quelle erqsome...

magical listness

This list is of things I wish not to forget:

1. I am in love with this poster. It cracks me up every time I look at it! I'm debating whether to get it for myself as an early birthday present or get it for Matthew for his. I'm just not sure how into zombies he is (but then, really, who isn't?).

2. With so many traditional crafts disappearing, this article is a fascinating look into those we're clinging on to. I'm torn between wanting to bring back the Sheffield Knife and making riddles.

3. In the past few weeks, I've let myself get seriously out of shape. I just feel so unhealthy, it's really bugging me. I went for a run this morning, the first since November, and I've been studying this page of yoga poses with great intent.

4. The part of me living in a small flat is really intrigued by this organisation. The part of me that's into gardening is doubly interested.

5. Long live this website. It makes my feminist roar and my femininist glee.

a group of three

Some things in life are really rather splendid, here are three from this weekend:

1. I've been completely obsessed with Karen O's soundtrack to Where the Wild Things Are. It's admittedly pretty twee, but it makes me want to jump and run and dance.

2. We went for a gourmet burger yesterday for a late lunch. I had a double mushroom burger with feta, pesto and red onion and tomato relish. It was heavenly. I also had a thick strawberry milkshake. It was sublime.

3. I met Laura's little Emmms on Friday. What a way to start the weekend! She's amazing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Laura always has awesome hair, Little Emmms came out of the womb sporting a pristine Mia Farrow pixie cut. Her smile is incredible, all gummy and elfin and so full of the purest of pure joy. When she sleeps she looks like a little Buddha, utterly serene and perfectly plump. She has that perfect baby-balance of edibleness and hilarity. It was very hard to leave for home.

If you declare three splendid things, let me know, please!

more doings than musings

1. I Knit Friday was heaps and heaps of fun, and that's including all the times I looked over at Lou and wondered if she was about to fall over (she had/has/probably made worse by going out last night some form of hopefully mild flu). Pictures of the excitement to come, yay!

2. I need chocolate pudding pie. With an almost pitiful desperation. My heart actually pangs at the realisation I have no chocolate pudding pie in my life currently, yet lifts joyously when I remember I need to go cupboard-restocking later and thus might well fill my basket with some of the more central ingredients.

3. My broccoli is sprouting. Pictures of this to come, too, but seriously! I've got real life actual living broccoli in my garden! Container pumpkins may be struggling for dear life, but thus far container broccoli is thriving. Also, I found a ladybird clinging to my doorway this morning after I came back from No. 4 and set it to work on the sudden hordes of grey aphids that have descended upon my cabbage.

4. This morning, to my great and soul-buoying delight, I discovered I can run and lose track of time. AT THE SAME TIME! I usually begin with a 3-minute warm-up run before settling into a 3 min:90 sec run:walk rhythm. This morning, accompanied by Ms Tikabelle, who announced No. 5, I looked at the clock on my iPod and discovered I'd been warming up for just over 4 minutes! And then it happened again! I walked 90 seconds and began running and over 4 minutes later looked at my clock. I kept this up for the rest of Gives Good Knit and about half of the geocaching episode of How Stuff Works before my cool-down walk.

I'm a bit worried that I might have overworked myself, but actually I almost felt like I was cutting the run short when I began the cool-down. Hopefully I'm right and I won't wake up tomorrow and curse my every move.

5. Gives Good Knit and Loumms (of London) are hooking up for a KAL! It's a first for us both, which makes it doubly exciting! What are we KALing? The Norfolk Ramblers pattern, pattern 17 of the Loumms Year of Socks, yay!* All the details can be heard on Ep.13 of Gives Good Knit and we'll be putting together a post of our celebratory antics over at Loumms in the next day or so.

* If you could read that bit again with Kermit arms of ecstatic glee flailing above your head, you'll be just about where I was when Tika first approached me about this. Hee!!

6. Matthew has been trying to unblock our kitchen drain since mid yesterday afternoon. He found a chopstick (a chopstick!) in the U-bend and a revolting amount of gunk, but it seems to be flowing even worse since he removed it (the chopstick -- the chopstick!). Any suggestions for non-toxic methods of drain-deblocking?

a list to remember

I mustn't forget these links.

1. Kokka Fabrics. My cousin and his wife live in Tokyo and they should be visiting his father in Italy some time next summer. Perhaps they will mule for me.
2. Online Conversion. Nothing to do with religion, just a very useful calculator.
3. Malcolm Bull. A seemingly very interersting article on his thoughts on Žižek's interpretations of Lacan.
4. Classic Cafes. Fun times in London's classic cafes. (With thanks to Mr Rossy.)
   
5. Making jam. This one I plan to take full advantage of as soon as possible.
   

memerrific

Glittrgirl tagged me for this meme the other day and who am I to say no?

Here are the rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Mention the rules.
Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself.
Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.
Go to each person's blog and leave a comment that let's them know they've been tagged.

If you go to Glittrgirl's meme, you'll see she ruthlessly stole two of my boring yet quirky facts (her numbers 4 and 6 -- damn you, Glittrgirl!). So I'm left with these:

1) Without 'to do' lists, I am nothing -- as evidenced by the weeks I pretend I can get by without them and wind up just about managing to scrub my ears and that's it.

