The countdown starts

It's finals week. All of my finals are papers this semester; I have one pile in my hands, and two more coming in tomorrow by the end of the day. Three piles to grade, plus grade calculations to do. (We shall not speak of the letters of recommendations that must be written, not to mention the 36 panels and 58 abstracts that I need to have read and ranked by next week when grades also happen to be due. That would be overkill, and perhaps depressing.)

So I don't have much interesting to report. I will say that the first papers I have read from my field methods class are looking very good. Their final assignment was to put together a small grammatical sketch of Bengali based on the data gathered in class, plus a mini-dictionary, and some of them have done a very nice job of it, if I do say so myself. It's exciting, and I'll be sure to show a few to my friend (the language consultant) when I see her tomorrow. On the knitting side of that experience, I gave my friend (the language consultant) Damson last week at a meeting; in a nice display of synchronicity, she was wearing a lovely deep fuchia shirt which perfectly complemented the deep fuchias of the shawl. She put Damson right on, and it looked like we'd planned it. She also said that it solved a problem that she hadn't quite articulated to herself, which is the problem of the cold spot on the back of one's neck, particularly in over-air-conditioned rooms. I informed her that a knit night friend of mine calls that her "hump", which is exactly what it is: the hump at the base of one's neck that gets cold. Little shawlets are perfect for hump-warming.

And there's a sentence I bet you never thought you'd read. Behold the creative function of human language!

Because of the many end-of-year meetings which I have been attending of late (five hours on Friday, when I was on furlough, another nearly five hours today, nearly three more tomorrow), plus grading, I have very little to share (hence the dearth of blogging), although I have been knitting, and Henley Redux progresses apace. So, in no particular order, some thoughts:

Saturday was busy. Older Daughter and I got up very early to be at her school by 7:00 in the morning so we could go to an adjudicated music festival in which her string orchestra was performing. It was an unexpectedly pleasant 4+ hours, her orchestra got reasonable rankings from the adjudicators, plus useful comments, and I got lots of knitting done on Henley Redux.

We went to our first professional soccer game ever on Saturday night, in LA. Rick drove, I knit (very nice). Chivas lost, alas.

Sunday was a lovely day. I'd dithered and dithered about what I wanted to do; I even dithered out loud to Older Daughter for some time, then asked her what she thought, whereupon she said, "I think that your brain must be an interesting place to be." I desisted with regard to the dithering.

But on Sunday morning, I got to drink coffee in a mug. While sitting in a chair. Rather than drinking it in my to-go mug while sitting in the car. It was delightful.

The girls did the laundry. Which was very nice.

But which meant that the happy spring green socks became felted.

Alas.

I got two new knitting books: Anna Zilboorg's Magnificent Mittens and Socks, and Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting. Happy day.

I will leave you with two jokes that the girls shared with me. The first one is from Younger Daughter, who got it from someone at school. It goes like this:
Two muffins are sitting in an oven. The first muffin turns to the second muffin and says, "Boy, it's hot in here." The second muffin says, "Look! A talking muffin!"

I don't know why, but that one just tickles me.

The second one comes from Older Daughter, who made it up herself:
Q: What does a musical chicken say?
A: Bach.

And with that, I will leave you.

The early bird

Sings at 3:30 am. Apparently.

We have a bird (this happens every year) who seems to think that 3:30 in the morning is an excellent time to exercise the vocal apparatus. Loudly. And with great vim and vigor. This bird has an endless supply of musical motifs; I don't think I've ever heard him repeat himself. He sings each motif precisely three times (although the last repetition often ends a note or two earlier than the prior two) before moving on to the next. (Can you tell I've spent a lot of time analyzing this bird's singing style? Have I mentioned that the time I spend thinking about this is time that I could spend being asleep?) It's a virtuoso performance.

And one that I would probably appreciate more if the sun were up.

