A little knitting and a gruelling trip to the gym

Despite a smidgen of project infidelity............
(That's a cast on Baby Surprise Jacket in Wolverhampton Wanderers black and yellow)

The Kauni Cardi is making definite progress. You see that up at the top of the picture? The little loop of blue cotton?
That's the beginning of a sleeve steek! So I estimate that I'm just over halfway through the body, which is... allowing for sleeves and button bands and things.... maybe 1/3 of the Cardi done? Does that sound accurate? So as regards keeping up the kauni enthusiasm and finishing the cardi, I'm definitely not out of the woods yet.

Went for a personal training session at the gym today (it was free, I think they're trying to drum up interest) and spent half an hour doing some boxing with my instructor (starts off fun, since you get to take all your agression out on his hand pads - but trust me, I have more agression than stamina. Arms like wet spaghetti, anyone?) Then did my usual gym routine as well. Burned a total of 900 calories, which sounds good, but is only a drop in the ocean, I'm afraid! I have a whole other person's worth of weight to lose. 9 and a half stone, which is 133 pounds. And that's to get to the top end of a healthy weight. Daunting task. Encouragement welcomed!

Meanwhile, Willow has been trying out new sleeping dens....
...but seems to prefer the one stuffed with merino wool and handknitted socks. I wonder why that could be....?

Oops! I cheated!

Project fidelity (since cast-on, we're not counting old UFOs) to the kauni cardigan has been quite easy so far... I'm up to the underarms, and just about to do the sleeve steeks! This is unprecedented progress for me. The most I have achieved of a jumper so far is one front and half a sleeve. There are several languishing here and there in a similar state, as I quickly became bored with large areas of stockinette stitch. That's probably why i knit so many socks - they're full of interest. No sooner have you started the cuff but you have a heel to do, then very quickly, a toe. Not much boring 'plain' knitting, even in 'vanilla' socks, with no textured stitches or colour patterns. In jumpers there is LOTS of plain. Particularly since I am rather a large and curvy girl!

So the kauni cardi was progressing well. Then this morning I slipped up. I swatched for the black and yellow baby surprise jacket. Oh dear. How do I keep myself on the straight and narrow?



Willow doesn't care so long as I don't use the ball she's sleeping on.

Oh and one more thing...

About those seven single socks?

I'm working on it....

Five down, two to go!

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.]