Pain in the arse

Actually I have a headache. I have a nasty cold and I'm possibly dehydrated but I'm too lazy to lift my tired and lazy self to bring myself a glass of water.*

Editing is in progress. It sucks. Sitting next to the editor, arguing about every second word and then arguing about the rest is draining me totally. The editor is okay and she doesn't want to be mean but sometimes she gets carried away, sometimes she doesn't get that there's a simple typo and not a huge example of idiocy from my part, sometimes things just aren't right and neither is able to find the way.


I also wanted to write about nice spring weather - it was so sunny and clear that I could see the mountains covered in snow when I went to work on Monday morning but it started to be rainy and crappy again.

I would be only too happy to write about anything else nice but I'm just too tired to notice things. And, I'm at parents. Had the silliest argument ever **. Mom told me that I'm fat and ugly (not that I wouldn't know but I don't need to hear) and mentioned that I might go to the gym, that the guy who is renting the place owes my father a ton of money.... and I said okay, a personal trainer could work for me, I have wiggly ankles and I don't know what to do with them. My gracious mother got furious, that I'm fat and ugly and all I care about are some useless little muscles on my feet instead of losing weight.
Yes, I did send her to hell.



-----------------------------
*upon writing which I lifted my ass and went to drink something.
**it's just a cliche. There might be sillier ones. Take it easy

Exercises in ugliness

Handspun yarn. I got some roving samples with the spindle and I gave it a try. The white clump will be okay but the other one is... well, I don't like it. The wool was sort of springy and wiry, it spun much worse than the white one and I detest the camouflage colours. I have a bit of brown (yuck) and grey (yucky grey) to practise on and then I'll have to find something better.
It goes slow. I guess I don't know the tricks yet. But, when Noro can I can as well.

I need to write now.

Feeling blue

I have some work issues which I don't want to vent here. Actually I would be only too happy to vent them here but it would be impolite. And I wouldn't use too cultivated language, I guess. I came home on Saturday night, on Sunday I bid farewell to Laura (flatmate needed again) and went shopping.
I needed some veggies (namely green peas. When I'm in bad mood, I'm in no mood to anything that has to be peeled or something and I don't really like frozen carrots) and toilet tissue. I like blue toilet tissue regardless of other factors but now, it fitted in my general feelings.
They had sales in Tesco so I grabbed some tank tops and apples and mint and chocolate bars and only at home I realized that my groceries are totally colour-coordinated. The overall effect is ruined by the red Tesco logo on the pea bags and the red Findus logo on the basil box. Even the cyclamen fits in.
And, just for the heck of it, yours truly. The pic is bleak, though. Wish the spring came and decent light for photography with it.

Stinking sweater

When I went to Italy for holiday, I wanted to take some knitting with me. Something that would not require too much material but would entertain me for ten days or so. I opted for Unger Something, wool/camel blend, handdyed red and orange and black angora and since these two weren't just that right thing together, I added mustard yellow alpaca from Welcomme which wasn't just that thing either so the evening before going, I handpainted it with some green, blue that turned grayish green and pink that turned purple.
I knit the whole thing on 2.25mm needles. I wouldn't make too much of it since my mom doesn't like knitting but third day of holidays I got an awful intestinal infection and then I was a poor sick child confined to bed or another vicinity of the bathroom so I was allowed this silly thing. I made the front part there and the back part on the drive back (like, 8 hours in the car before it got too dark to knit) and then there were the sleeves. It took me three months to finish, average speed 5 rows an hour (and something like 500 stitches each). Now, the only thing to do is weave in a zillion of ends and do some brutal blocking.
Before brutally blocked, the sweater looks fifteen months pregnant. The sleeves came out shorter than what was carefully calculated and determined but a bit of brutal blocking will fix it a bit.
Voila.
I got some yarn from a Ravelry yarn exchange and it's sooo pretty. I might have to change my plans and knit this first, before the black silk.
I'll write about writing when I recover from the writing.

