a little life bloge

last night me and my flatmate ashleigh went to do yarn bombing for the first time
it is very serious and fun
i suggest you try it
we are going to do it more with other textiles

in other news it finally got hot in the uk and i am watching true blood

the upper east side & then some

our host was this lady named michelle. michelle has a small, grey, fluffy dog called 'pee-wee'. this is an apt name because he often peed/did small poos on the floor. a lot of people on the upper east side have dogs but they all live in apartments so you see them on the street a lot. people take their dogs for walks in their pyjama pants which i thought was nice given that it was the posh upper east side. it is weird that so many people treat their dogs in this way, taking them outside only a few times a day, and not everybody has small dogs like michelle. and even still, it is weird keeping dogs cooped indoors all day. apartments in new york are usually pretty warm because of pipes that go throughout the whole building, so air isn't fresh and all the smells stay in unless you open windows. 

monday was spent mostly in the american museum of natural history. it was a really cool place that most people might recognise from 'night at the museum'. it was really cool and huuuge and you gotta allow a whole day to experience it. there are some disturbing things about it like the fact that a lot of the animals in cases are taxidermy. weird. it was a good experience though. our feet hurt a lot by the end of the day. 

we started buying breakfast from a nice bagel shop on 86th. i had jelly and cream cheese on mine which was pretty delish one day and my first experience of calling jam 'jelly'. tuesday was an unexpectedly legit day. we went on a tour of the UN and learnt about its role in international relations. i think we all felt a bit empowered by possibilities afterwards. our tour guide was peruvian. i want to roll my Rs like he does. lunch we used my zine guide of nyc to take us to this japanese place called menchanko tei and it was just what we needed, filling but not grossly and felt good for us as opposed to all the mexican and pizza we'd been eating. that evening i went to long island city to catch up with my cousin and go to a free comedy show. i felt like i mastered the subway. the show itself was pretty good. we had some beers then went to flux factory where they were having a birthday party for somebody. sam only wanted to stay for one beer but we ended up having some shots of rum and dancing around the kitchen. there was this one guy dancing really awesome and he had a beard and i asked sam if he was married because that's how i enquire about people's marital status. he was very tall and dancing in short fluoro green shorts and a salmon pink polo tee. that is not why he was attractive though. idk. he was ridiculous and uninhibited, i think that was attractive. i had not eaten dinner so i ate 2 donuts that were on the table. they were really delicious, cinnamonny things mm. we kept trying to leave but having conversations with people instead. i talked to a nice girl from canada and told some of the flux artists who i saw speaking last week that i liked their artwork. 'this charming man' by the smiths played and we got excited about english music being played then i said it was definitely our last dance and then we walked to the subway. i met the girls in the city and got pizza on the way back to our apartment. i was a bit drunk and kept exclaiming about how crunchy the pizza was. 

we had a big sleep in yesterday and woke up around 12pm and went to katz's deli for brunch. we ordered a pastrami sandwich, philly cheesesteak and cheese blintzes to share. it was all pretty good, but the pastrami was the best. katz's is overpriced. it wasn't too busy. it was raining a lot and i didn't have a raincoat or an umbrella so my jacket got quite damp. we split up after brunch (which was in reality a v late lunch) and i walked to a nearby salvation army thrift store. they had no fitting rooms so i could not try anything on. i walked back into soho to check out a wool shop, stopping in other pretty stores on the way. i walked past some nice looking galleries on west broadway. i like a lot of things about soho but i felt as if i looked too much like a drowned rat to go into many stores. the wool shop was a dream and is actually the store of a blog i read sometimes, the purl bee. emma came into the store while i was there, purely by coincidence. i thought she had already been there that day. we bought some wool and then went to meet caroline at mcnally jackson bookstore. we had a sit there for a while as our feet were very sore plus we were cold and wet. then went to hampton chutney co for dinner. we all had dosas which looks like a giant pancake with fillings of indian varieties. very tasty and filling. 

