Thursday, September 28, 2006

...[all invention gone]

Tabby is still sick. The washing machine is badly fixed or what so it leaked, I had water all oved but.. i needed to clean up anyway so when I got rid of the worst puddles, I just sprinkled some disinfection all over. And let some air in so now the place smells of the thingie for cleaning toilets and not like cat poo. The plumber will come next week, some other things are needed.. but meantime I'll have accumulated a large heap of filthy towels.. I need to wrap the little one into something and as he has diarrhoea and is too weak to clean himself... at least the medicinal carbon makes the poo stylishly black and it the smell gets absorbed, otherwise it would be like a bad compost in here.
Enough cat shit. I went to meet some Hospitality Club guys and after half a year I spoke Italian again and it went a bit tough. I should read more... after all, I promised it to Giulia.
I have no ideas. No brain cells either, seems.

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The latest news

So the little tabby boy either started to recover or at least got the point and started to try and at least swallow. I still have to put everything to his mouth but he tries to keep it there which probably means that the ulcers in his mouth and stomach are getting better. He still breathes badly... but breathes.
Nothing else.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Panleucopenia

here is the basic stuff.I have it at home. One dead, one sick, one still wild but who knows. That website says that normal disinfectants don't work too well on the virus and all Ii have at home is the thingie for cleaning toilets.... At least Tähti is vaccinated. I took the poor little one to the vet yesterday, spent there money for the second half of October...and at seven in the morning she was stone hard.
Meantime: Sunday evening the Americans came so I shoved them around a bit, debugged the kitten, my place was full of cats and bikes on which the people arrived and left today morning.
yesterday I went to pick one of my students to the airport. The university didn't send him any papers, just mailed him. However, the person who mailed him that everything is arranged and ok, forgot to notify the relevant places as to arrange him some lodging and whatever. so I had him at home. Well, I needed to do my errands like kitties to the vet (wanted a paper that the ed one doesn't have rabies, should my hole in the index finger need some medical assistance , they would want it from me. Luckily, it's not getting inflamed), feeding Hiisi and getting the guy a local phone number, if nothing else. So special thanks of the day go to Niko who depsite all the mess in which he arrived, spent the whole afternoon with me, carrying a box full of cats.
I cancelled the exam.
I expect that I'm going to get hit by a meteorite.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Anniversary post



The tabby boy likes me. I took him out of the bathroom and he was sitting in my lap, after a while he stopped trembling and just enjoyed.
I discovered that he was full of fleas. So to morrow I'll be spraying the house with insecticides and I have to do something about the cats too, I'd let the striped one to the flat - he seems ok.
The red one.. she doesn't look danterous, maybe she was surprised by the flash but she's a real devil. And the calico one is scared.
That's it.

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Saturday, September 23, 2006

Knee deep in kittens

They're actually only three. One big scared tabby, one calico, smaller and scared, and a tiny red wrathful devil. She bit my finger, now she's in hiding between the washing machine and the wall and her look says clearly Wait when I'm bigger, I'll bite your ears off.
I offered my humble help to one of the local shelters and went to introduce myself and stuff. To my surprise, a girl who looked like 13 came to open but as I was told later, she studies veterinary medicine and spends her weekend catching cats, organizing the cat-sitters and stuff. I took it a bit easy, I even didn't take the kitty carrier with me. She then gave me the three little ones to tame, lent me a shelter carrier (as soon as they go out, I'll scrub it in hot water) and off I was sent.
The kitties are in the bathroom and look unfriendly....

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Friday, September 22, 2006

Vile beast attacked my Protea!

That's it.



My washing machine.

