All last week I was on vacation. It was a wonderful at-home vacation of sleeping late, reading and sewing. Definitely a much needed break.

The vacation started with a little trip to Oxford, Ohio to visit Miami University, where Bryan got his first master’s degree. It was a fun time of just walking around the campus and him showing me all of the places he and his friends used to hang out. There have been a lot of changes made to campus since he was last there. We also discovered an outdoor amphitheater he didn’t even know existed. It was definitely a nice get-away for a couple of days.

On our way home, we stopped in Indianapolis for the Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting exhibit. It was an interesting exhibit with some amazing pieces, including huge lace panels cut with an exacto knife.

With my sewing machine set up in the living room, I got a lot of sewing done. This week I’ve gotten a lot of sewing done too while watching the Olympics. One project I can’t show until it’s intended recipient receives it. I started the project a year ago and then got distracted with school. Having nearly finished this quilt, I’ve been perusing the sewing blogs and flickr photos looking at quilts. It makes me long for the day when I can afford to buy fat quarters bundles. I’ve had so much fun with this quilt and I can’t wait to show it off.

I also finished a skirt and made a top on Sunday.

Pattern for red top is Simplicity 4589. Skirt is the basic a-line pattern from Sew What Skirts.

My first attempt of the top I used muslin and cut the size that corresponded to my waist and hip measurements on the package. The bust turned out huge and I ended up taking it in about five inches around the bust but leaving the hips their original size. I cut the red top out for the smaller size in the bust and waist and then cut the hips to the larger size. It turned out perfectly. I’m planning on cutting out another top this week so I can finish it and I’ve already started another skirt which I hope to finish before school starts on August 25.

My classes this summer have been keeping me very busy. I’m having a lot of fun in both classes, which is how summer classes should be. I’ve also managed to get a little sewing in during my breaks from reading.

My Adult Popular Literature is an online class and I’ve been reading science fiction, fantasy, romance and non-fiction books for that class. I’m in the middle of a romance novel now called Be Still My Vampire Heart. It’s really been a fun read and one that I didn’t expect to like. I still have to read three mysteries and a western.

This weekend I was working on a book talk that I have to do for Adult Pop Lit. I’m doing it on one of my favorite books, Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s been two years and after reading over 90 books since then I needed a bit of a refresher. I’m not one to reread books but I reread Prep to refresh my memory and I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time I read it. As one of my friends said yesterday, “The cover really doesn’t do it justice.” If you like coming-of-age stories and haven’t heard of Prep, I highly recommend it.

My other class is Information Books for Children. It’s basically Children’s Non-Fiction but since there are fairy tales, poetry, plays and literature cataloged in the Dewey numbers with the “non-fiction” in a library, information books fits the books better. We’ve read some great and not-so-great books for the class. The point isn’t to read all wonderful books because we need to learn about the not-so-great books out there too. My instructor is wonderful, she’s the same instructor I had for my Children’s Lit class last fall that I loved.

The last several weeks have been a whirlwind. June has also not been a friendly month for the Lee kitties. My parents lost their second cat, Lucy, last week. She hadn’t been doing well since her friend Milly died on the first of June. My parents were out of town and Lucy was boarding at the vet. She’d been having trouble breathing on Tuesday and just slipped away later in the day. At least she went peacefully and knew she was loved, she was definitely a spoiled cat. My mom made sure of that.

This past weekend, Bryan and I decided to make it a three day weekend to celebrate his birthday and both took Friday off. Friday, we just relaxed and got a lot of reading done. We’d planned to go to Springfield, Illinois but the threat of bad thunderstorms made us rethink our plans. Saturday, we did one of our favorite things - blueberry picking! There is nothing quite as scrumptious as fresh, handpicked blueberries. We thought we’d pick just enough to get us through a week since we’ll probably go back this Friday. We had not idea we’d picked almost five pounds. So we gave some to our friend L and her husband to enjoy since we know they won’t be able to get out there for a while. Then Sunday, L brought us some black raspberries from her garden to add to the berry delightfulness in our house. Even Chloe seems to like the fresh berries, though she can’t eat them. She gets so excited when we open the container of berries. You’d think we had kitty cat food stashed way in those bags by the way she acts.

Bryan also spent part of the weekend getting his Etsy shop and new blog set up.

Once I get some photos of my sewing I’ll post them. I hope everyone is having a good summer.

As if I was just sitting around waiting for something to do, I saw this book on the purl bee blog.

It’s so cute and I would love to make one to put on my bookbag but I’m afraid I might lose it. The bunny is just too cute!