Important notice

I am on Facebook. I do not like it. I do not like playing social games there, I do not like all the gadgets there. Messages are okay but keep it simple messages. Don't try thingies that require me to subscribe to some silly new gadgets, don't ask me to fill in the quizzes. I do not like it. I publish my pics here on the blog if I feel like it. If you want to know what sort of wine/chocolate/guys I like, you can ask me via email or in the messages here, don't ask me for filling in some quiz. If you want to tell me that you love me, you don't have to send me a bucket of virtual hearts on Facebook, you can write it in the comments. I'll be much happier with that.
Why so? There's my real name and whereabouts on Facebook. It's not here on the blog, not much on Ravelry or anywhere. I don't want to be googled, that's it. It's no secret that I collect yarns or pick my nose or eat chocolate in bed but not everybody who knows my name needs to know. For some people it's good enough to know that I do my work well. I want to keep my privacy under control.
Okay, there's a better chance to find the guy of my life on Facebook than here on the blog with average readership of one person per month but this is my playground, not Facebook.

Cleaning mania

No, I haven't gone nuts. This damn place is covered in dust and cat hair. I haven't discovered the dust generator yet but I know who the source of cat hair is. Tähti was banished from my bed, I used a neat trick of placing her onto my old sweater and she fell asleep there. Well, at 5 a.m. when I woke up, she was next to me again but it's a good start. Today she's been sleeping on her sweater in the armchair all day long.
And I did a ton of laundry. I wonder how to get rid of moth ball smell, it's just horrible especially when the item is wet. Any advice welcome indeed.
Another mania of the day is listening to Brahms (with special focus on Hungarian dances 4 and 5) and observing myself. I wonder whether the asthma meds are giving me a headache and whether the rash has something to do with it. I'm not happy with taking asthma meds so I'm possibly searching for a reason to throw them away:D

And, some yarn porn. I dyed some sock yarn which is being posted on etsy these days and I got something for my collection, too.

At allergist's

I was diagnosed with allergies to cats, dogs, birch and other spring trees, rye, ryegrass (Lolium sp.), fescue (Festuca sp.), and Elytrigia sp. whatever its name in English (wikipedia doesn't have it), autumn plants like wormwood or artemisia. They don't test for plane (Platanus) and yew (Taxus) because plane is some silly southern tree (which was trying to kill me in Paris) and yew is a silly shrub that however blossoms in January and my allergies stretch over the whole year. And cats and dogs.
The doc and the nurses were surprised that I don't have asthma. They checked several times but... nothing. Still, I got asthma meds. With the comment that the nasal spray I got from my GP contains corticoids which are not healthy for daily use and that the GP shouldn't have let me use the thing daily. I got the asthma meds which contain.... another corticoids. Who is the idiot here, then?
I was also told to get rid of any cats and dogs and not to go out when things bloom. For those concerned, yes, I still plan to go and study botany and do plant photography. And there's no way of throwing any cats or dogs away. The Dead Dog is a dearie and... who the hell would want to adopt a 13years old arthritic huski who is always ready to run away limping?



Good news is no sheep allergy, I'll go on knitting happily, then. No mildew or caffeine allergy either.

I finished the stinking sweater. There's just a million threads to weave in, one YO that doesn't need to be there to fix (a bit of ripping of the cast off and a bit of pulling threads) and some serious and brutal blocking. The sleeves are a bit shorter than what I wanted but no way of ripping anything knit on 2.25mm needles. And it's a bit tight in the underarms but it'll be fixed by my losing 15 kilos.
My father, who's knitting-ignorant and who hates sweaters, said that it's pretty and that he could imagine himself wearing such a thing. It means that he bought a factory behind mom's back and now he's trying to be nice. He also brought me the carton roll I wanted for making a scratching post and I didn't have to tell him thrice. I smell a rat. However, pics will be here later when the thing is blocked. Due to the construction it looks totally shapeless.

Tired dead

I'm writing. I got stuck with Austria in the 19th century and... and I'm stuck.
I got first sketches of illustrations for the textbook and the painter is great. The pics are silly and funny but accurate and every sensible kid must like them. We editors and related bunch do like them and we are always right. Today I commissioned some more and we'll see.
I started sorting out other documentation and pics, we did the basic layout of the first three chapters and it all seems be going nicely so I'm content.