we went home to get gussied up to go to a zine launch that brodie told us about. there was a long line at the zine launch and we smoked cigarettes to have something to do in the line. we saw tao lin walk to the front of the line and get right into the store. we played a game that i know called 'end of the world' which is where you look around you and work out who you would sex if the world was going to end in five mins. we made it inside and drank syrupy red wine. brodie and anton were leaving as we arrived. it was nice to see them, however briefly. inside we bought a copy of the zine and stared at tao lin a bit and spotted ryan o'connell who writes for thought catalog. occasionally i overheard people saying '....tao lin' it was funny/weird. we went for a drink at a bar called botannica. the girls were drinking spirits so they got a bit drunk. my drink in nyc was 'brooklyn lager'. i felt weird in botannica. i suggested we leave to get second dinner or go to another bar. we went to a bar i had noticed after the sunday night comedy. it was called 'the scratcher'. lots of the people from the zine launch were there. there were more good looking people there than at the other bar and we played 'end of the world' again. we decided to go outside smoke the last cigarette that caroline had and also talk to emma's end of the world boy. instead, we struck up a conversation with his friend, jackson. jackson said he worked for the third best art auction house in new york. i was interested in this. he was from tennessee. we got a taxi uptown. caroline and emma called their friend laura who is doing student exchange in arizona. we ate the same pizza that i had eaten the previous evening. again, it was really good. we each had two slices. 

i woke up around 6am this morning and felt awake enough to do some emailing and other internet items. we had to leave the apartment to pick up tickets to our bus at 9am. caroline woke up, we said goodbye to sleepy emma and we were organised enough to get to port authority by 8.30. it was too early and we were bored and tired. it was cold today so everything was misty and looked grim out the bus window. we talked about how things seemed rundown as we were driving out of nyc. the bus journey took 4 hours. it was cool seeing more parts of america. as we drove through baltimore i kept thinking of that song from hairspray. we got to DC and carolyn decarlo picked us up and took us to her place. she lives in a really cool flat. she is an easygoing and nice girl, i think we will have fun staying here. she surprised me by saying that a lot of nice int lit people are coming over to her place on saturday night for a ustream. i got really excited and caroline said 'what's a ustream?'. we walked to get some food and coffee at a cafe near caro's house. caroline and i were both very excited to be out of nyc, which is a cool place, but its bustle became tiring after 10+ days of being there. it's nice to see sky and for there to be trees and less people. 

so we are staying in dc for a little while now, going to do some touristy stuff but also have some chill time and hang with nice lit people. i think it will be good. i am hungry now.

product of my saturday night

I used this pattern with probably about 6 or 7 ply wool (I can't remember) and a 5 mm hook. I started at about 8pm and finished at 3.30am. The reason I love crochet so much is that it grows fast. Oh and it's not actually black, it's brown. I'm going to do another one in blue, or go to my local op shops today and look for some more wool! YAY.

Saturday third of July in review

As per this week's task, I am reviewing my Saturday the third of July in the style of this guy David from Christchurch. My description isn't very enticing, but his blog is the complete opposite. So go look at it.

