Life is a highway...

It was hard to stop in Columbia, once I finally got here. It's weird to stay on one Interstate for so long, just driving ever westward. I crossed a skinny Mississippi River and played my road trip soundtracks (more later). I tried to take pictures and send them mobile-ly to the blog but that's not working for me right now.

Road Trip 2007 Soundtrack
Careful-Guster
Route 66--Chuck Berry (I was only on it for a moment)
Sugar Cane --Mary Gauthier
Down at the Twist & Shout --Mary Chapin Carpenter
Stolen Car -- Patty Griffin
Beer Town--Session Americana (St. Louis, obviously)
Everybody's Talkin' -- Madeline Peyroux
Haven't I Been Good -- Katryna & Nerissa Nields
Brother Lee -- Citizen Cope (both sides of the Mississippi)
River -- Madeline Peyroux (the only version I have on CD)
Into your Arms -- Lemonheads
People Look Around -- Catie Curtis
Money for Floods -- We're About 9 (the quintessential Missouri song, by Richard Shindell)
Tomorrow Night -- Jennifer Kimball (written by Patty Griffin)
Amaze Me -- Girlyman

I played Carrie Newcomer all the way through Indiana, knowing that sense of place shapes her songs, looking for the places. Early Sunday morning, though, light traffic, a good front door--I wasn't in Indiana very long.

I will be blogging what I can of the Institute. There's a woman I should remember from LSU but I don't, and a woman who teaches at Natchez High--can't wait to pick her brain. Hopefully tonight will be mostly social and I can start learning names!

Pack up all my cares and woes....

I'm going to Missouri!

I will be a fellow at the American Society of Newspaper Editors Journalism Education Institute, at University of Missouri, in Columbia, MO, for two weeks. Wow, that's a mouthful. Basically, I get to study scholastic journalism at the home of scholastic journalism; no one thought journalism was teachable until Missouri began teaching it. It's very odd to me that they call their school "MU", which defies journalistic style! There's a lot of contention with school names in Louisiana. We LSU alumni had to fight to keep those Cajuns from becoming "UL". They only finally got the name change because they got a woman in the governor's mansion!

Today I will be packing, which will freak the cats out. I just hope I remember everything I need!

I'm going to blog my trip & journalism stuff while I'm there, because I will probably have the Journalism I classes make their own blogs. Also, we're supposed to talk about blogs at least a little bit at the Institute.

First Pictures!

Chocolate-Mint cookies from Maida Heater. They might be the best cookies I've ever made. I will try to send a sample to my cookie-tester, but I don't feel confident they will survive to Saturday, much less survive a plane flight with dynaboy.






We have been travelling lately. I think this is from Cambridge.






On the needles: Mason-Dixon washrag in lavender and yellow.











This blogging stuff is kind of fun. Guess I should try to get some readers. Or not. If anyone stumbles across this, please tell me how you got here and especially if you have a blog, how you got readers. I'm gearing up to ask for help with the knitting, so I guess I do want readers. I find it very hard to ask for help at either of my LYS's. Usually, I'm making up a pattern, or I didn't by the yarn there, or something stops me.

Take a deep breath...

and update the blog.

Obviously I'm not really ready to do this, but I'm going to try. I long to add pictures--give me time.

I re-vamped a sideways knitted sweater from some magazine (Knit 1, maybe) to be a back to front sweater. It's Maggi's Linen, in a lovely lavender. I think the idea of knitting a sweater in one piece like this will really work for me, and I can probably make it sort-of V-necked. It might come out a little too vest-y.

I'm knitting a MDK kimono in Tofutsies, doubled, in that shocking pink-orange-red combo, for a girl whose nickname so far is "the snorty pig". I think she needs a little feminine luxury.

Since no one is reading this but me, I will at least use it to plan my next project, which I want to be Tomato from No Sheep for You. First, I have to check the book out from the library again! Then I'll have to run down some Blue Sky cotton. Heading to Cambridge, MA and Concord, NH this weekend. I want to convince my mom to drive down to Noho to WEBS, but we'll see.

Pictures if I finish something!

Clearly I am suffering from delusions of free time...

I am no longer, in the words of the Mason-Dixon Knitting ladies, "sadly blogless". This means I will be able to participate in the one-skein swap of non-wool yarn this summer! Yay!

However, it means I have lost my mind. I do not need to blog. I need to knit. I know how I am; I will spend too much time playing with colors and fonts and posting pictures. It must be because my yearbook class finally finished this year's book and I am desperate for a project. Never mind that I'd like to finish my first sweater before the first hot day, if a hot day ever arrives.

I have tried to blog before, thematically, even, and failed miserably, so who knows if this will even take.