Work

Well, I got laid off from the BOE yesterday. Sigh... We finished most of the work from the November 4th election and a small local election on November 18th, so it had been pretty slow the past two weeks. The head of the BOE wanted the director of my department to get rid of all 23 of the temps, but she only let 10 (including me) go instead. She kept apologizing to us, and said she feels terrible having to lay people off so close to Christmas, and with the economy here being so bad. The director is pushing for her to lay off more temps, if not all of them. We're supposed to be called back in a week to a week and a half to update voter history for the November 4th election (when we get the poll books back from the BOE warehouse where they're being used for an audit), but I can't see them calling us back before Christmas.

In the meantime, this leaves me in a real mess financially, especially coming after having a short check from being off for Thanksgiving. I applied for unemployment pay yesterday. I don't know if I'll get approved for it, but even if I do, it takes 3 weeks to get the first check. I felt nauseous last night worrying, could barely sleep, and woke up with a headache. God willing another, permanent job (or at least a better paying temp job) will turn up for me quickly. The Census Bureau is hiring for some temp jobs in Cleveland, to start in February, so I'm going to go take their employment test next Tuesday.

Well, I do have a couple more crochet projects to show. The first is a hat and blanket set my coworker, Lola, paid me to crochet for her daughter. I finished them about a month ago, but never got around to blogging about them.
The hat is from "Stitch N' Bitch: The Happy Hooker" (I added a flower and used half double crochet instead of double) and the blanket is just rows of striped half double crochet with a fancy border. Lola asked me to put flowers on the blanket too, so I sewed one to each corner. Here's a close up of the trim:
I used Red Heart Super Saver in Petal Pink and Soft White. I don't normally use Super Saver, because I think it's scratchy, but I was looking at Walmart for some yarn, and all they had in pink and white was the Super Saver, not to mention that I didn't have much money to spend on yarn at the time. I hadn't used Super Saver since I first learned how to crochet, and I was surprised to find that it doesn't feel nearly as scratchy as it used to. I guess Red Heart made some improvements to it. I washed the blanket and hat, soaked them in fabric softener, and dried them with a dryer sheet, and they came out pretty soft afterwards. Lola was really happy with them.

Lola's daughter turned one year old last month, so I crocheted a poncho for her, from a free pattern I found online (I added the flower and the picot trim at the bottom). The pattern used a "crossed bar stitch". I really like the stitch pattern. I used some white Vanna's Choice Baby yarn from my stash, so all I had to buy was the red for the trim. Not a bad gift for $3.00! Here's the poncho:And here's a picture of Lola's daughter, Heaven, wearing it:

Isn't she cute?!

Well, off to get the kids' clothes ready for school tomorrow, and watch an episode from one of the "Medium" DVD boxed sets I just got from the library.