A house of lurgies

I made it all through winter without getting horribly sick, so I'm not  really bitter about getting sick now - just surprised at how bad this bug is. Muscle and joint aches, head like a door got slammed on it, and a phlegmy brick in my breathing passages -it could even be 'flu.

This is my second day off sick - yesterday I started and finished a knitted hat (from Oak Trail from Alana Dakos' Botanical Knits) which is lovely and warm and would have been really useful to wear yesterday when I was feeling bone-chilled (but today it doesn't feel cold so the hat goes straight into storage).

TLM is also sick, and the boy has a painful stye in the eye.

I had to make a block booking at the doctor's for this afternoon!

Happy Halloween to you too.

Naked sofa

My sofas are about 14 years old, and from the day they arrived in this house I have always kept them well-covered. 

I could done the Cantonese thing and used thick clear plastic but I knew(from experience) that would not be comfortable...

So in the summer I'd cover them with cotton throws (until they disintegrated, when I replaced the throws with some awful navy blue covers), and in the winter I covered them with those furry synthetic single-bed-size bed covers  (one in gold, the other purple).

Yesterday I decided it was time to live with the sofas in their original colours, which is what I attracted me to them in the first place.

Knitting injury

I've hurt my left wrist. Whether I stretch out my fingers, make a fist, lift something heavy or just twist and turn it, it gives me pain.

And I'm left-handed, which makes it worse.

Bah.

A jolly good spoiling

I had a great birthday today. Initially I was bothered that I'd have to get up early to take my mum to the lab to get her quarterly blood test done, followed by what I was expecting to be a horrific hour at the supermarket (also with my mum). But then I thought "what the heck's wrong with spending a little time on my birthday, with the woman who made it all possible?" After that everything just got better and better.

The boy and TLM spoiled me horribly. Apart from two wrapped presents (a trendy polka-dotted knitting bag with matching needle case, and a set of Taschen fashion books), they also took me shopping at Kirkaldies.

Although TLM did get somewhat bored at that point - but that's probably because (if she is to be believed) she was so excited about my birthday today that she didn't get a wink of sleep last night. And in any case her mood improved considerably after the boy bought her a new game for her Nintendo DS.

So anyway one of the additional presents I got was a pair of leaf-green NYDJ jeans. They were so comfortable! It's all that industrial strength elastic apparently, which keeps your flabby bits in check and supposedly lifts and separates too (maybe not that last bit) - and makes it possible to bend and touch your toes without cutting yourself in half.

Having said that, when I checked out my rear view I really noticed how big my bum  looked (no doubt it's true size and not an optical illusion), which I don't get with my Mavi jeans - so I guess NYDJ jeans don't quite work magic...

I so love the fit of the new jeans that...I now consider elastic waist pants as a viable style option. It's probably not the intended outcome of the jeans designers!

a small clay nation

I found some modelling clay at Uncle Bill's (a shop for thrifty folks, like a cross between a 2 Dollar shop and the Warehouse).

So one afternoon TLM and I got crafty -

This is my creation - an alien city mayor

This is TLM's crocodile

Also from the mind of TLM, a snake, a rabbit, a penis-shaped alien tree and a boob-monster