat my lunch, I thought of a great post. By the time everything loaded on the computer so that I could start writing, the post was gone. Stupid brain!

Oh well, I made some good progress on Kevin's DNA Scarf yesterday. I'm hoping that I can finish it by the weekend. I can do a repeat in about an hour and each repeat is about 6 inches. Here is 4 finished repeats...

I know the picture quality is poor, but I took about 10 pictures and this is the best one of the bunch. At least you can sort of see the cables. I forgot to block the second afghan square yesterday. Hopefully I'll remember tonight and I'll post that picture soon. Square #3 is about 35 rows complete out of 82 total.

January 17 2006:Self-Portrait Tuesday: Personal History

(Please ignore my poor photoshopping skills... especially since I am using Microsoft Paint).

This picture shows me today and me when I was 10 years old. Today I taught my first class for the semester and decided to "dress up" (which highly impressed the secretaries who are used to seeing me in jeans). The 10 year old me is "dressed up" for career day. I don't remember if I was supposed to be a teacher or an accountant, but definitely a professional of some sort (see the notebooks!). What is funny is that I cropped out the two guys behind me in the original picture, one who was dressed in a full football uniform and the other dressed in a sports coat and shorts (I still remember that he wanted to be a business man in Bermuda).

January 13, 2007:HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY!!!

No, my dissertation is not finished...

No, I haven't finished all of my wedding planning...

No, I haven't finished knitting Lilith (although it's very close)...

No, I haven't heard from any of the jobs I've applied to...

No, NOT THAT!

What could it be?!?!?!

Indications look very good that I'll have another published knitting pattern!!!

January 15, 2008:ALL THE LITTLE SOCKIES

I finally got around to washing a bunch of handknits yesterday. As you can see, it was mostly a load of socks. They seem to survive a trip in the front-loader on cold with some Woolite without much problem. The few that have shrunk/felted a bit suffered that in previous laundrymat experiences. Of these 16 pairs, 1 is Kevin's and 3 were knit for me by someone else. I just recently updated my sock gallery and I'm up to a lifetime of 30 knitted pairs of socks with 31 and 32 on the needles and potential 33 and 34 waiting for mates and likely 35 to be ripped.

After yesterday's post about January's past, I spent nearly 2 hours reading through old blog posts from one I first started blogging. It was interesting reading through the various life and school events, the minor complaints, and the silliness. But overall it made me a bit sad because I don't feel like I have the passion for knitting that I did back then.

I am a much better knitter now than I was in 2004 or 2005, but I'm not working on sweaters or other big projects. I have one current sock and a scarf, and I have no desire to work on either of them. Heck, I haven't even posted pictures of either!!!

I need to reclaim my knitting mojo, my knitting passion. I thinking that might entail a bit of money spent because unless I want to go sock or hat crazy I don't have stash yarn for making anything significant.

So I hunted around and placed an order. Yeah, it was a bit more expensive than what I'd normally want to spend, but I have an x-mas check to cash and I really need back that mojo, so I want to make sure that I make something nice that I'll like and actually wear.

What'd I get?

I ordered Thea from Kim Hargreaves. I ordered a medium long sleeves, though I may knit the short sleeve version and probably only needed a small, but when getting a kit, I'd rather err on the side of extra yarn than not enough. Several Ravelers have made it and seem happy so I'm excited!

Maybe while I wait for it to come in the mail, I can finish this silly sock that has been on the needles for months!!!

For Christmas, Kevin and I asked for a Dutch oven. You know, the really heavy enameled cast iron kind. My mom and brother found a nice blue one for us at BBB, and we couldn't wait to get to use it.

Kevin decided that the inaugural usage should be some tomato sauce. All day Saturday (while we had no heat... don't ask), Kevin simmered and bubbled some deliciousness in our new pot. And then we ate White Castle for dinner (don't ask).

On Sunday, it was my turn to heat the apartment with cooking, so I baked up two loaves of French Bread from Peter Reinhart's "Artisan Breads Every Day." Reinhart's recipes use similar techniques to "Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day," but some don't require rising before going in the fridge and others require periodic folding.

As the bread baked, I shaped some pasta for eating with that delicious sauce Kevin made on Saturday. For Christmas, my parents also got me the book "Encyclopedia of Pasta" by Oretta Zanini De Vita. The book basically details every type and shape of pasta ever made in Italy. While it gives information about ingredients and shaping, it isn't a cookbook.

Somehow I got pictures of the components of dinner, but never the full meal put together!!

Dutch oven at work...

Delicious pasta sauce...

One shape of pasta...

Second shape of pasta...

Bread...

Oh... and our heat was restored Sunday afternoon.

It isn't a New Year's Resolution, but rather a plan... no a determination...

I will exercise 5 days a week!

Somehow in December I forgot to workout. Well, not so much forgot, but somehow justified laying around in bed as more fun and enjoyable. But now that it is a new month with a new semester looming, I want to reestablish the workout habit.

Of course my body is rejecting this, especially because I decided not to start slow, but to go in full throttle--20 minutes of cardio followed by Wactive on hard. Today Wactive made me to push-ups and shoulder presses. My arms feel like putty. My legs are also sore from squats and lunges and jumping around.

So now I think I can go eat some peanut M&Ms.

No one ever mentions that the real work of being an academic is the prepping. Sure there's teaching, conducting studies, analyzing data, and writing. There's also meeting with students, responding to emails, and going to meetings. All of that is concrete stuff that can be scheduled and more or less has a finite amount of time required. But this prepping stuff...

For the past three days, I've been working on one syllabus. What's worse is that I'm using the exact syllabus that I used last year, the only changes are some dates and two projects. But getting the dates to work out and fit with due dates for the other classes, and determining the projects, their point values, how they will be graded, and writing up instructions is taking forever. After I finish this stuff for this one class, I have one more class to do and for that one I don't have an old syllabus to start from.

Additional prep work for that third class involves prepping all of the lectures. There's no way that I'll get them all finished for the semester in the next two weeks, but I need to at least get myself a head start. The spring is my four class semester, which means much less time to get everything done and an extra 20+ students to grade. While a 5 week break in the winter is nice, it is a time of prepping that is essential.

Slate had an article recently on why college students have such long breaks. There were a number of explanations given... energy savings, money savings, tradition... but I think they failed to look at it from the side of the professor. That time is needed for a brief recuperation followed by prep, prep, prep!

VH1 Reality Show Bus Crashes In California Causing Major Slut Spill

Panda Cub's Media Debut

This video of the San Diego Zoo's baby panda is too cute.

My favorite part is right around 2:40 when the panda is upside down and tries to reach out to the tree stump.

On first watching, I literally gasped at the cuteness!!!

Ever since classes ended in December, I've heard this odd buzzing sound in our apartment. At first I just thought that I was crazy.

Then I thought that it was something coming from a neighbor's apartment that I was hearing because I was at home more during the day. The week that Kevin was off from work, I didn't hear the buzzing, so I assumed that because it was very quiet when I was hear alone, I was hearing something from upstairs.

But then I started hearing it again. It sounded a lot like a cell phone set to vibrate. I started to think that maybe someone lost their cell phone in our apartment. Kevin's parents and my brother stayed over over Thanksgiving weekend, but none of them reported missing their phones, and we otherwise haven't had any visitors recently.

The buzzing wasn't constant. It seemed almost random and periodic, only during the afternoon. I started going back to the theory that I was crazy and I wasn't really hear anything at all.

A couple of days ago, I heard the buzzing in the bathroom and it seemed louder than when I was in the bedroom or living room and heard it. I tried to follow the buzzing and ended up in our second bedroom/computer room, but then it stopped. This bolstered theory three because that's the room guests sleep in, but again since no one said that they were missing their phone, I was unsure.

Today, I found it! I heard the buzzing and ran into the room. It was coming from the closet, so I threw open the store. Something was glowing in a plastic bag... the plastic bag full of old, (presumably dead) cell phones!

Yes folks, I'm an idiot. It was my old cell phone's alarm going off. I set the alarms to go off at the end of my classes so I wouldn't have to check the time every few minutes. So every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday the alarm was going off at 12:09, 1:14, and 6:04. Because the phone was deactivated, I never thought that the alarms would still be stored and active. Because the phone is deactivated and doesn't have a SIM card, I can't get it to start, yet it has alarms stored and battery power to keep buzzing. So I took the battery out.

