Results

It's been ages. Eons even. I've been so preoccupied with school and finals and other commitments that I haven't even had time to blog. But don't worry, I haven't forgotten! I suppose this post will be all about results. So here goes:

Didn't make jazz; didn't make Chamber Choir. Pathetic. But I made Women's, so I guess I'm stuck there. However, one of my friends consoled me as I was looking at the list, saying, "It's all politics. Trust me. There are tons of girls in Chamber next year who don't deserve the spot. They're just placed there because their mom is best friends with the teacher or have some other political affiliation. Don't worry. I've heard you sing. You're actually pretty good." So yes, I was disappointed, but at least I didn't have to worry about other girls who made it directly into Chamber without stopping at Women's first. Ah well. Stuck in a class with all girls. Oh, the horrors. I've heard it's hellishly cliquey. Something that I hate. I guess I'll have to survive. I'll learn to deal.

So I entered my stuff into the county fair. I did fairly well, and there was actually quite a bit of competition. The item that did the best at the fair was my Fabala afghan. I'll post a picture of it soon. I'm so proud of it; I was looking for it feverishly with my friends, and suddenly they just said, "Well, maybe it's over there, in the Winners' Circle". I looked, and there it was! It was displayed beautifully, and not only did it win First Place, it also received.. get ready for it.. Best of Class and Best of Show! :) Hooray! Other items did pretty well. I entered a scarf with colors of our rival high school (purposely) and my friend who attends that high school took a picture and displayed it on the internet. Here it is. :) I love how they displayed it. People have been saying they've "(seen my) scarf at the fair", but I never know which one because I entered four.

My dad's still really unwilling to let me participate in Marching Band in the coming year. He feels I'll fall behind in my studies and that I'll soon be flunking. I doubt it's going to happen, but he feels it's entirely possible. He made a deal with me: If I can get a score of 2200 on the SAT Reasoning, I can do Marching Band. The only problem is that I'm at 2000 right now, and I have about three days to get it up 200 points because if I let the counseling office know any later than that, I won't be enrolled in Marching Band and that would just be terrible. So I'm studying. Very hard.

I started a scarf with this stitch, and I also started an afghan in some old Caron Simply Soft (White) in this stitch. I'm almost halfway done with the afghan but I have a lot more to do on the scarf. I just bought the scarf yarn today. It's green in place of the cranberry on the stitch website, with the white squares. The scarf will be for a good friend of mine who is in colorguard. She's really sweet and I've been meaning to crochet her up another scarf. I gave her one several years ago, and in that time, I've seen her wear it twice. I suppose that's better than the never other people have worn the items I've made them. But hopefully this one will be more attractive for her and she will want to wear it more often.

I'm earning serious moolah from taking care of my neighbors' animals. I guess I shouldn't talk about my salary, but I frankly could care less. I got $40 + shower kit + chocolate-covered macadamia nuts for taking care of my neighbor's cat and taking in the newspaper and mail every day for about a week and a half. I worked for my dad the other night by entering contacts from a cell phone onto a spreadsheet because it's a company phone and he wants to return it. Extra $20, but I think I really deserved it. It took over two hours to enter them all because he has over 200 contacts. Ouch. So I have $60 floating around, and my parents owe me more for my grades (not all As, but really close, so I get some money), plus I went to the fair and Discovery Kingdom with my friend, and my expenses need to be reimbursed.

Ah yes, the fair. Basically all that happened was this: I hung out with my friend + her sister, spent serious money (ride wristbands alone were $25), went on rides, one ride in particular held us upside down for an agonizingly long time (I had a headache afterwards), and then went into some gallery place and relaxed in the air-conditioned building. It was over 100 degrees that day.

Then we decided it would be awesome if I could sleep over at her house. My mom agreed, and I did, which was amazingly fun. We played Rock Band for several hours, then we had to go to my friend's sister's dance recital. It was a dress-rehearsal at Ohlone Community College, and was amazing. It's traditional Chinese dancing, but it was actually really interesting to watch. It wasn't all that Oriental as I thought it was going to be; it had a lot of Western influence as well. Then the next day, we went to Discovery Kingdom (formerly known as Marine World); owned by Six Flags. Super fun. That night, we went to my friend's sister's dance recital (the actual thing), and it was more spectacular than the dress-rehearsal. I even saw one girl in Marching Band there (flautist). I didn't say hi, though, because she was too far away.

