I'm a chicken with no head

Wow, it has been a really busy past few days.

Monday I had a presentation (which went fabulous) and went to Pub Quiz at McGinty's.

Tuesday was knitting group. It was pretty normal. I had had a bad day, so I endulged on wine and a chocolate lava cake. It is a dark choclate cake for one filled with hot chocolate syrup. I met Heidi's mom, who is really cool. I came across a great find at Border's: The Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Embroidery Stitches. Hardcover, hundreds of pages, and on sale for $4.99! It shows you how to do the basics and variations of each.

Yesterday I had no internship because it was Emancipation Day in DC. Amy and I painted the town red. We went to the Plaza Art store and Strosnider's hardware to prepare for craftnite. We got loads of stuff. Then we went to Whole Foods for a snack and discussed vegetarianism. I tried tofu and this other wheat-based stuff that is supposed to resemble beef. Another vegetarian friend shared with me once that one of the reasons people don't like tofu is because they are expecting it to resemble meat since it is commonly used as a substitution for it, but that it doesn't come near to it texturally. I actually enjoyed my little non-meat hot bar snack. I did have salmon, however. Then I went to free yoga at Willow Street in Silver Spring. It was ok. I'm new to non-fitness-club yoga, so it was much more spiritual and philosophical than I'm used to. I've been sore today, too, so I did get a workout. I also fell asleep while doing the meditation part. I was feeling a little bad yesterday again. After that I went home to prepare for craftnite (I brought a shitload of stuff). In the mail I got both (and only) my next Netflix movie AND the Cascase220 I bought on sale from WEBS for the tilted duster part deux. Very exciting.

On the way over Heidi and I noticed an awesome sculpture someone made in their front yard. They made a "tree" from lumber and twigs, and covered each twig end with a brightly-painted glass bottle. It was so cool I had to get out and snap a pic.

Then Honey greeted us upon arrival.
You can tell a knitter lives here when a skein of yarn is hanging outside for some functional reason or another.
Can I have some cookies and strawberries too? Honey and I waited while Amy and Heidi ran out to the fabric store.
I swear, Selma is going to be a chef someday the way she randomly decides to combine foods. This is a strawberry with slurpee filling.
On to the crafts! We decided to do the shrinky dinks. Due to some miscommunication, I ended up downstairs for a long time, alone and sharpening scads of colored pencils. It was boring.

Can you see where Heidi got her inspiration for this one?
Amy originally wanted to do shrinky dinks because she wanted to make stitch markers with knitting symbols, to kill 2 birds with one stone. When you get to the stitch marker, you'd just do the symbols that's on it (make 1, ssk, etc.). She was gifted some with the abbreviations, but wanted to make some with the symbols instead.
I did some with the abbreviations.
Then we cut them all out. A professor once told me that I do not have a good poker face. Yeah, this picture pretty much sums up how I've been feeling the past few days:
Then we heated them in the oven for a few minutes, and tada!

Can you see the inspiration for the cherries? Amy's are the two made into earrings, and mine is the other one. I literally traced the cherries from the tablecloth onto the shrinky dink, so you can see you much it shrinks!
On to project #2. Amy had seen this on a blog. In that a crochet hook is a staple for picking up dropped stitches in knitted work, the creator of this gizmo thought it'd be handy for a crochet hook to be always in reach. You start by cutting the hook in almost half.
Then you just bend the end into a loop.
The aluminum hook didn't work out great.
Then with a steel hook and some manly arms of steel, it worked.

So that was craftnite. Then today was my last day of my internship at High Roads. They gave us interns a nice little breakfast from the Corner Bakery and the book, "Days in the Life of Social Workers," which is comprised of 54 tales from real social workers. My supervisor also gave my a bottle of wine and I got some cards from kids and staff. In group I had them make s'mores and playdough from food ingredients: combine 3c flour, 1/3 c salt, 2 tbsp vegetable oil; slowly add water and work into dough; add food coloring and knead until thoroughly colored. It was a lovely day, cut short by the pope's visit.

So it's been a crazy week; more craziness to come in the next month and a half.

Happy knitting.