“There is a crack, a crack in everything.”

“…That’s how the light gets in.”

So recently I had a bit of a wobble.

I felt overwhelmed with the amount of things I had to sort out or have responsibility for, and I struggled (and continue to struggle) with navigating the systems in place to address those things. I know that’s a very fuzzy description, but I’m sure you can appreciate why I can’t be more specific!

Advice tells us to write it all down, make a list. And sometimes that helps, I’ll admit. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes seeing all the things you have to somehow achieve – not to mention the barriers that you are up against – just serves to justify the panic.

When I feel overwhelmed and anxious, I need to find a way to regain control. So I had a sit down and reviewed my lifestyle to try to assess how I got myself into this position.

Is it how I work? Is it the work itself? Is it the culture of where I work? Is it how I deal with stress? Is it related to how I spend my time outside of work?

It’s likely to be a combination of factors to be honest, but that doesn’t matter. I need to know what is making me feel upset and then see if these are things I can change, I can accept, or if I have to avoid them.

I fear that it’s this job. Not necessarily this career, but this job at this organisation. That I just don’t fit in here and I have to find myself a new job. Now there aren’t many jobs in my chosen career path, and there are close to none in the area of the UK I’d like to live in, and none at a pay grade I’d like. Plus CB is in a worse job than I am and so is fishing in the exact same pool. Which creates further stress and anxiety...

So what do you do? You hate your day-to-day existence, but you have no choice but to keep doing it. If I didn’t love my home life so much I’m not sure I would cope!

But there is beauty in that. I am broken, I know that, but I am still here and I continue to be here. And that is beautiful. I am beautiful. And can you really be unhappy when you know you are so beautiful?

*Quote from Leonard Cohen

“Seems I canna possess your soul…”

“…without losing my own.”

I just finished reading Outlander (Took all my willpower to not write Highlander) by Diana Gabaldon.

Picture from Wikipedia

In brief – I enjoyed it. The characters were amusing and likeable, they were pretty realistic and they didn’t do anything wildly out of character just to move the plot on. There were a couple of holes, but I am willing to suspend judgement and say they’d probably be worked out in later books.

However, I do not think I am going to read those books.

As much as I did enjoy the characters and plot, I found the whole thing needing a great deal of editing. Far too bloated a book. Way too much guff.

I appreciate that I don’t really give a fig about the sexy stuff or what people are wearing or whatever. After a certain point (i.e. as far as the plot and setting is needed) description adds (or should add) richness. I found that the ins and outs of the sex scenes was gratuitous and added absolutely nothing. But then, as I said, I don’t really want to read an erotic novel; others may love those bits.

But it wasn’t just the bodice-ripping parts that I skimmed through. We had about 5 pages at one point talking about killing a wolf. 5 pages. 1 wolf. Seriously. Far too bloated.

In all, it took me 11 days to finish. It shouldn’t have taken so long; it should have been a much shorter novel.

It’s a shame really. It’s a lot better than some of the Young Adult books I’ve read, but I’m more likely to continue reading books in those series as they are short and generally quite action-packed. They act as palate cleansers between more substantial book-meals.

This was like eating the same dinner every night. Really good for the first few evenings, but then you get sick of having the same flavours and textures over and over again…

Overall rating = 6/10

*Quote from Diana Gabaldon

“Walter Benjamin said a book can wait a thousand years unread…”

“…until the right reader happens to come along. Books are in no hurry.” 

Tsundoku is an untranslatable Japanese word that means “acquiring books and letting them pile up unread.”

We are all guilty of this, don’t deny it. And if you are some sort of alien who does not do this, I say: "Welcome to planet earth, if you hang around here for long enough you will start buying books and letting them pile up unread."

I have stopped buying books, true, but I am still in the nasty habit of borrowing books. From whoever will lend them to me. And letting them pile up unread.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m meticulous about returning them, but it can take me a long time to get around to reading them in the first place…

As CB and I hope to move within the next year or so, and as books are a pain in the proverbial to pack up and move, we have made a pact to try and read all our unread paperbacks by the end of the year. This includes both unread books and those we wish to reread. Of course there are books we will always keep – Lord of the Rings for instance – but those I don’t begrudge moving house with. It’s the ones I know I will read once (or once more) and then will jettison off to whoever will take it.

