Knitter's Review has a lovely forum, and there are some really interesting threads that get going on there from time to time. I'm in the middle of reading a thread entitled "Knitting heretics", in which people confess their real, less-than-politically-knitting-correct, opinions about what is supposedly knitting gospel. The Yarn Harlot, in her blog and in her published work, often likes to comment on what an amazing thing knitting is to bring together such widely varied people. There is no one thing that can be said about all knitters, who they are, what they like, and the fiber industry has a really hard time keeping up with us. Things everyone knows are popular are always going to draw detractors who think that holding a "nonconformist" opinion somehow improves their status or their life, but admittedly some things do not deserve to be popular sometimes.
In that spirit, I'd like to offer a list of my own "knitting heresies", which are of course only my own opinion. After weeding out "heresies" which are so common as to actually verge on orthodoxy (I hate novelty yarn, I actually like cuff-down socks with heel flaps on DPN's, I never swatch, etc.)
(1) I felt like the show Knitty Gritty talked down to me, and frankly to all knitters of some experience. Except for knowing how to physically make the knit stitch and perhaps the purl, there seemed to be absolutely no brain cells required of the viewer. Vicky Howell seemed very nice, but the kind of knitting celeb who would only be appreciated by those not too far on their journey into our craft.
(2) I absolutely hated every single project in the original Stitch and Bitch book and I'm not quite sure I'd recommend it as a beginner book even for the learning section. The recent "Superstar Knitting" followup, however has redeemed Debbie Stoller in my eyes, if only for the descriptions of some more advanced-ish techniques.
(3) I cannot stand garter stitch. Think it's ugly as sin and frankly looks cheap. Must have been the garter stitch Red Heart rectangles I was forced into as "beginner projects." Thank gawd I love my grandparents-in-law enough to make a giant garter-stitch log cabin acrylic-in-massive-numbers-of-colors afghan. It would not exist if I wasn't using my great-grandmother-in-law's 1970's dime store acrylic stash, in memoriam.
(4) I love the members of my knitting group and adore talking to them, but I'm often ambivalent about the act of getting in my car for twenty minutes to do what I was about to do on my couch.
(5) I'm currently making my first sweater in pieces. Don't think the top-down-raglan crowd is going to make any headway with me.
(6) I'm generally unaware of what "everyone" is knitting. It's not that I actively avoid things like Clapotis, I am purely clueless.
(7) I sometimes intentionally choose projects to bring to my knitting group purely for show. I hate this about myself, but I just soak up comments like "I'd never have the patience for that".
(8) Crocheted fabric strikes me as weird looking and one-note.
(9) I would love to knit in church if I could - I swear I'd actually pay more attention - but there's always my mother's voice in the back of my head saying "Are you crazy?"
(10) I love pooling and flashing in my sock yarns. Think it looks awesome.
Aaaand...there you go.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Victory For Birch, the Miraculous Shawl.
This is what Birch looked like when she was brand new. That was the first ball of Kid Silk Haze, after an unfortunate run-in with a certain spaniel whose name rhymes with Shady. Fairly early in the process, I left our house with my husband to have dinner on our Friday Date Night, as usual. No big deal. As we were walking away, he reminded me that Birch had been left on the couch, rather than deliberately out of Lady's reach. I, being an idjit, insisted to him that this would be fine and that Lady was not in the habit of destroying things. We went on our merry way, enjoying dinner without a thought.
Upon returning, I saw it. Birch was on the floor, miraculously not off the needles. Not a stitch dropped, thanks be to wool. The formerly neat ball of Kid Silk Haze was spread out and undone, but again miraculously, not tangled. It took me many hours, but I was able to repair the damage.
Since Birch was cast on, I have completed one pair of mittens, one pair of socks, and a first sock of a second pair. One of said socks was the fastest sock I've ever done, at a solid two days. This shawl, during her production, has overseen my most prolific knitting month yet, and that includes last December, my first real Knitter's Christmas.
