Anticipation

I can't believe how fast November is going and how soon Thanksgiving is approaching! It is one of my favorite holidays, I love getting together with my family and kicking off the winter season, but I am facing it with some trepidation this year. I'm working on a final draft of my master's thesis and trying to get the data and everything pulled together to give to my professor before the break and it has gotten quite down-to-the-wire. My mom would say that I do my best work under this kind of pressure and while that might be true, I still hate it. I haven't slept well in weeks and I spend 95% of my time in front of this computer. It's getting old, to say the least. Plus, it's super difficult to work all the time when pretty things like this keep arriving in the mail:

 

That is Bugga in Colorado Hairstreak 2.0. I love how the colorway names are based on the insect and invertebrate species that inspire the colors. Here's what a Colorado Hairstreak looks like, in case you were wondering:

Beautiful, and I think they got it spot on! What's also neat is this skein is a commemorative colorway created for the moving of one of my favorite wish-it-were-really-local yarn stores, The Loopy Ewe, from St. Louis to Colorado. The shop is wonderful, they ship super quickly and carry great yarn lines. I specifically requested a skein that had less of the brown and more of the blue/purple and the Loopy elves really came through! It's perfect. I think it is destined to become a Magrathea Shawl:

Picture from pattern page, by Maltina on Ravelry

I've had that shawl queued forever. Not only is it an interesting shape and full of garter stitch goodness (which I love), it's named after a planet in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, one of my favorite authors of all time. Clearly, I must knit it ASAP.

Except I have other things to finish first. Like the Sunset Shawl I started a few weeks ago that got stalled because I worked on it during a road trip and got off by a stitch for several of the edging repeats and needed time to concentrate in order to frog back successfully (which I loathe):

 

It's further along than the picture shows here, but you get the idea-- that cabled edging is repeated around the entire semi-circle of the shawl body. It's a very pretty pattern with interesting construction and since I'm knitting it in Malabrigo Twist, it is of course ridiculously soft. And then there's the cowl design I started and the hat I want to knit to match my favorite holiday shawl and this and that and this and that, etc.

Things I'm anticipating:

• finishing this thesis draft
• traveling to see family
• finishing Sunset Shawl
• starting/finishing/wearing matching hat
• starting Magrathea shawl
• FINISHING MY MASTER'S AND HAVING TIME TO KNIT (Siiiigh... Jan. 5th is still so far away.)

What about you, dear readers, what are you all waiting for?

P.S. It would be awesome if some experienced bloggers could fill me in on blog etiquette. I've found that I keep wishing this was more like Ravelry where I could reply to individual comments on the page and have the commenter see or be notified about my reply, but I don't think that happens. How do you handle replies? Do you e-mail your reply to the commenter? Does this get to be too much e-mail? Please help a newbie out if you can, it would be much appreciated! :)