It’s the only explanation for why I haven’t blogged since April. Usually summer is my season for blogging because summers are boring and everything is closed and I am forced to be on vacation. The weather might be nice, the best it can get in Finland, but it’s often ruined by feelings of being an utterly useless and inferior human being because I didn’t deserve the vacation. This time though, I haven’t been feeling particularly bad in a long while, thanks to a certain nerd and his cute and cuddly dog. We have successfully cultivated the art of doing nothing much together.

Anyway. I got tagged by a Twitter knitter, Cheekytart (you can follow her here). So I’m basically obligated to blog, but I don’t feel forced at all. I needed something like this: My desire (more sharp than filed steel) did spur me forth,* when given a chance. The tag entails answering to a slew of questions about my personal life, which is fine.

1- What’s your staple meal (ie. what meal do you cook most often when you can’t be bothered to be adventurous) ?

I like to make a chicken wok with vegetables, basmati rice and various spices. I just throw in some courgettes, sweet pepper, black olives, mushrooms, sometimes carrot, and add different curry spices like turmeric, cumin, coriander, cardamom, ginger, chili, cinnamon and clove. You can make endless variations by wokking and you don’t have to consult any recipes, and I love that. It’s hard to go wrong because I’m not so choosy when it comes to tastes in food. The food has to be quite terrible for me not to eat it.

2- What do you want to be when you grow up?

I wonder how you know you are actually all grown up. Right now I would love to find work which involved using my language skills. Translation, proofreading, data entry, developing language-related apps, anything involving writing…

One of my ambitions is to write a dissertation, since I see it as something I have to do or I’ll always wonder what I could have accomplished with it, what I would find out if me and not anybody else looked at the data I am planning to use. I don’t see myself as a researcher for life because I don’t take criticism very well. I prefer an easier life to an ambitious one, since the former seems to entail far less agony and anguish.

Work is important to me because I haven’t had much of it so far in my life and to me it’s one way of defining myself as a person. I just want to feel useful and earn my living myself instead of living off everybody else.

3- What book are you reading at the moment (if any)

Larry Niven’s Ringworld. Someone over at the Mass Effect Social Forums said it was similar to the Mass Effect universe so I gave it a try. I’m almost finished and it is not a bad book. Before that, I read Allen Steele’s Coyote series, a gorgeous, realistic long series on colonizing an exoplanet, and Jack McDevitt‘s Ancient shores, a softer approach to scifi.

4- How do you relax?

I relax by exercising a lot and then eating something tasty with tea, watching tv and knitting, sometimes playing Mass Effect. Exercise is vital to my sanity and to my body’s functionality. Everything else is a plus.

5- What color are the interior walls of your home?

I live in a rental apartment with fugly old wallpapers, they are kind of white but not really, with weird yellowish and bluish stains and some texture. I try not to pay attention to it and I imagine it’s all white.

6- What is your guiltiest pleasure?

I don’t feel guilt over pleasures usually. Because I’m so worth it.

7- What time is bedtime and getting up time?

I like to tuck myself in around 11 pm so I have time to read a bit before sleep. Since I’m not working, I usually get up at 8.30 am unless, well, the circumstances are unusual.

8- How long do you spend reading blogs (per day or per week)?

I don’t read blogs on a daily basis, but I probably read one or two every week. I have spent so little time by the laptop lately, excepting Tweetdeck and email, that I simply haven’t had the time to read anything extra. Besides, my favorites have been taking a hiatus from blogging too, and nothing has been interesting enough to compel me into reading. I barely browse teh internets at all these days unless I’m using dictionaries or some other useful services.

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There, I’ve blogged! This just might have been the longest hiatus I’ve had with blogging so far. I just moved my blog to a new host, Downtownhost, which I so far recommend.

I would like to tag:

Ukkoite, because he probably isn’t man enough to blog about a blog meme, let alone one that asks very personal questions — really, he’s such a sissy he will not dare ;)

SetAsEssential, a Swedish lady whose portrait I’d like to paint one day as soon as she sends me a decent photo of herself. ;)

Baltarstar, because she’s such a sweetheart and writes so well.

