Goodbye to all that

So it’s goodbye to the green jersey, which is finally finished; goodbye to university, because the exam and semester are now over; and, it seems, goodbye to my beloved sofa. That’s right – I’m heading back out into the big, wide, working world.
The woman who took over from me at my old job is leaving and they called me to see if I was interested in filling in for three months. So we’ve been negotiating for a couple of weeks. I’m good at negotiating:
Me: Three months is too short to make it worth giving up a semester at university, it’d have to be six months at least.
Them: No, that won’t work.
Me: OK, three months it is.
It’s quite flattering that someone thinks I am still motivated, professional and awake enough to trust with a company car, a company credit card, and the company’s reputation. Mind you, they don’t know that I am the woman who has been known to leap up, get the kids washed, dressed and fed, load them into the car, and drive off to playgroup, only to realise on arriving that I am still in my pyjamas! Okay, it only happened once, but still…
Also, I keep thinking, ‘Hey, isn’t this the job that you left because you found it so hard when you had one child?’ It is.
Anyway, we’ve worked out this incredible schedule for the kids involving kindergarten, daycare, granny, kindy friends’ parents and one lovely university student. So provided no-one gets sick we should be able to manage it - and why would pre-schoolers get sick in winter when they’re at kindy and daycare surrounded by thousands of runny noses and hacking coughs? Oh boy.

On the knitting front the green jersey is finally done – and it fits (more or less). The lacey bits would look better if I’d blocked it but you know, it’s for a 2 year old who is going to spill porridge down the front any morning now, and also I just couldn’t be bothered. (Great attitude to take to work hey!)

I tried to get a nice photo of Jess wearing it, but first she did this:

Then she insisted we take a photo of her tummy (‘Pic tummy NOW!!’)

Then she grabbed Katie so she could be in the picture too.

So here is an empty jersey… and a close up-ish shot of the lace and cables.

At some point in the last manic week, while studying for the exam and 'negotiating' about this job, I started a scarfish kind of thing but forgot to mention it. It's from the book Knit 2 Together by Tracy Ullman and Mel Clark. They call it a neckwarmer, and I've seen similar things called cowls, so who knows. It's like a scarf but it's a big loop you sling over your head. Theirs is done on circular needles, which makes sense, but I tried, I really did, and then I threw the circular needle across the dining room (causing my partner to be extra nice to me because he figured he'd done something wrong - he he he). So mine is being done on straight needles, and in a different yarn (the green one), and I changed it from a 12 stitch repeat of feather and fan to an eighteen stitch repeat. Apart from that it's exactly the same.

The book is one that came home with me from the library while I was 'studying' for my exam. Kept happening, no idea how. I'd head off to the library prepared to settle down with an analysis of the postcolonial discourse utilised in Waitangi tribunal narratives, and their use of heuristic tropes and other such exciting stuff, and I'd come home with a bag full of knitting books. Very strange. Won't it be interesting to see what kind of mark I get?

I've also started something that I'm hoping will grow into a sleeping bag crossed with a cardigan for my friends Grant and Kate's baby, which is due in October. We will see.

There's a new little doodad at the right there, which is from the Aussie and NZ knitters webring - go check them out. There are more and more of us NZ knitting bloggers and I have a great plan. Together we can all write the knitting book that I want to buy, but which doesn't yet exist!

I want (oh how I want) a New Zealand knitting book with NZ inspired designs and motifs - NO INTARSIA KIWIS - classy, subtle things. Like koru cables (I've tried, I can't figure it out), and lace based on silver ferns or kowhai. I thought I might knit a 'brick and tile' sweater with some kind of brick-like pattern on the body, and scallop stitch for the sleeves and yoke. All in one colour - not to look like a house, but vaguely inspired by our vernacular architecture. I know James at Fibre Alive has done some nice stuff with koru motifs - what else is out there? Actually I'm looking at this feather and fan, and thinking if you knit four or five repeats in red, and knitted in gold beads in the fan sections... pohutukawa! It would be a great book, and I'd buy a copy...

What a long post... now I have to go and panic some more about working!