SAT: Happy Dancing Epilogue

This is where I started from

and this is what I have now:

Pieces of information:

• Designer: Ellen Maurer-Stroh
• Design: Bunny Baby
• Fabric: 16 count aida (I know, but while signing up they gave evenweave as another option, but as, less surprisingly people prefer aida (for reasons beyond me) it was what we were given.)
• Why?: This is for Stitchers for Children charity RR.

I didn't achieve as much I wanted or as much I seemed to be able to achieve based on my speed in Friday, but my new allergy medicine makes me really tired - and it doesn't help to take it in the evening as I will be twice as tired during the day...
Maybe I will do better next month, as I will ask for another new antihistamine if my energy levels stay this low.

Nevertheless, a happy dance!

Keeping myself busy

After getting her cell number from the synagogue I called to the Hebrew teacher in Friday... and now I have more things to do every week, in other words I will spend an hour every Tuesday in good company of alefbets.
What makes it interesting is that I haven't been in the lessons in two years and her opinion was that I can easily continue from where I stopped.
Admittedly one of the reasons why I have always liked her is that she doesn't seem to know the phrase I/ you can't do it.

This means that my stitching time will be limited in Tuesdays (as the day will go as follows: course -> back home -> shower -> eat -> head to the synagogue (well, in sense of correct terms the lessons are ran in the Jewish School of Helsinki, which is in Jewish Community Centre which is commonly referred as synagogue - the temple itself is in the community centre and in the same building as the school) -> learn -> come home at 21), though I have come up with a plan: I can stitch small items while waiting the lesson to begin (I usually have about 20-30 minutes to wait due buss scheduling (I'm too lazy to use the bus- train combo)) and therefore have some progress every day.
I will probably take something small with me to the course too, in case there are any idle moments (lunch, coffee breaks etc.).

And now, I am off to bed... (I foresee some lousy peak flow results in the morning. *grin*)

By the way

As I don't have enough projects on the go I decided to stitch myself alephbets as a re-learning experience. I have decided to go back to Hebrew lessons in autumn (I assume that JCoH still provides Hebrew lessons), no matter how broke I may be because of the bus fares.

Now that I am single enough to concentrate on important issues (and hopefully I will be healthier in September than I am now)...
Hebrew has always been something I am good at because it's so logical language and it's amazingly easy to pronounce if you speak Finnish as your native (excluding one consonant which will always reveal that I am not native Hebrew speaker) - and I am specialised on languages with an interesting alphabet (Russian, Greek, Hebrew..).

Rewriting dictionaries

Basket case:

Cat who likes to spend time under a basket.

(You know those doggy beds? That is one of those.... upside down.)

On dyeing

Thank you for the comments on my dyed thingies. There are some little details I'd like to let you know:

1. I am an artisan of textile designing and manufacturing (my 'major' was weaving (designing and manufacturing) though) by education and therefore dyeing was part of my education. I have spent good part of three years in the dye 'lab' (there was only one place I spent more time in and that was our 'weavery' (hall of looms)).

2. I won't write a tutorial, even Angela asked for it, because the process differs between brands and between colour types (there are hot dyes, cold dyes, machine dyes..). Only advices I give you are: prewash the item and trust yourself. (The dye will attach the fiber even if you made a mistake. The result just may be something you never expected it to be - and sometimes it is a good thing.)

3. Dyeing is actually very, very easy, you just need the courage to try it. Dye packets contain very good instructions (at least Dylon dyes do) so if you know how to read you know how to dye.

At this moment I would love to experiment with painting the fabric with the dyes, but as it is winter and I don't have a backyard I can't. Some day...

 

Why I don't use subtitles?

Recently I have been watching DVDs while stitching, and today I realised once again why I disable subtitles every time... I do it because it seems to me that translators don't either speak Finnish or English fluently (and some of them don't seem to speak either..). For crying out loud even I could do better translations with my elementary school English... but then, they provide form of entertainment.

