Wednesday List: six delicious smug lunches

Lately I've been doing this basically quite ridic thing where I smugly take a picture of my lunch and post it on a dedicated Twitter account.

I tried to come up with some reasons but really it's just silliness that allows me to humblebrag about my lunch. Here are some best ones:

What is making me happy: a new year just begun

Lunch and salad and beer and books

The main thing making me happy is the fact I’m still on holiday. Bliss!

I have been making an effort to be social which has been pretty great - so, Skyping with Bex, coffee with Mum, catching up with lovely Ange and family, and plans to visit my grandad on Saturday. I’m also hoping to see Liz while she is over here from the UK.

The question then is: will I be able to maintain this level of socialness when I am no longer lounging round the house? I’m not unhappy with how social I was last year, but I’d like to do a better job keeping in touch with certain people. Perhaps this should be another New Year’s resolution.

READING: I am blasting through things, and making some mature decisions about putting aside books that I am not interested in finishing (looking squarely at London: A biography).

• I have been reading many Phillippa Gregory books because it’s summer, and thus the best time to read something a little trashy. I finished the Wideacre trilogy which is spectacularly silly. All incest and frocks and mysteriousness and horses in the Sussex countryside.
• Affinity by Sarah Waters, which I am loving. I wanted to read The Paying Guests but I’d need to buy that, and I already had a copy of this lying around that I’ve never read.
• Still trucking with the Portable Dorothy Parker and Middlemarch (but I feel Middlemarch is a bit worthy for summer holidays).

WATCHING:

• The Staircase and all the DVD extras. Mon lent this to me after a very long discussion about Serial, and it’s a pretty amazing series. We watched the whole lot in one evening which meant that we went to bed after midnight, but it was well worth it. I urge you to seek it out.
• Midnight in Paris - pretty silly, tho' I thought the Hemingway characterisation was on point.
• Only Lovers Left Alive - Katherine recommended this to me (it was one of her top movies of 2014). A super stylish movie that features Tilda Swinton as a vampire which is A+++ casting.

FAVOURITE PODCAST EPISODE: It’s a little late (and off-topic?), but the Christmas episode of the Truth was great and I experienced some LOLs while listening.

KNITTING: Making great progress on my Madeline Tosh Featherweight cardigan. I also made a wooden yarn bowl using a second hand fruit bowl and my own ingenuity. More information to follow.

SEWING: I made yet another dress with no waistband (a current passion) and a top I adore out of apple print fabric. Again, more information to follow.

Wednesday List: New Year's resolutions

New Year's Eve At Gary Indiana Pubs. Photographer: Francis Miller. Google Life photo archive.

The matter at hand: with 2015 approaching, it seems a good time to put some thought into resolutions. I like making resolutions. In fact, I think the best thing about resolutions is making them. My 2015 resolutions are:

• Stay committed to my budget: bring my lunches to work, even if it means preparing lunches en masse; craft from my stash; op shop and check Trade Me before buying brand new. And - plan for any splurgy away-periods.
• Spend less time on social media: especially when I’m at work. Something about Twitter while I’m working makes me feel filled with ennui and a kind of mild horror, and I get so angry. It’s not good
• Make time for writing: it’s amazing how time doesn’t just magically fall into my lap and make itself available to me.
• Keep using all the techniques I learnt in 2014 to manage my worry and anxiety: especially “worry once, worry well” - that is, make a plan and refer back to it when worries intrude. That approach has served me pretty well so far and I’m quite proud of the things I’ve achieved while using it.
• Be kind to myself.

Over the next 12 months I’d also like to:

• Make a decision about my spinning wheel (which is looking at me reproachfully as I write this): to spin or not to spin? If I’m going to spin, I should probably work at getting better (classes?) and get myself something to card with; if not I should just sell the wheel and get it over and done with. Correspondence on this matter is invited.
• Finish Middlemarch.
• Have a good declutter. I haven’t moved house for over three years now and you can tell from the amount of crap I have acquired. I feel the urge to purge.

Do you have any suggestions or help for the spinning wheel situation? How do you feel about resolutions?

What is making me happy: Christmas week and summer holidays

Two Christmas trees are not enough. Also, please note my artful(!) use of vignette: I should not be allowed to play with filters.

I am on holiday now - three weeks of glorious me-time; cooking and sewing and knitting, and planning for Christmas and next year’s projects. Yesterday I put up our beautiful tree, I’ve made some simple mincemeat and we have a fancy free-range ham in the fridge for Christmas Day.

After New Year, Shannon and I are going on holiday for a week with the ever-lovely Nat and Mark - Taupō and then maybe Tauranga. Sunshine is nigh! Exciting because until very recently, Wellington has been proving itself true-to-type in the weather department. *Sighs as though her heart would break* *looks wistfully out the rain-smeared window at the rain with chin in hand*

Related to Christmas planning: I’m also enjoying planting succulents in teacups/stoneware goblets/dessert glasses.

READING:

• Naked by David Sedaris - I bought a copy of this for Nat for her birthday and then borrowed it off her - only to discover three essays-in that I had definitely read it before. I had a look on Good Reads in the vague hope that I’d actually made a note of it and it turns out I'd totally read it in August last year! How about that.
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood - long conversation with Mon after I’d read this about loving everything that Margaret Atwood represents but then not really loving the books themselves. There was so much I liked about this book, but I did feel it was a bit laboured.
• The Portable Dorothy Parker - dipping in and out of the short stories, and skipping over most of the poetry. Not keen on poetry, even the comedic rhyming couplet type.
• Always sitting in my reader and making me feel dismayed with my lack of commitment to Serious Reading - Middlemarch and Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography.

