Not a huge lot to report today.
Had my Occupational Health assessment which was a bit bizarre - I had been warned by a couple of people that they try to put the onus for your illness on to you, so I was prepared - work has made me ill, nothing else and I was ready to stand my ground.
And it almost came to it - she was rather officious and very abrupt, so I sat, said my piece very calmy, looked her in the eye and was ready to ask why she was being so rude.
But after I had described work, and how dangerous it was becoming she changed her tune, and went from one extreme to the other, ending up showing me photos of her ex on her work computer (WHAT??) and photos on her camera of her partner (WHAT AGAIN!!).Most peculiar ...

So that's another box ticked, meeting next week and hopefully part time after Easter. Utter dread, that's me!

Knitting - am playing about with a pattern idea for a bag, I like it (obviously) but am unsure about copyright - if I adapt a particular cabled leaf pattern that I have seen on several things, is that OK? Lordy.

Ideas are bubbling in my feather filled head for another book (equally craptastic as the first), but time, never enough time - what the hell will I do when I am back at work! Argh! Don't they know I want to CRAFT, DAHLINK!

Things.

New spinny goodness. This is lovely, it came with co-ordinating ribbons and lace and buttons, am looking forward to playing with it all. I also received 2 gorgeous plaits in shades of black, grey and purple to spin at some point fairly soon (ie probably before the return to work).I hope I do them justice ...



From several years ago, this is where I feel the need to be right now. At the seaside, specifically Scarborough, absolutely laden with lovely memories (we went on holiday here every year with my nan, grandad and my aunty, the whole lot of us! Fantastic times).This would be the ideal place for me to find a new job, I would move here in the blink of an eye.
Would make up for a lot to know I could walk along the beach every weekend, heaven.



And also from a few years ago, a nice bit of colour to perk me / you (does anyone still read this? I really have no idea) up.
Hurry up Spring!
Can you tell I haven't taken any recent photos?

Knitting - am almost finished with Pocket Watch, a cardi with hearts on, love it!
And also need to hurry up and finish a test knit celtic knot that's looking good.

But the main thing I want to do, is to actually DO SOMETHING with my craptastic book.
Whether that is going to be self publishing, or what I really don't know, but I do need to get a move on with the patterns for it. I have ideas, oodles of them, but never seemt to get focused enough to work on them properly.
I also have a piece of travel writing to do for a competition that my mum found, again I have jotted down lots of notes but need to get focused enough to write it all up.

It frightens me that I never seem to have time to accomplish anything - and that's when I am off work. Where does the time go??

Well, I did it ...

... finally got round to writing query letters about my craptastic 'book' and emailed three this morning, They can only say NO, which I can live with. But in that dream world ...well. If only. I don't think it's utter shite, but it isn't brilliant obviously. I enjoyed it, and it got me through a tough month - and one day I will sit and write something better.Ah, nd one day, 'one day' I will sit and start drafting the pattern that go with said book ...

but
until then
I knit
spiders.



The 'October is for Spinners' scarf / stole / thing - I really enjoyed this, pretty much every minute of it.



Love the way it deconstructs, starting with 4 threds and ending with 1, the needles go up and up, and the dropped stitches and dropped triple yarn overs are carefully supported by the preceding rows so that the whole thing doesn't unravel!



Took three goes to get the legs right, but I am glad I went back and redid it - it's soaking now, will block it on the floor when I get home (am heading for a swim in a bit).

Right. A brief summary of the last few months, since last posting.

The owl - am trying a bit of art quilting, or something similar - the novel (?) I ended up with for NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) is made up of chapters (thats fascinating, nobody has thought of THAT before) and the dark owl is one of the main themes in one, then reappears a couple of times in others. So out of that came this little owly bloke, but hes meant to look malevolent, but to me he looks cute, which defeats the object somewhat.

I tried some oil sticks for the first time, imprted from America after reading lots of rave reviews, but am pretty disappointed in them.

Too chunky, they stink (of oil paint, well would you believe it...) and my machine didn't enjoy sewing on top of it. I think my good old Dylon dyes are better for what i tend to do (I have loads upstairs from ye olden dayes when I used to make and paint corsets).

So I will plod on with it and finish it before the weekend, because I have just painted my living room and want this up on the wall, it's been far to long since I put anything I made on display. Not that there's anyone here to see it ....

What else - LOTS of knitting going on, LOTS of sewing and a few ideas beetling about in my head for some paintings, will add piccies and things tomorrow.

I am off work at the moment, back at the Dr next week, see what she says. Very odd feeling to go from 100% to zero in a day, but not a lot I can do about it. I don't want to go into detail online, but I think the break is doing what it is meant to, time will tell.

Right, that's it for now - more to come, but I still cannot master these damned piccies, they load into one place and don't like being moved in between text, grrrr ....

december?

how did it get to november - no, december - without me writing a single post?



am going to play about with this one, i dont like the layout, and try to keep up with it
lots to report, nothing world shatteringly exciting, but i DID finish my novel!
so a flying scrap of a post today, then hopefully more regular witterings to come



thank you to those who stuck with this and left comments, thats lovely of you

the owl? will explain later, hes only half finished bless him ... toodles x