yarn along: add a little more

The next two weeks are big ones in our family.  Two of my sons are in two different Midsummer Night's Dream productions this Saturday, so this week is full of dress rehearsals and preparation.  I sewed M's costume yesterday, which felt like a huge accomplishment.  Next weekend is our area's annual youth group arts festival, so our evenings are filled with rehearsals for those performances, too.  The choral speaking event for the arts festival is under my guidance.  Hopefully the kids will be ready!  I'm impressed at how well my kids are holding up, between the pressure to memorize lots of lines and the late night practices.  I'm certainly not!

Despite all of the busy-ness, or perhaps because of it, I cast on two new projects.  The mittens are my own pattern, which I'll share here once I'm finished.  I have been needing a new pair of mittens, although the weather has been unseasonably warm, and white, textured ones appeal to me.  The texture I get, but white?  There's something wrong with me.  They'll be dirty in minutes.  The bobble pattern is adapted from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  The yarn is this.  They're moving really quickly, and my meticulous notes mean I have a good chance of making the second one identical to the first.

The second project is a little baby bonnet for a friend's anticipated daughter.  I'd love for this pattern to be my stand-by for new baby gifts, but I say that about a lot of patterns.  It's in this yarn, which also should be my new go-to for baby items.  I need to start keeping a few skeins on hand.  There are quite a few friends expecting this fall (and baby #2 for my sister!), so the probability of baby projects hijacking my knitting time remains very high.  I love it.  I love that there are an abundance of babies to knit for, and hope there are for years to come!

My younger boys have been on a Happy Hollisters kick lately.  The books are sweet, simple, and full of adventure.  We have several on the shelf, but the boys read them so quickly that I ordered a few more as an end-of-term treat.

I finished Return to Modesty (my bedtime reading), which was very thought provoking (not great for bedtime!).  Wendy Shalitt and I are of an age--both in college in the mid to late 90s.  My freshman year was the first year that my college experimented with co-ed dorms, although men and women were separated by floor (Not room.  Yikes!).  I put on my freshman questionnaire that I didn't mind living in a single sex dorm, so guess where I ended up?  It was truly fine.  I never had to share bathrooms with a man until I got married, which suited me perfectly.  :)  The discussion over at Like Mother Like Daughter is helpful as well.  I decided that my bedtime reading needed to be light after Return to Modesty, so I started Freddy Goes to Florida.  It's delightful!  I hope my little boys get on a Freddy kick after they finish the Happy Hollisters series.

I's nearing the end of The Way of a Pilgrim, and have two Mother Maria books lined up to take its place.  Lent has just begun, so more spiritual reading is in order!