This is what Birch looked like on her way to glory. Yes, that's my desk at work. It's lunch, I swear it is.
I kept Birch going for longer and longer, building on the victorious energy with which I started her.And here she is now, an incredibly incredibly miraculous, victorious shawl.
Welcome to the world, Birch.
Monday, July 18, 2011
The Most Boring Post Ever - I Dare You to Read It
With a fairly quick push, the Rockin' Socks for July are done...beautiful, beautiful colorway from Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock, and a very useful pattern from a fantastic designer. These are on my feet twelve days early, meaning I'm ready to cast on for the next Sock Club pair as soon as the package arrives next week. Score one more for the Victory of Birch...which appears to be the Neverending Shawl. Maybe it's sticking around to absorb as many other FO's in its web of victory as possible.
It's clear just how many of all zero of you care deeply about my weekend, so here it is. Saturday was my first day in so long that I just got to spend at home with my husband and my dog. No plans, no requirements, no nothing. It was delicious. Lady, the pooch, got a bath and now smells more like vanilla than dog, which is an improvement.
Sunday, I had to do my first reading at Mass, which turned into a really nervewracking situation for me because I ended up having to do my first two readings. And the prayers of the people and the announcements. With a priest who has never said Mass at our parish before. I was counting on having someone else to keep a little eye on to ensure that I'm doing things right, and ended up screwing up a time or two because I had NO safety net. Joy. Serving the Lord, crazy initiation challenge style.
In order to unwind, my husband and I ended up deciding to go to the Renaissance Faire, which was a lot of fun, but I had conveniently not been paying much attention to the extreme heat advisories. Baking heat, massive humidity did not make four hours walking around outside the most optimal of ideas, but luckily my husband and I enjoy the Faire so much that it was worth it. We saw a couple comedic shows, which were delightful, and enjoyed the food, drink, shopping, and funne at ye faire. In addition to last year's corset acquisition, I now have a lovely underdress for which Birch will make a lovely overskirt. Tada, boring description of weekend accomplished! Still no knitting pictures! However will I maintain my extensive readership? Who knows.
It's clear just how many of all zero of you care deeply about my weekend, so here it is. Saturday was my first day in so long that I just got to spend at home with my husband and my dog. No plans, no requirements, no nothing. It was delicious. Lady, the pooch, got a bath and now smells more like vanilla than dog, which is an improvement.
Sunday, I had to do my first reading at Mass, which turned into a really nervewracking situation for me because I ended up having to do my first two readings. And the prayers of the people and the announcements. With a priest who has never said Mass at our parish before. I was counting on having someone else to keep a little eye on to ensure that I'm doing things right, and ended up screwing up a time or two because I had NO safety net. Joy. Serving the Lord, crazy initiation challenge style.
In order to unwind, my husband and I ended up deciding to go to the Renaissance Faire, which was a lot of fun, but I had conveniently not been paying much attention to the extreme heat advisories. Baking heat, massive humidity did not make four hours walking around outside the most optimal of ideas, but luckily my husband and I enjoy the Faire so much that it was worth it. We saw a couple comedic shows, which were delightful, and enjoyed the food, drink, shopping, and funne at ye faire. In addition to last year's corset acquisition, I now have a lovely underdress for which Birch will make a lovely overskirt. Tada, boring description of weekend accomplished! Still no knitting pictures! However will I maintain my extensive readership? Who knows.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Astonishing Progress Against Knitting Friction
There has been some astonishing progress with the ol' sticksnstring lately, mostly because I stealthily cast on (and off) a pair of mittens for my 2 year old neighbor girl for Christmas (It's only five and a half months away, people!). She's absolutely adorable and I think every single preschooler NEEDS to have a pair of bright red mittens, preferably on a little fingerknit string to prevent mitten loss. They should be issued on their second birthday, just to ensure full penetration of the preschooler market. I picked up some Debbie Stoller Alpaca Love at Michaels on clearance a few weeks ago in bright red and bubblegum pink, which immediately gave me visions of a 2-row striped scarf and mittens for the Neighbor Cutie. Surprise, surprise...once I cast on, the mittens took about 2 hours each, and I'm slow. Armed with this knowledge, I suddenly feel a knitting binge coming on, with plenty of bright red alpaca/wool and two more toddlers among my coworkers to be recipients. This is going to be a doozy.
Also, among my FO list for the day is the first Rockin Sock, with the second being cast on as we speak. I love this pattern (Unisex Slip) and will probably return to it a fair amount from here on. That makes three, count 'em, three FO's in one day, which is a marvelous victory. When Birch is done, it will have absorbed so much knitting victory that I will have no choice but to drape it about my shoulders every time I knit for a deadline, just for the mojo.
All this thinking about progress has me looking back a little at my history with knitting. I learned the knit stitch, longtail cast on, and the classic bindoff from my mother as a child, but quickly developed a chronic low grade distaste for garter stitch, especially in rectangular forms. Since she felt she could not impart any further skills in this area, that was about all I had, so I dropped it. My college freshman roommate was a crocheter, but too mean to bother to teach me, so all that did for me was spur me to pick knitting back up out of spite, to have a competing interest. I struggled for years to understand book descriptions of the purl stitch until one day it clicked and my knitting world expanded.
This is the story of my knitting life...I learned almost everything myself through a process of beating my head against it until one day my hands just do it out of nowhere. I learned knitting in the round on DPN's when a friend in my medical school days made me a stethoscope cozy and pointed out where the pattern was online. Google those words and you'll find it too. I struggled and struggled and one day it just made sense for no reason. The seventeen inches of in the round stockinette per cozy was a perfect way to practice DPN use, and the widening at the top taught me another useful skill...M1 increases. My increases always looked like poo until I realized that a KFB was not the only one around. Learning to knit in the round was absolutely a watershed moment for me, in that it significantly widened the possibilities for me and made anything possible. That was when I met the crowning love of my entire knitting career - socks. Once I made a couple, I was hooked.
My hands suddenly learned to do two-handed stranded colorwork the very same way just a month or two ago...rather spooky actually. It was the same theme of struggling and struggling and one moment I looked down and the movements were smooth, different than other ways I had tried before for no reason I could fathom. Lately, I've been struggling and struggling against that absurd deadline on Birch and then suddenly the friction gave way and now I have three FO's. Knitting has friction, oh yes...now I just have to figure out the coefficient of friction and I'll be able to overcome it more easily. (Yes, I took physics in college. Yes, I'm making a physics-related point in a knitting blog. I'm just that cool.)
Also, among my FO list for the day is the first Rockin Sock, with the second being cast on as we speak. I love this pattern (Unisex Slip) and will probably return to it a fair amount from here on. That makes three, count 'em, three FO's in one day, which is a marvelous victory. When Birch is done, it will have absorbed so much knitting victory that I will have no choice but to drape it about my shoulders every time I knit for a deadline, just for the mojo.
All this thinking about progress has me looking back a little at my history with knitting. I learned the knit stitch, longtail cast on, and the classic bindoff from my mother as a child, but quickly developed a chronic low grade distaste for garter stitch, especially in rectangular forms. Since she felt she could not impart any further skills in this area, that was about all I had, so I dropped it. My college freshman roommate was a crocheter, but too mean to bother to teach me, so all that did for me was spur me to pick knitting back up out of spite, to have a competing interest. I struggled for years to understand book descriptions of the purl stitch until one day it clicked and my knitting world expanded.
