Bits and Pieces

It's been rather stressful this last week or so, but one major accomplishment has been ticked off my list- I passed my written French translation exam, woohoo! Two nerve-wracking hours of translating some pages from Albert Camus's L'Estranger before sitting down and reading my translation back to one of the French professors resulted in (I felt) one of my bigger accomplishments so far. I was honestly worried that this translation exam was going to hold me back from my Master's degree, but lo and behold I managed to do it!

To celebrate, I gave myself a couple of hours off to watch Wall-E and work on the toe increase for my Pointe socks.

After a couple of hair raising moments (including a potentially dangerous moment where I somehow yanked an entire needle out and had to pick up the stitches again) I had the two all done for the first sock! It was finicky work, but I really like how it looks and how seamless the top of the toe is with this method.

I've also been doing a row or two on the bus or in the five minutes before class on these fun and easy ribbed socks, though I'm such a tight knitter that the slip 1-knit or slip-1 purl heel flap was suuuuuper short, which you can really see in the picture and is obvious after I knit the gusset. Just because I really want to like these socks and wear them a lot, and there's no specific time line on them, I might tear back the heel and make the heel flap longer. Just to make it right. :)

In other news, my ballet class has really started to kick my butt. Being back in pointe shoes resulted in a nice big blister, and I've been limping around willing it to heal super fast, since half my life right now is in dance shoes (tap and ballet) or climbing shoes. Tomorrow in class is going to be fun. I'm half tempted to knit a pair of those toe-less socks to walk around in, just so my feet stay warm while letting it heal. Yay for dance! :)

Off to work more on my paper. It's kind of nice that it's been so ridiculously cold out lately up here in the north, as I don't feel terribly guilty for being unable to go outside and enjoy our beautiful winter days. Hopefully a couple more edits and this thing is in the bag. Until then, research, research, research!