Working on mitts

 It was a hard week - three evening meetings (M, T, W) and  the usual start-of-semester things (I had someone walk right into my soils class, as I was about 3/4 through the first lecture, and stop me dead and say "IS THIS THE BIOLOGY CLASS" and when I said no, it was soil science, they said "WELL THEN WHERE IS THE BIOLOGY CLASS" and I said - politely, but I was nettled at that point* - "I'm sorry, I don't know. You should be able to look at your schedule online and it will say what classroom" (Never mind that there are about three classes that could be "THE BIOLOGY CLASS" and I didn't know what one))

(*These days, when a random person you don't know walks into your classroom, you tense up. School shootings, you know.)

then this:

That's a backup battery in the ecology prep room - there's a server rack in there that IT had to install to make our wifi stretch. They're supposed to maintain things. I e-mailed them Monday. They said they'd get on it. It was loud enough to be disturbing; I could hear it through the closed door and working in the prep room (which is where I, you know, do the prepwork for my labs) was distracting and uncomfortable.

Wednesday, my next lab time? It was still going. So after setting up lab I e-mailed them again and said "if it's just as simple a matter as hitting the "off" button and unplugging until you can replace it, I can do that" and they e-mailed back "NO THAT WILL LEAD TO SOME PEOPLE LOSING CONNECTIVITY"

so okay.

I came in today and it wasn't screaming any more. And guess how they fixed it?

THEY UNPLUGGED IT AND TURNED IT OFF. The exact thing they told me not to do, so I had to go through two lab-prep periods with that noise. 

Anyway.

Over break I re-started a pair of mitts; I had started these earlier in the fall, made a bad mistake I couldn't figure out how to recover from (it's a lace and cable pattern and I'm having to slowly ease back into more complex knitting, after not having the brain for it, and I think I tried something requiring a lot of concentration too early). So before Christmas, I ripped it back and wound the yarn back up, and I restarted them.

This time I got the hang of the pattern. (Or maybe I wasn't doing it in tiny confetti bits of time when I was already tired)

The pattern is Javajem Knits' "Merletto Fingerless Mitts." The yarn is from Quixotic Fibers, I think it's the new Malabrigo sockyarn. As  you can see, I finished the first mitt. And I did start the second one:

However, carrying them back in a knitting bag didn't go so well, one of my well-loved (and no longer able to be bought, I think) Pony Pearls #2 sized needles broke:

 

 

 😧

I have four others, but sometimes it's nice to have a set of five needles. (I think I have some #2 sized bamboo needles, but these were nice and smooth to work with). No, I can't fix it, if I could even get it to glue, it would always be rough at the join.