what is she doing??

i know, i know—two days and no post; believe me, i would have rather been writing.
i have the nicest readers and students, too! the other day in class, anne and maureen emphasized the need to see writing every day at knitspot. anne goes to the website, sees nothing new, and thinks, “what is she doing??”

(that makes me feel so loved! now, i know that, on SO many levels, it could be a bad thing to derive too much pleasure from compliments on the public display of my inner life. however, i did a thorough check of my ego, and i’m pretty sure i am reacting with a healthy amount of tail wagging, panting, rear wiggling, and dancing on my hind legs. yup, no ill effects at all on my personality that i can see . . .)

SO, what have i been doing??
well, i got an emergency project from work, and in the last couple of days i put together two text books. they are not quite done, but this morning they are in editing, so i can blog—lucky you! the rest of my desk life looks like a landslide, however

wendy’s book came (along with a copy of scarf style i finally broke down and bought, for
lady eleanor, which i’m not quite sure i will make—yet). i have patterns to type; yikes, there must be three or four complex ones here—plus, i’m getting a LOT of requests to write a sock pattern. i guess the other 4,371 sock patterns out there are just no good! ok, kidding—consider it “on the list”.

i crack mysef up all the time, but usually not in a good way. such is the case today. i finally organized a list of patterns i need to type. this involves running around the house, collecting envelopes covered with writing, turning over every paper to see if there are “pattern notes” scrawled on it,

and spending a lot of time flipping through stitch pattern books trying to remember if it was
fir cone i used in that shawl last year, or flickering flames. (to be honest, there is absolutely no difference whatsoever between the two patterns, though they appear in the same book. it is just a plot to make designers even more crazy-OCD than occurs naturally in the species.)

it’s not like i don’t have notebooks for this activity; i DO! and i use them

i use them for lots of things. but maybe not for deliriously accurate notes

hmm. wonder what this means . . . based on these “notes” can i actually replicate this sweater? no. somewhere, i do have more thorough “notes” about it, though. and then, there is that steel trap memory of mine—yes, i keep everything right up there in my head.
scary, huh?
now where was i—oh yeah, running around trying to get organized because i am feeling a little frazzled and behind on things. i’ve got this mountain of knitting paperwork staring at me today, which somehow doubled while i was playing around, having a good time at my real job.

and when i feel frazzled, my mind races even more, and i go off on tangents, such as “i have to type up the japanese feather stole pattern but i should make another one because that was SO fun and let me go see right now what yarn i have that would work but since i’m going upstairs, let me grab that yarn that was drying and put it away, and wow, that’s pretty—i wonder what stitch would look good in this yarn and since i’m going up i should check through the stitch books again, but oh yeah, those are in the office, hmm, i better do that now. oh! and i need to print business cards too.

but of course, i have knitting to calm me. heh heh heh.

actually, i thought i had not gotten much knitting done over the last few days because of all the work, but when i went around and looked, i had accomplished a fair amount!
sunday i started a new lace scarf and tuesday morning before work, i added on to it

good thing too; i ended up working til midnite that day. i love working with the mountain colors bearfoot. this is a scarf that we beta-tested in my wednesday night class last fall. it’s a very pretty combination of foliage motifs that begins at the center back neck and works downward (hence the provisional cast-on in the ugly yarn).

i also couldn’t wait to start another ostrich plumes stole in the yarn i dyed for that purpose, so i went ahead and “just got cast on, in case i had extra time”

i worked on it monday in classes. you know, what we MAKE time for it very telling indeed . . . you would think i didn’t have anything else to do, like sleep.

monday and tuesday night, i was so tired (two very long work days), i just knit on socks

monday night’s work.
and tuesday night’s work

i stayed up til 2:30 last night so i could get down to the brown toe (hey, it’s the little things, y’know?), so when i went to class i only needed to tangle up take along one ball of yarn.
so, now i’m off to more classes and taking the ostrich plumes and some sox with me. something tells me the sox will languish at the bottom of the bag this evening . . . what’s this??

is someone getting a surprise? hmmm, tune in tomorrow and see (it’s a not-so-secret-pal kinda thing)