When the going gets tough...

...sometimes the tough need to clean house.

Thursday afternoon, I ran out to the field site and checked on the milkweed plants. No sprouting yet, which surprises me a little (but then again, spring has been delayed this year). I also wrote most of the ecology exam for next Friday (except for 15 points over material I have yet to cover Monday and Wednesday).

Then, on Good Friday morning, I got up early enough to have time to prep the Sunday school lesson for this week before my hour-slot in the prayer chain.

And after all that, I decided I really needed to clean my house. I told myself I could go in and work after the Good Friday services.

Well, I hadn't cleaned well since before well before spring break, so it took more than I anticipated. And I realized I was out of trash bags and a particular cleaning product I needed, so I had to run to the store.

After the service, I wasn't really in a frame of mind to go and work in my office. (Good Friday services, for those who don't attend them, range from the somber to the somewhat harrowing). So I finished cleaning house, did all my laundry. That took me up to about 4 pm, really too late to go in to the office.

So here I am today, and I have an e-mail from my co-author offering to make the changes ("rewrite," it turns out to be less involved than I thought) to the paper. Being the person that I am, I first e-mailed him saying "No, I will do it, I want to see what the changes are." but then realized "Hey, silly, someone's offering to take part of your load for you." SO I e-mailed him back, saying I will still look at and consider what is going on, but maybe he should do the rewriting as he seems to have an idea of what is necessary.

I do also have to make up a vote-sheet for the Curriculum committee meeting on Monday, but then I'm done - until the egg-hunt. Which will be indoors, I guess, as it's raining buckets right now.

I also began another project, all in the middle of this (So there IS some knitting content, after all). Back a couple months ago, Elann was selling a silk and baby alpaca blend yarn. I bought some in a few different colors, and also the "Soft Cables Moebius" pattern they were offering with it, with the thought that I could use the black to make one for my mom, the blue for a future AAUW gift-exchange gift (the yarn for the moebius cost $10 so it was within the budget limitations, if you don't count my time), and the salmon either for me or my sister-in-law (we have similar coloring). I decided I wanted to give the one to my mom for her birthday - which is in mid-May. So I figured I'd better start it now.

It's an interesting pattern...the directions on how to put in the moebius twist and how to graft the two ends take up more room than the actual knitting instructions. It's a six-row pattern, with decreases and yarnovers positioned so the decreases look a bit like cables. I've finally (after several repeats and some ripping back) figured out the logic of the pattern, so it should go smoothly now. I will post a photo Monday if I can get a reasonable one (black yarn, plus it's all scrunched up on a short needle - didn't feel like using my big floppy circular on a fairly small project, and had no short size 5 straights, so it's on 2 of my Brittany dpns, with a stopper on the ends to turn them into short single point needles).