A crafter’s conundrum

I love to craft. It’s something I’ve been doing since I was a child. Every summer break was a time for me to let my creative juices flow and waste the sunny days away making things. I made friendship bracelets, paper beads, rings with wire and beads, I would make different kinds of shoebox doll houses and every time I would rearrange them differently, and one time I wanted to “dig” for dinosaur bones so much I took a shoebox and paper mached a lizard to the bottom then covered it with sand and spent hours pretending I was Dr. Alan Grant uncovering a T-Rex skeleton with a large paint brush.

However, now that I am an “adult” ( whatever that means) I have moved on from such frivolous activities… And instead have filled my extra time and  procrastination with knitting!!! I love knitting and although i had been a huge fan of sewing I began to fall more in love with creating something 3D from a long piece of that soft loveable string called yarn. Unfortunately, this means that my room has now become the prequel to a Hoarders episode for crafters. Seriously, it’s scary.

Now, I will say that this pile is A) not all of it but also B) started by my mother in the 90’s!! The woman has passed down her hoard to mine thus creating a nightmare of killer yarn tangles and nameless balls of unknown fiber content!

That pretty mint green one is from Sears!! How old must it be that it was from a time when SEARS sold yarn?! Oy vey. I’m just shocked this label and skein have lasted through the test of time and yet remains a fabulous colour that is so “in” right now….which means I want to use it! But how can I use it if I don’t know or can’t remember I have it?? What if I have an equally fabulous colour trapped in a bag in one of those cardboard or plastic boxes pictured above?? And thus begins my conundrum:

HOW DO I STORE MY YARN???!!?

I have pondered, googled, researched aka googled again) and decided on plans and scratched them because they are either too time consuming, too expensive, or I’m just too lazy to go out and find the right equipment.

There are countless blogs and websites offering advice, all helpful and inspiring but I don’t want to trouble myself with buying and nailing pegboard to my wall after buying a winder and winding a million little fluff balls. It looks beautiful and I was so ready to do it. I even started winding little yarn cakes out of a toilet paper roll!! But then I realized things get dusty in my room especially if I am not using my yarn that often. So I scratched the pegboard idea (at least until I had more time to knit…perhaps for the future when I’m a counselor and need some good ol’ yarn therapy for myself!). But then I was left with cute little cakes I can’t seem to organize!

So after much deliberation I decided to opt for my original idea but with a change. I had bought fabric boxes to hold my skeins standing upright so I could see the colors I have. Unfortunately, this whole issue started because I realized not all my yarn is in those long factory perfect skeins (like my friend Minty from 90’s Sears). And I tried and failed to wind them up myself. (It was pronounced a failure when I tried using one of my long hand wound skeins and it knotted up and caused needless frustration). BUT I used my silly/crazy brain once again today and have come up with a new way to wind yarn using a paper towel roll. I will experiment changing my original method so that I can still achieve a long skein but with less possibility of unraveling and tangling!

So please stay tuned for my yarn winding and storing developments!!

Cheers 🙂
Drea

Guess Who’s back, back again? Me.

So I’ve been away for a long time but I got a new job and started going to school…again. Don’t ask me why I did that. In May I finally got my BA in Psych and since no one hires newly graduated students I was jobless all summer (hence why I thought it was a good idea to start a blog) hahaha.

Anyways since that didn’t last (till now) I decided that I should go back to school and get some extra Canadian course credits. No I did not decide to do this, I HAD to do this. My dream of becoming a high school counselor began with having a teaching degree in my hand. So the plan changed from:
BA –> MEd –> Counselor –> BEd –> HS Counselor
to
BA –> College (Canadian courses which = LAME) + T.A.ing –> BEd –> Teaching –> MEd –> HS Counselor

Of course route 1 was shorter and of course I chose route 2. Even though Route 1 got me my master’s sooner. So crazy, but that’s me!

Then one day I thought: Hold it! back that ish up! I don’t want to be a teacher so WHY am I planning on going into teaching??
I know that I love teaching. When I was in second grade I used to want to be a teacher and play school with my stuffed toys and writing on a chalkboard was fun! (yes I grew up in the age of chalkboards, we were one of the last cohorts to have these in our classrooms). My grandma was a teacher and then became a principle (yay grandma!) and my mom was a teacher, my dad was a teacher and my big sis is currently a teacher in New York living her dream. (Yay sister!! she works as a Spanish teacher in a charter school in Brooklyn. Her and her husband of 6 months — yay brother in law! — are purchasing a home next month and are living fabulously).

SO what all this means is that teaching and a love of learning and sharing that learning runs in my blood. And working as a T.A. (Teacher’s assistant in case you haven’t caught on) made me love it more even though it was super exhausting and made me go mental on more than one occasion. I remember telling people “When I become a teacher I want to teach grades 4 or 5 or Kindergarten!” Because who doesn’t love being in Kindergarten?! But that one day I backed my ish up… it was most likely after a long week of work and especially boring and un-inspiring Canadian politics class that I realized EW there’s a reason I didn’t plan on teaching, there’s a reason I didn’t take these Canadian courses or math! I don’t want to be a teacher! I respect teachers in all that they do and even more now that I’ve worked alongside them. The job is exhausting mentally and emotionally and omg they do NOT and I mean NOT EVEN CLOSE get the recogntion and pay that they deserve.
*Mad props to all the teachers that had to deal with me and my serious disinterest in doing homework when I was in grades 5-7. yikes. It’s most likely because of their efforts that I actually managed to graduate with a BA in Psych. And seriously speaking: MEGA MAD props to my sister who deals with not only the everyday issues of a teacher but also the real life issues of the effects of low income/poverty on student learning as well as racial stereotyping and even racism in the workplace which on top of all that she manages to be a pseudo counselor and even confidante for her magnificent students. AND (no not done yet!) she EVEN STILL has the time to fit in training for marathons and half marathons. An awesome woman no doubt. She should be writing a blog..although she does not have the time for that! LOVE YOU SISTER!

