You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 2nd, 2008.
I am feeling a bit swamped with the knits at the moment. I have too many things on the go, too many things I want to do, too many things that are halfway through and no end in sight, and have reached the fiddly bits, so that they’re hard to take places.
This weekend I have had people over every night at my new house. This was sometimes pleasant, but made me a bit cranky this end of the week, since I feel like I haven’t done anything – nothing around the house, nothing on my knitting, and the headway I’d started to make on my podcasts (down to 5.5 days of audio in my podcast playlist! Yay!) is loosing ground. In fact, I feel like the unpacking and sorting is going backwards, since I cleared out the second bedroom last night so that my sister’s stuff could start being moved in before she herself moves. This is a Good Thing, as it means that I don’t get used to using it as a dumping ground, and it feels more like a two person house, which is something I want to maintain so I don’t get a rude shock. But it also means that there are books in piles in the living room, and DVDs in boxes taking up one whole wall of same.
The trouble is, I don’t have enough furniture – I need a chest of drawers and maybe a wardrobe for my bedroom and bookshelves for the living room. But I dont’ have the money to buy them at the present time – this is my second fortnight of paying double rent, since I broke the lease on my last place, and all the bills with the connection fees are starting to come in. Ouch.
It’s not that I can’t afford it – but there’s not a lot of extra cash floating around.
That said, I got rid of what extra there was, this last weekend. I was at the Port Adelaide Fisherman’s Markets, at Mel’s stall, and I had a wander around afterwards. Last time I was there, Emma and I found areally nice tea pot that I dithered about, and then decided that I’d go back for. I wanted it for my Birthday do, which is going to be an afternoon tea, of the refined sort. I have been slowly collecting odd cups and saucers, napkins, and the like. Anyway, when we went back it wasn’t there. But this time:
A miraculous reappearance! Not the best photos, but they were last-minute mornign snaps. I’m sure you’ll forgive.
It was only $12, so I bought it, on the theory that if I didn’t, I’d be kicking myself.
Bought with a similar point of view was this:
I’d just walked past a really really nice and perfect mirror for $99, which there is no way in the world I can afford right now. And then there was this, for $10. Snapped up! The astute among you will notice, from the colour of the wall, that it is in the kitchen, and not the hall as I have been scheming. It looked weird there, what with it being my its lonesome, and also saying ‘kitchen’ on it.
Besides, the kitchen is the most together room at the moment.
Check these out:
The far right canisters I have had for a while. The middle ones were bought on the last cousin op shopping trip. They are aluminium and I was originally scared that they might give me brain cancer, but then I decided that if I am going to get brain cancer, I’d rather get it from my canister what I love than from my deoderant, and so I’m using them. But my favourite ones are the ones on the right which are, as Jac points out, Shiny. I bought those at the Fisherman’s Wharf Markets, as a substitute for the teapot, that other time.
See the tags on them? Since some of them are not filled with what they claim to be (third from the left, for example, says ‘tea’ but in fact contains rice) and others are duplicate (three types each of flour and sugar) and I apparently have dementia (hello aluminium canisters) and can’t remember my own name, I labelled them.
I used these:
They are from Print a Day and they are PERFECT. See?
But even this project, simple as it is, is only half done. Yeesh.
I also printed out the list ones of the matrioshkas and also the toadstools (SO EXCITING I LOVE THESE I AM YELLING WHY AM I YELLING?)
SUCH a terrible photo, I do apologise. Also, I need a better magnet. Or maybe I’ll get a clip and a magnet and clip them. Or, I saw a thing on craftzine about making pieces of paper into a pad using special gum or jsut regular glue. Anyway, it’s exciting.
Also exciting is the fact that I am up (down?) to the waist on Sahara. I basted the neckline and tried it on, and it fits. I took some photos because I don’t have a mirror I can see all of myself in, and I needed to look at it.
I’ve since sewn the neck up properly and although I need to redo it because the seam is not very neat, it does sit a bit better than this. I think I shall sew up an inch or two of the split, as well. I knit it a repeat wider than the pattern said, because I was concerned about the fit and if it would stretch accross that opening properly.
