Time to smell the roses?

First, I want to say "Thanks" for the kind words about my Odessa. Dear Lynn likes it too, which is the most important thing. Now, onto other business.

For months I have concealed my urge to warm the hearts and necks of nice eastern Europeans I met while I was abroad during the summer. The dam has burst, and I am well into knitting three little scarves destined for a long journey east. First, of course, I have to knit a scarf for Agi, the clever girl from Budapest who kindly made me her companion for trekking the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I just hope she likes the yarn I got for her.


Olive green and pink isn't a color combination I normally reach for, but I picked this yarn because I couldn't resist the way it makes me think of rosebushes in full bloom. Agi can be critical sometimes, and I am worried that I should have picked a safer color, but, hopefully, she will also see roses. I think this stitch pattern (is it called "herring bone"?) shows off the yarn's color variations to great effect. It's Malabrigo Yarn, a kettle dyed pure merino wool, which is amazingly soft for 100% wool. I'm zipping along on this scarf and will probably finish this weekend, but I should probably be spending more time working on other things. What things? Let's zoom out a bit, shall we?


Ready for a shocker: school starts next week. (Now imagine me repeatedly hitting my head against a wall.)

Sometimes I can be a big old procrastinator, and I haven't exactly been rushing to take my qualifying exams. I saw a member of my QE committee about a week ago, and he introduced me to someone as "the girl who's afraid of QEing." Ouch! My biggest resolution is to finish this up ASAP, which means I have a BUNCH of reading to do/review and writing to finish. To be honest, I started to get depressed yesterday while I was with Dan at a bookstore because I couldn't help thinking about all of the knowledge I am lacking in my chosen fields. Do I have time to smell the roses? Probably not, but it's cold in eastern Europe.