Errands and discoveries

I was told that they'll bring the washing machine between 1300 and 1600 today. Okay, I can go and do things before. Little errands, catsitting, ordering the piece of metal on which my curtains hang and which mysteriously disappeared during ht recontsruction (they couldn't even tell me the price in the store as they obviously sell the whole systems including the screws to attach it to the ceiling and they wondered how come that one can lose such a gadget. Everything is possible and letting workmen in your house might end up in another mysteries), checking the results of the Latin tests which I happily forgot and remembered at around now, getting some flowers - a few days ago I noticed that htey have geen carnations (aka dianthus sp.) in one of the little hidden flower shops and I adore these, getting some dyes, sock yarn and checking a yarn store I discovered on the internet, putting up a note that I'm looking for a flatmate.
So I fed Hiisi, ordered the curtain crap, then the washing machine guy called that he's at the door and it was 11 something, so I was pissed off but we agreed that he come later.
I put up the note at the faculty. I went to the flower shop and asked for the flowers. The lady looked at me piercingly and said Yes... but they are pretty awful, don't you rather want green chrysanthemums? Or come on tuesday, we'll have fresh ones.
I went to check the yarn store. Oddly enough, it's in a street full of funny second hand fashion stores and the like and I passed by a million times, never fully taking a closer look... they sell fabrics and there're brocades hanging outside and dark inside so I probably thought it a store with some Indian esoteric crap. I passed by, turned around when I noticed some yarn balls in the window and went in. When I adjusted to the dark inside, I probably stopped breathing. In one part of the shop, rhere were yarn balls crammed in the shelves from floor to ceiling, some on the floor... When I was wondering with a ball of mohair-silk mixture in my hand, the shopkeeper came and asked the obvious May I help you and I said just Eeeeh... Blah. Meaning Kick me to wake me up, I'm dreaming! I rpoduced something like Just looking around and luckily she went to greet other customers which gave me a time to compose myslef so that I wouldn't look like a total dork. And, I promised myself to knit at least the two sweaters and the top before I buy more yarn.
Yesterday I met two knitting Finns. Not out in the wild, I don't have that sort of social life. My social life means being online at midnight. And I had met those two before but didn't know that they were knitters. The first knitters I actually met, here or there, if I don't count Mom. Well, and auntie** and grandma*. Both of them complained that yarn in Finland is damn expensive and I told them about the mohair and silk or at least wool I knit and that acrylic is not allowed in the house...... Seems that I'll be going with two suitcases of yarn when I'll go to Finland. (And with two suitcases of books, but I'd do that anyway.)
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*on my late Grandma's knitting sometime later. It's and absurd story but my Grandma was all absurd.
**on my still living and kicking aunt's knitting nothing much can be said. She used to knit stuff when cousins were babies and she has an unfinished lamé sweater somewhere. guess it was started around 1988.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

With my own weapon, on a short distance.















What's the difference between the two pics?





Ripping back some eight rows of messed up lace, ten times just needs a glass of pinot noir and anything by Lindt. Diets can wait.

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My place


I cleaned up a little bit and took a few pics of the 'after' state. The 'before' ones I had to fish out from my archive, abundant with folders named Various, Others, Mess, Leftovers, Wtf and the like. However, after a bit of searching and a lot of cursing I did find the pics.. they'e a a bit dark, though. Got a new comp with LCD screen so Tähti cannot sleep on it with her belly kept nicely warm.


The usual mess, books and knitting all over. See the floor. a bit of sandpaper and varnish and it looks like a floor:-)






Kirsi's room. Nothing apparent. The plaster on the walls was a bit, well, damn lot fallen off, it's the walls whitewashed without plaster. Dunno how the plaster can stick better to wallpapers than to the actual wall.


I should retouch the door frame, got scratched when we were moving the wardrobe... Sure there'll be curtains, they're jsut stores away so that the ywouldn't catch dust. I have no flatmate yet and I wwonder how am I going to pay bills. Damn.




The kitchen. Look at the prison touch - the bars were removed and I think some local hunter - gatherer picked them and had a few beers for them. And I got wonderful new tiles instead of dirt-coloured plastic. And repainted the great-grandma chairs. And broke my office chair so one of the kitchen chairs is in my room to sit on while computering....

I love the floor.

Sigh.

