Some Knitting

I feel that my blog has been lacking some knitting recently (as well as posts). This is mostly because I haven't been doing much. I have a lot of things that I wanted to start and I haven't felt like beginning any of them. Instead I started knitting this scarf using some Debbie Bliss Baby Alpaca from my stash and a stitch pattern from this blog..

I was feeling a bit more creative on Monday so I started knitting a bag from the Lopi roving I bought at WoolFest. I intend to felt it when I've finished knitting. I've never felted anything before. Hope it turns out OK.

Today was my first day at my first teaching practice. It's only two days a week till half term and we were only observing. It was an interesting experience. I enjoyed it much more than being in university. I hope tomorrow is just as good.

Life Update

This PGCE lark is leaving me with little brain power for interesting blogging. Most nights this week I have lapsed into a vegetable-like state after getting home. This has been made worse by trying to fit in preparation for a job interview last Friday for the famous RA post which I have been going on about (though not here) for months. Well, I didn't get the job (I think), which was a bit of a dissapointment, but there is something very nice about having it all done with and knowing what I will be doing for the next 12 months. I should point out that I came second in the interviews and there's still a chance that the person who got it might not take it or might not get their PhD done in time, but I'm going to ignore that for now and get on with teaching.

On Thursday night we wanted potatoes for dinner, and too idle to go to the shops, I finally split open the two grow bags of potato plants in the yard to see what was there. They were a bit better than the first but nothing special.


Although I think I heard somewhere that vegetables grown in compost do not produce good yeilds.

I also pulled up my carrots.

They were all very tasty with dinner. I'd like to say they were much nicer than the ones from the supermarket, but there wasn't that much difference. They were perhaps a bit more potatoey/carroty tasting than the mass produced ones.

Finally, it's Purlpower's birthday today, so I wanted to say a big
Happy Birthday Helen!!!
We went to her party last night, which was in a curry house in Fenham. It was a pleasant evening and we had a good time. I don't think the restaurant staff showed themselves in a very good light, but we had plenty of alcohol and good company, and that's all that counts really.

Note to self: I really must stop taking photos at parties with my camera phone and use my proper camera. The quality doesn't compare.

For all your rabbit disposal needs...

Cragside

Jim and Dawn were visiting this weekend. I decided to have a total break from work yesterday and felt much better. We went to Rothbury and after a short walk to some standing stones, we had lunch in a pub. Lovely fish and chips. Then we went to Cragside. Cragside was the first house in the country to have electricity. They had hot and cold running water, electric lights, an elevator and electric spit in the kitchen, before most people even knew they could exist. All that was powered by hydroelectricity. The house turned out to be shut. Apparently the 130 year old wiring doesn't come up to modern electrical standards and has been condemned. The grounds were still open and we had a good time walking around the formal gardens, pinetum, lake etc.

There were more wild mushrooms around the grounds than I've ever seen. We almost had enough photos of different types for a mushroom calender for 2007. We decided that this one was the 'perfect' specimen.

There were several art installations in the grounds. One was a four poster bed, floating in the middle of the lake. Something about it made it difficult to stop looking at it.

There was also a boat shape made out of little paper boats.

Sockedy of Errors

After posting yesterday I decided to have a quick knit of the socks I was working on. Thinking it would be relaxing. I was finishing off the last couple of rows of the heel. I've already had to undoo it a couple of times because I made mistake during the week. All I did was drop stitches and get confused. I've ended up making a total mess of it because I dropped a lot of stitches from the very edge of the short row shaping heel and even though I thought I'd got them all back there's now a big gaping hole on one side. I tried un-knitting but I can't figure out what's going on. I think I'll just have to undo the heal and start again when I'm less tired. Maybe I should resort to a plain stocking stitch scarf or something. Sigh!

School

I woke up this morning with that 'Do I have to go to school feeling?'. It's was all dark and rainy. I was with year 5 (9-10 years old) today. They were all fidgety because of the close weather. Fortunately the rain stopped long enough for outdoor playtimes. I find doing something new and different every day exhausting. I feel absolutely shattered. I can't wait for the weekend. Hopefully I'll have more time to do some knitting.

I just got an electric shock from the aerial cable for the TV? How odd, it's never happened before. My arm feels all funny. Wonder why it is.

The Group

Last week a couple of friends asked me, almost as an aside if I had many friends in Leicester and if I would miss them when I moved. The answer is yes to both questions. I wanted to write something about the people who have been a massive part of my life.

I moved to Leicester in September 2002, to do a PhD in the Radio and Space Plasma Physics group at the University of Leicester. The group consists of about 30 people, who are a mixture of technicians (building, running and designing radar components), administrators, PhD students, research assosciates (PDRAs), lecturers and professors and unusually for a physics department the group is about 50% female.

Right from the start I was made to feel really welcome. Not just by the other students, but by everyone in the group. The first day ended with a trip to the pub and that set a precedent for the rest of my time there.

It's a bit like being in a big family. People work together and socialise. Sometimes spending almost too much time with one another. There's always someone willing to join in with a sporting activity, or a trip to the cinema, a pub, the shops or a restaurant. Always someone to talk to when you're feeling down or someone to offer tissues when you need to cry.

Group members are not only sociable but they're extremely supportive when it comes to work. Everyone is always willing to offer help, encouragment and advice if required.

All that means that I am very sad to be leaving Leicester. The nature of a research group is that staff and students come and go, but I can't help feeling a sense of loss at having left. I don't think there are many people currently there who I don't consider to be my friends and there are a lot of people who I hope will remain friends forever.

On Thursday night I was presented with a folder, which had print outs showing presents that had been ordered for me. The first is a sushi making lesson, from a Japanese chef in Glasgow (I am very excited about this. There's also some rosewood DPNs, the Dr Who series 2 box set and some John Lewis vouchers, along with lots of pictures from the last 4 years. I was also given a card and these three fantastic cakes, which Sarah and Suzie spent many hours making.