I woke up at about 11.56am yesterday because I heard my phone vibrating. I couldn't find it and I thought "why the hell is it always on silent and who is calling me"?? 3/10
The number was this girl Tamzin from SYN. I called her back and she told me I got a place on air to do my food show!! 10/10
I had to tell everyone about it so I updated my facebook where my friend Erin left me a message saying she noticed I didn't visit her at work last night. I called her and suggested we get coffee on Glenferrie road to make up for it. I met Erin at Mario's Coffee house and had coffee and lemon slice. The lemon slice was about 8/10, coffee probably 6/10. Erin returned my notebook and a black cardigan to me - 10/10!!! We chatted and did the hard crossword in the A2 with answers that always seem familiar but just out of reach 6/10. Then I needed to take Erin to homewares heaven aka The Works (basically a warehouse Bed Bath N Table) and we wandered around looking at lovely household items 8/10. Erin tried to find some new stuff to wear to work but couldn't find anything and then she had to go to work which was a lame 4/10. I went solo to Readings and looked at books and patted a really cute plush owl in the kids section for a bit 8/10 (it's amazing how much pleasure I get from simply looking at stuff).
6
Came home and wrote in the notebook that Erin returned to me for a good hour, tidied my room, edited a poem and organised my crate office 6.5/10. Made some sort of tasty burger concoction for dinner, 7.5/10. I watched Ratatouille (8/10 - totally awesome movie) and started to learn how to make granny squares with the help of the too cheery Pip Lincolne. I thank her muchly, but just wish she wasn't always talking in technicolour. Patronising demeanour gets 4/10, useful instructions get 9/10. I nearly finished one square by the time James Bond was finished and had to keep going so I watched Never Been Kissed and one episode of the Mighty Boosh to satiate my new crochet addiction 8/10. Then I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking of things I wanted to do so I had to keep turning my lamp back on to write down ideas even though I knew I needed to sleep and was very very tired 4/10

And so you can rate my early attempts at crochet, here are some pictures of what I have made so far!!

winter watchables and other enjoyables

For a little while I've wanted to do posts on here about things I find on the internet that I think other people should see. It's also quite plainly winter and the majority of things that I see are limited to my computer screen. I generally conjure up ideas for the posts at about 4am, but now I find myself with an idea at an appropriate time. Hooray!

First item is of most importance: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows trailer. There are a few different versions going around, but m'colleague Stacey was kind enough to alert me to this new version earlier today. I am so invested in the series it's a bit frightening, but not as frightening as the ratio of quality acting to graphics and CGI (1:100). Emma Watson, will your boobs remain consistent throughout in this film (see: Prisoner of Azkaban)? Will you wear Burberry as you fight Death Eaters?



Another thing I found last night is this really cool adaptation of one of Basho's renku. He is one of the early haiku masters, for those who don't know (or at least this is my limited understanding of him). It's a collection of animations called Fuyu no Hi, apparently only released in Japan and France and somewhere else. Sooo if anyone's going there anytime soon, please pick me up a copy. Youtube does have each of the different animations (there are 36) but you know.. I just want it.



Other awesome things I've found over the last couple of weeks include a blog called 'this is why you're fat' (it's not like I was wondering) that just has all these ridiculously obese combinations of food. A bouquet of bacon! A cookie dough cheesecake! The normal reaction should be "oh god how could anyone eat that stuff"!?! But I'm sure I'd find a way.

Another resident favourite is the amaaaahhzing 'what Claudia wore', a breakdown of outfits mentioned in the Babysitter's Club series by Ann M. Martin. As an avid reader of that series and all its spinoffs, I was drooling all over the nostalgia and enjoying the rampant fandom from Kim Hutt, who writes the blog.

While I'm at it, I really like the teatowels that this cool guy from Liverpool makes, this gorgeous site of felt wares that m'colleague featured on her blog recently - oh I do love Kiwis! I wish Australia had a trademe equivalent. I keep discovering awesome things that I want to make, buy, eat or do but I am so poor that the first thing I need to get is a job! In the meantime, there's always cute blogs - my housemate alerted me to this adorable food blog called Epicute. So freakin' sweet.

And also I am in love with everyone at Voiceworks mag and if you live in Melbourne I hope you're going to come to the launch of the next issue on Friday, where I will be pretending to fit in with these really nice people who have foolishly accepted me into the fold (their folds? creepy). I was also spurred on to read this speech by David Foster Wallace. I've wanted to read Infinite Jest for some time now and it seems to be really rather important.

I'm also going to, for the umpteenth time, attempt to begin to crochet. My internet will be uncapped later this week and I intend to indulge myself in various tutorials. Although I find the abundance of exclamation marks and cheeriness wholeheartedly offputting, meet me at mike's is somewhat helpful.

Anyway I think I've got half a pudding in the fridge.