Today I had a most strange dream. It was about swimming across the river, missing a flight (or the other way round) and knitting a sweater of the most beautiful pattern. I remember it. I'll make it. Sometime later.
I went to write a Latin test. Or rather a test on the Latin textbook. I know why I don't study languages - I'll know them, cherish them, love them.. but never study.
I hung around the town a bit, got some vanilla (it's a spice), went to feed Hiisi and socialized with her for a while, then went home, realized that I left my celly at Barka's so I needed to go back and was late for an appointment.
I was to meet Sanna, one of 'my' students and her friend but for whatever reason, half of the Finnish language department was there too and if I really dislike some people as a group, it is them. So it all sucked a big time. I had a coffee and ran away. Sanna is nice and sweet, trying to learn Czech and I think there's a hope that we'll get on well.
On my way home I felt that I urgently needed some proteins so I dropped to Tesco (how nice to have something open 24/7 around the corner. How vain), got some tulip and freesia bulbs, a 10m extension cable, some rabbit food (understand: lettuce and tomatoes) and, finally, a chicken which lies boiled with saffron and cloves in the pot - meantime I grabbed some canned tuna meant for the cat and satiated my palates. I should start eating civilized, from a plate, with wine and stuff, not just grabbing something to eat while I do something else.

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Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Years in boredom


I did a tiny bit of knitting these days, just to check whether I still can do it. I started a sweater - with certain difficulties of the topological sort. Moebius would wonder what can be done with two strips of knitting. I ripped it around five times, each time getting entangled in different way. The blue clump is a lovely cotton tape yarn and I'm trying and ripping patterns. The colours are too contrasting so no complicated pattern would be visible.. on the other hand, I find garter stitch soo boring. We'll see. On my table you can see the proof that I live on apples and coffee - I'm studying meantime although no-one believes me.
I was sorting out things - apart from installing three nice boxes as rubbish bins, putting things to the places where they don't block the way and the like, I assigned a package to each of pieces in progress and stored away the yarn I'm not going to use too soon in a box... and I just couldn't resist the urge to try the hairy stuff. It's polyamide microfibre and it's smooth, light and pleasant to touch; however, I never had something of that sort so I didn't know how it might behave. To my surprise, the little swatch I did doesn't look like something awfully tangled and I'll continue knitting - it happened to fit to measure for the furry top I plan to make.
Yesterday my book finally arrived. Special thanks of the day go to Elisabeth who took the pains to get it for me and mailed it (I didn't find a bookstore which would have this and ship outside Sweden. Thank God for friends.)

Sunday, September 17, 2006

...

I'm at parets' place. Not now, now I'm in my office, scanning some pics, but generally I'm at parents'. Dad lent me one of his cellphones (one of those oversmart, overdesigned nokias with moving pictures instead of the decent written menu and all such crap I loathe...) so I'm able to commmunicate normally... sure, as long as you consider a cellphone as means of normal communication, should you be even more conservative than I, you might be content only with snailmail letters and meetings in the cafés, but... anyway, I can make phonecalls without the damn thing turning off for no reason.
I and Mom were partying yesterday. All day long. We got some.. well, doesn't have a name in English. Something tooo fermented to be grape juice nad not yet young wine. I reckon that people here and in Austria drink it, no-one else bothers. It's full of alcohol and vitamins and it's healthy. Looks like mud, though and Mom claims that I taught her to drink that, although I doubt it, I'm not such an accomplished drinker. However, we did basically nothing all day long and it was nice.
Mom sulked a bit, she's angry with Dad again... teh other day she mentioned that he has high blood pressure and I found his medication in the garage wehn I was loking for some tape (he has his universal mess there that contains basically everything, from the wreaths he got at the car races to dog food) and saw several packs of something and I checked. I thought it'd be something against getting old and weary, he believes all the adverts, but it was quite a strong medication fro blood pressure so I asked Mom whether she knows some details or whatever. She said that basically not, because when she asks, he tells her off that it's none of her business but that he has chronic bronchitis of which she got to know by chance and that he has all sorts of problems leading to heart attacks and stuff. Too bad. He makes himself less overweight by pointing that other people are fat:-). One day, someone will thrust his dinner into his face, he says Oh what fat you are you shouldn't eat that much instead of a Bon appetit. I think of getting him the paddle for christmas anyway. Mom said that basically it's not a bad idea but the house is full of useless rubbish anyway and that I shouldn't bother and give him another tube of hair polish. I said that he has all teh hair stuff unused in the garage. The better, she replied, dust it off and give it to him anew, he wouldn't notice. How sadly true. How sadly practical.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Lazy day

