Mothlady

Holiday snaps

Now that I've gotten over the flu bug (although I still sound like Eartha Kitt) I'm ready to show you some holiday snaps I took while we were away.

The first train journey went okay, but the second was rather awkward because the train was full of people and the weather was extremely hot. To top it all, we had the only window that had no curtains (Somebody had yanked them out and placed them on the top shelf. Gee, thanks a lot!). The third and final journey was the most difficult one. According to my calculations, there were six dogs with their owners - and us. One woman took her dog to Bettina's cage and when I asked her not to do it, she burst out: "Oh, but he loves cats!" Be that as it may, Bettina doesn't love dogs. Of course the weather was hot again and the heat and the presence of other dogs was too much for one poor dog, who kept howling, barking and growling for the whole time. Now, imagine two hours of that... And guess who were the lucky ones who got the roll-up window shade that didn't work? Argh.

Otherwise we had a really fun time. We met old friends, ate and drank well and got some much-needed sunshine. And we spent one day in a spa (a facial and a massage, thank you very much).

Although Bettina is a seasoned traveller, she doesn't like being in a cage (who would?).

"You just wait until I get my hands on you, you dirty rotten..."

The sky was blue...

...the strawberries were sweet and juicy...

...and I even got some fresh peas from the market.

Don't be fooled by this healthy-looking prawn salad, I've eaten enough pizza to last a lifetime :)

As we were at the seaside, there were always a couple of seagulls waiting for scraps.

By now, Bettina had forgiven us. Sort of.

I love old houses and barns, so I spent some time taking photos of them.

And I love flowers.

Seriously though, this was the fourth time we rented this cottage and Bettina recognized it immediately. But it's hard work for a city cat to watch all the birds and chase ants and bugs...

We spent the second week in an apartment that was worth every penny (and it wasn't even that expensive, it was cheaper than a hotel room!). This is the lakeside view from the balcony.

Of course I managed to do some impromptu knitting as well. This is going to be a scarf out of Brooks Farm's Harmony.

And even though we had fun, it's always good to be back home.

A good weekend

I'm officially blogging less often than Stitchy McYarnpants used to (although nowadays she's cranking out posts like there's no end in sight). But don't worry, regular knitting and blogging normal life will resume soon because I'm taking six days off from work. I still have a bit of work to do before that and I need to get one document and send one letter on behalf of my dad, but then I'm all set for Easter, woohoo!

I had to work in the weekend, but we still had time to visit my sister and her family on Saturday. I had of course Lillehammer with me.

But I didn't knit a stitch after I saw these cuties.

Four kittens, aren't they adorable? Here's my recipe if you're a bit depressed or stressed out: something cute and furry (see above), something colourful and beautiful...

...and shome of my favourite wine.

Errr, let me rephrase that: a delightful wine with a soft finish.

Mmm.

Sleep deprivation

Here's a great button I got from here.

Which brings us to sleeping, or not sleeping. I used to think that 7-8 hours would be ideal for me, and if I had a lot of work, 6 hours would be the absolute minimum. Also, I would sleep more during the winter and less in the summer. Lately though I've been sleeping less and less. I thought it was only temporary, but I guess I've been overdoing it for some time now. Nowadays 6 hours is plenty, but I can get by with 4-5 hours. You can blame it on the Internet, knitting blogs, online poker, and Coca Cola with Lime.

I realize there are individual differences, but here's a poll for you: how much sleep do you guys get on an average night?

Frogs and amphibians

Has it really been a week since my last post? Hmm. I've fallen behind in blogging, Bloglines, emails and work. So what have I been doing instead? Oh, just the usual. A bit of knitting. Meeting friends. Staying up too late. Bar-hopping. Um, recuperating. Yes, bad Moth. Bad. But you know me, the old barfly. NOT.

Hehe, I don't go out much and when I do, these all-nighters really wear me down. It's just not the same thing when you are in your late thirties, you know? When you're in your twenties you can stay up all night, go to work in the morning and not look like something that the cat dragged in.

A funny thing happened when we ended up in a local casino a couple of days ago (I should get a separate gambling blog for these stories, but they represent a major part of my life). My friends don't know much about card games, so they were looking wide-eyed when some people were losing large sums of money in a matter of minutes. To *cough, cough* pass the time, I decided to show them how to play blackjack. I got lucky and more than doubled my money in 15 minutes and got up from the table. Afterwards it was hard to keep a straight face when my friends were saying things like "so that's how you do it, you just sit down to a table, play a couple of hands and take the money". But I actually paid for the whole evening with the winnings, which meant more recuperation time the next day. Uhh...

Anyway, moving on. We went to my mother's for a lunch on her birthday and I gave her flowers. Not Backyard Leaves. The thing is, the longer I knit the damn thing, the more certain I was that I had the wrong yarn for the project. Gjestal Nagano looked lifeless, it split easily, it was too thick and somehow... all superwashy and wrong. By the way, has anyone shown you the back of a Backyard Leaves scarf? No? Well, I'm not surprised. Just look at this. And remember, you saw it here first.

 

What is that, some sort of plant? A dissected amphibian? Ewwww...

