Fair Isle and Planning

I spent the first part of my week teaching at Dance Camp at my dance studio.  I love teaching at Dance Camp.  I get to teach pretty much whatever I want, doing recreations of classic dances, or even leading a stretch session.  I had my dancers learn the choreography from "All That Jazz", from the 2011 Chicago revival for Musical Theater Day.  I taught my own choreography for a tap dance from "Thoroughly Modern Millie".  And I led an intense barre and stretch session plus ab workout for ballet day.  An intense but fun few days!

In the meantime, I finished reading Joanne Harris's book Holy Fools.  I loved Harris's book Chocolat, and was hoping that the charm would continue.  I have to admit, I wasn't terribly impressed.  It started off really well, but got long and boring very quickly.  She has great characters, great storytelling skills, and places her stories in the gorgeous French countryside, so I was surprised that I didn't enjoy it more.  I might try one more of her books, because I liked Chocolat so much, but so far it's pretty hit and miss.  

I finished the (tiny) thumbs on the Chrysanthemum Mittens, and they're blocking now.  When laying them out, I pulled super hard on the sides of the thumbs, hoping to stretch them out a bit.  A rainy day today means it'll probably take a couple days to dry, so hopefully I'll have pictures soon.  Bleh... I really screwed up on that one.  I'm holding out hope that they fit with the bit of stretching I did, but it might not work.  

My other Christmas knitting project, Heather's Star Hat, is coming along very well.  I finished the brim and finally started the colorwork section.  Hopefully a few days at work will help this one speed along.  :)

My first duty day back at my college is in two weeks, so I'm starting to feel the pressure of getting back into "school" mode.  I need to go over my syllabus, make sure my assignments are in order, flag my lessons that need to be fixed, and create new assignments accordingly.  I have a full teaching load this semester, so I want to get as much done before the semester begins as possible.  

Besides that, my parents have sold my childhood home.  We've lived in that house since I was 2 years old, so it feels really weird to think that after August 28th, it'll belong to someone else.  I'll be heading down early next week to help my Mom begin to pack up our things and (hopefully) get rid of a bunch of stuff not needed.  For example, my parents have a VHS collection that would rival my book collection. :)  This trip means I have the rest of this week to (hopefully) get a bunch done on my school stuff before going into purge mode.  Lots to do in not much time...

Though I may head down to climb at Sandstone tomorrow... after all, it's still summer!