I think it is time to recycle all of these old phones!!!

Hello from the NJ Turnpike!! Don't worry Kevin is driving. We're on our way home after a nice dinner with friends and some grocery shopping at Wegman's.

Update (1am): Well, things turned interesting after I finished posting. We got through the Turnpike, over the GW Bridge, when coming down the bridge ramps, Kevin realized that his clutch was no longer engaging. The pedal basically went down and didn't come back up. We stopped and put on the flashers. Kevin quickly assessed the situation and hopped out so he could push the car through an intersection and onto a safer part of the road.

Once we got to our new position, Kevin assessed again what was wrong and it was quickly apparent that we needed a tow. So while Kevin called his brother in the hopes that he was home and able to drive out and meet us, I looked up tow truck numbers. After Kevin dealt with a false start, I got through to the emergency line for the service station that typically does all of our car maintenance. We got someone through that who said it would be about 45 minutes.

Fortunately the car was still running fine so we had heat and didn't have to freeze. Kevin's brother and friend showed up after about half an hour, so we could transfer our groceries to their car. About 20 minutes later the tow truck showed up. We followed the truck back to the service station and profusely thanked the guy for rescuing us. Then Kevin's bro dropped us and our groceries off at home and we profusely thanked him for helping us out.

So now it is a little after 1am, our groceries are put away. We're both a bit wired from the experience, so I'm blogging and Kevin's playing some games on his phone. Keep your fingers crossed that the car problem is minor (for most of December Kevin's car was at the service station because he needed the speedometer replaced which could only be done by sending the parts to California, where they were fixed and sent back, but didn't work, and so had to travel back and forth again. A few things Kevin quickly read online suggested that sometimes clutches can have rusting problems if they aren't used regularly. We did have that huge snow storm while Kevin's car was at the service station. So hoping for just some rust that can be easily fixed, and not a major repair!!)

Even before Cablevision took away the Food Network from us, we watched a lot of the PBS food shows... Lidia's Italy, Jacques and Julia, Mexico: One Plate at a Time with Rick Bayless. These shows have a great mix of interesting foods and some travel. And of course Jacques and Julia has the great interplay between two great cooks.

On Lidia's Italy last week, she made braised beef with beer and spaetzle. (Here's an article on spaetzle if you don't know what it is). After watching the episode, Kevin and I looked at each other and said "we're making that this weekend." Of course we took our own liberties with the recipe... to be completely honest, we didn't even follow Lidia's recipe, we used her ideas with our own techniques.

Here's the beef at the beginning of its braising...

After more than three hours in the oven, we took the meat out of the pot, blended and strained the juices/sauce. We reduced the sauce for over an hour and shredded the meat back into the pot.

Then it was time to make the spaetzle. I used a recipe that I found online and added in a bunch of chopped up sage. Because we don't have a spaetzle maker, we tried to use our colander. Ultimately it worked, but it was a pain. (I've ordered a spaetzle maker!!)

We briefly boiled the spaetzle and then scooped it into the meat.

The spaetzle sucked up a lot of the liquid and helped thicken everything into a lovely stew. Delicious!!!!!

What do you do when you have a cold? Curl up on the couch with some knitting, tea, and bad TV? That would be nice, but every time you sit down your ability to breath is reduced by 75%. Stand in front of the TV and try to knit and drink tea? Can't say that I'm coordinated enough to do that.

So I decided it would be a baking day. I'd be up on my feet which would help keep my head clear, and would be in the kitchen with the oven on which would keep me warm. But what to bake?

For x-mas, my mom got me the book Great Cookies. I went through the book and tagged all of the cookies that I thought sounded yummy and that I wanted to try. I tagged probably about 60 of the 200 cookies (I tried not to tag cookies that are typical, like chocolate chips, I wanted to explore some other cookies). Of course, I couldn't pick from that list, so this weekend Kevin picked his top 3 of the ones I picked and then we got the ingredients when at the grocery store.

I decided to make the huge lemon cookies. The cookie is very soft and cakey (uses cake flour) and iced with lemon icing.

