Chaos. Someone bring me a shovel.

 I went to see my parents for a few days and life happened. I ended up in hospital, then hung around parents' because they were basically panicking that I'm oh-so-sick. All I needed were three days of sleep. Meantime, plague struck and said parents got paranoiac about me catching it. Of all people. Not my dad who has chronic bronchitis, smokes three packs a day and is a social.

It took me some time and cunning to implant the idea in their brains that I'll be fine at home so on Thursday, dad drove me there. Mom insisted that I take the whole fridge and half of the larder so that I don't starve, I had a few things that I had moved to parents' from Thomas' which belong to my place so I appreciated the lift.

But, remember, I have three cats. A friend graciously came to feed them and to water the plants but the place... well. And I had been pretty unwell for several weeks before I left so the usual storage method was first available surface. In other words, the place was a godawful mess.

I sighed and vacuumed a path through cat hair, dust and grains of litter and an occasional dried-on puddle of cat puke to open the windows.

It's Sunday. After about 16 rounds of vacuuming, there are no fluffs of cat hair floating from nowhere. I mopped the hallway - the stain cleaner rocks, it makes the puke peel off in one piece - and adjacent stains, took out the recyclables, did a bit of laundry and dusting and now, my place is not an exhibit of small carnivores but... let's be frank, my place is to neat what People of Walmart is to high fashion but at least it's livable. Three inquisitive pairs of eyes were watching me why I'm disturbing their circles and not unfrequently, one of the felines got in the way. Obviously.

Now, something got done, I'm making a bit of lunch, three puddles of cat fur landed in quiet places to have the 17th nap of the day and I can get back to work.

Lunch, meet book.

The box was supposed to be waterproof but it stealthily leaked to a bag which held, among others, library books.

I did not need those so I noticed an issue only after I wanted to return them. I decided to play it cool and pretend nothing had ever happened, hoping that the librarian will miss the faint stain and that giveaway waviness of the volume. The third volume, which developed a characteristic odour and some fungal growth, was exposed to some sunshine in expectation that lycopene would be bleached and the book would stop stinking.

Nope.

I was fined for light stain on the dictionary of law and the slightly moist volume was passed to the head librarian to evaluate.

Obviously, it was a study on swamp forests or forest swamps which was published as a part of some grant and it was not meant for sale.

The head librarian mailed me on Monday announcing that the library historians need to evaluate the book so that they could charge me for the loss.

Meantime, I made a few phone calls to the university, the publishing office informed me that these books are kept by the author, I mailed the author and in the subsequent exchange, he told me to drop by at the beginning of the winter semester and I promised him my history textbook; he wanted to be an archaeologist, he said.

The moldy book was published by my uni so I went to the bookstore. The shop assistant advised me to lend it from the library - it's been sold out for years. 

Well, internetz to the rescue, at Google page 23, I found an advert.

The head librarian knows me by name, I'm a notorious offender, not in damaged books but in late returns, I study elsewhere, and she thinks I'm cool. Gotta bring her a box of chocolates.

Things

The white sweater has been on the needles since late 2012. It was meant to be something else, probably all in linen stitch, or with linen stitch details... or something. After five centimetres of linen stitch, I caved and switched to stockinette - unless it was planned and only then I discovered that linen stitch doesn't work as a decent hem. I possibly thought it all white. Or not.
At some point, I grabbed a book on folk costumes which has an extensive documentation of embroideries, grabbed a few motifs and made them mine. The local stuff is hardly ever red on white, it's usually white, yellow or sometimes black embroidery, placed differently on garments etc. But I needed a starting point so I used the general daisy shape. Foliage is mine. It all goes slowly and I lost the chart again. The current state is not really promising.

The basket was meant for yarns I intend to use very soon. Currently, it's a depository of yarns that were somehow around. It's getting fuller and fuller.

In all the Flash Your Stash debates, I would love to add a picture of my stash. It's dispersed in several rooms and stacked in various boxes so it wouldn't look pretty. However, due to memory impairment, I need to do an inventory (and chase the spiders away) so it may go as far as to have most of my stash spread out in one spot. I've taken up weaving and that eats up yarn rather fast. Or makes the stash grows fast, sources vary.

And then there's gift knitting. I would love to say that I have a bag, box or other receptacle with yarns carefully chosen for hats and scarves that will be given away but the lie may change the basics of relativity. It's the random yarn pile, a mixture of yarns I don't like but found its way to my stash (most often there was a batch of yarn on fleabay or somewhere that contained stuff I wanted and the rest was... stuff I wouldn't touch with a six foot pole under normal condition.), or leftovers, or yarn I liked but couldn't find a way how to use it for myself. Well, gift knitting. Makes people happy since who knows when.