Friday 25 February 2011

New adventures in yarn

I've been knitting like mad lately. I decided that with my yarn acquiring folly, I might end up drowned in wool and that this year, I'm going to knit up more than what I acquire.
The month of January was a great fail, I got 103 skeins of yarn, of which I bought 87. Winter sale in my LYS, and a local wool mill discontinued their wonderful wool/'paca blend so I squirreled 38 balls from various sources because basic soft yarn is always handy. And, I knitted up around 30 skeins, I don't have the list with me.

February is continuing to be one big fail as well. At least I started a big fluffy sweater on 4mm needles which goes faster than knitting up sock and fingering yarn. Being decided to cull up my yarn acquiring activities, I found myself bored or tired at work so much that I'd spent some time now and then looking on yarn porn... which obviously leads to a slippery slope. I accumulated a heap of post-its with notes like Lovelyyarns-dot-com has Diakeito's Diamusee for only $5.20. I'd be a total sucker for Diakeito yarns if they only were sorta normally available.

Lately, I've fallen for wool/alpaca blends. And I've had a weak spot for Schoppel because I love their logo with winking cat. Yes, in a way, I'm a simple person. Very very simple person. I got their Natur Pur because it was white and generally nice and started knitting that white fluffy sweater.



See? I started with alternating Bouton d'Or's Ksar in sort of cream or pale camel colour, Silk Garden in 269, which is shades of white and some brown that was hacked away, and said Natur Pur. Then I threw in some lighter yarns which are even fluffier but, well, wool/alpaca blend which is even and cloudy is boring. Natur Pur contains some guard hair, few of them in black, and apparently I need yarn from which I can pick things. Noro has twigs, Natur Pur has tough wiry black hair. I got another six skeins in the continuing LYS sale, along with... quite some other yarn.

I'm doomed.
As soon as I get my mother out of the house, because she lacks the necessary sense of humour, and as soon as I get a halfway decent photographer (mental note, need to get the camera fixed someday), I'll take that iconic shot of a knitter in a tub full of yarn skeins.

Stay tuned. Since I've already opened that can of worms, I'll keep you, dear readers, updated on my health status and lousy feelings of incompetence.

Friday 4 February 2011

Just ranting, bear with me.

I'll be 32.
I've been depressed, on and off, since I was 14 or 15.

More than half a lifetime.

Well, there were the times off depression, off medication, I was thin (well, I'd have to dig out pictures, even then, I thought I was fat), I managed doing things, I travelled, I walked a lot and never felt too tired. For real, those were around three years between my 22 and 25 or such. And I sewed a lot and wore the clothes regardless of what my mother said. I didn't think much about her nagging or people looking odd at my hat with sunflowers.

I started a fashion blog. Well, not that it would be a fashion blog proper, it's rather making fun of fashion bloggers, showing that I wear rather a narrow range of clothes, all in the same style. However, I became a bit more aware of what I am wearing and how does it look because photographs are teh bitch. I also noticed increased spendings on clothing-related crap and urgent need to own more than four pairs of shoes, which probably has something to do with the fact that I discovered the existence of pretty shoes in size 42 and I want to catch up with years of blisters and shoes that don't fit. Or maybe another blog is just another useless idea and the Universe punishes me by draining my money away.

I have an urge to stop eating these days. Not eating is fun, one big adrenaline rush. Well, yeah, sometimes one may stumble or even fall because lack of blood glucose is teh bitch too... but. Now, I know I'm not rational, reasonable, sensible and such. I was anorexic and bits of my brain apparently never recovered. But, by objective measures, I'm fat anyway.

Next paycheck goes towards two bags of yarn, camera repair, bills... and for the rest, I'll get a special jar. Because, what's in bank, can be way too easily accessed through the visa card, while jar is safely in the bookshelf when I'm eyeing the cute crap in a store or on fleabay. Said jar will hold cash for the breast reduction surgery (yay scars) and meantime I can starve and work out myself thin. Or at least thinner.

Now, the rational bit of my mind tells me that this way of thinking is totally wrong, that I should stop worrying, that people like me even with those 25 kilos of fat (see, I'm realistic, in those days, ten years ago, I was around 70 and I disregard the fact that I wanted to be thinner, I wore size 38 and that is okay), that I should get therapy, that... that...

I just feel sad and lonely. It seems to me that I feel sad and lonely more often than people generally do but in fact, I don't know. Maybe all people feel incompetent and miserable all the time so I have nothing to worry about. The problem is that I'll never know, maybe everyone is pretending to be nice and jolly as I do. No, folks, I'm only pathetic.

In fact, I didn't feel that good those 10 years ago. At an exam, I just burst out crying that I'm totally stupid and useless and that I'm never ever going to achieve anything in my life. Now, I feel I was right. I'm not any smarter, I've done nothing too useful and achievements somehow fail to happen, too. I should've studied more. I should've studied at all.

Or maybe I'm not lonely at all. I do like being somewhere on my own, reading, knitting, doing nothing. Maybe it's only a dream never to be fulfilled, based on pulp novels, that people actually do have regular social life, maybe everyone just sits in the corner whining - who am I to know.

Sigh.