Well, I'm progressing along on the Hiawatha edging. It does take a while to apply an edging to a big shawl. I can get about three and a half pattern repeats done in an hour, I've found.

I'm interspersing that with working on socks. Mainly the "newest" socks, which are the cabled and ribbed socks (Not the Nancy Bush pattern from recently; an older pattern) from the Spring '05 Interweave Knits. I'm using the "rosehip" ("Hagebutte") colored Opal for this. (It looks more like a heavy-on-the-red-and-orange rainbow than rosehips to me, but what do I know?).

I also want to start more critters. I got caught up on "Cute Overload" yesterday afternoon (from when I was out of town). Kangaroos! Tapirs! Aardvarks! (I love all the "weird" animals, the ones people probably wouldn't mention if you asked them to name an animal). I have yarn for the wombat in the Kath Dalmeny book, maybe I'll pull that out and start it. There's something very satisfying to me about making "critters," and it's not just because they knit up fast.

Perhaps I will figure out a way to alter an existing pattern (I can almost imagine how) and make a baby tapir. (Really, they are the cutest things, with their little stripey and spotty backs. And their little snouts.)

The classes are going well, at least as far as I can tell from after the second day (which, actually, in the summer, is like the first week). They laugh when I say something intended to be amusing, they've gotten into the small discussions I've started, they've asked some good questions. Today is pH and water chemistry day in the gen. bio. class; I made another batch of the red cabbage indicator. And I brought in baking soda and baking powder and am going to talk a little about the differences between them. And mix vinegar and soda, and water and powder, and point out that both generate CO2. At least, that's a "hook" that has worked for some of the students in the past - I remember a student getting all excited when she realized that yes, every baked-good recipe she knew that called for buttermilk also called for baking soda as the leavening.

It is a bit of a challenge not having a break between classes; it's kind of like planning the invasion of a very tiny country each afternoon, getting everything together I need for the next day and making sure I know where I'm going with the information.

I'm breaking a personal rule tonight; a friend of mine has started one of those "home selling" businesses and she's having one of those party things. Normally I avoid those like the plague - I just object to being brought to someone's house under the guise of a social evening but being pressured to buy. But this person is a good friend, and I know she's doing it because her family could use the money, but with three young children at home, she doesn't want to go out to work. And it's stuff I might consider using - herbal-based skin care stuff. (And it's not like another "friend" of mine, whose house I was apparently only fit to be invited to when she was selling stuff. I guess I'm going to base my decisions on whether to go on that in the future: is it someone I socialize with on a regular basis otherwise, or am I seen merely as a "mark"?)