During the spring term on the painting course, this was the last painting I finished. I think it just might be my best so far. The teacher agreed that I’ve come a long way from the start of the autumn term.

I paid special attention to making the eyes realistic, and I’m very proud of their look. The face overall has a pretty good resemblance to the model, Cillian Murphy. He’s been one of my favorite actors ever since 28 days later, because he has such a distinctive, peculiar face. High and sharp cheek bones, gaunt cheeks, full lips and very light blue eyes. Very strange, which I like.

(I no longer know how to link the small pic to a larger one on WordPress, thanks so much update 3.01)

There are some  minor things off about the face, but I came to a point where making any changes would have probably jeopardized the painting as a whole. Usually it’s best to just leave it as it is at some point and make another version if you are desperate to get it exactly right. I think I will paint Cillian again later, but from a different picture and angle. Even though I’m not perfectly content with the actual resemblance, I like the color combo of earthy tones combined with cool blue. Besides, we had a live model once during the course, and she came by to look at it and recognized him immediately.

In other news, for a while I’ve meant to move my pictures to some other gallery than Photobucket. It’s just so sucky. But moving the pictures and updating the links won’t be a walk in the park either. As for continuing my painting, I’m thinking of joining the Saturday group in the autumn term. I can no longer attend morning classes just in case I get work, and that unfortunately means I will have a different instructor.

The Saturday group is actually 5 hours for independent painters to come and make use of the facilities, without any guidance from an instructor. That would be fine, since painting without guidance is better than no painting at all. It’s the facilities that I most appreciated in addition to the instructions, since it is very complicated to set up my painting table at home. Plus, having a set time for painting never hurts.

I’m also considering making a website for advertising my translation and proofreading services. I have my own personal nerd to help me so basically I just need to come up with the content and design. I might not get customers anytime soon since I have so little on my CV as far as translations, but I might have a chance with low pay rates and with a convincing website.

Even small jobs would add to the groundwork for getting to my ultimate goal, i.e. some day successfully getting employed at a translation agency. It’s difficult to convince them that I could be a great translator when I have done so little of it officially, with proofs. I believe in my own abilities but I have little to show for it. But maybe one day.

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.

–

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).

Thanks to the wonderfully boring and never-ending holiday of Easter, I’ve really been hit by the boredom of my life lately.

Two of my usual workout sessions cancelled along with the weekly painting class, all because of some stupid Christian non-event which someone decided to stick in the place of some heathen event celebrating something slightly more sensible I’m sure.

I have been completely spoiled by the atelier environment in the painting classes. There’s so much room, so much light from a long wall of windows, big(gish) tables empty and waiting for you to lay your stuff on them and start painting. At home, I have a desk with a laptop on it, and plenty of other stuff that needs to be gotten rid of before I can start arranging my painting gear on the same space.

Or maybe I’ve just become even lazier than I used to be. I don’t need much money to get by, rent is ridiculous and Lidl provides ample yet affordable nourishment. Money’s guaranteed, jobs aren’t. I still haven’t applied for post-grad studies because I’m too lazy to go all the way to Kela to ask if I could still get their money if I’m a student, theoretically more productive than an unemployed version of me.

But I don’t wanna! I spent over 6 years studying and I’ve had enough. Granted, it wouldn’t technically be the same. I would only be doing whatever I want with my own research, but it’s not that simple. There’s so much stuff I don’t want to deal with right now. Like being confident about your topic and defending its purpose in conferences, or to others at the uni. Anyone else pretty much. I hate the competitive side. I’m not competitive with anyone else but myself.

I don’t know why I see the other postgrads as enemies. It’s some kind of a gut reaction, derived from some deep sense of self-worthlessness and inferiority. I find it very hard to push myself from this happy, if somewhat boring place where for the first time in a very long time I can actually say I am content, even happy. Every day is not a chore no more and I even look forward to living a long life. But there’s a line, I think, between being content and being complacent. One means wanting to keep living your life, the other means you think you deserve all and more than you’re getting.

Oh well. I don’t know why finishing my research plan seems like such an insurmountable obstacle. Perhaps it is because I would very much like to get accepted at Langnet with full funding for 4 years and they only take brilliant students and brilliant research plans. I know that my biggest hurdle is communicating my topic in plain English to people who don’t know anything about it. Much easier said than actually done. I wonder if popularizing your research isn’t the most challenging part of it. How to explain in lay terms something that doesn’t exist in lay terms?

Long shory stort, I’m trying to regain my focus by reading some relevant literature, trying to come up with ideas and hypotheses to look into. In other words, a nice way of spending some time sitting on the sofa and pretending to be useful.

