Weave-It!

My descent into crafting madness has hit an all time low. My addiction is getting so great that there is no craft I will not try. The newest whimsy is this, which arrived in the post today fresh from eBay. I am actually annoyed I'm going out tonight as it means I can't try it out till tomorrow. Curses! I shall have to wait another day before I can make my own tweed...

Vancooooover!

I've just got back from a trip to Vancouver. It was my first visit to the North American continent and it was marvellous and I bizarrely didn't seem to suffer from jet lag at all on the way home. What I am most pleased about though, is that I managed to restrain myself and stick to my Wardrobe Refashion Challenge. I didn't buy any clothes at all, which I am amazed at.

Whilst I can't see myself living the high-rise urban chic lifestyle, I fell in love with the houses just outside the city, lining the sides of the nearby Grouse mountain. I could quite happily live in one of those wooden blue houses with verandahs. With the VC passion for arts and crafts I think I'd fit in perfectly. Now... to get a job and the vast amounts of cash to afford one...

Andre the Giant

I have a new bike. He is black and shiny and I love him. He is called Andre after my favourite Princess Bride rhyming giant (Giant *is* the bike's make after all...). I have a terrible habit of giving things ridiculous names based on terrible puns (cf. my car - Rolf Yaris). I can only apologise.

I haven't cycled since I tore my knee ligament a few years ago playing rugby (I was never any good - hence the injury!) so it was a bit of a shock to the system to make my first commute today. I've been feeling guilty about driving to work every day for ages so now I'm planning on making it my new regime, and I'm hoping I can keep it up. Trouble is, after only two half hour rides I am utterly saddle-sore in places that are unmentionable on the Internet. I am planning on using my sewing skills to create some sort of hilarious cushioned fun-fur saddle cover to make me feel like I'm riding on my sofa. It's the only way forward - being Green*and* indulging in my craft addiction.

The other problem is the fact that I cycle on a canal. Getting on and off is not exactly easy and I feel like I'm taking part in a triathlon when I heave Andre onto my shoulders and run up and down the steps. It's not really me, I am far too weak and pathetic, so a non-step-related route is required. Along with a body that functions ...

I must be getting old...

... because I don't understand fashion anymore. Boys: Why belt your jeans *underneath* your arse, thereby showing me your greying pants? Why think that trucker caps look good? Why emulate Russell Brand's hairstyle? The latter I would hope is pure laziness, though I have a sneaking suspicion it takes longer to style mops like that than to cook a 3 course meal...

I went to a gig on Wednesday night at Birmingham University's student Guild (it was rather excellent and involved amp fires and drummer fights - rock and roll!) so I was probably asking for my eyes to be assaulted by dreadful 'fashionable' outfits sported by 18-21 year olds. The pinnacle of nastiness was a girl who was wearing extremely tight and extremely high cut jeans with neat little turn ups to show off her black patent sensible lace ups (last worn by my mother in 1985) plus a puffed sleeve white shirt tucked in. If I'd have worn that I'd have been quite rightfully beaten with sticks and hounded out of the town.

I came to the conclusion, with the help of C, that this is because these people never had to live through the 80s when they actually happened. Horror of horrors the next crop of undergraduates will have been born in 1990. I was aged 3-13 in the 80s, and these were formative years where you make your worst fashion and hair mistakes. My worst that I can remember off hand, which I may dig out a photo of if you're 'lucky', was ski pants with deck shoes (blue with white cording), topped off with a lilac bodywarmer. (As an aside - when did bodywarmers suddenly become gilets?).

I've realised that most people are happy with the fashions of their early twenties. Hence people in their forties still dressing in a slightly 80s way (though not to the ridiculous extents of the youth of today) and people of my age sticking with the mid-late 90s (I am at my happiest in slightly flared cords plus a top with different coloured sleeves - which in turn is an homage to the 70s). It's all extremely cyclical, and I'm just hoping that in 5-10 years time that young people will not be stalking the streets in shellsuits...

The free-est skirt in the world

Here's my second attempt for Wardrobe Refashion. I made a reversible wraparound skirt from a free pattern from Craft: magazine (instructions are here) and what's even better is that the material was all free too as it was from a stash I got from Freecycle last year which hasn't yet been used up. I've kind of given up with Freecycle these days as it's just too big to manage, but I still have a mooch every now and again...

