Days of blue on white

Between Thursday and Friday nights, it snowed, it hailed, it rained; it sent down slush from the sky. When I awoke Saturday morning, the world looked like this:

I'd hoped it would keep snowing all day - what a perfect excuse to read and/or knit, but instead we're just left with the messy, slushy cleanup effort. I've been doing some reading because I got precious little done this past week, due to my students having questions about their mid-semester papers. I've also been knitting, however:

I might be crawling out of the knitting slump, finally. Last night I dreamed I was in a yarn store, touching beautiful lace yarns for shawls. That's probably because I determined last night that I'd start this:

It's not a sock! Does anyone recognize the pattern? I've just finished chart 1 in that photo and am into chart 2 for the long haul!

I expect that I'll get a lot of knitting done between Monday and Wednesday, as Coffeeboy and I are flying off for his dissertation defense. I'm bringing some books, of course - but ones I want to read more carefully so that I can haul fewer books. I'll be waiting in the same building as his defense, so I imagine I might switch from work to the shawl at some point out of nervousness. Kind of like hospital knitting except he's not actually ill or anything, "just" defending his dissertation!

Meanwhile, Juniper (and Mage - not shown) will be holding down the fort back home, catching up on some much-neglected reading...

"The books make the shelf bow... really, it's the books, not my girth!"

When I get home on Wednesday evening, I'll have two full days of spring break left - not enough time to do all the work I need to do, but still better than nothing. Between reading for my fourth exam and grading student papers, I'd say I'll have plenty to keep me busy while Coffeeboy is at his on-campus interview on Wednesday-Thursday!