Drained

I am idling today.
I was to the students' office and as I expected, there were notices all over the place that the students absolutely must apply for the final exams before July 31. The lady who is responsible for me was on holiday. She remembers me, I guess, I'm always late with stuff or have strange problems with filling the forms correctly and stuff but maybe she shows this motherly, mildly desperate attitude towards all people. So when some another lady said that we should go to her, I mildly panicked but I guess the guy two people ahead the queue had similar issue. When I told about mine, she said Okay, bring the stuff on Thursday, them teachers, what was your name again? and off I went.
It's Arts Faculty. Place where rules serve the people, not otherwise. I cannot avoid saying that majority of the teachers are unmanageable regardless of how many rules and regulations there are. That influences the whole system, obviously, if the Professor is half an hour late in half of the cases (in the other half of the cases it's forty minutes), how can anyone force the students to be always on time?
I called Dad. I wanted to tell him that I'm going away for three weeks and that I finally got my scholarship so that I can send him back the money he lent me the other day. He was busy so I called him later about the Stockholm thing. He told Mom so the first wave of comments missed me...Mom called back later and oddly enough didn't whine at all, jsut expressed a bit of a worry that I'll be away for long and that she hoped for some days together and whether I'll go to Rome with her.
So far so good.
Someone asked about CouchSurfing. You register there and when you need to go to, say, Rome, you find all those who have a couch in Rome, ask them whether they let you stay on it and there you go. And vice versa, when someone comes to your place, you might lodge them.
I promised some rosé wine and dark chocolate to the Stockholm girl, I wonder whether the university would pay for it when I said that I paid it for the lodging. Not probably, not that the accountant wouldn't understand the thing, after all, it's an Arts Faculty accountant... but the tax inspectors lack sense of humour. Or rather they get it surgically removed when they get the job, I guess. But..... I will buy a pack of that expensive letter paper at the uni's expense. After all, I need to have a nice paper when I write letters to important people. Watermark adds importance.
Kristin wants to know what Selbu is. Well, the thing on the picture is a sample for my future sweater. White alpaca, silk garden by Noro (I love that. It's sort of hard and dense yarn because of the silk and it's springy like wool). I'll find something to dye to match the colours, some cyan, anise green and yellow would be nice, Selbu in less than three colours works okay but it's sorta boring. I also awarded myself new bamboo circular needle. It was a bit expensive, would get five or six those grey undefinable ones which I adore (one has to find one with even tip but for euro and a bit it's okay. My most favourite 5mm one is of this sort) but the grey undefinable ones are aluminium and I want to knit on the plane. Twice Wien-Stockholm, two hours, twice Stockholm-Helsinki 55 minutes, once Helsinki-Rovaniemi, don't know, hour and half? Too short flights to get drunk, too long to sit and stare. I hate flying, that's it.
And now I'm going to sleep.

The thesis is finished.

And the final draft is submitted. (Not the final thing, I have to add some stuff like acknowledgments and get it bound.... later, later.)
One more tough job, I need a handful of credits from a guy who is in London or where the hell, only then iIcan apply for the final exams. I need to apply until tomorrow and he's coming back on the 1th. I just pray the deadline is not that dead, the ladies at the students' office are persuadable and explaining that hey, he is abroad for six weeks and coming only tomorrow and if I don't do the finals in September I cannot go for the Ph. D. course and mom will tear my ears off which would be far the worst, after all, I'm just a superficial girl who cares about her looks quite a damn bit.

Almost back to normal but not yet.

Today I'll finish the thesis. Not the totally final and absolute version, it'll go to my professor for review but I guess there are no considerable changes to be made. I know that there is a ton of things missing. I skipped the things of which I know way too little so skilfully that they might not be noticed. And I have to keep something for the dissertation and for other occasions, after all.
Then I'll print it out and do a bit more writing,just to keep in shape. I'll submit the stuff, apply for the final exams and then I will sleep for two days, I guess.
I cannot wait.

