Thursday 25 November 2010

A Crafting We Will Go...

Social Butterfly that I am, there are now five things on my to do list for the next month.

1. Craftacular at Bethnal Green this sunday - I went to the summer one (blog post here) and had a great time so am definitely going to this one for some xmas shopping.
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2. Deathtrap on Shaftesbury Avenue - looks like just my kind of thing.

3. Bridget Riley at the National Gallery - I have always loved her opart so am looking forward to seeing a proper exhibition along with art from those who have influenced her.

4. Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the Natural History Museum - I've always liked this exhbition and missed it last year because of my back. Looking forward to this one.

5. Book of the Dead at the British Museum - the BM is an easy walk from work now so am planning an evening viewing, if there are any.

If anyone fancies any of these let me know and we can meet up. I may already have found a willing victim for the Bridget Riley but the others are all open.

Wednesday 24 November 2010

Swing, brother, swing.

This is the title of a Ngaio Marsh detective mystery. It is about a swing band and the accordian player is stabbed and so on and so forth. I am a big mystery reader and I do have a soft spot for the Inspector Alleyn mysteries. However, that is not the reason for the title - which is more to do with mood swings. It hasn't quite been metronomic, but there are some definite highs and lows going on.
metronome
I'm still taking part in the LSE 'Mappiness' study which involves plotting your happiness, relaxation level and awekeness using a little app. You can click here to see how happy people taking part are right now compared to the average. There's a map too and lots of other info on the site. I have now made 147 submissions to mappiness via the app and my graph is all over the fricking place. I started doing it just after Pooch and I separated so you can imagine for yourselves what some of the lows are about.
IMG_0394
I compared it to a friend's and his was essentially the graph of a cheeky chirpy little bugger without a care in the world, which is fairly accurate.

I have been finally getting on with my stash review. I have been very influcenced by two things. The first is a print which the V&A has in their online store and which I will very shortly have in my flat:
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The second was this article on 'Slow Stashing' from Knitters Review about a year ago. The article got a lot of attention when it was published but for some reason it has taken a year to sink in. So last night I went through about half my stash ans now have 2 bin bag fulls for charity and another bin bag full on ebay. (Click here if you're interested in some bargain Rowan etc). I can really relate to keeping stuff for 'should' reasons and that is most of the charity stuff. Also things that I had bought because I loved them but were just not speaking to me were definitely part of the 'unhappy' pile. And having done this I already feel so much better. A knitter on twitter wants some for her school knit club but there is plenty to go round so if anyone does want any for charity knitting then just email me your address and it's yours. Plus of course this frees up a lot of space in the flat which is gradually starting to look less stuffed and more homely. Somewhat ironic really when you consider the situation but there you go.

One of the lines I particularly liked from the article was:
"At its core, slow stashing involves being mindful of every skein we own, and only bringing in new skeins that are truly deserving of our time, our attention, and our resources".
Being mindful of every skein that we own is something that can easily be expanded to almost any sphere of life and ties in so well with the William Morris quote on the poster. Because if something is not useful, and you don't believe it to be beautiful in at least some small way, why give it space in your life?

Monday 15 November 2010

Feeling Blue

I think it's fair to say I have been feeling a bit glum the last few days. It started when I had just finished watching the Lord Mayor Fireworks by myself on saturday.
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I love fireworks. I hadn't been to see any for ages and so off I went.
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They were really good but the thing is, they only lasted 10 minutes. Which left me in central london at 5.10pm on a sat night with nothing to do and no one to do it with. So I wondered about for a bit and had an early dinner of steak and champagne. Because I may be miserable but I know what I like.
Cow chop
So that left me fed and with nothing to do. So then a friend took pity on me and got me to go to a bar in shoredith to keep them company while they kept another friend company on a school reunion. A kind of double beard.
Bearded Pair
So I was there, drinking lemonade, watching what Temperance Brennan would have called "Hackney Hate Mating Rituals" and rapidly coming to the conclusion that this is what life holds for me.

So then I had this idea on the tube this morning.
London - Tube Map
How about a social network where you list an event you're wanting to go to by yourself and then others say whether they're going and you can arrange to meet. In a totally just-hanging-out-with-no-one-hitting-on-anyone-else kind of way. So I told the boys at work about it. Their response was to speculate the sheer quantity of lecherous apes it would attract and to suggest it be called various names which I'm not going to put here.
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Really, what this all says to me is that I am lonely but don't want to date anyone. I really don't want to do that. And in the meantime I may be a bit lonely but I'm well, fed, roofed and have enough money. So really it could be an awful lot worse.

