Flibbertygibbet

Who shrank my flat?

Yesterday I went back to the flat for the first time and I walked in thinking 'Hurrah, I still like it!  It's just that someone took away 50sq feet from the hallway...'

You know that extreme tracking shot they use in horror films for the moment of the denouement, where the viewpoint stays static and the world rushes past?  Yeah, it was like that, in my memory.  In reality it's rather more bijou.  Probably because I haven't been there since the beginning of May which really is such a long time ago. I had mistakenly remembered a huge hallway - which I was papering with feature wallpaper in my head - when in fact it's probably just about big enough to extend your arms out fully and twirl around in a giddy circle, thinking 'This is my new house! Mine!'.  Note I didn't say "to swing a cat in" because I don't think they'd really like that.  On the feline space issue - I'm a bit concerned that I'll either have to situate their litter tray in the human bathroom (eeeew) or replace the entire balcony door as I'm not sure that a cat flap could be fitted to the double-glazed door.  Add 'find local double glazing company' to the list.

That's all ok.  I will just have to really start to rationalise the amount of stuff that I am able to take with me.  No, I know I've been saying that, I just have to start acting on it.  I forsee a lot of black bin bags/freecyling in my immediate future...can I really do that?  I have the fear that I'm a clutter junkie. Certainly I am excellent at amassing stash and supplies without utilising them; of buying clothes I won't wear; of hoarding shoes that are no longer practical for me - the list goes on.

Do I really use the big bedroom as a studio, and the smaller one as the boudoir (Oh yeah, I am so a boudoir type of girl - not) or live in the large room.  That's the other dilemma at the moment - trying to figure out what to do with the place.  Not just from a what colour/wallpaper or paint viewpoint, but how much design goes into it.  I've been toying with all sorts of ideas, partly inspired by lots of bloggy people and links that you've sent me, thanks for that.  I suppose I am thinking back to when I moved in here to the house and at first we lived with the frigging hideous stencilling.  For a year or more.  When I got to sorting it,  it felt right to decorate it in harmony with the age of the property (1896) , and to also make it warm but neutral and in some ways a little formal.  A little less 'Changing Rooms'.  And not so yellow, red and green - the traffic light school of home decor!  Though ironically I ended up choosing a colour for the anaglypta which was not unlike the one that had been above the dado rail in the first place.

Now I'm looking at a much smaller space and I wonder how to make it seem more spacious, doing 'enough' to it without going overboard.  The kitchen fitter came in yesterday to measure up and I suffered option paralysis when it came to choosing which ranges I was interested in.  It's curious as many of my friends seem to know my taste better than I do, they point out something and say 'that's so you!' and they are on the money.  For myself, I can't close my eyes at the moment and picture how the flat will look - apart from lusting after a Danish sofa for the sitting room.  But apparently they are difficult to track down because of course they aren't compliant with current fire regulations so have to be (expensively) reupholstered before sale nowadays.  But I found some here... along with a classic case in point of my indecisiveness - I saw this sofa and thought - perfect!  That's exactly what I am looking for...

   

Yup, that's the one.  Then I scrolled down the page...

Oooooooohhhhh.....

How exactly do you marry up those styles (in a house without separate wings)?  How can my tastes fluctuate  so wildly, like a compass near a magnet?  Don't tell me it's just about the colour.  Hmmmmm.

In other news, there has been a little crafting.  As I confessed yesterday to Ting as we were knitting in London Fields, bathed in glorious sunshine,  I have been a bad sister and still haven't bound this, (for my brother's friend's baby) though I'm really happy with the way it has turned out:

[Well, that was after I ripped out the tiniest machine stitches because (and this always happens with me - can you offer any hints. might be to do with tension?) while they looked ok in the middle of the quilt, the end of the line was puckered and I couldn't live with it, so I ripped it all out. Painstakingly, and of course the initial idea behind machine quilting was to make it all quicker and then it took me a week's worth of evenings to remove out the miniscule stitches...]

The Clap is also coming along...

I'm meeting a couple of lovely ladies, co-incidentally both fellow clappers today to wander down the King's Road to look at house stuff, get a little knitting in, then catch a movie perhaps.  What a lovely way to Sunday.   

Wallpaper*

So this weekend (it's a Bank Holiday here) I'm doing lots of 'flat' things.  Getting in there with the kitchen fitter on Saturday.  Researching on Sunday.  Going back with some surveyor friends on Monday. 