2) Even though I bake with spices and cook with spices, I think they might secretly make me ill (cinnamon and nutmeg, I'm looking at you) -- I always get raspy throat when I eat the result.

3) I think non-sulfited apricots are the BOMB, particularly in porridge.

4) Occasionally Yeti will begin to yawn and sort of forget halfway through and just sit there, all sleepy-face, with her mouth hanging open and it cracks. me. up. every time without fail.

5) Mind you, when she does yawn, sometimes I'll stick my finger between her jaws as she's closing her mouth just to see her reaction (usually indignant, sometimes disgusted). It's how I show her I love her.

6) For me, one of the most compelling things about America's Next Top Model is how similar the experience of living in the house is to the first year of residence at uni. I think that might be why people like these cloistered reality TV shows -- it shows them that all the stupid overreactions you had to someone using your Marmite are really quite normal.

I tag: indieknits, Walter Knitty, Time for Elevenses, greenpea-greenpea, brokeknits, and Jesh.

As a 7), this food standards page from the UK government is hilarious. Honestly, half of it is so commonsensical it makes you wonder  a. if anyone actually reads this shit other than people like me who find the need for it (as it stands) completely perplexing, b. if the person who wrote it took it seriously or was giggling at perceived public stupidity the whole time and c. if the perception of public stupidity has a foundation in reality, because if it does we are in trouble.

morning noodles

In a strange turn of events, my life seems overwhelmingly taken over by these three sites:

• Mediaeval clothing -- for all my pre-Renaissance sartorial enquiries
• Digital plagiarism -- for sniping all those naughty students
• Tax codes -- for banging my head against a wall

Just for kicks I threw in half an hour at DROPS yarns and searching out UK suppliers of the yarn used by Villanka for her Shalom Cardigan, because I have become hit by a return to my on-going search for the perfect yellow. I'm torn between canary and a deep, almost mustardy yellow -- it's so hard to tell without seeing the yarn in person. Yellow is one of those colours that I adore like I adore my kittens, but it doesn't always adore me. One day I shall get my colours done and become one of those stabby-provoking people who go about informing others that they have poor colour understanding and that blue undertones really would make the world of difference. But if it meant I finally could find my perfect yellow, it would be worth it.

Incidentally, the more I see of Shalom the more I like it. I really must finish off Bridie and move on.

promises, promises

As mentioned in my previous post, I was pleasantly suprised to see I'd managed to stick to so many of my goals for 2008. With any luck, I'll find that my goals for 2009 are just as successful:

Knitterly Crafty Goals:
1. Have a pattern published in a knitting publication, online or otherwise. This means two things: actually submitting a design and being patient enough to wait the three months it'll take for the pattern to finally appear to the world. These two things alone will be a challenge.

2. Learn to sew more than just a straight line. Lou and I have heaps of plans for Loumms, a fair amount of which involves being competent on a sewing machine, so I'm going to have to, really. Plus, I spent all my Christmas money on a sewing machine.

3. Successfully complete the Loumms Year of Socks. This is so much fun and such a silly challenge, but it's forcing me to be simultaneously disciplined and experimental with my creativity.

4. Colourwork, again. This past year I designed a pair of fingerless mitts in colourwork. Now I want to try something larger.

5. Quilting. Sort of. There was a fantastic episode of Threadbanger on Caroline Hwang, who uses quilting in larger art pieces, and I was just so inspired by her that I think one of my major projects this year should be to integrate painting and quilting in a wall-hanging.

6. Hand-made celebrations. Not just knitting, but any kind of hand-made present, I mean. I made my sister-in-law a beer bread jar mix for Christmas (all the dry ingredients in a jar, plus a recipe card and a bottle of ale) and she loved it. I'll be interested to see what else I can come up with.

All Those Other Goals:
1. Seek out unpackaged food. In general I just want to reduce the amount of waste Matthew and I produce. We don't make that much waste as it is, but we can make even less, I'm sure of it. I've already begun growing food staples like potatoes and onions, but I'd like to grow more. And what I can't grow I'm going to try to purchase packaging-free.

This goes for pre-made food as well. We can't usually afford to buy prepared meals, but we do buy a pizza every now and then and in the last few weeks I've slipped and have been buying my bread instead of making it. I'm going to try to get back into the routine of Tuesday being bread day, Friday biscuit day and having a Sunday a month an allocated pizza day. It's more fun to bake your own anyway.

2. Water my plants. Sometimes I forget. The cats can at least splash about in the sink but the plants don't have legs.

3. Use cloth bags or my hands to carry things home. Dori and Val have been long-time advocates of Big Ed's No Bag Challenge, and this year I'm going to join them. I actually can't remember the last time I walked away with a plastic bag from anywhere, but I want to see if I can maintain it -- no more than ten for the year, including take-aways, clothing, yarn, fabric, books and whatever else.

4. Have at least two articles published in academic journals and participate in at least two conferences/academic events. I'm working on one right now and I have a seminar set for the middle of March. I hope to find more opportunities to do both as the year progresses.