It's still all just a bit sad making though.
Brandy the Sad Clown

Sunday 14 November 2010

Pinterest

I am pretty much in love with Pinterest at the moment.
pinterest
Sadly I've used up all my invitations but I signed up the waiting list and I think it was only about a week before I got my invite.It's just so handy. You create 'Boards' (think pinboards) and then pin stuff to them. This is my 'Embroidered Beautiful' Board. (You can see it in real life by clicking here.)
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Then this is my 'OMG I want a cat so much' Board. (Click here for more.)
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You add stuff by adding a shortcut button to your favourites menu bar and when you see an image you like, even if it's mixed up with a tonne of others and a load of text, you click the button and it isolates the images and asks you to click on the one you like. Then you select a board to pin it on and away you go.

I've always wished there was a way to categorise my Flickr favourites as well as a better way to collect lovely things together than just bookmarking the whole page. And here it is!

Sunday 31 October 2010

What Knits for Which Wrestler?

I always wanted to get Sky at home and Pooch didn't want to pay half because he said I'd watch Wrestling (and a load of other stuff) all the time. At the time I thought this was cruelly unfair, but in retrospect he was right. Since staying at Dann's I have been watching the two 2-hour shows Raw and Smackdown each week plus any special shows like Bragging Rights. I've also been catching up on things like Wrestlemania 26 from April. All in all it's a lot of wrestling. So naturally I have become slightly obsessed. So, possibly for the first and only time online, let us consider what knitted items these wrestlers would wear.

I've chosen a random sample of 8 Wrestlers from WWE. Some have only been wrestling a year, and some are 18-0 at Wrestlemania, and we all know what that means. 

Seamus

I first started thinking about this knitwear issue while pondering how they got Seamus to look so pale. 
seamus
He is the pale ginger one in the middle. Now don't make any mistake here - obviously they've gingered up his hair to go with the whole oi-rish thing - but he is 100% beef. He is 6ft6 and 272 lb. But they always fake tan the others whereas Seamus seems to glow persil white. So, this leads me to believe he has sensitive skin that maybe burns in the sun. Now to go with that irish puck-type hair I'm thinking an elf style hat. So I have chosen the Ribba Hat by WoollyWormhead
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This one was knitted by Toastbrot on Ravelry here and I think the colours would be perfect for Seamus. 

Randy Orton

Now Randy, short for Randall but also apparently an abbreviation for Andrew, is in my opinion pretty near physically perfect. On WWE he is known as the Apex Predator. 6ft4, 245lbs, which means unbelievably he quite often looks short when with the others. He is fit though. 
Randy Orton April 2009
I personally took that photo in April last year. Mmmm. So Randy is manliness personified and requires very little adornment. So I think a classic jumper. So let's go for a classic cabled jumper with a funnel neck.
ribbed orton
 It leaves all those tattoos covered up and ready to be explored at a later date. This is a free Drops pattern on ravelry here.

Triple H

HHH is a legend. He's known as 'The Game'. He is my first wrestling love. 6ft4 and 255 lbs. He's also known as the 'Cerebral Assassin' which makes me laugh everytime anyone says it as I can only assume it's because they don;t know what cerebral means. 
Triple HHH April 2009
This is another of my personal photos. He's out injured at the moment, although apparently is coming back very soon. Now the one thing I do not like about TripleH is his long hair. And long hair means inevitable bad hair days. So it's got to be a hat. 
Cat in the hat 1
And what better than my own most recently finished project. HHH could knit that himself. 

John Cena

Cena is the People's Champ. Literally. He is loved. There's an amazingly silly storyline at the moment where he's basically had to become the bitch of the baddy english wrestler - no it's not William Regal, he's a bit old now. It just means he gets to show what a legend he is a lot. A mere 6ft1 and 240lbs but he does look to be the most genuinely muscled of that lot. Serious definition going on. 
John Cena April 2009
Now Cena is not only a wrestler, he's also starred in several films. Not quite in the Rock's league, but he's not that bad considering. So he has nothing to worry about, which is why I have chosen ribbed boxershorts. Because the ribbing will kind of ....cling. 
cenapants

Edge

The Rated-R Superstar is 6ft5 and 250lbs. For a long time I thought he was a knob but he's been a bit more interesting recently. He wears a floor length black leather coat.
edge1
He's from Canada and it can get very cold up there, so I think a chunky jumper. And in keeping with that gothic vibe he's got going on, let's make it the Big Bad Wolf Pullover from Domiknitrix. Incidentally, I do like that book. Great how-to section which I've used for other projects, as well as the actual patterns. 
wolfpic1_medium2
This one is by AnneArquis and she used a different gauge, but it looks good. 

