Going visiting

Well, I must say that "more of the same" does not make for good blog fodder. I'm over halfway through with the Hip in Hemp skirt now, and still going strong although the rows are now getting longer (we've all heard this song before, eh?). I'm getting a little less than one repeat an hour at this point, and have 16 repeats left to go. The length and width are still looking right, so I'm feeling on target. But the pictures look the same, so it's not like I have anything to show you, alas.

Look! Our jacaranda tree is in bloom, finally.
They're all over the neighborhood now -- I'll have to see if I can get a picture. From the hill where we were hiking the other day, we could look out over parts of Vista and see clumps of purple everywhere. I love how truly exuberant jacarandas are. You can't see it in this picture, but they don't leaf and flower at the same time. They carry their leaves all year round, right up until they're about ready to bloom, and then they dump all the extra baggage so they can put everything into flowering. I like the attitude.

Aside from that, I've been slowly plugging away at my paper for this conference in early July. I really need to have made some serious progress on it before going to a workshop in Berkeley in a few weeks (make that ten days, eek!), so that I'm not fretting too much. I want it nailed and put to bed before I get on the plane for the conference (no, I haven't said where I'm going yet; it's an exciting happy thing, so I'm saving it for its very own post at some point soon) so that I don't have to think about it until just before I need to present, when I can have a small panic attack and practice it again four or five times in a deserted hallway (yes, I've done this before, why do you ask?)(I'm just proud that I've gotten the panic attacks to within an hour of my presentation, instead of days and days in advance; it ruins far less time this way). I have a huge stack of articles to read, but I also have something resembling an outline, so that's good.

And, I have a lovely visit to look forward to tonight! Rachael is in Torrance for a conference, and I'm driving up there tonight so that we can go to dinner. Really, it's so that we can get our raven stoles (formally known as Simurgh) together for a playdate. When we both started knitting the pattern with Anne, we emailed back and forth about how fun it would be to see them side-by-side, and promised that if either of us could ever make it to the other coast, we'd see what we could do. Well, she's here, so with luck we'll get a couple of good pictures of the stoles together (and maybe us, too?). That should be some excellent blog fodder!

All right. Articles call, and I must get a few read before I take Tilly to get her stitches out. One thing after another...