raising willow… and dexter!

So, some of you may know that I am studying at Uni. I’m also studying Certificate IV in Mental Health, but that’s another story for another day. I started my Social Work degree in March 2008, when Dexie was about 6 months old. I had studied previously and the credit from that study expired after 10 years. I didn’t finish that degree because inconsiderately, both of my parents died within 4 months.

Eight years later, I bit the bullet and returned to study. At the time I was working, for the most part, 0.8 or about 30 hours a week. As a result of the previous study, I did 2 subjects a semester, winter school, 2 subjects, summer school, 2 subjects, winter school and 2 subjects. This meant that I completed 2 years of the degree in 2 years, normally students would do 4 subjects a semester and no winter school or summer school.

At this point in time, at the start of my third year, my peers are doing their placements. Since I’ve had about 8 years of experience in case management and roles where social workers would also be employed, I’m getting Recognition of Prior Learning for it. I’m only doing one subject, a fascinating look at current Indigenous issues. Next semester I’ll have to do three subjects.

Again, my peers will be doing four subjects, but by doing this Indigenous subject now, I don’t have to do one in second semester. I rang uni today to confirm that I was on the right track. I was looking at the course time tables for the two internal subjects that I’ll be doing to find that they are on the same day. One lot of awesome. Life is a lot less complicated if I only have to go into uni once a week.

However, I noticed that these subjects had the placement as a pre-requisite. I wanted to check that this could be over-ridden and the program co-ordinator said that wouldn’t be a problem. After I breathed a sigh of relief, I lamented that third year would take me a year, but fourth year would take me two. I would do my fourth year placement at work, but I couldn’t do a full time load of study and work 30 hours a week.

The program co-ordinator said that lots of people work and do fourth year because the subjects are not the traditional lecture + tutorial once a week. They are done in one week blocks, so I could do the four subjects in one semester, with paid and unpaid leave. Then do the placement at work and I’ve finished! I will have done a four year degree in four years while working 30 hours a week for most of it.

I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. Pure Awesome.

It’s depressing, isn’t it? I worked out the other day that after tax and salary sacrifice, I make $15 per hour. I made more in my first job at an abbatoir, packaging meat.

On the bright side, it is a great job. I don’t have to deal with dead animal! Seriously, it is flexible, challenging, supportive and I work with some very inspiring people. Plus working as I do, means that my uni experience is a lot more rounded.

So, I have a client, who is also a client of a state government agency. He has a case worker from this agency, to whom he has to report every week. Often, I’ll take him in to report because it means that I know he’s done it. The case worker and I have a chat while he’s there - she’s lovely. Today we had a case conference about him and during a lull in the conversation, she exclaimed “I know where I know you from!”

It turns out that about 8 years ago, I started a new job. It was the week after my father died and looking back, I didn’t do the job justice. I left after 6 months to go overseas. My client’s case worker was the person who had held the position before me. So I would have seen her name on all the case notes, etc. No wonder her name (rather than her face) was oddly familiar!

I made two more pairs of undies today, one for Willow and one for me. I thought the white elastic and stitching might lighten my pair, but they really just look like granny undies! I have found another pattern that looks a bit more modern. Willow chose the purple elastic, so that’s what I went with.

Must admit that I never thought I’d be showing off my underwear on this blog!

A has asked me to make some boxers for him, but he is very, very fussy about the boxers he likes to wear, so I don’t really want to put all that effort in only to find that he won’t wear them. I might see if I can chop up one of his old t-shirts and at least have a go.

One of my problems at the moment is that I’m not very organised. I seem to have a habit of losing things and buying more of them, only to find the original. That’s why I haven’t yet bought another pair of pinking shears. Mum’s heavy black handled pair is around somewhere. I’d love to take the time to categorise my fabric. I’d also like to categorise my patterns once I get them back from the friend I’ve lent them to. When I was tidying everything up before, I just dumped anything that looked remotely like a pattern in this 100L tub. There are patterns traced onto baking paper, newspaper, interfacing, etc… vintage patterns, books to make Barbie clothes, modern pattern books and so on. Hopefully she can find something interesting, if not useful in there!

I have been doing more than just sewing lately - it was a long weekend here in Adelaide, so we went down to see A’s mum yesterday. On the way we stopped at a friend’s house, who has four children. My two, and A played with them nicely while we talked about sewing.

This week at school Willow is having swimming lessons, since she’s not terribly confident in the water and she misses out a day because of the public holiday I took her to the Adelaide Aquatic Centre. We hadn’t been there for a couple of years, but we had a great time. It was amazing to see the different cultures there, a big group of Indian people, a Chinese mother with her daughter and baby son, a group of young Aboriginal boys. Even over the short time we were in the water I could see her confidence increasing. It was a nice way to end the weekend, plus a good way to get in some exercise since I couldn’t get to the gym today.

Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera or I would have some photos.

Papie is the word Dexie uses for paper at the moment, very cute, we think. I recently printed off 24 A4 pages to make up a pattern, sticky taped them together and traced it on to thin interfacing. When I was finished with the paper, I turned it over and gave it to Dexie to draw on.

I finally uploaded the photos, so you’ll know what I’m talking about - Calenday. Dexie had to be in the photo.

This is how we hang it up.

The proportions.

A complained that I hadn’t made anything for him. So I made this oven mitt. I traced a pattern off one that he likes, but made it bigger for his manly hands. Notice the strawberry in the background?

I’m quite pleased with how the quilting turned out. I have enough left over to make a pot holder, so I might do that later. Now I know how to drop my feed dogs (only been sewing for over 20 years!) I might even try free style quilting.

Yesterday we went to a friend’s house for lunch. She is a sister sewing enthusiast and we swapped some patterns. I have some of her precious Ottobre patterns. In one of them I saw a pattern for girls knickers, which interested me, but there was also a pattern for women’s knickers. In Mum’s stash there is a bag of knicker elastic, so I thought it was a good opportunity to try something new.

I started with an old Country Road top, the lace had come undone, so it was really only for wearing around the house.

I stitched the seams together with the overlocker.

The end result. I was sure that there was some black elastic in there, but purple would have to do. The pattern didn’t have a crotch and three seams joined in that area, so it really needed one. Next time I think I’ll cut a bigger gusset out, use only green fabric and white knicker elastic. The good thing about the green fabric is that it is quite, ahem, supportive - good for my 30-something bum.

Sorry for the previous melancholy post. I wanted to write about two people who made comments to me recently, comments that meant a lot.

One of my clients is going through a property settlement, her lawyer is an amazing woman, someone I admire very much. She told me the other day that my assistance has been invaluable.

Tonight I did a pilates class which was a bit more full on that I am used to. The male instructor told me a few times that my poses were perfect. Ok, so he was probably just being encouraging since it was my first time in his class and I know that there were other people there who were far better than me. Regardless, it was nice to hear.