As you can see, it does fit. I’m not sure how neatly, though. Here it is without the front sewn up.
The shoulder sit better like this. (ooooh, look at my canisters in the reflection! Hello, shiny canisters!!)
The thing is, usually I do short rows, which would make it sit a bit better. I didn’t on this because 1) where I would do them, there is lace and shaping 2) top down short rows hurt my brain and, most importantly 3) I started doing them, right after neck split bit, but they were really really obvious in this yarn.
I probably should have investigated side dart, but it’s in the round, and I’ve never done it before and, well… it’s HARD. I think it will be ok, although not perfect. You can’t really see it that well here:
Or maybe you can. It’s a good half an inch shorter at the front than at the back.
I am thinking that what I will do is knit it an extra inch longer at the waist, and an inch longer at the bottom. That should account for any undergarment peeping, which is the worst result of my usual hemline dilemma.
Does anyone know any different, or have better advice? I wait with baited breath…
(Can you see my camera in this? Never knew apples could make such a good tripod, now did you?)
I’ve never been meme tagged before. How excitement!
The Science Girl tagged me for six things you didn’t know about me. This is tough because, as she pointed out herself, the longer you blog, the more you share. Plus, most people who read this know me in real life. There isn’t much I won’t blab about, and what I won’t is… well… private. So, I guess that leaves us with the trivial! I’ll try not to be too trivial.
1. I am really weird about texture in food. Anything sort of grainy/squeaky I can’t eat. This means green beans, tofu, oysters, seaweed, some fish (sushi is a nightmare) that kind of thing. I also really hate biting into corriander (cilantro) although I love the flavour of it infused. These two weird issues combined mean that I can’t eat cold rolls unless I make them myself – surprise cilantro? No thanks.
2. I am obsessed with maps. But I am not very good at geography, unless I have a story to go with the place – which is why I was a history major, I guess. I only started to know where things are in Europe once I studied its history. Although, I probably know the map of Reformation era Europe better than today’s Europe – the other day I caught myself wondering if Austria was still a country! (PS, it is)
3. Whenever I am going over a bridge or sitting next to an open bus window, and I have something precious in my hand (iPod, wallet, keys, etc) I have to grip them extra hard because I have this weird urge to throw them over the edge. I cannot express how devastated I would be if I did this.
4. I don’t and have never owned a hairdryer.
5. I love Doris Day. Yes, I do, and I don’t care how ridiculous Calamity Jane is, still love it, and my favourite song it is even ‘A Woman’s Touch’. And that bit where she confronts Katy and Bill shoots the barrel to teach her a lesson and she runs off and Bill comes after her? Makes me cry every time. I’ve felt like that a fair few times. There is nothing you can say to make me not love that move, or Pillow Talk, although you can have Lover Come Back (favourite moment in that? After a big dinner that she cooks for him Rock Hudson: Would you like me to help with the dishes? Doris, with no trace of irony whatsoever: Oh no! That’s woman’s work!)
6. I am straight. But My One True Love was a girl I went to high school with. I know, I know, I was 16 but I really truly did love her, with everything I had. Nothing ever happened – by the time I realised that I was actually able to be In Love, and with a Girl, too, she had moved on. It took me years to get over her properly – Adelaide’s pretty small, and I bump into her every now and then. Last time I was fine, but the time before that I cried every night for a week afterward. I haven’t been in love since, although I have loved people (not in the same way, though, really). I don’t love her anymore, but only because I am so much a different person. The part of me that is still that person, is still 16 (and 17 and 18 and 19 and 20) loves her. Thankfully it’s a pretty small part these days. But if she turned up on my doorstop today, I’d still probably give her anything she asked for. (I don’t mean that, you smutty people)
Ha! Got you with that last one, didn’t I! So much for being trivial. Dear ridiculous-father-figure-deity-in-the-sky, I hope no one I know from then reads this, because they will definitely know who I am talking about, too. Well, whatever. It’s not really a part of who I am anymore except as a fact. (she says, blithely)
And now I am not going to be lame and say ‘whoever wants to can do this meme’ I hereby tag:
