Brown is back in Wales visiting Hogan and doing more work on the property. The materials for the damaged garage roof finally arrived, so that's the major project, with a side of doing some more work on the pond. This leaves me free to catch up on downloads which I don't like to watch while Brown's here simply because he's always working and our desks are side by side so I know it distracts him. I don't even like to watch them using the earphones because I can see him getting caught up in whatever it is even when he can't hear it. So, when he goes off to Hogan's for the weekends, I catch up on the latest batch of downloads that have piled up. Today I'm going to watch 10,000 BC (I know it's going to be pure crap and that's all right :D), and Barfly. Actually, I'll probably watch Barfly first because it will probably be depressing since it deals with Bukowski-world and all that tortured artist self indulgence crap that seriously pisses me off. Anyway, it's a couple of downloads, a pot of tea, and finishing up a few little odds and ends of projects for the next few hours. Then I'll be freed up to start another project, so I'll have fun deciding what that will be later on.

I used my cute little bonnet dryer today for the first time. Since my dreads have started doing really freaky things like becoming rather solid squiggles and some of them doubling back on themselves, I have some areas that aren't drying fast enough for my liking. I was surprised at how quickly the little dryer worked, and very happy to find that it also helps them to stay back out of my eyes. That was driving me crazy. I've got lots of loose hair now that's very tickly and I really don't want to have to try to work them in with a crochet hook or felting needle for a while, so I was really glad to find out how much this helped. Cool.

I've been so freaking boring lately I can hardly stand myself. I can only imagine how much I am boring Brown on a day to day basis, and my daughters in my daily email. One of these days I might surprise us all and have something interesting to write about, but don't hold your breath. Amanda posted a bulletin on Myspace this morning of a survey she'd done, and one of the questions was "What do you think your #1 is doing right now?" She answered that I was either making something or hunting for my stray cat buddy. And that's my life, folks...needlework and cats.

This is almost done now.

I'm in a real thread crochet kind of mood lately in a Magnolia Pearl kind of way, so I'm starting to build up a little stash of ready made bits of doilies and trims for when the mood strikes to use them in things.

I will not rant about it again, but yesterday I spent 7 mofo-ing hours listening to blasting music reverberating around the back gardens here. For real...7 HOURS. 7. I'm still stunned that people are that capable of being so rude.

I've had a hard time dealing with not having a cat or twelve around since I moved over here. Neither place we've lived has allowed pets and I've spent much time wishing for warm little fuzzy bodies to curl up beside me on the couch. I just adore cats...always have. There's a picture of me at my first birtday party sitting on the grass with a whole bunch of other babies and what am I doing? Reaching for a cat. Screw the presents, screw the party, screw the people, just give me a cat and I'm happy. So, it came as a welcome surprise a about a year ago when I was sitting here at the computer and saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. Now, to someone who's had cats all their life, seeing something small and furry wandering by doesn't really register, and that's exactly what happened even though I'd not had a cat in the house for almost two years. The thing is...I still thought I saw them. I'd see a dark thing on the couch and think "cat" when it was really a pillow, for example. So, it took a few moments for it to sink in that something was going on here. Sure enough, when I investigated I found a skinny black cat in our front room, sniffing around and checking everything out. He'd walked in our back door and he's still walking in it now. Then, a few weeks ago, I was sitting at the computer, and another strange cat walked in. He's a gorgeous young male with spectacular markings. He comes and goes just like the first cat (Felix) does. They both curl up on the couch with me and take naps, so that makes me happy. This morning I was getting ready to wash dishes when I saw some movement outside...our kitchen sink is right beside our back door...and there peeking around the corner with huge eyes was yet another kitty. She was very nervous and jumpy, but I talked quietly to her and stood very still and soon enough she came inside. Then another head peeked around the same corner, and there was Burton (which I've decided to call the gorgeously marked young male)following her. It was like he was showing her around...very cute. Brown was upstairs getting dressed and I wanted to keep her in so he could see her, so I eased the door shut to keep them in. When Brown started down the stairs in his big clompy New Rocks it spooked her and she ran into the kitchen, but as soon as he got down the stairs, she peeked around the door at him and within seconds she was in his arms being petted. So, now I've gone without any cat at all to having three who feel comfortable enough with us to walk in and visit. I'm really happy about this, but only another cat lover could understand just how happy and content it makes me.

Here's a picture of newest visitor...sorry for the flash...



( more kittehs )

I love this guy....he looks like he's about to explode from the sheer joy of living. He needs to be my best friend. but I'd probably want to choke him after 10 minutes.