Just a few notes

As I already mentioned, I'm heading north. I got a lovely email from Professor Aili who does some stuff concerning St. Bridget of Sweden* and I hope I can meet him. He gave me some insightful ideas about some nerdy stuff I'm into which made me feel totally stupid because all I know about Mattheus de Cracovia is what I read in his books.... etc.
I however cannot find anyone to lodge me in Stockholm. I annoyed almost anyone at CouchSurf but either Stockholm is terribly hot destination or there's something being given for free that there's no-one to host me. Or otherwise, it might be a hell on Earth because the other half of people are out of there. I'm starting to be worried.
I have around 55 pages of my piece of crap** done. Like thirty go. Deadline shifted from tomorrow to Monday, Professor is sick. Up till the end of August for additional additions.I thought up at least 87 of them already so I decided that I'm not adding a single one.
I finally got the papers for the Ph. D. course. No nice letter saying congrats, we took you to the club, just forms and other forms which I can get at the students' office anyway.
I signed up for CouchSurfing yesterday. In no time I got people who will sleep among my yarns (no you do not want to see the huge heap that just is and overwhelms the room) until I depart for Stockholm.
I went to buy the reserved ticket and there was a thing that with a ticket I could get a free language textbook or travel guide. They had nothing funky like Icelandic, just the usual English and German and French and Italian for textbooks and places where I already was or where I basically never planned to go like New York (I can find the Cloisters museum myself, should the need be), places of which I didn't need to know anything more like Australia or New York - no offense meant, I've been to both and I enjoyed. Since the lady insisted that I take something, I picked a Canada guidebook, I decided that I know the least of Canada so I can look at the pictures (frantic waving at Stephanie the Yarn Harlot).
I bought a lavender plant - took me to months to find one which would be fragrant and small. They have either big trees which are expensive, for that matter, or some decorative sorts with big blossoms and no scent. I named the plant Pierre.
I guess I will spend the scholarship money entirely on books.
Back to work.

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*for nerdy types: some stuff means preparing books I and IV I think for critical edition and writing essays about manuscripts and the like. Not the 'some stuff' that I serve with pasta.
** for nerdy types: Master's thesis

I hate life

Warning: this article contains shit. For real.
I have allergies as I already mentioned a few times. This year they've been really bad. Not only that I had problems when going out because all the mad plants flowered like mad, spreading pollen all over (nothing against others having sex but this made me look like a used cosmetic rabbit). I developed sun allergy. I started to have more acne which wouldn't heal and my dermatologist told me that it's how the sun allergy develops in people who have acneic skin. Meaning that I cannot use regular sunscreen, I have to buy some special crap, there's only one product at our market and it is obviously expensive like hell because the usual filters either work and clog the pores or they do not work.
And I started having indigestions. I had already noticed that meat products do me no good, I guess it's the conservants so I thought that it might be some stuff like this, I cut on processed foods - not that I would eat too much of them but anyways.
But..... a few months of diarrhoea wear one out. The shit contains some acid or what so after two days you end up with itchy arse, your toilet magazines are read five times, classifieds included and it just sucks. Espedially when you're downtown and in an urgent need of a latrine. And soft toilet tissue, thank you.
Then I got an idea that it might be lactose intolerance. I gave it a try. Eating without parmesan is a tough thing, I tell you, but it worked.
Then I had some white chocolate and nothing happened. White chocolate is made of lots of milk. And this weekend I was at parents'. I had a bit of cheesecake. Nothing happened. Today I came back home with another fucking annoying diarrhoea because I had some pizza wit mozzarella on the top and some more cheesecake. I read the toilet mags for the sixth time, used up another roll of tissue and then set off to Tesco to get more provisions. Another pack of tissue, some veggies, a trashy mag and I remembered I saw the lactose-free milk there a few months ago, thinking that the weaklings should die out for the sake of better gene pool.
I hate it. It's not full-fat. It's not organic. It's in the hard to recycle tetrapak carton. It's imported from where the hell. It's fucking expensive. They have even no-lactose ice cream that costs five times as much as the normal one and it doesn't even come in some nice flavours. Bad enough that most of the time I need to limit myself to Granny Smith apples which tend to be the most expensive ones available. Yes, different breeds of apples contain different allergens.
Well, I'll see whether it's lactose intolerance or whether it's cow milk and derivates or whether it's just because. Now I'll go and find the diarrhoea stuff I had for the kittens and I'll pray that I don't get wool allergy. Or coffee allergy or something. And first of all I need to go to the toilet, excuse me but I warned you.