If my surveyor friends can't see anything too horrendous, then things may truck along quick quickly.  In fact, even if they do pick up on anything, my intention is to say "Fine, X is falling apart and it's going to cost me £Y to get it fixed, so I'll take that off the purchase price".  The owner, before flouncing off on holidays somewhere, thought that all she'd need to do was sign a few random pieces of paper and the flat would be sold.  Not quite so simple.  But my wonderful amazing solicitor hasn't let them away with a thing.  If things pan out, I'll be exchanging contracts next week, and completing the following week.  MPH just has to get the next load of cash to me so that I've got the deposit waiting. 

On the day I complete, I intend to instruct the kitchen with the people Claire recommended who seem great.  It's going to have to be a masterpiece of design as I've two dinner services, three teasets, most of the Le Creuset range and a Selfridge's showroom's worth of appliances to fit in there.

As frequently happens, this house-moving lark is stressing me out.  I had a big argument with my brother last night on the phone which hasn't happened for about twenty years.  It was trivial and has blown over but shows how nutso I am at the moment.

This Sunday I'm going to go looking for design ideas - for wallpapers (thinking Nina Campbell Birdcage Walk for the hall) and also need to find frosted paper or decals of some sort for the kitchen windows.  Where would you send me in London?  What are your favourite decorating blogs and where do your design ideas come from?

*and who's going to help me hang it?

What's on the menu today

1. Finish freelance job for tomorrow
2. Feed cats, feed me*, tidy house, bake for visitors
3. Spend time giggling with the Clap-along girls and other knitterly visitors who are descending this afternoon.  Yes, I started over.  With stitch markers, in the Debbie Bliss silk. We'll see how it  goes on the increases section with this version - hopefully the stitches will drop better and I'll get it right!
   
   
   
4. Iron the two baskets of laundry that have been sitting there for a while now, ahem, and which were unearthed during the epic housecleaning and laundry marathon yesterday
5. Head off to watch the Bourne Flimflammery, or whatever the last one is called, with Jen (Matt Damon - phwoar, frankly)
6. Make some more appointments for the flat next week - I'm trying to get in there to do some final measuring up.  I have been stressing the estate agent about various last points and have to do it by email as I can't really make personal calls at work.  And of course emails can come across as being stroppy.  So it was delightful last night when I met my estate agent in the queue for the loos at Prince** and the first thing she said was 'I read your email this morning...'... bee-atch... This is the second time I've run into her and both times I've been with Ting.  So she thinks I only have one friend or we are a couple.

Do you think there will be enough hours in the day (given it's already 10:30?)  Well that's what happens when you procrastinate and hang out on a limb (not just today) waiting to see how this or that or the other thing will pan out, not just today but recently, and for a while now.  Some things I'd been hoping for now won't be happening but easy come, easy go.  Now it's time - no, really, the deadline has passed -  to embrace and be positive about the options that are open to me - like buying my little flat. I am SCARED TO DEATH about it because it's kind of madness but if I don't do it now, I'll never be able to afford to buy somewhere.  I am extremely fortunate in that my parents are able to help me financially for a while, but jesus, I am 33.  When am I going to turn into a grown up?

*It's also time to get myself in shape physically and possibly mentally.  I've tried going back to WW on a number of occasions now and can't stick with it, for some reason, though I know it does work but I guess I wasn't fully committed to it.  Head stuck in the sand - or the bag of crisps.  A friend recently told me she'd lost 20 lbs and I thought 'Oh my god that's amazing, well done!'  My next thought was 'And f*** me, I found them!  They're on my hips and thighs right now.'  How many times have I said that I have to change this? Well probably not enough times.  I may be boring you all rigid with it over the next while.  Or I may say nothing at all.  I have to get over the fact that I've made things somewhat worse over the past three months and now it's only going to be harder.  And to borrow a phrase, just do it.

The other thing I have to face up to is my financial health.  It's pretty much terminal.  I have to accept that I need to make major changes to my lifestyle because it is time to face up to the fact that even if I get the salary I am targetting, it will only pay for my basics and not for the amount of socialising or fabric buying I've been indulging in. Being in debt just scares me, particularly as it's not especially good debt - it's lifestyle debt.  But one thing I'm going to be investigating for the new flat is Sky Plus - because I'm going to be spending a lot of time at home! 