*From Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 3, line by Antonio (see here).

Last year, I gave lol-slippers to my mum as Christmas present. I also gave Deniselle a pair of her own, a Christmas gift in name, but no sooner than earlier this month! That’s why I couldn’t show them here earlier – I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for her. As for mum’s slippers, obviously she has had them at my childhood home, and I kept forgetting to take photos whenever I visit my parents. But now I finally have photos to show both of them off!

Hmm, maybe we could make it a tradition to exchange xmas presents in March or April, since it’s such a long time until my birthday and next Christmas… Anyway, in exchange for lol-slippers, Deniselle gave me fridge magnet poetry!

It’s a collection of words and punctuation marks in the form of fridge magnets that I can use to compose sentences, poetry in particular, by arranging them around on my fridge. I tried to group them according to word class, but soon discovered that my powers of classifying Finnish are less than perfect.

But let’s move on to the slippers! The pattern is from here, the Ravelry link is here. They are called Peter Pan’s slippers, but since mine always turn out too big, I call them lol-slippers.

Here are Deniselle’s slippers:

Deniselle really, really liked them! I guessed her taste in colors quite well – I don’t like blue much myself, but I don’t have a problem making something for someone else in colors that I don’t like. She thought they look absolutely hilarious with the pointy toes, which fits her endearingly silly personality very well indeed.

And here are mum’s slippers:

Mum commented that the pointy toes seem to want her to keep turning to the left all the time. They twist like that because I wasn’t careful enough with lining up the sides properly when I sewed them together.

Just like my dad’s slippers, these are huge. The cat in the photo is about the size of a real cat! The weird thing is, they are 12 rows and too big for mum, but at the same time the 10-row slipper she crocheted herself turned out too small for a friend of hers who has big feet for a woman. And when I asked Amoena about the size, she recalled she may have made only 8 rows in slippers she gave to a male friend of hers! Strange.

In any case, mum was thrilled with the colors and she decided she wants to try to make her own to give out as presents. She used to crochet, knit and sew her own clothes when she was young, because back then she was too poor to buy her clothes ready-made. She used to have a decent skill at it at least, so no reason why she couldn’t re-learn it.

So I urged her to buy  a crochet hook (her old ones were so short that they felt difficult to use) and some yarn, so I could teach her some basics before I have a 3 week break before my next Irish dance classes. She obeyed and I translated and printed out Finnish instructions for the slippers. As soon as she made her first double crochet, she immediately exclaimed “ooohh this is fun!”. Hooked from the first stitch! I had to draw a detailed series of pictures as a reminder of how to make the first slipknot and the first stitches in a magic ring, but otherwise she got the hang of the different stitches very quickly.

So the next time I’ll show her how to make hexagons (see on the sidebar in my projects – oh dear, I’ve completely neglected to blog about my hexagon blanket that I also gave to mum?!), since the slippers are quite fast to make and can get boring really quick. I can’t wait. It’s fun to spread the joy of handicraft.

I finished Pichu a couple of days ago. It was pretty fast to make, even if I went safety eye hunting for a day and came up empty handed.

Pichu, on the right, is definitely cuter than Chuckychu! I think I’m getting better at making amigurumis already, on my second try! I’m a little miffed that I can’t seem to find black safety eyes with light spots. There are hundreds of variations of eyes with a white, brown, green or any other color background, except black! And none with a light spot. And black eyes with light spots are essential to pokémons!

Oh well. I just have to be extra careful in cutting the eyes from felt. As with painting, the shape of the eye is a delicate matter. A tiny bit too small, big, oval, anything, and it won’t look quite right. Pikachu on the left there is a prime example.

Next up will be Eevee. Crocheting adorable creatures is a really nice change. They’re so fast to make and they’ll do a great job at establishing my reputation as a creep. Or more specifically, engraving that reputation on stone.

EDIT: I completely forgot to give props to the person whose pattern I used. It is of course Wolfdreamer, whose blog has many cute Pokemon patterns! I will probably make most of them before soon.