I have also been systematically taking all my books from my parents’ house to my current flat, resulting in a huge pile of unwanted unnecessary books. I only own one bookcase so until today I had numerous piles of books on the floor of our spare room. A couple of these piles have now been transported to the local library, which was very happy to accept them.

The thing about these piles of books is that they make me sad. I love books and I love reading, and if I’m not going to reread these guys I want them to find a new owner who will. A bookcase full of gorgeous volumes is a magical thing, a wall of adventures at the tips of your fingers. But knowing I will never go on those journeys again, that just makes me feel guilty and sad.

Set your books free people! Let them find new homes and new lovers!

*Quote from George Steiner

"I may not have gone where I intended to go…”

“…but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."

I’ve just realised I have been successfully blogging on a weekly basis for a year now!

Huzzah!

This makes me very proud of my dedication, but also makes me sad as this time last year I was still in the rosy, post-New Zealand glow.

Quite a lot has happened in this past year. I have changed jobs, moved across the country, and got married. In that order. Friends have got married, got engaged, bought puppies and kittens, bought houses, had babies and become pregnant. Phew.

My knitting has had ups and downs, my reading has had downs and ups. My exercise levels have remained fairly non-existent, with a couple of blips here and there, and my film-watching has remained consistent.

I think this next year I will expand my blog from 99% about knitting to about 75% knitting. I’m thinking book and film reviews, I’m thinking… Well that’s what I’m thinking, book and film reviews. Maybe the odd gig or show I go to.

Oh that’s what else I was thinking – baking! I could tell you a bit more about my baking! Did I ever mention my Simnel Cake?

It was slightly over baked and the marzipan wasn't that flavourful. But still. At least it looks pretty!

Anyway, I wanted to mark the occasion of our anniversary, dear reader. Thank you for listening to me wittering on about double pointed needles and pattern choices.

I can’t promise things will change, but I can promise…Err….No, that’s it.

*Quote from Douglas Adams

“A well-stocked mind…”

“…is safe from boredom.”

Dear reader(s),

Do you remember the picture from last week, the disturbing one of my horrific ladders?

Well I feel a complete fool, because “hidden” in that picture is the cause of why those ladders were so much worse than the others. I had dropped a stitch.

Urgh.

I still have a few laddery bits, but now I’ve corrected that pesky dropped one, the sleeve’s looking much more sleeve-y. The laddery bits stop at exactly the same point I moved from double pointed needles to a circular one. Coincidence? No. Circulars are so much better. They are quicker, there are no opportunities for ladders, and they are easier to transport so you can get more ad-hoc knitting done.

But now I am beginning the second sleeve so I am back on my stupid DPNs. I even tried to buy a new set (considering I only have two in the right size) but I couldn’t get a cheap metal set from Amazon. They were out of stock or only offered 4mm or 3.5mm. So I’m back with my brittle plastic hodge-podge.

I cannot wait to be knitting the yoke. It looks interesting and tricky and is therefore fun. I was knitting at my family’s Easter party and people seemed a bit alarmed at the pattern when I showed them, but I guess it’s what you’re used to. Although I’ve never done anything like this before I’ve knitted enough things to just trust what the pattern says (and ask people on Ravelry when it makes no sense!)

In terms of the knitting queue, I realised I was being a bit silly and knocked off all Easter knitting after finishing Egwene, my chicken (blogged about here) . I also made up my mind to knit this pattern for my friends’ unborn baby:

© MillaMia 2009

It’s the Mikael cardigan by MillaMia Sweden (Ravelry link here) and I already have the pattern and (hopefully) enough wool to knit it in black with a putty-grey trim. If I have enough wool I think I will make little pockets too as that would look freaking adorable. 

