Your description of the first time you knit a sock heel is so spot on! It's the most magical experience, and I think why sock knitting is so much more addictive than sweater knitting--same number of stitches but so much cooler accomplishments!

Also, I am shocked by Thomas; how could anyone do that with hand knitted socks! :(

Home goods is literally my favorite store on the planet :) thanks for the advice about carytown, it definitely seems like my kind of place, and I have already found some awesome restored historic apartments in the Fan :),

Thanks! Yeah I definitely want to commit to fully living in my new home. I was really depressed this fall, and pet of how I ended up pulling myself out of that headspace was by embracing my life in my hometown even bough it was supposed to be a short term living situation. Thanks, I'm really excited for me too!

This is great advice and exactly he kind of attitude I want to be taking! Thanks

I have definitely been doing color scheme planning. In case anyone else is interested, I found this website http://www.theviviennefiles.com/?m=1 (html is hard) to be really great for examples of building up a wardrobe and this one http://into-mind.com/blog/2014/08/25/how-to-choos... to have good advice about color schemes.

If you are interested, here is my family's pelmeni recipe. Note that although this is the real deal from my mom's Cousin Vina, the proportions do not really work out--you will need to add a lot more flour to make he dough properly and probably make extra dough for this amount of meat. But they are totally worth it! (Also I like to eat them with vinegar rather than butter)

"This recipe is from Ann's cousin Vina, who is from Minsk, in the former Soviet Union (now Belarus). Vina says, “Enjoy eating pelmeni!”
1 C+ flour
1 C cold water
1 egg
1 lb ground meat 1 onion, minced 1/4 tsp pepper 1/4 tsp salt
I. Mix egg with cup of cold water. Add gradually to flour to prepare dough. Dough has to be soft. Take a piece of dough and roll out (before rolling put some flour on cutting board).
II. Mix ground meat with salt, pepper and onion, add some spices (as much as you like).
III. Put 5-10o spoonfuls (teaspoon) of meat at the edge of dough next to each other and fold.
Take a small glass or a round cookie cutter and cut crescent shape.
IV. Prepare a big pan with boiling water (add a little salt) and put pelmeni into boiling water for 5-7 minutes till they come to the surface.
V. People eat them with butter and black pepper or with sour cream, or with ground pepper and vinegar.
You may freeze raw pelmeni on plastic tray and boil frozen when ready. You can keep them into freezer for half a year."

Toasters! After a year of post graduation employment I just accepted a job in Richmond! So I have the following questions:

1) any advice about living in Richmond? I'd like to live somewhere young and happening, preferably diverse and not too boogie? If such a thing exists
2) my first real job also means my first real work wardrobe; I'm planning on trying to make a capsule wardrobe type thing from scratch (my parents gave me a budget for work clothes as a graduation gift); but any suggestions/advice for how to get the most quality for my dollar?
3) also my first real apartment! Advice on nesting/furnishing/decorating? I will be on a bit of a budget starting out but I don't mind living out of boxes for a bit until my new salary kicks in, and engineering means I will have a bit of money to throw at home making
4) speaking of money, I want your boughs on budgeting! I have the basic ideas down but I never really had a steady income/I've always been dependent on my parents, so the actual implementation of my theoretical budget ideas might be a bit painful. But again I want to capitalize on the part where I'm still used to living like a student to eg max out my savings when I won't miss the money

Any and all advice welcome, thanks in advance :))))

yUP
pretty much the only things I read my junior and senior years (of an environmental engineering degree) were georgette heyer and fic.

I actually thought I'd lost my attention span/was no longer able to read, and then I graduated and it's like my brain unfolded again. I suddenly had way more available bandwidth.

not sure about your style and so on, but $5 in Paris (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/5-in-paris) was my first sweater. It is very easy and I get compliments all the time!

I...have never even considered myself as existing in a mixed race relationship. Even though all my relationships have been, and I've been very aware of being in an interfaith relationship. WEIRD.