Yes, I got 5 hours of sleep. Yes, I had to drive 1.5 hours to class and the same home. Yes, I distract easily in a group and thus have homework to finish before I can go to sleep tonight (and we lose an hour because of daylight savings, which is supremely bad timing). It was perfect. I loved my Saturday.

There are 9 of us in my class, and Beth is her usual calm and peaceful self. We learn a lot… about the history of this garment and other sweaters by comparison… about yarn structure and increases and under-arm gussets and welts and knitting needles and the Channel Island cast on… and a bunch of other things that all pertain somehow to this workshop.

It was a socal group during some routing-knitting stretches, and I particularly liked discussing everyone’s choice of yarn and why it did or did not work well for the project. I probably talked a little more than the others at times, but I talked less than I would have doing anything else I normally do. Of course I did keep quiet when Beth needed to talk, which is when it matters most.

I’m knitting with a plain-jane workhorse yarn, Paton’s Classic Wool, in grass green. It is working out well. Green is such a hopeful spring color, and the color brings me joy right now. I was just sooo happy to be in that class knitting this tiny sweater today. It was great to feel a real rush of happiness today while knitting. I did not take that feeling for granted.

And now I need to sign off and finish knitting the body of the sweater so that I can do arms and neck tomorrow in class…

I’ll be mostly offline this weekend, both Saturday and Sunday. I’m going to make a mini-Gansey sweater at a Beth Brown-Reinsel workshop at Heritage Spinning in Lake Orion, Michigan. I learned about this workshop many months ago, in time to schedule myself the time off, which doesn’t always happen for me when these things come up. It turns out that Beth will also be teaching at Threadbear this month, but that information came to me after it was too late to change my plans.

I usually wake up around 10-11am after going to bed at 2-3am. The workshop starts at 9am both days, and is 1.5 hours away. I need to leave home before 7:30am. You can be sure I really want to do this workshop!!!

I have studied with Beth before and she is calming and thoughtful, focused and “just right” as Goldilocks says. I love being in the same room with her. After the turmoil of the last two weeks, I am really looking forward to being where I am not in charge and just learning and listening and knitting. This is perfect.

If you do not hear from me Saturday/Sunday, I promise photos of my project when I re-surface. For the record, we had to get “light colored” worsted-weight wool. I got yellow-green. Spring. It’s the color I always favor this time of year. I will drink in the promise of that color as I learn. See you when I get back!