This is the story of my knitting life...I learned almost everything myself through a process of beating my head against it until one day my hands just do it out of nowhere. I learned knitting in the round on DPN's when a friend in my medical school days made me a stethoscope cozy and pointed out where the pattern was online. Google those words and you'll find it too. I struggled and struggled and one day it just made sense for no reason. The seventeen inches of in the round stockinette per cozy was a perfect way to practice DPN use, and the widening at the top taught me another useful skill...M1 increases. My increases always looked like poo until I realized that a KFB was not the only one around. Learning to knit in the round was absolutely a watershed moment for me, in that it significantly widened the possibilities for me and made anything possible. That was when I met the crowning love of my entire knitting career - socks. Once I made a couple, I was hooked.
My hands suddenly learned to do two-handed stranded colorwork the very same way just a month or two ago...rather spooky actually. It was the same theme of struggling and struggling and one moment I looked down and the movements were smooth, different than other ways I had tried before for no reason I could fathom. Lately, I've been struggling and struggling against that absurd deadline on Birch and then suddenly the friction gave way and now I have three FO's. Knitting has friction, oh yes...now I just have to figure out the coefficient of friction and I'll be able to overcome it more easily. (Yes, I took physics in college. Yes, I'm making a physics-related point in a knitting blog. I'm just that cool.)
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Ask the Knitting Gamer 1
Boring. Boring. Boring. My knitting is proceeding pretty much at a steady clip, and I'm most of the way in on my first Rockin Sock and so close to finishing Birch I can taste it. Sadly, however, there are no FO's and I'm not in the habit yet of taking pictures of WIP's. I can feel all zero of you beating down my door with pitchforks and torches, demanding "Where are the pictures! Must have pictures!" You will just all have to wait! I can't take this pressure! Aaaaah!
Instead, today we'll be starting a segment I like to call Ask the Knitting Gamer, or How Games and Knitting Do Not Mix.
Hello and welcome to Ask the Knitting Gamer. I have to say, with Gen Con coming up in two weeks, the excitement of being able to frighten unwashed gamer-boys with shiny pointy sticks is building to a fever pitch!
It sure is, Kiki!
Q: So, as the wife of a committed, though usually washed, gamer-boy, what kind of advice do you have for the novice Gamer Widow?
A: First of all, I want to reassure all knitters newly hitched to a gamer that his (ok fine, or her) hobby is actually ideally suited to your needs if you have the right attitude and carefully execute the Game Avoidance Technique I am about to describe. The types of events attended by gamers and their entourage are fairly ideal places to knit. A typical board game costs about as much as a skein or two of REALLY nice sock yarn (I'm talking the cashmere, people!) or several skeins of what you usually buy after petting the cashmere for a few minutes. If you work out a tit-for-tat hobby budget with your gamer, you get to feed the stash every time they succumb to their LGS (LYS equivalent) and that just warms the heart.
Q: What Game Avoidance Technique? How do you avoid the incessant demands to "participate" whenever games are laid out, thereby actually getting to knit?
A: Sadly, one of the biggest problems with having a gamer in your life is that their hobby, particularly if the video branch of the game tree is not their favorite, is by necessity a social one. There are few games that can be played alone, and those that can be generally suck anyway for single-player. I'm sure you can sympathize with how badly this must bother the poor gamers...unlike knitters, they can't practice their hobby any time they want. Thus, when they're in the mood to play and there is no event to attend, married gamers must pounce on their poor wives with demands to play. Here's how to maximize knitting time anyway.
(1) Have a headache, or the more believable alternative "heartburn."
(2) When at game events, which must stretch for hours to accomodate the playing of more than one game, play one game only, preferably a mid-range not-so-long one, and then sit at the table in an out-of-the-way chair and knit with a look on your face that says "I'm totally interested in the game you guys are playing."
(3) Gain a reputation for being the official knitter at game groups, with ass-kissing knitted gifts to the leadership if necessary.
(4) Play games that require significant thinking time during one's turn so that you can get an entire row or two in while everyone else takes their turn. This is particularly effective if you don't mind losing because you're missing everyone else's strategy. Note: this is not the time for cabling or lace...it gets tiresome if you're too absorbed in your work when your own turn arrives.
