Advice needed. Life crisis ahoy!

Aaargh! My brain is melting.

I'm currently trying to decide whether to change my life completely, and if so, how. 
I spent a long time trying to work this out last summer and came to a conclusion.  I want to teach primary school.  So I did the research and it turned out that as I already have a degree, I could do a one year course to get the qualification, while still getting paid to work as I trained.
Perfect right?

I called up the local education provider and they advised me to get some experience and call back in October to start applying, as applications opened in January for a September start.  OK, I thought.  If I have to volunteer before the course starts then I've ample time. So I arranged with my local junior school to go in one day a week as that was all I could afford to drop my work hours by.  The class I have been put with is hard work and I was beginning to realise why they want classroom experience before application. I almost re-thought it last week. 

So I went onto the teaching website to get the number to call to get the ball rolling, only to find that the course is being discontinued by the government and last applications were accepted at the beginning if the month.

There is another course to replace it but the requirement is a higher degree result than I got and now I really am re-thinking whether i want to do it.  If I am going to go through it all, why not do something I know about and learn to be a textiles teacher instead? But that involves teaching adolescents and I'm not so sure I want to do that.  Also, it would mean teaching more than one subject in all probability, as I don't think Textiles is a very popular course around here.

And to top it all, I want a baby.  Well, we want one.  We've been trying for a while but keep miscarrying so even if I go for the course, the baby takes priority if it actually happens.
So my brain is fried.  I don't know what to do.
Does anyone out there teach, and have any advice?? Help!

No sewing this weekend.

I haven't managed to do much sewing this week.  Instead I spent the weekend with friends staying above a pub having a drunken girly weekend, which was desperately needed. 

The rest of the Sunday was spent at my mum's and at a gig by one of my favourite musicians, Seth Lakeman. It was the best of his gigs I've been to and afterwards he signed my cd and gave me and Ben a hug and a photo. So although I'm still just as knackered as I was last week, at least I'm not quite as stressed. I also had a lovely walk this evening and took this beautiful photo across the road from my mum's house.

Here's another photo of truffle to end with... she's got much more confident and playful and so cute :-)

UFO Sunday...

This week I'm not sure what I have now that is a UFO and what is a work in progress.  

I have one definite UFO, Julie's mystery quilt, which I started quilting and then for some reason stopped.  I bought some beautiful binding to use, and it's all planned in my head but I can't get the courage to do it.  No, I know.  I can't be bothered to clear the kitchen table so I have the room to quilt...  So I do other things instead.  

Then there's the Treasure Box quilt that I have made the binding and backing extender for.  I've got to actually spread it out and measure and work out how much of it I need to put on the back, maybe put some border on the front first.  I know what's wrong with that - I hate measuring and working stuff out.  So as well as not having a space to lay it out, I also don't want to have to do the accurate stuff.  

So I hide away doing my favourite thing - sewing tiny little scraps together to make bigger scraps, that will eventually be turned into a lap quilt for my neighbour.  Well, at least it's an actual project, not wasting time eh?

 There's a couple of rather large piles, so I'm doing well. and it'll look amazing, but it's not a UFO really, although Donna has been waiting for it for quite a while.

But this afternoon I took some time off from worrying about my house and how messy it is and how much I should be doing to go and see my mum and her new kitten.  She's called Truffle.  All together now, aaaaaaah!  She's 9 weeks old and very happy to curl up and sleep, although mum said that she was haring around killing a ball of wool just before I turned up.  She's so cute!!

 She fell asleep while killing this glove, which was helped by Chris (my step-dad) stroking her on the forehead - she just closed her eyes and went so still I thought there was something wrong for a second!!

This post is linked here...

Autumn is here.

Today has so far been a perfect autumn morning. After all the grey rainy weather of last week it's turned sunny and I got to enjoy the beginning of the autumnal woods.  It's starting to smell like mushrooms and the chestnuts are already starting to fall, although the contents are nowhere near big enough to eat yet.
It's also a pleasure watching the woodland grow and change.  The area has been coppiced this summer, and although it seems really harsh to cut down such a large amount of trees in one place, you can see that after a few months the chestnut retaliates by growing as many shoots as it can in the next few months before winter.  The first picture is of trees at one end of the area that were cut a few months ago, and the second lot were a few months before that.  They grow blooming fast!
Now I'm sitting down with a lovely cuppa listening to the neighbours' kids playing in the cul-de-sac. mmmmm.