xander – Enchilada Sunrise

The Good, The Sad, and the Dusty

I know, I know. It’s been ages. Again. I won’t try to update on everything that I’ve been up to, so here are five things: three good, one sad, and one dusty.

The Good.

1. I have a new blog! What on earth for, when I hardly ever post in this one, you may ask? Well, this one has kind of got too unwieldy for me, so I’m taking out the ‘Review’ categories that I never use, and narrowing the focus of this blog to be… well, what I actually do post about, which is knitting and bipolar, for the most part. So no real changes, except to how I think about it. Never mind, it helps in my weird brain. So the new blog, Frozensoul.net, is my review blog. So far it’s all book reviews, but it’s for whatever I feel like reviewing. TV, movies, music, podcasts, gigs, events, stuuuuuff. I’ll probably go back to posting general life stuff and fandom rambling at Dreamwidth / Livejournal, as well. There may be some crossover there, though.

2. I’m going to be an auntie! My brother and sister-in-law are expecting a little girl this summer. Yes, I am knitting. Mwahahaha!

3. The doctor (psychiatrist) reckons I’m well enough to start back to work gradually! So I’m going to be looking into the Permitted Work scheme, and speaking to the Bridge-builders worker at Together, as she has info about all of that. So far, the vague plan is to get back to freelance web design part time, and see how that goes. Fingers crossed!

The Sad.

My lovely fuzzy Xandermog has moved on to hog the big sofa in the sky. He was really ill last year, and he never completely got back to full health, although he was happy and active and pesty up until he got ill again last month. It was all very quick, and he went peacefully – lovely Adam the Vet did the necessary while I was stroking Xander. It’s very strange and quiet to be mogless, even though he wasn’t a noisy cat most of the time. But I’d had him for over 11 years, so I spose I was used to his presence. I shall probably find a new furry dictator to arrange my life fairly soon.

The Dusty.

I’ve been spring-cleaning. Or really, I spose it’s getting on towards summer cleaning by now! It’s an ongoing project. My allergies aren’t impressed, but I’m sure they’ll be happier with the final result. I’ve sorted out a whole load of things that I was hanging on to for no good reason – hairbands and scrunchies when I’ve had my hair short for over a year with no intention of growing it again, and so on. Old make-up, random bits of paper and fabric… so much clutter! I seem to have all manner of things that I’ve stashed away “just in case” they might come in handy some mythical day. But no! I need to get rid so that I can do the re-organisation of my living room that I’ve been planning for months. I will get it done!

Kick Start

Hello, and Happy New Year! Look at that, I’ve finally got around to posting here again. I keep meaning to, but I always feel like I should post a long explanation of where I’ve been. Well, I will, but first of all I think I need something simple to get me started. So, have a meme:

webuyanycat.com has valued my cat at £14.33.

I think I’ll keep him a while and see if he appreciates – I spent more than 200 times that on him last year, and I need to make some of that back somewhere. ;-)

Christmas prep

I’m in the middle of getting everything ready for Christmas. Actually, I feel that I’m doing quite well. I’ve done all my shopping except for a couple of small things (and I know what those are and where I’ll get them). Now I’m just waiting on a couple of deliveries, and of course finishing the things that I’m making myself. I think I’m doing alright on those too, luckily, so there shouldn’t be any last minute panics. Hooray!

Because all I’ve been working on recently are the Christmas things, I don’t have any pictures to post in case someone comes across this. Well, maybe this one:

And now I’m going back to the Christmas crafting. TTFN!

On Thankfulness

I don’t normally do this, since it isn’t Thanksgiving in the UK, but I think I will this year. So here goes: Reasons to be Cheerful, 1, 2, 3….

My family and friends. I’m lucky that I have people I’m close to, can have so much fun with, and can rely on.
The Xandermog. The biggest, daftest, and best moggy in the world.
Technology. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to keep in touch with many people so easily – wouldn’t have met many of them in the first place, in fact – and my world would be a very different place.

