I've been knitting since Stitches West ended.  I used up all my undyed yarn, and it's been quite a joy to sit with the needles and create.  I even have a finished object



This is another sweater using the nifty pattern that Spinnity shared with me.  I haven't returned the pattern yet, and had another 2 skeins of the Fingerpaints yarn, and a new baby arrived.  We will meet Teague next weekend, and I wanted a nice and quick project for him.  Success!

I've been plugging along with the Claudia Handpaints Green Boucle sweater, with a pattern created from Knitware.  The pattern is bottom-up in the round with set-in sleeves.  However, when seaming the shoulders, I came to a clear epiphany:  Seaming Boucle Is A Royal Bitch.  So, taking a cue from Lauren, I am doing top-down set-in sleeves, from Barbara Walker's wonderful Knitting From The Top.  So far so good.



Yeah, that's the sleeve on the right side.  I'm almost done with the cap.  I got most done while watching Kill Bill Vol. 2 last night.  Of course I'll finish the nice, warm, mohair boucle just in time for spring and summer.



Gotta love 80 degrees in March.  Take that, New England!

Lest you think I'm not dyeing any yarn, I got a nice big box from my primary vendor last week.  It was full of a new-to-me DK silk and fingering silk.  I have more Creme de Soie to dye, and more Luxury Sock.  But what's missing?  The superwash sock!  Yes, they are backordered until April.  I was annoyed enough to call Louet and talk with them about their delivery time and prices.  When I first started this business, their yarns were twice the cost of what I chose, and the minimum order was quite a bit higher.  Now there is no minimum order and the undyed yarn is reasonably priced.  Soon I'll be offering 430 yard skeins of yarn with Gems Pearl as the base.  I'll still offer the other yarn, which is slightly lighter weight.  What should I call the new sock yarn?  I'm thinking Crown Jewel Sock Yarn.  Or Pearly Sock Yarn?  I want to acknowledge the wonderful product Louet provides in the name.

Today's effort produced 12 skeins of Summer Sunset in the Luxury Sock - 10 of which are already claimed.  And then I played to get a brilliant blue in the DK silk and Luxury sock (front and very back right). 



I still need to skein this, which was dyed in February.  I love the color, which I'm calling Persimmon, and will probably dye some silk in it.



On the work front...  I did The Great Debate in Helene Lipton's health policy class for pharmacy students.  I was the market-oriented health reform advocate, against Kevin Grumbach.  Here is Kevin in his Canada Hat, which was a gift from Hal Luft during their debate a year or two ago.  Hal's on sabbatical, so I got the job!

I asked my students to complete a mid-quarter evaluation, which proved to be exceptionally useful.  I gained some insight as to why some of them have found the reading load to be too high for a 2-unit class.  I anticipated that 80 pages per week of an "educated layperson" type of health journal would take about 2 hours for most, 3 hours max.  But, about 1/3 of the students reported it required more than 3 hours a week, and many wrote in comments that helped me understand why this might be the case.  Nothing like a pile of data, instead of one or two individual complaints, to understand the real issue.  

Anyway, the reason this is on the knitting blog is that two students wrote that they find my knitting during guest lecturer presentations rude.  I found that really interesting, as those of us who knit tend to agree that knitting during such presentations helps us concentrate.  Among us knitters, we take this as gospel truth.  But is it really true?

The articles I've found are available online, at the minimum for those who have access to the UCSF library.  Without further ado, here is what I found:

* An article in Academic Medicine by Lisa Dittrich (2001 Jul;76(7):671  PMID 11448818) in which she cites Polli Klass's essays in which Klass writes how "knitting can help keep them [doctors] focused during staff meetings or classes".  Klass is a highly regarded pediatrician and writer.  The article continues to cite research that knitting helps to relax the mind and may even prevent dementia.  That's great, but it doesn't tell us whether knitting affects listening or comprehension.

From the research world, that's all I could find!  I checked PsychInfo and PubMed, and did a Google search.  I found a slew of blogs that confirmed I'm not the only knitting professor out there, and even found a brief article about an award-winning professor of philosophy who knits avidly during meetings, presentations, and everywhere else. 

Personally, I am a fidgety person, and have a tendency to become distracted, remember something that needs to be put on my to-do list, and then end up disconnected from a presentation.  By knitting, I am keeping my hands busy and my mind with the speaker.  I do not knit anything complicated in these settings, so I don't have to think about the pattern.  Since I know the material being covered in my own class, I don't need to take notes - obviously knitting doesn't work if note-taking is required!  But the two students' comments and the lack of real research on the subject have made me think about how knitting is perceived in various contexts, which is something we all should do.

