I've been neglectful.

Okay, trying to sneak in a quick post during some down time at work. It's not so much that I've been busy as I have been either too lazy or too focused on knitting. The Toni sweater is almost done, just needs a finished sleeve and to be sewn up. I dread this. I ran out of yarn, though, and I'm not having any luck finding it online. My yarn store says they have two in stock, but they can't find them. Crap.

I'm subbing today. I've been getting around 3 days a week lately, and I'm so glad for it. It's nice to have some sense of purpose. Getting up at 6:30 is hard, but I'd rather be doing that than waking up at noon because I have nothing to do with my life. It's been all special ed stuff, but I should be doing some regular ed subbing later in the month when teachers go out to grade writing prompts. Last year, I taught a day of first grade and a day of third. It was truly horrific and I don't know why I wish to repeat it, but I'm one of those people that does things just for the sake of the stories it'll generate.

I never actually blogged about the fair. I owned that competition. 8 white ribbons, 3 red, and 5 blue. I'm tempted to keep the ribbons on the garments and just wear them as accessories. The baby hat I designed came in first. I shamelessly added that info to the pattern description on Ravelry. You never know, maybe it'll convince someone else to make it. I like to check my designs and see if they're actually popular. I'd love to design something that really catches on. Maybe it'll happen with some socks. I just have a hard time writing up sock patterns because I just tend to make things up as I go once I get to the ankle, and it's hard to replicate that or put it in words. Or I'm just following the basic sock chart for those steps and I don't feel like I deserve to call that "my" pattern. Which is why I put everything up for free.

I'll put up some pics of the ribbons eventually. I took some pictures of some of the items with the ribbons on them, but the people at the fair stapled the ribbon directly to the tags this year. I have to be careful to take out the staples, lest I ruin the ribbon, but since the tag is on the front instead of the back, I wouldn't know what it's for. But I can't take pics of the ribbons that way because my home address is right on the front.

I also need to take pictures of my new Wollmeise, Campari Orange and Frosch. I will probably trade the Frosch, but I'm not sure what for. I've had offers for Limone and Fruhling, but I'm not sure. It's not like I'm going to use it right away. If I can convince someone that they totally want to part with a Libelle for it, though, that'd be a different story. I didn't stay up for the stalk last night, since I had to get up for work today, and there was a lot of good stuff there. But that's okay - I also went shopping and bought a bunch of new shirts at the mall. That's my frivolous spending for the week.

Speaking of frivolous spending, I figured out today that I can go yarn shopping with my friends on Columbus Day after all. I thought that was the day I was going to a Red Sox game, but no, I'm going on Sunday. I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't realize that. I guess I had remembered saying "good, then I won't even have to get up for work the next day because it's Columbus day" as "good, it's Columbus day." And I do have work on Tuesday and Wednesday so far. But this means my week is Boston-shopping-work-work! Awesome! It's not that I need to do any shopping, nor do I want to, but I want to go out to lunch with my friends and I was sad at the prospect of missing out on it.

I'm using my first hank of Wollmeise. I started a Baana scarf, which is a linen stitch triangle scarf. Ew, linen stitch. I've gotten the hang of it, but it's kind of slow going. I'm using Lowenzahn, a variegated green/yellow. It's cheerful. I'm actually up to size 7 needles because of the tightness of the stitch. I could go even bigger but that's okay. I wanted it to be light and flowing, but it's fingering weight yarn, so I was thinking I would still get that with 4s. Nope. It was rigid, like a bib. It's not a pattern I could easily bring to knitting group with me, since it's a 4 row repeat with increases every other row, and it's hard to keep track of if they're left or right leaning - yes, I'm actually bothering to check this time. Usually I just pretend it doesn't matter. For Wollmeise, I put in the extra effort.