I'm taking History, now, at a community college (not Ohlone). Some people are even going as far as Laney Community College so they won't have to take History during the school year. For me, I'm clearing up my schedule so I can do Marching Band, but many other people are doing it so they can take more AP classes. I think they're just crazy.

In a nutshell, my summer (so far) has encompassed:
+ Karen's Birthday
+ Paul's Party
+ Cynthia's Birthday + Party @ Tara's
+ Fair
+ Discovery Kingdom
+ School

My summer is about to encompass:
+ Cheering on best friend for Swimming Olympic Trials :)
+ Watching Olympic Trials (Tomorrow - Friday)
+ Hanging out at my knitting aunt's house for the weekend (+ her local knitting store!)
+ Band camp
+ Watching the Olympics held in Beijing, mainly swimming + track
+ School band camp (possibly; only if I make Marching Band)
+ And hopefully movies


I want to see WALL-E so badly; it seems so cute! A few friends from class are going to see it too, so I'll just see it with them.

We're going to Cheesecake Factory tomorrow. Maybe I'll get a few pictures to spruce up this blog and keep it from getting excruciatingly boring.

The Final Word:
+ "Stop trying to make her white, Chris." "But I've already half-succeeded!" (reference to my being half white [Mom's white, Dad's not]; Chris was messing around with the white-out)

Someone's Up Early This Morning

Good morning! I feel like I'm back at band camp (the one in the woods with cabins, not the one for school), having to wake up around 6:30 and get to breakfast before 7:30. Today will be a busy day I'm sure. As far as I know, I will be knitting as long and quickly as I can to finish up the Triple S ('Scrunchable Scarf' Scarf) in Cashsoft. In the afternoon, I'll probably head over to our local yarn store to try to exchange some yarn I bought there a while ago. It was in January, so I doubt they'll let me exchange it, but I might as well try.

I wanted to go to Berkeley's Ifshin Violins to get my bow re-haired, but I don't think that's going to happen today. I know the owners (they come to band camp - the one in the woods) so I know the store has to be good. Maybe in a few weeks or so. I'm freaking out about an audition to be part of a string quartet for our school jazz band. They have one selection that requires two violins, a viola, and a cello. I'm auditioning for second violin and almost all the other violins are auditioning for first, so I have a pretty good chance, but it's still nerve-racking. And if I do make it, will I be good enough? What if I mess up? Our jazz band is competing for the best high school jazz band in the nation with twelve other high schools from across America. Pressure? I've always wanted to do something like this, but.. I don't know. I thought maybe re-hairing my bow would help my sound quality because it was dropped in a puddle of water in the band room two years ago. I didn't even drop it. It was someone else who was borrowing my violin and bow and was trying to "wash" his hands with a bottle of water. Some water fell on the floor, and AHHH! Then he dropped my bow. I (obviously) freaked out. So anyway, to repair water damage from two years ago, I thought re-hairing my bow would work. Oh well. Hopefully I'll just make the cut and can re-hair my bow before the performance.



Updated at 8:23 AM to include:

I finished Triple S! I've decided to leave it a bit short, and it comes just below my belly-button when wrapped around my neck. I won't crochet a border after all because it looks cute as is. It almost looks like a crochet picot border. I can always a border later. I have a skein and a half left of Cashsoft, so I'm planning on making a hat; making it up as I go. I'll post the pattern whenever I come up with it.


So here is my lovely Triple S.

Isn't it wonderful? I can't wait to wear it on Saturday night!

Updated at 9:18 AM to include:

I know I'm obsessed. But I finally got pictures of my yarn! After finally finishing Triple S, I started winding my new yarn into balls. So here you go.

Color 115. I'll be making a Prismatic Scarf with this.

