Holly ignores the blogging world for a month

I am a bad blogger. I wish I could say that I was going to really be better about it this time. However, the next three weeks are going to be insane. Even more insane than the past three. Because I have to pass my qualifying exam. Three weeks from this morning. Hopefully that means that exactly three weeks from now I'll be sitting in lab with a bottle of champagne and a ridiculous smile. We shall see. I still have to write two research proposals and read a shitload of papers.

And then after I emerge from my lack-of-sleep + excess-of-champagne delirium, I will make Sam and Emily's wedding present afghan. They're getting married on May 28 this year, and I've already told them that depending on how things go, they may end up getting their afghan on their first anniversary. Which they were okay with, fortunately. But I would really like to have it done in time for the wedding. So far this thing has been a bit of a headache. I cast on at SnB one night, which was a horrible mistake. Never cast on while bitching with other stitchers. Over the next few days I knit 12 border rows of 288 stitches each, plus 8 of the pattern, until I realized that I had cast on 50 EXTRA STITCHES. And since the pattern was on a multiple-of-6, that wasn't going to work. Away went all that work. I ripped it out, cast on again, and got back to the pre-ripping-out point. And then I skipped a row of the pattern. I blame it on the poorly written pattern, which said things like "Row 3 and 5: knit. Row 4: blahblah. Row 6: blahblah." Of course, I didn't look at the row numbers when I was knitting, so I went straight from 4 to 6. Bad mistake. So I ripped out those 5 rows (again) and reknitted them. And put it away in my knitting bag and haven't looked at it since. That was, um, early February. Hopefully once the quals are over I'll be less scatterbrained, and able to sit and knit for hours and hours and hours. And hours. By my calculations, if I knit 2 rows every night it will be done in a year. And I'll only have 6 weeks. Wheeeeee.
Here's a picture to show you what I'm working toward:

I showed my new book, Easy Afghans for Knitters, to Sam and Emily, and this is the one they picked. The crazy hard one on size 7 needles. Not any of the easy boring patterns on 11s. They wanted pink and brown and khaki, so I got lots of Cascade 220 to use. It will be marvelous when it's done. That's what I have to keep telling myself so I don't go insane.

Thing 3 (where 1=quals and 2=the afghan) is going to the gym more regularly. Lucy and Sally, two postdocs in my lab, both managed to convince me that going to the gym more, despite being crazy stressed and busy getting proposals written, would be a good thing. So I joined the on-campus gym, and have been pretty good about going "regularly." I have found a couple step aerobics classes that I really like. Sally says that when I get good enough I can start going to "stepography" with Devin, who she says is the best, most amazing aerobics instructor ever. My first workout was pretty easy and I didn't feel like I had to work too hard, except that I realized during my second class that it was because I spent half the time being confused by which way I was supposed to be turning and why my feet weren't matching anybody else's feet. Turns out the workout is harder when you actually do it.