Happiness is a new tatting shuttle - or seven :)

My mother has been visiting us since Sunday. Today we went shopping together - among other things for more yarn for a new Great Big Bug :) Just because we had time we stopped by another little yarn store to look at fancy yarns. I have no money right now and had no plans of buying anything, but when I suddenly came across tatting shuttles, I just had to get them! There were even two kinds, and I naturally had to get both :)

The shuttle on the right is a pretty blue Milward with a crochet hook on the front and a removable bobbin. It came with an extra bobbin, but I'm not sure if you can buy more bobbins separately like you can with many other brands. The post sticking out the back is originally for putting the bobbin on when winding thread on it, but - as with many other Aero copies - the bobbins don't fit on there... So it's pretty useless and only in the way when tatting. I think I'll try to "neuter" it, i.e. cutting off the post and filing the end smooth. Maybe I'll even decorate the shuttle with decoupage, I've seen people do it and it looks really cool :)

The one on the left is a very plain purple shuttle by Prym. It's just about 2 inches long, fairly narrow and very thin. And you can actually take it apart, something I don't really see the point in, except maybe to remove thread easily when you're done using it. It tends to make the two sides slide apart, though, and the tips aren't very tight anymore. Plus it is difficult to wind because you have nowhere to hold :/ I've seen somewhere that these are recommended for beginners, but I don't know why. Perhaps they are good for practicing adding new threads to your work, because the post is so short you can only load it with a little thread at a time...

If I were to recommend any shuttles to a beginner, it would have to be the Clovers, of which I got five in the mail yesterday :)

You can get them both with and without points. They are pretty small, just a little more than two inches long. They definitely hold more thread than the Prym :) The only "problem" with the Clovers is that those points are seriously pointy! I've almost drawn blood more than once since yesterday :p However, the points are great for joins and or unpicking stitches.

 

Other shuttles for beginners would in my opinion be the Sew Mates. 

They are just like the Clovers, only bigger and therefore holds more thread. They also come both with and without points. Here is a picture comparing the two brands:

I've sort of become used to the size of the Sew Mates, but they are still a little big for my hands. Plus the tips are a little uneven (cheaper plastic, perhaps), which makes them unsuitable for picking out mistakes as it tends to frizzle the thread. However, it makes them better for joins. You could easily fix them by filing them with a nail file or something :)

Now I'm waiting for a few more shuttles and a couple of books in the mail, so fingers crossed that the mailman (mailwoman in this case) brings me goodies tomorrow :)

I'm still here

Just thought I'd post a little something to let you all know that I'm still alive :) I just finished taking notes from a really long chapter about eukaryotic cells, and I thought I'd take a small break before I start doing the exercises. *sigh* I read through the chapter last week, but for some reason I didn't take notes. Don't ask why... Next week I plan to start on the math. I haven't done it sooner because I need to borrow a fancy calculator from a friend who won't arrive in town before Sunday :/ Hope I have time to do it all. I figure that if I don't spend more than two weeks on each chapter, I'll get through the whole book by the end of November. Fingers crossed :)

Though I really need to focus on my studying this fall, I hope I'll be able to get some crafting done as well (I have to do something, or I'll probably go insane). I'm almost done with a new Great Big Bug - a firefly - and I have another one started. Plus I'd like to make another firefly as a mate to the first one. I have only four legs left to make! I'll do my best to finish it by this week :) For the body I've used glow-in-the-dark yarn (yellow Bernat) for the first time! I ordered it from here, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to people ouside of US or Canada, the shipping cost was insane compared to the price of the yarn :/ I tried ordering another brand (white Nightlights) from another site, but they had problems with overseas shipping, so I didn't really have a choice. Of course I could have waited until they had their issues fixed, but you know me :p Anyway, here's a sneak peek at the firefly:

She's quite large, and the back end really does glow! I'm pretty pleased with this one :)

Oh, another thing... I've managed to get tangled up in a craft project with a deadline of  August 31st, so that naturally has priority right now. Not sure how much I can talk about it yet, so if you feel like I haven't posted much craftyness lately it's not because I haven't done anything :) I promise I'll tell you more about it when I know how it turns out!

