this way madness lies

my friends, I have to tell you: I am wreckage. I have 2 1/2 days of anti-biotics left and i'm still coughing my lungs up hourly. I've been back at school for the last three days and i'm SO behind. I mean, my classes are fine and everything but i've done nowhere near the amount of marking i wanted to have done by now. Is making me crazy.
So tonight i am at home, marking essay drafts which i will return to my kids at the Swimming Carnival tomorrow. Marking essay drafts is not a sanity-forward type activity.

I am not a fan of the whole sports carnival thing. When i was at school as a student i was always a conscientious objector. As a teacher, that doesnt go down so well. So i've nominated myself for patrol of my house area. Apparently this is a crappy job, but i quite like playground duty and i dont want to encourage the kids to feel crappy by being a judge. yech.

and before you ask, there is no way in hell that i am going swimming. I do not need my students to see my cellulite, thankyou so very much!

A few people have asked recently exactly how big the stash is. After recent binge-ful events there has definitely been some stash explosion. It may have tripled.

This is my yarn room, also known as the spare room (if Monkey is in ear-shot) or Vic's room (during the reign of terror). Those two boxes contain sweater quantities of yarn that are not in original packets. Is that weird? Plastic bags just dont stack the same way, and they dont make zip-locks big enough. The two baskets in the background contain happyspider hand-dyed and spun for the obdm wool day this year :D
This is the cupboard that was the wardrobe in this room. You will notice large quantities of woolbale (which i am a fan of) and merino spun, also lots of pale yarn for dyeing. there is also spinning fibre and assorted odd-balls.
This is my cupboard in the office. See what I'm saying about yarn packets stacking so nicely? This is my pride-ful cupboard, containing all the yarn i want on hand to inspire me. left to right, top to bottom by stack. Top-ish shelf: Anchor Magicline cotton and some Katia Arc en Ciel; 4 packs of Zara and 1 pack of Me, 2 packs 8ply cotton, 3 packs Patons Dreamtime, 1 pack merino et soie, a few straggling balls of Me for Mum's cardi, some white moda vera bamboo/cotton; 7 packets of Zhivago.
Middle-ish Shelf: 7 packets of Jet; 2 packs white Inca 3 packs machinewash 8ply, 1 pack machinewash 5ply; 5 packs cleackheaton country, 1 pack white Inca; 2 packs of cleackheaton country 12ply.
Bottom shelf: basket of handspun and some cotone; moda vera supremo, paul and harmony; moda vera paul, katia espiga and moda vera merinos wool acrylic; 6 packets of harvest 8ply.
Tubs underneath - sock yarn, laceweight and odd balls.

none of this covers the stuff i intend to sell on or dispose of somehow. There are five giant boxes in the living room that are either being listed on my ravelry sell page or else i might cave in to eBay again soon. If only to get my living room back.
now that my full sickness is displayed I feel somehow less dirty. So I am cleansed - at least til the next binge.

I leave you with a few thoughts from some essay drafts I am marking (five points if you can tell me what the novel is):

"Ralph, as a head, is very calm at the beginning of the book."

"If and when they are broken or are not followed, the society will most likely fall and crumble and people will go their separate ways which does not do well in trying to achieve one amalgamated group."

"Jack would rather have stayed on the island as long as he got his protein."

Think calm, well structured, grammatically correct and sane thoughts for me...

Peace out,
Ms Spider

PS. How unfair is it that my house colour is yellow? i own no clothing that colour, precisely because it looks awful on me!

in which Ms Spider goes on and on until we pray her hands will fall off lest she type some more

Howdy!

It's interesting how naughty with blogging i have become, considering i LOVE the fact i have a captive (as far as i know) audience that i can rant at. I think part of the problem is having too much to say, coupled with a criminally short attention span (plus, this is eating into my knitting time y'know).

Also I have come to the realisation that many people read this who do not give two figs for what i am knitting (except in a sort of vague 'ooh colour-ish' manner, hello iso).

So in an endevour to make this blog as user friendly as possible (and as i dont think i can post under different categories - possibly because i am thick with computers) I am going to try posting under sub-headings. If all you want is yarn-porn (and fair e-bloody-nough i say) just skip to the end.

THE HOUSE

Monsieur le Creepy moved out this week and we have since painted his room. It was a truly migraine-inducing shade of orange (a very slightly less bright version of the blogger logo orange if you need a visual). we've painted three walls pale antique blue (called Breezy. Sherpa wanted the blue called Spanky, but i put my foot down despite the obvious appropriateness) and one wall a sort of deeper blue green. might sound a little OTT but it looks lovely and its very us.
I am just thrilled to be in a relationship where we can decide to paint and go into a paint shop and choose colours, style and everything in under 20 minutes with no problems. it must be love :)
We need a bed, a wardrobe, shelving, bedside tables and probably a trunk of some sort. But the bed is the main issue at the moment (one more night on the squidgy futon mattress and I'm going to jump the fence with a supersoaker and get the neighbours tabby) but if i ever get my butt in gear and call dear Kirsty i hope this will be sorted.

THE GARDEN

The radishes are up but the carrots are a little wimpy. planted corn the other day as well as some dill. and we are looking like beating my father to the first snow pea, ha ha!

UNI

Um... no. Don't want to talk about it. let's just say there are four weeks left and i move in with Sherpa at the end of them... where do you THINK my mind is right now?

CAMELOT

It is completely not my fault that i havent been giving you all fair warning, but they open on the 5th at Qbn Bicentenial Centre, tickets at ticketek. Sherpa is very bad about knowing dates and times so this is almost the first i have heard of it.
For those of you who missed the truly glowing review in Fridays Canberra Times, I provide for you the paragraph about my darling:

'All of this delicious misery is brought to a head by the plotting of Arthur's bitter, twisted bastard son Mordred. "Camelot," this swine scoffs, "where the table is round and the relationships are triangular!" (Sherpa), so perfect for the Players as a nerdy, malignant, almost supernaturally nasty Mordred (how I yearned to hiss at him and how my hand twitched with the desire to hurl my tape-recorder at him!) rather threatens to be the star of this production.'

I'm so proud it's ridiculous....
For those who are keen I will be attending the opening and closing night. It will be a great show and feel free to bring your knitting.

FIBRE

Well I've been a little short of attention lately...
I did a big stash-bust. the two littler boxes at the front are what i parted with (thanks so much Taph, i owe you some zip-locks bigtime!) I know it looks ver very messy... and i'd like to pretend that's the extent of my stash.. but.. well you know how it is. maybe i'll get you a snap in the new house... just maybe mind.
Spun this. Which was some wendseldale.. was just like spinning mohair. lovely sheen :)
And this. Which was some lovely mutli-tonal merino bought on eBay (here).
and this. (kind-of forgot to photo before i knit it up... cough cough. it's the pink stuff.)
Started this shawl
only to discover there is an error in the pattern... you may notice that in the picture there is a nice block of stocking stitch before the rows and rows of eyelets? not so in the pattern. Sigh.
Oh and this is the briar Rose yarn that i won from the Cast-On caption contest a while back. Any suggestions as to what it might like to be shall be fallen apon with cries of joy.

Much love all round, my apologies for the neglect... and i sadly wont be attending the next thursday SnB because it is in fact Camelot's opening night... sigh. what a choice...

The frantic
Ms Spider

PS I keep trying to update Vague but it wont publish... takes about half an hour of saying 0% published... i'm not as slack as i appear!!!

PPS will try to get some snaps of the house today :)