Let's Get the Weekending Started

It's finally Friday -- and I'm officially on vacation! It's a quick one, but it's a much-needed break from work-related stress. Life is going to get 100% busier next week with the start of the school year, so I'm grateful I could take this brief pause. Of course, as usual, my alarm went off at the normal time this morning. I inadvertently hit "snooze" rather than "off" on my Fitbit but figured I could allow myself a few more minutes of sleep. And then the Mister's alarm went off, so there went that plan. Oh well!

Today is officially Girls' Day. Later this morning Mo and I will meet up with my mother and head to the mall to do a little shopping. Fortunately Mo still has her uniform for school, though now that she's in the high school, she's allowed to wear red and navy polo shirts in addition to white and green, so we've already bought her a few more and we don't need to do any major back-to-school shopping. She's hoping to find a few more tops that follow non-uniform guidelines (she's not allowed to show her midriff or bra straps), but generally this is just a "let's walk around and see if anything appeals" shopping trip.

The shopping trip is really the only thing planned for the weekend, excluding the usual chores that I typically do. The Mister is leaving Sunday for the conference that he goes to almost every year that always seems to coincide with the first week of school. After last weekend was so productive in terms of crafting and reading, I'm hoping for a repeat. High on the list is finishing A Suitable Boy -- I have about 130 pages left!

I'm still working on my knitting WIPs, and I've started the first of the sleeve skeins of my sweater spin, but I got a little distracted the past two evenings playing around with some Tunisian crochet.

I've had a general understanding of Tunisian crochet for a while but had never actually followed a pattern, so I decided to give it a try with a free pattern I had in my Ravelry library. I did mine all in one color for the sake of simplicity and clearly have room for improvement, but I did it! This cloth measures about 8 inches across and used 30 g of yarn (boring-old Sugar 'n Cream). Though I used a smaller hook than called for in the pattern, my fabric looks a lot looser than the designer's sample, so next time I may use a smaller hook. The pattern also called for a provisional cast-on and using grafting to close the seam at the end, but I might try a regular start and just whip-stitch the seam closed. Now that I've gotten the hang of this technique, I might also look into some other patterns to see what I can do with it.

Before I go, a little update on the work meeting that happened yesterday: There are still some things to be figured out related to when the change will happen (which has to do with annual pay increases that happen in September), but the good news is that it's a go as far as the change in my job classification is concerned. My new classification is "editorial specialist," which is a salaried (exempt) position at a higher pay grade than my current classification. It's going to be processed as a promotion, even though I'm technically still doing the same job, but it also reflects the fact that I do a lot more and have more responsibilities than I did when I was hired for this job nearly 19 years ago. I have to look at some numbers related to how the annual pay increase is implemented to determine whether I want the change to be made as soon as possible or after the raises are processed, but the good news is that within about a month or so, all of this will be resolved and a significant source of stress from this year will be removed. Thank goodness! Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed for a positive outcome on the union vote.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!