The Martha sweater is literally three rows from completion. I hope to bind off the collar tomorrow night. After that, it’s just sewing the sleeves to the body and then the side seems! From the weather forecast for this weekend and the looks of things, I may be able to wear it into July. With this winter, we may have snow up until Memorial Day. I sure hope not!

I love these moments I’ve been having lately. They’re moments where I get off the bus, I’m walking through campus and it dawns on me, “I’m in grad school.” Yes, I’ve been in school for about five weeks but these moments are interesting. For years I’ve thought about going back to school and wondered what would it be like. This morning as I was walking to the library, an image of what I’d thought grad school would be like immediately flashed in my head and everything seemed so right. Do you ever have moments where you suddenly feel, “this is exactly where I’m supposed to be”? In my mind, I didn’t expect to be married while in grad school but I’m very happy that I have Bryan to keep me sane.

This past weekend was a busy one of readings, papers and a tiny bit of knitting. My first grad school paper was due on Monday and I handed it in early on Sunday night. (We post our papers online, which saves some headaches and the panic of getting to campus without my paper.) Wednesday, my second paper was due and next week I have two more papers. These first two papers were a bit challenging, just getting words on the page can be so daunting. Now I feel like I can get the next two done without any problems. The paper due this coming Monday is really interesting. I have to research an organization for my intellectual freedom class and discuss how they would be an ally in a book challenge situation. I’m researching the American Booksellers Association, an association of independent booksellers, which has been really interesting. The entire intellectual freedom class has really made me more aware of books that are currently being challenged and what it means for librarians. There are two challenges in the news now in Maine and Alabama.

Onto other news, I finally sent off the quilt to its rightful owners, baby (born in June) and mother received the blanket on Monday, I can show it off here now. It’s my first quilt and I’m quite proud of it. I’m working on my second quilt and it’s another secret project. I’m hoping to get some serious work done on it this Saturday during my Saturday Sew-over with S.

Last week, I also started another baby project in Rowan Demin, which is going quite quickly. The baby was born in May so I’m hoping to get it to the mother soon. There are so many babies being born this year that’s it’s been quite difficult to keep up.

Well, I’ve managed to survive two weeks of classes. There have been meltdowns and self doubts about getting through school but yesterday it all seemed to come together. I’m truly enjoying my classes, especially Children’s Lit. What isn’t fun about reading picture books for class? Today, we discussed the picture books we read for class and I had one of those “this is totally what library school is supposed to be about for me” moments. In my readings for today, I discovered a few picture books that have come on the scene since my childhood that I really liked, such as Good Night, Good Knight, The Princess and the Pea, which has my favorite artwork of all of them, and No, David!. And I’ve also rediscovered some books such as Where the Wild Things Are, My Friend Rabbit and a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin that I hadn’t read before. (I always remember the Rumpelstiltskin my parents read to me as a child that was illustrated by Edward Gorey, which is still how I envision the little man.)

There have also been the serious library school readings about information that had my head swimming a few weeks ago. It’s all about reawakening that intellectual mind of mine that’s been sleeping in the back of my head for over 10 years. (I didn’t need it when I was getting my computer science degree, that called for the practical mind.) My first paper is due in about twelve days and I’m nervous about it but know that I’m fully capable of writing 800 words easily.

My assistantship at the reference desk is going well and I’m starting to get a handle on how to answer some questions with confidence. It’s definitely challenging and I’ve learned so much in the last two weeks at the desk.

My knitting and sewing have suffered a bit from my busyness with school, as I completely expected they would. I did manage to finish the Moderne Baby Blanket two weeks ago and blocked it last week but just got around to taking photos today. I’m also making myself work on the Go With the Flow socks, which are almost finished. Last night as I was working on the socks at knit night, I realized I made a somewhat blaring mistake that I refuse to fix. On one sock there are four lace ribs on top of the foot and on the other sock there are five lace ribs. I’m so close to being finished with my third sock of the pair (I had to reknit one of the feet) that I’m leaving them as is and calling it a design element. (Photos of evidence coming soon.) Just before school started I started another quilt that’s a bit of a funky monkey quilt but that will have to be for another day.

My goals this weekend are to get all of my readings finished for my Monday classes, finish the Go With the Flow sock, hem two skirts, and possibly work on the panel skirt that I started and have neglected since mid-July. It’s a lot but if I put my mind to it I think I can do it.

Since I’m so immersed into the whole library thing now, I love finding random library-related things now, such as this song that I found out about on The Shifted Librarian blog.