Agenda

Apart from other things, I got the ticket to Stockholm. I need to go there to buy books and otherwise spend the travel money and I will come on August 8 and leave on August 28. But, and this is important, I want to be in Finland for like two weeks. So, whoever wants to take care about me, let me know. Yes, you. And you and you and you.
I will go to Italy later on, the airlines are somewhat cheaper than I expected so there's still some travel money left.
Back to work. I don't know anything smart anyway. And the special thanks of the day go to the Olomouc library for being ten times as helpful than they have to be.

Got to thePh.D. course.

Send the gifts and alcohol to the usual address.
I have to finish my master's before the end of September so I am busy now.....

More of mystery stole

I thought I already finished Clue 1 and wanted to go on to Clue 2 but they somehow didn't match. I found out that I skipped the chart B for the first clue. I did a bit of cursing, then printed the chart and did a bit of knitting.
At row 75 I noticed that the two parts are not really symmetrical. I did a few stitch counts, they came out differently each time, tinked half of the row, tried again, cursed for a while, went to do something else, cursed more and then decided to use my way.
I'm not much of a pattern person. I have an image in my head and I follow that. A chart with all those ticks and little slashes and other thingies is okay... but when I have no idea how the damn thing should look like, it's really hard. I sometimes try to use my logic which obviously doesn't work because Melanie apparently uses different logic.
So, at a certain point there was something that didn't have to be there. I stretched the poor pitiful piece of knitting and tried too find where the problem is. See the red areas - four eyelets in one, three in the other. Wrong. And the blue circle shows where there were totally different k2togs than there should be. (I cannot knit, which I hereby declare. K2tog goes in two directions, depending where the stitches lean to. One of them actually is sks.... but that's too nerdy for me. I am a simple girl, for me the pattern goes like this.) I thus discovered where the problem is. Some mess around here. And no way, I'm not ripping like four rows. I rip only when there are real problems, like sweater three sizes larger.
I put a needle through the row that was okay and disentangled those four rows above.
Now, weaker characters better should skip this paragraph.
At this point I knew that I mustn't at any cost look at the chart. I had no idea what row I was at so I would get it completely wrong. It might be 71-ish but who the hell knows? Not me. So, I put the chart aside and followed the previous repeat from the knitted piece directly. It worked at the first attempt. I knew what I was knitting and i saw it. I see nothing in the chart, for me it's mindless knit two, yarn over, knit one, k2tog to the right, knit seven, yarn over, k2tog....... etc, without knowing what I am really doing. That explains why I design things on my own, I just cannot work from an image in someone else's head.
As you see, it worked out perfectly well. or rather as you cannot see, I didn't notice the white lettering... and I took the dictionary as a good dark background. Well, you have to trust me.
Otherwise the day was quite unproductive. I just hope I get the research grant soon, I cannot afford to buy food anymore and the not so dear flatmate just told me that the money transfer for the rent stuck somewhere in her bank. And I just need chocolate now.

Mystery stole - progress

I went to the hospital for some knee treatment so I started.
When I wanted to make a To Knit list ( I saw the thing somewhere. Already knitted in plain text, planned in italic etc.), the category of things never to do would contain Knit a scarf. Knit very lacey lace. Knit laceweight yarn in one strand ('cos when you put six of them together, it comes out nice...). Knit acrylic.

Well... Plans are planned and life goes its way, after all, I wanted to do Oriental studies and I came out of the university (okay, not yet, but only two moths to go) as an art historian specialized in medieval stuff.
So now I'm knitting a lace stole in teeny thin acrylic. Some Dutch brand, I would have to lift my big ass and go and look. I'm not sure that like the result. Maybe it's totaly wrong yarn. Maybe it's a totally wrong project and I should have knitted a sweater from 100g/30m wool.
At least it's easy knitting that goes fast.