Gothic snowballs, dirty little secrets and SIL

After almost finishing first of the snowballs I decided to ditch what I had done and restart. This time I'll work straight from the original instructions.
But next time when I'm planning to knit plain, please, do come and hit me with a halibut - though... I have four planned projects (small) which will be knitted as plain knit...

One is insane, no doubt about that.

On something completely different.

Those of you few who know more about my personal history this is not a surprise, and I can hear you snort "Oh yeah, that's so not new..."
I confirmed it in Friday, though I have seen the signs of it long, long time... I seem to have a fetish for Indian men.
I know, it sounds stupid and awfully narrow-minded, but what can one do? What can you do when local men just don't do it for you? (And, admittedly, during last two and a half years my only short distance anythings have been with men of Indian origin...)
Lady is not made of wood, you know.

Though, I'm not saying that I don't find men of European origin (I hate word Caucasian, and as most "whites" in Northern America are also of European origin...) attractive, it just doesn't happen very often.

And then... something else...

My beloved SIL, oh yes... I think I have made despising her a hobby of mine.

Today she wanted to be helped on two issues (she only seems to come to our IRC channel when she needs something (can we say a leech?)):

1. recipe for tortillas,
2. help with English, as BBB (Brother-by-Blood *grin*) had passed out (in Finnish that refers usually to drunken state passing out... O_o) and she had to (you never have to do anything, you know) communicate with someone in English.

The thing is...

1. They have cook books (they have extremely good series of them which our mother has given to BBB as his graduation gift - and additional parts when they got married (we all have got both of the series)), they have internet (and I assume hope that either one of them is actually able to read and/or write)... and she's too lazy to consult those books they have, even they most likely are the closest, and easiest source of information. She refuses to use Google, as apparently typing word tortilla would be so amazingly difficult...
   She's almost 32 and she still needs someone to think for her.

2. I still remember how certain SIL of mine said to me that she does not need to know any English. (Though she also assumed in that same sentence that I know English just because I want to date "exotic men"... w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l. (Can we say active ignorance?))

I also happened to mention about the latter to her, and, surprisingly she gave /quit command quite soon after it. (Quite properly my last line before it was Boa noite e sonhos bonitos. (As I tried to remember what is Good night in Hungarian, but remembered only the Portuguese equivalent...) How did she knew what it meant?! *grin*)

Repeat is mother of ranting

It's rather curious how personally people take the fact that I choose my company not just by intellect, but by grammatical correctness (I'm not saying it has to be perfect, as mine isn't, but you can demand some quality even from non-native speaker) - including capitalisation and punctuation. Though, if you ask from me (and why wouldn't you, this is my blog anyway) those things do correlate.
I never say to anyone that they're bad because they lack language skills, or worthless as human beings because of that. But as I see it grammatical correctness is also about respect, and, sorry to say, I don't feel very respected when one writes all lowercase, slang and doesn't use punctuation...
And experience has taught me that if one doesn't know how to write English correctly one doesn't usually possess such fluency in English which is needed to understand what I talk about.

I'm not saying I'm good in English or that my vocabulary is great, I'm just basing this on what I've heard - from people who actually can interact with my level.

I do certain question hear time to time: "Do you study philology or do you teach languages/ write for living?"
Other one is: "How your vocabulary is so good?!" (I've quite good vocabulary in Finnish, and I'm sure it explains also level of my vocabulary in English - though I still think my vocabulary is full of big, black holes.)

Well, how personally they take it? They reveal their insecurities by insulting you, and don't seem to understand that they prove my point by doing so.

Lost in translation?

Can't sleep, for a certain reason, so I decided to flood my little blog a little bit more...

When I was coming home from grocery yesterday I realised something rather interesting: I feel much more comfortable when I use English in communicating with people. And it applies even with the communication in here.
And this realisation came from little conversation I had with someone when I guided her to correct bus stop.

