Knit Geek Life

Believe it or not, I've actually been knitting! Yesterday, I finished doing the gusset decreases on the Dublin Bay Socks that I've been working on since... the middle of June.

I am seriously, the slowest knitter EVERER!

Yarn is Lime & Violet Mermaid Sock in Cowboy Up, purchased at The Loopy Ewe.

I didn't knit a whole lot in 2008, to be honest... I did a lot more in the beginning of the year than I did at the end of the year. Partly I think it's due to the fact that I got into the digital scrapbooking thing and it's been hard to balance the two hobbies... Especially since digital scrapbooking has a tendency to be more of an instant gratification hobby. It kinda took over because I could start and finish a layout pretty quickly and feel accomplished. Knitting takes a lot longer. Plus, scrapping means I'm sitting at the computer... Knitting gets me away from it, potentially.

I think I'm going to make it a goal to spend more time with the knitting in 2009.

I also need to start going to the ManchVegas Knitters group again... Which will be a lot easier for me to do now that I have that second car.

I'd been oogling over Studio Flerg's Evilicious kit for quite some time I managed to grab it on sale during Black Friday... and I finally got around to playing with it today..

I absolutely love how the layout came out. It just works so well with my hair!

I spent some quality time this afternoon scrapping and getting somewhat caught up on my CT scrapping, so I've got some layouts to show off!

First up, Kiki Halbert's Snowberry Punch from over at her Plain Digital Wrapper shop. A very lovely and colorful winter kit.

Which I used for this adorable layout of my sister-in-law, Heidi and niece, Addison:

Second, Katherine Nelson of Flutter Expressions has opened up two new shops! One at Snap and Scrap and one at Natural Designs in Scrapbooking. She's also still at Been There Scrapped That. I worked with her new Thanksgiving themed kit, To Be Thankful, which is available at all three shops.

I used it to scrap this photo taken at Thanksgiving dinner of Claire, Addison and Wyatt:

I'm honored to be guest CTing for the wonderful Franziska Altmann for the month of December! Her shop is at Scrapbookgraphics and there's a ton of gorgeous stuff!

I got a chance to work with Snowberry and made two layouts.

One of my niece, Addie:

And one of my cousin's little girl, Ella:

I suppose this is really more of a vent than anything else... and probably there isn't much that can be said on the subject that hasn't already been said... but, I'm putting the scenario out on the table in case anyone I know has some words of wisdom and/or encouragement, cause I think we could really use them right now.

I say 'we' because this is about my husband and his employment situation.

It's probably best to start at the beginning, what he's doing now...

To generically describe what his company does... They make a security system that includes hardware components that report back to some server based software that report the events that have occurred.

He works in the service department of the company, the tech support. They do some installation, and a lot of troubleshooting.

While the department my husband's is very well run, the company as a whole has some serious problems that affect everyone.

First and foremost, the software component of the system is seriously flawed, to the point where you might as well consider it flat out broken. The only logical thing to do would be to throw out the entire code base and start over, but the upper management doesn't agree.

The engineering department as a whole is pretty broken... The head of engineering is a feckless moron who is mostly concerned with making himself look good, he lies constantly, never admits that he's wrong and in general does his best to stifle innovation and change, and his general philosophy about the engineering department is that their job is to create new products, not fix old ones.

The computer engineering side of the team is dysfunctional and understaffed. The lead developer is a former employee who's contracting in from Florida. He's an incompetent coder, can't remember anything and a Microsoft fan boy. There is no reason why he should even be a part of the team still. They have one excellent developer, jaded and old school, and one developer who's in over her head. There's no version control, and to add insult the injury it all runs on Microsoft products so you have that layer of irritation to deal with as well. That said, the engineering department is irritated, busy and mostly distracted by it's own problems.

The result of all this is my husband's in a position where he's at a very frustrating dead end with this job. He's overqualified for the position he's in, and he's bored with it. He's frustrated because he's constantly having to deal with angry customers who have broken products. His passion is programming and solving problems, but since he's not an engineer, his hands are tied as to what he's allowed to do. Because he's bored, he's writing software that the engineering department is too busy to do, and he's not getting paid anything NEAR what he's worth to do so. He's frustrated and angry with being told that everything is impossible and he's not allowed to do anything. It's a VERY negative work environment to be in.

Bottom line, he needs out. Like yesterday.

He's in a state of mind right now where he's depressed and demoralised. His self-esteem level right now is just heartbreaking. Everyday seems to be yet another day of talking about how he needs out, but doesn't know what to do next, who's to say the next company might be worse, no one would ever want to hire me, I have no experience, etc, etc.

