It was a good break. (And the train going up was very nearly on time, and the train coming back WAS on time. Perhaps the freights are being nicer to Amtrak? Perhaps the economic slowdown has one tiny upside in that there are fewer freight trains?)

I did get to see my brother and sister-in-law after they had dinner at her brother's house. And on Friday. And we did some furniture-moving my mom wanted done (my dad, because of his bum knees, really shouldn't try moving furniture any more). And I helped get the outdoor lights put out.

Coming back after Thanksgiving break is always the easiest return; I know I will be making the trip again (and for a longer time) in a short time (in fact, two weeks from tomorrow I leave again, this time for Christmas break).

Everyone was doing well except my sister in law got what we think must be the flu (the respiratory kind; she and my brother are oddly anti-vaccination) and they decided to leave a little early.

The (remaining) old cat is still plugging away and seems to still be doing well despite her arthritis. She seems pretty content; she purrs and eats and begs for attention and everything and although she limps when she moves (which is as infrequently as she can manage), she still seems to be enjoying life.

I finished a pair of socks - one of those simple self-striping yarn ones.


These are from one of the older Trekking yarns. They don't match but that doesn't seem to matter with these colors. (I got four pink stripes on the second sock. My only complaint with the yarn was that the pink stripes were too infrequent.)

I also made a pair of mittens, reprising the old original pattern I used for the first mittens I ever made - the project that got me hooked on knitting. It's an old pattern from one of those Treasuries of Needlework that used to be common (I think it was from the '55 edition of the McCall's Treasury). My mother owns several of those - the McCall's, a Good Housekeeping, a couple of British-published books that probably came from a used-book store in Ann Arbor when she was first married.

I knew it was the same pattern because I found my notes from 1997 or so stuck in the page where the pattern was. The mittens knit up faster this time (I knit faster now) but it's still a fun pattern and very functional.

You don't often need mittens where I live, but when you need them, it's nice to have them:

They are knit of Lanaloft, one of the Brown Sheep yarns. It's a "singles" type yarn, meaning it's not plied, it's like one big "rope" of lightly spun wool.

I also got some more done on the "Little Child's Sock." They look kind of strange and bunchy when not stretched out (because the ribbing contracts but the knit/purl panel stays wide); they look a lot better on.



I'm just up to the point where I start decreasing for the ankle. This is a pretty fun pattern to do as well - all knit/purl patterning.

So now I guess I'm ready for the Onslaught of Papers to grade next week - 22 ecology papers, 11 GIS papers, one research-student paper, and, at the end of the week, 16 biostats papers. Yipes.