impending changes...

So, I was cruising Craigslist yesterday, and there is was...a posting for my current job. An employment ad for the job I currently hold. My ticket to unemployment. Here it is....well, some version of the ad...cause CL will be deleting the ad in seven days or so they say:






Here's the text of the ad, so you know what I do for a living before it's all over:

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: job-143903979@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-03-21, 11:33AM PST


Seeking an intelligent, professional Executive Assistant who is able to work independently and stay overtime when required (rarely). This person will deal with investors and high level executives and must have a professional demeanor and be comfortable in this atmosphere.

Primary Responsibilities:
*Maintain calendars and to-do lists and coordinate schedules
*Answer telephones, set up conference calls and manage telephone system
*Manage email as required
*Manage internet and intranet as required
*Build and maintain effective relationships inside and outside of office
*Identify and suggest improvements to office processes
*Compose and edit a variety of correspondence and presentations in a polished, professional manner on timely basis
*Provide proofreading and editing and assist with preparation of management reports
*Purchase office supplies
*Arrange board of directors and shareholders’ meetings (Event Planning)
*Make travel arrangements
*Maintain contact lists
*Maintain office files
*Personal work as requested
*Manage checking accounts
*Enter transactions in Quickbooks and assist with the preparation of financial reports

Required Qualifications:
*College degree
*7 years of secretarial and administrative work experience - Minimum 2-3 years supporting senior management
*Team player
*Strong sense of individual responsibility
*Familiarity with business protocols and strong workplace judgment and discretion
*Professional appearance, demeanor and communication skills
*Proficiency with Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint
*Ability to manage office computer network and telephone system
*Some knowledge of Quickbooks
*Proven track record of stability
*Strong written and verbal skills
*Excellent phone manner

Job location is Pasadena, CA

Compensation: Compensation is approximately $40K depending on experience plus full benefits.


Oh, and he was "working" at his desk today after his helper left, and i saw hushmail pop up on the screen as I walked by....only time will tell how this all plays out.

I finished the socks for grandpa last night but didn't take a picture. Sorry those images are two different sizes, can't fix it either. :(

Seems pretty true....

What kind of knitting needles are you?

You are "turbo" charged.Fast moving and classy, you get things done with power and grace. Your expensive tastes can be deceiving, since what you really value is quality and efficiency. As you're careening around those corners in life, finishing a dozen knitted objects each month, stop and smell the roses. Don't miss the beauty of process!
Take this quiz!








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Self-Medicating

I've been having a baaaaad day......make that a bad week. I tried a danish and then some deep fried cheese covered stuff and neither made it better. Since I'm not a fan of wine, and don't really want to hop into the vodka bottle with more work days ahead I bought yarn.

I actually took a lunch hour today and went down to The Little Knittery at Steinberg & Sons to take advantage of their Noro sale. The girl working there, maybe running the place, used to be at Stitch Cafe. She was much much nicer here than she was in Valley Village...maybe she liked her job as much as I like mine. Anyway, here's the yarn for the Lady Eleanor from the Scarf Style book, it was less than $60.00.



And for Danielle.....



Happy Birthday Carlin!

More Gifts Given....

I'm tired. I couldn't sleep last night. I decided it would be ill advised to knit in that state, the possible mistakes and the fact that beginning to knit (or crochet...I got the Susan Bates hooks I needed) would only eliminate the chances of me falling asleep, so I laid in bed and watched a Discovery Channel program about a man that weighed half a ton. As he laid, there-post gastric bypass just under a quater ton, unable to sit upright, he ate cheese cubes with a bag of Sour Cream & Onion Lays next in the queue as his afternoon snack, and I got the urge to get up and do Billy Blanks Bootcamp Elite. I'm just saying, he was seven feet around his waist and I don't think he could lay on his back because it would have probably killed him....I just wanted to go jog. The next thing that came on was a program about a woman with no legs. I deserted this programming choice after they showed a clip of her proposal on the Maury Povitch show...the no legged married woman was really just too much for me, so I turned to Tivo to Barefoot Contessa and watched Ina start a pot of beef bourg...uh, with red wine. :)

I've been knitting quite a lot lately. The Odessa opened up the world of bead knitting to me, and I'm fighting the urge to fill my house with beads...ooooh, so sparkly, so pretty, so nice.....

I'll show you some of the items that have made it successfully off my needles.

Light and fluffy.

I did a favor for a friend. Remember Carol, my WW leader?, the one I made the crochet shawl for?, my first foray into beads, via crochet. Well she asked me if I could help her finish a scarf she'd started months ago, so long ago that she forgot how to do it, and certainly didn't know how to finish it. I went to the meeting ready to assist her, hoping that she would be able to remember the way she learned 'cause we all know I knit funny! She had one ball of some high end fun fur type stuff, and a second novelty yarn in white on giant white plastic needles. The original piece was about 2 feet wide and would have been about 3 feet long at that width. In the end I re-did the entire scarf for her. I made it thinner and she loved it.




Little Sweaters

Here is the sweater that I'm moaning about in the previous post. I think it came out okay. She loved it, the guy that works for her loved it, her husband and son liked it. It was the first baby gift she's received. I'm happy it passed all tests.




The Impossible Made Possible

I decided to make the MaryElla from knitty.com as a gift for a friend. It's been mailed, but I'm not sure if it's been received. I really hope so, the anxiety is building. Knitting with thread is a little bit daunting, but since the project was so small it went quickly. I actually enjoyed the process. So much that I'm making more, but more on that later. Here is my picture trail of the process.

the beginning.

up close and open.


up close and closed.

on my wrist...i don't think the color looks good on me, but i think it's going to look great on her...here's to hoping.