He's being irrational, obviously. He's a very intelligent guy with a knack for problem solving and making things work together that aren't supposed to, he's creative, he's a fast learner... He's got lots of traits I'd look for in an employee, if I were in the position to employ anyone.

The dilemma now is trying to figure out what the best course of action is...

He's got an associates degree in Computer Engineering Technology, but little practical work experience with programming in the four years since he's been out of school. His job experience has mostly been pulling wire and doing tech support. This doesn't exactly bode well for a "front door" entry to a job, and quite frankly, I'm not sure that's going to give him what he wants. I know the old line goes "Your favorite language is the one they pay you to program in" but, the choices here seem to be .NET and more .NET... and for someone who's heart truly lies in open source... it's a discouraging proposition.

However, the entirety of the programming experience that he currently has is very much entrenched in the Microsoft world, and he's been floundering to find where exactly he fits in as far as open source development goes... He's never contributed to a project. He's overwhelmed and lost as to where to start... and like so many of us are at times, he's not motivated when there isn't money involved... And it's not that there's any specific type of development that strongly interests him either, which makes narrowing down things hard.

I keep coming back to the fact that realistically, the easiest thing for him to break into would be to do freelancing/consulting of some sort... but he fights me on it. I suppose, it's risky business considering that's technically what I do as well, and both of us consulting means things might not be as predictable financially as they might be otherwise... but something's gotta give at some point, right?

What would you tell him, folks?

I'm at my wits end... It breaks my heart to see him come home everyday and just sit watching Family Guy on the couch, and listening to him everyday say that he needs a project, that he needs to do something, but he can't. I feel like I'm out of wisdom and guidance... I know how I'd do things, but...

Scrapping seems to have totally taken over my blog hasn't it? Kinda funny considering that scrap isn't the craft in the title...Knit is! I haven't been knitting nearly as much as of late, not because of a lack of desire but more a lack of time... but I have been knitting! I figured I'd take some time and show off the in progress stuff seeing as I finally took time to take some pictures for Ravelry today.

First off, the Tiger Eye Scarf in Yarn Pirate Bamboo/Merino/Nylon in the Sweet Lime colorway.

This has been on the needles since May.. and I've been slowly plugging away at it. I'm at the point where the pattern is pretty much memorised, but I don't feel that confidant with my memory so it's been taking forever cause I keep having to stop and consult the chart... but I really do love how it's been knitting up.

The Dublin Bay Socks have been on the needles nearly as long... Since June! This one's in
Lime & Violet Mermaid Sock, the Cowboy Up colorway.

I'm totally out of synch with my socks... In general I tend to have one first sock going and one second sock going.. This time around I have two first socks going!

And the other sock is the Welt Fantastic Chevron Socks from Sensational Knitted Socks... In Knitterly Things Vesper Sock Yarn in the Strange Little Mama colorway.

Then I've got a Natalie's Scarf on the needles in Yartini Varigated Cashemere DK, the Fig & Plum Variegated colorway... This is simply brilliant yarn. So soft!

And last, but certainly not least... Binary, in Caron Simply Soft, Black and Limelight.

I somehow have a feeling none of these are going to be getting done anytime soon though!

This past week I created another wedding layout with probably the only good photo that was taken at our cake cutting. I used a great template by Scrapbooks Gone Digital, Template #26 and Kiki Halbert's Glimpse of Twilight.

I've been having a really good time lately working with some of the most recent kits from Kiki Halbert Designs as a part of her creative team. Her work is so pretty! She released Amethyst Nights this past Sunday and it's absolutely gorgeous!

I used it to scrap one of my wedding photos:

I really love the tear dropped shaped jewels in it!

Damask Romance also really inspired me into scrapping some more of my wedding.

I absolutely loved the butterflies in this one!

And finally, Timeless is such an awesome fall colors kit, and all the clock gears TOTALLY had me thinking steampunk.

And steampunk immediately makes me think of my friend Arc, so I did a wonderful layout featuring him!

You can find all these kits and more at Kiki's shop at Scrapbook-Elements, and you can find even more kits at her shop at Plain Digital Wrapper.

I haven't been able to dedicate the time I would have liked to lately for digiscrapping, but I did have the opportunity to work with the latest from Flutter Expressions. She's made a great kit called The Trendiest.

With the title of the kit inspiring me, I made this layout of my friend Broderick:

And this adorable layout of my niece Addison:

I have more to add on that note later...