Yarn Chicken

Good Morning,

I am still trying to get myself back on Pacific Time and trying to figure out how to work every day and have some energy left after work for ... well... ANYTHING.  This week I have been sleeping poorly, waking at midnight, 2, 3 and finally giving up and getting up around 4:30.  The one good thing is that I am making it to the gym by 5:15 ish to walk and ride the stationary bike for an hour before work.  I hope to stay at the fitness level I reached on my trip, and there is no way I will have any energy to work out after work.  But this means that by 8 pm I am dead on my feet.  Also, I am running errands after work/school so I'm not doing much more than shopping for food, cooking dinner, eating dinner, and maybe, maybe knitting a few rows before crashing into bed.  I will get more energy as the weeks progress and I get on a better sleep schedule.

So, I want to force you all to look at my vacation slides, but I plan to do some mini-posts rather than some giant ones.  I don't have as much time to blog now, and I really want to figure out how I will fit this in to my new Working Girl schedule.  Blogging has been so much fun these last few years, I need to keep it up.

The Trip
So First I just want to blog about the plane ride to Europe.  We left on a Sunday morning because we went to the wedding of dear family friends the evening before.  Remember the Wedding Afghan?

We flew to Newark, NJ (this is Newark in the foreground and Manhattan across the river)

arriving mid afternoon because of the time change and had a 2 hour lay over.

We left for Berlin, Germany at about 5:30 pm.  Why Berlin?  It was the cheapest city in Germany to fly to.  This was my first mistake.



Honestly, I am horrible at geography, and my thoughts were, "Germany is a pretty small country, right?"  I mean, most countries in Europe are smaller than the state of Washington, so how far can it be from one city to another?  Well, it can be a 6 hour train ride.  But that is the next story.

We should have flown into Munich, even though it cost a bit more.  Our smart thing we did was to take an Ambien immediately after boarding the plane in Newark.  Doc got us a prescription for 4 each.  One for the long plane rides, and 1 for the first night after landing to help reset our clocks.  I never sleep on airplanes, and I was able to get in at least 4 hours on the flight over.  Moogie slept the whole way.  We were tired when we arrived, but not exhausted.

Here we are leaving Seattle:

and here we are arriving in Berlin:

My New Job
I just realized that I haven't really written much if anything about my new job.  I have a job working in the Bellevue School District as an Instructional Aide at one of the Middle Schools.  They are doing a big push to "close the achievement gap" in Math for the low income students and students of color.  There are 3 of us aides, and we will work with the 5 Math teachers who teach the regular math classes (there is one more Math teacher who only teaches the advanced gifted classes).  The schedule is "Bell to Bell."  So, this means that I start at 8:45am and get off at 3:30pm though this might be extended to 4:30pm so I can help in the after school homework program.  I just love all 5 of the teachers.  I really love the 2 other aides.  The aides have been so welcoming though they are my kids' ages.  It's fun being back in a classroom in a school that is MY school, though I enjoy subbing.  I think I will enjoy the chance to teach math without the pressure and responsibility of being the Teacher.  Last year I only worked an average of 3 days each week, so the 5 day thing is exhausting. 

Finally Knitting
I didn't knit that much on my trip because I was so busy during the day, and often exhausted at night, until we reached London.  I did knit on the planes and the train down to Passau.  I managed to finish the mittens for the Detroit Achievement Academy on the planes.

They are kind of big; I hope there is a kid with fat hands.  But for my first mittens (and double knit at that!) I like how they came out.  I started and finished 2 hats while riding the Tube in London back and forth from the flat in the East End (more on that later) where I stayed to Central London where Moogie is going to school.

I didn't have enough navy yarn to make matching mittens for the checkered hat, so on Sept 1 I started another hat for the school on the 10 hour plane ride home.  I tried taking an Ambien for that flight too, but as it was morning, it didn't work as well and I only slept for about 1 hour.  Well, I got a ton of knitting done, instead.  The new term for the HPKCHC has begun, and I thought I might as well get going on something for a class.  First I wove in the ends of the mittens and the 2 navy hats so I could get credit for Detention (this is where you finish a WIP), then I started a stripped hat.

This is not completely finished as I will put some tassels on the corners.  At first I was knitting 3 rows of white and 2 of navy blue, but I noticed that the navy was running out so I had to stretch the white more.  I really wanted to do a 3 needle bind off using the navy.

See the little bit of navy end?  That is all the yarn I had left after the bind off.  Yarn Chicken!

Peace,
f1bercat
shaping the planet from Bellevue, WA