P.S. I’m absolutely in love with this new WordPress bug which causes the save button not to save your post until you refresh your browser and lose whatever it didn’t save before. (EDIT: Apparently it works for the publish button as well! Super.)

The painting course starts again this week after the long Christmas break! I haven’t signed up, so I will just waltz back in on Friday morning and hope there’s still room for me. If I don’t still have a job in February, I’ll even pay the bill for rest of semester (50% off for unemployed persons!).

Anyways, I’m very pleased with this painting. I started the course with it and took my time to make sure it actually bore some resemblance to Amoena. Behold and judge for yourself:

(Painting of Amoena…)

Now that I can see them side by side, my suspicions are confirmed: her eyes are slightly off and too small in the painting and her mouth slants the wrong way. But by the time I had fixed the position of the eyes, it was too late to change them, or I might have done irreversible damage. Painting with amateur skills is like that sometimes. Her jaw is also more angular in the painting than it should be, but I think the overall look is similar enough to see who it’s supposed to portray.

(..and Amoena herself.)

The teacher, Tuomo Rosenlund, had an interesting interpretation of my painting. He saw symbolism in my color choices – red implying there’s something evil or devious behind that apparently innocent look on her face. This was highlighted by the way I divided the background into two colors and made the left side lighter and the right side darker red. After having said that, he concluded that painters often unknowingly paint people they know in a way that the view them as persons. In other words, I view Amoena as an apparently innocent but actually devious person?

Yes, she’s pure evil. She likes to knit, crochet and watch reality tv. She even coos about her dog Papu all the time and posts videos of the doggie chewing carrots! That’s evil and devious on so many levels, I’m sure you’ll agree!

I’m very happy with how it turned out! It’s very soft and warm and thick. For a while now I’ve been yearning for a black-and-white style in my clothes, so I figured this would be a good way to start. I call it the Skunk-Punk scarf because skunks are black and white, and black and white stripes are part of the punk style. (Something I learned from Avril Lavigne.)

The yarns I used were Novita Kaarna and Novita Marjukka, both off production by now (couldn’t even find a decent link to Marjukka), so they were on sale. Kaarna is 50% wool and 50% acrylic, Marjukka 100% acrylic, hence the softness. Plus Kaarna is superbulky and I’ve grown quite fond of bulky yarn. It makes for a very fast project if you need something quick. And I did, since none of my scarves seemed to work with my new winter jacket and its generously opening neck.

I was so proud of myself when I came up with the “technique” for this scarf. It shows I’ve understood the basics of crochet and I can perhaps experiment and improvise more in the future. It’s very simple and obvious: start with a loooong chain of chain crochet stitches, then continue with single crochet stitches and leave fringes at both ends. I know that’s super simple but it was a revelation for me, the n00b crochetress.

I also got this Estonian yarn from Obiskus as a belated birthday present:

It’s Artistic (or similar) by Aade Lõng, an Estonian manufacturer. It’s 100% wool in three colours: fuchsia, burgundy and light purple. The colours don’t change very quickly along the length, so it will be interesting to see what it looks like on a finished project. There’s 250 grams of it!

I have been brainstorming about what I’m going to make from it. It’s a little coarse, so it wouldn’t be nice to spend a lot of time on something I’m going to wear close to my skin and not be able to wear it because of itching. Well, maybe I’ll just knit a gauge patch to get a sense of how it feels against skin.

I know I’ve been a bad, bad bloggeress. Two weeks since my last post, and they passed by so fast. I’ve been crocheting like a maniac and it shows: my blanket is about one square metre big right now. I’ll post pictures later.

I figured a way to tie the hexagons together, differently from what the pattern proposed. Instead of crocheting them together as I go, I’ve been joining the hexes with slip stitches. They make these shallow ridges between the hexes and I kinda like the look of it, plus they make the blanket feel sturdier. Now I just have to keep up with it and decide how big and how many is enough.

I finally did what I’ve wanted for years now: I took up a painting class! It’s at the workers’ institute and it costs a little something, but I don’t care because my mum pays for it. She thinks it’s a great thing for me and she wants me to develop my painting hobby as much as I can. Nice to have support!

There are both watercolour painters and oil colour people in the group. The teacher started from the basics of oil painting because we’re mostly beginners there. Yesterday we made a little rehearsal of blending a single colour with white, trying to create as many hues as possible. Then we applied what we’d learned from mixing the paints to a painting of some object. The others painted some vases and boring stuff like that, but myself  I just started sketching Amoena‘s portrait. I felt inspired to paint her, even though I thought I would paint La Roux at first.

I’m very happy with what I got, at least everyone else was impressed and said it looked exactly like the photo of Amoena. The perfectionist that I am, I’ll say not quite photorealistic, but I definitely got something right. You’re not ugly and grotesque, Amoena! Not yet anyway. Heehee. That was just a rehearsal, I’ll start on the final painting perhaps the next time.