Now, the question is: How the heck it's more natural for me to communicate with English, which is nowhere close to my native language?
I've never been exposed to English that much so it can't explain it, our parents are purely monolingual, I'm not good with languages (if you ask from me, that is)... what explains it? Though I should also ask what explains that at least two out of three of us ('us' referring to siblings) speak English (more or less) fluently without excessive studying? Genes? Sticky brains which catch everything they can? (Not that far fetched actually.) Pure luck?

And talking of oddities... since I came back from Thailand I've had this odd feeling of not belonging here. It's nothing new, but it has never been this permanent.
This is where I've born, this is my home, but I'm not sure do I belong here.
Maybe I won't feel home before I have a need and reason to stay, no matter where it is. Maybe I'll never feel like home in anywhere as I'm an outsider by birth? (And to prove that I'm related to my sister and that we either have something wrong in our genes or upbringing: bits_2_whole proudly presents Clarity. (Second paragraph applies to this issue, but in general I'd have written all that.))

So many questions, not enough answers.

Ravings of a victim of jet lag; This and that - and everything else

I should write one entry considering Bangkok, but I'm too tired to do it, so I'll concentrate on other things on my mind.

Firstly:

World is odd place. I just chatted few minutes with someone who was applying to be part of my life before I got involved with Wolfie... ("You're a beautiful woman. I'm sure you'll find your soul mate." If it'd be that easy... *sighs*)
I'm not sure, but it feels that mr.X thinks that I was playing with him because I chose to concentrate on Wolfie. In certain extent that thought bothers me.

Secondly...

I seem to be interesting to certain member(s) of my family only when I'm in the brink of a relationship... Yeah, one SIL related rant again.
Since I told to my family that Wolfie and I won't be 'us' she hasn't sent me any IMs or hasn't been around in our family's IRC channel.
When I went to Bangkok, and before I told them (we (W. and I) knew it in early stage so there was some delay), she contacted (or at least tried to) me regular basis and idled around in IRC. My life was so interesting... and now, nothing.

And what's worse I'm dead sure that she has certain fetish for ethnicity, aspect of exotic (what ever it is) and... males I'm involved with. Or maybe I just get involved with way too good looking males. You never know. (Ok, I have never been involved with an ugly man, and I've to admit that last ones have been very nice to look at... *blush*)
It makes me worried because I'm quite sure that I won't end up in a relationship with a Finn in near future - or ever. I just don't seem to have anything in common with Finnish 46 XY karyotypes. (Don't ask me why. I don't know.)
It's not about not being able to trust my possible partner, but lack of trust towards my SIL...

I know she's able to cheat, and even I can't judge her because of that (being guilty for such an act myself in past) it bothers me because she's my brother's wife. And she has a good husband in many ways: he's good looking, physically fit and a good father (I'd think like this even he wasn't my brother). And the thought that she has been drooling after every man I've been involved with in past eight years makes me shiver.
The thing is that she does it very clearly, even she seems to think she's able to hide it. And it's very clear that she doesn't respect her own marriage or me... Sometimes it feels that she can't understand how I find those good looking, intelligent males being this nasty, plumpy brainiac who I am. (They come into my life because they like my brains - and looks. Because I've things to give, because I'm able to challenge them.)

What makes me worry is that I hate the feeling that my possible partner is just piece of flesh, something to show around.... a status symbol, something exciting. A possession without any value as a human being.
It makes me shiver because I'm with a person, not the looks or ethnicity (nor wealth/ social status/ profession (I just find males with good jobs *whistling innocently*)/ etc.). (Though, I admit that lately I've gotten fond of males with darker skin tone. They look healthier for some reason. And it's partly all about the attraction between opposites.)
It'd also mean that possible children of me and possible partner would be only freak show stars to my 'dear' SIL...

My honest opinion is that every single one of us should be involved with someone who's outside of our own cultural circle, just to broaden one's views of world and human race. (I can say that out of experience. Abhi taught me quite much without knowing it himself...) And to notice that no matter how we look we're all made of flesh and blood.

