On Sunday, I knitted two rows of the Hobo sweater. So I now have about four inches of the body completed. It’s knit sideways so I have one sleeve finished and then four inches of the body. It’s the first of two pieces so I know I have a lot more work to do on it before it’s finished. I love the sweater though and I think it might be a project that I’ll work on more as it gets colder outside.

I’m determined to finish several sweaters this winter. I will finish Karla’s sweater soon. I need to put it together and also extend the sleeves by 2 inches, so I have to rip out the ribbing and reknit it. Then I have to do the neck which will be a real chore, but at least the sweater will be finished!

Another sweater I wouldn’t mind finishing this winter is the Glint sweater. I’m tired of it sitting in the knitting basket. I just want it done!

I’ve also been working on Level 2 of the TKGA (knitting guild of america) Master Knitting Program. I’ve knit 8 of the 10 little swatches that are 10 stitches each - they are for the seams that I have to demostrate I know how to do. Seams in stockinette, reverse stockinette, seed stitch, k1 p1 rib and k2 p2 rib. I’ve also done two swatches to demonstrate raglan “seams” - a yarn-over on each side of the seam stitch and then a bar-increase on each side of the seam stitch. Sometimes it feels like I’m just knitting little things for no reason, but I am enjoying getting back into knitting by just knitting little swatches. Plus I know eventually having passed several levels of Master Knitting Program are more for myself than for anyone else. It’s like, look what I’ve proven to myself and I’ve also learned some things in the process. It’s like I can have friends tell me that I’m a great knitter, but haven’t experts tell me that I’m a good knitter just boosts my knitting confidence.

At one time, I thought that I wanted teach knitting professionally but I’m not enjoying it as much as I once did. It started to feel too much like a job and it’s not fun if it feels like a job. I haven’t been teaching at the Knitting Workshop in the city because no one signed up for my class in September and in October I had the testing exam that I was studying for and my time was stretched way too thin. I don’t know if I want to teach anymore. I am teaching a class next Tuesday at the guild in McHenry County. I’m teaching Seaman scarfs with the ribbing around the neck area to keep the person wearing the scarf warm. I think they are a really cool way to make a scarf and everyone that I’ve given them to LOVES them! So we’ll see how this goes on Tuesday. Depending on how it goes, it might be my last knitting class for a while. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to teach knitting at a Waldorf school because then I would be doing something I love to do - knitting and teaching and they would be kids so I wouldn’t have the adults who say, “I can’t do this” and have a self-defeating attitude and wonder why they aren’t getting it.

I’ve done a lot of card making to make up for my not knitting for the last month or so. I will have to get the photos of my cards on my site soon!

From my former “up to” blog:
Bryan and I went for a walk last night after he got home from work. I picked up several leaves for my cards-to-be-made. The leaves are absolutely GORGEOUS right now! I wish they would be this way longer. I don’t want them to be this way all the time because then we wouldn’t appreciate them. I hope they are this gorgeous when we have our engagement photos taken next weekend.

Bryan and I are looking forward to another exciting weekend of loud music and clapping our fingers off. :) We going to two shows this weekend! :)
Neko Case is Saturday night at Schuba’s in Chicago. It’s the same place that we saw Erin McKeown at nearly two weeks ago. The Innocence Mission is Sunday night also at Schuba’s. I think they will be pretty mellow shows - no slam dancing and no drunken idiots flailing themselves around trying to dance to the music.

Bryan is working all weekend so our main plans together are the concerts. I will be around the house knitting, scrapbooking/making cards and picking up after myself (maybe). I have some errands to run but they aren’t life-changing. :) Saturday, we will be stopping by my sister Meredith’s new apartment to check it out and wish her a happy birthday, which was yesterday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY M!

I was just looking at my statistics for this page, there are stats that tell me how people find this page. I am always fascinated by how people find me, especially when it’s from a search engine because sometimes I know what the search was. The last one that gave me the search results was “no sugar for a week” and the blog’s date that pops up is last year in November. It made me realize that I really really need to drastically curb my sugar intake from once or twice a week right now to absolutely zero like it was last year at this time!
Warning political ranting ahead.
I’ve been reading Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken and I’m mad that more people aren’t outraged by Bush’s latest problems. There is so much more to the leaks about the CIA agent that no one seems to be paying attention to. It’s serious and the Bushies are brushing it off and trying to make it sound like it’s not a big deal. I just read the chapters on how Clinton did a lot to stop terrorism during his time in the White House, but the Bush administration chose to ignore a lot of the information that the Clinton White House passed on to Bush’s administration. Then 9/11 happened and the right-wingers decided to blame Clinton. They should have been blaming Bush because he and his administration decided it wasn’t a big enough deal. Damn it, thousands of people died and shouldn’t have if Bush and his cronies had paid attention. Now we’re in a stupid war where men and women are dying just because Bush felt he needed to flex his military muscles. Yes, it’s good Saddam is gone but we should have had a plan. And need to have a plan now that we are there and men and women are dying every day. Don’t fund the reconstruction if all the money is eventually going to end up in Bush’s friend’s pockets. Put it where it really needs to go. And this probably sounds a bit calous, but do the Iraqis need a cell system that is based on our system when most of the cell phones that are there work on a different system? And do we need to build a more sophisticated electrical system than we have in this country? Shouldn’t we be concentrating on fixing our electrical system and just trying to get theirs up and running? I feel like we’re rebuilding Iraq so that it’s going to be more sophisticated than the US, especially when we can’t afford it. You don’t go out and buy a Hummer for your first car when you’re only making $10,000 a year, it just doesn’t make sense.

All for now.