Okay, so I was thinking of the Smiths’ song “Big Mouth Strikes Again” when I thought up the title for this post.

My very wonderful Secret Pal has done it again and twice in less than a week! This package included a ball of Opal Sock yarn in Krokodil (Crocodile) 14 and 4 7/8 oz of spinning fiber! A girl can never have too much sock yarn. I love the color of the sock yarn – it’s red and a dark brown, almost black. (update 11/29) The spinning fiber is from Neaveau in the Tody colourway. As my small fiber bookshelf and my husband are realizing – a girl can never have too much spinning fiber either. :)

Thank you secret pal!

(update 11/29) An update on my aunt. She came through her surgery, they removed one of the tumors near her brain yesterday and the other one will be taken of with radiation. Before the surgery, she was having trouble talking – putting words together and trying to make sense; after the surgery, she was talking and making sense. We’re all very relieved. She’s a strong woman, has been through a lot and if she can get rid of the other cancers she’ll get rid of this one!

I have to apologize profusely. Thank you to Erin for letting me know that she has commented. I went to Haloscan my commenting service, a few weeks ago to try to see if there was a problem and didn’t find anything. Today, I went there and found something I hadn’t seen before – a tab that said, “Comments Pending Moderation.” It must be a feature that I clicked before and didn’t even realize it. I’m so sorry to all of you that have been commenting for the last two weeks! I realized that I do have commenters and quite a lot of them. You are all so sweet and kind and let’s see there are so many other words I could say, but I’ll leave it at that. Thank you for reading and for commenting. I consider you my friends and love hearing from you. I’ve also realized that I’ve been a lurker on many of your blogs too, so I am going to start commenting more regularly too. :)

I’ll have news on my aunt later today. She’s having surgery this morning. Thank you all for your kind words. I’ve been sending her healing vibes since I found out on Wednesday. This is her third experience with cancer and I think we’re all ready for it to be licked for good and for it to stop spreading.

My library interview has been set up and is on Thursday.

I am finally finished with the Lemondrop yarn! It’s plied and washed and resting in the yarn bookshelf. I’m a bit tired of it so the separation from it is welcome. It’s lovely though. I haven’t taken the time to see how many wraps-per-inch that I’m getting to find out what weight it is. I’ll wait until I have an idea of a project for it. It’s a 2-ply yarn and I managed to get exactly 650 yards.

This weekend was interesting. It started out as any normal weekend then Saturday I fell in the parking lot – my foot twisted in my shoe and I tried to catch myself with my left hand. I thought I was fine but my shoulder seemed to hurt more as time passed and on Monday I found out that I sprained my left shoulder. Working has been weird because I’m on a work restriction of lifting no more than 10 pounds and no overhead lifting. A lot of what I do at work is lifting and stocking merchandise. So at work they have me entering things into the computer and doing as much light work as possible. I didn’t work on Sunday because I was still recovering from the fall. I did get a lot of reading done and a little bit of knitting. Saturday, I finished Fleurette, which is beautiful and I wish that I could show it finished, but it’s a gift. On Sunday, I did manage to knit the thumb of the left Norwegian mitten.

On Monday as I was trying to getting ready for work (drying my hair is a bit difficult with a bum shoulder), Bryan said that I had a package on the front porch. It was package from my secret pal! I immediately opened it – what a great thing to get on Monday! In the package, she included a hemp necklace and bracelet that she made, a little notebook made from handmade elephant dung paper (it doesn’t smell bad at all) and a cute handmade card. Thank you, secret pal you made my day!

In an earlier post, I mentioned the library interview and right now I’m just waiting to hear from the library to schedule that interview. The holiday seems to have thrown a bit of a kink into getting everyone that needs to conduct the interview together. I’m waiting patiently and am very excited at the possibility of working at a library.

On a very heavy note, cancer has hit our family once again and my aunt is spending Thanksgiving in the hospital. It makes it so much harder to know that I won’t be able to be with my family for Christmas again this year. We are spending Thanksgiving with Bryan’s family this year and had planned to spend Christmas with my family in Kansas. But I have to work around Christmas, I was hired on at the retail store as seasonal help and I’m expected to work the day before or the day after Christmas. Bryan and I are going to Kansas the second week of January but it just won’t be the same. Heidi, our family dog, is also getting up there in years and I want to see her too. A lot of heavy emotional things going on right now. I have a lot to be thankful for. I’m so thankful that I’m close to my family and that Bryan and I are each other’s support when a shoulder is needed to cry on. I’m also so thankful to the friends that I have who have become such a wonderful support for me lately.

