It's been a long time...

...but I'm still here!!

And just because there has been no blogging, don't think for a minute there has been no knitting.

Ooohh, there's been knitting....

Multicoloured socks:

Koigu socks: Koigu socks...
Colinette socks...
More Koigu socks...
More Colinette socks...

Sockapalooza Monkey Socks... (already received by Michelle - hope she likes them!)

Another pair of Monkeys - Once I'd finished Michelle's, I could only bring myself to let them go by immediately casting on for another pair for me! Though My Mum may get these for Christmas, since I've not worn them and she rather liked them when she saw me knitting them.

There has been a Baby Surprise Jacket....

In fact I haven't seamed this yet, since I have no baby in mind for it, it was simply a test knit so that I can scale it up and do it for a nearly-one-year-old nephew in this...

(Daddy and Grandad are Wolverhampton Wanderers fans).

A hat in Lorna's Laces - Lion and Lamb in 'Devon'. The hubby suggested that this year I should make myself a hat before the middle of February, when I really need it. Surprisingly intelligent suggestion. Bet I've lost it by February though!

Then there is this: I've had my eye on it for sooooo long, then I walked into Get Knitted the other week, and it was there! In the sale!!

Oh yes. There has been Kauni Cardi-ing...

Aren't the colours just gorgeous??

I'm working on it exclusively at the moment, and I'm pretty thrilled with how fast it's growing so far. It's the first thing I've ever attempted with steeks, and at the moment I'm just trying to shut my ears every time someone says "What? You're going to CUT your knitting?" It can't be that scary, can it? really? Tell me it's not...?

Oh, and there's this of course. A completed Forest Canopy Shoulder Shawl. Knitted in Debbie Bliss Merino Aran, and nearly stranded forever half-finished because the wool was discontinued while I was knitting it and I didn't have enough! Luckily after visiting 5 shops and 17 websites I found an extra 3 balls and managed to finish it with 3 and a half metres to spare! Talk about close call... It's my first shawl, my first completed lace project and I love it. My Mum and my MIL keep trying to pinch it every time they're here!

Gratuitous arty shot. Colour is better in the first photo.

So there you are! I just haven't been in a blogging mood, but I've certainly been busy! Oh and I finished my course, passed it, and am a qualified teacher now! And I don't have a job. Looks like I may be doing the supply teaching thing for a while... Now tell me, they do always give the nice, well-behaved classes to the supply teacher, don't they?

Why teaching interviews are a kick in the teeth

Ok. No interview is exactly a barrel of laughs, whether or not you get the job. They are nerve-wracking, soon-forgotten interludes from your daily life, which leave you a bit peeved if you don't get the job but aren't that memorable. What happens? You get asked to come to interview, you haul out your best suit, iron it, suck in your gut and smile. You might get it, you might not.
Teaching interviews? Oh, such a different world.
First of all, they never seem to give you more than a couple of days' notice by phone. No time to prepare. Second, unlike in any other job, your work (i.e. six classes of 32 kids) can't simply be left on your desk while you're out. So you prepare cover lessons. You make worksheets. You trawl your imagination for work that will need no questions answered (because the cover teacher probably won't speak German) then you spend hours inventing exercises, writing worksheets and wordsearches that you know only the three keen kids in your class will bother to do more than the first five minutes of, and you get them all photocopied and organise the paperwork. That's on top of teaching your full timetable and marking books etc etc in the two days (if you're lucky) before your interview. You will get NO thanks for setting such great cover work. It took 8 hours of your life and no-one will know or care, least of all the kids who get to do it.
You then go home and agonise about the lesson they've asked you to teach for the interview. Oh yeah, you have to teach on interview. Observed by up to five people, including head of department, deputy head, headteacher... It has to dazzle. So you stay up till midnight or beyond making up the snazziest 20 minute lesson you ever saw in your life, with powerpoints and flashcards and stickers for prizes and name tags and vocab sheets and games etc etc etc...
Then you get no sleep anyway cos you're so nervous about teaching strange kids, when you have no idea what they have already learned and whether you are aiming the lesson too high or too low.
Then you get up at a stupidly early time, put on your ironed suit, suck in your gut and go to the interview. You smile. You teach the strange kids. You try to get them to participate with this odd person they've never seen before doing something totally different to what they normally do in class. You heave a HUGE sigh of relief when the teaching is over. It was an ok lesson. They learned something. You're not a total failure as a teacher.
then you get about 20 minutes to answer whatever questions the head and the head of department (and whoever else - from deputy heads to governors) thought were a good idea, which you can never predict, then you go home and wait by the phone. Oh yeah, THEY TELL YOU THAT DAY. This sounds fab to people who have never tried it. Oh great, no waiting around for a letter, yeah? Great! No, what it means is you sit by the phone staring at it feeling more and more sick until it rings and then scream at your mother for tying up your phone line.
When the phone eventually rings, a hour (or two or three) after they said they would call, and then tell you that you were great, enthusiastic, confident, come across very well and taught a great lesson, but they aren't giving you the job because someone else 'just had the edge', you burst into tears and hit the wine or chocolate or hide under the duvet and cry.
Why? Because you just poured about 24 solid hours of work into that interview, you're sleep deprived and not only did you not get the job, but you know that you still have to plan all of tomorrow's lessons, and mark that huge pile of books in the corner.
Then you have to go find the jobs page in the newspaper and start the whole process again.
[Rant over. Sorry no knitting progress to report - too busy drinking wine and eating chocolate and having a good cry. But here is a picture of my garden looking lovely, and I am now going to go and sit in it and try to enjoy the sunshine and tell myself I am NOT crap and I WILL get a job for next year and I WON'T be destitute and kicked out of my house because I can't pay the mortgage. See? Teaching interviews suck.]

