I’m feeling pretty productive, knitting-wise. I dove in and picked up the stitches on the first bridesmaid tank, and lo and behold, it came out fine! I just have the second armhole ribbing to do and then I can sew up the side seams and see how this sucker looks. It’ll be too big for me, but I’ll still be able to get an idea.

I’m also about 1/3 of the way into the back side of the second tank. As long as I keep on knitting steadily, I think it will be no problem to get these things done. There’s always the wild-card of Lisa’s possible pregnancy, so hers is going to be last. She’ll know in another 10-12 days whether she’s pregnant this month, so I think I can hold off on ordering the skirts until then. If she’s not, then she can decide whether to order it a size or two big, in hopes that she won’t have to take it in if she isn’t pregnant then.

Terribly sad news about the space shuttle on Saturday. Both of my parents are very interested and involved in aerospace, so I am maybe more attuned to this than I would be otherwise. My Mom has always been a space enthusiast. She ran the Young Astronauts program at her school during her teaching years, as well as doing a lot of other aerospace education projects. Now that she’s retired, she’s become involved in The Space Society, and I think is the VP of their local group.

Dad actually worked on the International Space Station project when it was in its infancy, which is pretty neat. I’m not sure what exactly his role was, but I know I went to a cool reception where they had a scale model of it, etc. This was back when he worked at Grumman, before it became Northrup Grumman. He also worked at Lockheed Martin, another key player in the space shuttle program, but he didn’t work on the shuttle.

Anyway, that bit of history aside, my heart really goes out to the families of the astronauts, and to all the people at NASA. From what I have seen, people who choose to do this kind of work are so incredibly dedicated to science in general, and space exploration in particular. It’s almost a religion (though with a much more sensible basis, in my opinion.) I know that so many people, even those who were not directly involved and did not know anyone, will take this loss very hard. I hope that we will be able to learn from the tragedy and prevent anything like this from happening again, while still moving forward with the space program.