And now back to our regularly scheduled chaos

Wow. You'd think I'd get to bask in the glory of getting last week over with, wouldn't you? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm in a much better state that I was last week; I'm even sleeping every night. All night. Going to sleep right away, even. Life is good.

I just mean that the other things that I should have been doing while I was doing all the stuff I was doing last week were not found mysteriously completed when I turned around and looked at them again. Nope, they're still lined up, waiting patiently, looking at me with slightly quizzical expressions, as if to say, "and you thought we'd be where, exactly?" They love me. They are willing to wait for me. I should be more touched by this attitude than I am.

On the knitting front, I'm almost done with Kivrin's second sock (yay!), and I'm hoping that an almost-three-hour academic senate meeting today will put me over the top (in the good sense of having achieved something, rather than in the running-around-stark-raving-mad sense). (BTW, do you think it's a bad thing that at Monday's reception for recent aquire-ers of tenure, when congratulated by the VP of academic affairs, I told her that I am just glad it's over because, as I've told my kids, I can now run around campus nekkid and they can't fire me? She laughed, and then said, "until we could prove mental incompetence". I'm going to assume she was kidding.) These socks were the victims of major distraction yesterday afternoon, although I'm back on track now.

See, Kivrin's been wanting for ages to do something that her big sister doesn't do, and hasn't done before her. Gymnastics has been mentioned, as have various forms of dance. When we were at the Scottish Games last spring, we watched the Highland dancing. When it was over, she looked at me quite seriously and said, "I want to do that. Like them. Me." Well, that was pretty clear. So, yesterday, I took her to a nearby studio that does Irish dancing (not the same thing, but if she loves it and wants to switch, we can make the longer drive to Escondido for another studio later), and she started in. She loved it. And it was so much fun to watch her learning her jump-two-three (new terminology!), that I wasn't paying attention to my knitting. So, I knit a beautiful heel flap, in the STR as planned, then merrily and neatly picked up stitches all along the edge, started along the instep, and then realized that things looked a bit odd. It took me a minute to figure out what you all probably saw right away, which was that I'd forgotten to turn the heel. Doh!

I've wound my beautiful new Cherry Tree Hill into pretty little balls. I was a bit afraid of the colors when I got the skein, because the orange part looked so big and, well, orange. But when it's wound, you can see that the color changes are quick and beautiful, and the orange really makes the other colors pop. Here is the hank laid out:
And now, wound into little balls (I split it in two, so I'd know how much I have for each sock).
It's a little blurry, but don't they look exactly like fall? I am very happy with these, and can't wait to start knitting. I've got some ideas for putting a pattern together that's very autumnal, and we'll have to see how they work out.

Part of the reason I can't wait to get started is because Sheri got some Dream in Color in over at The Loopy Ewe, and I have been dying to try it (everyone who writes about it says such nice things). So I bought three skeins. (oops) But I'd like to get at least one of these socks done before casting on with that, so I've got to bust a move.