I had to add the hat pin (it used to be grandma Blanche's) today due to the rather gusty nature of the weather but still isn't quite enough to retain my dignity! Can't complain for the grand total of nought pence though ;o)

The Joys of Laminate

I've mentioned my evil upstairs neighbour before, he's been a joy* to live beneath for the last year and a half...

(*utter nightmare)

After he'd been living there about a month I had a particularly bad night: it was 11.30 at night and he was sawing and banging and generally being annoying, then he came down to proudly tell me about his new laminate floor. My heart sank... He'd blatantly not put down any kind of underlay and the noise just got worse after that. He might as well have been living in my flat the amount I could hear.

Well it's now a year later and he goes through phases of loudness and quietness (the quietness usually being those times he's in rehab). But this last week or two has been particularly bad. It began with a girl banging on my window to be let in the block (one of my personal favourite annoyances) and there followed continual late night bangings and shoutings plus extremely loud Coldplay at 3:30 am - I was at boiling point (at least choose better music!)

I was on my way for a weekend in Aberdeen to see the boy L and I ran into my neighbour selling the Big Issue at the train station. I was about to have it out with him when he told me that he'd moved out 6 weeks ago to a Multiple Needs Unit, which is great news because he'll finally get the care and support he needs without bothering me any more! But then who is in the flat? It turns out that he gave the keys to someone else and she's been living there illegally. Lucky for me though that the council are coming to change the locks this week.

And here was my chance! I phoned the Leasehold Team to ask about laminate floors and whether there were any rules about it - it appears you need permission to lay them (great news I thought! He obviously didn't have it), and the builders may or may not take it up between tenants, and that it depends on them. She then passed me on to the contractors to see if they were likely to take it up when they made the flat ready for the next tenant. On finally getting through to the contractors I was told rather unhelpfully that what the builders are going to do to the upstairs flat is classified information (this is Birmingham City Council not the CIA!!) , that they were unlikely to take it up unless it was a repair (despite not having permission to lay it in the first place), that I couldn't even put in a request for the floor to be taken up, despite it making my life a misery, and there was nobody I could talk to as it was plainly none of my business. Leaseholders' rights my arse!

So, I'm at an impasse. My best bet is to either pounce on the new tenant and hope for sympathy, or write a letter to the council. I suspect neither will work brilliantly but I'll give it a go. Until then I'll make the most of a tenantless flat...

Tremors

Whilst not living up to the Kevin Bacon classic, Birmingham's earthquake last week seems to still be a fairly hot topic of conversation, which is bizarre given how entirely underwhelming the whole incident was in this area of the UK - a bit closer to the epicentre you could understand it.

This was my third earthquake, of which none have been particularly tremendous. The first was when I was living in Rome in 2000. It was obviously fairly small as it's been difficult to find any information to corroborate my hazy memory. According to one site it was 6 on the Mercalli scale (about 5 on the Richter scale - who knew there were so many ways of measuring?), but we were a fair way from the epicentre in Subiaco so didn't feel a great deal where we were. I'd had a hard night on the tiles on the Friday so at 11:30 the next morning was unsurprsingly in bed. Feeling the bed shake with a chronic hangover is an oddly disturbing experience.

The second was the Dudley earthquake of 2002 (causing millions of pounds worth of improvements as the joke goes...). I'd returned to Birmingham to start my PhD and was living in a shared house in Harborne. It was late night so again I was in bed. The house shook and caused general confusion. People were on the streets and hanging out of windows to see what had happened. One of our housemates thought there'd been a gas explosion so thought the best way to check this was to fire up the hob. Idiot! That's Physics postgraduates for you. What was more amusing was my other housemate. The week before we'd been doing some epic get-to-know-you drinking and I'd consumed a fair number of ciders. Strangely though I couldn't get drunk. I'd gone to bed sober but woke up in the middle of the night to go the the loo, but on my travels managed to pass out drunkenly on the landing. The night of the earthquake I was fairly offended to find out that she was convinced the earthquake was just me passing out on the landing once more. Apparently I am heavy enough to register 4.8 on the Richter scale...

This time there was very little confusion on my part. I'd only just gone to bed after a (non-drinking!) night at the pub and had only been there a few minutes when the bed shook. For a split second I thought it was my noisy neighbour who has been a pain recently but I soon realised that even he couldn't make enough noise to make my bed shake. After a second I thought to myself - "oh, it's another earthquake, I wonder if it'll be on the news tomorrow?" then promptly went to sleep. I probably won't even bother to wake up next time...