We were up early and out the door yesterday to take our son to the airport for the return trip to college. Between here and there, we stopped for breakfast with my parents -- our son has a job lined up on campus for the summer and is likely not to be home again until next fall when there is a family wedding to attend, so we wanted to give his grandparents another chance to visit with him. We'll undoubtedly get to visit him at college sometime before fall, but his grandparents aren't able to travel that far.
Things were a bit tense as he packed up on Friday night (should we ship a box to him or pay for a second suitcase to be checked with the airline was just one of the "issues" discussed, money another). Although it is normal for there to be tension in preparation for a transition, I have to say it isn't as negative a feeling (on both sides) as it was when they were younger -- it used to feel like they had to create bad feelings in order to separate from us and it doesn't fee that way anymore. He was happy to return to his own life, we were happy to return to ours, even though we do miss him and his brother more often than they might imagine.
I managed to get a couple of inches of mitten cuff done on Friday -- that is what I would have shared with you yesterday morning if I'd stayed on schedule. The car ride to Portland and back gave me lots of good knitting time, though, so I was able to finish one mitten before getting home and start the second. I took a quick photo this morning before I did any more knitting and here is what I have to show for the past two days:
I'm knitting the second pair with the thumb increases on the end of the rows instead of at the beginning because the switch in colors, where I pull the new color under and around the previous row's color, leaves a slight ridge on the inside and I don't want to have one ridge on the top of the hand and the other on the palm for the wearer to notice. It isn't hard, just a bit different after using this pattern to knit literally dozens of pairs of mittens over the years. This pattern comes from a very old book that my mother had when I was a child. Some time ago I inherited the same book from an aunt. I also still have the paper where I hand-copied the 4-needle mitten pattern to take to college with me -- it is that old! By tomorrow -- finished mittens!
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