Tuesdays

The past few weeks I have been going through periods of intense stress ("Oh my god! I have to start that paper for my Human Event course! I haven't touched my Honors Contract in weeks! I have to find internships and get published and find a respectable job, or I'll be living by the canal and one day drown unbeknownst to anyone!!!") and lulls of "I'm fine. I can totally handle life." This morning was the former. Right now is the latter.

Every other Tuesday (starting today) a farmer's market comes and sets up shop on campus. Their location just happens to be right next to where I kick back on my secluded, shaded bench and watch cats/work on my short story entry for an hour every Tuesday. What a lovely coincidence!

What's on my mind:

1. Glee.

2. Holidays. (Halloween and Christmas with the gang.)

3. This cheesecake. Martha Stewart you kill me.

4. My birthday!! 19 years, here I come.

Guess who I get to see in three days

These kids! I've missed them in my life.

And this girl!

put a stitch on it

I have found myself quite often sitting in my dorm room with a pair of needles in my hands the past few weeks. I created an Etsy shop in hopes of generating at least a little revenue. The result?

1. Bows!

2. Faded necklace

A cloudy day in Tempe

There's no gloom though. Today has been lovely. Done with classes for the week, I am sitting on my bed, knitting a whimsical scarf (see below), listening to Belle and Sebastian, and drinking a Trader Joe's orange cream soda. It has been overcast and gloriously windy all day; I've hardly even broken a sweat walking to class. Even the girls outside my window wearing only their bras and distressed denim shorts where the pockets are longer than the hemline aren't bothering me! I just look above them at the clouds and the windy tree tops and life is good!

Disclaimer: It looks pretty silly now but I promise it will have many more leaves on it and be awesome when it is complete. If there's a deficiency of greenery around me, I will just have to wear some!

Also, I got an email about this annual creative publication called Lux. They publish undergraduate fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and selected art pieces. I'm thinking about submitting a fictional short story! We'll see where that goes. (This is the 2010 winner for the fiction section. Seems pretty competitive, but I might as well give it a shot.)

Maybe it will rain tonight.

Creative Writing: An hour in the life of an English major

It smells like newly cut grass and cigarette smoke in the quad behind the Interdisciplinary building, and I can hear the quiet humming of the mower ahead of me. There’s a speckled shade falling on the pages of my book as well as the occasional leaf or particle of pollen. I look up from my book at the lighted concrete pathway in front of me and squint at the greens of the trees and the brightness and the reflections in the windows on the opposing building, because I’ve been looking at shaded black and white for ten minutes.

I see a cat. I arbitrarily decide it’s a girl. Her body is a soft and slightly matted grey while her face is brown and her eyes a dull blue. She’s sneaking along in the dirt beside me, her belly pressed against the grass clippings and cigarette butts. She lays her hips and then her side lazily down.

I watch her. She doesn’t look at me. I read my book.

It’s an essay entitled “A List of Nothing in Particular” by William Least Heat-Moon, whose name I love. “The night, taking up the shadows and details, wiped the face of the desert into a simple, uncluttered blackness until there were only three things: land, wind, stars.” I look at her. She has been cleaning her temple with the side of her paw for 10 minutes, never mind the tangle of leaves and pebbles I see on the underside of her belly. I stand, shuffling the books in my bag, keeping one eye on her to see if she moves in response to the noise and motion. She licks her lips, looking out towards the sunny walkway. I clear my throat. She blinks slowly.

I sigh and as I zip up my backpack, the face of my watch catches in the dappled light filtering through the leaves in the tree above me and reflects a glitter of light into her eye. Her eyes widen and her face snaps towards me in a sudden and ridiculous fear. She stands, hunches her back, her shoulders arrowheads underneath her skin. I laugh a little too loudly. She runs, darting in front of a sluggish boy on a skateboard who doesn’t even notice her to get away from me and my watch face.

“To say nothing is out here is incorrect; to say the desert is stingy with everything except space and light, stone and earth is closer to the truth.”

Hey, look what I can do!

It's Labor Day and although part of the free day had to be spent on Oedipus and a rhetorical analysis, I thought I should also do something fun. (i.e. knit!!) I needed something small and manageable that could be completed in about an hour. My parents gave me a set of patterns for lacy trim and edgings a few years ago, and I decided to make a necklace out of said pattern.

For any knitters out there, here's the pattern. It's quite simple.

Cast on 7 stitches.
Row 1: k2, k2tog, yo, k2, yo2, k1.
Row 2: k1, (k1, k1 tbl) into yo2 from previous row, k2tog, yo, k4.
Row 3: k2, k2tog, yo, k5.
Row 4: Bind off 2 stitches, 1 stitch remains on right needle, k2tog, yo, k4. 7 stitches remain.
Repeat rows 1-4 until trim reaches the desired length.

Adorable vintage clothing stores are my toast and butter

College is about cramped desk spaces, 2 a.m. readings of Plato, lots of ramen, and finding great/quirky vintage stores. The other day, Rylee took me to this store called Butter Toast in Phoenix. We had to wander through some overgrown, abandoned-looking neighborhoods to get there, but it was quite worth it.

I am on a budget (again part of the college experience), but I couldn't help myself. The store was so lovely, the prices extremely reasonable. My finds:

The "I'm a college hipster" look: I have been wearing almost exclusively my high-waisted shorts since I got here because of the heat, but I've been on the lookout for some denim high-waisted ones for a while.

The "I'm a tennis pro in the '60s" look: This orange and white checkered gem was an early birthday present from Rylee. She's too nice to me.

The "I've been watching too much Mad Men and think I'm cool" look: This dress, however impractical, reminds me of Betty Draper and Kaylie Hatos. I couldn't resist.

So, there ARE cool places around here. I need to get over myself and explore and find them. This was a wonderful start.