I owe a picture to Jane....
So, I love the necklace. The picture is a bit bleak and I noticed only in Photoshop that although the top is fresh and clean from the drawer, there is a greasy stain on it. Expletive deleted. I still do not know how and what with to wear it so most of the time it hangs on History of Czech Fine Arts, volume 4, part II, because the book just stick out of the shelf and I pet it when I walk around. The necklace, not the book, after all, it's on19th century which isn't actually my cup of tea.
Looking at the pics, I guess I should find some new friends. The usual Finnish face of mild anger and general suspicion towards the world seems to be contagious. Not that I wouldn't think something generally bad about the world but I used to grin about it, thus the resulting wrinkle.
And I'm too busty for the necklace. Okay, I'm too busty for anything I like.
I threw a few things in the etsy store, I got a bit of praise and I would quite welcome some sales, too. So, admit that you need yarn and knitwear and go for it.
As for the Mystery Stole, I picked the material, the baby acrylic that Sandy gave me. I guess I have nothing else in laceweight and in amounts large enough.... and a stole that is machine washable cannot be a bad thing either.
I live in denial and I don't check the state of my finances anymore. The... expletives deleted still didn't send the rent or it it at least hasn't arrived yet (checked 30 seconds ago) so I will have to ask about it.
I bought some isotonic drink powder instead of protein so I spent the weekend eating all sorts of grains because I had nothing else to eat. Actually, wheat is yummy (and all the fibre causes a sucky diarrhoea. But the entrails are clean like new, then. Still, lots of easy reading matter and soft tissue are recommended), lentils are yummy, so is quinoa. I ventured to Tesco to get onions and maybe tomato puree because it became a bit boring. They didn't have any vegetables that wouldn't resemble compost so I took some frozen stuff (spinach soup today) and when I was putting it in a freezer, I discovered raspberries there - remained after the Euroviisut party when some of them got mixed with large amounts of alcohol - and a big chunk of undefined frozen meat. There will be a nice stew one day. I don't have much appetite anyway, I acutally found out that I don't mind what I eat as long as it isn't irritating my mouth.... and since most raw veggies, fruits and nuts do it, as well as spices, seasonings and salt, my cuisine has become pretty bleak.
I am worse than Bridget Jones, not only dieting but turning it into philosophy. I should go and kill myself, apparently, before everybody starts to hate me.
By the way, a friend who introduced me to etsy got married. When I read it in the etsy forums, I was like Damn that idiot - not that I didn't wish her well, it's just that the older I am, the more I consider marriage a threat to freedom of mind. It's not that I would be against relationships or family or stuff like that, I just wonder why people don't keep their distance. Getting married feels to me like stating that the guy owns me. Or that I own him and thus I'm responsible for him and his ironed shirts and warm dinners or whatever. And I don't want to be owned nor responsible for anyone's stomach.
No. I should go and have some fresh air or I'll sink into complicated explanations on philosophical matters and I would lose the last two readers I have.
Go buy that yarn, folks.

Another stupidity to do

I read about the mystery stole at Harlot's and I joined in. The mailing list keeps my mailbox bursting and I have no time to knit anyway.
Sigh.

Niente.

I'm short of ideas.
I'm also short of money because the next door bitch owes me the rent, still. At least there are two days of holidays before the weekend so she went to hell or just somewhere else than here so I can feel like home.
(I discussed this person with a friend of mine and after I described what impressions I had had when I glimpsed at the contents of her room, he said dryly that he would keep such animal for a few weeks for study purposes because people over age ten who still sleep with a pink plush teddy bear are pretty rare to come by. He is much more cynical than I am, I guess. But I second his opinion on pink plush teddy bears.)
I am short of time so I'm writing my ass off, trying to get the thesis ready. It goes slow. To keep myself sane, I knit when there's some reading on the radio or something worth listening. I finished the sweater for Beth (hallelujah), it just needs finishing and I somewhat don't like the pattern. And, there are two green balls left and four white ones. Bad count. Stuff enough for one more sweater. Or a lace scarf, for that matter. I like lace in thick yarns, if there might be a sort of lace I really fancy.
I finished the cotton tunic, it just needs finishing and better pics and it'll go to etsy. I need to try and earn something to buy more books and yarn and possibly even food. The intarsia details stand out much less in real, the cotton blend somehow absorbs more light than the yellow viscose-ish yarn.
Speaking of food, I'm living off supplies. I wanted to buy at least some powdered protein but I took the wrong box and discovered only when the powdery thing was somewhat pinky and behaved weird, didn't float on the apricot juice (if you dissolve the awful yet nutritious crap in water, you get crap. If you use the juice from soaked dried apricots, then it resembles food. Note: use organic or homemade dried apricots - they look like dried slugs but they are. The dry apricots from the store which are orange, sweet and tasteless aren't. No aren't what. They are not in the general philosophic sense. Forget them. Get organic ones) and..., I have half a kilo of powdered vitamin drink. Yuck, coffee is much better and contains important nutrients like coffee. So, I tried to find something that contains some other than powdered proteins and then I made a random mixture of grains. Wheat, quinoa and lentils. With some vintage cheese - do you know that if you throw the dry bits of hard cheese in the soup, the result is much better? (And did I say that I seem to have a mild lactose intolerance? But, I ran out of cheese and cheese leftovers as well so no more diarrhoeas, hopefully) I should maybe experiment more along those lines. It could be fun, Ive discovered many new, interesting (and bleak) tastes so far. And it might even be healthy although my lousy lifestyle makes me crave for chocolate at three after midnight. I'm resisting so far, though. A week or so ago I couldn't resist and started the rug. It's the blue clump with wildly tangled yarns that rests under my chair and waits for its bits of time when my brain just refuses to think about St.Birgitta, Italian book illustration or something like that. See the creative mess on my table and be sorry for me. You can decipher the names of the books for yourself. I think that the rug is going to be pretty, I've hitherto used like five balls out of 23 so I'm done with one fourth and I started worrying whether there will be enough yarns because I have no reserve.
There's a July Challenge going on etsyFast but I'm too tired to go to details, read it yourself.
An, yes, Jane, I still haven't mentioned the necklace of yours. I bear it on my mind, though.

