Wednesday, 27 July 2011

It's decided!

I've had itchy feet for a while and am desperate to go travelling, and I'd pretty much decided that once I've graduated I'm going to go on a really long holiday so I can get out and see the world. The only problem I've had this far though is deciding where to go.
Earlier I text Steve to ask him if he would like to be my travel buddy (which, thankfully, he said yes to. I wasn't really liking the prospect of going alone!), and he suggested "somewhere in Europe". I instantly took a like to this idea, but thought... why go to one place in Europe when we can get a train pass and go to lots of places in Europe!

Image from here

And so the year of obsessive planning, idea-gathering and money-saving begins! I'm ridiculously excited about this trip now, and it's going to be the perfect way to celebrate finishing education!

Sunday, 17 July 2011

Recent crafting

The final of The Apprentice is tonight, and the Big Cross Stitch is nowhere near finished. Ooops. I think I got as far as week 3 or 4, then my crafting time all but disappeared, and what little crafting time I did have I filled by making stuff for the recent Owl Swap over on Craftster.

Here's what I made for my partner:

A hand-carved owl stamp:

A little lavender bag with a cross stitch owl design on the front:
A covered hardback sketchbook with a ribbon page marker:
And the item I'm most proud of, knitted owl fingerless gloves:These took me forever: first I had to find a yarn in the right weight that didn't contain any animal fibres as my partner is allergic to them (which was a lot harder than it sounds, I thought it would be easy to find a cotton or even an acrylic yarn, but I hunted high and low before I found this one!), then I knitted one glove on the size kneedles suggested in the pattern only to find it was really small (I know, I should've knitted a swatch to check gauge first but I always skip this part...), then I had problems with the DPNs creating ladders up the palm of the glove. But I managed it, and they turned out really well :). And I even managed to teach myself how to cable with very few problems, woo :D

The Big Cross Stitch is still in my to-do list, but unfortunately it looks like it'll have to wait until exams are over as I'm going to be really busy for the next month doing near enough non-stop revision. Once exams are over though I've got a vague idea buzzing around in my head of hopping on a train and going somewhere "up North" for a weekend, partly so I can make a start on crossing off the "visit 5 places north of London" task on my list, partly because I'm fed up of being unable to do things that I want to do because one thing or another gets in the way, and partly because I want to get out and see the world, and what better place to start than with the little island that I've lived on for almost 21 years and hardly seen any of. So I should have plenty of stitching time of the train to wherever I end up going, but it's still going to take me a very long time to complete it as it takes a lot longer than I thought!

Friday, 8 July 2011

The trials of a student house

I've finally moved out of the nightmare that was my 2nd year student house. And about time too.

In the past 9 months I have discovered...
  • that people who are meant to be adults and capable of looking after themselves can be unbelievably lazy
  • that people will come up with absolutely any excuse to avoid doing housework. For example, saying "None of the washing up is mine", even though there's a knife covered in paté lying face down on the work top, and a plate on the side that's also covered in paté, when they're the only person in the house that buys it...
  • that people are incapable of moving themselves 2 metres to put rubbish in the bin, so they'll just leave it on the nearest available surface
  • that wiping out spilled food in the microwave apparently doesn't matter
  • ...neither does wiping up spilled food from the worktop
  • ... and neither does scrubbing the toilet (the upstairs toilet, which is already brown, was a completely different shade of brown after I first gave it a good scrubbing...)
  • that no one will think to empty the bin until it is literally overflowing onto the floor (if you can't close the lid that doesn't matter and it's still acceptable)
  • when people get drunk they lose all regard for other housemates who might be trying to sleep (this even extends to knocking on their door and waking them up at 4am just to tell them that ohmigawddd you're so drunkkk...)
  • arguments can, and will, happen over absolutely everything
  • at least one of these arguments will end in something being set on fire
  • when a chicken breast is left in the fridge for long enough, it will start to liquefy
  • apparently it's normal to take hour-long showers twice a day with really loud music blaring, and that the second shower of the day happens at midnight
There's probably more things that I could list, but I'd rather just forget the whole experience now and hope that next year will be a lot better!

My new house is pretty nice...


Please excuse the mess in my room, I hadn't finished unpacking when these photos were taken.
The photos of my room don't show how big it is... it's maybe one and a half times the size of my room at home, and probably about 3 times the size of my room in the last house. Definitely worth the £110 extra a month I'll be paying, and I'll definitely have a much better year now that I've got a bigger space for myself :D