Past few weeks

Time is flying by, but at least this time, I have things to say about the past few weeks.

There has been mostly a lot of work. How I do that, I don't know, but I always get myself in this kind of situation (I think the answer is that I don't know how to say no, and I'm kind of addicted to the feeling of being useful...I have to work on that...) Anyway, I'm still working 3 contracts, with 4 supervisors, 7 employees that report to me, about 88 undergrad students and 15 grad students with a lot of questions about a lot of things calling, writing to me, and knocking at my door. On top of that, I'm going to present the result of a small research project in Washington next month, and I did not start the presentation. Not surprisingly, the quality of my work, my interest in it, and my whole health are suffering. I've started to have insomnia, waking up in the middle of the night thinking about what I forgot to do, and I'm at the point where I don't digest anything - a-ny-thing. This week, supervisor #3 asked me if I could do more days for him, and I almost had a panic attack. I had to put a break on a few things that I was doing outside of work and that brought more deadlines and stress. That is already making a huge difference. Fortunately, my situation at work is known, and changes should come soon. I'm just looking forward to see what "soon" means...

Meanwhile, some fun things have happened too!

The office is starting to look like an office

Need to add our books 

There has been a Sunday at a kite festival.

It was not warm...

...but we had a nice fire to roast marshmallows...

...and the out house toilets were well insulated!

There was a weekend in Montreal, with a brunch, a haircut at my favourite salon, knitting and Indian food with good friends, traditional dance and music concert, late chat with my parents, and my aunt's 80th birthday brunch, with a lot of champagne! (Too busy, I did not have the time to take any picture).

There is a second almost finished skirt (the plan is to wear it next Saturday night!)



And Friday and yesterday, there has been a wonderful weaving class.

What my side of the desk looked like as we learned to read a pattern and plan how to warp the loom. 

It was given by the weaving guild of a town not far from 3R. I went as much to distract myself from work than to learn something, because I have big plans to meet someone who I think will be able to teach me a lot and answer all my questions in a few weeks. But I had left my name to that guild a few months ago, and when the lady called me back last week, I decided it was an excellent way to take some of the overtime hours I did over the past weeks, without staying home alone, which would have led me to do laundry and stress over things that are not done in the house.
So I rented a car and went. We were 3 students, including a very funny 79 year old lady. I learned a lot of stuff that I didn't know I needed to know in order to plan my weaving projects. I'm now able to plan everything down to the exact price of the pieces I will weave. It was also a good time for me to learn this, after I actually warped my loom once, and woven a few things. Tonight, I'm planning to apply what I learned to a present I want to weave for 2 of my expecting friends, and the teacher has agreed that if I do all the planning and send her a copy of it, she will correct it before I go buy my yarn next week. I told her it would be like my exam to pass the course. The 2 other students also decided to come with me yarn shopping, so that will be a fun expedition!

2nd sleeve about to get finished!

And I finished my 2nd sleeve this morning! I decided to block both sleeves before I continue knitting the sweater, mainly because I was such a novice DPN knitting, the tension is not nice and created some ugly holes. I'm hoping to be able to fix a bit of that with the blocking.
By the way, although I'm not "enjoying" knitting with DPN yet, the 2nd sleeve has been way lass painful to knit than the 1st one. Also, I learned that the metal needles I was using, even if it was more difficult, in order to get used to them, were not a good choice. Because they were big, and the yarn small, their weight probably contributed to the tension problems. So, as you can see on the picture, I switched back to the bamboo ones, which are much easier to use, although my tension gets very tight when I use them, so I cannot say I enjoy them more, except for the fact that they helped me finish much faster!

I'm now going to make soup for my lunches this week, hoping it will be easy to digest while being healthy! Have a great Sunday afternoon, and talk to you soon!