Time.  That’s what I wish I had more of.  Unfortunately, as we all know, we can’t add to the number of minutes that there are in a day, so there is nothing that I can add.  I was slightly dazed yesterday (Monday?) when I blogged about being unbalanced – and so soon after feeling (and blogging) about being balanced.  Most of you know that I used to work for Trinity, doing various odd jobs for both Admissions offices, the Records office and Financial Aid.  One of my jobs was to write reports for the Financial Aid office – of which there are many.  Some of them Federally mandated, some of them State mandated and some of them simply obligatory as an institution of Higher Ed.  I left Trinity nearly 2 years ago and the Financial Aid office has yet to figure out how to run the reports themselves.  To be completely fair, the reports can be quite complex, and I had developed a system of queries and such to be able to pull the data that I needed.  Knowing how to write SQL queries is not common knowledge and most people’s eyes glaze over when I simply mention the word “database…”, so I completely understand that no one would be capable of just stepping in an writing these reports.

So, me being of the helpful nature and not wanting to leave people hanging, have gone back to work on the reports – on a contractual basis.  It is a relationship that has mutual benefits and I’m not knocking the relationship at all.  But this semester, only 2 weeks into the semester, is starting to look, well, shall I say, busy?  The good news is that one of the reports will be “handed off” today and the second one should be done by next weekend.  The second one is the one of greater importance, that being if it does not get filed by October 1 (September 30 to be safe), then Trinity could lose their Title IV funding – something that could – literally – criple the institution.  No Pell grant, no work study, and more importantly, no loans.  It is a report of great importance and great pressure to pull data accurately and timely.  No pressure or anything….I can do this.

I keep telling myself to invest the time now and just get it done, then I won’t have to worry about it at all.  Then a little voice in the back of my head says, no, moron, there will always be something else to do.  Finishing the reports won’t be the end of it.  Arg.  I hate the deamons in my head.

I have a quiz in Carson’s class on September 29 and a mid-term in Vanhoozer’s class on the 30th.  La – ti – da…..I have no small amount of work to accomplish….la – ti- da.  Don’t you feel like singing?

Okay, focus.  I’ve mentioned the Trinity work….the quiz and the mid-term…oh yes.  Knitting.  Going well.  I knit 4 whole rows on the SSMO yesterday and I might even get to work on it some tonight.  It is getting to be just shy of half way done.  Yipee!

Oh, I need to talk about my BIG purchase on Saturday.  Kate and I went to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival.  I did NOT purchase any yarn, thank you very much.  But I did purchase a swift.  Tutorial.  Yarn is sold in two ways.  You can purchase a skein, which comes pre-wound and can be knitted/croched with immediately.  No additional winding into a ball is necessary.  Or you can purchase yarn in a hank, in which case you must wind it into a ball.  This is more of what you remember when someone holds the yarn on their arms and a second person actually winds it into a ball.  The first person is necessary otherwise the yarn would become tangled – and let’s face it – who would want to untangle 500 yards of yarn?  Enter the swift.  It is a contraption upon which you stretch out the yarn and the thing rotates as you are winding.  It totally keeps the yarn from tangling up.  Case in point.  The first hank of yarn for the SSMO took me the better part of an hour and a half (while watching a movie) to wind into a ball.  I had to splay the yarn out on the floor and then pay very close attention to keep it from gathering and subsequently knotting.  1.5 hours.  I just did hank number 2 for the SSMO and I did it in 8 minutes flat.  8.  90 minutes vs. 8.  Which would you choose?  Yeah, me too.  Well worth the money.  Guar-un-teed. 

Edited to add:
I found this profile of Dr. Carson online.  I am truly humbled and honored to be able to sit in this man’s class, even if it is a basic, fundamental, beginner’s level theology class.  The man is truly amazing and surprisingly enough, humorous.  Clicking this link will open a new window.  I actually can’t wait until that first quiz – it is always good to be challenged.

I’ve been back from vacation nearly 3 weeks now and I’m just beginning to recover my sanity.  I made tremendous progress on a big project for a department on campus and I actually got some sleep last night.  (I had wierd dreams, mind you, but because I knew that I had been dreaming when I woke up means that I acutally was sleeping, something rare for me in the last few weeks.)  I started school yesterday and I just know I’m going to love my Biblical Theology class.  The Professor is Dr. D. A. Carson.  If one could put a “face” to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, it would be Dr. Carson’s face.  He has published more, I think, than any other Trinity professor in the last 20 years.  I had high expectations from his class but yesterday he exceeded even those.  I tell you the truth – the man is absolutely brilliant – but he is also stinking funny.  And I mean that in a good way and will all due respect.

As to knitting news, my Trinity bag that I’ve been using for my projects broke on Tuesday.  The strap just came right off.  I suppose that I was placing too many demands on it.  Good thing that I had anticipated this a purchased a new canvas tote from Lands End. (I also purchased these – and boy are they comfy!)  And guess what?  They arrived yesterday.  Perfect timing.  The tote bag is perhaps a tad bit larger than I had anticipated, but I have no doubt that I can grow into it without fear of it breaking.

As to actual knitting projects, since I was a dismal failure at the Ravelrympics (please, no sympathy, let’s just forget the whole thing ever happened), I’ve been focusing again on the SSMO and am making good, steady progress.  The problem with shawls is that they need to be long, a lot longer than a scarf.  So I’m on the verge of beginning to think “how much longer is this going to go on” while actually still being enamored with the pattern.  I think Mom will love it (at least everyone else does…)

Toodles for now!

I’m going to talk about that subject which I can’t talk about.  The Super Secret Mom Object.  I posted a few days ago about the thing that I’m going to make for my Mom, but I can’t tell my Mom what it is.  Well, more accurately I can’t tell her about the object’s size, yarn, color or pattern, or rather I can talk about those things as long as she doesn’t hear about them or see them.  And since she doesn’t read my blog all that frequently, this should not be a huge problem.  So for now on I’m going to refer to this project as the SSMO.

The pattern for the SSMO calls for worsted weight yarn, which seems a little much for me.  So I purchased a fingering weight yarn – a much better yarn for this shawl (my Mom at least knows that it is going to be a shawl, she just doesn’t know what it will look like – that’s the secret part).  Just to get a better guess as to the modifications that I’m going to need to make on account of the yarn substitution, I swatched with a worsted and now I’m in the process of swatching with the fingering weight.  HUGE difference.  I’m working with a size 4 needles with the fingering weight and I think I either need to use wooden needles (to prevent loops from falling off) or to go up a size so that I can knit tighter.

The first part of the pattern is a series of repeats and I’m going to swatch 2 full repeats and then bind off and take measurements.  Hopefully I was smart in purchasing 3 skeins of this yarn instead of 2 and should have p-l-e-n-t-y of yarn to adjust for yarn weight and the length of the shawl.

I am really surprized as how quickly the swatch process is going.  I did the worsted swatch in about 1.5 hours and about 2 for the fingering swatch.  If the pattern is going to seriously be this easy to master then I just might (***just ***might***) be able to make one for little sis too in time for Christams.  Won’t that be special?