WATCHING: A lot (SO MUCH) of Nigella Lawson. On Saturday I watched two series of Nigella's Christmas Kitchen in a row, six episodes in all. I am totally Christmassy right now. I want Poinsettias.

Also! Last night: Home Alone which was better than I remembered.

FAVOURITE PODCAST EPISODE: Fugitive Waves (the Kitchen Sisters) - the Nights of Edith Piaf. SO.GOOD.

The Kitchen Sisters are amaze, also I am fascinated by Edith Piaf's life story. I love a mostly non-narrative/non-editorialising podcast with lots of oral history and primary sources - so: A+++.

KNITTING: I bound off a pocket of my tunic dress and have put it away until next year.

Finally, I began swatching for my Featherweight in Madeline Tosh Lace and the tiny stitches are basically quite terrifying.

SEWING: I have many plans, lots of patterns and a fairly hefty stash - but an empty cutting table. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

LISTENING: Michael Buble’s Christmas album is on high-rotation at the moment. I enjoy his unabashed cheesiness mightily at this time of year.

Wednesday List: books on my bedside table

• The Portable Dorothy Parker - Her Nibs. I bought this mostly because it’s on the Rory Gilmore reading list. I am awfully fond of the idea of Dorothy Parker, but I’ve never read much by her (with the exception of that poem). So far, much as expected. Very zeitgeisty, not so sure how well it’s travelled. But still, think of the Algonquin.
• Katherine Mansfield - biography by Kathleen Jones. This was lent to me by Mon, after an exhibition opening at Katherine Mansfield Birthplace where she volunteers. A veritable tome, I am yet to crack open the covers. Again, I’m fond of the idea of KM, if not so much her actual work.
• Learned Optimism - Martin E. Seligman. Not really bed time reading, this book has been sitting idle by my bedside for some time now. Eventually I need to return it to the work library so I guess I should get on to finishing it. *thumb twiddle*

On the reader

• Middlemarch - George Eliot. This is not a great book for dipping in and out of at lunch times, because I need to become accustomed to the style before I’m really enjoying myself. I should probably read this in the evening and read something lighter at lunch time. Anything by Philippa Gregory? Or Jilly Cooper?

Recently completed

• Postcards - E. Annie Proulx. Bleak, Americana, A++.

Wednesday List: three fave op shop finds, their histories, and where they are now

I have been quite the op-shopper in my time, and have bought many a fine and ironic garment. I went through a big animal phase, and developed quite a passion for embellished t-shirts at one point during the mid-2000s.

Op shopping is: the thrill of the chase, risking something strange and having it pay off, and persistence (especially if you're op shopping for jeans or oversized men's tuxedo shirts). Op shopping is also about the Story of the Find - where and how.

While I op shop much less these days because of my puritanical thrifty ways, I still think fondly of my best and most favourite purchases.

So - here are some good ones, where they came from, and their histories.

1. Black “Julia Roberts” dress

What: An early 90s black silk cocktail dress, with a drop waist and pleated skirt. It came with long sheer sleeves that I tore off immediately.

Where: An op shop in Perth. It was next door to the hostel I was staying in at the time.

History: I bought this during a road trip in the summer of 2005/2006 that took me from Adelaide, to Perth, to Melbourne. I was very excited when I bought it (you can read about it in a sort of stream of consciousness post I wrote at the time).

Shannon read that blog post in the very early days of our relationship, and commented that Richard Gere in fact drives a Lotus in Pretty Woman, effectively clearing up the mystery that features so strongly in that rambling bit of text. So, I feel as though this post/dress is intimately connected with our early courting days.

Most memorable wears: I wore it to a quite epic party on Waitangi Day eve in 2008. I thought I had a picture of this, but you can't see my dress in the picture.

I have hazy (drunken) memories of wearing it a lot during 2006 and 2007.

Where is it now: Dear reader, this dress was a size 10 - and as I became happier and better paid, I was no longer a size 10 myself and had to stop wearing it.

I hung on to it for a while, but at some point between (I think) the great declutter of 2010 and the present day, this dress was given to another op shop where it rejoined the great recycle of life.

It was a good dress though, and I’m pretty sad that I don’t have a photo of it anywhere.

2. Fawn cable-knit cardigan

A photo of a Polaroid of me wearing the cardigan and standing by a camper van. I was trying to do a sort of “American Gothic” thing.

What: A hand-knit cable knit cardigan in a delightful fawn wool. Features cream vintage-looking buttons.

Where: Either an op shop in Taranaki or in the far North. (I’m a bit vague on this as I did a lot of op-shopping in small towns the year that I bought this).

History: Two options

1. Shannon and I went on a road trip in 2008 and this was one of my many (so many) purchases on this trip. 
2. Or, I bought this during a lunch break while I was away in the far North working in that same year. 

Who even knows! Suffice to say I was spending a lot of money of second hand clothes at the time.

Most memorable wears: I found a photo where I’m wearing the cardi at Campus A Low Hum in 2010, and it was one of two cardigans I took on my trip last year (my list was very tiny).

Hey also I am wearing it in this blog post about a knitted drink bottle cover.

Another very distant photo. I’m standing in front of Hampton Court Palace, arms akimbo

Where is it now?: It’s in my drawer (or possibly my washing basket).

