"With hope and confidence...."

Now the airbag light on my car (2010 Ford Edge) is on and won't turn off. I'm hoping that's just some fuse acting up somewhere. When I noticed it this morning, I drove the rest of the way in very carefully, hoping the airbag wouldn't suddenly deploy.

The online auto fora I looked at suggested that (a) it's a fuse or (b) there's something very very wrong and OMB GET IT TO THE DEALER NAOW!!!!

Seeing as my day today is devoted to other things, and I have a meeting and piano lesson tomorrow, and teach all day Wednesday, and have AAUW meeting Thursday....taking it to a dealer NAOW can't really happen. (I do have to get it in for an oil and filter change soon).

(My dealer doesn't do "loaners" - so if I drop the car off, I'm on shanks' mare or dependent on the kindness of other people with cars until I can get it back. And I can't do that, not this week.)


***

I will get some knitting time in today as I have an exam to invigilate.

(The title of this post comes from the famous Elizabeth Zimmerman quotation: "Knit on, with hope and confidence, through all crises." Though in her case, I believe it applied to a political crisis she was observing, but whatever. )

I started another project last night. I don't NEED another project, in fact, I need to be finishing some of the things I have on the needles, but there's something comforting about new projects. I dug out the 2 skeins of "Melange" I bought a while back to make one of the little slouchy hats in the Jane Brocket knitting book.

Melange is a very, very nice yarn. It feels good to knit with and it is pretty knit up. (it's 100% baby alpaca, so it's very soft and smooth). The color I got is called Toasted Almond - a very light tan, almost more of an ecru than a tan.

I'm thinking of getting more and doing another hat or two - depending on how fast this one knits up - for Christmas presents. (I have to figure out something for the "anonymous gift exchange" one of my women's groups does, and this might work. Yes, I know, I don't need more deadlines and more stuff pulling at my time.)

***

I think part of the reason I've been cranky lately is that I'm just doing too much. And I'm away from home too many nights (or working at home too many nights). Or around people too much, which exhausts me. I went to the kids' Hallowe'en party that my church does last night - a couple who have a farm outside of town do it at their place. While it was fun, it was also a little stressful as I had to be one of the pairs of eyes watching to be sure all the kids were OK. Though I did get to feed an apple to a horse. (They have horses, and at one point the father got out a bag of apples and said that anyone who wanted to give the horses a treat could. Most of the kids were more interested in playing basketball...so I took an apple and got to feed it to one of the horses. I don't have a lot of experience with them - I once noted that I was kind of afraid of horses, especially as a child - and I have to admit it's a bit distressing to see what slobbery animals they are. (Kind of ruins the mental image of Applejack). I also went on the hayride - originally I wasn't, because of allergies, but rather than being a "lie down in a pile of hay in the bottom of a buckboard" it was more "Sit on a hay bale that's on the back of an open trailer," so I figured I could do that. (Still, my allergies are bad today - though that could also just be from having been outside where there was still ragweed blooming - and I did get a few hives on my hands where I was resting them on the hay).

***

This Saturday is the next meeting of the craft group at church. And even though I'm busy, even though I surely could find some work-activity to fill those two hours, I'm going. Because I want this one thing to be a success - I want it to continue, and to grow, to the point where if there's a month I can't be there, that's OK.

I volunteered last month to make food for this month. My original plan was to bake a loaf of (yeast) bread, but that's been scaled back to making blueberry quick bread. Which will probably be enjoyed just as much.

But I do feel the pressure this week, because that means I won't have Saturday morning to work, so I'll have to get stuff done this week.