Congratulations!

To Jennifer, who successfully defended her thesis this afternoon, and who we must all now address as DR.!

Jennifer is the first Fiberphile to graduate (of those of us who are currently graduate students), and we are very proud. Plus, she gave us permission to knit during her defense - can't beat that! Rachel and I took her at her word and sat in the back knitting away while we listened to Jennifer's talk; the rest of the Fiberphiles were more well-behaved :) I'm disinclined to post this photo as it's not my our most flattering, but such is life, right? Here we are celebrating with cheesecake (already consumed) and champagne (still in Rachel's hand):

For orientation, from the left: Rachel (nice handknitted sweater, no?), Daisy, Jennifer, me (please ignore bad hair/glasses slid down on nose/double chin/tendency to be own worst critic), and Shibani. Congrats again, Jennifer, you give us all hope that there is an end to the tunnel!

In other news, you may be aware that we are having a "weather event" here in Seattle. What does that mean? That means it snowed. A little. And got cold. Quite. And the roads froze and everything is in disarray and you really don't want to get me going on how quickly this city shuts down in what I would consider to be minor leaque winter conditions. In our neighborhood (one of the least-badly hit because we're on the water and at the bottom of the hill), we only got a tad of snow, but enough for Dave to make this wee snowman while we were walking to a coffee shop to study last night.

Aren't they cute? Dave and I both grew up in regions with serious, proper, worthy-of-the-name winter, so we get all excited about the snow. However, we have agreed that we're rapidly losing the ability to cope with the cold living here in Seattle, where it rarely gets below freezing. I guess we're disacclimatizing, if that's a word. Unacclimatizing? You know what I mean.

I have been knitting SO MUCH, and none of it is bloggable, and I'm really sorry about that, since all you get to hear about now is the weather, and that is truly dull blogging if there ever was such a thing. After Christmas there will be a solid week of Christmas gift posts! I did start a new project (for myself) this evening, using some lovely Malabrigo I bought a few weeks back. Here's the yarn. Project photos to follow when I get a bit further into it! The ivory mass is one of my first knitting projects, a very long scarf using fuzzy yarn (for coziness) and sequins (for bling). I still wear it all the time!