It's Monday Again

I don't know about you, but just about every weekend, I have a secret hope for a Groundhog Day-type occurrence in which I wake up on Monday but it's not Monday yet. That didn't happen this morning, sorry to say. I'm sure the day will come when I don't dread the start of the week, but today is not that day. That's okay -- I've had my coffee and will deal with this day as it unfolds.

I was very monogamous with my knitting this weekend and focused on my shawl. It's hard to really see the progress, but I have used more than half of my main color, so I know I'm getting there. You can see the shift in the gradient of my contrast colors now:

I joined in the third of the five mini skeins yesterday; I'm not doing a certain number of stripes with each one but rather trying to use about the same amount of yarn from each. Obviously because the rows get longer with each repeat, that means fewer total stripes in each as I get further into the shawl, but that's just fine with me. I'm happy with the way this is knitting up, I've got the pattern rows memorized, and I even came up with a good name for the pattern over the weekend. So now I'll just have to finish the sample and formally write up the instructions from my scribbled notes.

Though Friday ended up being a long day (my boss sent me a load of work in the afternoon that I was not expecting), I did not mind because I had an amazing stroke of luck in the morning. I think I have mentioned that there are several Free Little Libraries in my neighborhood that I pass in my exercise route every day. I always peek in them as I pass, even though most of the time what's in them are the same books that have been there for a while. Occasionally there's something new to see, and I've been lucky enough to find some good books from time to time. On Friday, though, I hit the jackpot:

Take a close look at that -- click the photo if you need to in order to read what that gold sticker says. I've had this book on hold at the library since it came out and had a long wait, to the point where I was just about ready to buy a copy. Now, I don't need to -- and I've got a collector's edition to boot! Whoever put it there appeared to have only read a little of it before giving up (the front flap of the dust jacket was marking a spot only a handful of pages in); their loss is my gain! I did thoroughly confuse my next-door neighbor, who saw me leaving on my run only to come back a couple of minutes later. But when I spotted this in the LFF closest to my house at the beginning of my run, I wasn't about to leave anything up to chance and risk it not being there when I got to the end of my run.

This week is going to be another long one. The production of Beauty and the Beast Jr. that Mo is in will be performed this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, so rehearsals go until 6:30 the next three days. I also have a board meeting this Wednesday evening. My boss and several other members of my team are away at a conference the next three days, but based upon her record of sending me work while she's on vacation, that doesn't necessarily mean work will be quiet for me. At least I know there's a short week coming up next week.

I hope your Monday is off to a decent start!