A Little Yarn On The Side

So far, I've been locked in the bedroom, Andy got locked in a bathroom, all but one of Calisto's favorite sleeping spots are gone, and I had to brush some white racing stripes off of Theo this week. Selling a house is not for the faint of heart. We've had to push the photography back a bit so we can get the carpet stretched and cleaned.  But today is STILL another fun-filled prep day.  I have forgotten what we used to do on weekends, but I'm sure it was much more fun than house prep.  Then again, what isn't? Thanks for your encouragement, everyone.  The thing I realized this weekend is that not ONCE in any of the interviews I have done have any of the organizations acted IN ANY WAY like this was a mutually-beneficial arrangement or that my skills were something they should want.  All of them have been about why they should hire me.  That's a fair question, of course, but especially in the nonprofit world, I am nowhere NEAR entry-level and have often had...

Eke!  We said we would have the house ready to photograph on Monday.  Part of me is completely stressed out by that idea, but if we don't have a deadline, we could "prep" forever, and I think another house in our neighborhood is about to go up for sale, so it's time. Here's a question for you:  If someone tells you at the end of an interview that "they're hoping to reach a decision by next week," and it's now Friday of that week and you've heard absolutely nothing, has that ever not been a total blow-off?  No one ever hears a week later that something just came up right, and all the phones and email were down, so they couldn't let you know of the delay in any way short of smoke signals?  That never happens, right?  So I have just gotten the professional brush-off from another charity.  Don't worry--I'm not insane (mostly)--I'm not going to consider charities as an option anymore.  They don't generally pay well, expect l...

It's clean and ready,   but I don't really get to play in it now because I don't have time and sewing makes a huge mess, or at least it does when I do it.  It's so funny that I'm this sad about not being able to sew--I originally learned to sew in 4-H and HATED it.  I think I could have enjoyed it, but for my mother, it wasn't important just to learn something or--heaven forbid--just getting to enjoy something.  Nope, it had to be about earning a blue ribbon at the fair .  Not for my sake-- for hers , because I didn't care.  But sewing 4-H was about her being AT me all the time about it constantly --no wonder I gave it up for showing cattle because it was outside and I could do it myself without her bothering me.  I actually liked the sewing part, but the whole experience was so hateful that I didn't attempt it again until I was well into my 30s.  I think the saddest part is that she still has my 4-H ribbons and won't throw them out even thou...

Thanks to my ever-present assistants, the sewing room is done and ready for showing.  Now I just need to get all the rest of them finished.

I spent yesterday doing more house prepping, but I get tired and have to take breaks, which I normally spend job-hunting, but I have decided to take a break from that abuse and instead: worked on the Begonia Swirl shawl.  It's down to just the last 10 rows, but they are LONG rows.  Still, a lot more satisfying than the job hunt.  I did sort of receive an update on the charity that stood me up for an interview, though not from the actual charity, of course, even after I had followed up with the regional manager about what had happened.  I'm using Indeed.com, and the website updated me that the position is no longer available on the charity's website.  This is how low things have gotten--the biggest courtesy I've received lately is from an automatic search engine.  It's so nice to be valued. I think we'll be ready to list the house by the end of the week, which will be such a relief--although I guess then we have to deal with total strangers wande...

1.  Given the right set of circumstances, one can starch the daylights out of carpet with water-soluble stabilizer and a tipped over water glass  2.  Never decide to sell one's house in the middle of a sewing project: 3.  When you have packed your yarn stash away in a storage pod, the Knitting Gods will try to help you restore balance:  4.  Look for the parts to rehang closet doors BEFORE you pack everything away, or have a spouse who is a really good guesser in hardware stores: 5. Even with most of my stuff packed away, my sewing room is STILL messier than any of the ones on Pinterest: 6.   There's a certain amount of tragedy in having a newly-cleaned and organized sewing room but no time to play in it: 7.  Some people might feel bad about finding fabric they don't remember.  My first thought, of course, was "Yippee!"  8. Getting a house ready to sell can make one so thoroughly sick of the house that one will no l...

Yesterday I went to a quilt show and didn't buy ANYTHING.  Not even a pattern.  I don't think I was running a fever, but I didn't actually check.  If I hadn't been on a fabric-buying ban I might have bought something, but then again, it was so overwhelming that it might have been hard to decide on anything--we skipped the booths that had mostly fabric because it was just an overload.  THERE'S something I never thought I'd say.

If any of you were thinking that by now I would have heard something from national charity #3, you would be wrong.  It was even a charity I have given money to in the past, but THAT certainly won't be happening again.

Our pod is filled and the Pod people will be out to pick it up this afternoon.  They'll store it in climate-controlled storage until we're ready for it again, then they'll bring it to our new location and we reverse the whole process.  Whew! During all this, of course, I'm still searching for a job because getting our house ready to sell just isn't ENOUGH fun by itself.  I can't remember where we left off with the charity recruiter saga, but as I have an update, let's recap:  National charity #1:   Kept setting appointments either without confirming times with the other parties, or which the other people completely disregarded anyway National charity #2:  Assured me in no uncertain terms that the particular position we were discussing required NO fundraising of any kind--which I found out to be untrue in the in-person interview, right after I said I was tired of fundraising And last week's cake-taker, national charity #3:  Called on Thursday to ...

It's now been 1 year (and a leap year at that) and 9 months since I last bought yarn! And I have to say that my desire to buy yarn, fabric, or books has been greatly diminished by our packing adventures, although if anyone were hoping I'd be learning any great lessons about buying craft supplies, yarn and fabric in sweater bags has been REALLY helpful packing our storage pod, so I think it's sort of rewarded me more than anything else. Oops.

Alright, to be fair, it isn't a LOT of yarn and I didn't actually remember having it, but I'm donating it nonetheless, and as it's bulky yarn, it actually DOES free up some space.  AND that is another 5 yards of costume satin sitting there beside it.  I may not have much crafting time this year, but at least the stash is shrinking a little.  It turns out that filling a pod storage container is like a giant game of Tetris.  Because it's going to move, things have to be securely stacked and tied down and they can't shift around, so today my project is to pack some smaller boxes because we need some filler.  I think it might work better if we were storing more furniture, but we really don't have that much furniture.  My parents have so thoroughly overcrowded every room they have with furniture that I've always tended the other direction.  We've decided to store most of our bookshelves to stabilize our boxes in the pod, but we could have skipped that...

Two MONTHS after the interview process started with the American Red Cross, and two weeks since my "final" interview, I received the "we're not interested" form email from them today.  I thought I'd be disappointed, but dealing with them has been such an unprofessional mess that I'm not sure it isn't a relief.  ONE HOUR before one of the interviews that the recruiter had scheduled, I received an email from the person doing the interview that she'd scheduled my interview for 4 days later.  When I responded that the recruiter had actually scheduled it for THAT DAY, all the manager said was that she would let the recruiter know.  No "sorry for the confusion" or any acknowledgement at all that I might have rearranged my schedule to accommodate theirs or that this might be WILDLY unprofessional and rude--and the whole process was like that: times changing all the time, the recruiter and the manager obviously not communicating and just on and...