I think that's all the news that's fit to print for now. Not feeling much like talking...musing over my life, where I've been, where I'm going...is there any good in any of it.

Hope you all are doing well.

No other way to describe it

I made an error, actually, to be blunt I fucked up a project....and I mean ROYALLY FUCKED IT UP. No, I don't have pictures of my fuck up. The batteries in the camera were dead when I realized my, ahem, error. I've pulled it out and hopefully I can salvage this mess.

As you all know I've let my hair grow. It's stressful, and worse than having hair is not having someone to do a decent job on it. I found a woman in North Hollywood to braid it and it looked amazing! I'd decided I would make a baby sweater for her. She's VERY pregnant, and while I feel guilty being her last customer before she goes out on maternity leave, I can't walk around with my hair all jacked up for very long, so I'm making her work tomorrow afternoon.

Anyway, I started the sweater the day after she did my hair the first time, that's how pleased I was with the results. I was so focused on not messing up the mock cable pattern and the raglan sleeve decreases that I didn't focus on the sizes of the pieces. Is it starting to come in to focus for you now? Yeah, the back was done in size M (middle number if you'd like) and the fronts (it's a cardigan) & sleeves were done in the small count. Yeah. So the back is like an INCH longer than the front. Christ!

Can you imagine how I felt at 10:30pm last night after working on it feverishly at the SnB (while flirting with the cutie at the next table), AND bumming yarn off of Nic just to be sure I had enough? Christ. I actually had to measure the back, just to be sure, that I had indeed fucked it up in this manner. Christ!

So, I've pulled back the extra inch, and now have six extra stitches along the neck line. I'm just going to knit one more row and combine some stiches and hope that it doesn't look like a friggen cowl! Fuuuuuuuuuck!

And I was trying to cut back on the cursing. **sigh**

Irony

To be AVERSE to something and then defined as that thing....

You Are Kermit

Hi, ho! Lovable and friendly, you get along well with everyone you know. You're a big thinker, and sometimes you over think life's problems. Don't worry - everyone know's it's not easy being green. Just remember, time's fun when you're having flies!

The Muppet Personality Test

I have dreams about losing my teeth....nightdreams, day dreams...my cousin Gab said it has to do with my feelings of powerlessness...I think. I'll have to ask her about that again. I've been reading Crazy Aunt Purl, and think maybe I should follow her lead and try to live out loud, at least in some parts of my life. I may just start including more personal stuff here, hope you don't mind.

It's a beautiful day here. Cool so the sun feels good on your face, clouds in the sky. I think I'm going to take a nap....then more knitting, almost done with that cuff.

Fear of Felting and more FOs

As you know, I've completed all of the knitting on the French Market Bag. I've also completed the knitting on the Fuzzy Feet, AND a mini bag with the left over yarn from the French Market Bag. Now I'm afraid to felt them. Here are the items pre-felted.



I think I did a pretty good job on them, and am nervous about the change. Also, I don't have a washer at home, so how can I possibly control the time the item will agitate. Does this mean I'm going to have to pop in my buck twenty five and then hold a wet item in my hands until the rinse cycle is over? There has got to be a better way...any suggestions?

The MaryElla process has already begun to go awry. I learned last night that all seed beads are NOT created equal. I bought the seed beads that were recommended for the Odessa. They are 6/0 beads and the store I go to calls them seed beads. I think in the rest of the world seed beads are 11/0. Who knows? After a bit of research I found a random blog on the net of a woman who did it (the MaryElla) for the Knitting Olympics and she used 11/0, so that's what I'm going to exchange my 6/0 seed beads for...hopefully. I may have to give up on this and go for the Eve piece in not so shiny yarn, although this girl can carry it off.

Let's see, what else? Other finished objects. I completed my multidirectional scarf. The end was funky and I did it three times before I gave up on it. I'm getting pretty good at fixing my errors and picking up stitches that I've ripped back. What is tinking? So, here's the multidirectional scarf.
I'm happy with the result. I love the yarn. I was going to block it, but I can’t be bothered, it’s a scarf and after five minutes the itchy feeling went away.


And last, but certainly not least, Royal Mail. Daniella introduced me to Cucumberpatch, a UK yarn seller with amazing prices. I've linked to them on the right there, right underneath the link to Nic's amazing handmade needle and other stuff website. Daniella told me about the Colinette Point 5 I've been coveting. It costs over $20/hank here, but this site has it for £5.70, which is about $11.00/hank, and the shipping and handling is £2.50 = $5.00. So, I ordered not the Colinette, but Addi Turbos. They were £3.75. I got four Addi Turbo needles, tiny sizes, for $31.20 delivered! How can you beat that? I saw them at local yarn shops for between $11.50 & $15.75 EACH! I figure I'll slowly build a complete set of them over time. Here is my picture trail:




Included was a hand written note from Daniel explaining that one of the sizes was currently out of stock and he would ship it as soon as it came in, and how can you not love the label that says Happy Knitting? More Royal Mail for me! I want to hurry up and order the Colinette so he can ship it all together, but I think I've blown my yarn budget for the month on the stuff for the MaryElla...wish me luck with that!

Impossible Project

So, a friend in NY has a birthday coming up on Monday....I, of course, am only now remembering that I don't have anything for her. I've decided to give this a try. I think she is one of the few people I've made things for who really appreciates them. So, I'm off to San Gabriel Bead Company, thank Clare, to get the thread (yikes thread!) and beads for this project. Then I'm going to Skein, yes Skein, to get the needles. She's the closest place that had the size, and they are only $6.95. Of course if I get there and they're marked $16.95 I won't be surprised or purchasing, you know what I mean? Anywho, wish me luck, this is what I'll be doing with my weekend!

More regular knitting news tomorrow!

Isn't it pretty though?