There are many more things I could list (music! yarn! spinning! knitting!), of course, but those are three just off the top of my head. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Typing + tiredness = not working

Since I’m extremely tired today (I have new medication which is making me drowsy, hopefully just for the adjustment period, and every time I sit down somewhere relaxing I drop off!), I’m not going to say much again. I haven’t managed to finish the shawl yet, but just have the cast off edge to go. I’ve been setting the twist of some of my handspun:

(excuse the rubbish photo), and also marvelling over how the Xandermog can go from FULL ON PESTER mode to fast asleep, you-can’t-wake-me in under five minutes flat. Still when the result is this little face:

how can you complain?

And I’m Done

Woohoo, I’ve completed NaBloPoMo for June. I shall give myself a pat on the back… and maybe check if there’s a “winner” badge or something. No big deal if not.

I’ve also been seeing how I can do on the Monthly Scavenger Hunt on Flickr. This is my first month, and I didn’t get something for all twenty items, but I managed to do sixteen, so that’s not a bad start!

1. Abandon hope all ye who enter here, 2. Smile Though Your Heart is Breaking, 3. Call the fashion police!, 4. Veteran, 5. Bubbly, 6. Reflecting, 7. Mad, bad and dangerous to know, 8. Nightlights, 9. Prized Possession, 10. Belly up, 11. Desolate, 12. Walkabout, 13. The north wind doth blow, 14. Microcosm, 15. An elephant in the room, 16. Born to be wild?

So, what next on the blogging front? Now that I’ve managed to maintain blogging through June, I don’t want to just stop again. The Tour de Fleece is coming up, so I think I’ll plan to post an update on how I’m doing each day of that… which will mean it’ll be very spinning-centric around here for a couple of weeks. I dare say I’ll ramble about other things though. I can only say “today I span such and such a thing, here’s a photo” so many times!

O is for Oh Dear

Ugh, I’ve lost almost all of today – I made the mistake of vegging out on my bed this afternoon to read… and apparently fell asleep at some time not long after lunch. Actually, that was probably why. Shouldn’t have laid down on a full stomach. Anyway, I’ve only just woken up. Or rather, I’ve just been woken up by a rather annoyed, and very persistent, cat. He wanted his supper. Actually, he probably wanted to go out as well, but he’s not getting that because it’s almost midnight and I’m going to go right back to bed and hopefully sleep a bit more. Will I manage to sleep til morning? Probably not, but I don’t want to stay up all night now because that will put me upside-down again. I’m already annoyed because I’ve missed going out to knitting tonight; I don’t want to miss anything else by being asleep during the day again if I can avoid it. I can’t remember right now if there’s anything else I’m supposed to be doing this week, but getting into bad sleeping habits is never a good idea. So, quick sandwich, then bed. Goodnight!

Merry Christmas everyone :-)

I’m just popping by to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from both me and the Xandermog.

Happy Christmas from Lou and Xandermog

I’m looking forward to spending a lovely day with the family¹, cooking together, eating til we feel slightly ill, giving pressies², and of course watching the Doctor Who special and other Christmas telly. I hope you all have an equally excellent one planned if you’re celebrating, and if you’re not, then have a lovely day regardless.

Do I have a New Year’s resolution? Try to post more often, of course! ;-) Probably also some others, but I’ll go in to that more in January.

In other news, if you’ve been here before you might notice that I have a new seasonal theme for the site. I was going to do a little bit of tweaking to get the Ravelry progress bars working with it, and change the non-blog pages a little, but I haven’t had time, and I think it looks fine as it is anyway. Hooray! Thank you to the Amberpanther team for making it available :-)

¹ Mum, brother and new sister-in-law.
² Which is more fun than the receiving to be honest, since I pretty much know what I’m getting already.

