STRESSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Morning! It's Saturday and I'm up and at 'em. Well, I'm sitting with my pad and a cup to tea talking to you lot! That counts right!? I'm waiting for my painkillers to kick in. I woke this morning with a headache. I'm praying its a tension headache and not a migraine as I'm at a swimming gala this evening! Headache + gala = nightmare!

As the title implies its not been a great week. As each working day finished I thought the next couldn't get any worse. As the next progressed I realised that it could. I've had patients swear at me, accuse me of getting their prescriptions wrong, I've dealt with my computers failing, coped with my day being screwed up by the doctors' computers failing, all the while dealing with the fall out of stock problems while my wholesaler's computers failed!  All in all it's been a foul week and after that rant I'm drawing a line under it and starting again.

What time I've spent at home has seen me knitting and spinning. My energy levels have been low, but sitting and crafting have been a godsend. Feeding fibre through the wheel is soothing, the gentle clack of the wheel turning and the click of needles have relaxed my mind and eased my soul. It's weeks like this that remind me that my crafts are my lifeline, my therapy, my joy.

On a lighter note - I coach at the swimming club Ben goes to. It's challenging at times, but greatly rewarding too. I have a new "project", one of the lifeguards at the pool has recently qualified as a swimming teacher and asked if he could help out at our training sessions. He's shadowing me at the moment. I'm enjoying mentoring him, encouraging him to develop his skills and his teaching style. Is given me the opportunity to look at my coaching too. I have a Level 1 teaching qualification, and I'm thinking now that I'd like to do the Level 2 coaching course. I'll look into it and see what the club say.

Sunday morning - what a difference a day makes. Today is a grey, murky kind of day. I can't see the Pennines from my window the cloud is so low. Yesterday Ben had another Gala. It's the start of the Diddy League season. It's a team even for 9-11 year olds. Our club is small compared to the others we compete with, and sometimes we struggle to field swimmers for all races. It's usual for us to come last by a long way. We came last again yesterday, but I'm really please by our score. We've made a huge leap compared to last year. The number of races we were disqualified from was a lot less than previously. Speaking of disqualification, each team has to provide officials in order to run the gala. Time keepers, admin, and judges. Yesterday I had to be a judge. Normally you can find me at the shallow end herding the kids where they need to be and making sure they know what they're swimming next. It was an awful job! It was my job to make sure that the change over's were correct in relays, to make sure the finishes were correct, and that dives and strokes are legal. It's bad enough having to disqualify a kid, but when it's your own team it's worse!

On to the crafting.

FO's -

That'd be a big fat fail! Nothing finished.

WIP's -

I've worked almost exclusively on the Wisteria sweater. I thought that with it being an Aran weight project I'd fly through it, but no. I've completed the collar chart, and now I'm working through the yoke chart. The collar is a lattice pattern that involves a lot of cabling and the yoke sees that latticework become a swirl as the project grows. All that playing with stitches has slowed me down. That and the fact that my concentration levels haven't been great, so I've made a number of mistakes and had to go back and correct them!

The advent scarf hasn't made it out of its bag. I decided early on in the week, that this perhaps wasn't the right week to work on lace patterns!

I cast on another sock. I've called it "half a stone socks". I'm using Opal hairdresser 4ply. It's a lovely self patterning pink/grey/ cream yarn, 75% wool 25% nylon. I cast it on to celebrate losing half a stone. I figure that if I knit Azores for every half a stone I lose, I'll be set for Christmas knitting!

Spinning -

Last week I'd wanted to finish the second half of the Dark Wings batt. Needless to say I didn't. I did make some good progress through it though! I think I'm halfway there, about an ounce to go. With any luck I'll get that done this weekend and plying can commence

Goals for next week -

Finish the yoke chart on the sweater and start on the raglan shaping

Get the second ply of the Dark Wings done and maybe start to ply.

Work on the half a stone socks.

Work on the advent shawl.

Have a great week guys. X