As I continued my Spring Clean, I have been plagued with frogs. Ms. Emerald’s Scarf – frogged for redesign, Ms. Emerald’s Redesigned Scarf – frogged for design problems with the new design (maybe I am not ready for design), Rose’s towels – frogged for gauge issues, Dublin Bay socks – frogged for yarn/design incompatibilities. Pomatomus socks – destined to be at least partially frogged for lack of yarn but I haven’t had the heart to frog them yet. It seems that most of my knitting lately has ended up in the frog pond. I will be glad when the curse is lifted.

I did manage to complete one Spring Cleaning project – my hubby’s Christmas Father’s Day sweater.

It almost hit the frog pond too but I chose ignore the mistake in honor of the time already invested with the silly thing. If you want to knit for your hubby, marry a short guy. These long torso sweaters get boring. The color is still not right in the photo but I give up. My camera has a mental block against burgundy.

I got practically no knitting done this week because I was teaching at VBS. So my time was occupied preparing materials for my class. I had a wild bunch of 1st and 2nd graders but they were a lot of fun. Thursday night I couldn’t stand the separation from knitting needles any longer so I cast on a skirt for myself.

It is a modification of Indigo Ripples from Interweave Knits Spring 2007. I am lengthening the skirt and adjusting the increases to match my shorter, curvier torso. As you can see, I have a very long way to go.

My hubby had the day off Friday so he drove us to VBS which allowed me the opportunity to knit on the way. It was a good thing I carried my knitting with me because we had a most eventful morning. There are two kids who live across the street from the church building who have a rough home situation. While we welcome them to events and have tried to help them in every way we could on numerous occasions, we have also had some problems with them – behavioral problems as well as vandalism and petty theft. Friday they were in top form. Within 15 minutes of arriving, they had stolen some supplies from one class room, hit a child, given the stolen items to another child to get him in trouble and stuffed paper towels down one of the toilets and flushed it causing the two rooms on either side of the bathroom to be flooded with water from the toilets. I spent the next 15 minutes mopping. I was so frustrated by the situation that I went upstairs to my classroom and pulled out my knitting to calm myself before I had to face a classroom full of first and second graders. I was knitting quietly when there was a tap on the door. One of the little boys from my class came in and wanted to know what I was doing. I explained that I had come upstairs for some quiet time after having to clean up the mess that had been made in the restroom. He then proceeded to tell me about his grandmother who knitted “things to go on the bed”. We had a very nice conversation about knitting while I clicked away on the needles. After about 5 minutes, I was calm and ready to deal with my class. The moral of the story is “Five minutes of knitting is worth a hour of therapy and a whole lot cheaper!!”