Slackers, My grandmother, and knitting

Okay, a wee school rant: It is the end of third quarter here, and the four-day week before vacation. My grading deadline for all make-up (read: not-turned-in-on-time) work was last week tuesday. I had several large projects due in my one class. There is a shockingly large number of my students who turned nothing in and are AMAZED when their grade isn't what they are expecting. It's making me very growly this week. Thank goodness it's almost spring break.

Ahem.

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So over the weekend, I finished two knitting projects in between heaps of grading! Though to be fair, Teagan's scarf was in the works when I put it down to knit B's baby blanket. And it's taken me since September to finish the baby blanket.

First, the finished baby blanket. I made it out of the most annoying yarn ever. It knotted as I pulled it out of the skein, knotted on itself, and was really a difficult thing to work with. It took me forever because it was so fine, but boy is the finished product fabulous.



But I tossed the rest of the gigantic skein because I could. not. stand. it. One of our new educators was going to scrounge it for arts & crafts, but she finger knit with it for about five minutes and agreed that it needed to be tossed.

Then I picked back up Teagan's scarf. I started it out of the extra skein of yarn I used to make her baby blanket. I can't believe that was five years ago already! This scarf will be a giant for a delicate little thing like her, but she'll grow into it. And she'll get it just in time for school this fall, at the rate I'm going:



Alas, the picture doesn't really capture the softness of the yarn or the gorgeous purple tones of the scarf. It made me sad to finally use that gorgeous yarn out of my stash. But I'm so excited to send it to her!!

Last night I cast on a baby blanket for my best friend's new wee one, due to arrive in November. I made my first baby blanket for her out of some of my favorite yarn. The first blanket was in mango, and the second one will be in sour apple. This time I'm playing with some patterning with stitches, but the yarn is still just YUMMY to work with. It knits up so fast that I'm already several inches in, and I've almost finished my first skein. I'm itching to get my fingers on it, but I have to finish my powerpoint for tomorrow's class lessons.

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On our way home from town on Saturday, I spotted two doghouses and a big "FREE!" sign on the side of the road. I pointed them out to Brian. We turned around and stopped to check them out, then staked our claim to the larger of the two. It's kind of ratty and run down, but it's a big, solid, hand-made doghouse that will be great for Pulu to use to get in out of rain or sunshine this summer. We've got it unloaded into our driveway area and still need a few of the neighbors to help us haul it to its final resting place.

Quinn was terrified of it, and wouldn't investigate without me offering many treats and to crawl inside with her. Pulu was very interested in sniffing it all over. Here she is surveying the neighborhood from it this afternoon:



and then she decided to lounge a little bit:

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And lastly, a little tribute to my grandmother (and my mom). She had this trick, you see. It was her secret weapon in winning raffle baskets.

She taught my mom, and my mom is freakishly good at winning raffle baskets, too. There is an everything-store near my mom's house that has a huge section of Christmas decorations every year. They used to have all sorts of free raffles--for baskets, for pre-decorated trees, you name it. There would be little tables with jars, little slips of paper with golf pencils, the works. You'd stick your name on the slip of paper and toss it in the basket.

Some of my clearest memories are of filling in those slips. Mom would do her name, and I'd do my dad's name, since he wasn't usually shopping with us and I was too young to enter. After we finished writing out our name, address, and phone number, we'd ritually crumple up the papers into little wads. Then we'd smooth them out and put them in the baskets.

Mom always told me that it made your paper float up near the top, and not stick to any of the other papers, so you had a better chance of being picked.

And it must have worked, because man, my mom won what seemed like a ton of those baskets.

So.

The senior class is doing fund raising to go on their senior trip. One thing they do every year is a raffle. People donate prizes of various things. Seniors sell tickets to everyone they can. On your ticket, you write the basket number that you want to win and dump it in a jar.

My mentor was laughing at me as I crumpled up my tickets before sticking them in the jar in the office.

But Grandma's trick really works. I came in to the office this morning to find a white cardboard box in my mailbox. Inside was this, my prize from the senior raffle: