The One Where I Turn Twenty-Seven gaaaaaaahhh

It's been a long time Chinas, a long old time. I've been too busy to blog, what with turning 27 and all. The English graduate in me is desperate to turn that 27 into a twenty-seven but time is pressing on us, Old Beans, and I'm not writing twenty-seven every time, so I'll just leave it as 27.

So I woke up on the eve of my 27th birthday and was all 'oh man, this sucks. My last day as a 26 year old OR, as I pronounce it, 'nineteen'. Woe is me, for it is rubbish to be nearly 27, probably as bad as actually BEING 27.' And then to celebrate my last day as a 26 year old, I did some lovely things like not running and eating Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Port Salut on oatcakes with chutney and WINE and it was good.

And then I woke up on my 27th birthday and I thought 'HOW CAN I BE TWENTY-FECKING-SEVEN?! I'm still deciding what to do when I leave school! I'm still always thinking 'I'll wear shoes like THAT when I'm a grown up'! I'm still going to the shop regularly to buy pick n mixes! I hate mortgages! But the truth of it is Chinas, I'm a 27 year-old married Librarian with a mortgage and a job and everything. And I'm no longer nineteen, and I can no longer dream of being an astronaut, and I can no longer drink with wild abandon because hangovers now last about a fortnight.

But then I had a flash of inspiration. 'Why not, WHY NOT', I thought to myself  'see this as a chance to do everything you've ever wanted to do and BE everything you've ever wanted TO BE? Why not make your 28th year (gaaaaaahh) the YEAR OF OPPERCHANCITY?

So I'm going to! I've made a list of resolutions that I'm going to share with you, but FIRST! A picture of me with my present from my brother (Calpol):

OH YES LADS THAT'S ME WITH BETTY! Is that the best present anyone has ever given anyone?! Answer: yes. I love her with my whole soul and Husband HATES her, although she freaks out the cats which Husband finds very funny. I said we should bow every time we walk past her and Husband refused, and that's very disrespectful to her Maj and she'll be WELL annoyed if he ever does that in real life. He'll be in the Tower before he knows WHERE he is, and I won't visit him because I'll be having crumpets at Buck Pal.

Anyway, RESOLUTIONS:

1. START SELLING 'CRAP WHAT I'VE MADE', because I've been talking about doing it for ages but then what if nobody buys it?

2. GET GOOD AT RUNNING - I can now run my full circuit without stopping, here's a picture of me after I did it for the first time ever:

(I promise this is really me and not Usain Bolt, however similar we may look)

3. STOP READING HEAT MAGAZINE AND TRY TO STOP CARING ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN TOWIE - pretty self-explanatory, this one.

4. HAVE A KEBAB - never had one before and I think I would like it.

5. TRY A DEEP-FRIED MARS BAR - never had one before because I know I would love it, and eat them FOREVAH and then turn into one of those people who gets so fat that they grow into their couch.

6. WEAR ALL THE SHOES - or sell all the shoes if not worn.

7. PICK UP A MASSIVE SPIDER - maybe.

8. BE A BIT MORE SENSIBLE - I'm not really a sensible sort of person. I'm more of a 'LET'S MAKE A LOL-CANO!' than a 'Yars, well, interest rates being what they are...' and I think I should maybe try to get somewhere in the middle.

9. TAKE MY MAKE-UP OFF BEFORE BED - I know this is really jakey (JAKE - Scottish word meaning unclean, dirty person who is usually drunk and/or stoned) but I hate washing my face in the sink, and I'm not having two showers a day, and my make-up removing pads live downstairs and I can never be bothered to go down and get them and I just generally am rubbish at taking my make-up off and that's that.

10. DYE MY HAIR BLONDE - DONE! Did it last week! Not sure if I like it though.

11. TRY TO LOVE MY EYEBROWS - very unlikely, this one, but I will try.


And that's THAT!

A Bit of Finishing

Ta daah!

Finished! Here's a picture of it next to my hand, so you get some idea of how teeny-tiny it is:

I was going to do a picture of my hand next to a penny or something so you could get some idea of the size of my hand, but I thought no, that's mental. Anyhoo, I think I'm going to do a wee pile of these bad boys and send them off to charity. I was going to try and get the stupid cat to wear it, but he was all 'you are out of your mind if you think I'm wearing that'. He is very selfish. 

It's very good to finish something though, I've been very smug about it. I got into a bit of a trance with it, and just shuffled around bleary-eyed going 'MUST. FINISH. FINISH. FINISH. FINISH.' I was trying to neaten up the collar when the window cleaner came to the door and made me lose count. Oh, I was FURIOUS. Although in retrospect, I did feel a bit sorry for him. It cannot be pleasant to be greeted at a door by a glaring pajama-clad lady with an afro and mad eyebrows, brandishing a knitting needle. Especially when that lady is hissing 'Do YOU KNOW how many STITCHES are on HERE? Me neither, THANKS TO YOU! WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHAT WINDOWS? I'VE NOT EVEN GOT ANY WINDOWS!' But we're probably friends again. I wonder if he needs a jumper knitted? Hmm.