I want this movie. I'll watch it even if I can't understand a single word. It's just too beautiful and creepy to miss.

http://www.projectfacade.com/

What an incredible project. There aren't any exhibit dates listed so I don't know if it will be shown again. I was going to post some images, but to be honest, the case histories are hard to see, and showing just the art without the background just doesn't seem right to me. So, you'll have to go there and face it full on. It's not for the faint-hearted, but it's something that should be seen, I think. I can sit and look at gore sites all day long and it really doesn't bother me too much. This does. These are more personal, as if you're looking at old pictures of your own family members. This should not be forgotten.

Every once in a while I check my Flickr stats and get a little surprise. Once again I've made Explore. Cool. This is our front room with the crocheted curtains I made that so many people seem to like.



In other news today...I'm doing some thread crochet, watching a movie, and drinking lots of tea. Brown's writing and research partner Paul is here today and they're plotting academic and professional moves, so I've moved into the dining room to leave them to their fiendish plans.

Today he's 46. <3<3<3

I still want a cigarette even though it will be three years in August since I quit. This is hard. My mouth is watering just thinking about one.

I understand that in order for the economy to work (ha!) that it depends on the poor. As Brown says, "the poor are a goldmine". If it weren't for the sales of track suits, cheap beer, cigarettes, Kentucky Fried Chicken, horrible glittery things, cheap aftershave, and black eyeliner, this country would collapse. So, there in essence is the reason chavs are encouraged to keep being chavs. It's cheaper and easier to house them for free, ply them with undeserved benefits, encourage them to keep having more little chavs, keep them happy with affordable beer and alcopops, and all the accoutrements of the lifestyle than it is to make them get off their effing lazy asses and contribute to society. But, please, please, please, can't someone make them just be quiet? It's not so much to ask that one little thing in return for all they're given. One rule...be quiet. Well, maybe two...stop stabbing everybody. It's not like their heads are full of complex equations, trying to remember when they have to be at work, or even keeping track of the last time they saw the two year old they left out in the front garden. They'd only have to remember and carry out one thing. Quiet. It's not that hard, and I'd really, really appreciate it.

I want a cigarette.

Brown is coming back from Wales today. He left last Wednesday and has been happily working on major projects at his friend's house. They have a new cement mixer to play with...need I say more? I'm really glad he can escape to a beautiful remote place with his best friend and do things like that. We're not really urban people at all, but there's not much choice about it at the moment. So, he's had lots of fun building walls and shoring up retaining walls and that sort of thing. The wind was terrible there yesterday and the power was out when he woke up. It didn't come back on until kind of late last night after they'd had to cook supper on the wood burning stove and found out that the oil lamps weren't actually good for anything more than looking rustic. Luckily he has a heavy duty battery pack on his laptop so we could keep emailing. I'd have been worried sick if he'd suddenly stopped writing. I worry about him using power tools...plus the place is so remote that if anything did happen, there's not much hope of help arriving in time. Well, it's not THAT remote, but the nearest village is a few miles away, and you can't see anyting but sheep and cows and fields from their property so it feels wonderfully removed. Also, neither he nor Hogan drive so there'd be no vehicle around to hop into and get anyone to hospital on their own. Me, worry? Naw. I keep remembering what happened very nearby here last Xmas and playing the imagined scenario through my mind...A man went out into his back garden to do some cleaning up, revved up the chain saw and almost immediately sliced into his neck. He stumbled into the house in front of his horrified wife and children, spurted blood all over the Xmas tree and presents and then collapsed dead in front of them. Can you IMAGINE? The fact that it was Xmas makes it that much worse, for some reason, and the blood all over the tree and presents is just too much of a horror fim type of thing. That poor family. One moment life is good and the next moment it's straight out of a cheap slasher movie. Shudder. So, yeah, this is what I think about when he's in Wales.

I read the other day that eating a really, really big breakfast has been proven to help not only lose weight, but keep it off much better than with other eating patterns. I've never felt better than when I only ate one meal a day, but that meal was always supper. Like I needed all kinds of energy to sleep. It's just common sense, but I've never been much of a breakfast eater...always felt nauseated when I tried to eat much. Well, yesterday I decided to eat lots of cottage cheese, some yogurt and some leftover plain rice for breakfast just to see what would happen. Cottage cheese because I love it and because it's lots of protein which a hypoglycemic like me needs, rhubarb yogurt because...yum, and rice because it was there and the point was to eat a big breakfast, plus rice=carbs which is my weakness and since I was having cottage cheese I could splurge. So, ate it, felt stuffed and then proceeded not to even think about food until about 7 last night when I realized I needed to eat something even though I wasn't hungry at all. I'm supposed to eat something every two hours because I don't particularly enjoy passing out or seeing double, and since I hadn't eaten anything since about 7 a.m., I didn't really have any choice. I ate a very small meal of chips and fake meat and felt completely stuffed again. So, needless to say, I've done it again this morning, only with no rice...just the cottage cheese, yogurt and some coffee. We'll see how it goes. I'm still feeling stuffed, though.

