Lunch hour

One of the hardest things for me about working from home is maintaining that elusive state commonly known as the work/life balance. When home, I am never more than 25 steps away from my office, meaning I am effectively “at work” all the time. Since there is never a shortage of work to be done, I find myself having to actively choose to not work, instead of the other way around. During moments of idle speculation I sometimes wonder if I’d be better about carving out a little “me time” from my day if I had an office to go to. I like the option of working in my pyjamas too much, however, to make an away-from-home office a reality. What I’m left with then is self-regulation; always a a tricky proposition for a workaholic.

I’ve made several attempts to remedy the situation over the years; this is the latest. I realized this morning that I’ve a host of projects I’ve been wild to photograph and share, and that the reason I haven’t done so, is that it requires sitting at a computer. Which is where I do my work. So blogging looks like work, it feels like work, and I’ve been scheduling into my calendar as if it is work. However, as a work task, quite frankly, blogging doesn’t get much shrift on the calendar. It’s way low on the priority list.

Today’ I’m sliding blogging over to the other side of the work/life fulcrum. I’ve given myself an hour for lunch, which is something I rarely do. One hour, to eat my sandwich at my desk, and get some photos up on the blog. I’ve never been good at cranking out the words, because I tend to write and edit simultaneously. And use big words that I can’t spell, and have to look up, like “simultaneously”. So I’ve been dicking around at it, in my usual succinct fashion, for a while now, and I have just twenty nine minutes left to get some photos up and show you what I’ve been up to.

I did not finish the Ariel Scarf in time to wear it to Austen’s wedding last Sunday, but it was of little matter, as the day was the warmest yet this summer. Even a silk scarf would have been over kill.

I finished it last night, and have just blocked it, deciding during the process to block the side edges wavy, as that’s what they seemed to want to do naturally. It was knit from Briar Rose silk aran weight (a gift from Chris, of BRF, via Lucinda, who visited a few weeks ago) in the most gorgeous range of summer rose pinks. My camera does not do the color justice.

Just one skein yielded a scarf that’s about 11 inches wide, and 66 inches long. It’s the perfect yarn for this pattern, and I love the finished scarf, though by the time I was done knitting, I was really ready to knit something else. Scarves are like that, I find. No matter how interesting the stitch pattern, I eventually reach a point where I just want the damned thing to be done. All scarf patterns should read, “Knit until the yarn runs out, or you can’t stand it anymore. Whichever comes first.”

The hour is almost up. Time to click “publish” and get on with my day.

This was fun. Let’s do it again soon.