sheeps :)

here's a pic of a cardigan i have managed to finish.
it was a christening gift for friends of ours in faversham. this is only my second colour-work project and my tension was a bit iffy - but i think you'd have to be a knitter to notice.

it was remarkably hard to knit sheep that didn't look demonic. i'm fairly sure you shouldn't be reminded of village of the damed when you look at cute sheep on a baby cardigan but that was pretty much exactly the effect when i added blue eyes as the pattern suggested. these sheep are now all blind. it's dilemmas like this that the knitting books never mention...

back in crazy town

with a vengeance.

my darling mother (hi mom!) arrives in two-and-a-half weeks and my schedule of repairs is more-or-less on track although my sanity may be starting to lag. today the new carpet went into the study - it looks lovely. bland, but lovely. n assures me that this is the point. i am no longer allowed to choose colours in this house after the easter bunny vomit incident. stuff that has been in the bedroom and the landing is now migrating back to its rightful home which is more fantastic than i could have imagined when we started this process - less really is less, especially when you bang your shins on more everytime you get in and out of your bed.

we found a sofa that, although ugly, was very cheap, and no one will fall through it which can only be a plus. humph thinks this is the best thing that has happened and we really have to work on the "off" command or no one will even notice that you can't fall through this sofa. we'll replace it with one we actually like when we have time to go find one we actually like. this is the ugly face of choice. you have to go and choose. even if it's choosing pathetic-ness and convenience over any aesthetic sense.

there is still a long list of cleaning to be done (half of which will be scratched in a wine-induced laissez-faire approach sometime late next week) and then there's this whole issue of what to wear and organising the party and - oh god.

i reacted to all of this in the only sane way this morning. when i woke up i just thought fuck it. i'm not going to work today. one day of sorting shit out now will save eons of sanity later. and i didn't. there are definite ups to being a contractor.

i am so sick of this wedding business and this is the complete half-assed approach - i can't imagine how those bride-zillas must feel.

cardigan update: back almost finished - just two inches of ribbing and i'm on to the sleeves. i may actually finish this bloody thing.

don't cross that bridge before it hatches

OMG. does this even LOOK like a cardigan???
wine. stat.

i may have lost my mind

there is evidence.

1. i picked the paint colours for my study which n is painting (more on that debacle later) and i don't know what or who i was channeling at the time but the effect, far from the sophisticated play of colours and elegant nuance i was convinced would appear, looks like the easter bunny had a vodka binge and threw up in there. it could not be uglier if you tried. i am now convinced by the power of neutrals. luckily (and this is a very odd use of that word), the painting all has to be redone because it needs to be scrapped and sealed better or something - on top of the (shockingly) ugly colours, it is peeling. this is why we do not do diy. clearly mad. n is torn between laughter and annoyance. myself, i look at the colours and cannot for the life of me imagine what i was thinking.

2. i have decided to try to knit a featherweight cardigan to wear at the wedding. (can't quite manage personal pronouns with that yet). never mind that i have never knit a cardigan for anything big enough to speak. never mind that it's in lace-weight yarn. never mind that it is miles of stockingette stitch and i get bored knitting a second mitten. never mind that this will have to be finished in 6 weeks. never mind that i still need to finish a baby cardigan for a christening next week. what could possibly go wrong? i'm sure it will be FINE.

clearly, i need more wine.

exactly.

st augustine's abbey, canterbury

every year, kent tourism hosts a weekend where people in kent can apply for free tickets to see kent tourist attractions. this year, we applied and got tickets to go to st augustine's abbey, in canterbury. i've never been - it's outside the main walls, and not on any of my paths through the city, and for years i didn't even know it was there.

the abbey is all ruins now, but interesting for that. there's ruins from the romans, then from the first abbey in 597, then anglo-saxons, then normans (those pesky normans!).

the red bricks below are roman bricks. i read somewhere that although romans built with bricks in britain, when they left they took the knowledge with them, and it was centuries before bricks were made and used again.

these tiles were on the floor in one of the chapel alcoves


unfortunately all this peace and tranquility were given short shrift indeed by the necessity of having to go shopping while we were in canterbury. ghastly. however, we persevered, and are making progress on the whole "get the house looking ok" thing and the "oh my god we actually have to organise this whole wedding party" thing and the "argh why won't wedding clothes just buy themselves" thing.

from the sublime to the utterly prosaic - such is life.

bill withers

"i think it was thoreau who said that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. i would like to know what it feels like for my desperation to get louder."

in which i become the type of person who

spends 2 1/2 hours online trying to find the perfect shower curtain.

i found three. all in the states. what do they know about shower curtains that we don't? i can't risk the prohibitive shipping and customs of buying them, so in order to make me feel like i haven't completely wasted my friday evening (oh god i really have completely wasted a friday evening) i present you:

1. the kraken:

2. the monologue (by dave eggers no less) ((i love how this starts "i am your shower curtain".))

3. going swimmingly. i think this is my favourite:


i realise i am "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good" as far as shower curtains go, but i am helpless. never mind that the current one has broken through 5 out of 10 of it's already repaired (if you can call duct tape "repairs") shower ring holes, and that you need the dexterity of a brain surgeon to maneuver the curtain into the one exact position where it will keep water from escaping each side, a dexterity not forthcoming at half six in the morning, i might add.

and yet - it's often the first thing i look at in the morning, and it's important. i think i would like a shower curtain with the shipping forecast written across it, or a kelp seabed, or perhaps helpful diagrams of nautical knots.

i do have a rather dreadful head cold - perhaps we should just blame this whole incident on that and step away slowly...

baby i'm back

in oh-so-many ways.

i'm back in the uk. i was almost a month in canada. my father died. i was glad i could be in canada for so long, and be there when i needed to be, and i'm glad to be back here, at home. that's all i really want to say about that, for now anyways.

i'm back at my old job. yes, i ditched the sparkley new job in and went back to where i belong. you cannot imagine how happy this has made me. earlier this week, i grinned at n over dinner, sighed happily, and exclaimed how happy i was to be back at camden. "no shit," he laughed. "wouldn't have picked up on that one." i guess it's obvious.

i'm back knitting. when i was in canada, i couldn't knit. i wanted to - i started projects, knit an inch, and stopped. six times. since i've been back i've finished a hat and one sock. phew.

it's not all back though -lots of forward too. n and i are getting married in may, and there's a party to plan. the best kind of planning. although i still think we're taking about someone else, even when i am writing it. i imagine i will feel like that all the way through. apparently there is lots you are supposed to do for these things, but we are jettisoning most of them. some out of cash flow, some out of laziness, some because they are batshit crazy. i'd still be happier getting a civil partnership but in the uk, you can only get those of you are both the same gender, and you can only get married if you are different genders. makes no sense to me.

and life goes on. which, all said, is a good thing, i think.

winnipeg murals

winnipeg walls are full of murals and paintings. they really brighten up the city in the winter.





so far winter is hiding out - yesterday was sunny and zero degrees. people kept saying how unusual it was, spring weather in january. we were still cold. today is colder, a high of -6. i hope the mild weather holds out - i know how cold it can get.