5. Read a book for Librivox. I've signed up to read my very first chapter for a work by Elizabeth Gaskell, but I'd really like to read a complete novel by the end of the year.

6. Keep drinking more wine, but this time invite people round to share the bottle. If I can't accomplish dinner parties, wine parties will surely be easier! (If you're London-based suggest a date for our first wine party in the comments, I am determined to make it work!)

7. Be a better time manager. No, not that. Be more active. I don't mean just in the physically active sense, but mentally, spiritually and socially more active as well. This year I want to knit on Monday nights and go to the seminar group on Thursday night and attend the reading group the first Tuesday of every month. I've discovered in the last year I'm at my best when I've scheduled my day, I need to learn from this discovery and put it to practice.

8. Call my grandparents regularly. I like my grandparents, even if some of them do read the Daily Mail. They're all pretty cool and have lived a lot and I want to hear their stories and tell them some of my own.

I think 'blog more' and 'spend more time cuddled up to Matthew with the cats sprawled on our heads' should be in there as well, but these lists are long enough.

spreading the love

Mary W awarded me the Spreader of the Love blog award, hurrah! This is so sweet of her, and not just because she's one of my favourite people who help make the Very Longest Thread even longer. She's kind and upbeat -- one of those lovely folk who never fail to brighten your day, even when she's having a crap one herself.

As a recipient, it's my pleasure to pass it on to six more, as stated by the rules of the award:

Calista, of landolista (who just makes the world a better place)
Laura, of indieknits (who I hope to catch up with in the new year)
Louisa, of loumms (who is my partner in crime and craft)
Faith, of flash bang fibers (who just welcomed into the world a darling little boy)
Diane, of needles on the move (who just read The Eyre Affair -- at last -- and loved it)
Katie, of broke knits (who needs to get back from her holidays and start blogging again)

Thanks for being love spreaders, guys!

Right, I think I'd better fulfil the last requirement of the award and let them know they've won.

4 a.m.

I can't sleep. This seems to be turning into a tri-weekly ritual. I conk out, knackered, at half 9 and then find myself staring at the ceiling from about 2 onwards until eventually I get up because telling myself to go to sleep isn't working. Rather, that voice gets drowned out by all the things I have to do and all those teeny flubs made throughout the day which loom up in the dark.

One of my students -- one of my brightest students -- came in to talk to me today about his essays and we got talking about Frankenstein and he got all excited about queer theory applications to Frankenstein and I got all excited about the possibilities of the creature being representative of Frankenstein's fear of his own sexuality and we both got all excited about Frankenstein cutting out the uterus from reproduction. There was much arm flailing and hyperventilating from all the excitement, and then I referred to transvestitism when I meant transgendered and tried to back-pedal because I really did mean transgendered and got all in a muddle. And he just looked at me with a mixture of pity and incredulous and gently tried to change the subject to save me from further embarrassment. But I wouldn't let him, because I meant transgendered! And there was jargon and blah and it was awful. Moments like those make me wish I came with a stop function.

So that's keeping me awake. As is the thought of making project bags. (Because in my head such things can run side by side.) I've got this fantastic thick, soft linen and some very funky prints and I'm thinking I might have to put the two together, with buttons and drawstrings and pockets, oh my!

Three things on my mind at this very minute:

1. I need to water my plants.
2. I wish Mozzie would stop farting.
3. The radiator in my office works and it's warm, hurrah!

Right. I got up to do things as well as blather. There's a list. It needs to be checked.

the big book meme

Matthew and I are going to a costume party tonight, so I ought to be getting ready. Which, of course, is why Pymette's book meme is such a good idea! I do love me a good meme. This one is origianlly from the Big Read. Apparently they reckon most people will have only read 6 of the 100, which I think is astonishing.

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Underline those you intend to read.
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (erm, I've read bits of it…)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Hate, hate, hate this book, it drives me mad. They all deserve each other.)
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (the book that got me started on this literature lark in the first place)
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Not all of them, by any means. Doesn't that take years?)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (LOVE!)
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger (Another classic one is supposed to love but I detest.)
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I've read about half, but I don't think that counts.)
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (I feel like I have but I'm not entirely sure.)
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (As above and, if I have, not all of it.)
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen (How could I not?! It's my namesake.)
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (See 33.)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Regretfully, yes. It was an atrocious waste of time.)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (I'm reading Moonstone by him right now!)
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (Started but never finished.)
52. Dune - Frank Herbert (I own this but haven't read it yet. I do remember starting it in high school though.)
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Another I must read)
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (LOVE!)
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (So hard to read, but truly wonderful.)
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (I've never read this and I'm not sure why.)
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Read in the summer of 2001 between lifeguard shifts.)
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker (I adore this story, there's so much in it.)
73.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (The whole thing. Every single crazy bit of it.)
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (Why is this here?)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (The awesomest. It was the first book Matthew ever suggested I read and I think that's why I fell in love with him.)
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

71/100 -- on the one hand, I feel a bit like I've let myself down; on the other, there are some incredible books that haven't been included, which really should be in a Big Top 100. I might have to come up with my own top 100, even those books I haven't read but think might be there anyway.