The Knitting Revolutionary

Update!

It's been a while. I've been doing a lot of stuff, including changing jobs (*gasp*) and batting off the black dog with a stick. I've also been spinning lots, and have made a gorgeous new dye colourway called Salamander (which are mythical fire elementals, ooooh)

So here's what I've been spinning: The first is a teal green mix of silk and merino, all wound on to my Andean plyer and ready to 2-ply, and the other is a bunch of purple merino that Rachel bought for me (yey Rache, you're awesome) and I'm thinking I might Navajo ply that, but I'm still thinkin.

Knitting: The Green Jumper is stalled with too-short sleeves, and lies around the house looking gorgeous but fragmented. Bit like me on a Sunday afternoon. (bwahaha)

Meanwhile I've started a new sage green cotton jumper called Twisted - you can see it on Ravelry (username monnsqueak) if you're a Raveler, but here's the first shot of the back. Look at that shaping! Mmmm! Slight problem with this one already - I measured and started this one about a month ago and have since gone on (another) diet. So 2 1/2 kilos later, I'm hoping it won't look like a sack on me when I'm done. *sigh*

Anyway, I'm off to feed my WoW addiction while living in jealousy of M-H running around Wales and hanging out with other knitting legends. *sigh* Have a wonderful long weekend!

work, internships and stuff

Work has been exhausting.

I say this in the literal sense. I seriously do nothing, and I mean NOTHING on a weeknight, because I'm so utterly ratshit. Well except watch tv and/or play warcraft. Which pretty much count as nothing, IMO. On the other hand, I'm actually enjoying my job - I just wish it involved shorter hours, or less days.

On top of this, I do volunteer work every 2nd Saturday, and since David works Saturdays, Sundays is the only day I get with him.

So, for someone who really values "me-time", I'm getting about a day a fortnight - ie every 2nd Saturday. If some other commitment doesn't come up.

Me-time is good. Includes having coffee with girly friends, nana-napping, playing with paper and/or wooly things, and doing yoga. I'm not getting quite enough of this, which is probably why work is really getting to me.

But! I digress, and I digress from Very Good News!

Today, I got my professional supervisor to fill in a Supervision Plan. This will be submitted on Tuesday of next week with the other metric fuckload of paperwork that makes up my internship to be a Real Live Psych Intern, as opposed to the wannabe intern that I am now.

Joy, glee, and rapture doesn't even begin to sum it up!

more why not

I put another coupla layers on the "why not" piece today, and I'm learning and re-learning lots of valuable lessons (like why it says on the fixative can to hold 20cm away from piece and apply in THIN layers) *ahem* and how to cover up or compensate for disasters (like when you get carried away with the fixative and end up with magenta runs all over your piece. Hehe.)

So this is how it's looking! I've been adding layers of gouache and doing things like writing, and then rubbing it off (the why nots in the background are done like this) and applying watered down gouache which pools and makes interesting patterns when it mixes with the fixative and other layers (the big white letters on top).

I'm happily anticipating adding this to the office wall - which is bare and boring and beginning to look better week by week as I pop new pieces up. If only I could work out how to make things actually stick to (or in) the wall - it's bumpy concrete, and even blue tac gives up. Revolting stuff. I wasn't really very interested in putting much up when I first started, as I was unsure whether I would stay with the job or not. The three months I've at work have been difficult for me as far as future focus, energy levels and general coping goes. I've decided that I'll be staying, at least for the next year or so, unless an internal counselling job pops up. And you never know your luck :)

whine whine whine

There are 81 psych jobs on the Psych Xchange email today. Sounds good, yes?

How many in Sydney? 19. Hm.

How many in the ACT?

None. Count 'em on your (clenched) fist. None.

Some days I seriously feel as though I'm living in a shit-hole pretending to be some sort of fucking capital city. What a joke.

Tarts and work and lurgy and shtuff

What can I say. The picture pretty much sums it up. Thanks to my latest obsession, icanhascheezburger, for the ridiculously silly and cute pic. :D

Hrm, yes. A pretty plain life at the moment. I'm settling in to work, which has some great moments and some horrid moments - fairly standard for most jobs I suppose. It's rewarding, but hell demanding, and I'm coming home pretty ratshit most days. As a result of huge change and adjustment (and exposure to sniffly coughing teenagers), I got sick. Third week into work and I've already taken a sick day. How embarrassing. And when I turned up to my volunteer work this morning, they told me to bugger off, go home, and don't even think about infecting them with my evil lurgy. Heh.