It’s a little the worst for wear, but is has held up remarkably well given that it’s been in constant rotation since 2008 and was second-hand in the first place. The longevity of this cardi just goes to show that hand knits are the best.

3. Pink leather orchid brooch

What: A slightly pearlescent pink leather brooch, ostensibly in the shape of an orchid. Usually referred to as my “vag badge” because - yonic much?

Where: I found this in the better of the four op shops that were within walking distance of my house in the Melbourne suburb of Yarraville. I snaffled it immediately.

History: Basically I just like wearing this and pointing out that it looks like a vulva. I've done this now since 2006. You'd be surprised how tired Shannon is of hearing about it.

At one point one of the petals started flopping forward, so I stuck them to the leather back more securely. A++ accessory management.

Where is it now? Tacked to my brooch board.

Vag badge on the brooch board

---

Brief life update

I have had a bladder infection since Saturday and it's fairly misery-making.

Wednesday List: Some recent archaeology finds I'm keen on

See me geek out at Stonehenge on a very dark day

While I'm not (yet?) elbow deep in dirt, I can still get my archaeological kicks from reading up on the discoveries that real-life archaeologists are making.

Here are some finds or analysis of past finds that I've read about, and that have made my skirt fly up in recent days.

1. The hairstyles of Ancient Egyptians. Amazingly and awesomely, a dig at Amarna in Egypt has uncovered at least 28 bodies with intact hairstyles. These include that of a woman whose (probably posthumous) 'do included over 70 different hair extensions, and another of a woman who hennaed her hair - perhaps to cover her greys. It turns out that the locals were also into braids in a really big way, and styled their hair with various fats. So, not that different from today.
   
   Extra awesomeness: Amarna is the desert city of the renegade pharaoh Akhenaten, who drastically overhauled Egyptian religious practises during his reign, and changed the focus (albeit for that period only) from polytheism to monotheism.
   
2. Neolithic child goldsmiths. New research on finds from the Bush Barrow burial mound near Stonehenge (so, on an amazing plain that's FULL of neolithic religious sites) indicate that it was children as young as ten who executed the really fine goldsmithing found on the artefacts. Check out the image of a dagger handle covered with over 140,000 tiny gold studs, overlapped to look like fish scales. Quelle amaze.
   
3. Hand holding skeletons at the Chapel of St Morrell, in Hallaton. This one has been kind of big news, because nothing says "sexy history" like 700 year old hand-holding skeletons. But the other details are equally fascinating: the Roman artefacts found beneath the chapel site, the six bodies found with stones on top of them (to "hold them down"), and the name of the Chapel site itself - "Hare Pie Bank" - and it's associated history of bottle kicking competitions.

Have you heard of any awesomely awesome digs recently? There's an extensive dig taking place in Gallipoli at the moment which looks pretty fascinating.

Wednesday List: alternative future professions

Here is a list.

A list of future professions.

Future professions I could possibly undertake in my next career-life.

In no particular order:

• Archaeologist. Slight difficulty in pursuing this in New Zealand given that I'm not really that enthusiastic about either MIDDENS or VICTORIAN RUBBISH PILES. In my hypothetical future career as an archaeologist I am also basically one the cast members from Time Team, so have more access to things like Medieval Castles and Tudor Gardens.*
• Related: Food historian. Because food and history are two of my favourite things, and food history is another of my favourite things. And you can tell the history of nearly everything and everyone through food. *nods sagely*
• Rare breed pig farmer. My love of pigs is well documented, and have only increased since I saw this documentary on YouTube about pork and rare breed pigs. It's presented by Clarissa Dickson Wright; I watched it after I went on a Two Fat Ladies journey of discovery after her recent death.
• Cider maker. I like my cider DRY and tasting a bit like FEET. Sadly in New Zealand the "cider revival" has concentrated on very sweet, RTD-style ciders and I am out with those poor excuses for a beverage. If you need something done properly you'd best do it yourself.
• Own my own online/local fabric shop. I really like fabric, especially some of the super-gorgeous Japanese fabric that I keep seeing online. And Petone clearly needs a fabric shop to complement the yarn shop, two sewing machine repair places and haberdashery.
• Make artisan mustard. Yum. Mustard.

*Related: everywhere I have mentioned Time Team on this blog.

What I have learnt from Sookie Stackhouse

Hey so, while I was sick with glandular fever and I wasn't sleeping or staring slack-jawed at the TV, I did a fair amount of reading.

I absolutely could not concentrate on any kind of substantial book. Instead, I ready the entire series to date of Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire mysteries, aka those Sookie Stackhouse books, aka the books that True Blood is based on.

I can't tell you what happened in which book because I basically inhaled them all one after the other like some kind of omnibus of ridiculousness. Now, I am shamefully excited because the final book in the series has been released on 7 May and I can finally find out whether Sookie ends up with Bill the Vampire Sap, Eric the Sexy Vampire, the dude that turns into a tiger, or her boss who is also sometimes a dog. I am totally rooting (lulz) for Eric the Sexy Vampire because he's all sexy and dangerous and not sometimes an animal. Just the kind of vampire a girl likes to fantasize about while running a 39C degree temperature.

If I have learnt anything from Sookie Stackhouse, (and it is certainly less than anything I learnt from Anne of Green Gables), it's is: 

✚ Stuff that makes me (even more) fascinated by Southern American culture. Like Southern hospitality: whenever someone comes into Sookie's house, she offers them a drink - but not like "would you like some tea, I've just put the kettle on". She gives a list of four possible beverage options to each visitor. Not one of them was tap water! And it made me think is my hospitality really terrible? Should I be more insecure about this? I am determined to make more of an effort to have beverages to offer to my planned visitors.

The beverage thing fascinated me, and stirred so many questions, like: how does Sookie always have four options? Is that expensive? Would she keep beverages in her house that she didn't even like that much just in case a visitor would like them (that is - more than just a synthetic blood substitute for the occasional vampire visitor)?  Did she keep MORE than the four beverage options, and then cap the amount that she offered so as to not overwhelm her guest? It's possible that I could write an entire fanfic story about Sookie shopping for beverages if I didn't find the idea of fanfic completely tragic. 

✚ When you get the opportunity to spend the day or the night at home (instead of, say, solving mysteries by reading minds, involving oneself in fairy, vampire or shifter wars, or working), you should probably - wash your hair, wear an oversized sleep-tee (of which I have none), shave your legs thoroughly and tan for a few hours. (TANNING. Charlaine Harris you should be ashamed).

✚ Nothing says "thanks for clearing my grandson from accusations of murder" than a well-made chocolate cake.

Silliest series of books ever, but they soothed my feverish brow. And I just counted that there's twelve of them already released so that's twelve ridiculous books read. Good lord.

Going to read something edifying and canon-tastic now. (Right after I finish this chapter.)

in-betweenie

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (belatedly). I started back at work on the third day of the year, and the office was like a ghost town: behold the tumble weeds.

Achievements on the first week of work include: creating inbox zero in both my personal and work accounts; emptying out my downloads folder; and creating a "welcome back to work" poster in which I hand crafted decorative pennant flags in PhotoShop. Achievement ++!

Given that I've definitely already started my year, it may seem a bit strange that I'm still mulling over the beginning of the year Feelings of Potential and Enthusiasm for What Is To Come. But I do! It's from catching up on all those other blogs.

Firstly, I am making lists of things I want to do or do more regularly. My resolutions for this year have their own star chart: I'm working month by month which means I can add, subtract and edit my goals as I go along. This is totally cadged from CrazyAuntPurl. January looks like:

• Yoga twice a week
• Floss every night
• Sixty minute declutter weekly
• Blog once a week

As well as listing decluttering as a weekly goal, I'm also undertaking a nice New Year's purge. So far I've had a go at my books and underwear drawer, but I still have plenty of other cluttered spaces to keep me interested - my wardrobe and dresser, and also I need to do something about all the crap on my shelf in the bathroom, the majority of which I haven't used in forevs and that probably break all rules pertaining to the shelf life of cosmetics.

One of my plans this year is to keep a tally of the clothes that I've made, any clothes I've bought new, and any clothes I've bought second hand. This will be my dressing-ratio, and I'm hoping that it will trend towards more sewing. Thus far, if we keep the tally strict from 1 January onwards I am 1:3:0, which breaks down to:

• Made: cowboy-print culottes
• Bought new: three cotton singlets
• Op-shopped: nada

(If we start the tally from after Christmas and thus, including the in-betweenie time, I can also add that I've made a skirt and a fabulous vintagey portrait top from Gertie's new book (as in Gertie's Blog for Better Sewing). This changes my ration to a more respectable 3:3:0. But behold my honesty).

Mostly, this year, I'd just like nothing spectacularly awful to happen. 2012 had a big dollop of crap right in the middle of it that adversely impacted my plans to make my thirtieth year the Best Year Ever (although I still have a few months to improve that).

However, I know this year is going to be better. I'm totally going to colour in that pesky Debt Unicorn in it's entirety. And then I'm going to start a Holiday Savings Unicorn and finally get to all the awesome places that I've idealised, romanticised and fantasised about. I have an awesome partner who I'm lucky enough to be blissed out with everyday. I have bookshelves and an e-reader full of books, maintain a fairly good balance between having too many and not enough Things, and eat stupidly well. As always, there are things I can change and tweak and move towards improving. 

But you know, baby steps.

Recent discoveries

via We Heart It

1. You cannot sharpen scissors with a knife sharpener, no matter how good the knife sharpener. Using the knife sharpener on the scissors will simply blunt them, making you increasingly frustrated as you hack at cloth with little to no effect.
2. Related: there are not very many knife sharpening services in the Wellington Region.
3. I still get a frisson of excitement every time I make a purchase - one that matches the frisson of excitement everytime I knock another $100 off my Debt Unicorn. While I wish the savings/debt paying back frisson was bigger than the other frisson, I am also not wishing my purchasing frisson into guilt because: Feeling Guilty Achieves Nothing.
4. When bored, I procrastinate terribly. This in turn leads to more boredom which leads to more procrastination, sending me into a procrastination spiral of awfulness.
5. It’s impossible to talk about Snakes on a Plane without swearing.
6. I am too too attached to the George RR Martin Song of Ice and Fire series. I’m on the last published book at the moment, am halfway through, and am already wondering how I will be able to stand the wait until the next book. The pain! The anticiPAtion!

Wednesday List: impending winter - things to look forward to

So, despite the confusing weather patterns of Easter weekend (was in Tauranga: very hot!), I am beginning to feel winter. Which brings me to my first Wednesday list of the winter season.

The Cherry Blossom Girl

Many things to look forward to!

• Soups - steaming hot, with excellent stock, lots of veges and lentils and beans and slow cooked pieces of beef. Can you say Nom?
• Boots and tights and skirts - which are obviously the most stylish things to wear.
• Wearing my bright red vintage winter coat with beavers on the pockets - because it's impossible to be unhappy in a bright red vintage winter coat with beavers on the pockets. Did I mention that it has an amazing fake fur-trimmed hood and is "inspired by the Eskimos of Canada"? Love.
• Knitting and knitting and knitting in the evenings - it's difficult to get excited about knitting when the weather is good. But I can feel The Urge coming upon me. Also, I have $100 to spend at Holland Street Yarn Company and it's burning a hole in my top drawer. What to knit next, what to knit next?
• Hot water bottles - snuggly. I like to lie as the Little Spoon, while the hot water bottle is big-spooned by me. And then the second hot water bottle lies down by my feet and I curl my toes around it until it burns me. Nothing like the rubber burns of winter!
• Lying in bed and listening to the weather - at our new house, the wind whips through the over head power lines outside which will add a whole new dimension to the "hiding from the horrible storm" feelings.
• Snow again? - last year the surprising snow was beautiful; walking around in it was the highlight of my whole winter. Snow is gorgeous!

Lay it on me sisters and brothers. Other things to look forward to?

(And yes I am ignoring my blogging absence x).

Two things

Google LIFE collection

1. Go away and do the thing that you've been procrastinating about for the last three or four days. If you can't do it right now, do it by the end of the day.

2. Stichomancy - from Now Discover Your Strengths (which is on my desk beside me - don't ask)

Just stop doing it. This strategy is a last resort, but when for one reason or another you are forced to try it, you may be surprised how empowering it can be.

Something to think about. Or not? Contradictory with the above?

I need to find something that I need to stop doing: chewing my nails or procrastinating spring to mind.

And … reappearing again

This morning I am struggling with the World (it’s so bright!) and for the first time for months I actually feel like writing something. So, school be damned! I’m going to write a wee blog post and try and wake up a bit more by drinking this enormous travel mug of coffee and examining my navel.

The last month or so I’ve been quite insanely busy with:

• beginning my final assignment and finishing off two others
• job applications - I’m totally sorted with a job which I begin in a few weeks time, FYI. So excited! New things to learn and do and also: having money
• helping my Dad clear out his house, which is long winded and tiring and emotionally draining
• the Rugby World Cup (New Zealand won!)
• getting a bread maker and making loaves of sour dough with my pet bug
• getting a slow cooker and slow cooking everything I can lay my hands on (YUM STEW)
• sewing a bunch of dresses for summer because apparently I am an optimist
• knitting knitting knitting
• clearing out my stuff and selling it on Trade Me/ giving it away on Freecycle/ taking it to the op shop or the second hand book-store. Stuff has included my roller skates, and my old dressing table set which are two things I have loved and been important and formative in my life. A formative dressing table! It happens.

As a result of my busy-ness, I’ve developed a perpetual To Do list that lives in my diary. While I’m not letting it overwhelm me and am actually crossing stuff off it, it also doesn’t appear to be getting any shorter. In fact, it has incredible growth powers, as though someone is sneaking in the night and feeding it growth hormones. Bizarre.

I have also been reading:

• A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
• Any Human Heart, William Boyd
• Intimacy and Solitude, Stephanie Dowrick
• Can We Help It If We’re Fabulous?, Peta Mathias
• French Toast, Peta Mathias

Reader, have you yourself ever read A Suitable Boy? Yes, it is huge. Yes, it does not fit easily into one’s handbag and weighs a fair amount. BUT: I am freaking LOVING IT. I love how epic it is, how delicious it is to sink down with it at the end of a long day and read a bit and love the characters, and then luxuriate in the knowledge of how much longer it’s going to be with me. J’adore, I cannot recommend it highly enough, and also I think it is one of my new favourite books. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to read it! I’ve had it sitting on my bookshelf forever, but I've always been a little afraid of it's tome-like-ness.

Finally: I've been thrashing this song lately. Dude, I love Architecture in Helsinki so hard.

Spring Resolution: getting ready in the morning

One of my resolutions from last week was to work out exactly how much time I needed to get ready in the morning. Lately I’ve been getting later, and later, and later. It’s no good! I hate being rushed in the morning and I think that starting the working day with a feeling of preparation and the deep inner calm that comes from not-rushing is really valuable.

To achieve the resolution I’ve decided to re-assess each part of the the process of getting ready and getting out of the house, which I roughly divided into a three - getting dressed and showering et al, having coffee and breakfast, and completing any waking up rituals. The plan is that when I know how much time each part takes me I can work out a better routine and get up at a more realistic time.

The re-assessment of the amount of time I was taking was in part inspired by this article I read on Already Pretty. The woman who blogs there estimated that she could complete her dressing process in 40 minutes minimum (that is - no fussing about). As I read this I thought:

a. 40 minutes! Without make up! What the hell does she do in the morning? 

and

b. It's not a race, but if it was I’d win hands down because I’m pretty sure I can get dressed in a fraction of that time. Hahahahaha.

Once my smugness about my dressing-briskness-and-potential-race-winning had subsided, I realisedhow misplaced it was. Because I have no idea how much time it would take me to get myself dressed and made up and showered if I had as much time as I needed. In the weekdays I’ve always arbitrarily given myself about half an hour to have a shower and get dressed and have made that work - which means that most mornings I jump in and out of the shower, don’t wear make up, don’t dry my hair and don’t rub any unguents on any part of my body except my face.