Anyone know what kind of bird this might be? I haven't seen what he looks like. (Because, as I believe I have mentioned, it's DARK when he's singing.) It's probably just as well, because if I had a description, I'd be sorely tempted to hire a sniper. And I'm not a violent person. As things stand, we have informed the cats that our standing moratorium on the slaying and ingestion of birds might be lifted in this one instance. I know. I'm not a nice person when I'm sleep-deprived.

In other news, I have cast on for the second henley, and am now about 5-6 inches up the body. I'm knitting the body and sleeves in the round this time, so it's going more slowly, but when it's done, there will be only a minimum of seaming to do. The fabric that this yarn is making is absolutely stunning, and I'm just pleased as punch with it.

I have also decided that I need to buckle down and frog the Great Linen Tent Debacle of last summer. Remember this?
It has not gotten any more flattering with age (its age or mine, come to think of it). I took it to knit night last night, figuring that I would fortify myself with good company while frogging, only to realize that I've completely forgotten which way I knitted it, so I haven't the faintest clue where to begin frogging. I need to dig those notes up so I can get the job done. I have ideas for that yarn, which is really quite nice; I just need to get it from a knitted state back into little balls.

Meanwhile, classes are finished, and I am now entering the part of the semester that consists of grading, and of attending really painful meetings to address all of the things that should have been taken care of during the semester but were not, and which now must be dealt with before the summer begins. However, I also have two of my favorite classes to look forward to in the fall, and many of the students I loved this semester have signed up for the upper-division one, which is a nice way to end the semester, knowing that when I come back in the fall, it will be to a room full of friendly faces.

Knit happens

In fact, I actually have a completed project to show off today! Of course, I also appear to have fallen down, and am swatching for yet another new project, but I figure as long as I maintain some kind of balance between the casting on and the casting off, I'm doing pretty well.

First, the finished project. I cast off for the happy spring green socks on Friday night, and I'm pleased as can be with the results.
I'm trying to decide whether I should be a good mom and hand these over to Older Daughter, who I think would like them very much (and whom they would fit), or keep them for myself. I'll dither for a few days, I think.
They are very happy, aren't they? These are the third installment of the Vintage Purls summer sock club. I really love her sock yarn, it's a great base, and the colors are rich and lovely. I'll definitely be casting on for the second installment sooner rather than later; I just need to decide whether to knit those as two color socks (with the colors switched for each sock), which is really fun, or to alternate the colors on each row, which makes for an amazingly deep and saturated color over the whole pair. I think I'll dither pleasurably over that for a little while longer.
Those little cables just charm me to pieces.

I almost wound up and cast on for a pair of socks for Rick; it's definitely his turn (and then Younger Daughter's), and I have a lovely skein of dark blue Bugga sitting in my yarn bowl, waiting. But, as I mentioned, I've fallen down the rabbit hole again and am planning to knit another of Anne's henleys. She just released the pattern, and in looking at the pictures of her sweater, I was reminded of how very much I love the colorway that she knit it up in. So I decided that I needed one of my own, as a summery sweater, you know. She very kindly said that she wouldn't mind at all if I had a matching sweater, so off I went to the Knitting Notions website to order the yarn, whereupon I noticed that Catherine has the same colorway in a gorgeous merino/bamboo blend. And that in turn reminded me that I've been thinking that a bamboo blend would make a wonderful summer sweater, given the weather around here.

I wrote to Anne, asking for advice, and she immediately dove into her stash and swatched the merino/bamboo to see how it would turn out. She wrote a really interesting post about the process here, in case you want to check it out (it's down towards the bottom). The result was lovely, so I ordered the yarn. It came yesterday, and this morning I sat down and swatched it up.
The top one is drying now, but the color of the bottom one is pretty true.
I think it's going to work beautifully. I'm planning to knit this one size smaller than my last version, for something that I hope will be lighter and airier and more summery; a sweater I can wear over a light t-shirt with shorts or jeans. I'm guessing I'll be casting on tonight.

