What Could This Mean??

Clean desk and clean room, this means I am done baby! School's out for summer! I just have to wait 30 minutes before check-out starts. Work on a sock and catch up on some blog reading until that happens. Grades are done, reports are done, dishes are done (chemistry teachers always have dishes) and personal belongings are put away for the summer.

Now I have just have to go home and clean the house madly before the folks get here in about 6 hours.....

Fleece to Shawl Beginings

Preparations have begun for my first Fleece to Shawl competition. We are allowed to start with a washed/dyed fleece--does not have to be sheared on location. This weekend I aquired a sample of the fleece and proceeded to take it for a "test drive". Our fleece is from a border leister cross and was quite kinky, which I just love.

Here we are after washing:

Now after handcarding:

And finally the washed two-ply yarn. This is about a dk weight. We will be weaving so this will be the weft and close to the warp as well.

Now comes the hard part, trying to decide on an color for the accent yarn. I am thinking perhaps a jade green, cobalt blue and a copper. If you have suggestions, please share.

Sock Hop Rounduo

One the left we have one pound (photo is slightly cutoff) of The Beat Goes On and on the right is one pound of Love Me Tender. I cannot believe the transformation they have undergone since arriving on my doorstep as rovings. At first I didn't like Beat at all, but I really like the yarn. I thought that Love Me would be perfect for school stuff as it was purple and gold. Funny, there was a lot of blue in there too that I didn't even notice until spun. I would have also never pictured these two yarns together at all, they actually look nice next to each other. I will get them packaged up tonight to send off to Teyani so that some lucky knitter can transform them even further!

Teacher Appreciation Day/Week

Spawn's 3rd grade teacher likes monkeys. He wanted me to knit her a monkey. I usually knit something for his teacher eeach year and we give it during this week. The monkey isn't real big, about 6 inches. We have used up stash yarns here, Bev's Bear from Brown Sheep and some alpaca boucle without a label for the contrast. The pattern was an adaptation of the pattern in Quick Knitted Gifts. In the end, I think he turned out pretty cute. I tried to knit him a little stocking hat, but that just didn't look right. It ended up looked like a rolled up condom.

Oh yes, don't forget high school teachers either this week. We like candy.

Me Sooo Naughty!

Knit Picks catalog and two books. No good can come from this......

17 Days!

It has been a rough year. It is hard to teach kids the responsibility and skills that they will need to become productive members of society when those above you seem to have other ideas. There is a change in the guard coming, so there is hope. Don't get me wrong, I do love working with the students, but those above have become more of a hinderance than a help.

As the year winds down, here is the view around my desk:

Notice the yarn cakes around my desk? I have two socks that I have been working on while doing my photocopying etc. They are both at a measuring stage and I keep forgetting the mates. There is also a skein of black/rainbow Trekking around too. I found that I like to have some on my desk, it just feels a little more "homey".