Inaugural Post

Greetings!

My name is Jennifer, and (as you might have guessed) this is the first post on my new blog.

By way of introduction, I should probably mention first off that Mum is my mum. (Incidentally, the way that she - a very American woman with a very American family - aquired this moniker is a rather interesting story; you should ask her to tell it. I will say that I should receive primary credit for the fact that the name stuck, as my sister calls her "Memo" for some reason... a name which, in my mind, is much less sophisticated than "Mum" and would make for a lousy blog title.)

Mum has been trying to convince me to start up a knitting blog for quite some time, and I finally caved after she set up the Hogwarts Sock Swap to entice me. Just to warn you... I currently don't have time (or enough interesting post topics) to maintain two separate blogs- one for knitting, and one for personal/social/fun stuff. As a result, this blog will likely be a combination of the two. So if you're only here for the knitting-related content, feel free to ignore the posts about school, vacations, the weather, the plight of the snowy owl (just kidding), etc. Likewise, if you're just a friend of mine, don't know how to knit, and don't really even care that I know how, you can ignore the knitting stuff. :-) I should also point out that for the time being, the ratio of knitting/non-knitting content will be heavily skewed to the non-knitting side- for the simple reason that I don't foresee much knitting occuring in the next four weeks! (See following paragraphs.)

So, that said, I should probably try to introduce myself to you. I'm about to graduate with my Bachelor's of Chemical Engineering degree from Auburn University (t-minus 27 days!). Unfortunately there's a heck of a lot of work to be done between now and then, so you may not hear from me much until after graduation. This is due mainly to the fact that I'm a slight overacheiver, and have a tendency to take on superfluous work (research culminating in a 60-page senior thesis, holding the office of president in an engineering society, etc). But, I wouldn't have it any other way. :-)

That leads into the next topic I should touch on... my personality. I should probably just go ahead and say it- I'm a geek. This tends to result in some really boring posts, so I apologize in advance. I'm easily excited by topics most people find soporifically boring (such as nuclear power), and find humor in things most people wouldn't (like the term "centrifugal force"). I promise I'll try to keep the geekiness to a minimum on this blog!

There are a lot of other interesting (or not-so-interesting) things I could mention about myself, but you've probably already noticed one of the more obvious ones... my verbosity. And, judging from the current length of this post, I should probably move on to different topic. :-p

If you linked to this blog from my Mum's, or are somehow connected with the Hogwarts Sock Swap, you might be wondering about my knitting history. I've been knitting for about a year and a half, and - interestingly enough - Mum didn't teach me how to knit. She was readily available with tips and advice, but I more or less taught myself. I've always been really crafty, though, which I'm sure is partly due to Mum's influence. I think I've dabbled in just about every type of handiwork there is, and have aspirations of learning everything that's left. My favorites (besides knitting, of course) are hardanger and scrapbooking. In terms of my knitting repertoire, I've not done anything terribly advanced... just scarves, hats, etc. I just finished my first pair of socks a few weeks ago; Mum was so excited she blogged about it. I'm looking forward to starting my next pair (and finishing up my other works-in-progress) as soon as school finishes up. For the time being, though, the only things I'll be "creating" are my senior thesis, senior design report/presentation, C++ program, etc... none of which would make for very interesting blog entries. My apologies :-)

Jennifer