Last-minute-itis

Do you ever find yourself wondering why on earth you have left the large, important, time-consuming piece of work to the last minute? If not, if you are one of nature's planners and freakily perfect, organised people who have always got it finished with a week to spare, then please go away, because I just can't be friends with you today.
The assignment is due in tomorrow at 2pm. And I have classes and meetings to go to in the morning. 4,500 - 6,000 words. I'm currently at 2,598. The first half I am now happy with - 1,739 words wich seem to flow and make sense and are about the right topic and everything. Now we are on to part two, which is more a rationale of a scheme of work I had to write. The scheme of work is 1300 words. Those words don't count as it has to go in an appendix. Neither do the other 6000 words of notes I had to write about the topic I will be teaching. That sucks. A lot. Almost as much as the fact that I had to read another 10 books on educational theory, as well as the text that I am trying to actually teach, in order to write this sucker, of which the only evidence will be a few tiny little snippets in as quotations, which, yes, you guessed it, don't count in the word count. I guess that's fair because I didn't write them. But it doesn't feel fair right now.
If my head hasn't exploded, I will offer an update on progress later on.
i haven't knit a stitch for 4 days now. not one stitch. I've got a twitching muscle under my right eye and I'm getting close to screaming. I just want to knit, and then drift into a peaceful sleep and dream about knitting. In reality, I'm off to take more pro-plus so that I can stay up all night writing an assignment that I never want to set eyes on again, ever.
Wish me luck!

high winds

This was a fence...

On Thursday it was quite windy. I drove home at lunchtime slowly, avoiding lorries, fighting against the wind trying to push my car out into another lane. I got home to find this large hole in the fence. Well, that's not quite true. When I got home, most of the panel was still there, whipping about in the wind and slowly breaking up, sending chunks of wood full of nails whipping across our back garden with amazing force. We made sure the chooks were ok and then hid in the house. The whole panel was gone by nightfall when we went to tuck in the chickens. You can just see through the neighbours' garden that they have lost fence the other side as well - these were seriously high winds! We don't get a lot of extreme weather in the UK, so when it does come, we're completely unprepared for it. The ugly chicken-wire patch is my doing, put up on Friday to allow Ethelred and Atilla out for a run without them escaping - I have no idea how many of the fences in the row came down, but they must all have been put up 9 years ago when the houses were built, so i'd guess they are all in the same state. Darling hubby has a weekend job at a large DIY store and says that they sold £15,000 worth of fence panels yesterday. I'm not surprised!

On the theme of weather, it has been amazingly mild so far this winter - I think I've only had to defrost my car once, and that was a couple of months ago! The garden seems to think it's Spring - several things in bud, like this daffodil. If we get a sharp frost, I think we could lose a lot of plants taht are shooting fast at the moment. We're generally only talking about things above chicken-destruction height here though. they don't seem to go for the bulbs, but everything else low-growing is shredded.

There are compensations, though.... like a warm egg on a cold morning....
Had some fun dyeing the other day: was playing with colours for my Spin to Knit secret pal's skein... ahh, it's like playing with a big chemistry set. But with prettier colours. Did some fun rainbow sock wool (homespun) at the same time. It came out a bit psychedelic, though... might have to overdye a few bits of it to tone it down a tad.
This post is brought to you by Ethelred and Atilla. Well, it might be one day. They keep trying to come into the house every time I open the door! I think they want to see where Willow goes...
I'll leave you with this meme that I pinched from Not an Artist:

Find the nearest book, open to page 123, and copy out 6-8 lines of text.

My text:

"Theory x managers assume that the average worker is lazy, lacks ambition, is resistant to change, self-centred and not very bright.

Theory y managers assume that the average worker is motivated, wants to take responsibility, has potential for development and works for the organisation. Any lack of ambition or resistance to change comes from experience. "

McGregor, 1960, quoted in Capel, Leask and Turner: Learning to teach in the secondary school. Routledge, 2005.

What book do you have lying around?

Projects on the go!