** Ok, so Prince didn't play very long, which was disappointing but he was just amazing, he does ooze sex appeal and he's a superb showman.  Highlights were Controversy, Pop Life, Let's Go Crazy, a snatch of DMSR, Raspberry Beret and U Got the Look.  I'm off to crank up the stereo with some of the Prince albums I bought last week, (lifestyle spending!!!)  and get it all started around here...

And there you are!

Thanks lovely people for reassuring me that I'm not going completely ga-ga.  Some of you are also having some tech issues.  Lots of people have experienced Bloglines spitting the dummy.  I'm probably the only person who forgot that changing back to her maiden name will indeed invalidate the credit card that Typepad have in their billing records.  Whoops.  Should be all-singing, all-dancing again now. 

Will post more later when their isn't a nasty little man reading over my shoulder.  Gah.  You have to hate open-plan offices. 

Are you out there?

Anyone having techie issues with Typepad?  I'm experiencing some bizarro things - like I don't always get emails to say that there's been a comment - never for some people and only occasionally for others.  Also the stats for last week are a bit wierd, with peculiar peaks and troughs.  Is this happening to anyone else? If you do pop in here can you leave a comment so I can see if your visit shows up?  Ta muchly!  Will try to get this sorted out!

WIPs

Hoping to have either one of these two projects finished by this evening...

Although it's unlikely to be this one - I reckon it's got another couple of months to go...

Snippets

As I'm temping I'm out of the house all day, of course, plus I have a reasonably steady stream of freelance work to get through too. I yearn for crafting time, though could entirely sympathise with a friend who today bemoaned the fact that all she's doing all day is crocheting, as she's working on a book about the craft.  That's overkill I guess - variety is the spice, eh?  Though I've been crocheting quite a bit just to chill out - as I do keep screwing up the Clap and Pauline has knitted more of it than me at this stage.  Who knows where I keep going wrong.

There are a couple of UFOs on the go at the moment, most notably the first quilt for my brother's friend (I'm rather pleased with it though we'll see how the quilting goes as I'm considering doing it by machine) and a few more baby gifts for my friends.  Still have to decide on a blogiversary prize for Sarah and send out some swap packages to make up for unreliable swappers in the last round.

On that subject, a couple of people have asked if I am running another round of the swap.  I wasn't going to, but possibly will reconsider in September.  Drop a comment if you'd be keen.  The last one required a hell of a lot of mostly fruitless chasing after people that I didn't really have time for then, and certainly won't be able to do this time around and it kind of put me off.  I'm still not sure that everyone who notified me of problems eventually received their two packages which makes me cross and a little embarrassed.   I know that's not entirely fair on those of you who sent out gorgeous bundles of goodness on time, halfway around the world, but I'm being a little grinchlike.

You might notice the sidebar page about Harry Potter.  It's full of spoilers so if you have any interest about the series, don't even consider clicking there it if you haven't read all the books including Deathly Hallows.  You can't say you haven't been warned.

I think I've finally had it with Bloglines.  It either tells me all of my feeds have 1,844,293 new posts or doesn't bother to update me.  What content aggregator would you recommend?

There's a lot of waiting going on and that probably accounts for the slightly brow-furrowed air of petulance about this post.  Yes, I do know I'm doing it and no, I can't stop myself.  Waiting for the flat, a job, other stuff.  I know everything will fall into place eventually but until I find out what's happening with certain things everything else is subconsciously and literally on hold. 

Yesterday I was dreaming about opening a fabric shop.  What would your fantasy pass-the-days occupation be?  Say you won the lottery - what would you do?

I'm so over knitting...

That's what I've been thinking in the past few days. It's not true, of course.  Only a little bit anyway.

I realised I've completely effed up the socks.

Firstly the tops have completely different amounts of rib, because I didn't take the first one with me when I started on the second. 

And then I realised that on the first one, somehow I just went a bit mad and did the heel flap on 30 stitches instead of 32.  Not insurmountable I suppose but annoying.

When I got into the second one I did count to make sure that I had the right number of stitches on the heel flap needles.  But neglected to count the remaining ones, so didn't notice that I only had 30 left there. That's right, two dropped stitches, now marked by the extra DPNs stuck in.  So basically I think I'll rip the second back and get it all right, from rib onwards.  Mutter, mutter.

Pauline helped me with the Clapotis the other night, she ripped it back and fixed it, while Helen wound up the reams of frogged angora.  Pauline persevered in getting me to try the purling-instead-of-using-stitch-markers route, and sat beside me to make sure I had it right, and lo, it seemed to be working in spite of my lack of prowess.

Until the end of that section, anyway. 

