What a busy week! I’ve jumped back into the fray after a wonderful Christmas vacation. I worked all four days this week, started school and also started training a new group of volunteers at our church. This will be a three month training with sessions once a week. I don’t need to be there every week and I am only teaching two modules (the first last night), but it still takes up a lot of time.

Two new projects were started (all within the guidelines I posted last week) – a new CIC sweater and the sweater I promised Abby. Here’s the CIC sweater:

I had intended to help Marguerite by test knitting Cozy in Cables, but my wrists just could not handle the doubled worsted on large needles. This is a gansey in single strand worsted and it’s just flying! The back is finished and I am up to the neckline on the front. Basically just the sleeves to go.

And Abby’s sweater:

This is Debbie Bliss Cotton Cashmere, snagged on sale from Elann. So far I like this yarn very much. The cashmere content is fairly low, but enough to give the yarn a little more spring than plain cotton. The color is just a tad darker than the photo.

A lot of progress has also been made on the Faorese shawl with the cashmere I received for Christmas:

I wish I could get a better picture, but you can blame the USPS. I ordered a longer cable from Knit Picks, but the postal service seems to have lost my package. According to the tracking number, it’s been at our local post office for three days, but they say that it’s not there and the closest guess is that it’s been shipped from here to Seattle. Why, they don’t know! Sigh.

On the school front, this promises to be a much, much easier semester. I’m taking Psychology of Women and it is proving to be quite interesting so far. No, it’s not a male-bashing feminist class, but one examining, on a scientific basis, the issue of gender and the view of women in different socieities. The professor is the same one that taught the dog training class last semester.

Tomorrow hubby and I are going up to Bellingham to look at sewing machines. Before I retire, I would really like to have the machine of my dreams with an embroidery unit. A new Bernina store has opened (or more accurately, re-opened – it’s the old Hank and Bolt, without the yarn) and they are having a grand opening sale. I’m trying very hard not to get my hopes up, but I’m hopeful that they’ll have something in my price range.

Oh, and I’ve joined a knitalong! Debi and her friend are hosting the Forest Path Stole-along. This has been on my wish list since I first saw it, but I’ve been a little intimidated. This is a great chance to do it with a group behind me for support, so I just couldn’t pass it up. To make sure that I’m not running roughshod over my guidelines, I frogged the inch I had done on the sampler stole and will probably revisit that at a later date. I was going to use the cashmere for the Forest Path, but I think it’s just a little on the thin side. Instead I will be using some rose Zephyr that I bought on a yarn crawl with Li last year. The Stole-along starts in February, so I’ll have some pictures for you then!