Some brief notes from Oahu...

1. The kids love boogie-boarding.  At Waimanalo, which is far away from our surf-pounded beach.

2. I had a horrible stress dream about not having my lecture notes done on time for next Wednesday's class.  It's a 160-person class, and I've never taught a class that large before.  I woke up yesterday and worked on my notes for hours, and they are just about done now!

3. I ran out of yarn for the darn Eloise sweater in Blossom!  Yes, that's after I bought 2 extra balls a few weeks ago.  I hoped I'd finish the sleeves so I could assemble it when we get home.  Alas!  I just ordered 2 more balls - even though I think I'll only need one, I am not going to run out again!  I'd post a photo of progress but don't have my camera-computer-connector thingy.

Back to my lecture notes... 

It's vacation time!  Well, sort of.  I'm bringing my laptop, because I have to prepare my lecture for the first session of Health Economics & Policy on the day after we return.  There are a million other work-things I could do, but that's the firm deadline.  DH is bringing his laptop too.  Are we crazy?  Bringing laptops to Hawaii?

Here is the pile of yarn waiting for me to skein and label it when I return...



That's about 16 pounds worth.  Some of it got really tangled, and I am not looking forward to untangling it!

I managed to skein some sock yarn to donate to the Yarn Harlot's Tricoteuses Sans Frontières fundraiser.  This will be a raffle item, so be sure to donate!  I think it will be named Cha-Cha-Cha.



I've been busy packing my projects for the trip.  Overpacking, really.  On the left, some La Lana Phat Silk Fine and the Knitty Branching Out pattern.  In the middle, some ArtYarns Regal Silk and Annie Modesitt's lovely cami pattern.  On the right, some Hand Maiden Silk Rumple for a simple shawl.



And off I go to bed!

1. Teaching.  It's Advanced Quantitative Methods for 2nd year doctoral students.  I'm co-teaching, so I didn't do the first lecture, but I'm doing lectures 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 or something like that.  The students seem to have kept up with me this week... and I didn't see anybody fall asleep.  If anything can put you to sleep, it's this material... unless you're a major data geek like I am.

2. Surveys.  



This baby goes in the mail Monday.  We are surveying 8000 nurses with active California licenses, and 1000 with inactive or recently lapsed licenses.  I doubt any nurses who get the survey are reading this, but... if you get the survey, please please please please fill it out and mail it back!  Or, please go on line to complete it.

3. Socks.



This is the second sock - I've started the heel flap.  The yarn is fun and reasonably comfy, but I think I prefer to do a bit of pattern.  Maybe it's time for another pair of Embossed Leaves?

4. Freezing in Yosemite.  We went camping last weekend at Tuolumne Meadows and it was literally freezing.  So freezing that our water in the water jugs froze.  We wore all our clothes to bed and still were cold.  But, the hiking was beautiful and the days weren't too hot (!!).

There are other things in the works, but no photos.  I am doing cardi in Noro Blossom, swatching some mohair boucle for a pullover, and plotting my next bath of dyeing.  I'm awaiting a bit lot of undyed yarn to attack... including a surprise for a family member!

It just has been one of those weeks.  Something about trying to finish the interview guides for the research project, reviewing all the financial data from the grants, preparing to teach a new course... well, I just have been too tired and busy to knit all week.  It's starting to drive me nuts.  So last night I decided that tonight I was taking a break, watching lame tv and knitting, darn it.  But then there was the financial review.  And then a 3-hour class, for which I'm the teacher, in a room with a missing projector (so much for the powerpoint I so lovingly prepared the night before), and more students than expected so it was hot and cramped.  (I hope they feel like it'll be a good class.)  And then a meeting, and then trying to find a new classroom, and then another meeting... I didn't crack my email until 8pm tonight.

And now I think I'm just too tired to knit.  Has this ever happened to you?  If you say no, I hate you I am truly envious of your composure.  I'm not even sure I can hack of some garter stitch.  We'll see how I feel after the kids go to bed, and after I finish off this Morgan Pinot Noir... thanks to Don for bringing it last Saturday for dinner, and not drinking it all!

Yep, the Tilli Tomas scarf is done. I used a 10 needle, cast on 18 stitches, used purse stitch... I think the scarf would have been better with 15-16 stitches (it would be longer), but ripping out with all those beads is tricky, and the scarf is lucious enough as it is!

I finally got my syllabus online for the class I start teaching Wednesday. Fortunately I've done this class about four times previously so a lot of the work is done. But, I always like to update the readings and come up with new assignments, which is time-consuming.  I guess I'm a bit of a perfectionist.