For Lee L. and other Knitters and Teachers

These past five days have been paper and knitting driven for me. A stack, a BIG stack of research papers has commanded my attention and must be finished by tomorrow. I deal with these grading challenges by separating the papers to be graded into piles of five or six and handling the reading load determined by the number of days I have before they are due back to the students.

It's always easier to grade papers that are well-presented so I experience a little thrill whenever these pop up in the pile. It's horrid and even painful when the papers are so bad that I can easily tell that they were thrown together at the last minute. It's even worse when I know I've worked hard to teach the research process at a level where it can be understandable for students. That's the part that bothers me the most. And that's why I try to turn up new teaching tricks every time this comes up in the curriculum. And I won't even say anything about the MLA changing the format for Works Cited entries.

At the same time that I'm grading these papers, I am also working to complete a knitting project that I'm not supposed to be working on. It's the one for the baby sweater that I bought the yarn and pattern for at our all girl beach retreat. Peg and Tracie took us to this yarn store I didn't even know existed after all the times I've stayed in Seaside. Of course I had to buy a project in spite of the fact that I have two projects underway and others waiting in my stash. But this project is tempering the pressure I feel to get the papers graded. "Five more papers and I can work on my knitting for a while" has become the mantra for this five day period. And my thinking constantly returns to the challenge of figuring out just exactly what the pattern means for the sleeve knitting portion of the project.

So paper reading and a new knitting project rule the current world for me. Hmm. . .but then there's Season Two of "Breaking Bad" to factor in.