My questions then were: if I did my ideal number of girly things in the morning, how long would it take me to get dressed - should I try and allow for an extra fifteen or so minutes? Am I cutting myself short and rushing around when I could be taking my time? Do I really give a crap about wearing make up and having dry hair etc etc anyways?

Over the last week I’ve made some kind of attempt to answer them, and have come to the following conclusions

1. To do maximum girly things, I need to allow a minimum of 45 minutes. This assumes a day where I’m not easily distracted and where getting dressed isn’t difficult 
2. This more generous amount of time probably goes some way towards explaining why I’m usually late.
3. To avoid the aforementioned difficulty I should probably lay out my clothes the night before 
4. Wearing a smear of make up does make me feel slightly perkier about the day, as does having dry hair. This is something I should try to do.
5. Even the thought of being late doesn’t make a large impact on how fast I move - as in, I’ll cut things out but I rarely move any faster. More time is vital. 

So, part one of the three part re-assessment is completed and I now know that I was cutting out fifteen minutes of potential lady-time. I shall now allow myself 45 minutes to primp each morning which I'm sure will make the whole kit and caboodle that much more fun!

Next, I’ll give the breakfasting process a re-assess. I’ve fallen off the breakfast bandwagon again, and I LIKE breakfast, so how that happened I'll never know.

So, about that tournament thing that's happening...

Possible subtitles include:

• a Rugby Widow’s guide to surviving the World Cup
• how I watched more BBC classic novel dramatisations than can possibly be healthy  
• OR: eating cupcakes in bed - yes or no?

Oh HAI Sonny Bill! You can leave your shoes under my bed any day.
Mark Taylor, Waikato Times. Via Stuff.

Hey, so, did you know that there is a big tournament thingy happening in New Zealand? It’s true! Every week you can watch a lot of television with lots of men with really large thighs tackling each other to the ground and fighting over an egg-shaped ball. Also, there is a great deal of hype about! As I have no TV I’ve managed to avoid most of the hideousness and miscellaneous player scandal, which is something that I’m terribly smug about (I am sooo Smuggy McSmugness over here).

On the other hand, my boyfriend is crazy about rugby. He loves it to an infectious extent. My attitude towards rugby changed completely after watching games with Shannon because he loves the game so - there is much ecstatic yelling, and exclaiming over the abilities of the various players... I’m afraid that I’m not really doing a very good job of explaining, but suffice to say, for Shannon rugby-watching is not a passive thing - it’s very much a full-on interactive experience, for him and everyone around him.

Obviously, a lot of his time is taken up with ruggers at present and as I am an impoverished social-sad-sack, this means that I have a great deal more time alone. However! I haven’t been wasting my time! No, I’ve been researching some ways to enjoy the World Cup period for non-rabid rugby fans. Some suggestions:

• Be nice to tourists. It’ll make you feel good about yourself and hopefully be a deposit in your karma bank for when you’re travelling. Also: how would I know about the Skittles bomb* if I hadn’t talked to a drunken laddish South African dude at the Malthouse? 
• Watch one or two games. Try going to a bar that has a world demographic (by which I mean - a Wales game at the Welsh bar, the Brave Blossoms at a Japanese bar). Failing that - try watching the game in a bar with decent beer/cider/wine and food. Don’t try to have a conversation. 
• Arbitrarily choose a team to support and make yourself a really awesomely naff costume. I saw a Wales fan dressed as a dragon and it made me so happy. Also: costumes are fun. 
• Enjoy your widow/widower-hood by watching programmes that would otherwise be relentlessly mocked by your S.O. Watch until your eyes drop out. Watch some more. Curse the new laws that will reveal the extent of your illegal downloading habit to the flat bill-payer if you get caught. Curse the people who scratch library DVDs. 
• Respect other people’s fandom - because it totally sucks when people are down on your fandom. (Chances are your fandom will never be respected, but think of it as another karmic deposit.) 
• Look at a lot of images of really large man thighs. Think about how those dudes could snap you in half, and how tiny your wrist would look in their fist. *giggle* 
• Go and see or take part in some of the REAL NZ Festival that’s running alongside the Cup. The Wellingtonista made quite a good list of Things That Are Happening in Wellington, and I know that The Body Festival is running in Christchurch. 

Truth be told, I’ve mostly been eating in bed, knitting cardigans for summer and watching BBC classic novel dramatisations - but I’m thinking this would be a good chance to sew two more dresses and work on my op-shopping website. Perhaps we should add “generally catch up on your life” to the list.

Lovely reader, do you have anything to add -- ways of enjoying the RWC period? We’re all people with fantastic imaginations and we have another month or so to use them! Woo!



*A shot of Cointreau in Red Bull. Sounds vile.

Fourteen Resolutions for Spring

I’m totally resolution-less at present since I ditched my "fifty-two things" list (which never made it to fifty-two things and which I spectacularly lost interest in). However Spring is Nigh, and spring is bringing with it the Urge to Resolve, and I can no longer fight it. It's time to make some arbitrary life changes.

I’ve made fourteen resolutions for spring. They’re mostly to do with decluttering parts of my life, taking better care of myself and keeping on top of my money situation. Decluttering because during the winter months my room seems to have become more cluttered and it’s small enough for even a slight increase in clutter to be overwhelming. Money because I have fallen off the wagon lately and I need to reassert control over my income and expenses. Modest my income may be, but it’s more than enough for me to live comfortably and have a proportionally modest social life - provided I manage it well.

