SpringPlum

This has been another week that has been much busier than I expected during my glorious summer vacation.  Putting everything off until summer apparently has consequences.  Between getting the hail damage on Matt’s car fixed, a dentist appointment, a day-long benefits meeting for my new job, housework (ugh!), and shopping for supplies for my new project, very little knitting has been accomplished.  But here is my new project that I started and finished.

For the love of yarn–that’s not knitting! 

So glad you noticed, Observant Reader.  I could not find a cover-up to match my new swimsuit (why does swimsuit shopping suck so much?).  Since I was determined to have a cute little skirt to wear on our Florida vacation, I made one.

For someone who is used to making things by hand, I get such a rush from sewing.  I’m not saying that I like sewing better than knitting–that’s crazy talk.  But there is definitely a high to be had from sewing.  It might be because of the danger factor.  Sure, you can injure yourself knitting by sitting on a DPN or jabbing yourself in the lip with a cable needle.  But sewing has machinery, electricity, and one really fast moving needle.  And getting a finger stuck under that needle hurts worse than anything I’ve done to myself while knitting.  Still, the high won’t last long, and this’ll be a knitting blog again soon.

This past Thursday I drove up to Oklahoma to visit my parents.  Despite a hailstorm and a cracked windshield, it was a pretty nice trip.

Last time I visited my parents, I dragged them to a couple of different yarn shops for a mini LYS crawl.  This time my mom beat me to it.  She found a new one for us to visit.  This is especially nice since she doesn’t knit–although she does have the makings of a champion enabler.  She took me to the L & B Yarn Co. in Norman, OK.  This yarn store easily competes with my affections for The Woolie Ewe.  L & B is a very swank shop and the women who work there are very nice.  My dad was dragged along  to the store, and they set him up their classroom with a soda so he could read his book in comfort.  I walked out with–

and 

Those would be Crystal Palace Yarn’s Panda Cotton in Roses and Prism Yarn’s Lacewool in a very pretty Mojave.  The Panda Cotton will of course become socks one day, but I am still not sure what the Lacewool will be.  Maybe the Spirit of the Southwest shawl or the Children of Lir.

We also went back to the Gourmet Yarn Co. and I acquired even more laceweight.

Mom disapproved of my getting a navy yarn when there were more colorful yarns to be had, but this is the perfect color for the Scotch Thistle Stole that I picked up at the Dallas Fiber Festival.

You know what this blog has been missing?  Cat pictures!  Because I have no cats, you’ll have to settle for pictures of my parents’ cats.  Sunny decided to help me bag books.  And Sampson ignored me.

*Update*

This was on the coffee table when I got home.

Matt spent from midnight to 2 am getting the gigantic knot out of the sock yarn.  A husband who will spend two hours unknotting yarn is super special.

This Sunday, the Dallas SnB had a yarn swap.  This is what I came home with–

I got rid of the cursed red Debbie Bliss and some overly bright Knit Picks Palette.   A bunch of old acrylic went to a women’s prison charity.  The trading was fast and furious, but I managed to score 3 different pairs of sock yarn.  Wait…there’s only 2 types of sock yarn in the picture?  Where’s the other?  It’s busy, you see.  Being a pain in my ass.

That’s a giant knot of Lorna’s Laces Shepard Sock in the denim colorway.  And that’s after I worked on it for over an hour.  Argh.

On a much more positive note, school is out for the summer.  My days are student-free until August.  You’d think I would have tons of knitting time, but I’m finding that being a housewife, even a temporary one, involves actual work.

Why can’t I figure out a way to knit and grade essay finals at the same time?  Maybe I could use my feet to grade.  I can flip papers over with my big toe and my pinky toe can type the grades into the computer.  Anyone know why I decided to give an essay as the final?  Someone stop my next time.  There’s a perfectly nice scantron machine down the hall, and everyone knows students prefer multiple guess tests.  Oh wait! It’s because I’m a responsible teacher and the kids need to learn more than just bubbling in.  I’ve even had to leave my knitting bag at home this week so there’s no distractions while I grade these papers.  The horror!

Oops.  I forgot to pay attention to my fingers for a couple of hours and look what they did–

They cast on the Sheep Shawl.  Only four days early.  That has to count for something, right? 

Originally, I had planned to cast this on the first day of summer vacation to celebrate being student-free for three months.  It was so hard waiting.  I’d go to SnB and see all the neat projects that the other gals were working on, or I’s open up my stash and the Zephyr would tumble out to entice me, and then I got my brand new KP Options that wanted to be used so badly.  So I decided–why torture myself?  This is a self-imposed rule–no one’s going to punish me if I toss the rule out the window; my husband isn’t going to divorce me; my fish aren’t going to shun me.

I am loving this pattern even if I do have to stare at the chart for every row.  But I think if I knit this again, I’ll purl the even rows instead of knitting them.  To me, stockinette looks prettier then garter stitch.  I appreciate that the shawl will be reversible though.  Here’s a detail shot.  I am at on the sunshine chart.