I eat marmite with a spoon!

I'm going to be really sad and say Sonic the Hedgehog

I've played a lot of games and become really quite attached to a large number of characters but, I dunno - Sonic. I think Sonic would be a pretty awesome friend.

Farewell, sweet internet. I am back to the realms of House-dom, where we are net-less until at least the weekend. Either way I'll see you again Saturday, as I am coming home to be laden with sweet produce filled kilner jars.

I love the house and having a gigantic double bed to myself is AMAZING

I am not sick or anaemic or diabetic or any one of the number of other things my crazy brain has convinced me I am. I am suffering from the classic side-effects profile of my medication. We're trying half-doses first and seeing how that goes.

No update on NaNoWriMo yet - I have to type it up, which I intend to do over the next few evenings, in order to place word count precisely - but I definitely haven't won. I haven't even finished the notebook. However, I'm putting it at a tentative 10k+ - maybe 15k if I'm being really optimistic, but more likely about 13k.

Shit man it's December I have to start thinking about Christmas.

SOMEONE had better text me or Roisin if they're planning to come and visit us any time soon because if they turn up spontaneously with no warning (Or DON'T TURN UP AT ALL) we are not going to be best pleased. This means you, you layabout student slacker you.

That's all for now, folks. Keep the internet warm for me.

So suddenly house

I have a house, and I moved down the first load of stuff today. It says something about my mind that the first (quite large) load I took down to the house consisted of;

One large handled shopper - entirely two scarves, a twin-set and a third of a blanket's worth of yarn
One small paper shopper - 18th century silk shoes
Three canvas shoppers, containing; one - library books and notebooks; two - four Little Apple Dolls; three - one stuffed tiger called Khan, a bottle of water and my knitting
One suitcase, containing;
- Six scarves, one pashmina, one fur wrap, one spring coat, one satin jacket, three cocktail dresses, one evening skirt, one mini skirt, one crepe tunic
- A bag containing a grand total of thirty metres of silk
- More yarn
- Two fans, a glass window pendant, an omamori and a Venetian mask
- One stuffed panda in a communion dress, one stuffed spotty cat, one small sheep, one capybara, and five beanie babies

They barely even make an impression on the obscene amount of space I appear to have in this room, but these things... they're not just my things, they're me things. They make the place mine.

So yeah.

Things have been going along, as they do. Work is still dull, home is still the way it is, nothing really explains the ongoing insomnia (It's the weekend, brain, seriously). I've started watching Supernatural, but given the current rate of three episodes a week, it might be quite a while before I'm getting giddy over Season 7 along with the rest of y'all.

Things to sew. Things to knit. Things to write. Always things, things, things.

I'm so tired.

Three day weekend whoo~

Work has been - predictably - about as much fun as stabbing myself repeatedly in the face (Actually, that's a total lie - stabbing myself in the face would be tons more fun that typing in meter readings all day) but at least I will now no longer be mystified as to why energy providers are so utterly shit. I have seen inside and it all makes total sense.

Also I want to murder the girl I sit next to. Thank god I'll be using someone else's desk next week.

Also weirdly I think one of the guys on my 'team' is someone I went to school with but I can't quite remember.

Today I went shopping, which was most satisfactory. I still feel slightly put out by the fact that the one Monster High doll I routinely can't find is Clawdeen Wolf (AKA The Black One. Imagine the expression on my face right now, since you can't see it) but I gave in and started on the Dead Tired collection. I almost, since I found it in Toys'R'Us, bought the Fearleading set, but it was much more expensive and it's probably just as well, since I went on to buy myself a pair of pinking shears (I now own my very own pair and fuck those things are expensive) and some knitters darning needles (Ditto) and, er, get slightly carried away in the yarn shop.