I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone there for my leaving presents and for the last 4 years. I wish we had more than one word for thank you because it doesn't really seem like enough. I'll miss you all loads.

Teaching Begins

I had the first day of my primary school observation placement today. There were 5 other students observing. I started off in reception, which basically meant that I spent my day playing in the sand pit, building Duplo houses, looking at snails with a magnifying glass and cutting out playdough shapes. Obviously I was also making observations which will be extremely useful in my future career. It was still a million times more enjoyable than sitting at a desk running time series analysis routines on magnetometer data.

Moving

Well I've now unpacked most of my stuff and there's a little more breathing space in the house. I did have to spend all of last night reorganising my clothes and the linen cupboard in order to fit everything in. I decided I had to get rid of a lot of old clothes that I no longer wear. Most of them are too worn to be any use for a charity shops. I think I might try and turn the old T-shirts into a knittable yarn. I feel terribly guilty about throwing things out because on Friday I listened to a program about the environmental impact of people buying a throwing out lots of cheap clothing. I'll have to just be more careful what I buy in future.

I went to the Centurion knitters for the first time yesterday (after I managed to locate my clean clothes amoung the boxes). It was fun. Hopefully I'll be able to continue going now I've not travelling so much.

Sorry for the lack of photos. Have been too busy to remember to take pictures or to knit much.

All Change

Today I left Leicester and my job there for good. Feels very odd, but nice to be home and know that I am stopping.

For those of you following the degree notes saga, they ended up staying in Leicester because I couldn't fit them in the car. Their future remains uncertain, but they're currently hiding on a high shelf in my old office.

Moving

I've shed about 50% of my thesis work notes and papers today. I've kept the 'important' stuff and thrown out all the duplicates and slightly wrong plots that I was keeping because they seemed useful at the time. I also have all my undergrad notes sitting here. I'm not really sure what to do with them. It would be most sensible to throw them away, since I haven't used them since graduating, but every time I take them off the shelf I think about how much effort I put into the work and can't bring myself to do it. I should also mention that I realised today that I have 5Gb of pointless files on my computer, which I am keeping 'just in case'.

My grandad was a bit of a horder. I have hording genes. Every so often I have fits of ruthlessness and throw things out, because I also have some conflicting genes that hate clutter. I am a tortured soul. It's hard to say at this point which side of my genetics will get the upper hand. Maybe I'll snap when loading the car and decide to chuck them out. It's feeling like a stessful process.

Faffy Faff Faff

It's my last week in Leicester this week. I'm sitting at my desk, surrounded by half packed boxes. I keep trying to contact the education office in Newcastle, who said they'd get back to me in 10 minutes 2 hours ago, to find out whether I am going to be able to do my primary school placement next week. I still don't know whether I'll actually be doing the PGCE because I'm still waiting to hear whether or not I'm going to be interviewed for a research job I applied for. I just had to call up the people supplying my new laptop and remind them that it needed to be delivered to me. They said it would be here last week, and despite making some excuse, it seems that they just forgot to deliver. Probably more to do with the fact that the guy I talked to on the phone when ordering seemed more intent on giving me the hard sell, rather than actually lisening to what I said. Why do people insist on trying to sell you things which you've already decided to buy? All it does is put me off. I still need to arrange with my land lady when I am leaving my flat and cancel all my utilities. All in all it's not the most relaxing Monday ever.

We were planning to go camping over the weekend, but I decided that I just couldn't face it in the end, what with everything else I had to do. We thought we'd just go for a long walk instead, but when we got up on Saturday morning and saw that it was raining hard and was forecast to do so for the rest of the weekend, we decided to give up on the whole thing. I'm not too much of a wuss when it comes to rain. I've done my fair share of eating sandwhiches, while sheltering from driving rain in ditches behind walls, but it just seemed to take the fun out of the whole thing. Instead we decided to start decorating the flat so we can think about selling it. So we had a trip to B&Q, which is always fun, and then set about painting all the wood/metal work in the hall, which there's quite a lot of. The emulsion will have to wait until next weekend. I still keep finding paint on my arms and things, despite having two showers.

All this activity meant that I didn't get that much knitting done over the weekend. I finally got a ball of matching alpaca silk, so I did some work on my ruflette ruffle, and started knitting up my KoolAid dyed sock yarn.

I quite like the colour (sorry about the crap picture). I started knitting some lacey socks, but I just can't seem to convince myself that I or anyone I know would actually wear them. I also think they look wrong in the patterned yarn. Maybe next time.

My First Hand Dying

Inspired by Helen and Jen's efforts I decided to have a go at dying some undyed Opal sock yarn from Get Knitted. I used grape, pink lemonade and cherry. I was suprised how well it took the dye. I was expecting it to take ages of heating and soaking before the liquid went clear but it happened almost right away. It's still a bit wet. Can't wait to see what it looks like knitted. The photo doesn't really show the colours very well.

Bizarre things from home

It's taken me all week to get round to mention my mum's glasses. When my dad picked me up on Friday last week he complained that my mum had lost her glasses and had been making everyone look for them for the last hours or so. They had just about given up looking when I got home. My brother's fiance had gone outside for a walk round the garden, decided to pick and eat a plum from one of the trees outside. She looked up and saw this.

The explanation is that my mum had a ladder out earlier in the day and had he glasses on her head while picking plums. Good thing the magpies didn't spot them first.

On Saturday, while Graeme and I were taking a walk around the block, for fresh air, we spotted a cloud of black smoke coming from someone's drive. We went to investigate and this is what we found parked there.


They were gone when we came back from the shops. We didn't see it again. It must have gone for a drive around.