Monday, August 20, 2012

Aaaaaand we're back!

I hope everyone had a wonderful First Day of School today.  It's really good to be back at the books.  And speaking of which, there were two boxes of new books waiting for me at my desk.  Inside these books were some titles I know the students will be excited for, including these:
 

Some other books that will be coming out soon that I'm pretty excited about are:
 


I have lots to do to get the library ready for classes, but hopefully it'll only take 2 or three weeks.  While you are waiting, you can go to the Marshall Lane Catalog and add reviews of books you've read over the summer.  Also, you can email me with any book requests you might have. 

See you around campus!

Monday, August 6, 2012

More knitting than reading

Holy cow!  Some time since my last post my blog got it's 10,000th hit.  That's kind of mind boggling.  My blog has been viewed, to date, 10,086 times.  I don't think I've won the Internet yet, still, I'm kind of excited about that.

Anyway.  I've been doing quite a bit of knitting this summer but not so much audio book listening.  This is because I've been reading A Storm of Swords, the third book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin.  This is the series on which the HBO show Game of Thrones is based.  I finished the book last week and it was pretty amazing.  Mr. Martin has a way of getting you emotionally invested in certain characters and then stabbing you in the heart.  More than once I found myself shaking my fist at the ceiling and shouting "Curse you, Martin!"  I was going to wait until next summer to read the 4th book, but I find that I just can't wait to see what happens to these characters.  So I'm on to A Feast for Crows.  I'll get back to kids books soon.

So what have been knitting you probably are not asking yourself.  Well, I'll tell you anyway.  I've designed and written another pattern.  This time for a hat.  Here's a picture of it.

And here's a picture of it in a smaller size.

I'm calling this one the Spider Lace Summer Hat.  I call it that because the lacy part has 8 "legs" to it.  The yellow one is made from a hemp and cotton blend yarn, which makes light and cool and perfect for spring and summer.  The blue one is made from a lovely alpaca yarn which makes it perfect for the fall.  I'm going to be selling this pattern on my Ravelry site so if you'd like to make this hat for yourself, you'll be helping me support my yarn habit.  I'll add the link here as soon as it is up.

As promised, here is a link: