And it's break

Ah, mid-fall break.

I remember how in past years I took this entire time off - went to Longview one day, stayed home and worked on quilts or knitting the others. Ah, youth.

This year I'm in today, and most likely tomorrow - I have grading to do, and the new online textbook-request form (they used to have us fill out simple paper sheets, now we have to do it all online and it's more complicated) to navigate, and the paper to finish rewriting....

But I did get up at a more civilized hour (I woke up spontaneously at 5:30 and decided it wasn't worth going back to sleep at that point, so I did my workout and practiced piano a bit). And I'm going to go do "big grocery shopping" this afternoon.

And Saturday, I am going to Longview. I get to see my friend Laura, I get to have lunch out, I get to shop for books and yarn and other stuff and I generally get a day that is Not Here. (I think one of my "getting stuck in the one inch picture frame" issues is that I see the same four or five places over and over and over again, and it feels like my world has shrunk to that - work, home, church, grocery, field site....)

No idea what yarn I'm going to look for. I may not even hunt through many of my books for "patterns I want to make some day" and instead go with the "If I like it, I will buy the amount I roughly guess I will need for $project" and then find the pattern that works. (Ravelry is wonderful for this - in their search patterns feature, you can tell it how much yarn you want the pattern to require. Then again, I've had a few cases where the "amount specified" turned out to be for the very smallest size...)



Then again, I have a cabled pullover vest I want to do sometime that takes about 1000 yards (!) of dk weight yarn for my size. (The exclamation point is that it's so much more yarn than a comparable plain vest would be. I don't know if the 1000 is an overestimate - I find many patterns, the designer makes his/her size or the smallest size, and then estimates generously for the larger sizes. I've rarely run short of yarn but I very frequently have quite a bit - like a full ball or more - left over after a sweater). So I might look for that.

ETA: I've come to think of the Longview trip in the fall as "My Own Private Rhinebeck." I get that it's really different going to a yarn shop than a sheep and wool fest (though I did get to a fiber fest a month ago....wow, it seems longer than that). But I'm too busy this time of the year, can't travel, probably don't want to spend what it would cost to go - and also, I think the crowds and stuff would freak me out. I don't deal well with large crowds, even large friendly crowds that are interested in the same stuff as I am. (And I have also heard tell of the traffic jams to get INTO the fairgrounds for Rhinebeck, and that alone would make me twitchy). 





Pink Fluffy now has her nose and two of her four feet. I may have to figure out a forelock because her head doesn't look quite right to me yet. (Then again, if she inhabited the Hank Hill universe, Hank Hill's assessment of her would be "That pony ain't right.")