Join us next time, when we will be discussing Learning to Spin at a Gaming Convention, and How to Walk Through a 10,000 Person Crowd and Knit A Scarf Too
Instead, today we'll be starting a segment I like to call Ask the Knitting Gamer, or How Games and Knitting Do Not Mix.
Hello and welcome to Ask the Knitting Gamer. I have to say, with Gen Con coming up in two weeks, the excitement of being able to frighten unwashed gamer-boys with shiny pointy sticks is building to a fever pitch!
It sure is, Kiki!
Q: So, as the wife of a committed, though usually washed, gamer-boy, what kind of advice do you have for the novice Gamer Widow?
A: First of all, I want to reassure all knitters newly hitched to a gamer that his (ok fine, or her) hobby is actually ideally suited to your needs if you have the right attitude and carefully execute the Game Avoidance Technique I am about to describe. The types of events attended by gamers and their entourage are fairly ideal places to knit. A typical board game costs about as much as a skein or two of REALLY nice sock yarn (I'm talking the cashmere, people!) or several skeins of what you usually buy after petting the cashmere for a few minutes. If you work out a tit-for-tat hobby budget with your gamer, you get to feed the stash every time they succumb to their LGS (LYS equivalent) and that just warms the heart.
Q: What Game Avoidance Technique? How do you avoid the incessant demands to "participate" whenever games are laid out, thereby actually getting to knit?
A: Sadly, one of the biggest problems with having a gamer in your life is that their hobby, particularly if the video branch of the game tree is not their favorite, is by necessity a social one. There are few games that can be played alone, and those that can be generally suck anyway for single-player. I'm sure you can sympathize with how badly this must bother the poor gamers...unlike knitters, they can't practice their hobby any time they want. Thus, when they're in the mood to play and there is no event to attend, married gamers must pounce on their poor wives with demands to play. Here's how to maximize knitting time anyway.
(1) Have a headache, or the more believable alternative "heartburn."
(2) When at game events, which must stretch for hours to accomodate the playing of more than one game, play one game only, preferably a mid-range not-so-long one, and then sit at the table in an out-of-the-way chair and knit with a look on your face that says "I'm totally interested in the game you guys are playing."
(3) Gain a reputation for being the official knitter at game groups, with ass-kissing knitted gifts to the leadership if necessary.
(4) Play games that require significant thinking time during one's turn so that you can get an entire row or two in while everyone else takes their turn. This is particularly effective if you don't mind losing because you're missing everyone else's strategy. Note: this is not the time for cabling or lace...it gets tiresome if you're too absorbed in your work when your own turn arrives.
Join us next time, when we will be discussing Learning to Spin at a Gaming Convention, and How to Walk Through a 10,000 Person Crowd and Knit A Scarf Too
Monday, July 11, 2011
Confessions of a no-longer-Teenage Product Knitter
I hereby confess that Birch is not yet done. 80% of the way, yes, but not yet there. I ended up wearing my non-handknit backup shawl for the wedding and feeling sure that it was far inferior in every way. The wedding was wonderful, despite being unfamiliar with the bride, the groom, and everyone else present with the exception of my mother and brother. The mother of the bride, a good friend of my mother, looked beautiful and relaxed, and the bride herself was, as expected, radiant. I've never before danced at a wedding in front of monkeys and a scared armadillo, but the choice of the Cleveland Zoo for the reception location was a brilliant one. So much fun for a wedding I all but crashed.
