It's aliiiive.  Sorta.

Updates and Such

Let's see, updates updates...

I've lost 30 lbs. That's a happy happy thing. 20 more before March is needed, and is definitely possible.

I've finished a bunch of little projects, including a felted purple mottled top hat.

We bought a dishwasher. This may sound boring, but it's utterly delightful in terms of sheer cleaning of the kitchen goodness.

We also got a new firdge, an all-fridge fridge, far more energy efficient and SO much more space than the 20 year old can't-put-anything-on-the-door, two shelved mold-making wonder we had before.

I actually bought a digital camera, so more pictures are also a possibility, including, perhaps, one of me with the new short (!) haircut. My hair went from dark brown, curly, and mid back length to chin length in the front and 2 inches in the back, caramel with gold highlights, and far straighter (due to the dye, I think). It's a bit of a shock, but people have been overwhelmingly positive.

Is it a bit selfish to wish someone had said "I liked your hair before"? (Except my wife, who did, because she likes me, just as me. I'm blessed and I know it.) A few hundred "Wow! You look good!" or "Huh, you're pretty today." are nice ego boosters, but leave me wondering if the rest of the time people were thinking "Geez, why doesn't she just...". Of course, this may be influenced by the fact that the student teacher in my class has decided to teach the fashion unit with What Not to Wear as the end activity. The victim? Yours truly. The kids lit up with glee when they were told, and I got reactions like "Miss! Yes! I'm SO changing your hair/face/those eyebrows have got to go (I LIKE my eyebrows, that isn't happening)/makeup/clothes/Miss, don't worry, you'll look good for a change."

*grins* I love teaching. Honest.

Cheers.

Yeah School Spirit

So the knitting club is moving along quite duckily. My digital camera was repossessed by the school when I ceased being the yearbook person, so I prevailed upon a friend to take this picture.

As a fundraiser, one of our charity groups sold blank white ceiling tiles for the cafeteria. Teachers and clubs and students could buy a tile, paint it wit something appropriate, and have it hung in the caf for all to see.

Witness the tile of the Knitting Club. The school name is smudged out, but the sentiment comes through - (deleted) High School, Closely Knit.

And we are. Idea by me, knotwork drawn freehand by my wife, painting by me.

Meeeeee (well, cuter and skinnier)

Visual DNA

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Permission

I've decided to give myself permission to accept that i'm never going to be a standard blogger. I love reading everyone else's blogs, and I admire them for posting tns of pretty pictures and life-news.

However, since I was 7 years old, people have been trying to get me to keep some form of journal, and it's yet to stick. I can write. I don't mind writing. Sometimes I love writing. But in terms of writing consistently, I can't seem to do it.

A recent (good but rather long) conference on literacy gave me time to realize why. I tend to discuss things when I'm emotional, or trying to entertain people. These are two totally different purposes. When I'm emotional, I write to express and release. I vent. When it's all over, I feel better, and vaguely guilty aboout having bothered others with an excess of emotion I no longer feel.

When I'm writing to share humourous things in my life, I find it's more fun to see my audience. Blogging, alas, doesn't let you actually watch the tea being spit across another person's keyboard, nor does it give yoou the ability to share a belly laugh in that one-encouraging-the-other-can't-stop-laughing kind of way.

So I write a little in one vein, drift away, come back, re-read and think "Blech, I wouldn't read this person." Then I write a little in the other vein, come back, re-read, and think "Tee-hee, but if people have read that, then I oughtn't burden them with this."

Either of these two reactions makes me toddle off towards the safer, instant-reaction land of verbality.

But then....

But then I see Stephanie, who makes me laugh AND cry with her - whose talks I attend feeling mildly like a stalker, and who writes nearly daily - and I feel like I ought to somehow live up to her example.

I see Mamacate, on whose blog I am normally a silent lurker, but who is where I hope to be in the coming years. She doesn't blog as often now, but she has reasons. I have excuses.

I see blog after blog, and all these wonderful women (and men, but for some reason I seem to read women more often) who write regularly. I think "I write, I think, why aren't I doing that?" I think "I'm sitting at home staring at walls and screens, and not writing. Why am I not writing?"

Perhaps its the same reason that the laundry is a pile, not a memory, the dishes in the sink, and the butt in the chair rather than wombling about the neighbourhood.

I'm lazy. *grins* And anti-social, cranky, curmudgeonly, slow, slothful, and generally a poor role-model.

Except when I'm not.

Murder Sucks

Khatera Sadiqi. Bright, smiling, bubbling, beautiful girl.
Most beautiful eyes.
Dazzling smile.
Gave away her lunch to a homeless man because he looked like he needed an apple.
Personality -charming even as she forgot her homework for the four millionth time.
You're in my heart - all our hearts.
Your brother is in jail now. It's not enough, but it has to do.
If we took the revenge we think we crave, we'd be as bad as he.
We'll continue on, and try to smile your smile for you.

