Knitting party

The best housewarming party I could think of was to invite various people from Knit Lincs over to my house to knit:


and eat plenty of food! Everyone brought something and we had a great time stuffing ourselves silly. I've still got quite a lot left in my fridge for this week's packed lunches!

Miraculously, the weather held (I'm sure the only reason us Brits talk about the weather ALL the time is because it never does what it's meant to. I've heard that some places in the world have the same weather for whole seasons of the year. Is that true? Can you imagine it? I can't! What do people talk about if not the weather?) and we could sit outside to stuff ourselves silly and knit. It was even sunny enough for most of us to retire into the shade!


Washing up and tea making services were provided by Mum and Auntie Jan. Well, they can't knit so what else were they going to do?


Oh, and I finished Lavender and Lace. She still needs blocking and a ribbon to thread through the holes, but I'm really pleased with her! She even fits...

Thank you for all the comments about attitudes towards librarians etc etc. I had a long think about whether I was just having whinge or whether I was going to do something about it. And I've had a chat with the Administrator at work (who is actually just as patronising as some of the visitors, but still...). I'm going to have a new notice up explaining what I'm doing in more detail for visitors to read, and also asking them not to disturb me. Which should put a stop to most of the idiotic comments, although only if people read the notice(!). And I've written an article for the quarterly staff newsletter about the project I'm working on, so people know what I'm doing and that I am actually WORKING and not doing a college project/sitting reading books all day long/ replicating work that's already been done by a long-since-dead member of staff about 40 years ago (humph!).
A couple of weeks ago a school librarian was one of the visitors and we stopped and had a long chat (I don't mind answering sensible questions from the genuinely interested, and ended up referring her onto my boss!). She described many of the problems she'd had with recognition in her job, how she'd campaigned to go on the same salary scale as teachers, and how she now dressed smartly in the same way as the teachers (she also teaches info skills type things now), all of which have helped her improve her status. All things to think about, although I wish our professional body, CILIP, would refuse to advertise jobs in its vacancies supplement that don't meet its suggested salary scales (ie a good proportion of the jobs!). It's not just about the salary scales though (hey, I'm self-employed, I don't HAVE a salary!) but about perceptions and attitudes. No wonder there's a shortage of librarians...