Not making "deadline" on Birch has brought me back to the state I had intended to be in the entire time...just a relaxed victory lap through a couple of interesting, delicious projects. The third Rockin Sock Club pair, the plain pair, and the end of Birch can now go back to their respective places as my work knitting, my distracted knitting, and my sitting-at-home-concentrating knitting. Instead of despising spring green mohair to the core of my being, I'm charmed by it again. Instead of languishing in the corner of my desk, the Unisex Slip socks can return to being fondly petted and squeezed and called George. Dressing for the wedding with an unfinished Birch was a reset button on my entire attitude toward life and knitting, which was just what I needed. Sometimes we knitters who lean toward the product side get so crazy and fixated on having the product for a specific deadline-driven purpose that our limitations just get wiped from our memories. You don't even really like knitting in that state...the knitting of it is holding you back from the having of it.
I always thought there was something noble about being a process knitter, something more patient and accepting and selfless. "I have no need for this material possession. I need only the act of creation." Since everyone knows that we define ourselves by what we want to be, not what we are, my belief in my own process-knitter-ness was firm and unwavering. I've begun to notice, however, a certain unmistakeable pride in wearing my own handknits. A lack of enthusiasm toward projects intended for others, particularly a certain sweater my husband will never wear at this rate. A drive to complete a shawl in a totally unreasonable timeframe just so I can wear it. The choosing of projects no longer for the skills I'll acquire along the way or for the interesting execution but because dammit I want that scarf. I'm Kiki the Alto, and I'm a product knitter.
Not making "deadline" on Birch has brought me back to the state I had intended to be in the entire time...just a relaxed victory lap through a couple of interesting, delicious projects. The third Rockin Sock Club pair, the plain pair, and the end of Birch can now go back to their respective places as my work knitting, my distracted knitting, and my sitting-at-home-concentrating knitting. Instead of despising spring green mohair to the core of my being, I'm charmed by it again. Instead of languishing in the corner of my desk, the Unisex Slip socks can return to being fondly petted and squeezed and called George. Dressing for the wedding with an unfinished Birch was a reset button on my entire attitude toward life and knitting, which was just what I needed. Sometimes we knitters who lean toward the product side get so crazy and fixated on having the product for a specific deadline-driven purpose that our limitations just get wiped from our memories. You don't even really like knitting in that state...the knitting of it is holding you back from the having of it.
I always thought there was something noble about being a process knitter, something more patient and accepting and selfless. "I have no need for this material possession. I need only the act of creation." Since everyone knows that we define ourselves by what we want to be, not what we are, my belief in my own process-knitter-ness was firm and unwavering. I've begun to notice, however, a certain unmistakeable pride in wearing my own handknits. A lack of enthusiasm toward projects intended for others, particularly a certain sweater my husband will never wear at this rate. A drive to complete a shawl in a totally unreasonable timeframe just so I can wear it. The choosing of projects no longer for the skills I'll acquire along the way or for the interesting execution but because dammit I want that scarf. I'm Kiki the Alto, and I'm a product knitter.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Birch-a-riffic
I really have absolutely no time today to post anything other than a statement that Birch is 31% done (by the Shawl Progress Calculator) and I continue to labor at breakneck speed believing that the remaining 69% will be done by Saturday. An entire triangle mohair shawl, 238 ever decreasing rows, completed in 8 days. This is madness. Send reinforcements.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Baby, You're A Firework
Happy Fourth of July to all zero of my American readers. 235 years is the blink of an eye compared to the long history of the nations that birthed and midwifed us. 235 years has changed us deeply but has made little impact on the central things we hold dear.
235 years ago:
235 years ago:
My ancestors still lived in the United Provinces of the Netherlands, Roman Catholics in a predominantly Protestant nation. Their region and their province were descending into an economic depression in the most ruthlessly capitalist society of their day.
My husband's ancestors probably already lived in Santa Fe, (eventually to become New) Mexico. It wouldn't be until his father's generation that members of his family stopped primarily speaking Spanish.
The women who unknowingly would lead to me and my husband were spinning, knitting, weaving, and creating. They provided clothing for their families as part of their work, and they were proud to do it. Skills I know and want to learn today as a passionate hobby, for fun, they were doing on a daily basis because otherwise those in their care just plain wouldn't be clothed.