In no particular order the resolutions are:

• Instigate a one-in one-out rule for my limited book shelf space 
• Return all my library items on time 
• Regularly clean my shoes, check which of them need re-soling, re-lacing or turfing and take any that need repairs made to the shoe repairer (I’ve had two pairs of summer shoes done recently so I’ve made a good start on this) 
• Have my coats dry cleaned and prepare them for summer storage 
• Wash my winter clothes and pack them up for summer storage 
• Sort through my winter clothes and get rid of anything I didn’t wear during the season 
• Turf the ratty undies
• Sell my roller skates (BAH, but it must be done. I haven’t been using them at all and I’m strapped for cash) 
• Get my bike-serviced, the crank arm fixed, and ride it everywhere 
• Restrict espresso coffee buying to Monday, Friday and one day in the weekend 
• Spend cash and stop using my debit card so freely 
• Stick to my budget 
• Be honest about how long it takes me to get ready in the morning and rework my morning schedule 
• Arrive at school on time

The rest of September, October and November look to be particularly smug months. Excellent.

Tell me if you have resolutions for the change of season?

Another Monday List of Awesome

How are you all this morning my dears? Did you have a weekend of Fabulosity and random acts of Super Fabness? My weekend featured eating eating and also eating, two birthday parties and cleaning my bedroom. The weather was lovely yesterday and as Shannon noted, it was a "resetting day". He is making plans for my very cool amplifier in a suitcase, and I am excited about the prospect of being able to listen to my music on it.

Some things that have been great and that I'd like to share with you today:

• This description of Kate Middleton's wedding dress. It was a very nice wedding dress, I must say. I had no real desire to watch the wedding, but I am glad I got a look at the dress because it was lovely. It would be great to have a closer look at some of the details.
• Hula Hope is a lovely person, and wrote about her recent gig at Happy.
• I really like this idea for a glass travel mug with a straw - it would be great to be able to take my morning smoothie with me to class, or perhaps a cold slow drip coffee in the summer time. On my list of Things to Make and Do.
• Fabric-filled potholes!
• Is it against the rules to link in a web roundup to somebody else's round up? The Pioneer Women's list of pasta dishes is heaven. Absolutely.
• I know that Detroit is also said to be a place of creativity and community gardens, but mostly I am fascinated/saddened by the ruins.
• An iconic photograph with a fabulous backstory.
• The history geek in me loves this story - a hoard found in a backgarden in Hackney, and the son of the original owner steps forward!
• I don't know how much I want to customise my jandals, but at any rate I might be able to get my three year old Havaianas to go another summer.

All Things Amazing

Monday List of Awesome

Alright so, I'm ditching the Sunday Awesome business and I'm going to make a lovely list of awesome things to see and do on the interwebs for Monday instead. You'll like it! It'll make your skirt fly up, and that has to be a good thing, right?

(If you are reading this in a reader you could put it in a separate window and then use the links when you're procrastinating. Don't pretend you're not going to do it.)


So, for my inaugural list:

 

♥ Today is the first day of the Six Items or Less challenge!

♥ The amazing Rebecca Clements of KinokoFry put together this hilarious/fabulous illustration which takes us from the year of the Tiger to the year of the Rabbit. I know nothing about Chinese Astrological years but the image of sexy time with a tiger had me shaking in my seat. For shizzle, my nizzle.

♥ If you haven't already, you should read this article by Michael Pollan that was published in the New York Times a couple of years back. It outlines his book In Defense of Food which I've been reading lately. It's some kind of super fabulous - food is an endlessly fascinating topic, don't you think?

♥ Talking of which, the ever fabulous Bex has started a little foodie blog called the Adventures of Doris Plum. She is adorable and I miss her a stupid amount (although I am, as always, a revoltingly bad correspondent. Boo. Sorry baby).

♥ This is a couple of weeks late now but if you haven't already seen the Hyperbole and a Half post on the year Kenny Loggins ruined Christmas then you are missing out on a belly-achingly good read. I think I doubled over at one point, it's just too too perfect. Comic timing is an amazing thing, and that lady has it in spades. For realz.

♥ Also, call Trippy Cat Gifs for a good time. There's nothing quite like a garish cat gif to make me lolz.

(close your eyes and dance or something)

 

♥ Here is a mixtape at The Fox is Black which is quite sexxxxxxy. Also good for work!

♥ How to tie a sexy head scarf on your sexy head. I am quite fond of number one which is called, ridiculously, "The Tastemaker Turban". I am tastemaking right now people.

♥ Product Junkies Rehab did a round up of their top ten natural deodorants (after exhaustive research, it must be said). I'm very tempted to try the first baking soda paste deodorant - however I'm using a solid crystal at the moment so it's bound to be another 15 months or so before I need to address the problem of more deodorant. So long to wait!

Enjoy, kittens!

The image at the top of the page is by Yoko Furusho, who I discovered via The Fox is Black.

The next one down is by Leon Baskt and I found it via All Things Amazing.

Wednesday List: Ten More Things in 2010 (An Exceptionally Long Round Up on How Far I Have Come)

id you know that October was a completely list free month? Fascinating. It's like, I completely lost my list-writing mojo. But darlings, it happens to all of us and we just need to take it as it comes. Sometimes, there just isn't the list making urge inside.


Anyway, you may remember that I made a list of things to achieve in 2010. And then another list, which is this list. I thought it must be time to reassess the situation, given that I haven't even looked at the list for a while and that the year is hurtling towards a close.


