Style over Substance

So, I have the dreaded swine flu. I’m glad to announce that it’s really not all that bad, bar the huge acheyness and tiredness after any activity (including getting up to get tea – WOE).

Luckily, my two boys (one with four paws, one with less) have been looking after me and combined with all the well wishes and haribo I feel quite loved and special. I have, however, been completley unable to leave the house and so have taken to trawling the internet compiling wish lists in my head. And then! I remembered that it’s my birthday in less than a fortnight and so compiled a birthday wishlist instead (much more productive). And here it is:

Owly tote, $7 from rainbowswirlz on etsy. I love all things owl related, the only dilemma being what colour to choose? (I think red)

Personalised birdy necklace, $28 from polktadotmagpie on etsy. (Sadly, these don’t ship to the uk and so I shall never have one. Snif!) I should point out that I’d have one with my name on fairly obviously, not Ethan or Sofia (lovely names as they are).

Juana heels from French Connection at Kurt Geiger, £19 down from £100!! These combine every detail I could want in a shoe: super high heels, platform sole, straps and studding. I think it’s love!

Beautiful, beautiful typewriter necklace from Paraphernalia. I thought I’d lost the chance to own one of these when the seller disappeared from Etsy but then found them again recently, much to my delight. I could quite happily own every single piece from their website and never need an other necklace again.

Musical rainbow necklace, £20 from Supersweet . I might neglect my musical abilites these days, but it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t wear a reminder of them round my neck!

Phew, my little flu ridden body is exhausted now. My rants about ageism on Radio Four and musings about the ethics of clothes swapping will have to wait for another day…

p.s. (my boyfriend has an article on the Guardian website this week. Proud!

An unexpectedly costly (but well worth it) holiday in Barcelona for the Primavera festival earlier this month has left my purse rather lighter than I would have liked, and just when the shops are filling up with summery loveliness to tempt me too. I’m making do with a cup of tea and internet browsing to fufill my consumerist needs instead. (I was going to make a joke here about window shopping – get it, window? like, on a computer? – but I couldn’t make it scan and also, I use a mac. Joke fail.)

I’ve suspected this for a while, but now it’s confimed: Matalan has grown up. Once favoured by mums everywhere for cheap bras and ill fitting jeans, a delve into their website shows just how much things have improved. Take these two dresses, for example; I love a good floral frock and these are no exception:

£25

£20 – cheaper than topshop and equally lovely!

Seriously, how good would these look with some pretty gladiators and a headband? (And a raincoat, if the current British ’summer’ is anything to go by)

In other satorial news, I’ve recently found myself inexplicably and strangely drawn to that most divisive of fashions, the jumpsuit (and also Zachary Quinto’s eyebrows, but that’s a post for another day). In my head, a black silk jumpsuit with killer heels and a lot of eyeliner looks like an amazing outfit, but in reality I imagine I would look like a dumpy extra from Ashes to Ashes.  I’m sure the perfect one for me must be out there, but my hunt so far has been fruitless. Watch this space…

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs, no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, headed north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters crouched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
“They’ll molder away and be like other loam.”
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers’ land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers’ time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads,
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

I studied this in Year Ten English and I remember my best friend Becky drawing a picture of horses stampeding while my teacher read it. It’s been in my mind ever since but only recently have I actually tried to find it. And here it is.

..I accidentally went to the pub and had burgers and cider rather than go to the gym.
I can’t help it, sunny days just mean pub gardens!

Spending all my lunch trawling through various beautiful blogs has left me feeling nice ‘n’ inspired for a weekend of craft, thrifting and picnics. I’ve been wanting to spruce up mine and my mister’s room for a while now, and have been scouring the blogosphere to discover crafty (and cheap) ways of doing so – hello crochet cushion covers, new curtains and old old photo frames. In a similar vein, I’ve been wanting to update my wardrobe without spending all my hard earned pennies (my upcoming trip to Barcelona is taking away most of them) so a whole day tomorrow is being dedicated to a scavanger hunt through the charity shops of Sherwood, and in the evening I shall get crafty with my trusty sewing machine in order to turn my finds into gems.
(What will actually happen is I will get so stressed out with my sewing machine refusing to do what it’s told that I will give up and drink wine and watch tv instead)
I seem to spend most of my time dedicated to crafting hunting for projects on craftster.org and queueing up projects on my ravelry (I’m tigerpaws, add me!) instead and so this weekend I’m determined to right the wrongs and actually get round to casting on for some projects instead. Who knows, one day I might even finish something.