Still here, surviving!

Wow, these last couple of months have been hard work. Why do I want to be a teacher again? Oh yeah, 3 reasons. Summer, Easter, Christmas. Feels particularly true at the moment, nearing the end of the hardest year's work in my life. 2 more assignments, 4 weeks of teaching a reduced timetable (6 hours a week! Woo hoo!!!) and I'm free till September. I just need to find a job! Anyone need a German teacher in the south west of england? Eager to start up knitting clubs at school?

Knitting has been accomplished in odd moments, but I seem to have fallen prey to the dreaded SSS: count them: SEVEN single socks are haunting my knitting basket. the really shameful thing is I've worn a couple of them once or twice as an odd pair!

I really have to crack on with some second socks or my knitting karma will be well and truly shot. It's not quite as bad as all that, though: I took this photo 2 days ago, and since then I have finished one pair! this sock:

had become known as the cursed sock, or the bad karma sock: for some reason I kept getting bored with it, and the poor thing got abandoned five or six times as other projects took over. Not only did I finish it this week, but i decided that to balance out the karma in the pair, so they didn't end up as unlucky socks, i cast on for the second one immediately. And it's done!
Ta dah!! Hopefully now these are a good karma pair of socks. Koigu KPPPM (mmmmmm... Koigu...), generic top-down heel flap pattern. Now there are just 6 single socks to rescue!

Chick sock one is done!

Woo hoo! Now for me, that is speedy knitting! I have already charted designs for pecking chickens, rows of little chicks and a cat.... shall I do two matching socks, or slightly different ones? The agony of choice!

Big catch-up blog post! lots of pics!

I just signed up to sockapalooza 4!! he he.... an excuse (as if I need one) to knit more socks!!

Wow, so much has been going on lately that i just haven't had a spare second to blog! School was just insane in the run-up to easter, I had a big presentation to give to my SPT (senior professional tutor) which counted for a fifth of my course in terms of written assessment - they also observe us teaching and stuff, but i can't really quantify that in terms of how much of the assessment that is - in one way it's everything really, since if you can't teach a class, writing good essays will not make you a teacher! But we do have to pass all the essays too! Then there was a formal observation from my uni tutor, and a week of fundraising for comic relief - we did the Big Knit (of course!) myself and Claire, the librarian at school, teaching kids to knit and joining loads of scraps of their knitting together to make a giant Dr Who scarf - it was over 6m long! (might not sound like much, but from 15-20 beginner knitters in about 2 1/2 hours that's a lot of knitting! Sadly I can't post pics here, although I have some fabulous ones, as they all have the kids in, and I don't have their parents' permission to post pics of them on the internet. You'll just have to believe me that it was great!

I've managed to squeeze in a few bits of knitting here and there:

Hat for the not-quite-sister-in-law, finished and gifted at last - her birthday was in January! I did manage to get it to her before she went skiing last week! Simple beanie pattern, silk/wool mix yarn, can't remember what now. Heaven to knit with, though. Could it be Lorna's Laces?

The three socks I started all together - two done (I even naughtily wore them as a non-matching pair!), one has succumbed to project infidelity... here are some new knits:

Hat to keep my ears warm on the allotment - oh yeah, we got an allotment! Yippee! We've been on the waiting list for a year. In case this is a weird british phenomenon that nobody else understands, an allotment is a small square of land (say 50ft by 30ft) that you rent from the local council to grow vegetables in, in a field with lots of allotments, usually on the edge of town. Or where the edge of town used to be. Mad, but fun. we're having a great time. i'll take a picture next time we're there. Anyway, it's a bit windy, hence the hat. Closeup:

My homespun. I'm quite proud of it! I've been spinning maybe 2 or 3 years now? I don't get a lot of time for it, though.

Totally loud and zany rainbow cardi in lamb's pride bulky. I've discovered spit-slicing with this and it works wonders. No ends to darn in! For that price I can stand my Mum going 'eurgh!' every time she sees me do it! Also for the allotment, cold breezes. It'll be high summer before I finish either of them, won't it? Oh well. Winter is fairly sure to arrive again next year!

Ta dah!!!!! Chicken socks!!! Ethel and Attila have been immortalised in wool. Not totally accurate, though, as they're not fighting over corn...
This is just for the idiocy of having chickeny socks. I'm really enjoying it! Knit in alpaca (dark blue) and my own homespun merino turquoise/ green.
Love the barberpoley stripes!

Other spinning: this was my second skein for my Spin to Knit secret pal, Barbe. I'll write all about the Spin to Knit swap another time. I wasn't that impressed with the swap as it was organised, to be honest. Although I did enjoy being a secret pal and making the yarn for Barbe! Other crafty news: 3 bias skirts sewn (only pics of 2 as I'm wearing the third). 1: turquoise silk. (gorgeous!) 2: dark grey wool with flowers embroidered on it. 3: (not pictured) sage green needlecord.

Huge sense of achievement with not much sewing. Hooray!

And lastly, thanks to these little rascals,

we've been chickenproofing half of the garden to allow the grass and flowers some chance of recovery! Drastic situations call for drastic measures! We had practically no grass left! I've taken the opportunity to plant some new pretty flowers in this fenced-off bit, as the girls peck and scratch anything that isn't tough as old boots into oblivion within minutes! maybe I should have listened to my mother's warnings about chickens....?