2½

And my father seems to think that Wolfie and I failed because of the cultural differences (in other words: It's no wonder that macho latino man can't get along with you... *SIGH* Just because he's South American by birth... ignorance is bliss, they say.).
If he only knew all the similarities we share in personal history, opinions etc.. (And my intellect wasn't a problem to him, as fact is that he fell in love with my brains.)

If my father just could get his head out of his a** for while.

Thirdly

I need to get decaffeinated from somewhere. My heart doesn't like regular coffee... after drinking decaf for a month.

Fourtly

This is not first time I hear this question in some form, but I can't stop wondering.... "What's your secret to speaking a foreign language with such exquisite beauty and poise and vocabulary that would shame 99% of people in the English speaking world?"
The thing is that I do survive with English, but I wouldn't say that my vocabulary is that good. (Though fact is that I'm able to have relationships in English and I survived last month speaking nothing else than English (and this wasn't even first time).) In my opinion I've dreadful black holes in that thing they call vocabulary....
But then.... maybe I should believe common opinion: it's not rare that people think I'm native English speaker. (Though I just don't get it. I'm not good at languages - or maybe I'm just too self-critical..)

Links, topic for the day and music

Hih, useful link for me (found from english): Dictionary of English slang and colloquialisms of the U.K..
Useful? Yes, I just can't understand slang even my English is somewhat tolerable. But then, I try to avoid using slang anyway.
Ok, I admit using slang when talking in Finnish (well, and in IRC, but it's almost talking *ahem*), but otherwise I more or less dislike it. (Though there are exceptions. If person's language is mostly 'pure' and one's able to produce beautiful language I don't mind some slang.)
Hypocrite opinion from non-native English speaker? Maybe, but then, I'm consistent. I also dislike slang in written form of communication in Finnish. (And then... I have bad habit of using dialects when writing (in forums) in Finnish...)

Language/grammar nazi in person here. Nice to meet you all.

Our topic for the day is...

Why it seems to me that about half of the blogging society (at least this seems to be trend in stitching bloggers) has huge amounts of stress at the moment? Or do I notice it easier just because stress is very much there in my life at this moment? (Having issues with my own economic crisis and Wolfie is dead tired/stressed out because of the project he's working in (not to mention that I might be there already without these problems *sigh*) - or more like because of his boss... It breaks your heart, really, to see his that exhausted and not being able to to anything, anything else than give my words to him. To tell how dear he is to me. To listen. (Yes, I know these are the basics, and I couldn't do more from afar etc., but I'd really like to be able to do more. To be there.))

And if I'm not seeing things why now? So many people at the same time? As it seems to be thing on this side of the equator, and we're supposed to have a summer here. Summer should be happy time, time of leisure, shouldn't it?

And then for something completely different...

Police is your friend (It's *.pdf file so be forewarned - and free ad: FoxIt Pro, for senile old computers like mine is (it's really good software, btw)).

Music

I've blogged about music quite much lately (I do know why it's so - very easy to deduce if you know thing or two). Only little notions, but anyway... It's interesting how certain songs represent certain people or certain times.
Mandalay's Beautiful was echoing in my head last night, because it was last song I listened before going to bed, and because (you all know where this is leading to) it reminds me of certain someone. *coughs*

"Do you know you're beautiful/ You are, yes you are."

Those lyrics are very simple (try to google them), but it's very beautiful song for reason or another. And it reminds me of Wolfie, for a reason.

Btw

Money, money, money... Part one in my fight with the welfare and SII is over, I've money on my account again. Now I can almost breathe.

S-A-T: Epilogue

It all started from this...

This is what I had few minutes ago

Not that much, but my Stitch-A-Thon goal was to cure my mojoitis and it seems to me that it worked.
And I had good reason to be slow. I've had a migraine today because I stayed up after 3 am today. I slept 7 hours, which should have been enough, but apparently I'm getting old and grumpy.
Or maybe I just should obey my migraine head and try to live like a good person.