And then there's the tatting :) I'm hooked! On the bus here I started a new project, and during the next two or three days I finished my first "big" item, a crocodile bookmark :) Thought it would be cool to put in my biology book. The pattern is called "Alligator bookmark" from the book Animal Bookmarks - A Tatted Zoo by Dianna Stevens, but I think it looks more like a crocodile than an alligator. I like crocodiles better :)

Bookmarks are both practical and fun to make, and I think it's becoming a new obsession :) I'm not at all a fast tatter, so I can only make a few rings and chains every night, but I've just finished a thistle bookmark from this pattern. It doesn't say how many colors to use, but I made mine in green and pink. Pictures will probably be up on Flickr and Facebook tonight or tomorrow :)

Home again :)

My summer holiday is now officially over, and I'm back home in my apartment. The dreaded busride turned out to be quite nice this time. Not really sure what's happened, but I guess the bus routes have been changed or something, because now I only had to change buses once, and not in one of the places it used to be. And all my luggage was still with me! Yay :) Here's a better picture of all my stuff (the previous one was taken with my phone):

Because of the weight, that black bag and the big suitcase are now ready for the scrapyard... Oh, by the way, more than half of that pile is YARN! Some stuffing and finished amis as well, but mostly yarn :) I guess you can imagine Dung Beetle getting tangled up in all that, with the Velcro on her legs! She'd stick to everything and frizzle up my yarn... So I solved the problem by putting her in a plastic bag. Not the most pleasant picture! But I can assure you she survived the trip and is now happily reunited with her dung ball :)

Bollan, Glyptodon and I were all very happy to come home, but I think Piggen and the kids were just as excited! They couldn't wait to show the family pictures and tell all the stories of their summer adventures :) (I will tell you all about it in a later post, I promise!)

Yesterday I got a lot of things done, but I'm still working on my CV and I haven't applied for any jobs yet... So many details to include! I don't even have all my records of school and previous jobs, so I'm not sure what to do about that... Looked all over the apartment today, but can't find them :( But at least I got to buy math and biology books yesterday. The biology book is so cute! It has a honey bee on the cover, because the book is called Bi 1, which is short for 'biology', but it's also a pun on the Norwegian word for 'bee' ("bi", even though "bie" is most common these days), plus the ring around the '1' sort of makes it read 'bio'. Very clever on so many levels. I think if I'd been high school age I would be embarrased for the people making this book, grownups weren't supposed to have humor back then :p Almost finished reading the first chapter already, and I love it! This is definitely what I want to do :)

Tomorrow I'll go out and talk to some councellor about jobs and financial support, because I won't get payed for the last week of work until the middle of September. That's a long time without food! Well... if my blog doesn't get updated in a while (within a week or two, I think - you can survive for a long time as long as you have something to drink!), I'll propably have starved to death or something :p

Bags are packed...

And I'm sort of ready to go home to my apartment. But only sort of. I hate traveling alone, especially by bus. Have tons of luggage and I have to change buses two or three times. Always worried I won't get everything with me, or that someone else will take my bags :/ They are locked and tagged, but still... And then the buses are so crowded this time of year, all the students coming to town at the beginning of the semester. At least I'll have things to pass the time on the ten-hour bus ride. Tatting shuttles wound with thread for a new project, yarn  & stuffing to make some Bug legs, and best of all, my new laptop has batteries to last at least six hours of music and movies :D Perhaps I even get to sleep some of the way, that will shorten the trip a lot.

But, when I finally get there with my 30+ kilos of stuff, I have to drag it with me virtually uphill all the way from the bus (can't afford a taxi on a Sunday), and the forcasts say it will be 24 degrees C and bright sunshine! Whew, think I'm going to die... At least Bollan and Glyptodon are anxious to go! Wish I could be carried home in a bag, too :) (Um, you know what I mean!)