The last several days, I’ve been thinking about my blog and why I write it. There are several reasons that I write it – to share my knitting with others, to be part of the larger blog world of knitters, for my grandfather (hi, g-pa) and mom to know what I’m up to and for myself to document what I’ve done and knitted. I have never been good at keeping a journal, I usually write in it when I’m having a bad day or just need to work through something, but for some reason blogging is so much easier and a bit more fun. It is a censored part of my life, not everything needs to be public, but I try to remind myself that I write for myself. Lately, though I’ve noticed that my main reason for writing (for myself) doesn’t seem to be the dominant reason. It’s been two weeks since anyone left a comment and it feels quite strange. It’s almost the feeling of “doesn’t anyone like me anymore?” So it’s thrown a new twist into my blogging. Should it matter that I haven’t had any comments in two weeks? No, but as I’ve been adjusting to our new life in Champaign, I’m learning that I am a person who always wants some reassurance that people actually like me. It sounds strange and even a bit self-centered but I think we all need that reassurance sometimes. I always wonder what it is about certain blogs that people get 30 to 40, even 50 comments on a particular post. Nothing against the bloggers that do but sometimes the most basic posts get a lot of comments. Is my blog just not as interesting as theirs? Is my writing just not as elegant or catchy? Are my knitting projects boring? Are my photos not as exciting? If I posted more would that be better? These are some of the things that I think about when trying to figure out what to do with my blog and all of the stuff I talked about earlier. I know that I average about 20-30 visitors a day based on my Site Meter counter and I’ve had over 27,000 visitors, so I know people are visiting and reading. I realize a lot of people probably read through bloglines that doesn’t lend itself to commenting. In light of the things going on in my family, this seems a bit petty.
Does anyone else ever feel like this with their blog?

This post seems so crazy now. I started it and continued to write it backwards. The last paragraph was the first and as I thought about it, I kept moving that paragraph to the bottom. I have more to write about than being bummed about not getting comments or even knowing who is reading besides my husband, my mom and my g-pa.

Yesterday was one of those cold days early in the season that makes you think, “How am I going to survive winter?” I set out to work with my previous pair of mittens and had forgotten about the state of the right thumb. It obviously needs to be repaired, which I plan on doing today, but it didn’t keep the wind or the cold out yesterday. They’re cute and I love wearing them but they just aren’t that warm.

Last night was my knitting night with Miss M. I decided that a new pair of mittens would be the perfect thing to start at her house. We’d gone to the book sale at the library on Sunday and somehow got to talking about Pride & Prejudice, the new movie that is coming out. Miss M mentioned that she has the BBC production of it on DVD and that we should watch it on a knitting night. Last night was the perfect night. She worked on a beautiful counted cross-stitch sampler that she’s been working on for a while and I started my mittens. They are the mittens from the Norwegian Mittens class with Beth Brown-Rinsel at Stitches 2003. (The original mittens I started in the class were a mess and I ripped them out long ago.) At first I wasn’t so sure about these mittens – would the two-color stranded knitting drive me crazy at the moment; would my stitches look as bad as they did in my first attempt with these mittens; would I even be able to keep the strands in the back loose enough so that I could actually wear the mittens one day? I have become completely enamored with them. The rows are going much faster than they were at first and I’m getting the two-handed stranding down, although there are still a few irritations. I’m knitting them on two circulars (all of the traditionalists cringe) because I couldn’t stand the thought of dealing with long bamboo size 6 double-pointed needles. And I knew I had a better chance with these needles to keep my work pulling in and the Fair Isle puckering like it did with my first attempt with these mittens. For the most part I think they are going quite well, especially since I was up late last night knitting on them. I completely lost track of time and didn’t realize that it was 1am. I kept thinking, “I’ll just do one more round and then I’ll go to bed.” Today I am off work and have been knitting on them since I woke up. If I keep up at this pace I’ll have one mitten done by the end of the day. :)

I have to share the great news. I have an interview at one of the local libraries for a shelving position. I took the shelving test today and got a really good score. It was a tough test but I knew what to expect. Now I just have to wait until everyone’s schedules can be coordinated for an interview. I feel like I have I have a good chance at getting the job because I’ve been a volunteer for a few months and I’ve also talked to the head of shelvers before. Having connections with Bryan’s library friends helps. So my life in the library world may be starting quite soon (not that volunteering hasn’t counted for something). Keep your fingers and needles crossed for me! I’ll let you know as soon as I know something. The work on the library school application has already started, so things could really be falling into place for me. I met with the director of one of the local libraries last week for one of my two essays for my school application. The letters of recommendation forms have been sent to their respective recommenders and the transcript requests will go out later this week. It’s all starting to come together, I think this year’s application and essays will be a much better than last year’s.

The two socks on two circulars are actually going quite well. After the fight, they decided to play nice and I have about two and a half inches completed on the cuff. It’s slow going because I’m doing both of them at once but I keep reminding myself that it’s going to be great in the end because they will both be finished at the same time! I just can’t think about the fact that my FIL’s feet are big and that the feet might take me a while.

