Seriously? Where did *this* week go?

I have got to pull my blogging schedule together! Right now, my work schedule is pretty crazy; once I get to campus, I'm in either meetings or classes all day long. So the one day I work at home is the day that I need to get grading done. And by the end of each day, I'm ready to fall over, and I just don't seem to have any more words left in me. I keep thinking that if I can just get past the next deadline, things will open up a little bit, but something always gets tagged on to the end. At this point in my mental calculations, I figure if I can just make it until mid-February (when the last of my current deadlines will come along), then I can take a little break. (Laugh with me now, people, laugh with me now.)

However, knitting does continue. I finished the first sleeve of Elektra last night and attached it to the back. One more sleeve, and then it's just the two fronts, and if I remember correctly from last time, those go quickly. Still no pictures, but progress is being made. If I can get the second sleeve done before the end of the week, I may take it in to my beloved LYS and ask for some help with the whole mattress stitch thing. I know it's supposed to be easy but honestly, I just can't seem to make mine turn out the way I know it's supposed to. And I think I've decided that it's silly to keep banging my head against that particular wall when I can go and ask for advice from Carol, finisher of garments par excellance (no fears, Carol, I'm just asking for advice; I'll do the actual work myself, I promise!). I only wish I knew as many ways to put a garment together as Carol does (and herein lies the reason why I knit so many shawls, socks, and scarves: no seams!).

I'm also contemplating whether and how much holiday knitting I'm going to do this year. The list keeps getting smaller and smaller. I'm down to between one and three gifts, with a strong leaning towards the "one" side of things. It feels selfish, but given that I'm going to be out of town for the next five weekends, with somewhere close to 2,000 miles of driving and a trip across the country and a conference paper presentation included in all of that, I think I need to make some sanity-preserving decisions here (let's not mention all of the grading that's about to come my way; talk about chickens coming home to roost!)(and who assigned all of these papers, you may ask? I'll never tell). As for the one present I really want to knit, though, I've already bought the yarn.
It's a ball of the tweedy Zauerball (am I spelling that right)? I absolutely adore the colors, and I'll be using this to knit socks for someone else I absolutely adore: my niece. She's the only niece I've got, and it came to my attention that she has no handknit socks (she's not deprived of handknits, mind you; she has a gorgeous poncho that both of my girls developed quite the lustful relationship with while we were in Cincinnati). So it's my hope that I'll get a pair of socks knitted up out of this before the holidays, but if I don't get done in time, that's OK. There's always Martin Luther King Jr Day presents to be distributed in mid-January, right?

All right. That's the quick update. I'm off in twenty minutes to drive to Bakersfield and Tehachapi for work this weekend. I'd better go pack!