Thank God It's Friday!

It's finally Friday, the last day of finals week. At approximately 1:30 this afternoon, I will be free as a bird. I have my last exam at 11:30 and then, finito! What do I plan to do with all of my free time? Knit! That's right baby! I've got a goal to finish a gift for my husband by Christmas, but I don't want him to see me working on it. I want it to be a surprise. I'm going to make the Laptop Case pattern that was in the Fall 2005 issue of Interweave Knits. It's not actually going to be used for a laptop, but rather a Wacom tablet that he uses for drawing that he wants protected from scratches. He requested a solid color, but I said that if I was going to make it, it had to be stripes to keep me interested. So, the actual item is not a surprise, but he has no idea of the colors or that he's getting it for Christmas, or even that I've started working on it (which I haven't actually, but that's neither here nor there).

It took me a while to choose the colors but I think I came up with something that will be pretty. He said he wanted earthtones (why do men like such boring colors?), so I think these are a good choice:

On Wednesday, I was trying to decide what my next project would be since I had finished the knitting portion of Vittadini. Well, my decision was...drumroll please... I didn't start anything! I'm such a nerd, I swear. I felt that I should keep working on a WIP. Something has come over me lately that I just don't understand. I no longer buy tons of yarn to make enough projects for the next 10 years. I now tend to knit up what I buy. I no longer itch to start a million projects at once or insist that they be completed in 5 minutes. Maybe knitting has finally taught me patience, and that would be a good thing. It may have also taught me to finish what I start and follow through on things. So, that being said, I finished the back of Chill, complete with my first intarsia pattern. I'm not sure it looks that great, but I was excited all the same.

Finally, I decided to go ahead and start a mindless project for when I'm watching TV or on the phone or whatever. Plus, I'm in a scarf frame of mind right now, fashion-wise. I keep picking up scarves in stores to buy, both knitted and otherwise, and I have to stop myself because the ones I can afford in a store are acrylic (horrors!) and I can make something better myself. So, here's my Polar scarf after about an hour of knitting. This should be a nice quick knit and I'll be able to wear it over the holidays. This yarn is so soft and unbelievable that I believe the execs at Rowan should have their heads examined for discontinuing it. That reminds me, had anybody out there in cyberspace heard that Rowan was bought out by Coats and Clark recently? Recently meaning in the last few months or a year or something. This isn't something that happened yesterday. But that could explain some of their more questionable business decisions of late, and perhaps the departure of designer Kim Hargreaves. Anyway, just something to ponder. Wish me luck on my final!