Packages

My father is not very good at mailing things, and, thus, I don't feel too badly that I won't mail off his Father's Day/Birthday gift until tomorrow. I distinctly remember receiving last year's birthday gift from him six months late. I have come to accept that timeliness doesn't matter--it's the thought that counts. (You see, I come by my procrastinating mailing habits totally honestly.)

The difficulty arises when I am sending packages to people other than family, or perhaps institutions with deadlines. This was the case with all of my application materials to Tel Aviv University for their Summer Yiddish Program. As early as December I decided that I would attend this program; yet, my application materials slid in just before the deadline months later. Luckily everything has worked out, and the little package made its way around the world to show someone in Israel that I will probably be a good addition to their program--probably.

Anyway, I am leaving in one week. Crazy.... I will speak of this more at another time. Back to my father's package...

When I was in Portland in December I picked up some lovely alpaca yarn with the intention of knitting my father a scarf. The results were fairly exciting. I wanted to do something with a slip stitch pattern that would look almost checkered. After experimenting with a variety of stitch patterns that I found online and a few I happened to memorize while loitering in the bookstore, I discovered the one I was looking for. Here are the results:

I hope you all like this picture. It's my first experiment with taking pictures of my knitting with the digital camera Kelly kindly lent to me. I decided to get creative with a shrub across the street. I think it works. Tomorrow the little scarf will start its travels up to Portland. I hope my dad likes it!