Kernels

Hello blog!

What happened to this year?  Apparently my last post was in January. I meant to look at you, read you, even post at least once a month, but time went by and major stuff happened and my time was hijacked.

There has been a long history at work that if something big is going to happen it will happen while I am away on holidays.  It happened again this year in a huge way which meant on my return I was greeted by several people telling me that "the shit hit the fan" and "you are going to be travelling".

Bottom line - an entire department had imploded and the managers had both been given the boot.  The department is in another city and I have spent much of the year flying back and forth between there and my home city.  Following on from that (and as a consequence of the work I am doing) I was put on a project that meant adding trips to yet another city, then another project to a third city.

Yes life has been manic!

It has also been astonishing because I am not a business power house, not exceptionally intelligent and have no higher learning.  Yet here I am being given more opportunities, being sought out as someone who can fix it, having my opinion valued and, most important to me, being respected by people I respect enormously.  I have found myself in discussions with people far smarter than me where I hear myself explaining something and think "bloody hell, I know what I am talking about and these people are listening".  I spend a lot of time just a little gob-smacked at my life

So why has it happened?  Because a handful of people had faith in me and apparently saw talents in me that I didn't know were there - and one Nun long ago in another universe.  Figuratively of course.

I left school at fifteen and apart from some one or two day courses have had no further education.  I hate classroom situations and always have.  I suspect if I were a child today I would be assessed with some type of learning problem.  Formal education does not agree with me, but I learn from necessity really well and have a belief that I can probably find some way to do just about anything asked of me. Thankfully no brain surgery has yet been requested.  :-)

I am fully aware that despite all of this, I work in an industry where no-one is indispensable and we are very prone to huge profit downturns and buy outs.  In reality if I do my job properly and train people well I could make myself obsolete, and that's OK.  As much as I need to work, I have and still am enjoying this ride if a little travel weary.

And that Nun?  She has come back into my mind a lot over the last year and I think it is a little kernel planted in my mind a long time ago by her at my high school that allowed me to have faith in myself despite my well recorded below averageness.

When I sat my last test in her classroom she told me that while my final results overall would not show it I would be a very valuable employee to anyone who could see beyond the numbers.  She was right my results were crap as we both knew they would be, but I remembered her words all these years and I can't express how much I appreciated her being able to see past the surface.

So thank you Sister Josephine.  I pretty much hate Nuns but you were the exception  I suspect you, like me, flew under the radar for much of your life, but you were a teacher in all the right ways.  I am still grateful you were there in an otherwise execrable school.

Damned chains.

In recent years I have had a craving to be more creative.  Blogging may have started it and it has progressed through to writing poetry, drawing, painting, half arsed sculpting, sewing, knitting, crocheting and lately, cross stitch.  Each new pursuit pushes the previous one into the background, but I do like to go back to see if I can improve on past efforts for each.

The cross stitch is one that allows my mind to wander back and forth (sometimes requiring un-stitching) and the very act of needlework took my brain down a pathway to a time long, long ago and remembered pain and humiliation.  I was thinking how horrible I was at anything to do with hand sewing when I was a child and I have vivid memories of the old bat who taught the girls in my class to do samplers (this was the 60's and a catholic school).   For those unfamiliar with this weird ritual, it was a way to make sure good catholic girls could do the very important stitches that would set us up for a life time of doing very important stitches that don't really serve any purpose.  My sampler was, to say the very least, shit.  None of the stitches were nice and neat and the chain stitch sucked to the point that neither resembled a chain or a stitch  - more a knot really - and my blanket stitch would be saving no blankets any time soon.

The previously mentioned old bat was very new to the school and either had not been told something kind of relevant about me and my crappy stitches, or was really a horrible old bat.  You see my mother had passed away earlier in the year.  All the other little girls could take their samplers home and mummy could help them, so next lesson, lovely neat samplers.  I of course did not have the advantage of a living mother and the only person I could ask for help was.........the old bat.  For reasons best know to herself, it was beyond her to help me perfect my stitches, it was a one shot only deal, demonstrate stitches, send off girls with samplers and wait for beautifully finished item next.

My dad was aware of what was happening, not sure if I told him or if someone else did, and while he thought the woman was being unfair, didn't really think that not being able to do chain or blanket stitch rated very highly in the scheme of things.  This is a rational but doesn't quite address the fact that my self esteem was taking a battering and 7 year old girls also don't understand about different circumstances and sniggered at my hopelessness.

So after a lifetime of thinking my hand sewing was pretty appalling, imagine my delight when I found I actually am pretty good with a needle.  I have a habit of saving my dogs stuffed toys far beyond what most rational people would do.  While trying to save one of the more seriously torn toys I suddenly realised the stitch that allowed me to hold back the tide of stuffing was........BLANKET STITCH!  I don't now how it happened, but there it was, lovely even blanket stitch.

Now I am happily stitching to repair and stitching for fun.  It's neat and does what it's meant to do.

So suck on that you old bat (who I think was called Mrs Langton). I hope you had a life time of knots forming halfway down your thread, and pricked you finger every stitch you did.  How hard is it to help a little girl who was struggling with her stitches and why act like I was destined for a lifetime of failure for not meeting you stupid expectations.

I will admit, I have never tried to do chain stitch since that time.  Strangely the lack of chain stitch has not caused me a lifetime of misery.

What the hell is the purpose of chain stitch anyway?