Though... it was worth it. First time, in that 40 years we've participated, when Finns success in ESC. It wont probably happen again during my lifetime. (No, choice of blogging song has nothing to do with my lifetime or being old and grumpy.)
Anyway, metal (though Lordi is categorized as hard rock, I think) is what Finns do best. Long, cold, dark winters; short, warm summers without any actual darkness... We just don't know how to do good pop because we're not cheery enough.

Nrrd in love

Isn't this cute or what? ^^

And while talking of nerds in love... Meu Lobinho just knows how to be cute. ^^
I wished him good night (in Portuguese - just because I can, and little things are important) few hours ago, and just thought aloud in that SMS that I should improve my Portuguese... And what did he do? Yes, he gave me short lesson of diminutives before hitting the sack. ^^

Just about the most wonderful thing you can do for knowledgeholic like I am. ^^

Happy 2nd birthday dear blog!

Coffee and cookies for everyone!

Yes, my dear blog is reaching it's obstinate age. According to my profile this blog was founded exactly 24th of April 2004 at 07:37:24 (GMT).

Back then it was known as My therapist... which it actually was, as I begun my blogging career because I wanted to process my thoughts.
My first entry is not a pretty sight, as I had no knowledge what-so-ever of HTML. In general my English wasn't as good as I'd like it to be now: I used slang, plurals and genitives were mixed, there were some confusions in 'similar' words and apparently my tenses were even more horrid they're nowadays. But then, I actually begun to use English for communicating two years ago, so not that bad from a rookie?

So, love was my reason to become a blogger. Love has been my reason to blog more or less these two years - have it been end of relationship, new love or living in it. Or my love for cross stitching or thinking.

At least I can say that today, two years since I found Livejournal, I'm much happier, much more contented with myself than I was back then and I seem to become softer, less unconditional (flexible might do it). But I've also grew stronger.
During last year I've found new world of stitching blogs, and 'met' great personalities trough blogging.

What can I say? Life has gotten better, and in my current situation it just keeps on getting better. (Yes, I'm like this when I'm happily in love. But I can't help it, he's such a wonderful person. ^^)

Actually I did some tagging in those first entries (I left dan out because we're both different than we were then), so in case you really want to know: divorce tag for you reading pleasure.

Learning new things

I'm studying Portuguese. Yes, I am. Wolfie is teaching me.
Though I don't know that much - yet - at least I know how to say I have four cats (and of course I know how to say I love you, my dear - in addition to few other things) so that's quite much about me anyway... ^^ (And he's studying Finnish with help of yours truly and grammar etc. (actually I'm impressed that he was able to find suitable literature from [big city in SE Asia]). I'm very impressed. ^^ (Have I mentioned how wonderful he is? I have...? O_o ))

So, be forewarned chanda_m, soon there'll be comments with my pigdin Portuguese.

I'm very proud of this

True English Nerd You scored 78 erudition!

Not only do you know your subjects from your subjects and your definite from your indefinite articles, but you've got quite a handle on the literature and the history of the language as well. Huzzah, and well done! The English snobs of Boston salute you.

Link: The Are You Truly Erudite? Test

And I don't know anything about English literature or grammar if you ask from me.

DMC Mentor Program

It seems to me that I'm DMC Mentor now. This was first launched in States, but now it seems to landed in Europe too. I used French site to apply (Notification: I do not speak French, but it went well without BF...), but it seems to be also in Spanish site.
If I had been wise, I'd have signed in to Spanish mentoring program, but on the other hand I've my loyal friend BabelFish and my loyal pescado de Babel (aka. Sonnenschein), and he happens to speak French too... (What are men for if not for translating?)

And anyway I'll work as living translating machine for him when he moves so I can ask little favours from him sometimes.