A bit of this and a bit of that

It seems I've survived my second week of school. Already I'm starting to feel like I've accomplished more in the past two weeks, than the whole of the past two years. I've been out of school for those two years, working meaningless jobs that don't have the capacity to make me feel like I'm making a difference, and now that I've started down a whole new road I feel rejuvinated again. I feel like I'm working towards something that not only could make a difference in the world, but will also allow me to feel fulfilled in my own life.

This weekend I'm volunteering at the zoo for a big exposition called Fragile Wilderness. It's actually quite a big event with all sorts of wildlife experts, educators and rehabilitators. I'm thinking it's going to be something like a wildlife fair with booths set up throughout the zoo and stages for presenting exotic animals to the public and I hear there's going to be a bird show. I'm not even sure what it is I'm going to be doing at this point, but the possibilities include face painting, working the concession stand, helping the keepers with the education animals, and a million other things including wearing the outfit for the zoo's mascot, which I think is an otter. It should be a ton of fun and the fact that I don't even care that I'm getting nothing but the experience out of it makes it that much better. You know it's something you love to do when you don't care about monitary compensation right? Hopefully I'll get a break to take some pictures for the blog.

Speaking of the blog, I just realized that I started this blog a year ago, so happy bloggiversary to me! I can't believe it's been a year and I've loved everything about blogging. I'm so fortunate to have found such an awesome community to be a part of! Thank you everyone for making my blogging experience excellent.

I also wanted to thank everyone for the links to all the hippo things. I never knew there was so much out there on hippos, or that so many people are obsessed with them! It makes me wonder how into them some people would still be if they knew about some of the things I've been finding out about them. They're interesting, but they are in no way cute and cuddily.

Some people were asking about the mittens I started. They're from Anna Zilboorg's book Magnificent Mittens. The technique is pretty interesting and once you get it down these mittens are really fun to make. Plus they make great Christmas presents. And don't let the fairisle scare you. Blocking is an amazing thing and almost any imperfection with fairisle can be blocked out. So if you're interested I say go for it. Maybe I'll do a little picture tutorial on the mittens. Would anybody be interested in something like that?