Well, it's been an exciting morning. (It would be exciting in a bad way if I were not the sort of person who prepares in advance for things).

There was apparently a HUGE GIANT POWER SURGE on campus last night, it blew out all the networks (we just now, and probably only temporarily, got internet connectivity back). No printers. No e-mail. No access to BlackBoard (and I had been planning on updating grades this morning, but OK, I can do it now)

But what was really bad? A couple buildings on campus have no power. One is running on a generator and the other one - the Print Shop - shut down for the day.

(Thank goodness I have no Monday finals; our poor secretary will probably have to copy ALL the finals for Monday herself on the little office copier. Ugh.)

I'm half expecting us to lose power at some point. Which wouldn't be a big deal, save for the fact that I have an international student who wanted to come in and take her final early so she can get back to Ecuador a bit early. So I hope we keep power on so she can do that.

We're also supposed to get snow again tomorrow.


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I usually use this weekend - the one between classes and finals - as a "blow out the cobwebs" time - either to go antiquing or to go to McKinney. I don't think I am going to this year, for a couple reasons:

a. I just spent a lot of money on new windows (which should be delivered tomorrow or Monday) and I think I'm going to try economizing for a while to build back my savings account.

b. It's supposed to be cold. And maybe snowy. And I don't want to risk driving in bad weather if it's for something "frivolous"

c. (most importantly) I'm just sort of tired. This has been a long semester, I feel like I've not been home enough, I feel like I have all these partly-done projects crying out to me. So I think I'd relish a long Friday afternoon and evening, and an entire Saturday, at home with no responsibilities other than listening to music and knitting.

Also, I arrive at my parents' home with more than a week to spare before Christmas, so if I want to do some clothes-shopping or craft-shopping, I can just as easily do it there.

It will be good to have a weekend at home. (And, I heard that this is the weekend that the Family Channel re-runs the Harry Potter movies. I ADORE the Harry Potter movies; they are such a great escape and I find them eminently re-watchable. So I can see myself sitting happily on the couch with the Honeycomb vest back that is very nearly done, and enjoying watching Alan Rickman chew the scenery a bit as Snape.)

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I'm already thinking about what projects to bring with me to work on over Christmas. I'm strongly leaning towards winding off the other colors needed for the "Rosy Fingered Dawn" shawl (yes, I am still working on that, or rather, it's still sitting there not being worked on) and planning to spend a lot of time with that, as I have a week before Christmas, and what I have taken to thinking of as the "quiet week at the bottom of the year" after, and then a few days in January before going back. So I could potentially get a lot done on it.

And I think I'm going to take the Honeycomb vest, with the intention of finishing THAT.

And some sockyarn. There have to be socks. Maybe one of the sock books I'd like to do a couple different patterns out of. Or maybe a stack of internet-freebee patterns, some of the ones I've collected, that I never got around to knitting up. Or there are a couple of Nancy Bush patterns from Piecework I've been itching to start - I could even just copy them over here and not have to take the whole magazine with me.

And I'm going to hunt through my pattern-stash, particularly of small toy items, and take some patterns for toys and make toys. Because it's not Christmas break for me without making a few toys. Even if I just take the pattern and either use the leftover yarns I've left at my parents' house, or go out and buy new for whatever I'm making.

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I did get some stuff done on a little gift. One of the long-time family friends (long-time in the sense that I went and stayed with her and her husband when my mom was in hospital having my now-35-year-old brother) exchanges small gifts with us over the holidays. I try to figure out something to make each year.

This year, I'm doing dishcloths. Yeah, it's small, but dishcloths are actually surprisingly useful (and sturdy; you can even boil the cotton ones to clean them if you have to).

I did one of the old "Grandmother's Favorites" (if you're a knitter, you probably know what that is; one example of the pattern is here. It's dead easy to knit - all garter stitch plus yarn overs and decreases - and would actually be my nominee (rather than the endless and boring garter stitch scarf) as a good learn-to-knit project.

Simple as they are, they work really well for scrubbing dishes. Or countertops. Or glass doors on appliances. Or even your face, if you don't worry about breaking the little capillaries under the skin. (I have to scrub my face carefully; my skin is so fair and thin that even the slightest damage shows up pretty badly)

I'm also doing a waffle knit dishcloth, which is also a very cute pattern and works up into a nice cloth.

For the third one, I'm going to do a simple single-crocheted cloth like one in one of my crochet books.

I'm contemplating sending them with either a nice bar of some of the "locally" made (well, local in the sense of it being Oklahoma) soap, if I can still find it. Or maybe some other little thing. Not sure what.