Here's the best shot I could get of the vest finished and on:


I decided to go with the geometric buttons. They look pretty good.

I did run out this afternoon - I picked up a copy of the first-in-the-series "Little Bear" book and one of the "Frog and Toad" books to go with the hat. (You can't go wrong with "Little Bear.")

I also bought some of those "Thermacare" things (they are heat packs where an exothermic reaction starts up when exposed to oxygen. I'm not sure exactly what the reaction is but there's iron and activated charcoal and sodium thiosulfate in there). (My neck and shoulders are still bothering me). They look kind of unfortunate - I think a comedienne once described it as looking like you have a feminine-hygiene product stuck on your back. But they are very nice. They get warm without being uncomfortably hot, and they stay warm much longer than my bag-of-buckwheat does. And they don't involve water. I don't like hot water bottles because I have yet to find one that either doesn't leak or have the rubber perish over the summer when they're in storage. The only complaint is that they're kind of hard to put on your shoulders yourself and also you can't do anything TOO active (=flexing muscles) with them on because the adhesive is prone to letting loose if, for example, you bring your arms further forward than they were when you put the thing on.

I'm almost done with the first of my mom's socks; I also picked away a bit at the embroidered pillowcases. Tomorrow is my long long day. I have my 8 am and 11 am classes, my 5 pm class (and my co-teacher is out of town so I will be on my own, sigh.). AND I have a CWF meeting right after the evening class. I boiled up a couple eggs today and I think when I run home at lunch tomorrow I'm going to pack a snack-dinner to quickly eat before the 5 pm class, because otherwise my dinner will be cake or pie or whatever the "snack" is at CWF, and it's not good for me to eat something sugary on an empty stomach.


my co-teacher owes me. He's going to do an invited presentation somewhere, and the subject for tomorrow in our class is digitizing - typically one of the more frustrating and problem-ridden exercises. I'm hoping this class will be unusually good at it, but if they're not and I wind up being run ragged trying to help people, I'm definitely going to let the chap know just how much he owes me for running off to have enthusiasts ooh and aah over his expertise.