I did nothing of importance, went to the bank, to pay a fine in the library, to feed Hiisi and missed the train I wanted to take; anyways, I can go later. It'll suck anyway, it's Friday. Maybe I got the delay in the secondhand place where I got cool jeans. (Hope they're my size, I hate trying clothes and stick to guesswork most of the time.
Prague is a globalized place, apart from other crap connected to the sad fact, we have Finnish graffiti in the town.













Tähti i s the greatest lazyass I know. She sleeps 20hours a day. In my bed. Under my sheet. And I'm desperately looking for the lost cat which then emerges from under the sheet and makes this Why do you wake me, I hate you look.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Kitschy sunset


What a beauty, isn't it. Oddly enough, I wanted to make it rather blueish and hte most beautiful ball is the one laid flat, the skein must have got tangled somehow because there's hardly any trace of blue.
I jsut have to invent a pattern for it....

Arredamenti


Dad fixed some stuff yesterday. I have a brand new light in the kitchen although it took lots of screwing and cursing to fix it.
He brought me my Moroccan vase and my basil, too. By the way, the big plant is Geri. Still alive and kicking after a summer of neglect.
My room looks cool. I have a carpet, too, but I just don't feel like putting it on the lovely floor. The next step is to make the place look less Ikea-ish which is gonna be a bit of a problem because it is all Ikea. Even some of the books are from there....

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Detailed descriptions of crap


This is not a snob version of a Rubik cube. It's a designer crap. I have lots of designer crap, mind that I'm an art historian and I have a certain twist to the 'tou'll be judged by history' direction. Should my place be excavated a few hundreds years later, I don't want anyone to find out that I used plastic plates for everyday use. This is a candy box by Pavel Janák, designed in 1912. It's a replica, though, I'm not that rich.
(to be cont'd)

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Back home!


A million cartons of no-one knows what unpacked, or at least greater part of them.
I made myself a coffee because I brought some, I ate all the nougats (bad, bad me) and started putting things to place. Or at least somewhere near. I dug my beautiful kitchenware from the heaps of silk paper and I simply had to stop and adore - I'll be civilized again, no more odd things which look like hunted from the rubbish bin but my silver and designer kitchen towels and stuff.....
Tomorrow Dad will come to fix a few things and move the heavier pieces of furniture, it's hard to clean up when there's still nowhere to put some things. And I could use another bookshelf. Bookshelves are always scarce.
Tähti had a busy day, after screaming all the way here and messing around the flat, she's sleeping like a baby.
I realized that the previous days she kept peeing in my bed because Mom emptied the sandbox and didn't put any clean stuff in it.... A person with a Ph. D. and doesn't get the simple thing that cats have to dig in the final products of digestion. Sigh. She'll get the hand knit socks as punishment:-E

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Monday, September 11, 2006

Things.