And again back to me…I realized I did not want to be under-recognized, under-paid, stressed out, mentally and emotionally and probably physically exhausted for a job that I probably would only hold for maybe a year or two until I went into my MEd. Love teaching But I knew that this was not my passion. I was fortunate enough (before taking that dreaded math class this spring and most importantly enough, before paying for and doing a BEd program) to realize that I love counseling, and more than that; I love the idea of therapy and how important it is for counsellors to be available to ALL. I remembered what I learned in my first practical counselling course last spring of 2013 and how that taught me the real reasons as to why I was attracted to this profession since my second semester when I started in college. The MEd in Counseling at UBC was my ultimate goal even though I wasn’t sure what that meant. However, my last semester of my BA taught me so much about who I am and what counseling is that I realized I was lucky enough to have my mind set on something I was meant to do. So after contemplating my career choices and aspirations and second-guessing myself for the tenth time I realized that NO I don’t want to keep taking courses I was never insterested in, no I do not want to be a teacher RIGHT NOW – maybe after my MEd but not now, and yes I want a job where I can reach not only youth but adults as well, yes I want a job where I am obligated to live a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle, and yes I want a career where my passion for arts and crafts can be maintained when I finally have my own practice! So YAY to me!

That my dear friends (and we must be friends now since you actually managed to get through this whole post) is my path to my career enlightenment. Now that it is a new year I have soo many ideas of how I will get to that point of balance in my career and my life all because I decided I don’t want to go into teaching. So my initial goal of becoming a high school counselor may not happen but I’m okay with that. I prefer to be a full-time therapist than a therapist who also does course, career and university prep advising to those young adolescent minds. I’m sure it’s a rewarding career but I know that if I ever want to do that I can! Except this time my route to get there will look more like this:
BA check! –> work (in progress!) –> MEd –> Counsellor! –> changed mind? –> BEd –> Teacher/HS counselor

So my options are still there but my desire to be a therapist is more tangible and I can achieve that goal sooner rather than later after having spent so much time in the teaching world (which in this province means being a TOC – teacher on call – or a Substitute. Because full time teaching jobs are hard to find).

If you are reading this and are struggling with what to do with school or career choices I hope you too find your calling. It may not happen as quickly as it did for me or maybe it will happen after you have done that second route and realize you should have taken route 1 in the first place. Don’t worry if this happens, think about it this way: now that you know this isn’t what you want to do for the rest of your life you can plan for what you do want to do and with that you may find that things will start to fall into place. Also, my journey is only just beginning so there will be lots of changes I’ll be going through in my life and this was just the first step. So happy trekking in the path of life and good luck to you all!

>>for more info on where and why my sister works at a charter school check this link out: http://uncommonschools.org/our-approach

New Project!

I want to begin a new project. I was thinking about making a small bag with half knit half fabric but I want to find the fabric first! So that project is still being mulled around in the back of my brain. However, when I woke up this morning I felt inspired –probably because it’s cold and grey outside — to begin a project for the fall. I want to knit a skirt! So after spending a half hour nestled in my bed sheets searching up patterns on my iPhone I came across some really cute- and free- patterns! So there are two patterns I’m going to post below that I want to try out.

All I need for the cute pocket skirt is the size 4 circulars. I have a crapload of yarn so I doubt I’ll need to buy some. I will also probably need a lot of patience and my Rub A535 for when my hand cramps up! For the diamond skirt I’m just gonna wing it! I’m sure it will turn out fine so I might knit that first just to gain some knitter’s confidence :p

Adorable pocket skirt that will most likely give me carpal tunnel but I’m willing to risk it:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/yoked-skirt-with-pockets

Simple diamond flat knitted skirt that I should probably start with even though I know the diamonds will give me headaches when I mess up but that can be avoided if I don’t rush through it:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/mayas-diamonds-skirt

Hello world!

I hope you all are well. I am currently watching our (the world!) athletes competing in the 2012 London Olympics, and how wonderful they are!

I have decided to create this blog as a means of showcasing the many projects I take on, their progress (or lack thereof) as well as their completion (if it actually happens!). I am doing this as a means of encouraging me to work on such projects with the reward of posting on this blog!

“What sort of projects?” You may ask. Well, I do many things and HAVE to do many more. Truthfully though, I don’t do that much more in my life than the next guy. But for fun I take on knitting, sewing, painting, and room redecorating projects. For not so much fun I take on resume building, and school-related projects. Other projects may include athletic and health projects. I am not much of a blogger/writer but I will do my best to keep all of these interesting and organized if anyone does happen to read this!

I hope that this blog will help me learn more about myself as well as showcase some of the more creative projects I take on to readers who happen to stumble upon this blog!

Cheers,

Drea