Ask me about blaseball and teaching in semi-rural New Zealand.

How you got into crocheting?

Been doing it for years, really. My earliest stuff from 2010 (my first year of university) is still on the internet if you know where to look. I got into it the same way I did most craft forms; my mum did it so all the hooks and yarn must've been available in the house during high school, and I kept at it once I headed off to university.

Mum's crochet format of choice has always been granny squares; my stuff is historically in the amigurumi style (98% single crochet, worked in rounds to make tubes and orbs of various permutations) but I've definitely built up a preference toward patterns with more sophisticated sculpting methods.

Once I moved to Japan in 2013, I fell out of crochet for a while. My main media were carving rubber stamps, needle-felting, and a little bit of sewing. Looking back on photos on my phone, after that was some cross stitch and embroidery, but still not actual crochet.

It would seem that I got back on my hook-based bullshit in 2021 or so, so I'm pretty sure it came with a couple of friends having babies (which is actually also why I learned to knit recently!)

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In New Zealand, when you're new to the teaching profession, for the first couple years you'll be "provisionally registered". This means you're required to have scheduled time in the school term with a mentor, and taking part in a structured professional development program until you've built up your body of evidence that says you're good to be fully registered. If you haul ass, you can get this done in a single year; most folks take two.

I had a few reasons why I took four years to get it done instead:

1. Undiagnosed ADHD. I was under the impression that I was supposed to assemble, print, and arrange a systematic and organised corpus of lesson plans, personal reflections following any professional development I participated in, proof of sourcing and acting on student voice, and a bunch of other tedious horseshit. This was overwhelming and I really couldn't be assed.
   
2. My first year of teaching (2019), I will conservatively say that my mentor was not a very good mentor-er, and I honestly felt like that while I'd learnt some tricks of the science-teaching trade I'd made negligible progress in things like classroom management or being on top of my shit. I figured I'd start fresh next year with building up this mystical ring binder at a school I'd actually be guaranteed to spend multiple years at.
   • Also, that year in Christchurch there was an incident that made international news, and due to proximity of one of the mosques to our school it became a triage point and community hub for families affected. Suffice to say it was not a normal year.
     
3. My second year of teaching (2020), well, I just made it clear while I was certainly developing as a professional, it was definitely a wash of a year in terms of normality and I'd get on with reaching full certification next year.
   
4. 2021 was probably my first somewhat normal year of teaching, and my mentor was this amazing champ I'll call "Stan". Stan was an English teacher, and was married to the school's Dance teacher who I'll call "Ellis". Stan was patient, level-headed, warm and stuck to wearing one hat in the school (that of being in charge of the mentoring program for beginner teachers like myself). Stan and Ellis left my school at the end of 2021. The teacher who took Stan's role, Hannah, was a good mentor but also had like. Three hats on so she often felt too busy for me to arrange the one-on-one time I had found that Stan could make for me. Still, she supported my anxious ass well and got me through to full registration by the end of 2022.
   

I got to know Ellis better when I decided to actually take her up on the usual pleasantry-based invitation of "oh you should come over so we can do crafts together!" and then I decided I wanted to make a baby blanket as she was expecting twins. I think Ellis liked that I was the type of low-maintenance house guest who'd come around and then need nothing but some tea, a comfy place to sit, and periodic conversation while we both worked on our respective projects.

The girls were born in June, and I finished the blanket some time round November:


You can also see one of my earliest whales there. I only had this one for a good while, until I found some nice denim-patterned wool in a vintage clothing store in Milwaukee in the middle of 2022. Between then and leaving for Austria, I made enough of them to tack them all onto a jump suit and call it a Met Gayla outfit. I'll see if I can find a picture.

I was a semi-regular visitor at Stan and Ellis' place through the back half of the year, so I got to see the girls go from funny little blobs to tiny little humans with personalities and such who were almost crawling. Ellis was really struggling with raising twins in an isolated area though, away from her parents and in-laws, so they made the decision to move back home to Motueka at the end of 2021. I kind of contemplated buying their house; it had a beautiful garden with a neat building, that I think used to be the house for the local guy whose job it is to do signals on the railway or something (when rail was the main way to go up and down that stretch of coast).

So I made more whales, and snails, a parrot for a school production, a millipede as long as I was tall, and two of these frogs (because I made one on the plane going to the States in 2022 and left it at my friend's house in Illinois).