This is so freaking interesting, innit? You know it is.

Here's a nice view from our friend's home in Wales.


( More Wales goodness )

What's with me? I've been so moody lately. First I was depressed for a few weeks, and now that I've snapped out of that, I'm all feisty. I need to get over myself...but not quite yet because I have at least one more good rant left in me before I harness myself in.

I've dropped a lot of communities. Oh hell, I'll just leave it at that. Well, maybe just a little bit....There was a long rant here, but what the hell...it's pointless. There will always be a few bastards in any community, but when it gets to the point where I feel guilty by association, it's time to go. I got to the point where I was afraid people would see them listed on my profile and think I was one of the jerks, too. Sad that communities aimed towards those with out of the mainstream appearances or interests should be even more judgmental than rating communities. Particularly sad when mods are right in with them.

Sooooo, time to start hanging out in communities that encourage peacefulness, appreciation of nature, diversity, and pretty shiny things. Don't worry, I'll never be a special little angel snowflake type. I've still got plenty of bluster left for when it's called for.

Also, for what it's worth, the new Myspace layout feature totally ruined my page when all I did was opt to preview a layout. I spent over two hours this morning trying to fix it back the way it was and the contact box on the one I tried out would not go away no matter what I did. Finally, the fifth or sixth off site layout I tried "took" and the thing went away. I even wiped out everything on my profile...EVERYTHING...totally blank boxes, and that same freaking contact box kept showing up until some kind of magic worked on the last layout I tried. Oddly enough, the layout that finally worked was a "Gypsy" one, so maybe there really is something to my fascination with Gypsy "magic" and folklore. I like to think so, anyway.

If you're wondering what the hell an old woman like me is doing with a Myspace, it's not because I'm playing cougar (those days are in the past :-P), but because my youngest daughter wanted me to make one. How could I say no?

And, finally, here's something to set the sweet and peaceful mood...

I've finally managed to come up with my own way of attaching fake dreads to wigs. I've worked on trying to get them the way I want for about two years now and it's finally all come together. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's ever come up with this way of doing it, because let's face it...I'm not that brilliant or innovative, but from everything I've read everywhere for the past couple of years, I've never come across anyone else that's done it like this. I just never was satisfied with the way any attachment technique looked when *I* did it even though it may have looked awesome when someone else did it. I'm certainly not saying everyone else's methods look bad, I'm just saying that I could never manage to get their way to work for me. Everything I tried looked so amateur and so sloppy. Anyway, I've finally figured out a way that involves felting needles that not only looks damned good, but gives such a solid join that the things won't budge even when jerked on as hard as I can. I'm really glad all that long bout of frustration is over with and now I can enjoy the process AND the end result. Now if I only had a case full of wigs to play with...

Here's a picture of the attachment. Please note that this is a practice wig and some of the first dreads I ever made, so this is not something that is intended to look good, but to experiment with. Try to imagine it with nice colours and well made dreads. :-)



So, now that I've had my brief moment of joy, I'm off to clean up cat puke and a broken bottle of soy sauce off the pantry floor. It was nice while it lasted.

Once again, I just can't let ignorant comments on a forum die a natural death. Not that I take them on too often, but every once in a while someone is so fucking holier than thou and so invested in making themselves into someone so "other" and so "abnormal" and then acting as if the rest of us are mere humans and not worthy to lick their oh so alternative boots. Grow the fuck up. For Christ's sake, saying that if someone wants to get numbed before having something pierced they don't deserve to have a piercing? Implying that the only worthy ones are those who view it as a ritual, as a journey, as proof that their just as ordinary as anyone else's piercings are somehow superior? I mean, a bridge is a bridge...a septum is a septum...right? But, of course, you're soooo different than that 16 year old high school kid with the same thing. We get it, you "suffered" so you're oh so intense. For the record, I've had plenty of piercings although most of them are removed now because of reactions to metal. I would have kept them each and every one, but I don't care for the look of non-metal facial piercings. None of them were numbed except for my genital ones because I'm really, really sensitive there...more so than other people, apparently. TMI, I know, but I'm making a point here. It doesn't mean I'm any more fucking hardcore than anyone else and I don't understand the need to present yourself as such. But, I guess I've pissed off a couple of obnoxiously alternative people who are determined to be more so than anyone else. Sigh. As usual, I end up more pissed at myself than at them because I've given them what they so desperately need...attention.

EDIT: I'm not against alternative people, as my partner and myself identify as such. I DO have something against people who think in order to be alternative they also have to be so goddamned obnoxious. If you've got to work that hard to prove what you are, then you aren't, you're just a caricature.

