Must needs to start thinking.

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.)

posted by admin on 04.05.10 @ 1:55 pm | 3 Comments

Deviously innocent Amoena.

I finished my portrait of Amoena ages ago. Last year, in fact.

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!

posted by admin on 01.12.10 @ 4:06 pm | 4 Comments

The Skunk-Punk scarf.

Yesterday evening I finished my first ever crochet project — the Skunk-punk scarf! Behold:

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.

posted by admin on 11.11.09 @ 11:52 am | 1 Comment

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