I am not an expert: Level I

Hello, all!

My husband and two of the kids on Father's Day

This past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind around our house. Of course, today was Father's Day and I sincerely hope all you fab dads out there had a great and relaxing day full of attentive pampering. At our house, we also have one daughter heading to high school, which means her 8th grade awards ceremony is this week and a 5-year-old who had a pre-school graduation this past week. Adorable beyond words.

Amy Rose at Pre-School graduation. She's a "school-ager
now, mom."

In other news, on June 11th, I turned 45, which means I plan to pretend to be Molly Shannon's 
SNL character for the next five years and go around saying, "I like to kick! And strrrrrreeeeetch, and KICK!" while kicking in the air and stretching in inappropriate postures whenever I feel like it. It's my prerogative and I have to use it or lose it since 50 is only five years away and I intend to act like a dork forEVER!

In honor of my own personal aging, and in addition to my chronic silliness disease (I think I picked it up from touching the floor and not washing my hands after visiting the Ministry of Silly Walks...), I am doing something exciting, something newish...something terrifying.

I signed up for and am already studying madly for The Master Knitter's Program through The National Knitting Guild Association.

I don't know how ready I am for this, but I do know that I do my best learning through structure, especially when I can combine group brainstorming with going off on my own and pondering/analyzing what I have heard. This is the best possible combination for me to move forward, challenging myself as a knitter.

For the group piece, I will be joining the Tigard, Oregon knitting guild (they are thought to be the hard core folks around Portland and I hear there are several people going through the program there) and I have already joined the Ravelry group for Master Knitter students.

For the thinking on my own piece, I am apparently in luck since I went through that earlier period of what seemed like an incurable urge to purchase all sorts of knitting literature (to my husband's chagrin at the time). It turns out, according to the Master Knitter's reading list, I have already accumulated some good study materials.

I have purchased the large, required binder, 250 page protectors and another wave of reading material from the Master Knitter bibliography (mostly on the history of knitting--I can't believe I didn't have them all). Finally, I have also collected over the past few years what will now be some very helpful classes on Craftsy.

I am armed and ready. And I will be using the blog as a journal (as it should be, right?) for my learning experiences.

I will be posting weekly (or more often maybe, depending on how frustrated or excited I get...I'm pretty excitable.) with my progress, what's on my needles, something new I have researched and learned, where you can find certain helpful resources, etc. You may notice that there are a few new blogs under "blogs I love" to the right margin---> Each time I find a new one for learning, I will add it.

I also want to start a random fact of the week addition to the blog.

Let's start that now.

Random Fact of the Week:

Both wool and silk are very poor conductors of heat. This means that your body heat will be trapped inside the fabrics produced by either one of these fibers, sweaters and stockings alike. Your fancy silk thigh highs may not stand alone as winter wear in International Falls, Minnesota, but they may be hotter it more ways than you think.



Now....let's get knitting!