Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Being a little behind is still better than being a big behind...


OK, so it's been awhile since I've written a post. The start of a new semester always has me chasing my tail, especially in the fall. Somehow all of the things I was supposed to get done over the summer eluded me and are now staring me in the face! So now it's hurry up and get them done before classes start.

Still I love September and the energy a new school year brings. I have come to think of it as more New Years than the one at the beginning of January. It feels good to see the students on campus (even the clueless ones who stop in the office to ask which floor room 200 is on!) My "mommy-antenna" goes into overdrive with every near-tears new student who I find wandering aimlessly in circles. I just want to put my arms around each one of them and reassure them that in a month they will be navigating the campus like they were born here.

September does mean a substantial ramp-up of my schedule, however. No more lazy, hazy summer days with (slightly) extended lunch hours and leisurely meetings under the shade trees. Now it is classroom presentations, committees, planning meetings and back-to-back appointments. And it will be a non-stop whirlwind of activity until early November when things begin to settle down a little. Hopefully I will still be able to find the time (and the energy) to knit and maintain a regular posting schedule but if not, be assured I am still alive...just buried under a pile of paperwork.

Anyway, I REALLY wanted this entry to be about some finished projects. Over the past few weeks I completed Meredith's bag for school. Being a science major (Molecular Genetics/Microbiology to be exact...the little smarty pants!) she carries around an ungodly load of books, lab manuals, binders, notebooks and other science stuff. I wanted to make her a sturdy bag to hold everything so I used the Constant Companion pattern, doubled the strands of wool and felted the crap out of the thing.

Here is what it looked like before felting:



And here is what it looks like now:


(Those are some of those monster science books on the top shelf)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE what felting does for a piece... except of course when it is done accidently. Brendan's sister made him a sweater when we were first married. He wore it constantly. I decided to wash it one day and, well, you know the rest of THAT story... That was one of our first "What were you thinking?" episodes.

Also on the FO list is the pair of Socketta Socks I was working on during my vacation. They came out well but I discovered a nasty secret about the yarn... the colors run!!! I washed them in cold water with my light green Green Gable sweater and ended up with some nasty blue marks on the sweater that I traced to the socks. Fortunately the marks came out with some pre-treating and additional washes but I was NOT a happy camper. Needless to say, I will be washing them by themselves for the next few cycles. Here are the culprits:


It's a good thing they are pretty or they would have been SEVERELY punished for bleeding on my NEW sweater.

The other finished project is (are?) the Fixation Footies I finally finished this week (also for Meredith). I started them while I was on vacation but once I got home life just kept getting in the way. She picked out the yarn last April and, while it isn't a color combo I would have chosen for myself, they really grew on me. Here they are:
They are headed up to Burlington tomorrow in a care package with Double Chocolate Cookies (courtesy of Dad) and ink cartridges for her printer. (She's no dummy... those suckers are expensive so she talked me into buying them for her!) Hopefully she will like the socks and actually wear them! Wouldn't that just float my boat!!

So on to the next project, a vest for me! And maybe two or three other things to work on in preparation for the December craft fair at work, perhaps some hats or bags.

But tomorrow morning I have a 7:15 breakfast meeting followed by a committee meeting followed by some student appointments followed by...well, suffice to say, a long day. So it's off to bed for me. Nighty night all!

3 comments:

KNIT A NEW DREAM said...

The bag turned out gorgeous!!! Nice pic with you trying to hide under it! Who took the picture? Nice socks - too bad about the bleed. Love sue

Busymom51 said...

Thanks, Sue! I took the picture with the timer feature on my camera. Now that I've figured it out, it's fun to use!

Anonymous said...

Felting is such amazing thing to do - bag is gorgeous!