Generous inspiration

This month I've been inspired by, of all things, a BBC blog. It's written by a woman who decided to avoid buying or otherwise collecting any plastic products for the whole of August. What I've found most interesting in a way is the debate that raged in the comments pages as to whether such lengths are truly necessary - and Chris, the blogger, joined in this theme by examining the pros and cons of plastic alternatives in her posts. But the main theme that seemed to come back again and again was that plastic is not a bad thing, it's the 'disposability' of many plastic products.

The eco-geek's motto is 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle'. I'm pretty good at recycling and reusing, but never really gave the reducing part much thought. Putting the plastic debate aside, I send vast amounts of cotton pads and wipes to landfill just through washing my face - I have mega-sensitive skin and using water to wash off face cream brings me out in spots, so I wipe off the face cream with cotton pads or, if I'm in a hurry, use cleansing wipes. My bedroom bin is usually about 80% full of these items alone. I try to reuse them, perhaps to wipe excess cream off my hands when they've dried out or to wipe condensation off my window, but as they're covered in cream or some other cleansing product there's not many options to reuse or recycling. So, inspired by Chris's blog, I'm thinking up reusable alternatives. I might try using flannels, although they might be a bit rough and I'd need to remember to wash them often enough to make sure I didn't run out (a similar problem to that encountered by Chris with reusable nappies, only less icky!).

So in terms of environmental stuff, I'm sticking to my new year's resolution of learning more about the causes I support. But I'm still struggling when it comes to finding out more about ethical things - Fairtrade, the clothing industry etc. The problem is everything's so biased that I can't really compare like for like, might have to do more digging there.

This Week I will mostly be ...

... reading 'Great Expectations'

... watching repeats of 'Friends'

... knitting a beret

... enjoying the last week of the summer hols (no more free Friday nights and househusband after this week!)

... hoping my last week in my temp job goes fast!

New look!

As you can see I've made some drastic adjustments to the colours on the blog - this is because apparently having a black background on a webpage uses less power than a white or pale background. So I'm saving on your electricity bill (probably only a few pence though) and using up fewer resources. A little change but, as a well-known supermarket chain in the UK would say, every little helps!

Call off the search!

Well, the big gamble paid off - I got a job at the uni! Starting on 1st September as a temp while the contracts go through. It's even a higher grade than I thought I'd get, I only went to the interview as practise but I'm thrilled that I got it! It just goes to show that a bit of persistence (and a lot of guts) pays off in the end.

The weird thing is that I've been jobhunting since April last year, and now I don't need to anymore, at least not for a few years. I kind of feel like I'm at a loose end now! Hubby almost asked if I had any application forms to do this weekend and then suddenly realised that that answer is no, and will be for every foreseeable weekend!

Still got the medical screening to get through which I'm a bit worried about, but hopefully it'll all go well. Yippee!

(DISCLAIMER: Bec would like to apologise for the number of exclamation marks in this post)

This Week I will mostly be ...

... on reception (God help me)
... reading 'Great Expectations'
... knitting a cardigan
... watching whatever LoveFilm sends
... looking forward to the Bank Holiday weekend
... hoping the rain goes away

A nice surprise

The other day I got home from work and had a nice surprise waiting for me. It was a letter from the National Blood Service - at first I thought I was due an appointment to donate blood but they'd actually just written to thank me! I even got this lovely card:

I don't give blood to be thanked or praised, but it was still really moving to receive this. I kind of look at giving blood as a duty and forget that there's a lot of people out there who don't even show an interest in giving blood, so what I'm doing is actually pretty special.

Thank you National Blood Service, you made me smile!!

A hat for hubby!

Remember that gorgeous but illicit yarn I bought in Staffordshire? If you need a reminder, here it is:

So beautiful ... mmmm ... anyway, now around half a ball has been transformed into this lovely head cozy for my equally gorgeous hubby:

I should explain ... my hubby doesn't have a freaky alien pixelated face in real life, he just doesn't like his face being on the internet so he photoshopped it. But that's fine, because the real star of the picture is the hat! It's based on 'Hot Head' from 'Stitch n Bitch' but without the striping effect and using bluey-green instead of reds and yellows, so I've dubbed it Cool Head (clever, eh?). I love the patterning effect and the supersoftness of the Blueface Leicester wool, I think it may spend more time on my head than hubby's!

Unfortunately it didn't use up much yarn, so there is still plenty of evidence of my torrid liaison. Oh well, I found a fab pattern for a scarf in this month's 'Let's Knit' that should use up the rest, but for now I'm back onto the cardigan.

Illicit yarn, project bigamy ... what am I turning into?!

This Week I will mostly be ...

... reading 'Great Expectations'
... knitting a hat and maybe more of the cardigan
... watching 'Rumour Has It' and/or 'Good Night and Good Luck'
... eating eggs (Dad gave us three dozen yesterday!!)
... bored at work, it's so quiet
... practising my turn in the road

This Week I will mostly be ...

... reading 'Great Expectations'
... knitting a hat
... watching 'Memento'
... working in the IT Faculty of LMU
... going to a wedding on Saturday (yay dressing up!)