i float

Hello internet. This week has been very serene. It's nice, if not particularly exciting. I went into recluse mode for a while (sorry guys, I still love you, I promise) after having a particularly awful night thanks to some wretched substances and subsequently spiralling into a deep pit of unrelenting despair for a number of days. On the plus side, that is now over and I find myself strangely numb. It's still not exactly pleasant, but at least I don't feel like I'm dying anymore, right?

So it's been a lazy week. I've watched a lot of hockey. I miss hockey. When I played my team was super, super terrible, but it was fun, I miss it. I cannot TELL YOU how excited I am about the Olympic hockey, you guys, oh my goodness. Now that Latvia's out (not for want of trying, I was honestly convinced that they were going to pull some Steven Bradbury bullshit and beat everyone, and it would have been AWESOME) I think I want the Swedes to win. Sweden is, after all, a peaceful nation. I think that the US and Russia and Canada are all so fierce about this that they're going to DESTROY EACH OTHER and then Sweden'll beat Finland because...well, because I like the Sedins.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED THIS WEEK:

- My grandfather, my father's father, he was born in 1925. He came to Australia in 1949. I found that out from the internet, the emigration thing. I rang him up and used it to convince him to tell me things. That's how I found out about 1925. His name was Arthur, before I knew him. Before my father knew him. Before 1949, even. His mother's name was Maria. He doesn't talk about her, but I feel like I knew this somehow anyway. There aren't any photos of her. His father - I never knew this - was named Paulis. There are old photos of my uncle Jimmy, and one of my uncle Michael, in a little shoebox downstairs. The ones of Jimmy are marked "Jamie". He's two or so. His name isn't really James, so it's strange to me that he was Jamie even then. Why not just stick with one name, pleasekthanks.

- I watched I Am Legend. Why would they change the ending? It was the WHOLE POINT. Ugh.

- I wish I could spin wool from fleece. I wish I could weave. I think it'd be relaxing. There's something very calming to me about really honestly DIYing things all the way back. I want to be able to make a jumper from a sheep. If that's wrong then my goodness, I don't want to be right. I know a woman, Joy, who weaves tapestries for a living. She went on a holiday and wove the things she saw. This is how she makes her living. They're displayed in galleries and things. There's something lovely about this to me. Tapestries, in a modern age. I think it's because they haven't been embraced by the youth, you know? Everybody nowadays is an 'artist'. Very few are actually talented but the field's so saturated that the real gems don't get a chance. I think maybe there's a sort of magic in being talented at something like that. How do you even find out, I wonder? How does one come to the realisation that you're incredibly proficient at tapestry-weaving? Painting, photography, things like that, they're accessible, the talented people can find them (and so, too, the untalented who don't realise). It's strange.

I think I will spend tomorrow in libraries. Museums, maybe, too. I don't have any money. I'm going to improvise. I can sew, you know. Sometimes I wish I could make money that way, over the internet, maybe; I hear Etsy's got a market for it. Unfortunately I'm not very fond of fussy and overly-precious and poorly-stitched. I like fit and finish. I like grosgrain binding, and French seams, and fabric that feels like heaven under your fingertips. I like seams that don't pucker, for god's sake, and super-structured jackets that nip in sharply at the waist, rows of pintucks. I really hate yards of tulle gathered on a waistband and called a "petticoat", and I cannot abide the thought of selling a corset - with boning! - that wasn't made-to-measure. There isn't really a market for that - not on the internet. If I was older I'd be a seamstress. I'd still like that. It's not really a part-time job, though. My grandmother was a seamstress. Maybe she'll teach me.




Sometimes I wonder why we don't get more time.