Carefree and slothful

Eating: salted pistashio nuts by the handful (mmm....)

Listening: this afternoon it's been a few compilations, the Waifs, and Travis

Reading: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch - far too much fun for just one book.

Yeah, I should probably be studying. But it's such a Nice Day... I'm fairly certain that this will continue to be the justification for all my brands of procrastination, at least for the next while anyway. Definitely until the novelty of sun wears off...

Anyway, since it is such a Nice Day, I walked home from my morning class - 3 kilometres of glorious sunshine! - via the market, where I acquired smoothie makings and chocolate biscuits. And now I've spent the afternoon with the television off and the stereo on, full of strawberries, banana, passionfruit, and general feelings of good mood. Hurrah!

Above is said smoothie (tasty!) with the beginnings of a Mrs Darcy cardigan (in my very favourite shade of green - the yarn is cheap and unimpressive, but I love the colour so much that all is forgiven). I started it yesterday, and ended up knitting quite a sizable chunk of it while sitting on the couch with a mug of tea, avoiding reality and watching back to back episodes of Stargate Atlantis (for I, my friends, am a tragic nerd).

I've been thinking the last while that I really want to get back into sewing. Well, "back into" might be more than a little misleading - I was never particularly proficient. I could make skirts, capes, and occasionally ill-fitting pants. But I want to get better. Working against me is the fact that my sewing machine is ancient and the instruction manual that came with it has long since been lost, but I am nothing if not determined... I've been reading a book on how to make skirts, and if I can learn how to do that, then I will be a happy camper indeed. I like wearing skirts, but I am not really shaped correctly for lots of shop bought ones to be flattering. One simple thing keeps thwarting me: my widest part is not my hips - it's my thighs (surely I'm not the only woman out there with this problem?). So if I can learn to make clothes to accomodate this I shall be happy indeed...

Oh, and speaking of happy, I have lovely yarn from Live 2 Knit. Figured it was about time I tried some of their yarn - supporting the locals and all that. So I acquired some 4ply 100% silk in the 'Seaglass' colourway and some 10ply merino in "Tidal". They're both so beautiful I don't even want to take them out of the skein. Behold my photo that totally fails to do justice to the beautiful colours (both skeins are much darker in real life):

I have no idea what I'm going to do with them (a few hazy ideas for the silk, but nothing too specific yet)... They're so beautiful that frankly I'm happy enough just to know that they exist and that they're mine...

Anyway, off to enjoy the rest of my afternoon. Tonight I need to go up and do the final clean of my old place. I've conscripted my Dad to help (well, by conscripted I mean he very nicely volunteered), so hopefully the cleaning won't take too long. Though it's not the cleaning I'm fussed about - it's being there. Too many bad memories now. Oh well, I'll just have to remember the good ones. After all - a whole lot of knitting took place in that lounge room too!