I can't believe I haven't posted since last January! My life has just been so hectic. I'm almost finished with my Masters program (yea!), and school doesn't start, officially, until Sept. 1st. I'll be back in my classroom, setting up, by the second week in August, though. We don't get paid to put our rooms together, even though we have to strip them in June, and the custodians pile all the desks on top of each other and all the chairs in stacks 8 high, all in the center of the room. We start back on August 31, and that's all the prep time we get (most of which is in meetings). We do have a new principal this year (Hallelujah!), and I'm looking forward to meeting the new one. I sure won't miss the old one.
I did finish a bunch of UFOs, but I didn't reduce the stack of them to zero. I still have 4 or 5 to do, and it's been very, very hot lately, so I haven't been knitting at all. It will be nice to get into cooler weather, around the end of October or so. If then, of course. SoCal doesn't get very cold, even in the dead of winter, so cool is a relative term here.
I got a look at the new Interweave Knits for fall, due out around August 11. I have to say, I wasn't very inspired by it. I don't think I'm going to buy it when it comes out, but I will have to check it out for the articles when it does. It just seemed to me that they were heavily into awkward clothing in the pictures I saw. A collar and front edging in a braided cable, reversible no less, but the collar stands up, and I know that cables don't fold down easily, so their idea to fold back the front edging to form lapels won't be all that easy to do, I think. And a high collar just doesn't work all that well in SoCal, especially not one that's so thick. Oh, well. That's just me and my opinion.
I will seriously try to post more often than every 6 months or so. I'll try to manage at least once a month, but I can't promise that. I do have my last class to complete for my Master's degree, and it's a doozy! 45 hours of field work in 10 weeks (well, less than that, since all that has to be completed by week 8, I think), and that's in addition to completing a portfolio of all your previous work/classes, and presenting it, and defending it. And weekly class discussion postings. All this, for just 6 quarter units. Sooooo, I'll be a little busy from October to early December, but then I'm done! No more coming home late from work, only to log on to my classes and work some more. I'm glad I did this, and the MS will be worth it, both in terms of all I've learned and financially, but I was considering going for a Ph.D, and I just don't think I will even try that, after this. I've been exhausted for just over a year, and I don't want to feel that way any more. I want to get back to having time to read, time to knit, time to have a social life!
I have just about 1000 yards of some Rowan All Seasons Cotton in Midnight (blue-black) that I've been eying. I just have to find a pattern I like for it, so I think that will be my next project. To search out a pattern and then make it. Unlike most of the country, cotton is a year-round fabric here, so I'll be able to wear it any time. Unlike all that lovely alpaca I have sitting around in bins, waiting to become something other than just stash. Ah, well. I just won't have to spend my retirement money on yarn, so it's all good.
