theyellowhobbit

It’s been a while, so an update seems to be a good idea.

Last week I was at Penn. I stayed with GM and AK for the non-Shabbat parts and dr_whom for Shabbat. On Thursday we visited Monge and gave her the Monge Blanket
( Monge Blanket!!! )
She was touched. And she really likes it. Huzzah!

I also did lots of spinning and knitting at GM's place. The night before I got there I had a dream that I had bought a new spinning wheel, which happens to be the wheel GM has in real life, an Ashford Kiwi. ( Wheel! )
I used her wheel to ply the silk I was spinning for crewgrrl and the last of the alpaca for hatam_soferet's scarf.

( silk and scarf )

On Thursday we also went yarn shopping, and I spent an obscene amount of money on yarn (well, there were also 2 sets of double-pointed needles, but still). The yarn is really pretty, and I'm going to make 2 lace shawls... Eventually. I still have a bunch of projects that I need to finish before I start on the shawls. But I've finished a lot of things in the past 2 weeks. Go me!

We met up with cynara_linnaea and saw the Star Wars exhibit at the Franklin institute, which was cool.

Shabbat at Penn was fun for the most part, though I have serious doubts about the future of the Conservative Movement, though I'm not going to get into that here. Let's just say that I was a bit uncomfortable with some of the things they were doing, and I'm so grateful for the Student Conservative Minyan at Harvard.

And dr_whom introduced me to Basari, a fun game that involves lots of shiny things. I should play games based on the shininess of the pieces.

That night we saw Iolanthe, which superducky1 and platypuses were in. It was a really good show.

On Sunday night I stayed over in RI, and there was the Providence Hebrew Day School's annual fundraiser event, which is this big raffle with lots of really good prizes. I went in 2005 and 2006, and we won things, and then last year I didn't make it and my parents didn't win anything. This year we won a 65-piece set of dishes (service for 12) silverware (also for 12) wine goblets, and a really nice tablecloth. They'll be put away until I have my own place (since right now we have everything and these are really fancy).

This week was pretty uneventful. HRSFA was pretty quiet (nothing on Wednesday night and nothing on Thursday night) though I did get together with a few people. And on Thursday night MB and I got together so I could sing the Passover songs for him to dictate with his shiny music software. Unfortunately, we will not be doing my/the Penn Chad Gadya. So I’m not sure how I’m going to actually be able to sing it on Passover. Also, I lack plans for second night seder, so I need to fix that. And I only put 2 and 2 together today that I might be missing 2 D&D meetings for Passover, since chag falls on Sunday for both the beginning and end of Passover. And the first one will be during 2nd seder, and I can’t really skip the seder (even if I currently have no seder to go to.) I might theoretically be able to go to the one during the second days, if I prepare my spells in advance and print them out, and either have a really good memory about the spells I’ve used or put some sort of tokens on top of them as I use them. I guess that’s what a lb of dice is good for. Though even then I still have the problem that if I want to write a note to anyone, I can’t. I could pull them aside and tell them whatever, but then it would be really obvious. I should call hKC and talk to him about this, but he’s probably in Noteables right now and I can talk to him about it tonight.

And I guess there was also the conference on Women and Gender in Religion on Thursday at Radcliffe. I had to go for my Religion, Gender, and Space class, and I have to write a 3-4 page response paper on it. It was a good conference (or the part I was at was good. It went through Friday, but I was gone by Friday morning, so I only went to the Thursday sessions) though I have no clue what I’m going to write about considering that the talks were way outside my area of study. If I had been there on Friday I could have gone to the Judaism session, and then I would have something to write about. They videotaped the conference, so maybe it’s on the internet by now.

At the end of the Thursday part of the conference, there was a reception. (Probably the most unkosher reception ever- tons of shellfish and stuff. But luckily there was also fruit.) I spotted Tamar Ross, a famous Orthodox feminist think/writer/scholar. So I introduced myself to her, which was amusing since she has definitely heard of the other Rachel Adler, and obviously I am not that Rachel Adler. And apparently Tamar Ross was at UMD last Shabbat. And I was there this Shabbat.

This Shabbat I went and visited MT for Shabbat. I ended up leading pretty much everything at the Conservative minyan (well, not everything, but 2 out of the 5 services, and they had me do Kiddush on Friday night as well) and I read Torah for them. cynara_linnaea was also around this Shabbat. We were both there for the same reason- Gymkana, UMD’s traveling show gymnastics team had their annual home show. cynara_linnaea’s younger sister is in Gymkana, so that’s why she was there, whereas I was there more because I had seen home show 2 years ago and it was amazing, and I hadn’t seen MT in almost a year. And this was the last weekend I would be able to get away for the next month or so.

I’m riding the train home as I write this. The train has been running really late, and I’ll be getting home (to South Station, not even to my house) at 6:40 instead of 5:15. Which means I’m probably skipping the general meeting tonight, since I need to drop off my stuff and eat dinner/grab something that I will pretend is dinner. Even then, I need to be back on campus at 8 for hKC’s D&D campaign, which will require taking the 7:30 bus. Either that, or I go straight to Harvard (since I’ll be riding the T anyways) but the problem with that is that I’d be missing dinner, which normally would not be such a big deal, but today I did not eat breakfast or lunch. In fact, I’ve only eaten chocolate today. And water. I know, I know, I should have packed food or something. If I had brought some granola bars, it might be a different story. Though even then you’d all yell at me for not eating real food. Thus food trumps the HRSFA meeting, since every one at the meeting would also yell at me for not eating all day if they knew I skipped dinner to come to the meeting.

I should sleep. But I've been having too much fun spinning my emerald green merino wool. I'm finally using the fast flyer, which makes it go really fast! (It's easier to spin slowly when you first start, so I had been afraid to use it up until now.) Whee! Look at it go! If only I could draft more quickly.

The problem is I have no clue how many yards I've spun, so I don't know how much more I need to spin for the current project. This is the first yarn I've spun since moving to Cambridge that is for me to knit (even if I'm giving away the final product.) Everything else has been for gifts to other knitters.

And once I finish with the emerald merino I might use the really nice stuff I bought from poppyflowerfibr. (It's so shiny!) Though I'm not sure what I'm making with that. I might just be making yarn. I need projects small enough that I won't run out of yarn. But I have a pair of wrist warmers now and don't seem to need another any time soon. I have a nice hat (though I guess I could use another). I have 2 really nice scarves in the making (llama and alpaca). So I'm not sure what this roving/yarn will be. It might be a while before I get to it anyways, since I need to knit up all the aforementioned projects. I'm looking forward to working with handspun yarn. Especially the alpaca I have going on my drop spindle. Ooh! An alpaca hat! I'm going to make myself an alpaca hat if I have enough yarn!