Mmmmm, merino-silk worsted in purple and plum. Mmmm, oyster merino-silk lace (All three big twisted skeins. YUM). Mmmm, 100% virgin superwash merino lace in seven colours (I couldn't decide! They all looked so good side by side and it's lace weight so it's not even like I can't get a whole thing (A small thing, to be fair, but a whole one) out of one ball and I can always go back for more of a particular colour and I'll use it all up eventually I promise)

I also got new shoes in the charity shop (Plum-red leather - I'm guessing Italian or otherwise Continental because of the cut and the quality and the no English sizing - wide top ankle boots, which I wish I had worn today because it pissed down) and as always a stack of books. Jules Verne! Iain M Banks! Murder mysteries involving railways! And 'Lyra's Oxford' in hardcover, which I have wanted since forever but never got around to buying at the time. I almost took home the extra copy of 'Dracula' they had, but I restrained myself.

I also went to the library, where - following on from last time's escapade ("Oh! You're getting ballet DVDs and a book on ballet! What else do you have? 8DDDD" - "... book on vampires. Anthology of vampire stories. 'The Fireside Book of Death' ... book on unicorns." "8DDDDDDDDDDDD8") - I actually ended up taking out 'War And Peace' sandwiched between 'Moreta; Dragonlady of Pern' and a Michael Moorcock. I don't quite know why I didn't want to be seen taking out 'War and Peace'. I don't quite know whether I don't want to be seen to be the kind of person who reads Tolstoy, or if I don't want to be seen to be the person who hasn't read it yet.

In other news; Raging insecurities still raging along quite happily. The herbal tablets to help me sleep work extremely well (We'll see just how well Monday night, since the last night of the weekend has proved to be the worst so far and crucially also the night where I really need to sleep, because fuck knows I'm not facing another first-day-of-the-working-week on an hour and a half of sleep) and while all the main ingredients are depressants, so far so good. I haven't noticed the anxiety slacking off, which would be the first sign that side of things is kicking in - unfortunately past experience has shown that I don't actually notice when my seasonal emotional wobblies kick in, it's only afterwards that I look and say 'OH YOU MORON', so... yeah, we're keeping an eye on that one.

Also; We started watching The Borgias (We will not mention how Mum will make me and Dad miss things so we can watch that instead, but refuses to let me and Dad watch True Blood while she's in the room and will put on utter crap she claims she wants to see instead) and it's - well, it's sordid and horrible and the dresses are fabulous and there's Catholic clergy and subtextual homoeroticism everywhere, what's not to love? - I'm quite enjoying it.

Within about five minutes, of course, I was trying to convince myself I wanted to make a Renaissance gown. I say 'trying' because of course what I actually wanted to do was make a Cardinal's robes. The sketches from last night show my tragic efforts to reconcile the two. Cardinal Lucretia Borgia - I think there's a story in this somewhere. A story, and a fabulous hat.

One final note; Today I saw someone wearing a red dress with a navy dress underneath it and a mustard scarf and stockings, and it looked amazing. I wish I could pull that off.

So today was my third day temping and I hate it with a passion and I had about an hour and a half's sleep all night and then my alarm didn't go off and thus generally everything just sort of sucks right now.

This whole not-sleeping thing needs to sort itself out right fucking now, so I have broken out the big guns of heavy pharmaceuticals - or my equivalent which is the natural remedies section in Boots - and we'll see how that goes.

I have totally oversubscribed myself for Expo. Now I have to make decisions.

Bleh.

Things.

Item; I'm knitting! Like a nutcase! I've been doing a lot of short projects - neckwarmers and collars and such - although I'm deeply saddened by the fact that my favourite yarn so far - glorious glorious Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk Aran, chunky, soft, silky, textured, vibrant colours, all that I could ever want - is being discontinued. I'm buying up a fuck-ton of it before it disappears.

Item; I have a job. It's a temp thing and it's impossibly dull and if it wasn't for the money and the experience and the fact that I have nothing better - but seriously, if I was looking at this as my serious long term job prospects, I would be depressed indeed.

Item; I have unpacked my dolls. They are just as beautiful as I remembered. Now for pretty clothes.

Item; Having a job that leaves me drained and tired is apparently not enough to conquer the insomnia, especially notwithstanding dreams about purl stitches, meter readings and baby ferrets.

