Making progress

My woolly friend Ewe-nice graciously agreed to pose for the camera to show off what's been happening on the knitting front lately. After taking yet another sanity break from the Hidcote garden shawl I am at it once again, this time knitting furiously on to the finish line! Since this is the one year anniversary of the Knitting Olympics and the completion of my first lace shawl, a red Kiri, I decided to go for the gold once more and see if I can finish Hidcote before the end of the month. As of this minute I have 15 rows left, very long rows, like more than 500 sts long rows! While I love this shawl and look forward to wearing it proudly, I am sick to death of knitting it! Whew! Confession is good for the soul, isn't it?

OK, so I'm making fine progress on the Hidcote shawl. I'm also making fine progress on my dissertation and graduation plans for May. I presented another one of my interviews in the phenomenology research group at the college yesterday and had a really insightful experience. It really does amaze me how the use of the interpretive group brings out nuances in the text that I didn't notice, even after spending hours reading and transcribing the dialogue myself. Then to top it all off, my major professor, the wonderful Sandra Thomas, handed me a copy of the letter she wrote to the dean of the Graduate School requesting the waivers and extensions I needed to be permitted to graduate without further adieu even though it's taken me many years longer than the rules allow and there were many semesters where the rules dictated I register and pay big bucks but I didn't 'cuz I was too darn sick to do school stuff and too poor to keep paying tuition when I wasn't working on the degree. Yes, it's a miracle I don't have to come up with a several thousand more dollars, just a relatively meager graduation fee. Hallelujah!!! Amen :-)

In light of all the anxieties produced by the aforementioned University stuff, and the fact that it has been blessed cold here the last couple of weeks, I continued to work on refining my fingerless mitts design. They now have a name---Miss Melly---and a story to go with it (it's still a secret but think "Gone With the Wind"), but the pattern is still under written construction. Since I already made the faux pas of publishing a picture of the design online I can't submit the manuscript for consideration to be published (but at least I know the rules now), so I've decided to offer it as a freebie here on the blog when I get it finished. I figure the feedback will also be instructive and a good experience for a budding knitware designer. In the meantime Ewe-nice, whose paws are too small to wear the mitts, decided to humor me by wearing my latest Miss Mellys on her ears. Well ears get cold too you know? The yarn is Plymouth's Baby Alpaca DK, which is wonderfully soft, comes in delightful colors, and is a joy to knit with. Or, and the wearing ain't bad either--esp. when it's late at night and I'm rewriting that dissertation chapter one more time >:^{