Disgusting

Some things should not be done. And if they are done, then they shouldn't be mentioned.
It's particularly hurtful when something disgusting is performed by a close person. I can think of a distant moron as a distant moron but if it's one's own relative, then it's pretty hard to cope with.
When I was in my teens, I had heaps of problems and issues. My parents started running a business on relatively large scale when I was around 11 and I felt neglected. I was a child and I just didn't understand that Dad is away all the time and Mom is sitting at a working table in our living room that changed to the main office and when I would want to talk to her, I was told to go away, don't you see that I'm working. I lost lots of contact in the psychological level, then. Later on, I started to have social phobia, I became totally paranoiac (not clinically, only in the common sense of the word) and obviously it didn't help my relationship to people. Since I didn't trust to my parents, well, mainly mother, father was gone most of the time, I sometimes talked to teachers about my feelings. It showed that not all of them had brains enough to keep that for themselves and would tell things to mother who used to be a teacher as well. And how a third hand information works, I do not have to tell. All this obviously didn't help anything, I just felt endangered the more. I started to have depressions, too, and all this wasn't named. For teachers I was just a nasty teenager, I guess.
I started seeing a psychologist at a certain point and at another certain point he sent me to a psychiatrist. The shrink, although I came there for a different reason, discovered that I had depressions and gave me some medicines which made me sick and stuff (ten years ago, remember) but at least they worked and I could sleep and do similar things again. But, nothing was done about my social phobia and since I wasn't absolutely mentally stable anyway, I had a nervous breakdown, suicide attempt and all such crap that followed.
I don't know what went wrong and when and what could be done to prevent it. I guess I wasn't able to do anything in the state of mind and my general opinion is that sometimes the adults just have to be smarter then the kids.
Yesterday mother got a bit tipsy and started for whatever reason talking abut my teens. I sometimes wonder whether she's a total liar or whether she has a highly selective memory but what the heck. I just don't consider her a trustworthy person anyway and good that she aint my banker.... but she told me that she got to know via some third person what I would tell to the shrink, adding some comments along the line of The shrink was an idiot because she believed all those lies you told her, adding what information she got third-hand.
Here I need to add that my mother always claimed that spying on other people is immoral and disgusting and that she hated when her mother would open her mail or check her drawers and that she would never do it because it's immoral and unfair and shouldn't be done. Since I'm not an asshole, I obviously knew that she was poking her nose in my things, that she read my mail after I opened it and tossed it around so I was relatively careful....
But, the main question is, how can someone dare to ask a doctor to pass on clients' information? I was full of age, for that matter and I never gave any consent to just spread my private stuff around. I asked mother how could she dare and that it is totally appalling and whether she remembers what she would always tell me about privacy. She said, 'I was worried about you.'
I just told her that if she had the guts to ask for such things, if someone had the guts to tell her, not to mention some professional standards, laws of this country and other useless crap, then she should at least have enough class to keep this for herself for all her life and that she is just disgusting. She replied that I shouldn't be so angry, that it's long time ago and that it doesn't really matter.
It fucking does matter, though.
I was never a great follower of Forgive and forget, I always rather thought of Remember and wait for the right time... but I never said that I am a particularly nice person.
I am totally appalled and I feel that I should do something. Any nice ideas for revenge?