In the picture

Warning - very bad photographs are gratuitously scattered through this blog post.

At last I have a functioning digital camera again, albeit a very basic model.  I'm not complaining - it was free, thanks to Freegle, and I even got 10% off when I ordered a memory card for it.  So for the princely sum of £4.49 I am again able to publish photographs to this blog.

A swan.  I was actually quite close to it, but the camera helpfully adds distance.

Which is my lame excuse for how long it's been since I posted.  When I wrote a blog a couple of years ago, it was all words.  I didn't have a camera and didn't feel the lack.  But these days a blog post without any images looks and feels a little dry, so having posted once with only words I didn't want to do it again straight away.  Consequently it's been a while and I have a few things to tell.

This is the best picture by far that I have taken with the new camera to date.  Admittedly I managed to chop the top off the very nice belltower, and include someone's backside bottom right, but at least you can tell it's the right way up and what it is.

The table-top sale was several weeks ago now, and I am gutted that I couldn't take a photo of my table, because I was quite pleased with it.  I didn't sell much, so obviously my efforts at artistry didn't impress anyone, but they lifted my spirits and that's the important thing.

Amongst other things, I sold 600 grammes of superfluous yarn, which astonished my mother because she is firmly of the opinion that there is a one-way valve between me and the entire yarn stock of the world.  I do have a fair bit, it's true, and to be honest 600 grammes is a bit drop-in-the-ocean-ish, but it is a start and does at least prove that I am not totally obsessed with the stuff.

The money I took wouldn't keep me in groceries for a week, but the most interesting outcome of the morning is that one of the other stallholders is also a crocheter who runs a small haberdashery shop a few miles from my home.  We have very different styles.  She uses mainly natural fibres in neutral, classical colours, whereas I use almost exclusively acrylic yarn, having found a brand that is soft, reasonably priced and which comes in rather more than a rainbow of wonderful colours - Stylecraft Special DK.  She makes mainly small items such as hats, headbands and flower brooches, whereas I have a penchant for making blankets and baby/toddler clothes.  So although we both crochet, we produce very different items.  She suggested that we could probably come to an arrangement whereby she could sell my stuff in her shop for a share of the proceeds.

This is what I was crocheting when I met the haberdashery shop lady.  It's my adapation of the Mount Vernon Throw square.  I will be blogging further about this square, which I reckon is a corker.

I was pleased by this, but didn't get quite as excited as I probably should have done, mainly because I suspect she'll want quite a big percentage, and partly because I'm a bit of an old cynic these days and tend not to allow myself to rejoice before the good news event has actually happened.  So far I have visited her shop twice, but each time she's not been there, so I'm still not too excited!

But I have started making preparations.  I've been crocheting more stuff that I hope will sell, and I've bought some card to start making tags to hang off my things, giving care advice as well as price and dimensions.  I'm thinking of using my dad's old sit up and beg typewriter, to give the tags a vintage air, but I'm not totally decided yet.  Decisions, decisions.  Not my strong point as anyone who knows me will attest.

It was my birthday earlier this month, and Husband took the day off work so we could spend it together.  Unsurprisingly it rained quite a lot of the time, and we sheltered under the eaves of a chip shop eating our lunch out of paper with wooden forks, which wasn't quite the picnic I'd had in mind when the day was in the planning stages.  It brightened up enough to let us take a stroll alongside the body of water that runs through part of residential Emsworth.  I'm not sure whether it's a river, a long thin pond, a canal or maybe even a bit of the sea that stretches inland a way, but it's very pretty with lots of waterbirds and colourful cottages. 

My notice period is ticking away, and there are rumours that several interviews are to be held the week after next, which is encouraging, because I was starting to think that my replacement would turn up the day I left and that wouldn't be good for anyone.  It's a complicated old job, which nobody but me knows how to do.  Recipe for disaster or what?

Although I'm not in a position to look for a new job yet I've been scanning newspapers and websites for local opportunities.  Far and away the most active sector is care - care of the elderly in their own homes, care of people in residential homes, care, care, care.  You could say that in this area we specialise in care of the vulnerable.

