Jananas

As the Olympic fever winds down, I’d like to say that I’m pretty proud that I didn’t watch any (except for about 30 minutes at a friend’s place where it was on the in background while we played some Catan). Its not that I’m not proud of how well the athletes did, its more that I don’t think that all the pressure to be perfect and to shave milliseconds off a time is healthy. I don’t think that the nationalism is healthy. And I know that listening to the commentators will make me want to scream – I have enough frustration in my life right now that’s outside my control without adding something I know will irritate me.

Instead I spent my time knitting and spinning and interviewing and reading. Instead of living vicariously through someone else, I lived my own life.

And it included some pretty awesome moments like the one pictured below. Where my newly Canadian dog napped on his Fraser tartan blanket with his nose just barely touching his favorite bone (generously given to me for free from the local Portuguese butcher around the corner from my house).

I took a class this week at The Knit Cafe offered by the lovely Edie Kim on how to dye yarn and rovings using cake decorating dyes (i.e. non-toxic so you can use your normal cookware!). I won’t fill you in on all of the lovely little secrets, but you’ll get a general idea of the process. First up, I tried my hand at some rovings that I had – I figured that they’ll be more fun to spin with when there are pretty colours than when they are plain basic white.

First step – soak the fibers so that they’ll open up and accept the dye better.

While this was happening we started to get the dye baths ready. We did simple immersion baths. First up, yellow!

Next up, red! This looked really red in the pot, but once the yarn and rovings were pulled out and rinsed it was more of a bright, bright pink.

Finished product! My second attempt at dying was using some superwash merino sock yarn that I’d picked up a while back. We used teal and a rose pink, for a nice popsicle bright yarn. I also dyed over part of the rovings with the teal, all in the name of science and experimentation!

I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with the sock yarn as I don’t really enjoy knitting socks. However, I am super excited to spin up the rovings and see what happens to the colour changes (and how deeply the dye penetrated in – should make for some interesting variation).

I discovered Kombucha sometime on our road trip last spring. Its one of those things that’s strange and delicious and strange all at the same time. I like it, but its not something that I come across all the time (plus its expensive!). I did some reading up online and it seems to be pretty easy to make. I decided that once I was home from our Asia adventures that I’d try my hand at making some.

Today was that day! I found some raw/live Kombucha this past weekend and picked it up, hoping that I’d be able to use it to start my own batch using this recipe/set of instructions. I also picked up some a gallon/4L glass jars today from a local wine supply store. I brewed up 3-ishL of tea (mine was yerba mate with some rose petals thrown in for good measure).

Once the tea had cooled down to room temperate (which took more than an hour), I poured it through a strainer and into the jar with the white sugar. I shook it up so that the sugar dissolved. Then I added the bottle of live culture Kombucha that I purchased (which was blueberry flavour, hence the slight pink-ish tinge in the following photo). I covered the top with a clean cloth held down with an elastic.

Its supposed to sit for 8-12 days. I think that ours might take a little longer because the house is generally cooler than is recommended. But hey, we might as well try! I can’t wait to test this out.

I have to say that I’m really enjoying spinning. I made this last weekend and finally got around to taking it down from the drying rack (aka my railing) yesterday and to photographing it today.

I’m pretty impressed – it looks like real yarn! There are still a few areas that are bigger/puffier than I’d like, but overall this is pretty nice looking. I can’t wait to practice even more. And to start doing things like dying my own rovings! So many plans, so little free time. Time to get more efficient.

Do you have any plans coming up? Things you’d like to learn? Or do? Or accomplish?

If you know me, then you know this about me – I do not suffer fools gladly. More than anything else, its that I don’t like incompetence.

Last year I was editor of the Rotman Yearbook. I did a pretty bang up good job and because yearbooks are one of those things that often aren’t given a lot of recognition, I’m going to officially and publicly pat myself on the back. I did a lot, I learned a lot, I put out a good book, and I did it at a profit.

Here’s the problem. The person who took over for me is incompetent. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. This isn’t just me saying this. The situation was so bad (as in they’re two months away from the end of the school year, have missed two deadlines already, and are on track to miss delivery entirely) that the student council called me and asked me to step in and help. To summarize – the current editor messed up so badly that they’re having to pay money to fix his mistakes. In most jobs that would get you fired.

I have of frustration dealing with the current ‘editor’. I’ve been told how much ‘easier’ this person’s job is now that I’m on board to do layouts. Major problem with this statement? I’ve spent as much time tracking down photos and pertinent information for them as I have on layouts. In fact, this person is essentially a glorified admin assistant tracking down the photos that I’ve asked for (and that they should have already had!). I don’t like having the amount of work I’m doing devalued or belittled. Especially when they aren’t even able to provide the information that I do need, thus increasingly my workload dramatically.

For example, we have a section for photos of the first year study groups. Right now I have most of them, however they arrived in folders labelled ‘section 2′ and then something like IMG_7XXX.jpg. The problem with this is that I need to put names (and the correct names otherwise heads will roll) to faces, but I do not know these students and further have no access to school websites to even get access to this information. Thankfully I was able to go through other channels to get a copy of student photos and names, but now I have to go through the photos and essentially match them back to people which dramatically increases the time it will take to get something that should be simple done. Needless to say, I’m not please that a very simple instruction has been ignored completely and that my time is being wasted when I’m doing someone a favour (I guess it just means that the work will cost them more).

Even worse, is that the current editor officially has their PMP designation. Yes, they are an official project manager. I have no idea how they’ve fucked up this badly – they’ve obviously not done any research to define business requirements or deliverables, build a project plan with deadlines (and a work breakdown structure going backwards from a hard and final delivery date), define risks, or even think for that matter. I guess they might think that as a project manager their role is to direct from higher ground, without having to get their hands dirty. Well, fuck that! In fact, they even went as far as to blame some of the volunteers for the confusion that photos existed in. I quickly pointed out that as the manager it was their responsibility to provide direction (which requires understanding what’s needed and why). To which I got the phone equivalent of a blank stare.

You can’t be a good project manager if you don’t understand what you’re dealing with. And trust me, this person doesn’t. Example – they asked if I was doing layouts on my desktop… Which is difficult given that we do it all in an online system, you know cloud computing and the interwebs, and all that good stuff. Really folks, it isn’t that hard to pay some modicum of attention to the world around you. To put this in perspective, I was able to teach myself how to use their online system in about 20 minutes – it isn’t that hard if you read the faq’s and have any knowledge of enterprise software (and I’m not even a designer!).

It kills me that I recently applied for a job and was turned down because I didn’t have my PMP designation. And yet here’s a great example of how little value designations really have. Someone with their PMP has fucked up a project so badly that someone without their designation has had to be called in to fix it. Give me common sense any day of the week.

This post probably would have stayed in my head had I not received a voicemail yesterday asking me for a “status update” on how I’m doing. Oh my, what a good little project manager you are! Here’s the deal, when I’m being paid to fix your mistakes and do 95% of your job and have to go around you in order to get most of that actually done, don’t call me asking for “status updates”. Fuck off and let me do your job.

So yes, I do not suffer fools gladly. I do not appreciate having my time wasted. If I could, I would shout it out to potential employers to not hire this person that’s how incompetent they are.