Undertaker & Kane

These two are currently worst enemies because they are half-brothers, but their Dad, who had supported Undertaker, switched sides and went over to Kane about a month ago. Then things festered til Kane (7ft and 323 lbs) beat Undertaker (6ft10, 299lbs) in a 'buried alive' match when he....buried him alive. So actually Undertaker may be dead. Who knows. Except he's obviously not going to be. 
Kane-and-Undertaker
Undertaker is the one with long hair. So what knitwear would suit these two? Well...what else can you get siblings except matching sock monsters. 
Sammies
I've loved Rebecca Danger's patterns since Nickerjac knitted me one as a get well present when I had my back op. So here are Sammy the Sock Monsters. This is a link to her etsy shop for the pattern. 

There are of course many other wrestlers so if you have a favourite I haven't covered here let me know. 

In my personal life, things continue to be fairly miserable, but Wrestling makes it all bearable. Thanks for all your comments and messages xx

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Larkin About

An interlude to the emotional turmoil. There was a big review article in one of last week's Evening Standards about a new book of Philip Larkin's letters. I don't know his poetry but there was an excerpt as something he'd written in a letter to Monica on 27 Nov 1968. I rather like it.
Morning, noon & bloody night,
Seven sodding days a week,
I slave at filthy work, that might
Be done by any book-drunk freak.
This goes on til I kick the bucket:
FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT

Saturday 23 October 2010

Consumed by sadness

After a rather tumultuous day, Pooch and I have mutually decided that it's over.

I am as upset as I have ever been. I've lost my best friend as well as my husband. It is just so utterly sad.

Thursday 21 October 2010

Day 19

Here we arrive at Day 19, and what do we see? Different hair colour, everything else the same. Hmmm.
The 19th is getting closer
Pooch and I have been talking a bit more recently and spent some time together at the weekend and had dinner last night. We have been talking about what we feel is wrong and what we've been happy about. At the moment there seems to be an awful lot that is wrong. Plus there are things wrong that I didn't know were wrong which have only come up since we started talking about what was wrong. So to keep the marriage going we are going to have to rebuild it completely.
Thick arrow made from jigsaw puzzle pieces
This echoes a comment a reader called "Lauri" left that said....
"Just remember that you don't have to make any permanent decision. You can choose what's OK for now, and choose something else later. FWIW, I've been married for 21 years and marriage is HARD. It's really hard. You're not alone in finding that relationship the most difficult thing you will ever do!"
This is something I've thought about quite a lot, along with something in a book I've been reading about the 'fit' between two people. The fit there was when you met will not necessarily always fit right. People change over time and so the fit between them is bound to change too. Some things, after a while, just don't fit anymore.
Cat asleep in a really small box

Having decided that there was no point going back to Relate for a third time, we're going back to Relate for a third time. I changed my mind after drinking Raspberry Shortcake cocktails with a friend who I have never known to willingly answer any direct question, but who is good at reflecting stuff back to you.
raspberries

Raspberry Shortcake Cocktail
* 1 shot Amaretto
* 1 shot Tuoca (no I have no idea what this is either. Plus the internet thinks the factory that makes it is closing down. I think vanilla vodka would do fine)
* 1 shot Chambourd (raspberry liquer)
* Cranberry Juice
* Ice
* Bucket to drink it out of


So. There you go.

Tuesday 12 October 2010

What are you going to do?

This is what everyone keeps asking me. It's also what I keep asking myself. What am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I going to do, like a train clikkity click clikkity click.
Passing Trains
It is all absorbing and everytime I stop doing something else I come back to it. It's terribly annoying. Mum wants me to go down to hers in Exmoor and stroke the cat. 
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I can't say I'm not tempted. But it's not like I'd be leaving the choo choo behind in London. 

It just seems like every mortgage advert or every woman with a pram is rubbing my face in it. I assume as a self-defence mechanism by brain has started associating things with older, safer memories. Writing on a flipchart at work I had the most vivid flashback of having a piano lesson at primary school. The teacher was telling me how important joined up writing was because it meant you could write faster. 
handwriting
I can remember the uniform I was wearing, the room, the temperature, the piano, the weather - all so vividly. I must have been about 8. Or getting on the bus yesterday I was reminded of a time I saw an old man drop a glove from the top deck and dragged my sister off the bus 2 stops early much to her fury so I could call after him to pick it up.
glove
Of course by the time we got off the bus someone else had already done this and Sian was absolutely outraged and complained to Mum when we got home. I guess I was maybe 14? There have been other things - none of which I had thought about for 15+ years but which are vividly flashing back to me at random moments. All completely and utterly pointless. 

To try and take my mind off things I've been ploughing on with the grid embroidery. This picture is pretty awful because of the lighting but you get the idea. 
Grid Embroidery
When I last showed it there were only 2 squares - the 1 and the pretzel. The newer ones are fairly self-explanatory except perhaps the cherries. When I was in Covent Garden on saturday I stopped off at a specialists to get the best chocolate bar on earth. Cherry Ripe. 
I have actually emailed Cadburys begging them to start selling them here but no reply. They're only native to Australia. Anyway, hence cherries.