I have also decided that it’s unfeasible to try and knit a cardigan for my friend’s birthday in June. It makes me sad, but considering how long it’s taking me to knit Peloponnese and the fact that I don’t even have the wool picked out for it, I think it’s a wise decision. I still have two other piles of wool waiting with their patterns anyway: 

Confetti, by Veera Välimäki (Ravelry link here) (which I will knit in King Cole Bamboo Cotton):

© Veera Välimäki

and Navigate by Annie Lupton (Ravelry link here) (which I will knit in Cascade Yarns® Heritage Solids):

© Devon Johnson

Plus another pair of socks. Phew! 

*Quote from Arthur C. Clark

“…although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable…”

“…solutions are not.”

I have begun knitting the sleeves of my Peloponnese. Yay! Finally she gets round to it!

As you know, I prefer knitting in the round on circular needles. As I didn’t have any short needles, I had to buy a new set. Blah de blah.

When I started knitting, however, I realised I wanted to knit long sleeves (not three-quarter length as described in the pattern) and so would have to knit the smallest size to fit my wrist. Can you guess what’s coming next? My needle was obviously too big. I needed to use double pointed needles. And I didn’t have the right size…

I could have cried. I had two DPNs in the right size, and a bunch that were a size up. So I decided that would have to do.

It was really fiddly doing the pattern over DPNs of varying sizes, but I got through it. Now I’m going round and round slowly with my increases and it’s going well.

I have run into a couple of issues though…

El Snappo
Turns out using hand-me-down plastic needles isn’t always smooth sailing. As I mentioned, I have been using two 3.75mm needles and two 4.00mm needles, which brings its own special kind of joy, but yesterday I also managed to snap one (luckily one of the bigger ones) in half! As much as I’d like to think of myself as the Incredible Hulk of the knitting world, I think we can blame the perishing plastic DPNs. RIP.

Ladderinos
The reason I dislike using DPNs is that I cannot seem to avoid ladders. I try and I try, pulling my yarn as tight as I can when moving from one to another (possibly another reason for El Snappo above) and yet I still seem to create nasty ladders. I’m hoping most will come out when blocking, but this one I am particularly worried about:

Honestly, I shudder looking at that :(

Fabric yuck
Finally, not DPN related, but I still dislike the feel of the wool and of the resulting fabric. It’s horrible knowing I’m going to so much effort for a jumper that’s already pilling, but I really want to see how this jumper comes out. It’s a big step forward for me so there’s bound to be numerous errors and I will have to reknit it again at some point anyway, so I think it’ worth continuing and just using different wool next time. Knowing my luck if I stopped halfway and switched wool I would run into a completely different issue when I got to the yoke anyway…

*Quote from Isaac Asimov

“The good guys dress in black…”

“…remember that.”

So here’s the brief:

• My friends are expecting a baby in June. 
• I would like to knit them a baby jumper and hat. 
• They have asked that – regardless of the sex of the baby – all baby items be black, white or grey. 

I have already knitted a cute black hat (blogged about here) and am thinking about the jumper.

Originally I was going to knit this:

© Tin Can Knits

Gramps (Ravelry link here), by Tin Can Knits, in dark grey.

However I would have to buy new wool to start it. As I already have rather a lot of wool and a few projects earmarked to use it, I feel wasteful buying MORE. I know that’s silly, as it will all get used eventually, but I still would rather work through the wool I already have rather than buy more.

I thought I could knit this:

© Phillysaurus

Fredrik (Ravelry link here), by MillaMia Sweden, in black with a light grey trim.

I already own the pattern (and made the jumper, blogged about here) and have a few balls of black and one of ‘putty’ to kick off the project. But is a black V-neck jumper too much? Too morose? I hate gender stereotypes so believe me I cringe at saying this, but – would it be too severe if they have a girl? But they did specify black, white and grey…

Other options include this:

© Georgie Hallam 2014

Gidday Baby (Ravelry link here), by Georgie Nicolson, with black as the main colour and grey as contrast.

But is that going too far in other direction and choosing something girly?

I know I’m worrying prematurely; I just like to plan these things…


*Quote from Will Smith