I knit slower and slower and was ready to use the yarn as mothbait. The only reason that kept me going was the fact that I had blogged about it here, so I decided to get at least the first half ready (the scarf consists of two identical halves). I half-heartedly blocked it on the ironing board which wasn't long enough for it, but that didn't matter as the scarf was going to the frog pond anyway. But...

As soon as the yarn got wet, the fibres relaxed significantly, the yarn got a bit fluffier, but it still had a nice sheen. And... well, it's beautiful.

I know, the sides are wonky (I told you I didn't concentrate on the blocking!). I'm knitting the second half now and when it's finished I'll block both of them properly. I could still give the scarf to mom, or I could keep it (whee!). Heck, I could knit two of these so that we both get one.

Hobbling along

Well, there's been some development since my last post. Not only I'm a bit tired, I'm pissed off as well. To Tina: I'm able to sleep now despite the new meds, but I tend to wake up four or five times a night. But the reason I've been really grumpy is my foot. I got a cut on my big toe and, as usual, went my merry way without giving it much thought. Now it's infected. In a bad way (as if there ever was a good way). If I was a hardcore blogger, I'd put a gruesome photo here, but I'll spare you the details. My SO (who diligently cleans every little teeny tiny scratch he gets) gave me a good lecture on self-induced illnesses. I swear he has "I told you so!" written on his face every time he sees me hobbling along. Harrumph.

Anyway, mov... limping along to other matters. Saturday was a fine day, we spent the evening in an amusement park and it was fun. I still had my two healthy feet, the weather was grand and time just flew by. We ate in a posh restaurant which was nearly empty, it seems everybody else was eating hamburgers and pizza with the kids. I had a tomato and mozzarella salad, ravioli with pesto sauce and a caramel coffee. Absolutely delicious, I tell you.

As I've been more stationary than usual, I've spent a lot of time surfing the net. As a person who likes to list things, I've come up with a simple system for keeping tabs on blogs I like. I've put them into three groups:

1. These are the most important ones to me and I've put them on my Bloglines Notifier. They'd better have some interesting posts because my Notifier has the sound of an arrow hitting its mark (you can find it here) every time there's something new to read. This is one reason I'm fairly picky about which blogs I put on Bloglines, I don't want those arrows swooshing by and scaring me to death too often. Group 1 consists of 11 blogs, but the number is growing slowly.

2. This is a group of blogs that I've put under 'Checked' in my Favourites. They are blogs that I read usually at least once a week and I've probably left one or more comments in them. 9 blogs at the moment.

3. This group is under the heading 'Check These'. I'm always stumbling across sites and blogs that seem pretty interesting, but I don't have the time to check them out properly. So I just put them here and come back another time. Sometimes it's funny because I've forgotten why exactly I put them there and it might take a while to find the one particular post/page that caught my attention. There are 15 blogs right now in this group, but it's constantly changing as I move them into groups 1 and 2.

So what makes a good (knitting) blog  in my mind? It's hard to pinpoint exactly, but I like humour and stories about everyday lives, which can sometimes turn out to be quite extraordinary. Good photos and knitting projects are a plus, not a prerequisite. Very often I find the non-knitting content much more interesting, as it makes the writer a living, breathing human being.

My latest additions to group 1 are Spinnerella's Attic and Yarn-A-Go-Go. I wrote something about Spinnerella in the beginning of August and now it's time to move up. It's been really fun to read the archives of Yarn-A-Go-Go. E.g. the whole saga of moving with only eleven boxes and a convertible is priceless.

But if you like to read blogs, I highly recommend using Bloglines or some other easy way to keep tabs on blogs. It really saves time when you don't have to check all the blogs for new posts.

The new Knitty is out, and there are two things I like. Samus...

...and Flora.

My list of future projects keeps on growing. But it's reassuring to know that I won't run out of ideas. And with this knitting pace, I won't run out of yarn either in the foreseeable future.

Coffee and tea, please

Yesterday we went to visit my sister's family. They live in the country and have lots of animals, cats, dogs, bunnies, fish, chickens, sheep, you name it. The bunny pair had six little bunnies, four black ones, one brown and one grey. I never knew little bunnies could be so cute! I wish I had some pictures of them, they were adorable and so incredibly small.

I've made a discovery. I know this is old news to anyone who likes good tea, but I've been in the dark until this week. Here is my new favourite.

I used to be a tea person, then I became a coffee person. Now I'm both, and I'm the first to admit that I'm addicted to caffeine. Not in a bad way, it's just that I can't seem to open my eyes before I get my first cup of coffee. I drink coffee in the morning and during the day, dark, strong coffee, preferably ecological. With plenty of milk, please. When evening comes I switch over to tea, which should also be strong and served with a little touch of milk. And Lapsang Souchong is divine, I was hooked after two cups. Ah, the little joys of life...

Talking about the joys of life, here are today's winning screenshots.

Four deuces and a royal flush in one day. Not bad, eh?

As there's no knitting content in today's post, I'll appease you with pictures of Bettina playing with a scrunched up piece of paper.

"Now where did it go, is it here? I know, it must be here. Bah... Hey, aren't you supposed to make the bed when you get up?"