The Wolf River I floated down today in an inner tube was being visited by deer, badgers, birds, dragonflies...and Native Americans. It was surrounded by forest, where farmland and small rural towns stand today. Where my house now stands, Native Americans of a related tribe, if not the same one, were hunting, beginning to trade with the European trappers who stumbled into the area and were making themselves at home. They built a community in a place they called The Good Land next to a really big lake that, for all they knew, may as well have been the ocean.
None of the peoples mentioned above probably had much of an idea 235 years ago today about the events that were taking place in Philadelphia. If they had heard of the English king and his colonies, it was as a side note to their everyday lives. As a result of the ensuing 235 years, the nation I'm proud to call my home has been molded into what she is today. Those condescended-to Dutch Catholics who had lost everything, those proud descendents of Spanish military men who built a thriving town in the mountain desert of northern Mexico, the different kinds of people who turned this nice place for a harbor into a port town, all found a place in this nation. Happy 235th, USA. Compared to the nations whose tired, poor, and disheartened you welcomed, you're a firework. Brilliant, explosive with progress, and impossible to hold down without getting burned.Friday, July 1, 2011
Difficult Day
Today is going to be a little difficult. There, I said it. Normally, I don't make any particular judgments about days, at least not on the negative side, preferring to let them happen and see what comes of it. I'm not so reluctant to proclaim a day as having been particularly happy, but this is usually in retrospect. My wedding day, the day I graduated from medical school, and the like as obvious exceptions. In this case, I have my reasons for saying that this day might suck, just a little.
(1) To top the list, I was supposed to become a third year resident today. All my medical school friends are, and for two of them, it's their last year of residency. It would have been mine, had I not made a fateful decision to switch specialties. The day one year from now when two of my bestest friends finish their residency for good, I will (hopefully) be starting all over at the beginning. That just plain hurts, and I haven't given it two seconds' thought until now.
(2) Today, ERAS opens. That means that today is the first step in a journey back to residency, and I'm worried. I'm worried that everything I'm doing will be a waste of time and money and emotional investment if next March does not find me headed to a new position. I'm worried that the faith in me that is being shown by my husband, my boss/mentor, my old program director, will mean nothing if programs take one look at me and decide to look elsewhere.
(3) Today, the Pediatric Pathology practice manager who was the first one to really usher me in and make me feel welcome here is leaving for a new job. I've only known him since February, knitted him a nice gift, and wish him well, so this would be much less affecting if it wasn't for the above two points. I'm hit by the contrast between his bright future and my muddy one.
It must be a good thing that I've surrounded myself by yarny goodness, right? Date night tonight will include one danged stiff drink and possibly some dessert of a chocolatey nature.
(1) To top the list, I was supposed to become a third year resident today. All my medical school friends are, and for two of them, it's their last year of residency. It would have been mine, had I not made a fateful decision to switch specialties. The day one year from now when two of my bestest friends finish their residency for good, I will (hopefully) be starting all over at the beginning. That just plain hurts, and I haven't given it two seconds' thought until now.
(2) Today, ERAS opens. That means that today is the first step in a journey back to residency, and I'm worried. I'm worried that everything I'm doing will be a waste of time and money and emotional investment if next March does not find me headed to a new position. I'm worried that the faith in me that is being shown by my husband, my boss/mentor, my old program director, will mean nothing if programs take one look at me and decide to look elsewhere.
(3) Today, the Pediatric Pathology practice manager who was the first one to really usher me in and make me feel welcome here is leaving for a new job. I've only known him since February, knitted him a nice gift, and wish him well, so this would be much less affecting if it wasn't for the above two points. I'm hit by the contrast between his bright future and my muddy one.
It must be a good thing that I've surrounded myself by yarny goodness, right? Date night tonight will include one danged stiff drink and possibly some dessert of a chocolatey nature.
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