I really hate emotions. Really hate them. Bleh. 

Sunday 10 October 2010

Reality Check

I rather enjoyed yesterday. I was happy to be at the flat, knitting, embroidering and watching what proved to be a truly awesome Hell in a Cell. I ate a pie. I drank pepsi max. It was all good.

Today I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep. I was feeling somewhat glum and decided that the answer to happiness, as so many of us have told ourselves, lay in shopping. I would buy a pair of trainers the colour of a solar flare. 
C3-class Solar Flare Erupts on Sept. 8, 2010 [Detail]
Now I'm not someone who has lots of trainers. I have one pair at a time. They wear out and I get another one. I'm not saying I don't have lots of shoes, but only one pair of trainers. 

So I ventured out and hit Covent Garden where there are eleventy squillion trainer shops. Turns out trainers the colour of a solar flare are hard to find. So I moved on to Oxford Circus which only has about 6 trainers shops and started on Carnaby Street. This was my mistake. 
Carnaby Street
You see Pooch's office is just off Carnaby Street so it is riddled with memory prompts. I thought it would be better if I went up to Oxford Street but that just made it worse. Because now I was getting memory flashbacks AND there were a million people jostling and also seemingly on a fruitless quest for trainers. My office used to be on the other side of Oxford Street to Pooch's and so we were forever meeting at different places round there, especially when we first met and everything was so amazing. It was an exceptionally hot summer and...bleh. All starting to sound like an early episode of 'The Wonder Years'.
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So trainerless and wobbly I came back to this flat. I've been here a week which means there's one week less before I have to make a decision about what to do next. It's not like I'm going to be homeless or go without anything but it just makes me feel a bit panicky. And if there is one thing I do exceptionally well, even after years of meds and therapy, it is being panicky.

I don't want to give the impression I'm falling apart though and the 90 mins I spent on the balcony this afternoon knitting and listening to the radio was really good.
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I'm not a sunworshipper and usually dislike sitting in direct sun but I guess as it is weaker at this time of year it was just blissful. Next weekend I am definitely going to be a bit more social, but I think the solitude this weekend - although sometimes uncomfortable and nervy - did me good. 

Saturday 9 October 2010

Thanks Everyone

Thanks for all your comments, tweets and texts. It's been an odd week but friends and family have made it easier and so I'm still in one piece. I met with Pooch on Thursday to discuss what had happened and we agree 100% on what the problems are, but are fairly clueless about the solution. We have been to Relate twice before and it was very helpful but we both feel we've gone as far as we can with that. Not got any plans for what happens yet except that we're both agreed we shouldn't rush to decide anything. It is all very amicable which is good.

I have been pretty restless this week and not sleeping as much as usual (I'm a 9 hours kindagal) both of which have affected my concentration. So I was pretty surprised to finish my second pair of jaywalkers, using some lovely sock yarn my Secret Pal sent me from Norway. On Ravelry here.
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I also cast on another pair using some of the sock yarn I got in Istanbul. It is quite a heavy 4-ply so they are knitting up pretty cosy on 2.5mm but that's fine. I had expected it to be self-striping/fairisle type thing like classic regia, but it's actually much shorter colour lengths than that. Having noticed this with the ribbing I decided on the Estonian Button Stitch socks that I have made before (Rav link).
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It was supposed to be sunny and 22 degrees today, but instead it is literally this gloomy outside.
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Perhaps fortunately I had a well needed night out last night and so felt rather reticent to venture out today as had previously planned so I don;t really mind. Plus it means I have started the embroidered grid that I've seen on a number of blogs and on Flickr recently. I've only done two squares but I really like them.
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The other grids I've seen were 1" squares but that seemed a bit small for my bodgy embroidery skills so I've gone with about 1.75" which is coincidentally the width of the ruler I used to draw the grid. Brains, I gottem.
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I've decided to fill the squares with things that are currently relevant to me. When I woke up this morning I felt rather unwell and pretzels have been a lifeline.
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I don't know how far I'll get with it before I lose interest (realistic - I got it) but I do love the 3D aspect to it.
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My Director was asking me at work yesterday what I was doing this weekend and to advising me to make sure I wasn't going to be alone. She meant it kindly but I did boggle at this a bit since I really like being alone and am quite happy entertaining myself. Then one of the people I was out with last night said something that made me laugh. "I know you'll be alright cause you've got your knitting and that. I know you told me you liked that stuff but it wasn't til I saw a tweet about yarn that I realised you were serious." But it's true - I have got my yarn, and my box of embroidery threads which makes me happy just looking at it. Life may suck, but at least there is still yarn.