I was reviewing blogs today for the MWK blog ring (a little shameless self-promo there) and read about the Warm Hands Knitalong on Bassett Knitter’s blog. I think it’s time to knit another pair of mittens. The last pair of mittens I made were for Brandi three years ago. I think it’s time that I break out the cool pattern that I received from Beth Brown-Reinsel’s Norwegian Mittens class at Stitches 2003. Erin has been working on her mondo mittens and I feel like now is a good time for me to start some mittens. After Fleurette is completed though. I only have about two days worth of work left to go on it.

Thursday I decided to be brave and attempt two socks on two circulars. I am making a pair of socks for my father-in-law using the Lorna’s Laces yarn in Pioneer (16) that I bought several weeks ago. I cast on for one sock and had read that it’s better to work a few rows before casting on for the second sock. So I knit about two rows of the first sock and then attempted to cast on for the second sock. Casting on wasn’t bad, I had managed to get the needles backwards on sock number two from what it was on sock number one. I managed to get that fixed or so I thought, I just know it required the use of a double-pointed needle than should have been necessary. Once I thought I had fixed the second sock so it was the same as the first sock, I attempted to knit two rows. The only problem was after working the first half of second sock, my needles were all out of order and I had to use the double-pointed needle once again to “fix” the first sock and in the process managed to twist the first sock. After two hours of fighting with the socks, I finally won and have now knit a total five whole rows on both socks. I was not going to let the socks win this fight, I was going to win even if it required me to recast on one or both of the socks, which I guess would have meant the socks had won.

You may be wondering what has possessed me to suddenly decide that these socks must both be done at once. Well, for one, I suffer greatly from Second Sock Syndrome with socks that are not for me. And two, when they are for a man the foot seems to be endless and the quicker I can get these done the better. They may take me a bit longer since I’m doing both at once but at least then they are done, they will both be done at the same time. I have a bit of a deadline for these anyway – I have about 42 more days to work on them.

And before I forget, here are the bookmarks that I made for the new class I mentioned in my last post. Our knitting group gave them to the members of the class on Wednesday. I went a bit crazy because I had so many lace patterns from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara Walker that I wanted to make. I did as many as I could up to 4:30pm Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what I finished:
Basic Eyelets and Zigzag Eyelets (BW, 169)

Traveling Ribbed Eyelet (BW, 169)

Arrowhead Lace (BW, 193)

Vine Lace Zigzag (BW, 219)

Fan Shell (BW, 206)

I’m still plugging away on Fleurette. It’s about 2/3 complete.

Yesterday, a knitting friend, L, and I went out for lunch and got to talking about books. We thought it would be cool to start up a book group with people from our knitting group and others from church that might want to join. After I got home from lunch, I immediately went to work and came up with a list of books that I’ve narrowed down to four for the members to vote on. The first few books we’ll read are award winning books from the last severals years. We’ll alternate between fiction and non-fiction. It should be a lot of fun. I’m really excited about it, I’ve always wanted to head up a book group. It’s always so muchfun to be able to talk about a book in a group setting.

The finger crossing is working. I received a call on Thursday from one of the local libraries for a shelving position that I applied for. I’ll take the shelving test next week.

There isn’t a whole lot to report this week. I knitted on another gift item. It really makes it hard to blog about projects when they have to be kept secret because they are gifts. Once the holidays are over, I’ll be able to post lots of photos of the secret projects of the gifty type. I’m apologizing for the lack of any knitting related photos this post, except for a photo of a book which I’ve added just to have one photo in this post.

This week felt quite busy. I worked 5 days last week but working those days just felt very long, even if they were five hour shifts. Wednesday was a great evening, I went over to Miss M’s to knit. She made an Amy’s vegetarian pizza and then we knit for a few hours. It’s always so nice to get together with her.

Today, I started several bookmarks to go to people who are part of a new Unitarian Universalist group. Our knitting group is knitting them for the group and they will be handed out on Wednesday evening. I wrote two very basic patterns but got bored knitting them, so I pulled out my favorite Barbara Walker book and have been experimenting with lace patterns. It makes the bookmarks much more interesting and fun to knit. They are taking me about 1/2 each and I did three of them before I went to work today. I’m using leftover yarn from various projects. I’ll make sure to post them before they are given away.

Earlier this past week, I went on a job interview at a bookstore and found out yesterday that I didn’t get the job. I was really bummed yesterday because I really wanted the job, which would have been in addition to the current retail store job. I’m sure things will work out in the long run, I just wish they would work out soon. The finances are getting extremely tight and we’ll probably have to break down and ask for some assistance soon. Very sad, but it’s a fact of being a student and a student’s wife. Supposedly, there may be something opening up at one of the libraries in town, which I will definitely be applying for. It would really help a lot and would give me that library experience I’m looking for. Not that volunteering for the homebound program isn’t great experience and fun, but just having a job at a library would be wonderful.

Well, that’s about all I have to say for now. Let’s hope this week is better than last week. :)