Meanwhile, yesterday was a pretty busy day. Older Daughter once again had a very early soccer game. We were sitting on the sidelines by 7:30 in the morning, clutching our cups of coffee and trying to pry our eyes open. We then raced home to let her shower and change, and then took her to school for Stakeholder's Day, at which, she thought, she'd have to both play violin and staff a booth dressed as a medieval doctor (part of a project she just completed). It turns out that things weren't nearly so well organized as we'd thought, and that she was therefore the only member of her class team to come for the booth (and therefore the booth wasn't happening), and she was also the only member of orchestra to come to play (there were a few choir folks who were there). I pushed as much as I thought fair (given that I wouldn't have played by myself under those circumstances) to get her to play her violin, but she really was having none of that, so she ended up doing none of the things she'd thought she needed to. I hope they plan better next year.

Then she headed off for a sleepover with a friend, while I took Tilly to the vet. The poor pup had gotten grabbed by something on our walk on Friday. We noticed that she had a huge red splotch on her tummy on Friday night when she rolled over and we found a tick in her tummy there (a tick which, judging from its size, she'd picked up last weekend when she wasn't bitten by a rattlesnake). But she's been bitten by ticks before and never ended up with a huge red spot like that. And we remembered that she'd acted really oddly at one point on our walk running around trying to rub her tummy and paws in the mud -- at the time, we thought it was either red ants or burrs, and picked all the burrs we could see out of her, after which she seemed to feel better. But now we're wondering if it was something else, because when we got up on Saturday morning, the red had more than doubled in size. (Fair warning, incoming bruise picture.) So I took her to the vet, who said it looked like she'd been grabbed by something that gave her a really good pinch. She's on antibiotics just in case it was a bite, and she's in no distress (even on Friday night I could palpate the spot with no trouble), so we're pretty sure she's going to be fine. But poor baby, look at her tummy!
All of that was cherry red on Saturday morning, hence our concern.

And once that was done, Younger Daughter and I took ourselves off to our local Renaissance Faire, where she had shaved ice, and we listened to the Baudy Juggler, and we poked around and had fun, and ended by getting hennaed. She very much wanted a henna butterfly, which I allowed her to get on her upper arm where it won't show under her school uniform. I was wearing sleeves that wouldn't let me get to my upper arm for hennaeing, but Younger Daughter really really wanted me to join in her fun, so I decided in for a penny in for a pound, and went for one around my wrist.
It's the last week of classes, after all, and can't I claim that this somehow relates to our work with Bengali this semester? I do believe that I can (at least, that's what Younger Daughter claimed; clever child). And so I will.

Close encounters

I had firm plans to post this weekend. I even had finished objects to show off: the Just Enough Ruffles scarf is off the needles and has been worn several times, and the first of my happy green spring socks (not the official name, but I can't remember the pattern name right offhand; it'll come to me) is also off the needles, and I'm about halfway up the foot of the second sock. (Adamantas! I knew it would come to me.) I'm also working away on my no-concentration-necessary scarf during Older Daughter's soccer games, when I can barely be trusted to remember to K7 K2tog consistently, and most certainly cannot be trusted to manage anything more complicated than that.

But the weekend itself got a bit complicated. On Saturday, Rick had to go down to San Diego to work, so the girls and I devised a plan. The plan was that after Older Daughter's soccer game (not such a good one this week), and the speediest run to the farmer's market you ever did see (we were in and out in 15 minutes flat, with strawberries, blueberries, English peas, fava beans, apples, two loaves of bread, two jars of jam, and a few other things), we caught our local train to Oceanside, where we transferred to the Coaster for the trip to Old Town. It was certainly the way to go; the girls played games, and I knitted my sock and read my book and enjoyed the views and generally loved the fact that I was not sitting behind the driver's wheel of a car. It took almost twice as long as driving, but was far more than twice as relaxing. Don't they look like they're having fun?
(Apologies for the crummy camera-phone picture.)

