We leave a week from today for Maryland. I'll be house-sitting for my in-laws while they take our girls to Italy for 10 days. The girls are looking forward to the trip. This will be DD#1's third trip to Europe and DD#2's first. I have lots of fun stuff planned for myself while they are traveling:

June 18th: I'll be teaching at The Mannings Handweaving Studio in East Berlin, PA. This wonderful shop is only about 30 minutes from where the husband and I lived right after we graduated from college. I have many wonderful memories of trips to The Mannings and I am hoping to get to see familiar faces while I am there. I'll also get to meet one of my test knitters, Jamie, who lives in PA. Yay!

June 22nd: I'll be teaching Fitting Your Knitting at Vulcan's Rest Fibers in Chesapeake City, MD. This cute little town is about an hour north of Chestertown, where the husband and I attended Washington College (we graduated in 1988—seems like forever ago). I also plan to have lunch with one of our friends from college, who lives and works in Chesapeake City.

June 25th: It's a full day of classes at Woolstock, in Glyndon, MD, home of the lovely Leslye Solomon. I'll be teaching Infinitely Interesting Cables and Colorizing Cables.

June 26th: Frivolous Fibers, in St. Michaels, MD, is my host for another round of Fitting Your Knitting, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

In between, I have a trip to Washington D.C. scheduled; I am doing some research for a knitting article and some of the information I need can only be had at one of the D.C. public libraries. I'll also spend some time visiting my college roommate and her husband.

Beyond that, my only other plan is to knit. I am slowly gathering a bunch of projects to take with me: some need to be finished, some need to be reknit in other yarns, and some are swatches for some of my classes that need some tweaking. If I get all the miscellany taken care of, I plan to reward myself by starting an Aran.

Before we leave, though (don't you love the serial prepositions?), I've got a teaching gig this weekend at the Big Sky Fiber Festival in Hamilton, MT. This is an every-other-year event—if I recall correctly, DD#1 was only 3 or 4 when the first one was held. I'm teaching Infinitely Interesting Cables, Better Beginnings and Elegant Endings, and Short Row Savvy. I spent this morning working on my handout for the short row class, and I am just tickled with it, plus it helped me refine a project idea I've been kicking around in my head lately. That's always a bonus.

I'm waiting on my transcription final exam test results, which I will get on or around June 16. I think I did well on the test. Yesterday, a friend of mine who teaches at my daughter's elementary school and does transcription work on the side gave me the name of the company she works for. When I get back from the east coast (and hopefully with an excellent grade on my final), I plan to contact them and see if I can start working.

I do want to spend some serious time this summer attending to my knitting. It's been woefully neglected for the past nine months. I think that part of me really needed the hiatus, but I don't want the knitting to just drift away completely. It's too important to me to let that happen, so stay tuned.