Busy, busy...

Gosh, it's been a busy few weeks! There's been lots of sunshine and sitting in the garden, lots of garden (look at that perpetual spinach!), and a fair bit of writing. We've made more rhubarb jam, done a fair bit of sewing, and had a couple of lovely weekends away. The garden is flourishing, although the only thing we've managed to harvest so far has been spinach, cabbage, one broad bean pod, and one strawberry :) And very nice they all were too. 

I also had a trip to the exhibition of one of our friend's paintings. Lyn paints gorgeous, beautiful, strong, vibrant women, and I love to see her work. Have a look at Lyn's website for more of her paintings. Isn't it fab when someone can make a living out of doing something creative that they love? An inspiration to us all. 

For a while I've been thinking about ways I can simplify my life, making more things from scratch, spending less, doing more. Last week, I finally achieved one of my goals and handed in my notice at work. I needed those extra 20 hours a week to finish off this phd, and managed to organise my life for the next couple of months to manage without the money. 

My boss, however, had different ideas... We've negotiated, and instead of leaving altogether, I am taking July, August and most of September as unpaid leave, until the phd is submitted. While part of me would have liked a clean break, this way leaves my options open and gives me work to go back to in the autumn. 

In the meantime, my head is down writing, writing, writing. Peter de Vries once said 'I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o clock every morning.' I can't say I quite achieve that every day... But I'm chipping away at it, and it's a lot easier now I can see the whole thing emerging in front of me. There's eleven weeks until my deadline, and I'm trying to channel my energy (panic) into positive writing. Watch this space... 

On a cheerier note, I gained a gorgeous new nephew last week, my third! I'll be visiting him and his two big brothers tomorrow. I'm so looking forward to it! 

Being organised

I knitted a dishcloth! I love knitting, and I've knitted some presents recently with thick, bobbly wool. When I got a couple of balls of cotton yarn for my birthday, I planned to make a few dishcloths. I'd forgotten how nice it was to knit with thin soft yarn! 

I used the waffle knit pattern from the Homespun Living blog. It was really rather easy - I think the main pattern is called sailor's rib. It's actually green with a yellow stripe - the picture makes it look blue. 

If you look closely, you can see I've managed to add an extra stitch to a row near the beginning and shift the whole pattern sideways a bit :) But progress not perfection and all that. It took me probably about 3 hours in total, mostly while I was watching a film (a subtitled film! Hardly ideal when trying to follow a knitting pattern for the first time...). I'm going to try another one soon with a different pattern.

Tonight I've also been working on well, I'm not sure what to call it. I started it based on Flylady's control journal. Rhonda Jean also talks about a home management journal - it's essentially a similar thing - a place to keep routines, recipes, cleaning tips, plans and projects all in one place. Mine is fairly basic, and I've tried to not get hung up on making it look pretty. 

At the beginning I have a plan of things to do this month, split into PhD, work, house, garden, and money. This changes over the months, not all of them will have a big money section, for example, and I'm looking forward to the month when there's no PhD section... :) I've got deadline dates for each goal, and the colours correspond to the week things need doing. I've noticed I've only managed to tick one thing off so far - oops!

The rest of the folder is split into sections - home, food, garden, money, presents, and contacts. Again, things will be added to this as I go along, this is just what's useful to me right now. 

There's not much in the food section yet, just a shopping list, meal plan, and recipes for yogurt and quark, together with how they've worked (not very well so far!)

The garden section has a list of what needs planting in which month - although I haven't yet made a list of what I've actually planted and when. Probably should do that soon. It has a couple of pictures in of things I'd like to have a go at one day.

The presents section is again quite small, but hopefully it'll grow. I'm trying to make all birthday and Christmas presents this year, and not doing too badly so far. This very rough list is from a whizz round a few websites before last Christmas - some of these ended up as presents, and some might do in the future. At some point I'll make a list of planned presents for each person's birthday so I can start making them in advance, rather than a couple of days before. 

So, has it helped me be more organised? Yes! I'm trying to get everything in one place that I need in the quest for this cheap and cheerful, home made life :) It keeps growing and changing and developing over the months, and has already moved from an A5 to A4 binder. It lives on the kitchen table, so I can refer to it when I want to make soap, or a shopping list, or a birthday present. It's a great idea, one that I certainly didn't make up, and there's some fab ones out there on the internet to have a look at. 

Working

I thought I'd write this post because of the comments I've received from several family members who have read this blog and said "shouldn't you be writing your PhD instead of making soap...?" So here's a post about PhD-ing.

This picture is of my desk this morning. It's in the attic, under the skylight. Someone had left the desk in the street with a note saying 'please take', so we did. Peter made the bookcase. The boxes on the floor have photos, cds, and an assortment of rubbish in. If you click on the photos, they get bigger and you can see better.

It wasn't feeling very restful with all the papers and stuff on the floor... so I spent half an hour putting things away, getting rid of paper, and changing the furniture around a bit. 

It had gone a bit dark with the rain outside by this point, so the photo is a bit dingy! The photo on the left is my young cousin - quite a lot younger in this picture! The two cards at the back are of pictures painted by my friend. The photo on the right is of a valley in Orkney I went to on holiday. And in the glass frame laid down on the yellow cloth is a collage of found treasures made by Peter. 

I've moved the bookcase to the sewing area on the other side of the room - that's a project for another day. I've got a bag full of papers to take to the office, and the cds and photos are under the yellow cloth. 

On the desk is my PhD management folder (until I think of a better name for it). I've been doing this PhD for years, and have so many papers, folders and files everywhere that it's difficult to keep track of things. I started this folder a few weeks ago, to keep the most recent things together, and so far it's working well. It's an old conference folder thing that was just hanging around in the house.

The chapter I'm working on at the minute gets put in a pink plastic folder, so it's easy to get out. On top is the sheet I use for planning the section I'm writing, so I can see everything I need to do on one sheet.

There's space for post it notes and small paper for messages and numbers. There's a couple of zips for pens and paperclips. In the space at the side, I keep some plastic wallets with copies of the past couple of chapters I've been working on, together with articles I'm collecting to read for those chapters, and notes when I've read them. I've also got a plastic wallet for notes from supervisions.

The red hardback display book was also hanging round the house, and has been put to good use. On the front is a work plan, with the date of my next supervision meeting, things I need to do before it, and a space to tick off when I've done them. Inside is a sheet to write issues and questions and things I need to find out later, so I don't get sidetracked while I'm trying to write. 

There's a list of books and articles on loan from the library and other people, and dates they're due back. I've got a sheet with contact details of people in the department, and one where I write the current version of each chapter, so I don't lose track of whether I'm on version 556 or 557... 

At the back is an overall work plan, showing when I plan to have each chapter finished and handed in. And there's an ongoing list of things to do that need chipping away at - listing references, filing articles, and scanning in photographs. I do 15 minutes of one of these each time I go into the office, and they're slowly getting finished.

So I AM working, and it's a lot easier now I've got everything in one place, and easy to find lists of what needs doing and when. It's also a lot less stressful (and again easier) when I give myself decent, proper breaks and do cheery things like making yogurt or soap or dinner, sewing, cleaning (not sure that's cheery yet, I'm getting there), or gardening.