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.

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.

Hubris

I was taking some pics for my fashion blog (1)because after quite a time, I was at home when there was still some daylight. After a long long time, I managed something worth the name of self-portrait because for two seconds, the sun shone and it just happened. I admit to quite some photoshopping, though. And if I had two more seconds of sun, I'd make another shot, with symmetrical hair. Which I'll do, some other day.

I admit to being slightly obsessed with my hair. All that peroxide, oil and expensive brushes get on one's brain sooner or later.

Since I'm dabbling into art, I was reminded of something else.

Enthroned goddess from Antikensammlung Berlin: Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

One day, I'll add some better styling to such hair for more cool.
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(1a) should you want me to add some verbiage in English, ask for it in the comments there.
(1b) said blog is not very serious. Just sayin'.

Gah.

I'm writing a history textbook and I'm editing another one so I'm happily immersed in various epochs finding out random interesting things. Too bad that I'm getting oxhide ingots, Standard of Ur, Piero della Francesca and John of Luxembourg mixed together into some sort of history pizza.

I have my little obsessions and quirks so just now I'm planning to insert something on Manuel Chrysoloras into the book I'm editoring and embellishing but the editor-in-chief doesn't know who this guy was so it might be a bit of challenge. I can be pushy, though, and I have a weak spot Early Renaissance and consequently, all things Florentine. Manuel Chrysoloras was invited by Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of Florence , to reside at Santa Maria degli Angeli (where the Arts Faculty of said university is now) (gah, I should finish my thesis, or, well, start the bulk of the work, for that matter) and to teach Greek, to anyone interested, I hear, and if I remember well, he was paid by the city council (gah, I should've bought the catalog of the Salutati exhibition that happened at Biblioteca di San Lorenzo a few years ago, now I'd know).
And this should be translated into Humanist Latin, incised in stone and used to hit the world leaders on their precious little heads because education is the bestest thing in the world. Well, along with knitting, indoor plumbing and sliced bread.

...

A friend works in a bookstore. BIG bookstore. She has an employee discount and an ability to search databases and stock of the actual stone stores for things. It has already proven useful when I found a rather obscure book that has been out of print for five years and she has it on her table now, waiting for the right time when we meet for a coffee.
Today I was browsing through Hartt, that big book on Italian Renaissance art where Frederick Hartt was one of the authors when said friend messaged me that today she had folks from Thames & Hudson there and that they'll be ordering books from them from time to time and that she can get them for bulk price. I eyed my well-worn beloved copy of Hartt, published by said Thames and Hudson, for which I had paid arm and leg a few years ago and just now I'm perusing their online catalog.
A thing struck me recently. There seems to be a general lack of books on Japanese art but for those damn woodprints. I care a damn about woodprints, I mean, they're pretty but there's moar. I must be doing something wrong because I doubt I'm the only person who speaks English but not Japanese but is interested in said matter.

I'd probably better be knitting.

Upon digging in the internetz, I discovered that part of what Leonard Woolley dug up in Ur ended up in Penn Museum and that there are actual books with coloured pictures of Sumerian (?) thingies. Darn, how am I supposed to write something sane about Mesopotamia when I can't get sane literature in this country? In the National Library, they have an issue of something like Acta Sumerologica. Published in Tokyo. Some of the Mesopotamian stuff is inherited in our culture, not theirs, but they do have some research and publications going on. Alright, someone gets a point for bringing said journal to the library but...

Erm, I need a new bookshelf anyway and I might get a book on Sumer, too. Just because. And the stuff is pretty.

Now I'm going to knit. For real.

Makila

The other day, I was digging for something I don't know what exactly on Fleabay. I spotted a miniature of Jean Patou's Makila. I had never heard about that one so I used uncle Google to check, found only a link to Octavian's blog... and then the miniature sold for something like 130 euros.
I thought something about idiotic collectors and half forgot about it. Some time later, I just randomly checked for Makila... and got a big bottle, around one-third full, for something like 20 euros. I never made it a secret that I'm cheap.

Makila is green. Dry and green as it can get. It should be a jasmine fragrance but having sniffed living jasmine for too long, I'd say it's more like crushed leaves of one of the Rumex species plus some dry hay. (1)

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(1) Do you think that I've been living with too much nature?

New year

Blah, blah, world peace, blah blah.

So, I'm done with the compulsory well-wishing stuff and I can go back to incoherent whines and ranting about self, self, self, only myself. Or, not really. I'm putting some nail polish on my nails, to be exact, it's Chanel's 207 Barcelona Red, which looks rather vermilliony when freshly applied and changes to the exact shade of drying blood. I have to find the Killer Rabbit Lips lipstick to make the perfectly styled picture. I started a lame attempt for a fashion blog, by the way, but I'm not sure whether it doesn't suck, by chance. (You see? I'm superficial.)

Which leads me to the important matters: I broke my camera. I dropped it on the floor and now it's injured and not cooperating fully. No flash, borked electronics, so I'm stuck to my heaviest, bestest and most expensive lens which can be dealt with entirely manually. Pics take longer to take, they're messed up easier but when they're done well, they're done perfectly well. Since I'm at the office from dawn till dusk, not much of a problem in this season, don't expect too much colourful a content. Since I'm broke, broke to that extent that I'm not sure how I'll pay the bills, it has to wait until someday.

I was dusting the books a few days ago. This place is indeed slightly messy so I wasn't too surprised that I found a package of sleeping meds behind the Finnish-English dictionary. Upon closer scrutiny, I discovered that it's not ambien but antidepressants, some generic from the same company as my generic zolpidem, same design, different name. Since I had forgotten my psych meds in Prague and had only a few days worth, I started changing to the constantly angry and emotionally unstable older self but now I have my drugs back so I can be normal again. Did I mention that I found a new psychiatrist? Well, I did. He seems to be reasonable and rather a nice person. The bad thing is that it's two hours commute but after past experiences, I don't want a local shrink. Half of them are on my blacklist anyway, I've had quite a bit of history regarding a mental mess. (1)

Also, Tähti, with her usual regal dignity, so typical for Siamese cats, wishes for more belly rubs in 2001.



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(1) Should someone not be properly informed, I've been suffering from depressions on and off since I was 15 and I'm a sociophobic chickenshit even longer. It does odd and irrational things to me, generally rational and ordinate (cum grano salis) person. I however don't run around killing people, nor do I wear my (or someone else's, for that matter) underpants on my head.

While vacuuming under my bed...

... I found a dearly missed wristwarmer with several dust bunnies attached, seven packs of tissues, quite an amount of used tissues and a skein of yarn.

One thing is positive, the dust generator doesn't live under the bed. Gotta check the corners because I'm positive I can't be producing that much dust. Crumbs and sheddings, yes, but not dust.

Why, yes, I did some cleaning. It somehow happened that the floor was covered in yarn and shopping bags with things (and dust). Instead of cleaning reasonably, for example mopping the floor, I spent two days arranging yarn to future projects, ripping a failed sweater, skeining skeins and winding balls, washing that damn fluff that was chewed and drooled on by a friend's baby and such.

Christmas knitting is so much better than Christmas cleaning.