It's been one heck of a summer -- as evidenced by the, um, ONE post I wrote in a four month period. Summer brought a lot of work, a lot of wedding planning, a lot of travel, and a lot of knitting, though never as much as I would like, of course. And NO screaming autistic children. It was beautiful.
In light of the no-posting-for-four-months situation, I have decided to be a good blogger and actually come up with a PLAN for catching up on my blogging. One that will fill you in on all the HolyKnittery without overwhelming me. This plan does eventually involve pictures. But it seems like every time I sit down to blog, my husband is not home -- and since he is the person with the little picture-saving card in his phone, it does me no good to attempt to blog while he is away, because he takes his phone with him. Sigh. One of these days I'll get it figured out.
Meanwhile, here's what I did this summer. I'm putting the probably-not-so-brief overview here, and then subsequent posts will flesh out the details with good stories, actual pictures, and maybe the occasional link or yarn store review or theological music and what-have-you.
First of all, summer brought lots of travel. I need to go all the way back to
April for the explanation stuff. That super-important meeting I mentioned having to go to? The one I was kind of nervous about? The one that's sort of like a dissertation defense, except people can ask you questions that are completely unrelated to anything (like, really personal stuff)? Yeah, passed it with flying colors. The people who showed up (anyone in the geographical region can come) grilled me for an hour and a half (a really long time for this kind of thing), then sent me out of the room to talk about me and vote. According to the moderator, that part went something like this:
Moderator: Let's open this up for discussion. Does anyone have anything they'd like to say about HolyKnitter's paper or answers today?
Gathering: [insert crickets chirping]
Moderator: No one stepping forward, do we have a motion to vote, and a second?
Somebody: So moved.
Somebody Else: Second.
Moderator: All those in favor of approving HolyKnitter to circulate her Profile, please say Aye.
Gathering: AYE!
Moderator: All those opposed?
Gathering: [insert crickets chirping]
Moderator: Well, then, [Committee Chair], please go get HolyKnitter and her family.
[I enter the room]
Gathering: [insert standing ovation]
Suffice it to say, I didn't know what to expect, but I certainly wasn't expecting that!
I took me about a month or so to get my Profile (which is kind of like a cross between a CV and an FBI dossier, complete with background check to make sure I'm not going to embezzle the church funds or anything) ready to send out, and then another month or so for the Central Office to get their side of things together and actually send it out. It went out in July, and I've gotten a great response, which has been HUGE for my confidence level. I've already turned down two pseudo-offers, and a church I really like is flying me and my husband up sometime next month. (Olivia, this is NOT public knowledge at Dad's!)
Job search? Successfully launched. Which means now we're getting our house ready to sell, which is a lot of work. But we have no major structural problems or anything like that, it's just a lot of decluttering and painting.
But I digress. Back to summer travel.
June was huge. My husband is a mild-mannered English teacher by day, but by night he's an Improv Comedy Rock God -- he makes the music and sound effects for a local improv theater, and he's one of the few people in the world who can do what he does and do it well. He is in High Demand because he is So Talented, and he was invited to spend two weeks in Edmonton, Alberta playing most of the shows for a big improv festival there. Just a few days before he came back, I flew to Boston to visit my sister and her hubby, and then went to Hartford, CT, for my denomination's big bi-annual national meeting. It was huge, because this year was also our 50th anniversary. There were nearly 10,000 people there. I went to do some networking for the job search. It's awfully hard to network in a room of 10,000, but I managed to meet almost everybody I'd hoped to meet, and some very good things came out of those meetings. Definitely a worthwhile trip, both professionally and personally. On top of that, I did some quality knitting and engaged in some enjoyable yarn tourism, which I will include in a later post.
When I returned home from that trip, I had a two-day laundry turnaround. Then my husband and I hopped on another plane and went to my parents' house for ten days (ten days! It's been at least five years since I've been able to spend more than a weekend with them. It was wonderful.) to do a bunch of wedding planning, have some Fourth of July fun, and go to a friend's wedding in Northern Iowa. We accomplished everything we set out to do and more, and went back home.
The next day, my sister arrived in Atlanta. The day after that, my two best friends who don't live in Atlanta flew in -- and five of us went up to a rented cabin in the North Georgia Mountains for a weekend of serious bacheloretting, which includes wine:
...and pie:
We also accidentally found North Carolina, but those pictures are still trapped in my phone.
After that weekend, I had one delicious weekend of not going anywhere or doing anything (much). The next weekend, we hopped in the car and DROVE to my parents' house 1000 miles away. *I* love the drive. My husband didn't like it so much, but he'll learn. And the insane number of things that went wrong with my car (we spent the vast majority of the drive with our accelerator holding together with only the power of prayer and florist wire) made the drive a little more nerve racking than it otherwise would have been. But again, it was a productive (and necessary) trip. We took up a whole bunch of vases and things we needed for the wedding, and we left my car at my parents' house so we could drive it back to Atlanta loaded with presents. And boy was it loaded with presents!
We flew back to Atlanta for a week and a half of work and one-car life (which is HARD in Atlanta, especially when you live in the 'burbs), and then flew back up north for the wedding and the State Fair. And then drove back down to Atlanta and went back to work on Wednesday.
And now here I am. Married. Looking for jobs. Trying to sell the house. And blogging. I fully intend to blog more (remember: I have a PLAN! This plan involves something like five more posts already somewhat outlined and photofied), but I also fully intend to get a job, sell the house, and move somewhere. And, y'know, if those things get in the way of the blogging, then so be it.
One last thing: I did see the Yarn Harlot in Atlanta this week. That gets its own entry, because I now have my very own Yarn Harlot Story. But I just wanted to say that I greatly enjoyed meeting Aimee from Charlotte and I'm flattered by her knitter crush on me, and I think you should all support her in her efforts to raise money for the Lupus Walk! Go, Aimee, go! Woooo!
So, a year ago back in June, a church member (awesome woman with tons of connections to my hometown) had a baby. This past June, Baby Ben had his first birthday. And because this kid is so awesome -- and his mom is so awesome -- I decided that I couldn't just show up at his birthday party with a card, watch him get cake all over his face, and then leave. No, I needed to knit this kid something as awesome as he is.
