Monday, August 28, 2006

Back online

I spent three days in Prague in my reconstructed appartment. I have the internet conection there but no computer at the moment, and, there was lots of stuff to clean.
I thought that I'd vacuum clean it, wash it (whatever the 'it' might be) and it will all be ready in two hours and then I'll go have some culture and stuff. No way. I entered, I had to wash the chair so that I could put my bag on it. Then I sighed and wnt to the centre to do some shopping. Rubber gloves, CDs and stuff. I was cleaning until some 11pm - it showed that the floor tiles aren't of the wrong color, after a bit of hard work with a brush, they become red. And so on. Just the tub is covered by some stuff as the guys washed tools in it. I pured strong chemicals onto it and it started giving way but with such speed i'm going to get it clean no sooner than for Christmas. However, the toilet looks civilized, not like a backcountry outhouse (although I might send a pic to some lifestyle magazine creating a new bathroom fashion). I just need to install some sort of shelf for reading matter there.
Barka came on Thursday, I needed to get furniture out of one of the rooms to have the floor done... and we realized that the wardrobe is some two milimieters lower than the height of the door frame (newly painted, for that matter) is. So we somehow managed to get it through although we couldn't use the ladies' way of moving heavy furniture because of the height*. The Ikea furniture is awful, by the way. I know that the cheap stuff is single use only.. but trying to move something made of thin chipboard.. which means that it's heavy like hell and stable like a paper bag.. it sucks. And I have to add that shoe boxes have better design than my furniture and their only disadvantage is that there're none large enough to hang clothes in. Otherwise I have lots of shoe boxes. One of my favourite brands makes boxes of a size to match the CD boxes, for example... so why should I bother to get a CD stand (unless it's some nice design piece to please my heart, of course. That's why I have designer kitchenware, sure I can eat from a plastic bowl).
I got some more yarn. And some more yarn, three nice packets. Some silk for Juha's sweater (need to dye it beforehand and even before to rewind it into hanks, balls dye badly), quite a nice thin tape which has fascinating self-entangling properties, I'll have to handle it carefully because it's wound onto pieces of cardboard (what sort of idiot invented that, I wonder.), here featuring on yellow washing cloth, spread on a book of Swedish poetry Kaylee sent me. I liked that book.
Some alpaca. Pure alpaca, hear that? 45czk per 50g skein. Bargainy bargain.. It looked turquoise on the website, in reality it's the most terrible petrol green I could ever imagine, the washing cloth makes it look better. In reality it's a dark green.. imagine a muddy pond in warm weather including the smell andadd a bit of blue to this mental image. You'll get the color and the visual sensation... and it's so soft and cuddly... I'll try whether chlorine bleach makes it better. If not, I'll dye it black. Black covers anything. And makes me look thinner.
Half a kilo of mohair (35 czk/50g skein). Baby pink but light colors dye nicely. I'm thinking about some sunset-like color scheme. Blue, orange, gray, pink.. could be. Not that I had an idea what to make of it but it doesn't matter at all. Something nice and warm.
And another pack on Friday, fluffy poly-something which is basically against my principles but I got it with thison my mind. Well, I'll make it more covering. I have a beer gut rather than a sixpack in my belly area. the little piece of greenish something at the bottom of the picture is a dyed sample of the following horror..... so that you can be optimistic from the beginning... This weirdo yarn which was pale pink on the pic... and surgical pink in reality. It looked like a puke. However, it's quite ok to touch. What surprised me was the price tag. DM14.95, would you believe it? German marks.. how long is Germany in the monetary union, since 2001? And.... how much was German mark before, some 18 czk, i think... so the yarn was something like 270 czk and it looks like old rags of surgeon's working clothes? (I got it for 35 per skein... could be). It's rayon and cotton and flax, I guessed that something might dye and I added a piece to the pot of green in which I was making the pale green viscose more passable... and surprise, the surgical pink changed into beautiful deep green whereas the synthetic tape component retained a range of pastel colors. I'll have to invent something vintagey for this yarn. Any ideas welcome....
(pics coming gradually later)
------------------------
*how to move furniture when you're fragile and weak or the furniture big and heavy: lift it on one side and kick a piece of cloth onder it. Something like old bed linen, folded to a nice rectangle to fit under. Do the same on the other side. Then you can slide the thing on the floor. Doesn't work for carpeted surfaces, stairways and things. But if you need to chase spiders away from behind your piano, it works ok. That's what my mom taught me, you know(-:. She's smart.