I've been working on fake dreads and wigs again with wildly varying degrees of success.

I finished the really colourful set...


( more projects behind the cut )

After a few weeks of moodiness I think I've finally snapped out of it. I like myself again.

The dreads were 3 months old on the 11th...


I call this one The Night of the Living Dread. Yeah, I know it's corny, but whatev...



I'm working away on two sets of synthetic dreadfalls. I'll be steaming the last of the second set today and then I'll trim the ends off both sets and make them into the falls. I may do a little experimenting with the first set I made to see if an idea I've had might work. The first set is very colourful and the second set is black, gray, lavender, and purple. I have so many ideas for colour combinations I want to try.

You know how sometimes it hits you that you've just wasted a chunk of time that you'll never ever get back? Now put that in sweater form and you'll get an idea of how I feel about this thing. I freaking despise it. Horrible pattern...horrible fit...horrible shoulder placement. I waste time each and every day...it's my job...but, for some reason the time wasted on this just infuriates me. Oh, well.

As you can tell this isn't my daughter wearing it. It's Brown. He's over 6 feet tall...long and lean. The thing would have come down to her knees. Now I've got to find another skull sweater pattern...maybe a knit one this time. It's not like there's any hurry for one seeing as it's supposed to be right at 100 degrees F this week where she's living now.

To carry on wringing every obssessive drop of hatred out of this whole thing...
The thing fits terribly...just one long skinny tube for the body. Brown's got his dreads and the scarves he wears all stuck down in the back of the sweater here. He just pulled it over his head and posed. So, it's not as tight as it looks, but it still looks uncomfortable to me.



Brown really didn't want the thing, either, but he said he could use it when he's in Wales taking his long walks and working outside in the cold. Since it was made for my daughter, the sleeves were much too short, so I had to lengthen them a good bit. He requested thumbholes and a bit of a flare, too.




So, there's that whining, griping, and generally poopy entry. Got to get in a better mood.

EDITED: Brown is concerned that he looks grouchy and toothless here. Neither is true. He's a fully toothed sweetheart.

I'm feeling the urge to play around with synthetic dreads again. I can't wear wigs any more, and really have no need for synthetic dreads since I have real ones, but it's still fun and it's something I've gotten away from for the past several months. Plus, I've had people asking me when I'm going to start selling them and that's in the back of my mind, too. I abandoned work on my favourite set I've ever done, and it's time to get back to them. I love them so much I may just have to find some way I can actually wear them, but I have no idea how I'd go about it now. I just looooooove these...


( more work behind the cut..pic heavy )

Life is rather boring at the moment despite my attempts at making it otherwise. I'm on a mission to change a lot of habits and I guess I'm "detoxing" in a way, so I'm touchy and angsty. Change is good, though...less spending, more exercise, more creative endeavours, more introspection. It's all about the learning and growing. Every time I read through ohnotheydidnt I'm reminded of how willfully ignorant and shallow people can be and it just pisses me off no end. People actually think it's funny and cool and sexy to act like fools and express the most misogynistic and ignorant opinions. I feel bad for even reading that community...dirty...yet it does serve a purpose if for no other reason that the righteous anger it causes is a catalyst to keep improving myself.

This is the most awesome feminist publication ever. They've been kicking ass and taking names for over 35 years now. I've seen it change from a newspaper format...it used to be soooo thick and took days to read and I'd end up with black fingers and inky marks all over myself...to a better grade of newsprint, no ink rub off, and in a stapled magazine format. No slickness here, no bending to advertiser's demands, no sweetness and light...just out and out truth, some good and some bad. You'll find news here that you'll never find in any mainstream media. You'll be appalled, you'll be inspired, and you'll be introduced to the most amazing, brave, and selfless women you'd never have had any idea even existed. All decisions are made by a co-operative of women, so no one person has final say-so or could assert her own agenda even if she wanted to.

http://www.offourbacks.org/

If ever there was a publication that needed to be supported, it's this one. Please take out a subscription. If you're already a feminist then you'll feel righteous. If you're not, and reading OOB doesn't make you one, then there's something seriously wrong with you. Really...what IS wrong with you if you're not? We're talking basic human rights, people are people, bigotry sucks, misogny is ignorance, if you're not with us you're against us common sense here.

A lot of people seem to think that if a woman enjoys the traditional "women's work" there's no way she can be a true feminist. Horseshite. "Women's work" has always been the steel core through the structure of the family and society in general. Not all of us are public speakers, movers and shakers, or very outspoken. Some of us move slow below the surface. We make a one hell of a difference in our own quiet way, and it's no less important or impressive.