1. Spend two hours a week putting the photos back into the SCP blog archive, and otherwise generally tidy up the archive so it looks more consistent. Suffice to say, this is incredibly tedious and distressingly close to what I actually do at work, so I am finding it very difficult to get enthusiastic about cleaning up the blog.  I shall do some work on my Lady of Leisure week, which begins next Monday. I have been trying to fill things in as I go, so that's made a bit of a difference to the back catalogue. Overall, I give myself a "Must try harder".


2. Make my bed everyday. Ah. Must try harder, again.


3. Have at least one "Buy Nothing Day" a week. This I've been doing really well at! I'm also on a spending fast at the moment, which is kind of good (and has been giving me a bunch of excuses to get out of things that I don't really want to do). 


I love love love Buy Nothing Days. If you're new to the whole thing, why not try taking part in Buy Nothing Day which is November 27th? You've got heaps of time to aim for it! Read Thrifty Chick's post about it for a bunch of info.


4. Pay back $4000 of my credit card. Check out the Unicorn! Booyakasha! 

I don't know if I'm likely to get pay off $4000 before the end of this year, but I am making some adjustments to get my expenses which will probably bring me closer to the goal. Either way ($3000 or $4000), the Debt Unicorn makes me thrill every time I fill it in. Awesome. I kind of like hanging off filling it in for a while too, so I get an extra surge of excitement from filling in large chunks of the Unicorns torso. Tee hee.


5. Take part in the Six Items or Less Challenge. I'm holding out to know whether there is going to be a SIOL-organised Challenge before the end of the year, and I'm thinking the best bet will be just to nominate a start date for myself and stick to it. Thus, I nominate next Monday (first day of my Lady of Leisure week) as the first day of my own, personal, six items or less challenge. I'll follow it for four weeks (ending 22 December). Rock and roll! It's pretty exciting - anyone else keen to join me? Let me know if you are and we can be support buddies.


6. Spend a month identifying and wearing clothes I never wear, and decide whether they're keepers or biffers. I've been trying to wear things that I don't more often, and getting rid of them if I genuinely have no desire at all to wear them. I'm a bit hampered by the unpredictability of the Wellington spring but I feel that I'm doing pretty well. I have two more bags of stuff that I'm keen as a bean to get rid of and would generally give myself a B for this one. I don't think I ever really settled to the task.


In hindsight, I think it would be a good task to set oneself maybe once a week every two months - having a set week to wear clothes that don't normally get an airing seems like a pretty good idea to me.


7. Either use the hula hoop or get rid of it. Totally gone. Awesome.


8. Clean and maintain my crafty machines. The other day I oiled and cleaned my overlocker, and I think it made a difference, but I promptly broke a needle and packed up in disgust so I can't tell for sure. I know that my sewing machine has been operating a whole heap better since I gave it a good clean. My spinning has dropped off the radar a bit but never mind. I think I can safely say that I'm achieving at this task. I rulez, and am now striking it through. OH YEAH.


9. Get rid of the knitting machine and table in the garage. I need to chase up the person who is supposed to be taking this off my hands, wherever she is. I'll chase her up. With holding judgement on my achieviness on this task.


10. Eat my food more slowly. I'm definitely eating my toasted sandwiches at lunch time more slowly: this is mostly because I had a series of really bad tomato/cheese burns on my chin and it was bloody miserable to be constantly burning myself with my own lunch. I can safely say that I'm making more of an effort to eat my food slowly. I'm going to take a leaf out of my own book and be more mindful when I eat - think more about nourishment while I'm eating. It's harder to scoff your food when you're thinking about the process of eating it.


1a. Make a budget and stick to it. My budget is coming up for a pre-study reassessment. And believe it or not, I'm actually very excited about this. I am also surprised at my excitement? Anyways, my Savings Accoutn has not worked out so well, but I've always maintained that the Savings Account was really for rainy days more than anything (at least, it was while I was getting out of my mountains of debt). I also need to work out a budget for next year when I start studying! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee STUDY!


2a. Unclutter my life and maintain a clutterless environment. In the weekend, I rearranged my room in the hope that I would be able to fit in a desk next year. I am super stoked with how well it's worked out, and I've managed to get rid of an entire piece of furniture. My bedroom is now a shrine to the Power of Getting Rid of Things That You Really Don't Need.


However: I read this very interesting item by Danielle La Porte on White Hot Truth and it rather resonated with me - especially the part where she quotes a woman called Lianne Raymond who notes that the recent obsessions with minimalism could be read as "pathologizing the feminine in favour of celebrating the masculine". This ties in some ideas I took with me from a book I read some time ago by Penny Sparke called As Long As It's Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste. In this book, Sparke explores exactly this kind of idea in a historical context - namely the shift from Victorian parlours and knick knacks to Bauhaus et al, and the way that this shift reflected an effort to negate the overtly feminine in interior decorating.* And it made me think about decluttering as a sexual political act. 


I must confess I've never loved the idea of extreme minimalism, but I do like the idea of removing the things that are dragging me down - mentally and physically. In conclusion, I intend to think a great deal more about this but mostly sit on the fence with the doing, and also to reclaim my knick knacks that I really love. I'm not going to turf out my lovely teacups just because I don't drink tea out of every one! Organised collections people, organised collections.


And thus ends this round up for November! Congratulations if you made it this far. Contact me if you require a chocolate fish and one shall be forthcoming.




 *This is the briefest summary of these concepts ever, and they really are so much more interesting than this. If you're interested in this kind of thing (and it is really awfully interesting) then I strongly recommend you find the book and read it.