Let it not be said

...that I avoid keeping my New Year's resolutions by avoiding situations where I'd be forced to keep them (i.e. posting new entries).  This is the tale of too many projects and not enough time/willpower in the world.

It started with a dress.  Not just any dress, but a dress fit for a wedding.  OK, not my wedding, of course; my friend's wedding.  It's not a bridesmaid dress because she's not having bridesmaids (something about traditional Jewish weddings?), so basically I'm allowed to wear whatever I want.  I took one look at my closet, shuddered, and started rifling through patterns.  What I turned up was a lovely halter dress circa 1947, Butterick B5209 I think (double-check me on this one, because my dyslexia has definitely bitten me in the hindquarters before) and somewhere in the vicinity of 2 yards of leftover periwinkle-blue crepe-back satin from my costumes-mistress days with the med school musical.  Insert idea to mix it up with both sides of fabric--satin for the midriff and crepe for the skirt and bodice--and voila, fabulous not-bridesmaid attire!  Except there wasn't nearly enough uncut fabric to put together the 4-piece skirt in the pattern.  Necessity as the mother of inventiveness?  Would I have it any other way?  Apparently it's not only feasible but easy to turn the front of the skirt into a 3-panel affair and still maintain the delightfully swirly fullness at the bottom and enough fabric up top to do the requisite gathers.  And, while we're on the subject of alterations, do we really need to do side closures (a lot of the major pattern companies seem to be in love with those)?  Let's use the still-2-panel back as the launching point for a midline zipper closure.  After a lot of plotting, some straightforward cutting and sewing, and surprisingly few mistakes, a dress was born.  Whether it was successful, we'll have to see from the wedding pictures.  Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of taking pictures of myself in the bathroom mirror.

Project number 2 also started with an upcoming wedding (same one, actually, are we seeing a trend here?).  My friend is a huge Lord of the Rings fan, so I'm going to do a cross-stitch that plays on her fantasy-devouring tendencies.  On second thought, perhaps I should wait till I've finished it and given it to her as a wedding present before I unveil it to the "general public."  You never know who's listening in, and I do still believe in surprises.  Only a few tantalizing details: 1) I spent an afternoon scouring Google images and have now drafted my pattern from screen tracings, and 2) somehow I managed to lose a skein of light gold embroidery thread somewhere between the Jo-Ann and my car.

As for project 3?  Nothing to do with weddings--I hear your sigh of relief now.  I've now done 3 Dalek washcloths in different colors.  The first (blue) I gave my sister and her roommate, the second (red) I gave to a friend back in St. Louis, and the third (yellow) I'm keeping as a souvenir.  My friend of the red Dalek told me the colors were different roles in Dalek society according to their new incarnation, but alas I don't remember what they are, so you'll have to ask someone else if you're curious.  I'm getting better at knitting off a chart.  And because I'm getting better at knitting off a chart, my brain automatically hopped to "I can plot knitting patterns on a chart now!"  I have blue yarn left over.  Of course I'm plotting a TARDIS.  Really must remember that graph paper is only a loose approximation of knitting stitches, and this thing's going to have to look as elongated as an El Greco painting on the chart in order to turn out the right proportions in real life.  Also I'm still cracking up at the wisecrack, "You should leave one at the Way Station for when Matt Smith goes to visit again!"  Heh, as if.  And yet...it would be amusing.

By the way, did I mention I'm still a little over 4 months away from finishing residency and am still tying up loose ends in the job-hunting game?  Eh, that's just a hobby.  Somebody have an idea repository I can borrow?  Dumbledore's Pensieve would be almost ideal.

New Year's Resolutions...or something like them.

The theme of my New Year's resolutions this year seems to be to get back to my roots.  While that could punningly refer to my hair color at the moment, it also refers to my educational background.  It means that henceforth I plan to write and, yes, even blog as if I were a former English major who once seriously considered burying myself in dusty tomes and stacks of papers for the rest of my poor but blissfully well-read existence.  This also from the person who would count her most influential book during her medical school years, while others raved over Gray's Anatomy and the memoirs of countless great physician-thinkers, to be a collection of Keats's poems and letters picked up completely on a whim from the undergraduate library.  Well, that in itself should be a bit of a warning sign, I suppose.

In any case, going back to my roots also involves revisiting a task I haven't really attempted, much less completed, since I first picked up Grandma's double-points (again) at the age of nineteen.  I've mentioned the fingerless mitts, of course, but this is--shall we say?--old-school: narrow 1x1 rib cuffs, stockinette body.  The yarn has some novelty to it, being some homespun-looking stuff that varies in thickness along its length and has a subtle metallic gold-colored thread running through it, and as one of my former college roommates once pointed out, somewhat to my surprise, the colorway is very...Monet?  Monet's water-lilies, in fact, if you wanted to narrow it down: this is Impressionist thread at its finest, but I digress.  The point is it's a pattern of very simple stitches and, hopefully, simple lines.  It's already teaching me a thing or two about the simple gifts of patience and foresight.  Someday, when they're finished, they'll complement my first truly independent "pattern," a 1x1 rib scarf with garter border (it actually ended up looking like a double-thickness stockinette that--miracle!--doesn't curl) made of the same yarn many years ago, like paintings in an exhibit.  And, after all, there are worse things in life than to have anything at all in common with an Impressionist.  Well, Van Gogh could be a bit problematic...

Oh yeah...

It occurs to me I haven't actually posted pictures of the finished Dalek washcloth.  It's now hanging on one of my sister's kitchen cabinets, where those in the know might hear a metallic voice droning, "Halt, you are about to be ex-foliated!"  Or not, but it still looks pretty neat where she put it.  Enjoy!