Dream Job For a Nomad

I am returning to social work with a new position and signed on the dotted line this morning to be the Adoptions Child Specific Recruiter for south Vancouver Island. 28 hours per week, with one day per week in Duncan, one day per week in Esquimalt, those are both at Ministry offices, and then one day a week at a local Aboriginal organization. I will be digging through mountains of files, looking for permanent homes for children in care that have been struggling to be matched with adoptive families. My job is not casework - these children already have their government case workers. I will be the one working away on the sidelines to push the paper along and find permanency. I think it will be quite rewarding work. The structure of the job is interesting to me. I work at three different offices three days per week, so using someone else's desk, or a meeting/board room, wherever I can squeeze in. Then I have a day that I can work from home and since home is mobile, I can park the RV anywhere and work away. I have most of what I need to set up a home office - printer, laminator, stapler, post it notes, ha ha. I think what I might do is have a rolling office kit in a small suitcase - all my papers and odds and ends I like to have at my desk, wherever it may be. We shall see how that works out. 

I'm heading over to the mainland tomorrow for two days of training. And I don't have to pack a damn thing. I love that. I am just driving over and taking the ferry. I have a friend from high school that lives in Port Moody and the office is a short distance from there in Burnaby. It will be nice to get away again as I have been having itchy feet...let's take this nomad on the road and try it out. My new employer is not sure what to think about the whole live in my RV thing. Honestly, I'm often unsure what I think about it! I think it will suit me best as no matter where I'm going, I can take my home with me, so I never have to pack or worry about what I left behind. (Or unpack!) Nash comes with me, and I can either eat out or cook my own food. My bed stays the same, and only the outside environment changes. As much as I enjoy travelling, I always struggled with travel sleeping arrangements - bed too hard, too soft, room too hot, too cold, noisy fans, noisy neighbors, intrusive housekeeping, snoring roomies, etc. Now little will change, and I really like that Nash is with me, so no cat sitting required, and both he and I get to spend time together. I think it will work for everyone. It's cheaper than a hotel to just pay for my ferry fares and gas, than all that and a hotel. My ferry fares are bit more, but nowhere near as much as a hotel in Burnaby - at least $150-200 per night. My ferry is only about $40 more because it is an RV. I have to pay by the foot for what is over 20 feet. 

I'm excited about the new role, and about returning to social work after a year away from it to regroup, and reacquaint myself with my country again. I will continue working at the Canadian Cancer Society as a telerecruiter until the end of February when the contract finishes, so for the last two weeks of Februrary, I shall be busy working both jobs. but I know it's only a short time and then I'll just have my new job and it will be more than enough wages to live on, and such a meaningful and interesting job. Yay me! I had wanted this type of job for many years and am glad to have this opportunity. 

The Quilt From Hell

So I began this quilt last summer after visiting my sister who graciously allowed me to pillage her fabric stash as she had finished up her projects and hadn't quilted in years. I knew I was looking to stick with an ocean beach themed RV design, and mostly with blues and greens, so I was tickled to find the fabric that I did in her stash to make a quilt. I hadn't bought the RV at that point and was living in the Karma van. I had planned on buying an RV with a Queen size bed in the back, so I started making a quilt for that size bed. I didn't have a pattern, as I don't usually for quilts unless it's a piecework quilt. This is just really a blanket. I wasn't planning to do any fancy hand-quilting, as I knew my hands were in no shape to even consider that. I did not have any bedding when I returned from Australia other than a couple of lap quilts, one made by my sis. 

As the temperatures dropped, I felt the need to make some quilts, as I planned to make most of my own things in the RV. The nights got colder and I was too stubborn to buy blanket, so I ended up putting the half finished quilt on the bed at nights to keep warm, and hoped I hadn't left any pins in it. I had added the layers without trimming them, so the quilt was big, bulky and the layers shifted all over the place. The quilt was so damn big and it took up half the bed chamber with it's sprawling layers. I tripped and snarled myself up in the bedclothes so damn many times, and fell on the floor, or into the wall, trying to get out of it. 

I didn't have anywhere to really spread it out to get the layers sorted and pinned, and then machine quilted. So I tried to make a few quilting lines in the Karma van. That did not go well. Between the needles breaking, the thread breaking, the bobbin becoming tangled again and again, that before long I gave it up after swearing, stomping around, and screaming to the sky. My hands would not cooperate to rip out any mistakes or snagged thread, and I kept dropping things. I cried, I screamed, I cursed. Every few weeks I would haul this damn quilt out again and again to try and work on it and it never ended well. Then I bought the RV and it was too big anyhow, massive for a single bed. So then I had to decide what to remove from the quilt, and trimmed all the yellow off - I hate yellow anyway. But again, with no place to stretch my quilt out to properly pin it, the layers kept bunching up as I was using a variety of fabrics with their own level of stretch and shift. 

I used a flannellete sheet for the fill, and cotton sheeting, and a piece of a hospital sheet I think, from where my sister lives. There is also a piece of a sheet my mother gave me from the sheets she had for my dad's sick bed. We had searched and found the softest of cottons for my dad to be comfortable, and one of them had torn so was not of any use as a sheet any longer. Now it is part of this quilt. I also have added a piece of dip dyed aqua blue eyelet to the back of it, just for a surprise. 

I finally gave up on machine quilting it and bought some ribbon to tie it instead. Even that was a friggin chore as I still couldn't spread it out to work on it so did a little then gave up in disgust as the layers shifted and bunched again. But by that time my daughter was arriving for Christmas and I needed to use the quilt as it was cold and I didn't have any other quilts made either. So she used the unfinished quilt, but at least I had trimmed the excess off by then and it was not the burden it was, but still UNFINISHED! 

This past long weekend I had the use of a friend's big living room while I house/cat sat for them and hunkered down, finished tying it, then pinned the bloody hem, and dragged it back down to the camper to sew it. It is now complete. It looks okay, and turned out well enough, but is not my best sewing by any stretch of the imagination. At least I didn't burn it. I had threatened to many many times as I sat in my camper and cried about my useless hands, and the damn quilt that I couldn't manage to finish. I have added some photos here, but sorry, I did not take the quilt back into the house after I sewed it to take a photo and I can't get a good photo of it in the camper. Nash gave it a good smelling as I had it on the floor of the living room that had a rug on it, and two resident kitties. He knew I had cheated on him with other cats.