I spent five days offline in my crammed kitchen, sort of supervising the guy who was cleaning and painting my floors. As I had nothing to do and for most of the activities also a nowhere to do, I sat in the kitchen. Or ran around the kitchen. Tähti was left with my mom (as a thank you, on saturday she puked all over) - so I used the lack of possibilities for dyeing yarn. And messing around. And doing nothing. I wanted to dye the pink mohair in long skeins, then it makes stripes on the knit matter, not just small spots.... and unwinding created quite a decadent effect - mohair is fluffy. And it reminded me of this. I had another plans, wanted to add a bit of blue and red, creating the sunset palette. I basically managed but the colours got a bit too intensive.... so I named the colour scheme Kitschy Sunset, after all, Mother Nature is allowed to produce creations in bright blue and yellow and my favourite (hääh!) Surgical Appliance Pink, the ghastliest colour ever (I admit, with Rotten Pond Green and Vandyke Brown, hard to define which is the worst), so why shouldn't I imitate. And I forgot to make you a pic. I boiled the green alpaca in some decolorant. It decoloured in Vandyke Brown-ish.* The decolorant smelled like... well, imagine a toxic waste dump. Imagine a dead skunk there. Imagine that all the seven circles of hell came and shat over it. Something like this. It even matched the colour. After three days the smell got better, or rather, less intensive. I'll use chlorine and if it doesn't work, I'll dye it black and knit something cool. Black saves everything.
I added some touches of green and green to the pale green viscose... posing on my new, improved floor. I love the floor and I love the yarn.
Meantime, I started a sweater which I knit from the shoulders down. I started with an 80cm size 5 needle - my arm span is 136 cm, for that matter - and a 60cm size 6 needle (i knit much tighter than I purl) and realized that knitting this on two needles only wouldn't work. After asking in several stores, I got a 100cm size 5. When I wanted something longer, I got disbelieving looks. It works somehow, though. I'll post when ther's something decent to be photographed, now the thing looks like a tangled knot of no-one-knows-what. And I managed to get the beginning right on the third attempt... regarding the topological complexity of casting on from two directions.
I'm catsitting Hiisi. She started to be quite friendly when she got that I'm the one who fills her bowl. Didnt want to be photographed, apparently.
The other day I took the decolored yarn out, it was hot outside and I thought it might dry a bit and i could sit there (although i think that even those hunters-gatherers who are at the end of the neighborhood's food chain and keep the rubbish bins clean.. at least of anything that can be sold wouldn't touch something of a colour of. ehm, final products of animal digestion which smells awful) and knit. I did. People kept their windows open and frtom at least three directions sounds were coming. Techno. For whatever reason it's called music, maybe because it comes on CDs. It played loud. Maybe I could, someday, let the neigbourhood hear a cembalo concert. Someone might put me to the court for it:-)
On Saturday Katarina came. We went for a shopping spree - there was some advert action with discounts and things all over the city and I wanted to get some crap for Christmas. I hate christmas when I need to get gifts for people who don't need anything and if they want something, they just go and buy it. But anyway. Mom is gonna get another load of antiwrinkle stuff, either she uses it up or it'll wait for me, Dad is going to get socks for trekking - not that he'd walk more than 50 metres these days but he likes to think that he's a sportsman. I'd get him a paddle but he might consider it sarcastic. And something against hair fallout. Not that his hair was falling (whereas Mom does have soggy eyes and wrinkles and stuff) but he thinks so. I thought about knitting socks for Mom, she has varicose veins and cold feet, but she would be pissed off. She has some sort of twisted thinking that says We're not so poor that we'd have to make things. (And, I'm not sure that I can knit socks, for that matter.)
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*There's an anecdote about Anthony Van Dyck, the court painter of Charles V. (I think, I'll check) of England, where he was called Vandyke, to make it clear. And, the little story says that he was working on some canvas and needed the right shade of brown and he couldn't get it. His greyhound was running there and back, wanting to play or something, and as his master largely ignored him, the dog shat in the middle of the atelier. The painter, upon noticing the guano, exclaimed Yes, that's the right shade.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Little pleasures

I'm in Prague. THe floor guy is doing the floors andI'm doing nothing: the contents of my appartment are in the kitchen and I simply don't have space enough to do anything.
I used the relative lack of urgent matters and the absence of the cat and dyed some yarn. The mohair is now in a color scheme which is different from the original idea.. and I provisionally named it Kitschy sunset. The pink puke yarn is now green and blue and looks cool. I got a decolorant for the dark green alpaca and we'll see.
I went shopping. Apart from the decolorant I wanted a yarn.. you know, the plain green thingy you use for tying things together and no-one in the whole department was able to tell me where I can find such a thing, I tried the home&garden department and then the stationery but all I discovered was that the beginning of school still continues, there were zillions of people looking like desperate mothers trying to think out what their nasty little children forgot about. School sucks.... I wanted to inscribe in the dance courses and happily forgot it.
There'll be lots of writing when I"m connected - Katarina comes for the weekend, new floors, I'm cat-sitting for Barka... so expect the worst.

