Well... so much for me keeping up on blogging. :) I do have some excuses, really, I do. Andrew and I went to D.C. for Spring Break. It was a lot of fun. I'll post pictures some time later. We of course, couldn't get through all of the sights that we wanted to see, so we'll have to go back soon. It was beautiful though! The cherry blossoms were out in full force and they really are glorious. We went to a few different museums and made it down to some of the wineries and a battlefield. It was a great trip, but definitely too short. I feel like I could live there for years and still never see all that the city has to offer. It did spark my desire to live in a city again. We'll have to see how life works out, but I do think it would be fun to live in a little apartment or brownstone in Manhattan or D.C. Just to be in a small neighborhood, ride the subways around, be in the middle of a major cultural scene, I think it would be a lot of fun.
After getting back from D.C., I went to the RMC-SCBWI Spring conference the next day. It was a ton of fun! I was really inspired by all of the authors and aspiring authors there. Though I am still struggling with my children's book ideas, I do feel like I have more direction. I'm thinking that my picture book may be better suited for a middle grade novel, but we shall have to see how it turns out. I think I'm just going to write it and see where it goes for right now. Also on the writing front, I've started going to a writing group. I went the first time right before we left for D.C. On Tuesday, I went again and actually took some writing. I was absolutely petrified! However, everyone was extremely kind and had a lot of works of encouragement. I was so excited after listening to all of their comments. It made me SO happy. I just can't even explain how much I want to keep writing. I hope that I'll make it as a writer. I do think that I'm a good writer (not that this blog is necessarily a good example of my writing prowess) and I just need to get my work out there.
Well... on to slightly more exciting things. I've got a bunch of pictures of my knitting and various works in progress.
Here are some of the finished squares for my Great American Aran Afghan.

Only a slight mess up on this one. Hopefully no one who doesn't knit regularly will notice. :) I really struggled with this pattern at first, I had to tear it out and start again, but eventually got going on it and it turned out nicely.
This pattern was really interesting. It was knit in strips-- which is sort of hard to explain. You knit the bottom garter stitch rows, the place most of the stiches on a holder and knit the far right cable pattern all the way to the top, then pick up down the left side of the knitted piece, add a few stitches from the holders and knit up the side again, purling stitches together at the end of wrong side rows to join it to the existing knitting. It's quite hard to explain. I really should have taken pictures as I went, but alas... here we are. I'm not exactly sure why the patter was written that way, it didn't seem to do much visually... but whatever. :) Here it is. Only 9 more squares to go!