Item; Ice cream trucks you cannot see but can hear are insanely sinister.

That is all.

So you may not hear much from me until the end of the week.

The long story short is my brain got very, very unhappy and decided to funnel this particular branch of unhappy into the worst kind of insomnia with a side order of extreme anxiety. I've had maybe nine hours broken sleep in the last forty-eight, and watched far too much Friendship is Magic at 3AM, and I picked the wrong night to wig out because reading about London burning while you're freaking yourself out at every tiny little noise of the house settling.

So today, I decided to CLEAN ALL THE THINGS. And I have so far cleaned approximately half of the things. The rest of the things will follow suit throughout the week. It will take me the whole week. and include such exciting things I've been meaning to do since forever as inventorying my stashes of fabric and perfume, alphabetising my DVDs, packing away the books I've already read and will not re-read any time soon so that the books I haven't read yet can go on the shelves and finally unpacking my dolls.

Job hunting continues meh, but I have had two agencies contact me and I'm going to see one tomorrow and one next week. Hopefully they'll do better than the girl so far. I'm going to start making PLANS, man. PLANS.

Plan no. one continues to be a graduate program. Plan no. two might actually be teaching in Korea (Similar pay scale but cheaper cost of living than Japan, less competitive to get into than Japan, more positive responses to the school system than Japan from what I've heard so far, adds a second Far East Asian language to my bow). Plan no. three is yet indeterminate but probably involves becoming the next JK Rowling or something.

But until the end of the week, when ALL THE THINGS ARE CLEAN, you may not hear much from me. Adios, amigos.

Bleh.

I'm not exactly having the time of my life right now, but I'm struggling along despite it all. Job hunting is... well really I need to get off my arse and start badgering the agencies and applying for more things off my own back. If nothing's turned up by September I'm just going to lower the bar and go looking for something lower paid, which will mean that I still have to live at home but at least I'll be earning while I search for something better.

Living at home is not good for my mental health right now. Actually, since I've just come down with the second bought of Man Flu in a month, it's not really great for my physical health either.

But there are some good things - I am still knitting and sewing away merrily, and am currently planning to do like six billion different knitting projects (Seriously, self, what are you doing). It's interesting, because - as I realised when browsing the free pattern section on Ravelry - I didn't go through this phase with sewing. I get sewing. I know how it works. I don't remember a time when I couldn't draw something and go "Right, so I should do this and this and that-" - not that it actually worked half the time but I understood the principles of what I was doing and I could see in my head how the shapes went together and what changes would do what. I can't do that with knitting. I'm knitting a patterned scarf right now and as long as I follow the pattern repeat it's fine, and if I spot a mistake I can usually figure out what I did wrong (Which, to be fair, is a fairly limited number of things) but, as I realised when I tried to resize what I thought was a fairly simple pattern, I actually have no fucking idea what's going on. I don't know what stitches are doing what or why this bizarre set of repeats which don't really seem to increase or decrease in a logical way turns into a pattern of triangles and lines. I don't get it.

I'm sure one day it will come like a bolt of revelation from the heavens, and then I will be able to sit and go "Yup, I want to do this like this and that and thus here, magically, is a knitted garment sprung like Venus fully formed from my brow" and basically write my own patterns, but I think it's a long ways off and there doesn't seem to be as much literature available for that sort of thing as there is for sewing. Probably because there's so many free and cheap patterns available and HOLY COW, knitters really don't care about laying down the cash in the same way seamstresses seem to do - there's people sat on that side of the fence, quite happily knitting hundreds of pounds into a blanket or a cardigan, and over here with the needles and thread we're all clinging to our cutting layouts in desperation screaming "I must be able to get this on a smaller yardage! I can use cheap lining! I just won't trim it, minimalism is cool right?! BUDGET BUDGET BUDGET!"

Alterations in sewing are pretty basic - it seems like in knitting they're some kind of arcane mathematical sorcery and you have to earn all the shiny gold stars before the final secret is revealed, or something. Which is okay, because there ARE all those free patterns available, but still...