So as you know, my sister is having a baby. A baby boy. There was a flourish of baby knitting when the news was announced, which then tapered some in the last two months. I knit a blanket, a hat and two sweaters. Well, the week before last I stayed home on a Friday because I had a phone interview. (Yes, I'm sneaking important life progress in with knitting content). This was a preliminary interview for a small school and it's mostly a teaching position. Not my number one job choice, I'd prefer a 50/50, and this is more like a 80/20. But there are days when just teaching seems like a dream. I like to teach, I think I'm fairly good at it, it's always there to do, and you are not at the whims of granting agencies/political funding climates, etc. So it's an academic position, a small department, fairly close to home, a step forward. Last year I focused my search to more traditional jobs only, but this year, upon much reflection, I'm applying to a lot of things, expanding my options one might say. Plan B we call it around here. (Plan C is returning to engineering and pretending that the last 6, no 7 years of academic pursuits were just for fun, it hasn't been activated yet). Anyways, this interview was a first cut. 10 phone interviews, then they will select 3 candidates for on campus interviews. So, my office has become work study central and not really a cohesive environment for a nerve racking phone interview. It's two Friday's ago and I'm home and the phone rings (15 minutes late).
I could recap the rather amusing interview story here (complete with wrong numbers and wrong names, and odd interplay among the three interviewers), but let's just abbreviate it and say I sucked. In retrospect, I probably did ok, but there were some big gaps and some questions I just wasn't prepared to answer. Questions I'm not sure I could have been prepared to answer, so therefore questions non of the other candidates could really have been prepared to answer either, so I've upgraded my complete disaster to average. I'm ok with the whole thing, it just wasn't the job for me. But, hanging up the phone l had a severe case of the blah's. All those fears came rushing in (the ones where I have to activate Plan C, or that we end up homeless on the streets or something), and I just had the blahs. That's the thing about the "post-doc", I know that I could be successful, I just need to find the job, and it seems that finding the job is 50% how good you are and 50% how lucky you are and well...I've never really been all that lucky, so that unsettled state of being is just so....well...unsettling.
So I'm home, it's a friday afternoon and I have the blah's. I didn't want to knit anything engrossing, I was just going to sit and knit a few rows to shake it off and then get back to work. But what could I knit? Without any real plan I picked up some big needles and some yarn from my stash and cast on, one stitch. Then I hit Ravelry, which brought me here and which led to here then I ended up here, and then I ended up with a square, and then another cast on, and then the phone rang again and I spent several hours talking to my best friend, who is also in an unsettled life situation, and then oops it was Friday night and time for dinner with friends.
It's much prettier than blogger let's the picture show. [flicker link here] The pattern is oddly addicting, and I'm completely compelled to cast on that one stitch as soon as I bind off the one at the other corner. I am now completely sympathetic to the mitered square a thon. Although I will not knit that many squares because I only had four balls of this blue in my stash, enough to make four 10x10 inch squares and four 5x5 inch squares. I decided to make a blanket for the baby out of it. The plan now is for four of the squares to be the center and then a border in a lighter shade of blue.
So, there you have it. I'm knitting a blanket. For those of you who are upset that I have not posted my November progress as diligently as some., Here you go:
The left front of the sunrise circle is done. I'm well on track for Thanksgiving wear.
I have completely analyzed one of the five nights of data that form the basis for the paper I'm writing, so we're cruising along there too. :)
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