Ying and Yang

It's been a busy month. Of course, as mentioned in my last post, I am doing lots of wedding planning right now, but I also just completed a major hurdle on the way to getting my doctorate: the Thesis Background Oral. It's basically a thesis proposal presentation, followed by an hour of questioning by my committee of three professors. It's a pretty big deal, as you need to pass to stay in school.

I am discussing this here because so much of the last month of my life has been taken up by reading science articles and thinking about experiments. No real time for knitting or stress relief via some craft project. And as the date of the exam approached, I really found myself yearning to be creative. My creative side is half of me and needs to be stimulated in addition to my scientific half. It is like ying and yang--I need both.

Of the small amount of creation that I have been doing over the last several weeks, most has centered around baking for some strange reason. I have always liked to bake and truly enjoy the fruits of my labor when I am stressed and craving sweets. I started with these fabulous muffins and moved onto red velvet cupcakes. I am starting to understand the current obsession with cupcakes and plan to keep my friends fat and happy with them in the future.

The last lonely cupcake, soon to meet its fate

Also, while perusing for more cupcake recipes, I found an easy way to make caramel using a can of sweetened condensed milk. I had seen this the other day at The AntiCraft, but didn't believe it until I heard it from two seperate sources. I gave it a try the other day and am working to find a recipe that calls for caramel, so I can open the can. Any ideas?

What an easy way to make caramel!

Now we come to the saddest part of this post where I show all of the knitting I have finished over the last 6 weeks:


Yes, just the one sock. The picture was not taken at a great angle, but it is a really nice looking Monkey Sock. I have spent the day working on its partner, now that I actually have free time. It is so nice to be knitting again.

I hope to be able to show off more knitted goodness in my next post!