Of course, poor Rick wasn't having nearly so relaxing a time. Turns out the drillers didn't bring what they needed to in order to drill the wells he wanted, so he needed to go back to work after lunch. So the girls and I hied ourselves to the San Diego Zoo, which is always good fun. We saw polar bears and elephants and meerkats.
We saw a condor flying. Alas, the picture was really bad, but let me tell you, a flying condor is a thing to behold. They are massively huge; the girls and I spent several minutes feeling rather awed by our imaginings of what it must have been like to see them, nine-foot wingspan and all, actually flying in the sky overhead. (And there was one rather lovely moment when a zoo bus came by and stopped just a bit too long, which led one condor to fly over to see if it was dead yet.)

Of course, the biggest crowd of people was the one taking pictures of these guys:
Apparently ducklings trump even the most exotic of animals.

On Sunday, we packed up some lunches and headed out to Daley Ranch for a hike; we were bound and determined to give Tilly a good run, and to bring home a dog smelling of sage. There was plenty of sage to run through.
And the bees were going crazy; hiking through some of the little valleys felt like hiking through a giant humming beehive -- the sound of bees was constant, an almost inaudible vibration in our skulls. It was incredibly impressive.

We also heard a rather different buzzing sound, to our very great dismay. We stopped for lunch at one of our favorite picnic spots, where the view is absolutely amazing, just perfect for taking a break about halfway through our hike.
If you click to embiggen, you can see all of the blue-eyed grass in bloom in that little notch betwen the rocks.

We enjoyed our rest and packed up to head out. Older Daughter struck out for the trail first, when buzzing erupted right underneath her feet. She jumped a mile and ran like a jackrabbit, and I saw a rattlesnake slithering right out from where she'd just stepped. I'm sure it was just as scared as she was (it probably spent the rest of its day with the vapors, telling its whole family about the person who nearly stepped on it, poor thing), and it immediately holed up under a nearby rock. We managed to get ourselves (and the dog, who was -- I'm delighted to report -- terrified) past that spot to meet up again with Older Daughter who turned to me and said, "Mama, do you have anything to stop bleeding?", and pointed to what looked like a scratch between two red spots on her leg. I said, in my best panic-is-not-useful-in-emergencies voice, "Did you get bitten?" "Oh, no" says she, "I got this scratch while we were playing around at lunch."

Aaargh.

All's well that ends well, and when Older Daughter told us that she kept thinking about just how wrong that could have gone, we reminded her that it didn't, and that it was a good learning experience about barging through grass in the summer in California. Ten minutes later, though, Rick and I looked at each other, and he said quietly, "We had cell phone reception, and I knew exactly where we were." And I said, "My thoughts exactly." Whew.

But talk about a gorgeous hike.
The recent rain means that there's water in places that are usually merely marshy.
Lots of bugs to examine.
And a little bit of shade for a hot dog.

And we all got home under our own steam. It doesn't get much better than that.

A new season

It's spring, and a young woman's fancy turns to thoughts of soccer.

Yup, spring soccer (non-competitive, neither of the girls has gone to the competitive leagues) has started, and Older Daughter is back on the fake turf.
Yes, fake turf. For some reason, one of the parks in my town put in a field with fake turf, and that's the spring soccer field. I'm not fond of it, I have to admit: it smells funny (especially when it's wet), and on really sunny days, the field gets so hot that the kids can't take a knee when someone gets hurt, because it burns their knees (they hunker instead). (I've heard the refs complaining about their feet getting too hot during the games, too.) Nevertheless, it's good to be watching her play again, especially since after this year, she'll be too old for this group.

The spring league is particularly interesting because, being small and non-competitive, they play co-ed teams. This year, Rick's calling our defense The Wall of Women; all three of the main defenders (including Older Daughter and a girl who was on her fall team) are girls. And they play a physical game. Given the age range, it shouldn't be surprising that the defense is girls who have had their growth spurts (the fastest offensive players are often the girls who have not); the tallest girls are generally much taller than the boys. So Saturdays are busy again, except on those days (like tomorrow) when we're playing at 8:00 (have to be on the field by 7:30 am), which means that by the time we're done, most normal people are just finishing their Saturday morning coffee.