Color 602. Golden Ochre colorway. I'll be making another My So-Called Scarf.

And color 114. Oro y vino colorway. I'm supposing this means 'gold and wine' becuase 'or' in French means gold, and 'vin' in French means wine. Hooray for French in the real world!

Updated at 9:29 PM to include:

At 7:00, my mom dropped me off at our local knitting store for tonight's Sit & Knit. True, the ladies weren't my age (the youngest one was 28), but I had tons of fun otherwise. One of them, Joe, obsessed over her "Gizmo" that was supposed to airate wine (yes, wine was present tonight) to make it taste better. It made funny noises. This evening, I bought a skein of Araucania's Multicolor Limari (AHH $16!) to make my friend a hat she's been wanting for so long (I charged her $20 figuring that the yarn was only $11.50 or so. I won't change the price for her because that's just mean and I already told her the set price, but if anyone else asks, I'll probably charge them at least $25. She got a super discount!) I worked at the hat for about two hours and I'm ALMOST DONE. It works up quickly and is incredibly soft. I just have to crochet the border, finish weaving in the ends, and add a tassle, and it will be complete! I was finishing it up at the shop tonight, and one of the ladies there said, "Ooh such thick dpns. I'd have to get my AspiraCream to do that!" I was using size 15s.

Okay now it's 10:55, and I'm done with the hat! It's all packaged up, but before I wrapped it up, I took a picture.

Due to the lack of natural lighting now, it's all.. yellowish and greenish. In actuality, the tissue paper is a bright teal and the hat is mainly light blue with darker blue and purple highlights. I believe I'll call this Little Mermaid because of the undersea influences. Though I hate the ocean. Oh well.

I Left My Heart In San Francisco

We left at around 10:15 this morning to head to San Francisco! We ended up taking BART to the 16th St. Mission Station. We got out of the station at just after 11:15 (construction was underway, which delayed us a bit).

Coming out of the station.

Mission Street is not a very nice area. It was kind of worrying, but there were plenty of police officers on bicycles around, so that eased my mind. And off we went to ImagiKnit.

After a long trek (0.86 miles according to BART's website), we were finally there!

ImagiKnit is up ahead, just across the street.

It was pretty big, and contained yarn I had seen in many different places but until now, not together in one place. I'd say ImagiKnit has a pretty eclectic collection.

On our way back to the 16th St. Mission Station, we took a little bit different route. We saw tons of Barack Obama posters. I won't get into politics now, but I think it's so amazing that both a black man and a woman (a white woman, but still a woman nonetheless) are running to be the first president of their kind in the history of America. Unless John McCain wins, of course.

It's kind of hard to see, but there are nine Barack posters on the first floor and three Hillary posters on the second floor. I'm liking the juxtaposition. Ironic much?

Five official Obama posters. I don't know what the other ones are.

Blogger takes too long to upload photos, so I think I'll leave it at that. I might as well mention that Macy's was really cool. They had this Spanish theme going on. And as we were walking, we saw Dior, Chanel, Gucci, Lacoste, Burberry, and others. Oh yes. Britex Fabrics was pretty cool, but everything was really expensive! I got pictures of everything, including signs, sculptures, and more. I even took a picture of my frappachino at Starbucks I got later on in the day (which I consumed illegally on BART during the return trip - no food or drink allowed).

I would love to post everything and all the pictures I took. But I don't have three hours. Blogger takes too long and I need to get to bed. I have a big day tomorrow: knitting all day to finish the Scrunchable Scarf and get the border done before Saturday (I would like to get it done before Thursday ends but I don't know if that's feasible), then I got two skeins each of Manos del Uraguay's color 115 (for a Prismatic Scarf), Malabrigo's color 604 (Golden Ochre colorway) (for a My So-Called Scarf), and Malabrigo's color 114 (Oro y Vino colorway) (for the pattern that came with the yarn. They're all beautiful and I'd love to post pictures, but again, it takes forever. Maybe tomorrow.

Spring break is.. actually sort of almost over. Tomorrow is Thursday, which means only two more days off from school + the weekend. Then school again. Ugh. Back to the old grind.