Back to school

The manchild headed off to 8th grade this morning, grumbling under his breath. Something about "...why....stupid...hate...school....anyway..." It's a shame he doesn't like school more. Except for a few teachers here and there that I didn't particularly get along with, I really enjoyed school. I have to admit that it's different these days. For one thing, I never had as much homework as he does. Last year he often brought home an hour to an hour and a half of homework a night, which I think is a bit excessive for a middle schooler.

What really amazed me when we went to orientation last week was the girls. What a huge difference there is between the girls and the boys in eigth grade! They suddenly look like young women whereas the boys are still all over the place. When he came home, I asked the manchild if he thought the girls looked different and he said "yeah," with this sort of deer in the headlights look. We're still waiting for the BIG change, you know, the voice dropping, hair growing, height shooting overnight morphing. Although the kid already wears size 11 shoes. Surely it won't be long now.

Didn't get much actual knitting done yesterday after all. Instead I changed this:

Into this:

It took pretty much ALL afternoon. Even with my really cute helper (whose name is Kimi). Not sure what possessed me, but decided to get it all done at the same time. Several of these (but not all) are from my pilgrimage to Web's. The four on the left in the back row are ones that I dyed myself. I'm not completely happy with them, I really wanted more vibrant color. The one skein directly in front of those, the sort of orangey one on the left is a skein that I won for getting first place in the "fulling or felting" category at Shepherd's Harvest last spring. How did I win first place? With this guy, isn't he adorable? I got a blue ribbon and everything!

And he still needs a nose. Don't cha just love Fiber Trends?