Do you want one??? They are delicious!!! Perfectly lemony and not too sweet.

Then I decided that while the dough for the cookies was chilling that I should make something in another x-mas gift from my mom, a baking dish with matching basket. The baking dish came with a hershey's recipe book, so I found a recipe for coconut macaroon bars that I had all the ingredients for (except the chocolate). So I made that.

I haven't tasted it yet because the instructions said to allow it to cool to room temp and then cover and wait at least 8 hours before cutting. Thank god I made the cookies too!!

Then I decided to whip up a bread dough because I had the stand mixer out and all of the ingredients. (Sorry no picture).

Finally, I decided (because I had 3 egg yolks and nothing for them to do) to make some pasta for dinner.

I didn't really have a recipe for this. I used about 155 grams of Italian 00 flour, 3 egg yolks, a big splash of milk, a smaller splash of olive oil, and viola! pasta.

And here's the pasta supplementing the last of the yummy braised beef from Sunday.

On schedule for today... that sitting on the couch plan since I can mostly breath while not 100% vertical.

Just as I was beginning to wonder how long it took for a package to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, I opened the door and saw a package for me!!!

From one Kim to another!! All the way from England!!

What's inside the pretty paper???

Yummy, yummy yarn!!! In a pretty, pretty color!!!

Must have the precious!! The precious.....

Sorry to go a little Golum on you there!

The yarn is to make the pattern Thea, which is this one...

Ain't it pretty? All of the patterns in Precious are gorgeous (honestly, nearly all of Kim Hargreave's patterns are gorgeous... her website is sometimes a little annoying to navigate, but she designs sweaters, not webpages).

Time to read the pattern, find some needles and get swatching!!

there is ribbing.

Last night Kevin and I traveled down to MSG to attend Eddie Izzard's Intimacy Tour. Of course, watching Eddie with 20,000 other people was extremely intimate. We've seen Eddie 3 times since 2008. Each time in progressively bigger arenas. In early 2008, we saw Eddie in a tiny venue downtown that was truly intimate. There were probably only 50-75 people in the theater (if you can even call it a theater). Kevin and I were in the front row!! Then later in the summer of 2008, we saw him in his Stripped tour at Radio City Music Hall. Some of the material from the earlier show ended up in the summer show. Then last night, some of the jokes and stories from Stripped were elaborated and expanded, but there was quite a bit of new stuff too.

One of my favorite jokes (aside from the Spartan Ninja sheep who are so tough that they shear themselves in front of wolves) was that he was confused by all the EZ-Pass signs. He remarked that he couldn't figure out why there were so many signs for something called "E-Zed-Pass." Hahaha!

As you can sort of tell from the pic, we were up in the nosebleeds (almost the exact same seats we had for Tom Petty last summer). I always find it so hard in those situations to not watch the big screens. At one point during the performance, Eddie stopped and said that it was ok that everyone was staring at the screens and not him. He promised that it was really him on the screen and did a little dance.

It was an excellent highlight for the weekend! Now I've got one more week until school starts up again.....

Honestly, I don't normally watch Oprah, but I saw a commercial for today's show on texting or using the phone while driving and decided to watch.

You can see clips and stuff here.

You can take the pledge to not text or talk on the phone while driving here.

What she's discussing is nothing new to me. I've been teaching my students for years that talking (and now texting) on the phone is distracted driving. We do some demonstrations in class that show how we often miss things that are right in front of our faces. Then I have them imagine texting or talking while doing the task and how much more they would have missed. I hope that I reach at least a few of them.

With the thousands of people who watch Oprah, I'm hoping that it starts to change things. Texting or talking on your cell phone while driving IS AS BAD AS drunk driving.

This ends today's public service announcement.

Thea is no longer backless (though she is still frontless, sleeveless, and collarless). I just finished the back tonight with only a minor glitch.

In one of those measuring and calculating and measuring and estimating, I knit about 3 extra centimeters in the arm hole. Frogging was less than fun since the yarn is kind of fuzzy and wanting to stick to itself. But all is good now.

I decided to knit the two fronts at the same time. Since they need to be identical (with reverse shaping... is that even identical? maybe symmetrical?), the instructions are basically the same, except for some buttonholes on the right side. Hopefully I won't screw it up!!

