Jumbled Words

This post was written a week ago, though apparently I did not hit publish…

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Cups of tea drunk today: 3.
Times I used the kettle rather than the microwave to heat said water: 3.
Likelihood this makes me British: 0.

I enjoy structured blogging, so here we go.

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Procraftination.
As most of you probably know I run a low-key, DIY, stay-at-home-without-children type business. I sell cloth pads and accessories (okay, mostly cloth pads, but um, more is coming). My webpage can be found here, and my craft blog here. It has various crafty pursuits in it, because I hate when people try to sell things in every single post they make, so I’m trying to mix it up.

I do some knitting patterns too, all free for you to use, should you want to do so. I am not the most accomplished pattern writer, and am in awe of those that are. My dear friend Corrina, on the other hand, is. She is getting a pattern published any day now! So happy for her.

Anyway, the reason I’m bringing this up – would there be any interest of a Twitter account especially for crafty/business type tweeting? I feel like if I did it on my current account it would drown in all the random observations and football mania, but as I already mentioned, people that tweet/blog/etc just to sell things? Booooring.

Maybe I just need a hash-tag of my own…

To-Do-List.
I try to put five things on my to-do-list a week. It’s what I call “trying to live a normal life and make myself not collapse in a heap”. I hope that if I keep this up, it will help me get well sooner. Well, one can hope, right?

So, this week I had 1) clean bathroom and kitchen, 2) cut out fabric, finish pinning it together (this was also on last week’s to-do-list, ie big fail on that, 3) put away laundry, 4) write some, 5) read at least one book.

I managed 1, 4 and 5. Granted “write some” isn’t exactly specific, but I did re-write a very difficult chapter, so I’ll give myself a pass on that one. Books read: Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Tightrope by Gillian Cross.

As for 2 and 3 I have some hope of accomplishing at least one of them before tomorrow night. Go me.

Gluten free stuff.
This one must be FASCINATING to read. But okay. Must buy new pasta strainer, I think that is what’s making me sick.

Ate yummy things this week: Tofu alla Cacciatore (butchered spelling, I know, I know), random stew of awesomeness, more tofu, with glass noodles, which is my new favourite dish. Yesterday mum made vegetarian gluten free lasagna, which was very yummy.

I tried to make vegan gluten free brownies. They BOILED THEMSELVES INTO CONCRETE. It took me two days of soaking before I could shoe horn it out of the cake tin I put it in. I have not yet dared to look at the cookie sheet I protected the oven with.

I can make gluten free cookies and muffins just fine, but brownies? Um, no.

Socialising.
Making myself do this too, just to get out of the house. I managed three times this week; Monday I had tea with Viola, Thursday I went to weaving and chatted with little old ladies, and Friday I went over to my parents house to watch the handball game and have dinner.

I met Viola’s boyfriend for the first time, admired their flat that has an OFFICE (colour me jealous) and talked about… stuff. I also knitted some, but that’s no surprise.

The weaving was more mentally trying than I’d like; they’ve changed it so that it’s a full class on Thursdays too, and there were people everywhere. I am very sensitive to noise, and these people talk OMG SO LOUDLY. I suppose that is par for the course when you hit 75, but come on!

Handball, then. It’s the sport of our little town. Sure, there’s a hockey and several football teams as well, but generally people don’t care so much about them. I tried to explain this sport to a friend, vaguely successfully, as I mostly listed sports it’s not like (football, volley ball, basketball), so here is a link to Wikipedia, in case somebody is interested. Our boys lost, sadly, 30-29 (yes, it’s normal with that many goals), but it’s always exciting to see people you know of in the national team. We had two from the tiny place I’m from (population 1000+) this time, though one is a goalie and barely got any play time. But in the end Sweden was knocked out of the European Championships before the semi finals, and it’s the first time in 36 years we don’t move on to the next stage… Disappointment!

Twitter party.
I love these. I never go out, because of the noise factor, among other things, but today the Aurealis Award happened, and people were live tweeting. Scott Westerfeld, author of the Uglies series and all that (which I need to read, have a copy!) tweeted, on the insistance of the twitt-o-sphere (so hard to type that word with a straight face, but what am I supposed to call it?), what all the winners were wearing.

Twelfth Planet Press was shortlisted for seven awards, but sadly did not win any. I wish that Tansy’s Siren Beat (yay gratuitous linkage!) would have won, because I love that book so and if I ever get to go to Tasmania I will demand sightseeing of all the places mentioned in the book. (Possibly I’m a tad biased. Just a tad.)

Political stuff.
So many things to mention here!

a) Alisa aka Girlie Jones has an amazing post on Joanna Russ and women in speculative fiction up here. It (as of this very moment) has 71 comments to it, most of them awesome. For example somebody is using the metaphor of somebody standing on your foot and asking them to stop, and possibly being less polite the hundredth time it happens, to describe sexism and why feminists get tired of repeating Feminism 101 over and over and over again.

Very interesting read.

b) Amanda Palmer, Margaret Cho and the fake Katy Perry video. I could say many things here, but I can’t really articulate myself in less than thousands of words, and I don’t have time for that. Watch the clip, form your own opinion.

c) Here in Sweden two female politicians are talked about for two different reasons. Note that I don’t support the political party that either of these women belong to, but that’s besides the point.

1) Mona Sahlin is posing on a pic with seven other politicians, five male, three female, with a Louis Vuitton bag at her feet. She’s criticised for having a 6000 SEK (roughly 800 USD) purse when that is about half of what people earn in a month. And sure, I can see many things more important to purchase than a freaking purse (I so don’t get the purse thing), but I do wonder how much the suits of the male politicians on the same picture cost. And as an aside, it’s said that the purse was a gift and that it was given to her seven freaking years ago. How much are all the purses you’ve used in the last seven years worth? Just a question.

2) Birgitta Ohlsson of another party altogether is pregnant. She’s due in July, and the election is in late September, and people are horrified that she’s not counting it out. Now, I know several people with small children, and I know how stressful the first few months can be, but I assume that a politician have the means to pay for daycare and such, and not to mention that her husband is (according to her blog) going to take the first few months of paternity leave. We can share here, you see, which is amazing, and I think this is the exact reason for it.

I rather enjoyed the blog post she wrote about it, saying things along the line of “I’m married to a modern man, not a dinosaur”, and “if I’m going to lose a post it’s going to be because I’m not the right person or competent enough”, asking what decade media thinks it is anyway.

d) New shiny blog in my blogroll – Trollhare. He writes about fat acceptance (though I’m not sure if he calls it that), queer and/or gender stuff, politics, veganism and mental health. I enjoy his posts a whole lot, and comment possibly a bit too much. But it’s that awesome.

And really, a blog with the subtitle “welcome to the freakshow”? Love at first sight.

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I totally meant to do some sewing after writing this, before making dinner, but it took longer than I’d expected, so now I have to go glare at my fridge and see what it produces… I think tofu loaf. If I can find my favourite recipe.

PS. Is a post with so many different subjects that it requires ten separate tags fail or win? I can’t decide.