Zigs and Zags

Journeys always take interesting turns -- some expected and some less expected. My journey always takes a zag at this time of year. As an educator, married to an educator, with children in school (hardly children as they are 18 and starting their senior year in high school), daughter of an educator, my life's calendar year has always begun in September. I've worked in higher education for 25 years now and continue to love working with college students, but the September zag seems to be harder to do each year.

Most of my women friends work, but I am one who would love to stay at home. I went back to work when my sons were 3 months old and never had the stay-at-home Mom experience, but I can easily imagine keeping myself very busy staying at home without children. Luckily, I work just 10 months out of the year, since my college has no summer school, and am home for about 2 months every summer. This has dovetailed very nicely with my sons and husbands being home in the summer over the years and allowed my husband to have various interesting summer jobs.

Anyway, I get enthused about my many projects each summer and then hit the zag in late August when it is time to get back to the office and pick up the threads of that life again. In many ways, it is like casting on a new project -- probably most similar to the casting on of my toe-up two socks on two circs earlier this month. I cast on at least four times, and ripped out three of them, before getting it going smoothly. I know that in a few weeks I'll be back in the groove at work, but at the moment it is somewhat painful to be caught between the two worlds.

ON MY NEEDLES
I've read that blogging helps keep you on track with projects. So far, so good!

I finished the Vermont felted bag and then stitched together the handles on the other felted bag I'd made last winter but never finished. Then, I pulled out the Kitty Pi bed that I started last June and finished that. Then I went and bought zippered pillow cases and am ready to felt everything as soon as I get a bit of time to spend in the laundry room. Now, however, I've got an order in for yarn to make another Vermont bag (Christmas presents!) and since we adopted a new kitten this summer (who will be bereft when we all go back to school next week), I'm going to have to make another kitty bed -- possibly the dotty one I found on line.

My Clapotis shawl is making good progress. I've been trying to get one dropped stitch section done a day -- it is so much fun to drop a stitch on purpose and pull it all the way down!

I've picked up my jacket and made a bit of progress on the sleeves. Doing both sleeves at once is really a good idea -- not just for the consistency, but for the psychological benefit of knowing that I won't have to do another sleeve after this one! I've never been much for blocking, but am promising myself to really block these pieces so that it will have that nice, finished look. After the sleeves, I'll just have the collar to knit.

The one thing I haven't touched is the socks, but those will be perfect to take on our camping trip this weekend, so hopefully I'll make some progress there.

Now that the bag is off the needles, I'm thinking about starting the feather and fan scarf that I bought the yarn for from Knit Picks. I'll be using their free pattern and can't remember if I'm making the scarf or shawl -- guess I'd better pull that out.

The one item of progress made in my knitting world is the installation of a door between the room where I knit (called the fireplace room, it now has a lovely gas stove in it for warmth and ambience) and the living room where my family likes to watch movies (hurrah for Netflix). Now I can knit to my own music (or podcasts!) instead of to whatever soundtrack is on the TV at the moment. Mucho thanks to my Dad for helping us put that up yesterday!!