The next day I moved on to the straight sections and just couldn't get it right.  When, if I ever go back to it, I think I'll be using markers, sorry P, I just can't seem to get it.  Now I've ripped it back quite a few rows and can't get the stitch count right.  Bah.  However I guess the other members of the Clap along may think it's a bit odd if I don't stick with it.

We're finally getting some long-wished for sunshine in London (Obviously it's two days in and we're already hearing complaints about the heat) so the Innocent fete yesterday was a big success.  There were fifteen of us there for my friend's hen do.  We eventually retreated into the shade under the trees.  The knitting tent, run by Buzz of All the Fun of the Fair, was actually the coolest place to be but I didn't think they'd take kindly to all of us piling in there, although there were two knitters amongst the group - I just about count myself as one of them. 

It was rather more sedate than most hen dos (didn't manage to find Claire in the crowds but she thought she'd spotted our hen, dressed in a veil and L Plates - no, not us, our hen had no identifying features) but great fun.  We went back to the B2B's house for champers, facepacks and Dirty Dancing though some of us had to leave a little early before the movies started to get back into London.  Early on the in the day, I was introduced to one of the other guests and was told that her ex-husband was a colleague of the groom.  I said I got divorced recently too and she immediately said 'Thank god!' because it is a little surreal when it seems like the entire world is married and/or pregnant, which pretty much summed up the demographic of the group.  We ended up catching the train back to town together and it was interesting talking about our situations.  She's doing the match.com route at the moment and I have to say, it sounds hellish and I'm now 150% happy with not doing anything like that. 

What I am trying to do instead is to concentrate on other stuff which is gaining momentum  at the moment.  The flat-purchasing, obviously.   Job-hunting, still on the lookout for the right permanent thing.  Baby quilts, I've got two to make plus another two (baby's sex as yet unknown) on the list.  That's without considering preserving fruit , finishing the dress that Dolly's been wearing for two months or getting the letterpress working.  I'm going out with a new running club tomorrow because it's time to make more of an effort to improve my health, sort out my back and lose some weight.  Ting and I were  talking on Friday after seeing 'In Conversation' and I said that I need to get myself together and she kindly said that I wouldn't want to lose too much weight, because when people do, it often makes them look older.  Bless her for thinking I'd get to that point.  However as two people have put my age at 25 this week - how flattering! - I reckon I've got some leeway there...

The world's smallest violin

...is playing for Mr Potato Head.  (Formerly known as XH).

Not going to go into it, but I saw him last night and he tried to nonchalantly throw in what I felt were carefully crafted comments about how hard it all is for him. Breathe in, breathe out.  I can't take issue with the fact that the marriage ended, if he felt that it was never going to work out then that's the way it is.  That doesn't excuse him for starting an affair while he was still married to me and leaving me to draw my own strangulated conclusions about the demise of the marriage without ever communicating anything to me, making me elicit every sad strain of the story out of him. So sympathy is off the menu. 

Moreover I've been musing about moving on, and no I don't mean about buying a new flat because although I hope that's all going through, there are some niggles.  Like the lease specifies that you can't have pets.  I mean, what would I do without my feline paperweights?  It's house-hunting all over again if this can't be overcome.

I've been thinking - no, musing still, because musing suggests the appropriate amount of trepidation and commensurate caution - musing about meeting someone else. 

It's almost like a seven year relationship never happened, mainly because I'm blanking it I suppose but I look back and think how the hell did it all start?  I used to firmly believe that you meet someone when you are happy and least expecting it.  Which was what happened last time, more or less.  A holiday romance that turned into more.  So now I'm relatively-happy-comparatively-speaking and how do I go about meeting someone.  Do I go about it at all? Do I just wait to see who I meet, or who Fate throws into my path.  Or go down the mysinglefriend route, on a campaign.   Get out there, start 'dating'.  Holy crap, I think I am too scared for that. No, I know I am too scared for that.  What about seeing if any friends say 'I know this great guy' - at which point my inner cynic comes roaring to the fore screaming 'Freak! Freak!  Why the hell is he still single?'  And how do you say 'Oh dear god. I like your taste in yarn/restaurants/clothes so sweet dear lord why would you think I'd ever have anything in common with this troglodyte humpbacked  misogynist taxidermist?'  You know, it's not that I want a new relationship.  I think I just want some fun.  Maybe a frisson of excitment...

Gah.  A lot to think about.  Or maybe don't think about it at all.  It will be interesting to see what happens next...