Back to Thermal

One of the things I really like about knitting is that you can put down a project when you get bored with it, or you get too busy to work on it, and as long as you keep good notes as to where you were in the pattern, you can come back to it and pick it back up.

I give an exam today and it's a small class (lots of attrition in this one), so I don't need to be QUITE so observant to stop cheating (also, I have Form A and Form B with scrambled questions). So I decided to re-start Thermal. I had stopped just short of doing the back neck/shoulders - so now I have bound off for the neck at the back, and am getting ready to do the wraps-and-turns for the shoulder shaping. And then I do the fronts. And then the sleeves. (I MIGHT get the back done and part of one front today).

I'm going to take this one with me over break and try to finish it. It's a lovely sweater but I think it's going to be a while before I consider doing a sport/fingering weight sweater again. (While I'm not an enormously large person, I'm not extremely small, either, and it takes a LOT of stitches of fingering-weight to make a sweater to fit me).

One more week and I'm on my way. (Perhaps earlier than I intended, if my TICKETS STILL DO NOT COME. I've decided if they don't arrive, I'm going to drive down really early - like, a 1 pm arrival time in Mineola - so I can see if the Quick-Trak machine is working (I printed the e-mail with its barcode). If that doesn't work, I'd still have time to drive over to Longview - which IS a "manned" station - and get my tickets there. But oy, what a mess. I really hope the tickets come today, if they don't, I'm going to call Amtrak and ask exactly WHEN they were mailed.

I'm wondering if I just am destined to have problems every few trips these days. And I'm thinking of the traveling I did at Christmas 2000, when my tickets were apparently stolen out of the mail, it was very hard to talk to anyone to get help, and I literally drove to Longview not knowing if I'd have tickets to get home for the break or not...even though I had my reservation number and everything. And then there was an ice storm and I was 12 hours late getting home.

I really, really hope those tickets come today.)


ETA: I just realized: the station in Ardmore (an hour from me) might have a Quick-Trak machine, and they're only an hour away. If my tickets don't come today I'm going to call and ask if I can still get tickets from a Quick-Trak even if they mailed them, and then I could drive over to Ardmore on Friday, get my tickets, go out to lunch, go to the bookstore there. It's not ideal but it's a darn sight better than not having tickets in hand when I head down to Mineola.

(Yup, it says the Ardmore station has a Quick-Trak, though its hours are a little odd.)