I cast on for this sock on Saturday night and did three rows before giving up and going to bed. I did quite a lot on Sunday morning in a semi-vegetative state, and turned the heel on Sunday night. I was knitting it yesterday and today at Uni in my break and lunchtime (kind of scary to realise how many people have no idea how to knit, let alone in cirles and turning corners. Socks are magic to most people - little pixies grow them on bushes and send them to shops to be sold. Or something like that). I decreased the toe and grafted it this evening, and it's so nice it's only come off my foot for 5 seconds to be photographed, then went straight back on. I cast on for sock 2 straightaway, only modification was to cast on over 2 needles (first time I've tried this), as sock 1's only flaw is the cast-on edge is a teeny bit tight. Not stupidly, foot has not gone purple or dropped off, but harder to get on than it needs to be. Hopefully fixed for sock 2.

Wool: Colinette Jitterbug merino easycare in No. 16, Blue Parrot. A joy to knit with - may spark further temptation and credit card debt! (don't tell darling hubby!)

The colours don't show up fabulously here, but hey, it's nighttime and I'm using a flash. Several tones of blue with green and burgundy highlights. Much nicer in person than in this photo.
I have several skeins of koigu in different colours lurking in the stash at the moment, threatening to make me stop working on my next assignment for Uni and just knit socks 24 hours a day! I have an incentive to work hard, though... If I pass this assignment, darling hubby has promised to buy me 2 skeins of Socks that Rock! Yes, unbelieveable as it may be to Cara, I am an STR virgin! And since I didn't win any in her contest, I have to get my hands on it somehow! Isn't he just the most lovely hubby in the world? He's willing to add to my stash!

Project 2: at a standstill. there is 1 3/4 tonnes remaining of the 3 tonnes of gravel that were delivered onto our drive. Everyone seems to have lost interest in moving it and we're just taking it in turns parking in the street. I blame the weather. It's been ok actually, but I have to blame something and I'm not honest enough to admit to just being a lazy beggar.
Project 3: Forest Canopy Shoulder Shawl. Supposed to be ideal beginner's lace. Of course, being me, I started it in a completely different size wool and needle size, which isn't really a problem, as it's a triangular shawl with a repeating pattern, so you can just keep going till it's the right size, but it was takingages to grow and the point of this beginner's pattern is to knit it fairly chunky and get a huge sense of achievement from it being finished so fast. So what did I do? Why, I bought more yarn and needles and started a second one, of course!

Willow is not in the least impressed by all this knitting - it cuts down the time I can stroke her and feed her treats.

" You think I won't find them in the bookcase, eh? Wrong!"

In other news (boy projects) the Landy is not at all well. It had a short list of some 20 or so reasons for failing its MOT before Christmas, and it's been sitting on the drive in pieces ever since. Poor thing. All it wants to do is go and wallow in some mud.....

Lastly, I just have to share the picture that hubby set up as my desktop for my snazzy new computer. It makes me smile every time I see it. Willow, Ethelred and Atilla playing in the garden. They all seem to get on fine now. It's all peaceful down on the farm... or in the very small back garden, anyway.

Eggs!!!!!!!!

We have eggs!

Is it me, or are chickens just amazing? A couple of weeks ago I came home from work to find darling hubby giggling with excitement: we had four eggs! Four! We'd decided that they probably wouldn't start laying until Spring, so we hadn't checked them for a couple of days. Four eggs! We didn't even have to fight over who got to eat the first egg! (and no, we can't share. I have my yolks runny (as fresh, free-range eggs should be served)

mmmmmmmm....... eggs on toast......

but Hubby is a child of the Edwina Currie generation and has his hard boiled for 12 minutes until they're like rubber bullets. Philistine!
Attila is not amused.

(Mental note: take pictures of chickens in daylight rather than at night with flash, to stop them looking like devil hens).

New chicken residence, constructed by ourselves: the eglu has been moved to a permanent site on a 6-inch bed of bark chippings, owing to the ability of 2 small hens to turn our back garden into something resembling the Somme...

The path we laid yesterday in a sudden unexpected bout of energy, having had 3 tonnes of stone chippings delivered onto the front drive. My car now lives across the street until we use up the other tonne and a half!

Willow and the chickens have now reached a mutual understanding. She doesn't chase, and they don't peck.
What you can't tell here is that darling hubby is going 'Ow! Ow! Attila! Will you stop that? That's my hand!......' They don't really do gentle pecking. They do love corn.

technical

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