October Goals Round-up

Complete Malaysia paperwork
Done. SO much easier second time around.

Call my gran
I am a bad grandaughter and did not do this. I am going to email her this evening, though. Nanny Hand is a very modern granny and is on Facebook and everything, so I've no excuse.

Cast on for a decent-sized knitting project
Yes, done. I have cast on for the Washington Square Vest. I was all angsty about it for ages; I spent ages picking the yarn, had to wait nearly a month for it on backorder and then I couldn't bloody get bloody gauge. I dropped three needle sizes and decided to give up and knit a smaller size at a larger gauge. Got myself some new 3.25mm metal Knitpicks tips...and voila, gauge appeared. Bizarrely, I had tried a 3.75mm, 3.5mm and 3mm tip previously, all of which had come out big; but they were wooden tips.
I'm knitting it in Debbie Bliss aran tweed, there's something about lurxury and Donegal in there too, I think. I am thus far unimpressed. When it goes thin, it goes very thin, and I have broken it a couple of times already. Luckily it spit splices back together with just a hard stare, so it would seem.
I have also cast on for a Cherie Amour, and put about 4 inches on it. It is preferable to the Vest, tbh. It seems that whenever I knit anything red, I have a problem finishing it....

Plan a week of decent assemblies for school
The word decent is relative, but I certainly did do this. I was down to do something about not hiding your light under a bushell, but was concerned about the religious overtones (I don't know what the rules are) so in the end I talked about why it's cooler to be David Beckham than it is to be famous mathemetician Carl Gauss, who was so good at his job he has a crater named after him on the moon. I also managed to squeeze in something about Amelia Earhart being a loner but not letting it put her off being good at science. It was tenuous, but went down quite well.
It was also Governors' week, so I had a grand total of 7 of them come in at some point; and because SLT wanted to make themselves more visible around the school to impress the governors (I suspect) I saw the head, both deputy heads and one assistant head over the week, too.
I quite like being a governor. They all love me, and I'm not scared of them.

Finish the sparkly hat
Done! I promised a blog post, I know; it is coming, when I remember to take some pictures outside.

Mark all five sets of KS3 assessments before half term
I didn't do bad, considering that amounts to the best part of 125 assessments. I had 10 left to do by the time I went to bed on the Friday night. I was kind of scuppered by a very restless night's sleep on Wednesday, so I couldn't work on Thursday night.

Wash the dining room and kitchen floors
I did do this, sort of. What prompted this was the ring of grime around the edge of the kitchen floor, and the ingrained grime in the doorway of the dining room. So I cleaned both of these, though stopped short of doing the whole floor.
(I really hate cleaning and begrudge the time I have to spend doing it, since time is such a sparse commodity).
For the dining room floor, I wanted some biological washing powder, since the How Clean Is Your House? gals recommend it and I used some last time. Unfortunately, I make my own washing powder, and don't like biological anyway, and couldn't think who to beg a cupful from. So, I made my own floor scourer, using the ingredients for my washing powder - borax and washing soda - plus some salt, mixed with enough water to make a paste. It worked an absolute treat, and apparently borax is good for wood floors. (I did find a recipe for this mixture online but I can't find it again now).
I should probably wear rubber gloves, next time, though. It dried my hands out something criminal.


It is November. I think it may be NaBloPoMo again, although I can't be in the Na bit, being not American. Maybe I'll call it InternaBloPoMo over here. Whatever - I'm going to try to post every day this month: even on the travelling days of the Malaysia trip; this should be easier now I have figured out how to schedule posts.
I managed 25 posts last November. Fingers crossed I can better that this month!