The Lazy Days of Summer

The first blush of post-school busy-ness has faded away, and summer spreads before me like a blank canvas.

Great sentence? But not quite true. The insanity of article to knit and books to edit and databases to design has indeed faded away. The articles ARE knit (or aren't ready to be knit), I'm practically caught up on edits, and I have two nicely working databases. But somehow, the blank canvas part isn't true. Filia and Filius are signed up for swim lessons starting in a week or two, and once those are over Filius has scout camp, followed by VBS for both, followed by a week off and then another camp. But I won't complain. There is plenty of free space in our summer. A 50-minute swim lesson, even if it is two towns away, still doesn't take the entire day. I would like to know how it ended up that I have four doctor's appointments in a 3-week period while Filia has a 4 month period without any. (Orthodontist doesn't count. I don't think we've EVER gone 3 months before without a check-up with someone.)

And dh put the air conditioner in yesterday ... so today, the heat breaks. Just in time for cooler weather, which I appreciate. Summer is a very good thing for crops and long walks, but I miss warming up with hot cocoa and cozily warm blankets.

Strong on pictures, short on words

Let me present the finished At Sea gansey:

And then a closeup, followed by Podrick (in cozy and out), and the project on the needles.

And then I will get back to work!

Catching up on things

Summer is always an opportunity to dive into things wholeheartedly. I like submerging myself in things. I'd say 'immersing', but since I don't come up for air, submerging is probably more accurate.

I've finished the Irish Lace Scarf. Soaking it was an interesting tactile experience. So was knitting it, actually. It felt and looked like I was knitting dust bunnies. I leave it to your imagination how to describe the 'shawl coming out of warm water bath'.

The gansey is moving along nicely. I hit a small snag when I started the sleeve with a star pattern, then realized it should be a tree. Rather than frog 16 rows, I decided to do a bit of minor surgery. Another knitter in the family, who shall remain nameless, accidentally deleted the 'before' photo, but here's a picture of the corrections mid-stream. Star on the left needle, tree on the right needle! The swap took me just over a half-hour, and that sleeve is now done. I hope to start and finish the second sleeve this week.

But this morning, I finished some mittens for Terri Shea's upcoming book.....

And yesterday, I began using the new database I've constructed (using OO Base) for Classical Writing accounting/invoicing/royalties stuff. I had two hurdle to surmount. One involved my own stupidity (bad figures give bad data ... fortunately, the bad figure was only in a note to myself, not to a customer!), but the cause of the other problem is still beyond me. How can an automatically incremented record ID produce duplicate numbers?

Now, to go see if I can finish editing Chapter 3 of Herodotus. And then make sure the answer key has answers that pertain to the contents of the chapter. Fun!!!