I Think Winter's on the Way

It's damn cold and very windy today.  The sky is clogged with clouds in every shade of gray and I keep expecting to see solid pieces of rain-like things flying past the window.  The grass is mostly still green but all the leaves are off the trees.  By November all weather bets are off.

Last night's knitting lesson was a big success.  At least I think it was.  The nine (9!!!) knitters at my table worked really hard on their coasters, asked lots of questions, and were generally a ton of fun to have around.  When show & tell time came around, four of them popped up brandishing their partly done coasters and grinning like fools.  I was so proud.  I snuck around and took a quick photo of each teaching group for the newsletter (we need a staff photographer... no, not me) and it looked like everyone in the room was learning things and enjoying it.

I goofed off this morning (didn't blog, didn't yog), I plunked myself down on the couch, turned on HGTV or DIY and finished my own mosaic coaster.  There was some chatter last night about there being mosaic dishcloths in the December dishcloth exchange, expectations seemed to run high, so I guess I'll search the stitch dictionaries tonight for a pattern I can use to make one.  Actually I kind of have an idea already.

I went back to JS's flower & yarn shop to get the black & white sock blank I should have gotten last week and to ask him to measure and wind it up for me.  To my amazement there is a whopping 480 yards of fingering yarn in one of these things.  That's plenty for a pair of socks or mitts or a little shawl.  I'll be over on Ravelry searching the free patterns if anyone needs me.

I was just going to say that I have a mad on at my Knoxville Seathwaite hat after only one and a half rounds of the cable chart but it just popped into my head to transfer the stitches onto 4 Double-Point Needles so that each needle will be one chart repeat.  That will most probably solve my issues, plus I can do a bit of damage control this early in the pattern.  Suddenly I feel better about the whole thing.  I'm pretty smart sometimes.

November 13--Don B. Stevenson, Mr. Blakely's Class.  My third grade class at Taft Elementary was a real United Nations of a class.  When I was there in third grade it just seemed like a regular group of kids but when I look at the class photo we were anything but.  Out of the seventeen kids, five were white, then there were a couple of Asian kids, an East Indian boy, some actual Africans, one African-American, two Native Americans, three or four Hispanic kids from various Latin American spots, and me who was a bit of all of them mixed together.  I don't know how that happened in our small Midwestern town in the mid-1970s but I loved it.  We had the best parties of any class in the whole school, everyone wished they were in Mr. Blakely's class too.

Well, now that the day is almost over the clouds are breaking up and the sun's trying to shine.  Just in time for it to set.  Of course.  It's about time to reheat some leftover pizza because tonight's Friday Night Knitting and I don't want to be late.
--Barbara