Emma has graduated!  Hooray!

We are very proud parents.

Emma looks pretty pleased as well.

Vancouver cooperated with a gorgeous day.  The UBC campus was beautiful. Happy grads and their even happier parents were everywhere.

However, a funny thing happened on the way to graduation….

On Tuesday, I was teaching a full-day workshop in Johannesburg.  On Thursday afternoon, Emma was graduating in Vancouver.  I finished my class Tuesday and rushed out to Tambo airport.  There was an accident on the highway to the airport, so we went a different route (the long route), passing a fire along the way.  I passed through the security and passport control and made my plane –  a nearly 12 hour flight to Heathrow. I made my way through passport control and hopped in a taxi to go home, where I then had 4 hours to unpack my suitcase for Jo’burg (where it was winter and I was working), re-pack my suitcase for Vancouver (where it is glorious and I am holiday-ing), and get back in a taxi to return to Heathrow.  On the way to the airport, our taxi was broadsided by a car in an intersection!  Both cars were totalled; the taxi’s wheel base was crumpled so we couldn’t even pull over off of the road.  Doug and I stood on the side of the road with our bags waiting for another taxi to come pick us up.

We made it to the airport (just!) and on to our plane, had the safety demo and were taxi-ing down the runway when the plane slowed down and detoured onto a quiet spot. We were then stuck on the tarmac for three hours because of a broken indicator on the plane. They re-booted the systems twice and then called in engineers to fix it. I had visions of Emma graduating without us.  Eventually, however, the bad luck ran out and we made it in time.

Knitters: please note this post’s sole knitting content.  Above, I am wearing my Cool Boots shawl.

Doug tells me to show you the following photo.  This is me at my graduation from Barnard in 1984.  No laughing allowed!

What do you do when your daughter graduates from university?  You do a happy dance, of course!

I had an idea that my 9 days in Johannesburg would have me working all day and then spending the evenings in my hotel room, quietly knitting and listening to audio books. What actually happened was that I worked all day, ate dinner (by myself – boo hoo!), and then went back to my hotel room where I answered email, caught up with admin and collapsed well before 9 each evening.  Not much knitting got done.

However, I was able to spend a few hours on the weekend sitting out by the pool in the Johannesburg winter sunshine (which is almost like British summer sunshine) and get some relaxing and knitting time.  Here is where I sat by the poolside:

Not bad, huh?

And here is a very un-interesting photo of the progress on my black linen tee-shirt.  It is hard to photograph plain, black knitting in progress and make it look interesting.

The tee starts at the shoulders on the back, does some short row shaping, and then is knitted down to the the armhole; then stitches are picked up for the front shoulder and knit down.  There is some lace on the front, which I am just about to start.  Once I get down to the armhole, the front and back will be joined and then the body is knit in the round.

I also cast on for my Hanne Falkenberg jacket.  The fronts and back are knit as one piece, back and forth, so although this photo makes it look like a very small piece, this is actually 300 or so stitches and 40+ inches wide.

Here is a close-up of the pattern in which you can see the variegation in both yarns. The dark blue is a Shetland wool and the contrast yarn is a linen blend.

Here is where I spent most of my time.  This is the lovely campus of the Henley Business School South Africa in Johannesburg.  I teach there around 6 times a year, and always enjoy it immensely.  The students there are fantastic, and the staff always make me feel at home.

Here I am with some of my South African colleagues, from left to right: Lyneth, me, Eli, and Caritas.

I leave you with another shot I took at the Henley South Africa campus.  When you next hear from me, I will be reporting from Vancouver.