Reassessment

Siiiigh... these goal lists... why do I even make them?

Because I'm Type A and love lists, even when they just highlight my lack of accomplishments. I prefer to think of them as motivation for reaching higher standards... yeah. That's it.

May June Sock Goals:

• Maia socks (80% 85% done)
• Gone Fishin' socks (DONE!)
• Lunacy! socks (1% 25% done)
• New Sock Design (0% 10% done)

As for my To-Do-Before-Going-Back-On-The-Boat-List, things didn't fare much better. I did manage to rewrite and update my Beribboned Wrists pattern, finish and publish my Fiasco sock pattern, work out (most of) the design for the next sock in my How I Met Your Mother series, and design/knit up most of the secret project I'd like to submit to Knit Picks. However, I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish that and submit it by the 14th, that depends a lot on how long my boat days are this week. As for the rest of the list (job/apartment hunting and planning camping trips)-- epic fail. For now, anyway.

Edited to remove excessive whine:
I'm getting a bit tired of this research boat, not going to lie. I think I've officially outgrown my capacity to be a research assistant. I need to be in charge, need to use the ol' noggin more rigorously. This puts me in a tough spot, though, because for most of the in-charge jobs you need a PhD, and for a PhD you need time and a willingness to be 1) broke and 2) all-consumed by your work for the next 5-6 years, and those are tough pills to swallow. All that said, I know I'm lucky to even have a job in this economy, plus this is the last round of sampling, so after the next few weeks it will just be 7 hour office days for the rest of the summer. The office days are pretty boring, but at least they're half as long.

Just keep swimming,amIright?

P.S. I added different pages to my blog in the tabs above. Now you can see my designs, my spinning in progress, my socks in progress, my other works in progress, and my finished socks on their own pages. Yay for procrastination through digital organization!

Squee!

Guys--I pet a baby bobcat yesterday. As in a real live wild bobcat kitten! I'm still not sure what it was doing looking all angry in a box in the Marine Fisheries headquarters, but it was there and I pet it and it was superfuzzycuteomg.

I failed to take a picture but it looked quite a lot like this little fella:

Photo credit here

Except he wasn't drinking from a bottle, he was making little hissy faces and clearly didn't want to be there. I think he was abandoned and then found by one of the Conservation Officers. They're sending him to a local zoo so he can safely grow up into this magnificent kitty:

Photo credit here

Meet Lynx rufus, the largest wild cat in Connecticut! And I pet one. Sometimes, low-paying seasonal jobs are pretty damn cool.

In other squee-worthy news, I have a sock pattern currently being tested and the testers are finishing up and their socks look amazing and the pattern is getting really great feedback and I'm super duper excited about that and can't wait to release it. See? I had something knitting-related to say afterall...

Gone Fishin'

My apologies for the radio silence lately, folks! I've been spending 13 hour days working on a research boat. I've been waking up at 5am, getting to work by 6am, getting back home around 7 pm, and falling asleep before 9pm. Busy busy busy! But it's a pretty cool job, I'm getting to see a bunch of different sea life, which is neat.

Here are a few of my new favorite fish species:

Scup (image source)

Windowpane flounder (image source)

 

Sea robin (image source)

They're very colorful and pretty in person. And the sea robin does this neat vibrating/grunting thing you can feel when you hold them. Biology is cool!

Needless to say, I haven't been making a whole lot of progress on my myriad in-progress knitting projects. However, I did start another pair of my Ribby Holiday Socks pattern to knit during downtime on the boat, and I've gotten surprisingly far this week:

STR Mediumweight, colorway On Blueberry Hill

I love how the simple stitch pattern works with variegated/stripey yarns like this. It breaks the colorway up just enough to be noticeable, without looking messy. I foresee many pairs of easy-to-memorize sock patterns in my future with this job...

Now I'm off to catch up on what's been going on in blogland. I feel so out of touch! Hope all is well with everyone.