Spring is showing up in other places, too. It poured off and on all week, and snow levels dropped to about 3,000 feet; yesterday on Palomar Mountain, it was about 27 degrees. And this morning, when I didn't go to the pool to swim, it was 47 degrees. Now it's 63. (Don't worry, I got my exercise in by taking Tilly for the long walk she missed during the rain.) Where'd the sun go? But the mix of sun, then rain, then sun is certainly making the flowers happy.
Matilija poppies. Or, as they're known around here, Fried Egg Flowers.
Sage (my favorite; Tilly always smells so good when we can get her out to the hills to run).
The climbing roses smell wonderful, too. And the orange blossoms are out, which means that the entire neighborhood is filled with their scent; I love driving around with my windows open this time of year.
It's sweet pea season, too. Sweet peas are among my very favorite flowers, and I wait eagerly every year for their brief season, so I can buy bunches and bunches at the farmer's market. This particular bunch matches my finished Damson.
I don't know if I mentioned that this week I had to cancel my field methods class. The reason? A volcano was erupting in Iceland.* Talk about something I never thought I'd have to write in an email to students, but our Bengali speaker was stuck overseas, and couldn't get home to class. And since I don't speak Bengali, it's not like I was able to stand in. But it definitely clinched in my mind the idea that had been brewing there that she needs to end up with this shawl; this semester just wouldn't have been the same without her.

*I have, as you might expect, heard many an excuse for missing class. An Icelandic volcano is certainly one of the better ones. But the best to my mind is still the time that one of my students, a very sincere young man who was a quiet and excellent student, came up to me to tell me that he might not be in my next class because his sow was due to throw her litter, and if she started that night, he probably wouldn't be free to come to campus. I gave it to him. It just appealed to everything in my nature: first, no pregnant female of any species should be stuck going through labor without her support person available to her, and second, if he was making it up, he got full points for creativity. A year later, he took my gender and language class, and cemented his place in my heart during a discussion of the social construction of expectations of potentially attractive mates when he said that he had rather different expectations than the ones his classmates were coming up with: he was looking for a woman who wouldn't mind if he came in from the fields with lanolin on his hands, and who'd be willing to get on in there and lend a hand during lambing season. Man, do I miss that student.

Shiny object distractions

Years ago, when I was in grad school, my friend had a wonderful dog named Romeo. Ro was the perfect dog for taking on walks or bike rides (he had boundless energy), and he loved nothing more than a good game of fetch, with either ball or frisbee. However, he did have this tendency to run madly after a ball, only to suddenly find himself utterly distracted by something else (tree! dog! squirrel! car!), whereupon we were the ones fetching the ball that he'd lost in his distraction. My friend called him the Shiny Object Distraction Dog (she also happened to be dating a highly distractable man at the time, whom we subsequently called the Shiny Object Distraction Boy).

As of yesterday morning, I became the Shiny Object Distraction Knitter. But honestly, I defy any of you to say that you wouldn't have done the same. Off I went, just before 9:00 in the morning, to a knitting class at my beloved LYS. It was a wonderful class, and I daresay a good time was had by all. By the time I had to leave, I had completed the class project, and was wearing it proudly.
How much fun is that? And I've totally fallen down the rabbithole, because this morning, I finished this:
Oops.

And let's be honest. The only reason why I don't have at least one more finished (you can only imagine the daughterous clamor for bracelets) is because I don't have any more of the findings that I would need to make them. You can see them there: incredibly powerful magnets (which are a Shiny Object Distraction in their own right; I spent an embarrassing amount of time playing with mine when we were out to dinner last night. Look! They stick to the table! And the knife! And the salt shaker! And...!!)
I knew I should have gone back yesterday afternoon and cleaned her out of these. This project is the perfect project for using up fingering-weight yarn (of which I tend to have insane amounts); it only takes about 15 yards. It does take up lots of beads (between 200 and 240 for the size I'm making), but I have all of those beads I ordered that I'm not using for the Tibetan Clouds Stole, so it's not like there's a dearth of beads chez moi these days. I anticipate that this will be known by my friends and family as The Year of the Beaded Bracelet, because these seem like the perfect gift. I wonder if Rick would wear one...?