When I get home I need to put together a proper CV and start applying for jobs. Really scary stuff. Worried I can only get crappy jobs, or that I won't be able to do the ones I do get. Maybe I can't find anything at all and end up on welfare or something... I know I can probably get a job as a cleaning lady fairly easily,  but I'm not sure if I want to have that as my first option. The cleaning itself is not that bad, but I've become allergic to the gloves that are used :( I've tried wearing cottong gloves inside the latex ones, but that only helps a little... 

Plus I'm no longer a university student. Was going to take a year off anyway when I couldn't begin a Master in Arabic this fall, but now I've decided to give up on languages & linguistics pretty much for good. It's all very exciting, and I'm pretty good at learning new languages, but I've come to realize that I'll never find a job with an education like that. I wouldn't survive as a teacher, getting a PhD also includes teaching and stuff, and that's pretty much all there is as far as I can see right now...

So, I've come up with a new plan. Since I'll be working for a year now anyway, I can just as well spend the time doing something useful, like studying! :p I've decided that if I go back to the university I'll study biology. To qualify for that I need to take some math and/or biology classes at high school level. I sent in an application to a school which has adult classes in the afternoon, but they were all full, so my only option is to try doing this by myself. Signed up for an exam in math and the beginning course in biology, and we'll see how it goes. Off to buy books tomorrow, and hopefully I get to spend most of next week reading biology :) 

Well, time to have some breakfast before I go! Ugh...

Changes :)

Today I decided it was time for some blog redecorating again. I started with Bollan's blog, which took me about two hours to get right, even with the new and easier Blogger tool feature thingy (I've had a glass of wine and can't remember what it's called!)... Finally I was able to give her blog three columns and space enough for both the gadgets and the blog posts! I still have some minor things to add, but they probably won't change things too much :) Oh, and by the way, can you guess what the background image on her blog is? I haven't added it myself, it was already in the default backgrounds added by Blogger :D

While I was at it I decided to change my own blog as well, but not as much as Bollan's. I've recently developed a thing for the color purple (not the movie, though it's wonderful and you should see it!), so when I found this background while searching for something for Bollan, I just had to have it. So there :)

I think my pattern blog is up next, but I think those changes will have to wait a little while. Tomorrow I'm going back out to my grandmother's, and while I'm there I can't really do much on the internet... Some time next weekend I'm going back to where I live during the school semesters, so I'll have to catch up with my online life then. See ya :) *waves goodbye*

Worst song ever!

Today has been a really long day at work! Not because of the hours, but because every second I spent cleaning I had the most annoying song ever stuck on my brain :( I get songs stuck very easily, and some of them stay for quite some time. The longest I've ever had the same song was a whole semester, about five or six months... Beethoven's ninth symphony. Not the worst song, but still annoying enough if you listen to it for too long. Today it was a song called "Oah" by Alexander Rybak, the guy who won the Eurovision Song Contest for Norway last year. Thankfully not with that song! I feel like such a traitor for hating his guts (and his songs!), but I can't help it. I just can't stand listening to pop music for too long, or I'll go crazy, I'm more of a rock 'n' roll kind of person :)

Anyway, this song has been playing on TV a lot lately, because the guy has a new album coming out, plus I sometimes hear bits and pieces of it when I'm cleaning people's offices and they have the radio on. I guess the melody is fair enough, but the lyrics make me want to cry! I first heard the song when I was at the dentist, and I almost choked when it came on the radio: "Oah, I love you Moa, you're way too young for me, but I don't mind!"...


Oh, so HE doesn't mind? Well, that makes everything okay! Hmpf! This guy is only 23 or something, which makes me wonder how old the girl is (or was when he wrote the song)... *shiver* If you should want to listen to this atrocity yourself, you can follow this link (haven't listened to it myself, I just can't, but there are others in case this is crap). 