My life has changed drastically in the last two weeks. I’ve gone from being a circulation clerk at a public library to a graduate assistant at the third largest academic library in the United States and the largest library at a public university in the world. These last five days have felt very surreal. I start classes on Wednesday and I’m sure it will all very even more surreal then. I’m taking Children’s Literature, Intellectual Freedom for Youth and the required class, Information Organization and Access. Of course, my excitement about classes started a few weeks ago when I was able to access some of the syllabic for classes online and found out the reading lists for two of my classes. I’m really excited about my two youth-based classes. When I was able to access the Children’s Lit list, I immediately checked out a few of the books for the first week of class and have already finished them. For my Intellectual Freedom class, one of the books for the first week of class is either the first Harry Potter book or any of the other ones if we’ve already read the first one, which is a perfect excuse to read the fifth book.

Knitting-wise, I’ve finished the Moderne Baby Blanket, have to give it a bath and then I’ll take some photos to show it off. It’s gorgeous and huge. I didn’t expect it to be 48 inches by 44 inches, but it will make the perfect lap blanket when the kid is older. Sewing-wise, I finished the baby quilt and just need to snap some photos and send it off. I started another baby quilt on Saturday that’s coming along nicely. As I learned with the last quilt, the top goes quickly, it’s the back and binding that takes a while.

Sorry for the photo-less entry. I hope to get the photos of the blankets up soon.

Don’t hate me because it’s summer and I don’t feel like knitting a stitch. Don’t ask me where that came from either, it’s just the first thing that popped in my head when I started this post.

No Cookies in the Library
I stumbled onto this on YouTube and thought, “Cookie Monster would love our library since we have a cafe with cookies.”

I’d love to say that I’ve finished so many projects lately that I have a whole slew of them to show you but I don’t. Last week, I knitted my first stitch in about three weeks. I traveled to Kansas about two weeks ago and had planned to get some sewing done but I just didn’t have the time. Before I left for Kansas, I did whip up a cute little skirt from Sew What Skirts and cut out another one to work on while I was visiting my parents. A few things I did manage to do while I was gone were putting in, ripping out a zipper and resewing it into another skirt that I hadn’t finished. Last week for the Harry Potter party, I realized I didn’t have a black skirt to wear so I just bought some fabric and whipped up a cute black skirt. Since I had my sewing machine out, I also finished the skirt I’d been working on in Kansas. I’ll get photos up soon.

While I was gone I worked on the baby quilt, I finished two of the edges and am working on the other two then I’ll be sending it off.

While I was in Kansas, I was able to visit the Hays Public Library. It’s the library I grew up in and was anxious to see their remodeled and expanded building. What a great library and extremely inviting when you walk in. They’ve put a lot of time and work into making it a very browseable library. In two areas, they’ve arranged the shelves so that there are small alcoves of shelves, sort of what you’d see in a bookstore. I was very impressed and now know why my grandfather brags about the library so much. The best part was that they still have the castle in the children’s department that I remember spending so many hours in.

The Harry Potter party we had at the library was a big success. We handed out all of our books, more than 300, in less than 14 minutes. One of my favorite parts of the night was the reactions of the kids when they were handed the new Harry Potter book. You’d thought that they had been handed the greatest thing they’d ever seen. It makes me so happy and excited to see kids this excited about a book. The café in our library was open that night too and served butterbeer, pumpkin juice and various other Harry Potter related treats. Now people asking when is the next big party at the library. I think people not only loved the activities we had going on but the fact that the library was open late on a Friday night and it was a party. It was a lot of fun working that night, but it took me the entire next day to recover. Saturday we’d planned to go blueberry picking and I was exhausted from the night before but that wasn’t going to stop me from going to the blueberry farm. I was a gorgeous day out and to be outside I think helped me recover some.

More than anything else I’ve been reading a lot. I finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban en route to Kansas and started and finished The Uglies by Scott Westerfeld while I was there. Last week and most of Sunday I read New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, the sequel to Twilight that I mentioned in my previous post. I literally read the entire day on Sunday. Sunday evening, I started the fourth Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. With all of the Harry mania, I couldn’t help but get wrapped up in it. I’m enjoying the books and this is a case where I want to be like everyone else and finish the series.

The weeks are counting down and I can’t believe that in three weeks, I’ll be in the middle of my graduate assistant training at the library I’ll be working at this fall. School starts in about four weeks, fortunately my first class isn’t until August 28, so I have some time. I was checking into the book list for my children’s lit class and I think it’s going to be a really fun class. Having to read children’s picture books for class, what fun.