Best foot forward

Nothing starts a semester off worse than being ill. More and more accumulates daily, forcing the student to overcompensate upon returning to class. It seems as if this fate often befalls me.

This semester, I missed over a week of classes after only being well enough to attend the first week in full. I missed all the logistical information, the last-minute assignments, the field trip information, the projects, the group work. Now I have too much to do and too little time in which to do it. The semester is drawing to a close and I could care less. I have done all the work I care to complete and that is it. I plan on being done. I'm taking Jan term off and not looking back. I don't care anymore.

And I have developed a singular attitude toward all this, one that may become hazardous to my GPA: "You can't make me!" I don't feel like studying, writing, or taking on gigantic projects single-handedly. Usually I force myself into action anyway, since I have nothing better to do. But one change has occurred since the Spring semester ended.

I began knitting, buying seasons of The X-Files and found a boy who didn't scream blue murder and claw at his eyes every time he saw me.

Of all those things, the one with the greatest impact on schoolwork-neglect ratios is the knitting. Certainly the most detrimental thing I ever could have done was pick up a knitting needle. Now instead of studiously examining texts, reading ahead, and making absolutely sure my grammar is perfect, I am turning heels, casting on, and weaving the toe closed. I am learning complicated patterns and shopping for yarn online all while pretending to write a paper.

And it doesn't just strike me at home! No, socks are PORTABLE knitting projects. That means that a person can easily find Miss Laura sitting through convo, a movie, or simply alone in the Lounge or the library while knitting faithfully at a project. Where once my friends saw me recline with a novel, now they find me with a new ball of yarn.

I shop the yarn sales, the discount bins, coming back with multi-colored strands of merino, smokey gray cashmere from Italy that exactly matches the color of my cat's fur, or a soft striping of gray, blue and green with aloe and jojobo oils in the strands, leaving your hands conditioned and soft as you knit, or your feet when you have completed the project.

I find hole-in-the-wall yarn stores born out of abandoned railway depots or in a strip of anonymous storefronts in Highland. I leave cradling bamboo kneedles, intricately carved buttons for the purse I plan to make over the winter.

Sleep becomes a thing of the past as I plan to work "just one more line" or turn the heel before curling into a wilted Laura puddle and sleeping away the cramps in my fingertips.

If the endless trips to yarn stores like Stich by Stitch in Highland, the Cass Street Depot in Fort Wayne, and, most importantly (because it is closest to me) the Shuttle Shop in Warsaw were not enough, I have discovered the glory of the knitting world ONLINE! There are a massive amount of websites dedicated to helping lonely knitters like me socialize, and before I knew it, I had found a soul mate in the person of another blogger: Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot, who knits and writes, just like me. Bless you, Stephanie! And will you teach me to spin?

I want a sheep now. A merino sheep. I will care for it, pet it, love it, and shear it, spinning and dying the fleece as I create my own individually crafted sock yarns. Don't tell me how absurd this is. I want one. I already have a sheep dog!

I have reached the point where I have created a photo album of the socks I have made, so thrilled by them that I plan on making them available for the world to see. I may be walking holes in them, but I can honestly know that their woolen souls will live on in blogging infamy for all time. Or at least until blogsource decides that this Idiot Girl is never coming back and wipes me from the internet as a whole. We'll see.