Monday, September 04, 2006

...and keeping them sometimes

I wanted to write about the August 21. You know (or more probably, you don't know), anniversary of the Soviet invasion in 1968. But I somehow forgot it around the right date and it's a bit late now, I'm afraid. And, after all, who cares about something happening nearly 40 years ago.
But, today is the first school day in this lousy country. I went to work quite late, when the kids were probably let out after all sorts of stupid speeches ('I hope you had nice holidays and despite the fact that school sucks, I hope you'll enjoy it. You country needs you to be valuable citizens so you will happily work on being valuable citizens, blah, blah.' One thinks a lot about being a valuable citizen at the age of six.. indeed. I wonder whether the firstt graders know what valuable is. Or citizen, for that matter. And anyone at the age of 15 has different problems than their value for motherland.... But, let's conssider laughing at the school director's speech a tradition).. our office building is across the street from a basic school. I can watch the little bastards while sitting at my table. There's a portico with columns at the entrance to our building, reasonably well placed around the dorner form the school and shadowed by thick yew shrubs and the innocent little angels go to smoke to the portico - stairs to sit and spit on (does anyone know why teenagers have to spit so much when smoking? I asked several accomplished smokers whether cigarettes make one salivate and the answer was a general no from smokers of something handmade and smelling worse than camel shit as well as from smokers of something expensive and smelling as diluted camel shit*... maybe some smoking teenager could explain? I don't know any in person. Or is that spitting caused by some hormones like, say, acne?)... and when I was arriving, I had to step over a teenage girl (probably girl, it was wearing big earrings and a pink t-shirt) smoking somehthing awful and spitting on the stairs. I thrust a bad look at her, she looked back, thinking something about overage people being put to sleep automatically or something...
At work I read thru articles about schools - half of them is sentimental crap about holidays ending, how sad, poor children having to work again, how sad, another theme is Children are expensive.. and the rest is about the proposed reforms of the school system. Whatever is happening, it's mostly paperwork although the only solution would in my opinion be something along the lines of humanitary bombing and starting it all again. I'm soo happy to be graduating soon....
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*Yes, I'm an aggressive non-smoker. Smokers are disgusting, smell bad, make the shared air smell bad and.. and anyway.

Breaking a promise.....

I wanted to try this. Not directly form this site but I found it translated into Czech, mistakes and the total incomprehensibility included. (Here's a better site, with pics and stuff...) Who the hell can invent using colour coding for knit and purl in a more-than-one colour pattern (hint: an idiot). And it doesn't work as it should. So, having nothing but the blue yarns brought here for enjoying them and some leftover crap, I tried (with quite a thick black acrylic something and quite athin recycled curly wool. Yuck.). First, I used the colour code for colours and it came out weird. Then I re-read the instructions and followed them. Stithc by stitch, word by word, and the result was something in black and white stripes, with knotty something within the stripes. Then, I rethought the whole concept.
Here an insertion will come: Topology is a sort of mathematics. Here you find a knitting mathematician, she might be able to explain it better, try and ask. I'm not a geek, I'm just trying. As I"m getting it, topology is about organizing things in space, As things, mathematical objects can be understood, or real objects that could be mathematically definable with difficulties. Basically, creating a seven-colour lace from seven balls of yarn means reorganizing the yarn from balls to something flat, trying to skip something vipery-snakey and tangled. Knitting is only the technique. So, if you have something on your mind, you can do it. The technique must give way to the powers of your imagination, doesn't it? Playing Tetris is basically a question of topology too... hope you're getting it.
So, if I wanted to create this sort of pattern, I thought, ok, on a garter stitch surface the purl stitches stand out in space, creating little bumps. If they should have different colour from different points of view (spatial, not metaphorical), the purl stitches have to be on the edge of the areas with different colours. I produced this sample.. but the colours aren't contrasting enough and the pattern is thus of a Braille sort only. With the Opal yarn I"ll have to stick to good ole cables or something, then. Or throw out the dark blue and get something else. How to make the pattern is apparent from the detailed photograph, should someone want a pattern, say I want a pattern in the comments. I'm lazy now. Yeah, and the main problem of this sort of pattern is that it apparently looks best when knit on no. 1 needles. Damn.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