Have you all already gotten hooked on this Hulu thing? I'd been hearing about it and reading about it. Sometime way way back I think I had looked at it, but there weren't any shows that I was really interested in, or I was looking for something in particular and couldn't find it. I don't really remember, I just remember being somewhat disappointed and not going back. I really didn't get all the hype.

Then, back in December when I was making those slippers, I was looking for something to watch on the computer while Kevin played video games. I ended up at hulu and found that they had the entire series of... uhm.... I'm a bit embarrassed.... Doogie Howser, MD. Since the whole world has fallen in love again with Neil Patrick Harris (NPH!), I was excited to go back and see how he started. I remember watching Doogie when I was in middle school.

I watched an episode. Then another, and then another. Kevin came into the room after a few hours had passed without seeing me, and found that I was through most of the first season. Of course he laughed at me and mocked me... as he should... but I went on watching until those slippers were finished.

Since then, I've been avoiding the hulu because I don't want to get sucked into another Doogie marathon. The cutesy, corniness was grating after a few too many episodes, and besides NPH is so much hotter today than he was as a dorky teen doctor. So I mainly associated hulu with the place to watch Doogie Howser.

Yesterday all of this changed when again, Kevin's playing video games and I want to watch something while I knit. I just bought the 3rd season of Big Love, but unfortunately my laptop's DVD drive is at work. I went to hulu thinking that I'd try to find something other than Doogie. I just about screamed and did a happy dance when I found My So Called Life!!!!!

Angela!! Rayann!!! Ricky!!!! Dreamy Jordan Catalano!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm trying to pace myself since there are only 19 episodes, but I still have a lot of sweater to knit. But oh, the teen angst!! The teen problems!! The teen lust!!! As much as I loved 90210 as a teenager, I knew that my high school experience wouldn't be like that (Jersey is a lot colder and less beautiful than Beverly Hills), but My So Called Life seemed so real, so true, so possible. I was a goodie-goodie like Angela, but I never found my Rayann and Ricky (well, maybe the Ricky, but that's another story), and no Jordan Catalanos (at least not ones who ever paid attention to me as he did eventually to Angela).

Anyway, be wary of the hulu... it will suck you in and make you watch things that are embarrassing to admit to (Doogie) and things that you can't get enough of (MSCL).

I was happily knitting along on the left and right fronts. Easy, breezy, no problems. Then I stopped for the evening and admired my work. Then I thought for a moment.

Aren't there supposed to be two buttonholes in the buttonhole row? The kit came with 6 buttons, not 3. So I looked again at the pattern and sure enough there was a repeat * to * that I skipped.

Do I keep going and forget that buttonhole? Do I just sew on a button to make it appear as though the hole is in place?

After some hemming and hawing, I decided that the buttonhole really needed to be made, but I didn't want to frog. So I got to the correct set of 4 stitches and dropped them down; carefully reworked the stitches; created a buttonhole.

Then I saw this:

Those buttonholes aren't on the same row!!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So another 30 minutes of dropping, reworking, creating...

You can bet I'll be reading those instructions more carefully!!

Tomorrow is back to school time again. I'm on the Monday, Tuesday, Thursday schedule, which I really dislike. That Monday-Tuesday combo means that Sundays become a work day (and Fridays are a nothing gets done day). If I could be more disciplined about working on Fridays, then maybe Sunday wouldn't be such a problem... but Fridays are Fridays, ya know?

It is also my semester back up to 4 classes. I also have 2 research students (for credit; I have 4 more as volunteers) and 1 tutorial student. I might have a second tutorial student, but she hasn't approached me yet about it.

---------------------------------------------
On the sweater front (or fronts), I've made it to the portion of the instructions that can be summarized as "continue in this manner and at the same time and also." Yes, there are three simultaneous things going on, which the pattern leaves up to you to figure out and store in your memory. I don't know how anyone could do it without writing it all out. I literally had to make a chart to follow for the next 50+ rows of knitting.

