Knitting is a Knotty Activity

(Macrame is even worse)

I wanted to share... thanks to the generosity of someone I'd pretty much just met, I know have a fresh load of yarn to work with.

It was a usual church Wednesday, I was crocheting and feeling a little self-conscious about it because we had someone new at the service and she was sitting right behind me.  A ways into the service, I turn around and notice that she's crocheting too.  I guess I didn't need to be worried.

Anyways, we got to talking about yarn and she confessed to being a yarn hoarder, saying she had several bags of yarn she hadn't touched in years, if I wanted them.

Of course I wanted them!  Not that I need yarn, but I'm a yarn hoarder myself and looking forward to some fun projects which basically require me to have a lot of random scraps of yarn (read: rugs), so getting some fresh yarn injected into my supplies will help a lot.

Anyways, here's my new wealth of yarn.

Three grocery bags full.  The bag in the back has shoes in it..

The extremely tangled bit, post untangling.  Lots of little scraps.
Also, the blue in the background is "Quick and Easy Chunky" yarn.  :)

The full collection of new yarn, plus some new crochet hooks!

Stay posted for a host of new, exciting projects!  I'm about to finish a narwhal... and once school ends, I'll be in rugs, weird pillow creatures and maybe a scarf.  Oh, and yarnbombing Grant's house.

Sometime in the future, when I have spare money to spend on new yarn, I'll have to find myself a college student with a love for knitting and crocheting and pay it forward with a nice supply.  Random acts of yarn for all!

Great News for (environmentally minded) Whiskey Drinkers!

Okay, so I suppose I'm basically stealing this article, title and all.  But it's an interesting bit of green news for the over-21 set, and a reminder of the importance of voting with your wallet.

To summarize, it turns out that whiskey (and other spirits) are on the less-green end of the spectrum of alcohol, especially when you want quality whiskey.  The biggest problem is that the production of whiskey produces a lot of byproduct that are acidic and contain traces of copper and therefore cannot be disposed of nicely.  However, one company, Celtic Renewables, has developed a method for turning this byproduct into a biofuel, animal feed and acetone - all three are substances which are important and very useful, being created out of a substance that we would otherwise have trouble throwing away.

A final point in the article, made by the company's founder, is my favorite: "'You don't need to plant virgin crops to make biodiesel,' Tangney told me. 'There's plenty of stuff just lying around that you can use.'"  One of the big arguments against biofuels is that they take away valuable land resources from food production (or wilderness areas).  However, there's still plenty of possibilities for making energy out of things we currently throw away.  Yesterday it was french fry grease.  Today whiskey.  What's in store for tomorrow?

Belated Review: The Lorax

I went to see The Lorax over spring break (so... 2 weeks ago?  3?  I'm only counting forward right now).  I'll admit, I was doubtful at first.  I really wanted to see it, but the reviews were... mediocre at best.  As would be expected with any book-turned-movie, the main complaint was that the movie didn't fit well with the "spirit of the book".  As is frequently the case with negative reviews of movies I want to see, I didn't agree.

For one thing, the movie was amazing.  It was cute, with a good message, and just enough "adult" humor to keep the older audience (most of us in the theater were college students, actually) from being bored.  The best part is, the adult humor wasn't sexual in the way that most sly adult humor in kids movies is.  Instead, it was intelligent humor that any adult who's been in touch with current events would understand.  A few things that were funny in the way that the best Onion articles are funny - not because they are humorous, but because they're so close to home that they almost hurt.  For instance, the business which ultimately destroys the Truffula trees is described as "too big to fail", and the founder asks "How bad can I be?  A portion of my profits goes to charity!" ...

Second, I'm not sure what to think of those people who felt the movie didn't fit with the spirit of the original book.  Yes, more background was added - instead of just a story, told by the Once-ler about his life and interaction with the Lorax, we get the background of the boy listening to the story, and life in a society without trees.  Sure, there's a love story and a happy ending thrown in, but what's the harm in that?  The spirit of the book, as I see it, is a message of conservationism, a message summarized by the quote at the end: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

The film was designed to make us care.  Maybe it was the hike I took that morning that made the idea of living in a consumerism-driven, nature-less society so horrific, but I think the movie did a good job of showing us the consequences of letting companies rule our world.

