scifiknitter

I use Ravelry.com to keep track of my knitting projects. Each project has a series of pages, with information about the yarn used, the needle size, photos, rating of difficulty, and comments. You also can record the date you start and the date you finish a project. That is how I know that I started this shawl on July 2, 2009 and finished it on March 18, 2010. That’s 37 weeks, exactly - I started and ended on a Thursday. That’s a long time for me to have one project on the needles. I already knew that knitting means math. Awareness of math can certainly help you look ahead in a project, and know what is coming. The end of this project drove that point home. I started with 6 stitches. Due to the inexorable growth that results from adding 6 stitches every other row in the body of the shawl and 178 stitches every other row in the ruffled edge, I ended up with 2,497 stitches, give or take a few. This is what it looks like to work on a project that has a couple of thousand stitches or so. ​ ...

A few days ago my Twitter friends Lenore_Happenstance, Booalready, and ailec were bouncing some thoughts around about education on Twitter. The thread was sparked by the news of the draconian budget cuts and school closings about to happen in Kansas City, Missouri. Ailec challenged us to suggest what we think could improve the state of education in this country. My thoughts on education are difficult to compress into 140 characters, even if I were to generate a stream of updates. I believe in public education. I believe that it is appropriate for our society to educate all of our children in safe, technologically adequate schools staffed by well trained and dedicated teachers. I believe that teachers should be paid salaries commensurate with investment of time and expense we demand they make in their education. I pay my school taxes each year without complaint, and believe that whether or not I have a child attending school, I benefit when children are educated. They are the future of...

Taxes finished and filed - check! Reservations made for A.'s graduation ceremony - check! Laundry done - check! Exercised twice this weekend - check! Spent time having fun with family - check! Caught up on my sleep - check! And, 70 sections of ruffle (about 1,960 stitches) left to bind off, which means 19 sections done. That's over 20%. I'll get some more knitting time in tonight as well. Two days of sunshine - check! It's so early to get a taste of spring in these parts, but there is no doubt that a change is coming. For one thing, the maple syrup makers are having a glorious run, and are boiling sap. It seems early for maple season to be happening. Could we really be having an early spring this year? All in all a very good weekend, though not one that leads to deep thoughts. I could use a few more days like this.

Life truly abhors an empty moment, and if you spend less time writing, very soon you will find that you have less time to write. What have I been up to in recent days? I've been diligent at work. This is easy to do at the beginning of the year, when year-end closing tasks lie thick all around me, and I add free tax preparation to my other duties. My ongoing struggle to get in earlier and get out earlier is starting to get easier. I find it easier to get in earlier than to shut down the computer and get out of the chair at the end of the day, but working late isn't as QUITE late as it used to be. I was finally casting off the stitches of my shawl. This project grew in scope when I decided, at the point the pattern said to add the ruffled edging, to make it longer. I'm knitting at a tighter gauge than specified, which seems to suit the yarn beautifully, and there was too little shawl and too much leftover yarn at the designated ending point. I say "was" casting off,...