I've done this sort of thing before - a little, a long time ago.  I've wiped bottoms and washed genitals and neither hold any horror for me beyond the initial embarrassment of such intimacy with someone you barely know.  But that passes quickly, mainly because the person receiving the help has done so many, many times before and is long past embarrassment.  So that is an option.  I would prefer to be dedicated to one household rather than skipping from place to place - I think I would find it more rewarding to be able to build a personal relationship - dare I hope for friendship? - with someone rather that just nipping in for an hour each week to wash someone's hair and push a hoover round, then onto the next person.  We shall see.

Well, this blog entry has taken a couple of days to write, consequently Emsworth has now been re-visited and the new camera tested out.  Hmm.  It has its weaknesses, as you may already have noticed. 

A wonky road in Emsworth.  I don't remember that man being that short and fat, so perhaps it was the camera which bestowed these qualities upon him.  Being overburdened already in both these areas, I shall be taking care never to be on the wrong side of this camera.

The photos it takes are not terribly good quality and the view screen turns almost completely black at the first hint of any ambient light, so you can't actually see what you're taking a photo of, which is something of a drawback.  So you don't know what you're going to get until you download it to the pc, at which point you notice the lack of tops of things and the attractive bollards in the foreground.

See?  And I'm sure said bollard was not at that weird angle - neither was I, so I again have no choice but to blame the camera.

 My old camera had an ordinary viewfinder like a non-digital camera, as well as an electronic screen, and I tended to use the traditional one because I could see so much better through it.  I know I sound like I'm describing the proverbial gift horse, but I really do need to be able to take decent shots of my crochet if I am to stand any chance of selling online, so I'm not being picky for the sake of it.  I'll download a manual for the camera (the one that came with it is written in Spanish, a language which is completely Greek to me) and see whether there are any helpful settings I can try.  Otherwise I shall have to dig into the coffers, and the timing on that is not good.

Emsworth (revisited yesterday) was pretty and interesting and the weather was the best we've had for ages, so I'm glad we decided to go there again.  I'm sorry I don't do it justice with my photos, but I will try to do better in future.  Discussions with Sony re my old camera and its eventual fate continue, but I think it's probably for the bin.  Which is sad as it was a present from Husband and has not had a lot of use.  I do hate waste!

Emsworth being pretty.  You had to be there.

Outlook uncertain

Well, the time it has taken me to set up a Google account and this blog proves to me once and for all that computers and I are not suited. 

We used to be.  In fact I have earned my living for more years than I care to admit (more than twenty, less than fifty) in IT, or "computers" as it was known when I started out.  I was a Computer Operator, then a Computer Programmer (much to my father's surprise, who never made it past Operator and couldn't believe I had the brains to do so), and have now reached the lofty and uncomfortable heights of IT Manager.

Surprisingly, I am not rich.  You'd think I would be, wouldn't you, with a job title like that and no children?  But no.  Some dodgy career moves by both me and Husband, plus a tendency to go for jobs that appealed rather than job that paid, have seen to that.  I'm not starving, but I certainly don't have the sort of financial comfort that is generally associated with my calling. 

Luckily this is not a huge problem.  I'd sooner be happy and interested and optimistic about the future than rich.  It's therefore a bit of a bugger that at the moment I am neither.

I've been in my current job for 15 years in June.  It is a good company, with some lovely people, run by a wonderful family.  Should be idyllic, but I am jaded and stretched beyond comfort, and the older I get the more of a Luddite I am becoming.  I won't even use a mobile phone except for emergencies, because I don't want to be available 24 hours a day.  And if truth be told, I spend so much of my time fiddling with technology trying to get it to do what it is supposed to, that the last thing I want to do is more of the same in my spare time.  So it is Husband who has wireless broadband and a smart phone and laptop and a tablet - or whatever the squitty little things with no keyboard are called.

So - it is time for a change, which will of course not be easy.  For a start I am on 3 months notice at work, which means that I can't look for a new job until I have resigned the current one, because who is going to consider - let alone interview - a woman of my age who can't even start for 3 months?  So I will be launching myself into the unknown, and scouring the local paper for anything that I can do which will pay.  I will likely end up self-employed, doing a mix of lealet delivery, temping and trying to sell stuff online that I have made or renovated.  Although I've done a fair bit of crochet in recent times, selling it (or trying to) will be a very new experience.  I also still have a mortgage, so on paper all this is complete madness.  But if I am to remain sane and the carpet unchewed, it has to be done.

Wish me luck.