Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Changes are afoot....

This is my last week as a stay-at-home-mum. Work begins on Monday. Last night my "team leader" (that phrase makes me want to do air quotes for some reason) popped around to assess my home workspace for OH&S reasons. He really should have come around after the kids had gone nuts and pulled every toy/plaything they own out and strewn it from front door to back door, as they frequently do. Then I might not have passed the "no tripping hazards" criteria. But he would have got a more realistic view of my what I'm dealing with here. Ha ha.

I also took a big leap yesterday.... I joined a gym! I'm very excited about it and keen to get started, but it's a bit like the work thing. It sounds good in theory but I'm actually going to have to go there and do something. That's the hurdle I need to get over! I'm meeting with a trainer on Saturday morning though, so I'm trying to start off on the right foot with a clear view of what I need to do to achieve my goals. The good thing is a friend also belongs to this gym and she knows I've joined, so hopefully that will be an incentive to get along and make an effort. Not to mention the kilos I need to shift and the fitness I need to gain.

I've been making grand plans in my mind about how I'm going to manage all these new commitments, after 4.5 years of just having to make sure children were fed and clean and that I remembered to pick them up from school and kindy! So far it's all still in my mind. Hopefully I can put it all into practice. To do it there's going to have to be changes around here also. The other occupants of the house don't know it yet, but they soon will.

In knitting news I have been crocheting. So maybe that's not knitting news? Although when I say crocheting, I mean making chains, following instructions, getting instructions wrong when I thought I knew what I was doing and then ripping everything out in frustration. So all I have to show for it is a ball of yarn with a crochet hook shoved in it looking like some kind of bizarre stabbing implement. I did feel like stabbing myself after all of the work I put in for nothing though!

And the big news of the day is little Miss F is 2 today! Wow, that went fast. So Happy Birthday to my beautiful daughter.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Ta-Da!

It's done*!

The blanket is about cot-size (assuming you are familiar with cots!).

All up about a month to make. And although I did get a bit obsessive about them for a while there, I did take a break from making the circles in that time also, so it was a reasonably quick project.

I've gone with the random look, although it's more planned-random than random-random. I did struggle with the thought of random for a while there, but then I came up with a plan.... I made all the hex rounds the same colour as the centre round on each circle. Then I put them together in rows of 9 (since I used 9 colours) and made sure I had only one of each colour in each row. I also tried to spread all the colours out evenly so I didn't end up with clusters of the same colour anywhere. I think it's turned out nicely and I'm really happy with it. It's big enough to go over one of the kids if they are lying on the couch and all of them really love it too. Even DH loves it! Actually I think he loves the fact that I'm done with it so I can get back to knitting his blanket!

I'm going to have to take a break from knitting for a while though. My hands are still giving me quite a bit of trouble so it's not an enjoyable thing at the moment. I also only have two weeks left until I return to work. I have so much to do before then! The kids have started childcare successfully - in fact they are there now and I'm at home alone!! First time in almost 4.5 years I've had an entire day to myself. Now I must go do some housework...


*It's not entirely done. I'm calling it done for the CAL at Tangled Yarns, but I would like it bigger. I have yarn left so I'm going to just add to it as I feel like until it is at least big enough to cover my legs while sitting on the couch on a cold night