Knitting avoidance good and bad

When you have a commission to finish you need to be aware of knitting avoidance behaviours, not all which are bad.
Good avoidance
Exercise-lets face it knitting is not good for the posture
Cooking dinner but not random baking
Balancing the bank accounts-yes I am one of those people who not only can spell account reconciliation but does it every month.
Laundry especially delicate washes hung up on a rack and not put in the dryer
Office work for the husband which I am paid to do.
Bad avoidance
Coffee coffee coffee
Sudoku
Randon phone calls
Facebook
Twitter
Anything else I can play with on the phone like weather obsessions

No more commissions

Somehow I have lost a lot of the pictures of commissions I have done-the joys of transferring from one computer to another so this is only a small selection.
I have learnt a lot making things I never would have thought of making. To say I went beyond my comfort zone is an understatement. But the fact of the matter is that is is impossible to make a reasonable hourly rate. This was tragically reinforced by seeing a hand knitted scarf made in China in Asda for £5.00.
So no more. I shall concentrate on my City and Guilds Knit Design course and create knitting from my own designs. I even have a lovely new sketch book and a box of art pencils to tacky the somewhat scary art part of the course.
So I am very motivated to finish the Lady Diana Spencer sheep jumper and want that snow. Can anyone think of a nicer combination than snow, radio 4, blanket and knitting.

Weekend

My weekend was nothing short of fabulous!
I went to a weekend workshop for City and Guilds Knitting Design students. This is an extra mural course and it was wonderful to meet with other students and see what they are doing. 
I have said it before and I will say it again. I really do find a weekend of intellectual stimulation far more invigorating, more joyful than doing nothing.
I have come home with lots great ideas and highly motivated.
Knitters did you know about biscuitsandjam/stripe_generator .This generates random strip patterns-fabulous.
Also fabulous and already ordered from Amazon are the Pattern Magic books from Tomoko Nakamichi.
All in all a great weekend.

Dublin and why you should go,

Too much sun gives you cancer so why waste your holiday fund ruining your health when you can go to Dublin.
Here's why you should go.
The joy of language. Dublin has been the home of a number of important writers-Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Jonathan Swift to name but a few. This love of language permeates the city. People talk, they talk to people they have never met for the sheer joy of just talking. Go get inspired and maybe even finish Ulysses. If you do or have finished this most difficult of books I am truly impressed. Chapter one was great.
Do the Literary Pub Tour.
Statistics show the Irish are very charitable and there are noticeably far more examples of, well niceness than I am used to. I saw many examples of the elderly walking out into traffic knowing cars will stop for them and smile whilst doing so. There is an optimism that I sense comes from being charitable. Many people told me that things were bad economically but that they will improve. 'We'll be all right'.
The city is big enough but not too big. We could walk everywhere. The guy in the music shop knew the great slide guitarist from the night before.
Go to Dublin. We walked down Baggot Street on Saturday night and for 3 blocks there were taxis on either side of the road. Take a taxi and talk to your driver.

Ryan Air

Ryan Air shall I compare thee to a nightmare thou art more ghastly and more horrid...
I flew Ryan Air yesterday. Writing this will help.Well I hope it will help.
The board at Luton showed the Check in  counters for a lot of flights after ours. We we passengers to Dublin had to go to check in remained a mystery. Strange but hey this is Ryan Air. 
Finally we were told which check in desk to go to and we happy little travelers bounded along to queue. To queue and to queue. I am constantly amazed by the tolerance of the English. After half and hour of queuing with no Ryan Air staff in sight I could stand it no longer and went and asked a member of staff at another  desk.
She made the huge effort to look to her left to the queue of very patient travelers and said she did not know what was happening. I asked her to find out what was going on. Looking exhausted by my demands she phoned someone and found out it was Hussein who was meant to be at that desk.
II asked her where Hussein was-he was at another desk chatting with another member of staff with no one waiting to be served.
I went and asked why he was not helping us. He said he was busy (doing what??). I suggested as there was two of them serving well no body maybe Hussein could come and help us. The other chap asked if I wanted to take over managing Ryan Air at Luton. Trust me by then it did not seem such a bad idea.
Hussein then said it would be 10 minutes and he would open the Counter. Hah!  Lies. Another half and hour later 2 other frazzled women opened the counter. Of course we were late taking off. Of course there was no apology.
Ryan Air cheap but maybe not worth it. 

Stowe

We went to Stowe Gardens today. This National Trust Property was owned by Lord Cobham who in his day was richer than the Royals. The property has several lakes and 40 buildings and statues in the gardens. Makes our humble garden shed look, well , humble.
The thing is that today was a full day. The husband had to fly back to Dublin this afternoon and our daughter was battling Israeli bureaucracy in readiness for when she goes back later this year. 
Nonetheless we went to Stowe and walked the gardens for an hour. So not a major day out and we only saw a small fraction of what the gardens offer. Yet it was still great, cold and crisp and that very special light of a mid winter sunny day.

The point of all this is that it is worthwhile to get out and walk in a beautiful place even when time is short. We came home feeling calm and centred and I have been a paradigm of efficiency all evening.

Good ideas

If you have a Wii www.wiifitroutine.com is a fantastic web site. I replaced my gym membership with a Wii two years ago and have been feeling extremely bored. This site has a range of 15, 30, 45 and 1 hour routines that combines what the Wii offers in ways I never would have thought of combining them.


 Every now and again exercise habits need a boost but, as I have realised, the body needs blob time. The festive season for a Jew means Chanukah candles, a few doughnuts and not much else, such calm in the midst of people in pre-Xmas melt down. My inactivity reached it's trough today with  the annual Anne & Sue mid winter slob day. We ate and watched DVDs. In our defense we did watch a PBS documentary series on the American Civil War. This is probably a little more meaningful than previous choices such as 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and was much more interesting than it probably sounds and has inspired me to finally actually look for a American Studies course at the Open U.


The moral of the story: stopping every now and again is incredibly energising. Just don't do it.