Yesterday I was knitting the damn sweater again and I seem to be near the end. The speed of some 1cm per hour is frustrating but the more finished it is, the happier I am.
I'm a part of Knit a Mile January Challenge we have on Ravelry (maybe there's a button or a logo, I'll check it) . The thing starts at Jan 5 and goes on until someday inFebruary. A mile is some 1600 m which makes two sweaters in sweater yarn and I decided to count by finished balls. So, yesterday I finished one ball of alpaca. First 80 m or so.
I'm going home, I"m tired.

Discoveries and ideas

I'm going to take guerrila knitting. Looks like fun and exactly my style fun.

I got a diary from Elisabeth. She has style [pic later] and I had a good laugh when I got the envelope.

I met a friend, I again forgot to take the gift for his newborn girl and I forgot to drop to a pharmacy to get a lip balm. I wonder whether I'm getting senile or whether it's the plain lack of a diary. Well, since the mail arrived, I have one now. That abovementioned friend wondered why someone still needs a paper diary when there are applications in the cellies that can be coordinated with diaries in computers and it's possible to have a diary online so that people see that, say, you're going to theatre and they can wait for you after to have a coffee with you... Yes, he's rather on the geeky side. I however prefer to have my big thick book, I don't make notes, I scribble.

I managed to find henna for which I have extensive plans. First, I need to do some experimenting regarding my hair - I have some rashy crap on my scalp and I cannot dye my hair so I need to tone it down, the contrast looks stupid. And some more.


And, I'm freaking mad. I decided to apply for the college and study botany.

Got it.

The thing that tried to kill me was the damn pillow. Duck feathers.
Now it's only another nasty cold to fight with. What irritates me is that this is at least fourth nasty cold this season. I know, I know, living without a leg would be much more irritating but just now and here, I'd like to live without colds. It has another drawbacks than just cracked lips and nose and increased consumption of tissues.* And when I wake up in the middle of the night to blow my nose, I wake Tähti. Tähti meows, pokes my face, starts licking me or decided that she needs a midnight walk that inevitably leads from her cushion across all of me and then back when I start dozing off again. Repeat twenty times and guess how I feel in the morning.
I guess I deserve some yarn.


------------------------
*In this sphere of my life I do not go into ecology to use fabric handkerchiefs. I buy expensive soft and smooth tissues because I just hate when the skin on my nose is rubbed through.

Happy New Year, Happy everything and now let's be normal

I spent ten days visiting relatives who stuffed me with food. Greasy, sweet, whatever. I feel, to put it nicely, puffy. I escaped to Prague under the pretext of school work (mental note: new health insurance card, mail the professors, mail Ivana, make notes about the website, go see all those exhibitions, buy henna, buy lip balm) so I'm here, Tähti is oppressing me and I need to doblogging, laundry, dyeing... dyeing needs to be done today, Finns are off for a trip and I prefer to make mess when I'm on my own.
I did some errands today. I actually wanted to go shopping and to see a few exhibitions but first I needed to pick some mail. And there was damn lot of it - so I gave in and did only the necessary stuff - returned books, bought vinegar and dyes, mailed something out to the world (whoa, someone bought yarn from me) and now I'm tired and back.

There's something that tries to kill me. I woke up at five because I couldn't breathe. I did a big deal of coughing and some thinking. This doesn't happen to me at the other home. Ihave exactly the same heavy woolen bed sheet. I have exactly the same pillows, made from the same batch of feathers. Either it's some yarn which is stored in plastic bags under the bed or the cat or the pillow from Ikea. I'll clean the place (it's different dust here, too), wash the bed linen and leave the Ikea cushion somewhere else than under my head. Should all that be cat allergy, I'll have to persuade Tähti to sleep somewhere else than on my pillow which will be tough, she wants to have lots of contact.

I got some more yarn. Pretty ones, including the second skein of the antique Noro sock yarn. Camera is at home II. so no pictures today.


I wonder what happened to Glorious Jane. Maybe she's still Christmassing. Or she used the shrug to keep herself warm, it didn't work, Jane got cold and pneumonia and now she's pissed at me.