I’m so happy to be painting again. I’m so happy that my darling Pretty Head rescued me from the sauna bathroom. He’s got such lovely eyes. I also went to a drawing class on Thursday, but I lost my nerve with drawing. Drawing isn’t painting, and that bugs me out so much. I need colour! Lots of it! Being a good drawer definitely pays off when you paint, undoubtedly, but I can’t bring myself to draw. Perhaps when I develop some patience one day in my life.

Well, now that I got this off my chest and over with, I can take another break of two weeks from blogging! Let’s hope not.

Here’s my work desk: my new couch on the left and yarns on the sofa table. I like to crochet/knit while I watch tv shows on my laptop, sitting on the sofa and sipping tea and enjoying good food.

I feel a little bad about neglecting my half-done second mitten, but tomorrow I’ll get to knit again: I’m going to visit a new acquaintance here in Tampere. She also likes knitting and crocheting, so we decided to go to hers and do it together while eating apple pie.

My main project has been a hexagon blanket. The pattern is by Attic24. Amoena had made a similar blanket for her cute puppy Papu, and I truly liked it when I saw it in person. I wanted to make one for myself, except very colourful. Later I decided I would try to finish it in time for Christmas, so I can give it to my mum. She likes colourful things just as much as I do. She’ll definitely appreciate the work I will have done, since we’re both a bit clumsy about handicrafts.

(That’s my new beautiful carpet btw! Mum gave it to me in the summer.)

Here’s how much I’ve done so far. I’m planning to use 2-colour hexagons on the rim around the blanket, always with white as the other colour. Then I’ll have mostly different coloured hexagons with white outer rounds in the middle, and some hexagons with no white at all here and there. The round ones at the bottom are unfinished – I decided I’ll add the white round later all in one go, so I won’t have to change the yarn all the time. I like doing things systematically if I possibly can.

There’s one thing I’m slightly concerned about. The hexagons don’t quite seem to match together when I lay them together on the floor. Some of them look bigger than others, and some of them have corners and straight sides in different proportions than others. I wonder what’s up with that. Well, I can only hope I can force them to go together in the end, even if the blanket becomes a little bumpy.

Today I went grocery shopping, but I ended up buying some more yarn that was on sale. It’s the same yarn I’m using for the blanket, Novita 7 veljestä. I bought two new colours for my blanket, just to be even more extravagant. I like things when they go overboard. In particular I like spending money on something that isn’t quite necessary when I should be saving it for food and other life’s necessities.

(Close enough?)

I’m listening to La Roux as I’m writing this. I like her music so much, as well as her style. She’s androgynic and kooky, it’s so cool. I’ve been missing the feeling you get from falling in love with new music. I know that my medication has partly to do with it, because it tunes down my emotions so much that I don’t get really great highs from anything these days. I’m happy, don’t get me wrong, but a part of me misses the feeling of being completely and utterly over the moon over some newly discovered music, or anything new and great whatsoever. But the middle road isn’t too bad either.

You want optimal results in everything you do. Whatever you get, you’re not happy with it. Either because there’s no such thing as perfection, or you don’t recognize it even when it slaps you in the face.

I always feel like I could have done much better, whatever it is I’ve done. Sometimes I’m happy and satisfied, but mostly not.

It must be linked to poor self-esteem. There’s always someone who does the same thing better than you in an objective evaluation (though all such are really subjective ones). On the other hand, there’s probably always someone who does it worse than you.

I feel like I’m backstabbing myself when I’m feeling fine and dandy and happy and so forth, then suddenly I get overwhelmed by a huge attack of envy. Why is it so hard for me to acknowledge that someone does something better than I do? Why not just be happy for them? Why should I be just as good, or better? What would I accomplish with that?

It’s like my whole existence is questioned if I don’t do something as well as I’d like to. Like I don’t have the right to exist if I can’t do anything worthwhile or noteworthy.

I think everyone needs to feel that they’re successful in something, whatever it is. Raising reasonably normal kids, keeping a pretty garden, painting, writing, teaching, keeping people safe, selling stocks.

So it’s only normal that I want to have that feeling. It just seems I’m not satisfied with anything small. Is my problem too much ambition? Is ambition a bad thing? Is it a sin to shut down your ambitions?

Ok I don’t know what I’m trying to say, this is just a filler-gap dependency* function of my blogger’s identity.

*In bloggese, that means no posts in a while -> must. post. something. no. matter. what; in grammar, a filler-gap dependency refers to a process whereby a subpart of a phrase is missing and another, complete phrase outside of it fills the missing part. The other phrase is called the filler, and the existence of the gap in the other phrase is licenced by the existence of the filler phrase.