Gingko and grad school

It's been an awkward time of life these past few weeks. I was accepted into my graduate program at EWU (weeeeee!) and funded for the next year, which meant that job searching was more or less a moot point, since no one is hiring someone for 6 months. So job hunting has been replaced with sketching serial cross-sections of chick embryos and learning basic programing. I'm excited to see what next year will hold, but I'm also rather nervous. I received an assistanship, which I wanted, but they haven't told me what I will be doing/teaching in order to merit their money, and I've been out of school for a year. I'm feeling rusty. I'm feeling inadequate. I'm feeling like I need to review my entire undergraduate curriculum in the next 6 months.

It's terrifying. Still, I can't wait to get back on the embryology horse and learn all sorts of new, fascinating things. Let's just leave it at "change is scary."

In other news, I started knitting Les Miserables, which has several things going for it. First, it is named after my favorite book by my favorite author. Second, it is felted laceweight, something I have always wanted to try. Third, it is charmingly distressed by little dropped stitch columns that fill me with girlish glee. The pattern is quite simple, and it's nice and mindless most of the time.

It was put aside for two days, though, to make way for Gingko, a shawl that I knit for our accountant. The blessed woman did our taxes pro bono this year and got us back enough money to calm my worried, worried heart and fix the car. She said, "pay me when you come back next year." I could have cried. Instead, I knit her a shawl.

Gingko is adorable. I went down a 2 needle sizes across the board so that it would be a little more sturdy. I added a repeat to each section (45 increase rows and a m1 in each half to get the necessary 92 stitches), and it looks lovely. I couldn't be happier. Well, maybe the leaves could look something like a gingko leaf (seriously... no relationship is shape.)

These are not gingko leaves.

This is a gingko leaf

But for what I wanted and the amount of time and effort it took to get there, I am more than pleased. It's in the mail. Marvelous.

Photo credit for the gingko leaf: http://www.bio.brandeis.edu/fieldbio/medicinal_plants/pages/Ginkgo.html