Too bad we're not doing a good job of listening.

Unexpected feeling of freedom

I dropped a class this semester for the first time.

Okay, second time (not counting rearranging my schedule before classes start).  But the other time I'd only attended the first class, and I found a replacement later that day.  This semester, I dropped a class a couple hours before the drop deadline, after a conversation with my mom which made me realize that not only had I not liked the class all semester, it a) wasn't going to change and b) wasn't necessary.  It was a class I was taking completely by choice, only because I wanted to.  It just didn't end up being what I'd expected.

Somehow, as I suppose will happen, that time on Tuesday evenings I got back quickly got filled with homework.  Not that my homework load is any worse... I've just had a much harder time getting anything (important) done since my grandma passed away.  (I say important because I've done a surprising amount of crocheting and hanging out with friends...)

That's where I realize how glad I am I dropped that class.  No more dreading Tuesdays, like I did for 8 weeks.  No more sitting through two and a half hours (if he doesn't go over) of detailed explanation on HVAC systems, while everything I want to learn about gets pushed aside.  No more projects for a professor who truly doesn't understand that we have other classes, who thinks we can do the same amount of work in less time than his summer interns and new hires.  It was freedom!

Enough ranting, though.  I'd wanted to learn something in that class.  My disappointment in the stuff he wasn't teaching made me realize how much I want to learn about green building and the kind of tradeoffs that need to be made when seeking sustainability.  I want to know about renewable energy, and low to no VOC carpeting and paints.  So, with what should be my small amount of extra free time after dropping this class, I want to focus on doing just that.

Since I have problems motivating myself to research for the point of researching (when I could be crocheting or making rugs out of old t-shirts), I'm going to try to focus this blog a bit towards green technology.  I worked as a green tech/news blogger for a bit and then the group updating the website stopped, so I'm back on my own.  I have some interesting articles and thoughts lined up already, but if any of you see anything I might be interested in, let me know.

I hope you all enjoy!

--Mia

How to say "I love you"

I'm trying to keep it up.  I really am.  But I haven't been myself for the past couple weeks.  The weekend before spring break, my mom called me to tell me that my grandma was very sick in the hospital, and I should come home immediately, because she probably wasn't going to make it.  I went home and am very glad I did, because I was able to talk to her and tell her I loved her one last time.  A week later, she passed away.  All I can really say is that I'm really going to miss her.

It's cliche to say that life is short, we should tell our loved ones that we love them before we lose them.  True, but still cliche.

Besides - sometimes the words themselves aren't what matter.  I'm not talking about the five love languages, though that's all very interesting.  I'm talking about the feelings of being appreciated and cared for.  Sometimes, this is what we mean when we tell our friends that we love them: we appreciate having them in our life, and we care about them.  We all want to feel appreciated and cared for, so we should make sure to let people know that we care for them, that we appreciate them.

How do we do this?  Different people, I'm sure, feel appreciated in different ways.  My mom, for instance, likes when people notice that she's vacuumed.  I've started to notice that I feel valued when people like my cooking - something that drives me to cook for more and more people whenever I can.  It's a strange habit, but I've found that if I'm in need of some extra love, I can whip up a batch of banana muffins and pass them out to friends (who love them).

And caring for people?  I've found that the best way to show people you care about them is to ask them how they're doing, and actually listen to their answer.  Not "how are you?" because that's a common greeting and usually doesn't want an honest response.  But take the extra time and vocal effort to stick the word "doing" onto the end of that sentence, and it denotes a willingness to actually listen to a response, however good or bad that response may be.

One of my professors has been checking in on me since I asked her for a couple extensions due to being home and generally being unable to focus.  Even if I don't want to talk, I can tell you it's one of the most amazing feelings to have someone who really doesn't need to care actually want to know how you're doing.

Hm... I guess this didn't turn out nearly as good as I meant it, but it feels good to start writing again.  I have a few things I've been meaning to say, but I'll save them for the next few runs.  In the meantime, I have some homework to get over with so I can spend time with one of my best friends, who flew down from Seattle to hang out with me for a few days.  :)