Needs

I don't usually do this, but it seemed like a good laugh. I found this idea on this blog. Type your name followed by "needs" into Google and see what you need.
1. Disquina [not her real name] needs to be prompted to see a reproductive endocrinologist.
2. Disquina needs someone to buy her debt.
3. Disquina needs cheese.
4. Disquina needs to stop living vicariously through her daughter.
5. Disquina needs officers or will cease to exist.
6. Disquina needs to get her priorities straight.
7. Disquina needs to die.
8. Disquina needs to shut the fuck up [pardon me, just quoting Google].
After this they start to get dull.

Yummy

I forgot a couple of things yesterday, a couple of tasty morsels.

Morsel #1:

Noro Kureyon Sock yarn. 4 ply, pretty colours. What on Earth am I going to do with it? So many possibilities. Lace? Perhaps. Hmm.

Morsel #2:

Terrible photo. It's actually chocolatey in colour. Lovely 8 ply Perendale from the guy at the Bus Depot Markets for hubby's jumper-to-be. One day. I just like to cuddle up to this stuff.

I have big time cat envy. All around me people are cuddling cats, and yet I am catless. My boy passed away in 2007: That's a little cat treat he's interrogating there. 15 years old and then bitten by a snake. Then when we moved into the share house we currently live in, we adopted the resident cat Kujo (as we re-named him) who had been abandoned by previous tenants and was unwanted by the current ones. He had lived at the house for several years, but about three weeks after we adopted him, and he was starting to enjoy sleeping in my armchair, he died from causes which looked suspiciously snake-biteesque. It's terrible, but I pine for a cat. I dream about them all the time, mostly my old boy coming back. I see them on just about every blog I look at, and I can't resist looking at them in the pet shops. The other week on the radio I heard an interview with a man who wrote a book about the grief he had resulting from the death of his cat Blackie (also the title of the book) who died from a brain tumour. Sometimes I think the universe is trying to punch me in the face. My boy died a month after my brother's death from a brain tumour. I feel so silly getting sad about not having a cat when life is so precious and beautiful!

I'm not always a miserable sod you know!

Universes

Now I know that it would seem that I am slack, and if knitting is truly the centre of the universe, as I often suspect it is, then that would be entirely true. However, the world tells me that knitting is not in fact the centre of the universe, and that knitting is in fact a distraction from what one ought to be doing (which is why it is so enjoyable). I have been working quite hard on my research lately, and until an hour ago had not knitted a stitch for two weeks.
The knitting in question is Laminaria. I am perhaps a quarter of the way through it:

I decided not to do the star stitch repeat in the pattern because I wanted a more open lacey look, so I replaced it with honeycomb stitch. I'm not sure if it matches the look of the rest of the pattern really, but of course you can't tell until it's finished and blocked:

I'm sure it will be fine. I'm looking forward to having a lovely lacey shawl, especially now that the weather has gone mad here in Canberra. I have a lovely blue and green silk dress which this shawl will look spectacular with. I'll have to make hubby take me out for a fine meal at a respectable establishment so I have an excuse to wear them together.

I have been going a little mad. Well, I can't put it into words. I have "issues" which I won't bore anyone with, but I can be fine for a couple of months, quite happy and working well, and then within half an hour one day for no reason I turn into a mess. I panic, I can't sleep, I can't assess anything rationally, every dark thought becomes obsessively turned over and over in my mind. I know a lot of people have these sorts of problems. I think reading stories in the papers about the deaths of so many people in Victoria is bound to set these things off. Since my brother died, I take every death I hear about personally, and to see photo's of these people is heartbreaking. Grief is so incapacitating, and we are not allowed to talk about it openly. I don't know why. What I wanted to get to is that I think that knitting plays a large role in the control of my mental health. I knew when I woke up this morning that I couldn't possibly work today, so I finally picked up Laminaria again, and I really do feel better already. Perhaps it's the familiar comfort of one stitch after another, or the enforced rest and contemplation. Maybe I've been working too hard. I won't go on about it. Knitting good. Working bad.