Today I had some folk round to the crib, chillaxin' an that, and someone brought through my fabric stash for a rake. And I was shamed, SHAMED, for how much l'oeufly fabric I've got just sitting around. So I decided to do a bit of fabric-y making too:

and ended up with:

unt a close-up:

...but it's still not quite right. I'm going to have a fiddle with it and see if I can't neaten it up a smidge. I'm still very new to sewing and I don't seem to be getting any better at it. And I HATE that. I don't want to learn stuff, I want to be immediately good at it. So every time the thread knots or the fabric bunches, or the bobbin runs out, I throw a massive tantrum and phone Len in tears.

It's not a very relaxing hobby, this one.

Finish ALL the things?

Hello chaps. It might surprise you to learn that I am not a particularly organised person. It's partly because I like STUFF and partly because of my criminally short attention span. So, I look at my massive pile of STUFF and think, Right! I iz organises! I iz puttin' that THERE! I iz now putting that thing THERE! I iz now bored, and am wandering off in search of something else to do.

And this short attention span sadly is reflected in the making. So I come home from a lovely day shopping and I'm all 'Husband! Look at this mad fabric! I'm going to make an apron with it and put it on ebay and it'll sell for a million pounds and then we'll be RICH and then we can give up working for evah! But first, I'm going to wander over here for a bit and play with the cat.' So, as a result, I've got a stash of fabric that would make John Lewis HIMSELF weep. And also, loads of unfinished knitting hiding behind things. And, even though I've got a hundred million appropriate knitting holders, for some reason I always put my knitting in plastic carrier bags. So, as I type this, there's a massive accessorize bag behind the cuddler which is hiding Husband's unfinished jumper.

See, I had this brilliant idea of knitting husband a jumper because I'd knitted LOADS of baby jumpers for friends and I thought, oh Husband would just LOVE a jumper made by the delicate hands of his magnificent wife. So I bought all the wool - lovely, Sirdar, tweedy-type, blue and gray, goes very well with the eyes of Husband - and a easy pattern, and new pins and got STARTED! And at first I was all 'CLACKITY-CLACK oh KNITTY KNITTY taptaptaptap happy happy lalalala, knitting away...' and then I realised I'd been knitting for A THOUSAND YEARS and the jumper was barely even three inches of stocking-stitch. And THAT is when I realised that Husband is much, much bigger than the average child. He's properly a GIANT compared to the average baby. So logically, his jumper will take much, much longer to knit. And I started to resent him for it. I would be all knitting away, glaring at Husband every so often and thinking 'Look at him, sitting there, probably growing BY THE SECOND and I've got to knit this huge stupid GIGANTIC jumper that'll take a MILLION YEARS. Probably the SLEEVES will take A HUNDRED YEARS each and he won't even LIKE it by then.' And Husband would look up at me and blow me a kiss and I would smile tightly back at him. And then I stopped knitting it, and hid it behind the cuddler. It's probably a bit dusty by now, actually.

Anyway, that was a massive diversion but here is THE POINT. I have made a pledge to finish the things before starting the new things. I thought I'd start with a jumper that I had promised to a friend's baby. The baby will be three in January, so the jumper will be much, much too small. But! I thought, I'll crack into that. So I was looking for it, and instead found a million other unfinished things including a teeny tiny jumper that I'd started when I was round vistin' Len and Roy. I was all bored and sloping round their house, and I said to Len 'I've forgotten my knitting, and that's what I'd like to do just now' and she was all 'I've got spare wool and an easy baby pattern if you fancy that?' and I was all 'HELZ TO THE YEZ LEN GOODMAN!' so I started it. And then I got home and abandoned it. And then I found it and STARTED IT AGAIN. And I'm nearly done. Here's how it looked when I found it:

And here's how it looks now:

GETTING THERE! Don't ask me what I'm going to do with it, I have no idea. Sometimes hospitals need things for premature babies, don't they? I might send it to them although they might send it back because it's a bit wonky. I'll think about it.

P.S. Husband just came up behind me and pointed at the screen (quite accusingly, I thought) and said 'Yes! I remember that jumper! Get it finished!' I probably will never, ever finish that jumper so I just pretended to be French until he went away. Which worked, actually. 

P.P.S. I think I've broken the Curse of the Unlucky Pajoojes. Nothing bad happened when I wore them, and nothing bad has happened since. Phew!