Boulder, Part 1

Say "college" once more and I'll fling this laptop at your head.

Well, we're back, and still no closer to making a college decision than before we left. It's between Bennington and Boulder right now, and if Fiona gets off waitlists at Sta. Clara or Scripps I guess we'll have a four-way tie. At least the others have fallen out of consideration.



Boulder has a lot going for it - it's in a great town, the scenery is beautiful, and everyone looks like a cast member of The Hills. Plus, it's La Jolla in the Rockies - Did you know that 25% of the kids are from California? - which has its own pluses and minuses. If UC Santa Cruz and USC met, fell in love, and had a baby, it would be CU Boulder. A little crunchy, a little shiny.

A moment of silence for Harry Potter's glasses, please.

Of course, Boulder also has about 25,000 undergrads. Does anyone else think that seems like a lot of people standing in line in the caf? I'm sure any one of the freshman lectures contains the equivalent of the entire student body of Bennington College...again, pluses and minuses. Oy. Decisions, decisions.



So Fiona and I flew into Denver, stayed with family overnight, and set off for Boulder in the morning in our black rented PT Cruiser, which, as soon as I figured out how to roll down the windows of and read the analog clock (hard to do going 65) turned out to be a lot of fun to drive. In Boulder, we stayed at the St. Julien on Walnut. I highly recommend it - it's beautiful, centrally located, has a spa, and is easily the quietest hotel I've ever been in. Also, the bellboy recommended a great restaurant - The Med - for dinner. Try the carrot cake.

Stay tuned tomorrow for some fibery content!

Scattering

So yeah, I'm still working on the Wool Peddler's Shawl, and the Mystic Light shawl, and a few other things, but you know me. Gotta be starting something. So I had this Noro Kureyon in my stash, three skeins, not enough for a sweater, too much for a scarf.

Now it's sleeves. I cast on willy-nilly, knitted through one ball; cast on another, knitted through the second ball; and now I've joined the third ball and will add caps to both sleeves. I spent a loooong time figuring out whether I could do a seamless join to the sweater body (gray Peruvia, as yet unknit) and reading about intarsia in the round, and finally decided just to suck it up and knit the caps and seam later. I should've started from the top, but like I said, I started willy-nilly.

Anna is finally coming home on Thursday. It feels like she's been gone forever...and I won't be here when she gets back. Fiona and I are leaving this afternoon for Boulder, to look at CU. We're in that period where the yay/nay letters are arriving from the schools she applied to, and while we do have some yays from places she likes (Bennington at the top currently) she also got accepted to the theater program at Boulder and we thought we'd go see what it's like. We've been to Boulder before, but it's been a long time and Fiona was a lot younger - college was on the distant horizon back then. And while Boulder's beautiful, now we'll be looking at it from a different point of view. Boulder admissions people, if you read this, you might like to know the kids on Facebook have adopted the slogan, "Of Coors I'm going to Boulder."

While in Boulder, I plan on visiting Shuttles, Spindles & Skeins, and I hear you can tour the Celestial Seasonings place...I tell you, I'm an exciting vacation partner. I'm not sure Fiona will be able to keep up.