The realisation that all my bestests embarked on a mass migration out of Nottingham in the last year has really hit home of late, so I’m looking forward to a weekend of being sociable. I should really take this oppurtunity to go out there and meet new, exciting people etc. but my social anxiety has reared it’s ugly head again of late, and going to a party is enough to bring on a panic attack. Hopefully things will improve soon because the viscious cycle of feeling miserable because I have no friends, and having no friends because I had at home feeling miserable, is getting really old.

love:

Sushi dates with beautiful boyfriend
payday
sunny days that make you happy, especially when you work in an office with huge windowed walls

Things I hate:

Having to pay at least a million pounds out of my wages straight away for various things
Not losing any weight and still risking getting harpooned on the beach/blinding tourists with my expanse of white flesh whilst on holiday
Finding out my anniversary is a day earlier than I thought it was and being woefully underprepared
Forgetting my gym kit and facing the trek up the hill to get it, and return to the gym whilst avoiding falling asleep the minute I enter the house

My intentions to use this blog to force my pointless wafflings on the world more often have been scuppered by the deeply tragic and untimely death of my harddrive. I have had so many problems with my little macbook that it almost makes me fall out of love with Apple (almost, but not quite. Don’t worry, Steve!). Monetary restrictions, caused by the cost of Primavera (yayomfgilovejarvis?!?!?@211 etc), have put a stopper on large purchases for the moment, but payday on Monday shall result in a shiny new hard drive and a subsequent adventure into it’s installation.

So as it is, I’m posting this from Alex’s powerbook (a much older and more reliable machine than my flimsy plastic number, you hear that Steve?) before I go to the gym. Yes, a gym. I’ve joined one, and bought trainers and a yoga mat and jogging pants and everything! I’m even vaguelly enjoying it, in a sort of masochistic way. I would enjoy it more if I could knit whilst sat on the exercise back but the looks I would no doubt be on the receiving end of as a result of this have so far prevented me from trying.

A brief Easter venture home to the country saw plenty of time to catch up on my knitting projects (when not teaching a labradoodle to use a trampoline or playing a very inventive game of my brother’s devising which I’m sure has given me permenant back problems) so I’m feeling pretty good about the state of my crafty affairs at the present time. Having recently (finally!) learnt to cable, I’m sticking them on everything there is: a scarf, some armwarmers and a headband to contain my sister’s ever varying hair when at college (currently a long white blonde mohican, it looks pretty awesome). Thanks to the countless hours I spend browsing craftster.org (I dare you not to get hooked), I’ve got a substantial list of projects to try but I think this must be the most pressing:

A cabled knitted bag! I imagine this in a soft grey yarn, with a floral lining on the inside and the strap. (pattern &hereThis reminds me of a blog I once found entirely dedicated to knitting versions of  ’it’ bags…must go find.

Friday was one of those days that reassure you that, however cold and grey it has been, spring genuinely is on it’s way back.

waiting for trains in the sun

I had a nice time waiting for my train and crunching autumnal leaves at the station, having made the briefest of visits home to wish my sister happy 18th! and go to an antiques auction with mutti. Where i got nothing at all but wanted a box of old old tins. 

Friday night was the night of lights, when all of the city was lit up (but which bits were always like that? I think we forgot) and delicious cake was had. My life sometimes seems to centre around cake, and most food, a tiny bit too much. But oh well. Broadway cinema had lamps which I wish to own, if I ever have a house big enough to contain them, and I excitedly discovered that a group of the artists doing the current exhibition there are from my home town (where i thought art pretty much didn’t exist at all).

Valentines day yesterday and love it or hate it, I like any day that lets me buy heart shaped pink and red things and drink strawberry sparkling wine. And gifts! We hired a picnic from Delilah’s lovely deli – it came in the cutest hamper (which we have to take back, curses) and was filled with meats and cheese, olives and salad and chocolates and prosseco and the sweet little strawberry bubbles which had a cute note from Delilah’s on.

This stuff tasted of actually strawberry jam, if strawberry jam fizzed on your tongue and made you giggle. Then we had tea in my bestest (and regrettably, only) tea set and watched old films and I loved Tony Curtis quite a lot.

Today….strolling into town for hamper return, spaghetti purchasing and cake related fun with some of the best ladies across the pond (except here, right now).

So, Heston Blumenthal is taking on Little Chef. This, I cannot wait to see.

So, Christmas is officially over (and has been for a while), New Year has gone, resolutions have long been broken and forgotten and the sale rails have been thoroughly picked over by the hordes, leaving nothing but a frayed sequined jumpsuit behind.

The New Year started well, as they probabyl always do, but has increasinly gone down hill since. My sudden bout of productivty at the start has waned, leaving a lot of half finished knitting and my room a mess again. Still, I have this whole weekend free to start again, the first weekend I’ve had free so far. I’m not entirely sure why I’m feeling so lonely when I’m constantly busy – I think the lack of the friendship group I had last year doesn’t help.  It’s hard not having a group of people to call upon to entertain you and I’m looking forward more and more to the day I finally leave Nottingham (though, I’ve been saying that since first year and I haven’t left let. Nottingham has never really been my city)

Still, plenty of things to look forward to in the coming months. Visits to Manchester, Birmingham and maybe London, booking holidays (reccomendations for hotels in Ghent would be greatly appreciated) and maybe, just maybe, finishing some of the UFOs lining my craft basket. Watch this space.