At lunch I couldn't take it anymore and complained to my mother. She tried to give me "Aiken Drum" ("Åkken Bom" in Norwegian) instead, which also gets stuck in your head really easily, but even that had to give way after a while, to the horrible OOOH AAAH, I love you MOOOO-AAAAH.... Didn't make cleaning toilets any more fun! *sigh* I even tried humming the Hamster Dance song to myself, but that didn't help much either, now I have all three songs in my head playing on top of each other :/ But the hamsters sure are cute! :D


There, just had to get this out of my system! Sorry for the long and relatively pointless rant (and apologies to any Rybak fans out there), but I hope the song will disappear from my head soon! Hoping for a better day (and song!) tomorrow :)

Two CALs and a "feature" :)

As you may have noticed by the links in my right sidebar I'm participating in two CALs this summer :) I've already shown you the beginning of my owl for Itsy Bitsy Spiders Great Owl Crochet-along. I finished the owl a while ago, and I made even more changes to the little bird: added embroidered eyelashes and feathers on the belly :)

Now the crocheting part of the Owl CAL is over (it ended on Sunday, I think), but there is going to be a swap with some of the finished owls. Signing up for the swap was optional, so I'm keeping my owl, but I really enjoy seeing lots of different owls together :) Click HERE to see Karla's post about the birds. Makes me want to make lots more owls and have them roosting on a shelf in my apartment :) I'm sure Bollan wouldn't mind! Speaking of The Great Boll: she was actually mentioned in a blog post along with my owl for the CAL :) She's so proud! Even Bollan's own blog was mentioned :) We are both very grateful to be featured on Itsy Bitsy Spider's blog!

You see, The Itsy Bitsy Spider has this Flickr group where people are encouraged to post their latest finished crochet projects, and she will then pick some of them once a week to be featured on her blog. You can read more about this HERE. Ooh, and guess what, I've been featured again! With my Great Big Dung Beetle :) 

Thank you very much for your kind words about my Bug, I really appreciate it! Bollan and I are both very happy :D

The second CAL I'm in is PlanetJune's Summer CAL, where you can crochet either alpacas or a pot of African Violets. I am of course making the alpaca! I've started the CAL a little late, because I was so sure my mother had some alpaca yarn in her stash, but I couldn't find it (not in the right colors, anyway - unless I want to make a blue one!), so today I finally went out and bought a ball of lovely light brown alpaca yarn :) Expensive, though... So far I've made the ears, muzzle and head, and was ready to assemble the face, but then I discovered that I don't have suitable safety eyes :( I have the right size, but the posts are both too thick and too long (and too hard to cut off), so I'll have to come up with a different solution... No pictures of the alpaca yet, but I'll post some as soon as I've made some real progress - I have until August 31st to finish it :)

Work, work & apologies

First I'd like to apologize to my readers and commenters for being really bad at responding to your nice comments the past weeks. I know it sounds like I'm lazy, but I just haven't had much energy for keeping up with my "online life" lately because of my job. Jobs, actually. Plural... I've been cleaning the town hall five days a week the past three weeks, and last week I also had the job of cleaning the town's public toilets & showers. That's not really much, just a couple hours twice a week, but it's still something I have to do after I finish my other job. Right now there isn't a lot of people working at the town hall because of vacations, so I use less time than I normally would, which is great, because I don't think I could manage to stay there for five hours every day. I guess this can sound like a piece of cake to some, but I'm not used to working this hard, and when I get home I just crash on the couch and can't really do anything for hours. Of course, my crafting really suffers because of this. I don't get much crocheting done during the week, creating patterns just takes too much energy and effort :( I sure hope I get used to living like this really soon, because if my creativity has to go, then... well, it's not the life I want :/

It's now almost half past eleven and it's time to go to bed, I start work at eight tomorrow morning. My final week in this job, and then I'll have some time off before I begin looking for a new one. Hopefully a more comfortable one, but beggars can't be choosers, so I guess I'll take more or less whatever I can get (within reasonable distance from where I live since I don't drive)... Anyway, once again I apologize for not replying to comments and stuff. Don't think that I ignore them, I really do appreciate all the nice comments I get! Thanks, and good night :)