Tuesday 4 September 2012

SO BUSY! And a Tale of Two Blankets


Crikey, where has the time gone?

That's a rhetorical question. I know exactly where it's gone. SCHOOL. There's school, stupidball, knitting for tutor-group, marking, woodwork classes, helping the Tetris Queen move house (yes, I have the house to myself again), meetings, more school, more marking.....

You know what there ISN'T, on that list? Riding my motorcycle. *sigh* and it won't be on the list for a bit longer yet. Thank goodness I'm a patient person. Poor Piglet has become a commuter bike. How embarrassing.

A metamorphosis is underway, although not of the motorcycling sort. I've been writing every single day - nothing special, but I'm getting words on the page, and re-establishing my old habit of writing every day. I'm actually motivated by one of my classes in particular - the Year 12 Writers' Workshop.

I'm working at getting my writing mojo back. That's a plus.

And this weekend I'm off to Mallacoota to mow the lawn before the snakes decide to hide in it. That's another plus.

SO SO busy! My tutor group has almost finished its second blanket. I'm so proud of those kids - I learned to knit earlier in the year so I could teach the kids in my tutor group how to knit, so we could make blankets for charity as our tutor-group service project. It's been an amazing project. So satisfying to watch a group of kids sitting in their little gaggles, knitting happily and chatting away. And we'll have blankets at the end of it - something the kids can look at and feel proud of before we donate them to our chosen charity - YouthCARE Canberra - a community organisation that relies on donations for its survival (no government funding or church affiliations) - and they care for at-risk and homeless youth in the Canberra region.

Our two blankets may not go very far in terms of warming Canberra's homeless youth - we can only warm two of them after all that work - but the amount of work that went into those blankets has taught my tutor-group kids a lot about making a commitment, sticking to a task and the satisfaction you get from making something yourself rather than throwing money at a charity and feeling smug.

It's involved a lot of people besides my tutor-group. My Basketball parents, and others from the school community donated wool. Kids who aren't even in my tutor-group have spent time knitting with us. The Fashion Design class pinned all our completed squares together as a design project, and the Fashion teacher made valuable suggestions for sewing the completed squares together. It's been a great project - and it's not quite finished yet. I'm in the process of knitting/attaching the borders to the blankets, and contacting the lady from the charity so we can organise a time to present them with our finished product.

I won't be sorry to finish the project - I've felt inspired to start knitting a jumper that I'd like to be able to wear NEXT winter - yes, it'll take me that long to make it. Also, I have writing projects, woodwork projects and house renovation projects that I need to get onto pronto. There are plenty of school deadlines - marking, assessments, exams, reports - to get through. Stupidball finishes in two weeks (phew!) and I also need to sell my house. Eek.


For now, though. I'm just being happy about our blankets.

See below, added 2 October: The finished product, at last, handed over to YouthCARE Canberra at the last assembly of term. YAY!