I knitted that blue one first, because it seemed like the perfect go-with-denim bracelet, and my uniform of choice is denim bottoms (jeans or skirts) and a relatively plain top. One must add bling to such an outfit, mustn't one? And then, just as I finished and was wandering around the store, forcing innocent standers-by to admire my handiwork, I saw this skein of yarn.
Fate. It was Fate, I tell you. Don't they go together perfectly? (The colorway is named, appropriately enough, Denim.) This yarn is destined to become a Just Enough Ruffles Scarf, I think; I spent an inordinate amount of time on Ravelry last night, looking for a scarflet in that very elongated triangle shape I'm loving, and that was finally the pattern that I bought. I haven't cast on yet, though, so if anyone knows of another one that I should consider, now's a good time to shout about it.

Spring and fiber

Well, spring has sprung around here. That means that we alternate lovely warm sunny days with days like today, which has been chilly and windy and overcast. I'm OK with that, but I think some creatures around here would prefer more of the sun. Rick went hiking last weekend when I was out of town, and texted me a picture of this lovely guy, whom he found hunkering down in the sun, trying to generate enough energy to move.
Rick was worried that it was dead, until he saw it blink. It was just absorbing as much sunlight as possible. Tilly, however, apparently thought that there was a bit too much of the bright orb overhead, and sat down to rest.
It's a long habit of hers on hot days to trot ahead to a patch of shade and wait for us there. The monkeyflowers liked the sun a bit more.
I, however, have been enjoying our last several days of fog and wind, especially when I'm hiking on trails with Tilly. Somehow those gray skies make our brief green season seem that much greener. There are a lot of flowers out that only appear for this short window of time.
In fibrous news, I'm still contemplating what to knit with my newly-spun Wensleydale. It's all wound up into a yarn cake, just waiting for me to find the right thing to make.
There's about 260 yards of laceweight there (pretty true to color, for once), and I bet if I wind some singles from one bobbin to another so I could finish them up as a three-ply, I could get another 50-60 yards to match (I may do that tonight). Any ideas? I'm thinking something lacey, and vaguely triangular (in that long shallow way I'm liking), but I could probably be swayed.

I'm also working on the Tibetan Clouds Stole (I promised I wouldn't put it aside, Ellen, and I haven't!). (BTW, if you want to see more lovely spinning, you should check out what Ellen's been up to. And Erica's been tempting me down the path of color and spinning, which I swore I'd never follow. You know, I don't think it's knitting that's a gateway craft; it's knitters who drag us further down the rabbithole.). I finally realized that part of what was putting me off was having to pull out the beads and the beading hook and the pattern and the yarn and the pencil, blah blah blah every time I sat down to work on it. So I cleared out one of the trays in my beloved Japanese lunch box, put everything I need for this project into it, and there it sits, beautifully contained and readily available and moveable.
I only have 16 more rows to go on the center square (it does get larger with every row); then I cast off one edges, put one edge on a holder, cast off the third edge, and start knitting back and forth on the last edge. It'll be much easier to see what's going on then, but here's a bit of a teaser for the time being.
This is one fun knit; talk about always wanting to complete just one more row (or in my case, because of the way I mark up my charts, four more rows). I'll be hard-pressed not to work on this tonight instead of finishing my spinning...

Meanwhile, I'm off for my crazy Thursday afternoon kid-activity run. Rick (for reasons known only to himself) decided to calculate just how much driving I do on Thursday afternoons, and came up with a figure of 45 miles. I think I was happier not knowing.

ETA: Marta, by the time I stopped dithering about the GGFI, registration was full, so it doesn't look like I'll be there this year (sniff). I'm really bummed, so I'll count on you to knit and spin a little extra for me, OK?