As I’ve learned the hard way a swatch is your friend. I’ve been swatching for the Saddle Shoulder Aran for Bryan and while I’m happy with the swatch. It wasn’t the most fun swatch to knit, which slightly disappointed me. It was a matter of too few stitches stretched on a circular needle, eventually I used the magic loop technique and I had a hard time keeping track of the cables since I hadn’t fully charted everything out.

The yarn looks beautiful, it’s Rowan Classic Yarns - Wool Tweed in Shetland (953). The swatch was also a great lesson in steeking, I’ve never done a steek before so I figured this was a great time to practice. It actually turned out quite well and I’m feeling pretty confident about my steeking abilities for the full sweater. It’s truly not as scary as I thought it might be. I’ve cut so many knitted pieces to lengthen or shorten them that the cutting part doesn’t scare me quite as much as it probably should.

Last week, Bryan and I traveled out to western Kansas to help my mother clean out my grandfather’s house. It was definitely an experience. My grandparents never threw away bills, receipts, tax returns or credit card statements. We found them going back to the 1950s. It was really amazing because it was all put away and out of sight. Every time we thought we were finished with a room, we’d find one more drawer that needed to be cleaned out. Nothing could be just thrown away because there were literally photographs tucked away everywhere. We found some real treasures in the house - a photo of my grandparents locked in a kissing embrace before they were married that looks like an art photo you’d buy, a darning egg, many buttons, old library cards from the 1950s and 60s (a treasure for a librarian), family photos we didn’t even know existed, a few Singer Featherweight machines and so much more. It was a real experience to clean out someone’s house. My mom needed to get the house cleaned out because she wanted to put it on the market, it sold while we were there.

During our travels, about 12 hours in the car each way, I started the Saddle Shoulder Aran Cardigan for Bryan. It’s coming along well and I’m definitely keeping track of the cable pattern better than I did in swatch.

Thank you all for your kind words about George. We’re all getting along okay and Chloe is figuring out what it means to be the only cat in the house. This is the first time she’s ever been without George. I swear George gave her some snarking tips before he passed away.

I’m finished with school for the semester! It felt like the semester that would never end a few weeks ago, but I turned in my final paper (exam) on Wednesday, a day early. I’ve been home sick for the last seven days with a nasty virus (cold-like symptoms) so I’ve have a lot of time to read, watch Ugly Betty on DVD and knit. Another Baby Surprise Jacket is three rows from being finished. (Photos soon)

This summer I’m taking an Adult Popular Literature class and figured I’d start doing some reading for the class before everything kicks into full gear in June. In four days, I plowed through Devil in the White City, an amazing book. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. I seriously could have stayed up all night to read it but knew that I needed my sleep.

Of course, after I finished Devil in the White City I got a bit distracted. For one of my final papers this semester, I had to evaluate a medium that was geared to children or teens. I chose to evaluate the show Gossip Girl with no idea how addictive the show could be. It’s sort of an updated Beverly Hills, 90210 mixed in with Sex & the City. In all of my research, which included watching several episodes of the show and reading quite a few articles on the show, I totally got sucked in. Yesterday, I checked out a fair amount of books for my Adult Popular Lit class and a Gossip Girl book just happened to end up in my stack of books. How odd! I’ve since finished the book and am thinking I’ve found yet another guilty pleasure. They aren’t books I would recommend to younger teens and they’re books I would be hesitant to recommend to fifteen-year-olds but if they are fans of the show, then I probably would recommend them. I can definitely see why many parents are not happy about these books and the show - the amount of underage drinking is more than I think most adults want any kids engaging in, although I’m sure a lot of teens are drinking anyway.

(I learned this semester that when school gets a bit insane that washcloths are the perfect project - from February until this past Monday I knit a total of seven washcloths. Above are just three of them that I knit for my sister.)

It’s been a really rough week. We had to put George to sleep on Thursday. He’d been having problems walking and was very weak. I miss him tons. After 11 years together, there is a huge emptiness in our lives.

We’re giving Chloe extra attention and watching her for signs of kitty depression. She seems really lost without him but she was able to go visit him after he died and give him some good-bye kisses.