Scarf Exchange

I've just joined the Scarf Exchange and I'm so very excited! This will give me an opportunity to knit for someone else specific for a change. I'm already pouring over patterns, and yarns, and Oh JOY!

In other news, the Giant Desk from My Childhood has been moved out of the office in the basement, and transported to school. "Why?" you may ask. Well, for several reasons. First of all, it's a jeezley huge piece of furniture in a teensy weensy room. Not sensible that, especially since we have 2 laptops, and no longer use the desktop except as backup.

Secondly, I didn't want to get rid of it. I got that desk when I was about 8. It is the size of a single bed, with drawers and a middle drawer, and pull out extra work surfaces, and it help everything in the universe til I was 13. Then we moved and, horror of horrors, couldn't get it up the stairs. My parents sold it, and bought me a tiny desk, one suitable for a young lady. My packrat tendencies with shifted to beneath the bed and in the closet.

Fast forward almost 10 years, and I find my desk up for sale on an intraweb site at work. $80 delivers the hardwood heaven to my apartment, where my darling wife (then my darling fiancee) raises an eyebrow and tolerates it for my sake. She tolerates it through the move to the house here, but puts her foot down with regards to it being in the upstairs livingroom. Down the stairs the three strapping young men take my desk, and, with much groaning and manuevering, they wiggle it into the tiniest of the three bedrooms, where it takes up fully half the space.

So I'm a little attached. Selling it wasn't an option that my wife would entertain (although I think that was because she was scared I'd spend another 10 years looking for its replacement). So she suggested moving it to school. To my classroom.

That's right, dear readers, I have my very own classroom. Four years of lugging everything I own around on my back (because teachers don't _get_ lockers, my dears, they have classrooms, doncha know), and I've received a home base. Happy Happy Knitter me!

Now I'm a-looking for posters and doodads and paper thingies and all the stuff that makes a classroom interesting for the kids. And in the front of it all, firmly marking my territory as mine, and not to be trifled with, will be my huge solid imposing wooden desk.

After all, they can't make me change rooms if the desk is there, right?

So dear wife and I moved the desk up the stairs. Mental note- if it takes 3 strapping lads 20 minutes to move something down some tight stairs, then 2 women should likely not try to move it back up. Or so we discovered, once we'd trapped my wife on the stairs, and me at the bottom.

Sheer stubborn got that desk up the stairs. I have a bruise across my chest where I balanced the entire weight of it for 3 minutes while my wife got her wind back. SHE has a bruised foot where she balanced it accidentally whilst losing said wind in a rather audible gasp. The wall may have acquired a gouge or two in the paint, but I'm not going to pay attention to those yet. After an hour, the desk was up.

The gentleman hired to take it to the school happens to work as a custodian there too. He's decided that it's my room - he's never moving the desk again.

As for myself - I have a room free now, so we're moving the loom and part of the stash and the bookshelves into it, and we shall have a media/knitting room and a library/weaving room.

New knitting, new furniture arrangement, and a classroom to call my own. I'm happy enough I shall go knit a sock.

(Nope, that's not done yet...but it will be. I have Faith!)

In Knitting News

Well, socks and I are still not best friends. I have about 4 inches completed on My First Real Sock. MFRS is so called because I've done four pairs of Fuzzy Feet from Knitty, but have yet to manage to focus on a pair of real socks long enough to finish.

Instead, I cast on for the Faroese Peaks shawl from Knitpicks. I'm using their yarn in the Leprecaun colourway. It's yummy - soft and doesn't split. The variagation is pooling a little, but not badly. Interestingly enough, it seems to be one of the overlooked patterns. Everyone's enamoured with Adamus, but I'm enjoying the simple garter stitch parts.

I have, however, found that the only way I seem to be able to knit lace is doubled. That is to say, I knit a row, count the stitches and yarn overs to make sure it's correct. Knit the locking row (plain garter stitch that locks the lace together) while counting the stitches again from paranoia. Knit most of the rest of the next row of lace before discovering that I have miscounted. Tink two rows. Reknit and achieve perfection. Move on to the next row. Lather rinse repeat.

Nevertheless, I have finished the first chart of the pattern! Picture will come as soon as I figure out how to post the blasted things again.

As for the job....I'm teaching knitting at Yarn Forward! Yes, yes, I know, after that last paragraph I wouldn't hire me either, but honestly I can teach. There are over 150 teenagers who prove that. My DW will be teaching tatting too, so we're both hired by a yarn store. Not just A yarn store, but OUR yarn store, the one we love and cherish.

Louise joked that she should pay us in gift certificates. I think she was surprised when we not only agreed, but begged her to do so. That would solve our overspending on yarn habit. Well, it would hide it, truthfully, since money not coming into the house in cash needn't be added to the budget.

So, a house, a job in a yarn store, and hidden money. I'm a happy happy knitter.