32 – Thwarted

So much for that plan: as soon as I got comfortably settled on the sofa, the Xandermog jumped up and forcefully reminded me that I haven’t provided his required amount of Fuss and Adoration over the last 15 hours. But since I was sitting down doing nothing (what’s that paper in your hand? Let go of it, you need that hand to stroke meeeeee!), I could rectify my mistake right then and there.

Xander, of course, doesn’t sit on my lap. He’s too big. He’s tried it a few times, but as soon as he relaxes he kind of overflows my legs and slides off shortly thereafter. He can sit on me if I’m sitting with my legs up on the sofa, because then he can stretch out from my lap to my knees. Monster beast.

26: Xandermog strikes again

Ah… oh dear. Look who found my empty dinner plate:

At least I was finished with it! Should have remembered to take it out the the kitchen when I did the washing up!!

—————-
Listening to: Candie Payne – i wish i could have loved you more
via FoxyTunes

23: Whoops, where was I?

Sorry, I zoned out there for a bit… I think I’d better go and get some food to keep me going. Oh, whoops again – and let the poor cat in!!

3: A yarny post

As I said the other day, I’m not only going to be talking about bipolar, but also about the knittng and spinning that I’m doing. I’m even hoping to get some spinning done during the event (because if I sit on this computer chair for 24 hours straight, I may never get up. It also occured to me that today might be a good day to do some finishing: sewing up and blocking of some of my knits that only need that doing for them to be finished. Sewing at the computer is probably easier than knitting at the computer, right? Although I could try that too. I know last time that didn’t work out terrible well, since I need two hands to knit and two hand to type… and don’t have four hands (dammit).

In preparation for doing spinning, the current view directly to my right looks like this:

And the view directly behind me looks like this:

Project 365, 22nd March – 4th April

I meant to post these weekly, but I’ve gone and slipped up already. So here are another two week’s worth of Project 365 photos. They’re also up at Flickr in my Project 365 ’09-10 set and in the Project 365 album for this year in the photo album here (you can see the great-big full size versions there). This time I’m going to put the medium-size pics up here rather than the thumbnails and put some comments in as well. Ideally I want the medium pics to link to pop-ups of the full size versions, but the plugin I’m using to integrate the blog with the photo album is being a bit temperamental about that. But with a bit of luck that’s what I’ll get. Here we go:
Continue reading “Project 365, 22nd March – 4th April”

Still around!

Since I haven’t posted in a million years (or four months, which is the same thing in internet-time), I thought I’d mention that I am still here! Alive and kicking, and all that. Mostly accidentally kicking the cat, actually, but if he will sit under the computer desk, what does he expect? Aaaaanyway….

I think what I need to try and do is get back into the swing of regular posting. Even though it’s been years since I’ve actually been doing that. But I want to try it, so I’m going to do a sort of NaBloPoMo of my own… only starting today and running until 6th January. Which is the Twelfth Day of Christmas, and even though it’s a coincidence that it works out like that, it feels kind of appropriate. So even though I’m not doing a calendar month of posting, I will be posting for a month up to the end of the Christmas season proper. :-) A festive BloPoMo!

So, that’s my end-of-year resolution! Now, I have to go and write my list of people I’m buying presents for and sending cards to. Do you think I’m running a little late? Well, let’s hope not! Which reminds me…

If you’d like a Christmas / holiday / whateveryouwannacallit e-card, drop me a comment including your email address (which won’t be published on the site) and one will be winging its way to you soon! If you’re in the UK and my budget allows, I might email you for your snail mail address so I can send a ‘real’ card out… let me know if you’d be up for one of those too. :-)

Project 365 #8, Days 52-67: 1st – 16th March

Stiiiiiiiill catching up: here are days 52 to 67 of my Project 365 photos – the first half of March. I’m going to post them in chunks of half a month at a time until I get caught up, now. If you want to see all the photos so far, click on the Project 365 category link, or check out the Project 365 folder in the photo album. Or for the most up-to-date version, try my Flickr set.
On to the pics (click them for the full sized versions):

Continue reading “Project 365 #8, Days 52-67: 1st – 16th March”