But! I am getting a tiny bit of time to knit. And I mean tiny... but I'm happy with that! Despite the fact that I took yesterday off, I spent most of it curled up on the lounge, unconscious or semi-conscious and having really freekin weird dreams. Booo for disrupted REM patterns. So I did a couple of rows, and realised that once again I'm having serious colour issues with the green jumper. Double booo!

The beeg excitement for this week was Cynthy coming to stay (I hope I didn't infect you too! Ick!) and going out for a hugeMUNGous dinner and hanging out chit-chatting and watching dvds. Yay for midweek visitors and courses in Canberra :D

A friend came over and hung out and dyed wool with me! It was awesome... I love having people over. :D It's one of those strange things about me: I'd rather host a dinner or a morning tea or a get-together at my home than go out most of the time. I do love going out, but something I love even more is having friends over, cooking, eating, drinking, enjoying love and life in this gorgeous little space that I call my home. I don't care if it's a bit messy, I stopped getting worried about "the mess" in my house a long time ago when I realised that no matter how clean or tidy it is, I'm always going to fret that it doesn't come up to scratch, so the only solution is to give it a quick once-over and forget about it. And enjoy my visitors! Any of my friends in Canberra who ever want to just come over randomly and/or spontaneously and hang out... call me!

I'm working on this new colourway... the first pic shows attempt number one, but it's way to golden and caramelish for my liking. I've re-hashed it with far less of the caramely colour and replaced it with deeper, richer browns, and it's called Chocolate Slut in honour of a dessert I used to have in Erskinville's Rose Pub when I was still a Sydney chick. Unfortunately, when I list it on ebay I have to call it something more respectable, so I call it Chocolate Tart. Close, but just not the same indulgent, rich implications that come with the word slut. Rowr. What a great yarn name... brings to my mind images of an unapologetically sensual woman, smirking knowingly as she wipes a tiny bit of chocolate sauce from the corner of her mouth. Heheh! Maybe Tarty Chocolate would do it justice without stepping over ebay's "polite" line. Hmmm....

It's Friday, and all is well...

Life has been pretty good to me lately.

So far, I'm enjoying my new job as youth worker. Unfortunately I don't really get to talk about work at all on the blog, so booooo to not being able to share one of the coolest and most interesting bits of my life with you all. Those of you who know me in person will have to catch up the old-fashioned way. :D

The weird thing about me is that the more I'm doing, the more I get done. No, wait. That sounds like a statement of the obvious, but it's not really. I mean... when I was not working, I tended to just get around to the housework whenever. But now that I'm working again, I'm remembering how much energy I used to have, and am rediscovering. So I'm actually doing more housework, and getting back to the gym (whee!) and knitting! Because my work hours aren't flexible (double boooo) I get up at about 7ish, but don't have to be there until 9am... and I usually have about 1/2 an hour free in the morning to hang out and do whatever.

So instead of playing WoW for that 1/2 hour (30 mins isn't really enough to get into it and have a proper play) like Marty-Bear has been (tsk tsk Marty, you'd better start leveling that shaman), I've been doing a little bit of housework some mornings, and knitting. Yay! AND... the days I'm in the office for lunch (it happens occasionally), I pull out my knitting. It's attracted less comments than I thought it would, but my work colleagues are slowly realising that I'm not likely to poke them if they're nice to me. *evil giggle*

I finished the back of my green jumper last night, yay! And I'd be casting on for the front of it, but I felt like bragging instead. :D Isn't it loverly? After the setback which saw me frogging a good 20% of the back, I put it aside for a little while and voila! I get a job, have hardly any time any more, and the only thing that's suffered is my gaming time. *blush* Funny that.

SSK last Saturday was AWESOME! The piccies will go up sooner or later, but M-H is even busier than she usually is these days, and for now you'll just have to believe me that it was huuuuge and there were so many people there that I didn't get to talk to most of the new peeps. My priority was more to catch up with my buds that I hadn't seen for so long though, so no biggie. Ooh! There's my alarm... I'm off to work, more later! :D:D:D

It has its moments...

Despite the fact that I'm struggling a little bit with the new casual job, it does have its moments. Like getting in this morning and seeing a huge roo basking on the grass between a couple of the buildings. He's still there now, some hours later, and I get a warm fuzzy squeaky feeling every time I peek out of my window and look at his furry sun-drenched face.

:D

The job

Jejune asks, what's the deal with work?

Well, I'd love to elaborate here, but I've heard way too many stories about people who get the sack for talking about work on their blogs. I'm careful about this stuff. So if you're interested, feel free to come on over to livejournal, my id is (of course) monnsqueak - set yourself up an account if you don't already have one, and message me so I can add you to my friends list, for access to locked posts.

See ya there!