• @Waste of time to dry my hair this morning. Stupid wind and rain. Even stupider umbrella who just wanted to be permanently inside out.
• @On the upside, all of my classes are in the same building as my office. No more going outside to get to class!!
• @I got to my office early to get some things done before classes. One thing was to fill up my Brita. I went into the bathroom for water and each of the three sinks gave me about 15 seconds of cold water before the cold water turned hot. Weird.
• @I love my new Athleta dress that I'm wearing today. I have a longer post about it that I'll write up later.

• @First class of the day (intro psych), went well. Students were interested, they laughed at my bad jokes, participated, answered questions.
• @Second class, same topic... not bad, but the students were less into it.
• @Apparently the one stairwell between my office and the classrooms is in the process of flooding because of an open window on the 5th floor.
• @As I was walking up the stairs to go back to my office, the guy in front of me decides to shake off his umbrella by flicking it behind him... all over me. Thanks!

• Class # 3, pretty awesome. They laughed at my jokes! The class is all girls (though not a psych of women course) and I know many of them already. I hope that it will be a good class in the middle of the day that helps energize me to get through the rest of the day.
• Fortunately on Mondays I don't have my 4th class. I'm ready for a nap.

I don't like slips. I find them uncomfortable and bothersome. To me, a slip has always been a small white skirt that pinches at the waist with some stupid, pointless and extremely itchy lace. The few I've owned have always been too tight in the waist (but the bigger size is too big) and the tightness of the skirt restricts your movement even if your real skirt is nice and flowie.

Sometime in late middle school, I convinced my mom that all the girls were wearing spandex shorts under their skirts instead of slips. And since that time that is mostly what I did through high school and college. (In high school in particular, I was terrified of falling down and my skirt flying up and everyone seeing my underwear, so spandex shorts seemed a good idea, though still not entirely comfortable.) By the time I got to graduate school, I was mostly in a jeans uniform and not wearing many skirts or dresses. If I wore a skirt or dress, I made sure it was one that wasn't see-through enough to warrant a slip. (Hence, a lot of denim skirts and black skirts.)

As much as I'm loving my clothes from Athleta, they run on the sheer side of things. One dress that I wore to work several times last semester, I was worried about, but lessened my worry a bit by wearing tights (still not the most comfortable option... I really hate anything that's tight around my stomach/waist... I would have never survived the days of girdles). For x-mas, my mom ordered me this dress (in the purple). It is cute, fits well, and I love it. But you can guess the problem...

I didn't want to return the dress and I didn't want to just hide it in the back of the closet. I decided that it was time to be a grown-up woman and get a new slip and just suck it up. Two weekends ago, Kevin and I went to Kohl's to spend some gift cards during a 30% off coupon weekend. I got several new tops and a new pair of jeans. Then before I went to find Kevin, I walked over to the underwear section to find a slip.

There weren't many options, but I found something similar to this. I guess to get technical with the terms. I though slips were pettiskirts or half slips; I never thought about chemise or full slips. I got a black one that it reversible depending on if you need a deeper neckline in the front or back. Obviously, the chemise works best for dresses, but my see-through problem is with dresses, not skirts, so this is fine with me.

I was so excited when I bought it (I know, silly to be excited about paying a chemise slip) that when I got home I immediately tried it on with the dress. I wore it yesterday under the dress (since even though it was rainy yesterday, it was quite warm), and it functioned perfectly. I hardly even knew I was wearing it. I may just have to get another one!!

I'm 31 rows from the should shaping (which is about 5 rows of knitting) from finishing the front pieces. And in 6 rows, I get to cast off a huge portion of each front, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish the fronts later tonight. I've been getting about an hour of knitting time each night, so I think it is doable.

The question now is whether to knit the long sleeves or the short sleeves. I purchased the kit for the long sleeves so that I'd have the option of doing either. Here's a link to the pattern: Thea.

I'm currently leaning toward the short (elbow length) sleeves because I'm a little concerned that the sweater might be a bit itchy. Not intolerably itchy, but I often find that my forearms can be more sensitive to that and I don't often wear or have long-sleeve shirts to wear under this sweater. On the other hand, long-sleeved would be warmer. But would take longer to knit...

Thoughts??

*Remember on Arrested Development when George Michael found out what "fronts piece" meant. Heehee!!