France-ness

So here I am in France, without ever photographing and posting about my Christmas knitting. There wasn't a whole lot of it, but enough to warant a post with pictures surely. I produced a scarf from Knitted Lace of Estonia for my sister - the peacock and leaf scarf, except much longer and in white angora. For my brother I made a pair of socks, in blue with a knit two, purl one, one seedstitch, purl one rib (which was very successful) with a green cuff. I also made a document carrying bag for my dad out of green leaf-patterned brocade.

I'm staying in Grenoble for the next month and studying French at the CUEF (Centre Universitaire d'Etudes Françaises). I'm living with a host family in the center of grenoble; right in the old city. I take the tram to class every day - the stop is a block or so away, and I have a 20 minute ride.

The tram is pretty awesome. It runs on electricity, and is very quiet. There are wires overhead, but only two except at intersections. The rails are set into the pavement, and cars drive over them all the time. Because the electricity is in wires overhead, there is no third rail like the subway, and people step onto the tracks and cross over. Even when the tracks are separated from the road there is no barrier of any kind - at the station you just walk to the other side to change direction.

I forgot my camera (I don't know how - I walked right by it when I left) so there will likely be no pictures, but I'll still be able to post discriptions.

A Catalog of Shoes

I live in a quite small dorm room. It's a single, which means it's just me and my stuff in a 10.5 feet by 8.5 feet room. It's not very big, but I mostly manage to fit everything in reasonably well. I find myself hampered in this attempt by all the shoes I own.

They are:

one pair black character shoes
one pair gold character shoes (spray painted)
one pair black leather pumps
one pair black ballet slippers
one pair gold ballet slippers
one pair low-top eco-sneaks
one pair converse high tops
one pair flip-flops
one pair running shoes
one pair rugby boots (with large metal cleats)
one pair neoprene winter boots
one pair cow boy boots
one pair brown leather ankle boots
and one pair slippers (red, boiled wool)

Exhibit A: 15 pairs of shoes

On the benifits of gettting dressed up and going somewhere

Last Saturday was the Hepcats Swing Club annual winter dance. Compaq Big Band played. It was lots of fun. We all got dressed up and went out dancing, in the snow. I wore a bright green silk dress that I made last spring, and gold shoes.


Getting dressed up is fun, even if it's just to go to a small dance where some people will show up in fancy dresses or shirts and ties, and others will be in jeans and a tank top. What other people are wearing really doesn't matter.

It was snowing for most of the evening, and by the time we walked back to the dorm. Heavy, wet snow that clung to everything it touched and layered on the trees and bushes and telephone wires.

Thanksgiving Sewing

I got very little knitting done this Thanksgiving, mostly because I was too busy working for my mother. I was home for most of a week, and spent the first weekend cutting out and starting a muslin for a dress shirt. I had to go back to school for classes on Monday and Tuesday, but I had intended to come home and work on Wednesday. I figured I could make the final draft, as it were, in a day and where it to Thanksgiving. Not so much.

It turned out my mother (who I love dearly) needed me and my sewing machine all day on Wednesday to finish covering new cushions for a danish chair belonging to a friend, which she had promised by Thanksgiving. It consisted of wrapping the foam cushion forms in dacron fluff and muslin, sewing them on, and then creating removable covers. The covers were in a thick, loose-weave upholstery fabric, with piping around all the edges. I got to make the piping. I'm not quite sure what she would have done if I had not been home to work on them, but they would not have been done by Thanksgiving. (My showing up in the nick of time clearly makes me a Big Damn Hero)

I spent most of Friday and Saturday working with my mom at the Craft Fair, we ran the food. There was ham, egg, and tuna salad sandwiches, hot dogs, and pupkin soup. We worked for 5 hours or so each day, and it was pretty easy. I knew I was going to be doing that, though I hadn't quite realized how exhausted I would be by the end of the week. In all, it was not exactly the relaxing vacation I had in mind.

My life was eaten by:

So, for the past two weeks or so I have hardly had time to think.

The reasons are:

• Fluid Mechanics: I am taking Fluid Mechanics for honors, and it ate my brain (but maybe when I finish the CAD renditions I'll post them)
• French: Presentation (on Chartres Cathedral), quiz, the like. It's hard!
  
• Technical writing: final team project.
• I got the flu, and was sick for 48 hours or so.
  
• First Saturday Contra Dance in Peterborough New Hampshire
• Intermittent bits of knitting (new project, will show soon)
• Harry Dresden, wizard private investigator

But I have gotten a fair amount of knitting done. I started the sleeve of my sweater, but sort of got distracted, and I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out. I may try again and knit the patterned part inside out to keep the floats loose.



The offending sleeve. It's a bit too tight in the pattern, and I think it loosens too fast.

Charleston Game

One of the other things I do when avoiding studying (besides knitting) is swing dance. My school has a Swing Club, we meet every week for an hour lesson and an hour (or so) of free dancing. Swing dance is a couple's dance, and comes in three general types. East Coast Swing has a six count basic, and is danced to any 4 beat music. It is often what people learn first, and is also called Jitterbug. Lindy Hop has an eight count basic, and is the main social dance everywhere. West Coast is a variant on Lindy, it has many of the same moves, but is danced to more latin-type music, rather than the jazz favored by Lindy.

The lessons have now moved on from East Coast Swing to Lindy Hop, which is much more fun. Lindy is a dance that was invented in the 20s and 30s, and is generally danced to jazz music, though anything with a good 4/4 time works (I'm partial to Buddy Holly). Charleston is what came before Swing, and Lindy incorporates a lot of Charleston moves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=339ixMtHrVk&feature=related

This evening during the free dance, a bunch of us started playing "the Charleston game". This is a game invented by a couple of the club members (who have now graduated, sadly), where Charleston is danced in a big group, but with variations all done together. The signals are given on the back rock step, and then the front kick is changed into something else - a stomp, two stomps, a freeze, something like that. From across the room, it looks like telepathy. An entire group of people are all Charlestoning at the same time, with variations, all in sync. And it's not choreographed, except on the fly. Lots of fun.

This afternoon I spent 3 1/2 hours watching an informational video on identifying bankfull width in streams. Bankfull width is the level at which the stream fills its banks, but doesn't quite spill over onto the floodplain. It's useful in stream restoration. But the upshot of watching this video was that I had 3 1/2 hours sitting staring at my computer screen, knitting. I finished the body of my sweater, and grafted the shoulders. I even wove in all the ends. Now all that's left to do is cut up the middle (you can see where it is folded over in the picture). I'm really pleased, so far.

The Sweater.