Saturday (again?)

Yesterday felt like Saturday. We didn't have school -- it was our last remaining day of Spring Break. The earlier part of the week we were in school to make up snow days. And flood days.

I had made an appointment to take my car in to the dealership to take care of a recall. But since the nearest VW dealer is 150 miles away, in St. Louis, I wanted to make sure they went over it and took care of anything else that needed to be done. So they asked if I could leave it first thing in the morning. The easiest way to do that was to go up Thursday, stay in a hotel, and take the car to them. They got me a rental car to use while they worked on mine. My son went with me, and we went to the Gateway Arch.

He'd been there before, but had never taken the tram ride to the top. So we did that -- it was a gray day, but we could still see pretty far. The view from inside the top of the Arch, on the Missouri side:

After the Arch, we went to Kirkwood Knittery to buy Stitch n' Pitch tickets. This year, the St. Louis game is May 28th, so it won't be as hot as last year's August game. I might have also found some Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed on sale, and purchased 2 colors. Unfortunately, not enough of either one to make a sweater, and I don't think they'd really go together too well. But I remedied that with an order from the Knitting Garden this morning. Now I'll have enough for 2 sweaters! I'll work out any dyelot issues later. The dark green is #408 Cedar; the dark brown is #411 Granary.

My daughter needed shoes (I think I'm going to have to start calling her Imelda), so she drove up from Springfield to meet us in St. Louis so I could buy her some shoes. Fortunately, she already knew what she wanted, and where to get them, so all I had to do was pay for them.

While we were eating lunch, the dealership called and said my car was ready. We headed back that way to return the rental car. Then the phone rang again. They were very apologetic, but something had gone wrong with the car, and they would need to keep it over the weekend. All the VW techs had gone home until Monday. They would arrange for me to keep the rental car all weekend. So we finished our shopping and headed home (150 miles) in the rental. I guess I'll have to get a substitute for my afternoon classes on Monday so I can go back & get my car. There goes my (potential) perfect attendance bonus for this semester.

Sock Madness round 2 pattern was emailed on Monday. By Wednesday night, this was as far as I'd gotten on the first sock of the pair.

It's a completely reversible sock, with a garter stitch short row heel and garter stitch sole. It's going very slowly. I made very little additional progress Thursday or Friday. When I checked the divisions this morning, there were 17 finished in my division. The first 20 advance to the next round this time. Since I'm still working on the first sock, I think I'm pretty much out of the running. So I'm going to make some modifications and finish these my way. I have ripped back to the beginning of the heel. I'm doing an eye-of-partridge heel flap, and I'll do a stockinette sole and standard toe.

The sun is shining, and the grass is green (after all the rain we've had, the sun is a real relief, and the grass has been well watered!). My son walked outside & said he thinks he's going to have to mow the yard. Spring has sprung!