The final complaint

Mom decided that the silk yarn smells bad. Well, it smells. Somehow. I've been knitting tha tsweater for two months, bit by bit, and I found it quite pleasant. She decided to do something about the smell so she washed the sweater. Machine-washed. Not at 30degrees but at 90. It still smells and instead of something soft and smooth, it's itchy and hard as a board. As if I haven't told her that it's silk, you know, not jeans.
I'm moving away. And if things go ok, soon moving even more away. Damn. And no more stories about my mom, promise.

Other things...

I went to Prague on Tuesday, on Wednesday morning the floor repair guy was to came.. and Wednesday afternoon Mom planned to arrive to do some cleaning and nagging. Luckily, there was more of the cleaning part, although useful advices as dry the cup after you wash it and before you put it into the cupboard found its way to the world. Anyway, on Tuesday evening I wanted to do a dyeing experiment, an opal inspired yarn. I didn't have much idea how to do it, all I knew was that I simply cannot dip it in the dye. I had several dyes, some acid-fixed, some salt-fixed. After previous experiences with the acid stuff I decided to add salt anyway. However, how to make speckled yarn: get a big pot. You'll boil it in vapour (cannot dip it into something) so arrange it somehow. There's things for it or you can just hang it onto a knitting needle set across the pot. Put some water in the pot. Add vinegar and salt. Generously. Dip the yarn in this terrible solution. Meantime mix the powdered dyes with some water and salt and vinegar. The main colour can be pretty liquid, the speckles are better made from a paste (meaning, add a real lot of salt). Then apply randomly. Boil it. Long. Then wash it. Wait until dries and then make conclusion. My skein came out from the pot as a tangled blackish mass smelling like hell. (Vinegar hell, for that matter.) and I was pissed off that I screwed it up. By the way, the dark blue skein was easy. Just uniform and plain dark blue. I left it hanging in the space overnight and the following day I dried it in the microwave oven.. and when dry, it was really opal blue with speckles and I decided that I love it.
Mom arrived just when I was eating my lunch (leftover pasta with leftover sauce. Potatoes are pretty weird in the pasta sauce. I needed to clean the fridge.). Oddly enough she didn't make any comment. She started cleaning from the other corner of the place, re-cleaning what I cleaned, sometimes making biting comments how come that I don't see this fingerprint, why I don't have the toilet chemicals displayed around the toilet bowl and other sorts of cleaning chemicals in the bathroom, what if some visitor makes some mess and wants to clean it and the like (A query: Have you ever made mess of such a sort in someone's bathroom that you needed, for example, natrium hydroxide to clean it?). But, moms have weird logic.
On Friday we went for a shopping spree or something. Mom basically wanted a wedding gift for a friend of hers (I never understood why people get married. They can have children without it and even a mortgage doesn't get cheaper when one gets a husband, as far as I know. Mom says that it's because when people have children and are not married, teh children go to school and other children laugh at them that their parents are not married and have different surnames. But.. then one should make sure that his child doesn't have red hair or anything noticeable... I was laughed at because I worre glasses - even though my parents were married. Well, for me it has no sense. Just enormous money spent to show up and feed relatives who care a damn) and she also wanted to buy me some clothes. To her surprise, I didn't want any because I didn't need any. I have my Copenhagen tank top and I'm happy for this month and around:-) and I'll knit something as soon as I'm moved. And anyway. I'd prefer books. Or the money to get whatever I might need someday. Travelling and stuff. Things she considers wasting money and time. Thinking of it, she considers all my hobbies a waste of time. Despite my efforts she wouldn't understand that art history cannot be done from an office, like, say, law or civil engineering.
Kristina has moved to Paris. (Kristina is a friend for over half of our lives - which is long like hell in these unstable days. Paris is in Europe. Easy to meet her, then, I'm in Europe as well.)
I'm out of ideas.