Dear Clothes People...

And by "clothes people" I mean all of you. Designers, buyers, the whole chain that gets fabric wearable items into shops.

I have friends of all different sizes. Tall friends, short friends, skinny and not so skinny friends, apples, pears, hourglasses, twigs, rectangles...Whatever the defining shapes are this season.

One common denominator for all of us, I'm finding, is that NONE of us can find clothes that fit properly. None of us are the same size in every shop. None of us are catered to by ANY shops, as far as sizes go.

I put it to you, Clothes People, that the problem is in fact not us and our weird and wonderful varying shapes, it is YOU.

This many randomly sized people can't be wrong.

Love, Me x

Listography: The 5 Signs Of Christmas.

As soon as we hit October, the countdown to Christmas begins (unless you want to start at 100 sleeps, in which case you started on Sept 16th), and so I await The Five Signs of Christmas. . .

1). The Magical Elves are back!! No, I haven't finally flipped. These are the Magical Elves of which I rave:

Cadbury's Magical Elves are amazing. Well, OK, they're elf-shaped Freddo bars with popping candy in them. Not that that's not amazing, but what they represent is even more amazing. Christmas time is near!

2). The Boots Christmas Gift Guide. This sign seems to be arriving earlier and earlier. I remember sitting as a kid every Halloween after my trick-or-treating, waiting for Trick-or-Treaters to arrive, reading the Boots Christmas Gift Guide and the Studio Catalogue, sneaking sweets out of the Halloween bowl and making lists of things that I would never be able to afford. Holiday is two pay days away!

3). DFS "In Your Home For Christmas" adverts. The only DFS adverts that aren't depressingly annoying (Concerningly though, they do seem to be running one for the END of the sale?! Do they know something we don't? Is DFS run by the Mayans?!! *Debates pre-emptive Christmas on Dec. 11th just in case*). Christmas is near! But still far away enough to buy a new sofa. . .

4). Christmas Lights Switch-On. For us, the Friday after Bonfire Night is the big Christmas lights switch-on hoo-ha at work. And, even though for the past few years the decorations outside our shop have looked like giant glittery hemorrhoids, it does still put you in the mood for Christmas.

5). The Coca-Cola Truck Advert. I love this advert so much that I literally have the T-shirt. No really, I do, and it looks like this:

(Photograph Copyright TruffleShuffle.com)

HOLIDAYS ARE COMING!!! :D

Let's "Celebrate" Twilight BD p.2!! < /sarcasm>

And by "celebrate", clearly I mean mock unmercilessly with a little bit of pulling to shreds on the side.

Apparently people are already excited about the upcoming Twilight film. Cineworld are celebrating with a "Twilight Day" when you can watch all of the other films, back to back, finishing with the new film at 00:01 on release day. But for me, Twilight is wrong on so many levels.

I'm not just blindly criticising, I've read the books, and seen most of the films. Now that I have the full story, I just don't like it. It irritates me. It disturbs me. It also disturbs me that Stephanie Meyer advertises it as a lovely, teenage romance book, when a lot of it is vile on levels teenage girls won't see.

Edward is a stalker. If your teenage daughter had a regular teenage boy loitering around the garden and sneaking into her room in the dead of night to watch her sleep, that would raise security/legal issues. If the daughter was under-age and the man was much older, that would raise even more legal issues (and possibly a few pitchforks and flaming torches, depending on where you live).

If he were human, he would be a mentally (and occasionally physically) abusive, controlling partner. He takes away her right to make her own decisions, monopolises her time taking her away from what social circle she has and making her more reliant on him, threatens with displays of his power.

Meyer insists that Bella is a feminist because feminism "is the right to make a choice". Which is all very well. But that choice is essentially between necrophilia and bestiality. Lovely teenage romance book.

Let's get right to the heart of the matter. The cold, dead, unbeating heart. Now the whole issue of the last Twilight book and the latest film is Bella and Edward's child (who's bizarre compounded name escapes me at the moment). Let's go over that again. Child. Vampire . . . creating child. Now, I'm going to assume that you are all old enough to be familiar with the necessities behind creating children. But just incase any kids stumble across this, I'm not going to go into it. But essentially my problems with this stem from the cold, dead, unbeating heart. That, and this quote from Meyer:

"Most human fluids are absent in my vampires. No sweat, no tears, no blood besides that which they ingest–they don’t have their own blood."

Now for those who paid attention in Biology, we are going to be needing some blood to rush to some places here. There are no mentions of vampiric turkey-basters, put it that way. Edward has no blood. So some fans get around that by saying "But vampires are always described  as having bodies as hard as marble, granite, rock . . ." so maybe blood isn't necessary. Fair enough. I'll give way on the blood thing. Let's assume for a moment that Edward is a paler, wussier, more constipated-looking version of Thing from the Fantastic Four (sorry geeks). Other fluids are still required. See Meyer quote above.

And another thing . . .If vampires of both sexes all have rock-hard marble bodies . . . Well that just doesn't sound sexy at all to me. Surely the romantic scenes would have been more like this:

"It's clobberin' time!"

 





So [spoiler alert, if you care] there's pestle 'n' mortar time, there's a baby, Bella's a vampire (dear goodness, that miserable face for an eternity, ugh), there's a hot-blooded teenage werewolf boy fixated on a baby girl . . .Wait, what?! Excuse me? So . . . Jacob is madly in love with/fixated on Bella, until she goes all bitey, and then the fixation transfers to her baby when their eyes meet. Love at first sight. Which is covered in the book by the convenient "Oh, he loves her like a brother whilst she's a baby...It's only when she 'comes of age' that he will romantically fall in love with her . . ." So it's OK that he falls in love with a seven-year-old who looks seventeen, because before that he considered her his little sister?

And then my brain exploded.

'Tis The Season...For Knitting!

I know quite a few people who are bringing out their needles and wool now that we are heading into Autumn (though it has been unseasonably warm over here in recent weeks, I think The Change is upon us). Last year, I decided that I would be one of them. I did manage it. I managed three thin scarves and one giant scarf, and another scarf-that-was-too-short-to-be-a-scarf-so-it's-now-a-weird-snood-thing.

Now I have to admit, I am not the best knitter. I cover this by claiming to be saving a craft or two for when I am old. To be honest, I firmly believe that a lot of the old ladies you see merrily knitting away have actually been knitting, making mistakes, undoing, and re-knitting the same piece of work since they were in their twenties. I do have many, many friends who are awesome at knitting though. I have friends who are so awesome at knitting they write about knitting for other people who know about knitting. Even my own Grandpa is a better knitter than I am, and I'm fairly certain he would win an award for "Least Likely To Knit". He can do stripes and use tiny thin needles, both of which are beyond me.

So far I have tried:

"Regular" Knitting
I was always a bit surprised how bad I am at knitting. I'm a creative person. I can sew, cross-stitch, draw, model, craft, bake...all pretty well (yes, modesty is another talent...I did say pretty well). Knitting? Not happening. Well, it happens a little. I can make squares, and rectangles. Which is all very well for making larger square or rectangular objects, but that's about it. I can even join rectangles together at the ends now and make snoods. But we all know how short-lived that fashion trend will be. *sigh* At least I'm not Knit-One-Drop-One any more, but even so, squares and rectangles are my limit. One colour, plain, chunky, squares and rectangles. But at least it's not a total fail.

That's only "regular" knitting, of course. I decided to branch out and see if Other Knitting was any easier.

Crocheting
I decided to try crocheting mainly because a magazine came out that gave away a crochet hook and two balls of wool to practice with. After a good couple of hours, much pulling apart of failed crocheting and even more hurling of profanity (and crochet hooks...), the project was cast aside to the back of the craft box, certain that the lovely blanket on the magazine cover was far out of reach.

A few months later, I decided to give it another shot. Fortunately for my sanity, the magazine had disappeared into the abyss that is my craft area, so off to Youtube I went. Bored of squares and rectangles, I decided to find something else. Flowers. That'll be pretty. I found this awesome tutorial video and, after an hour or so of meticulous pausing of the video every stitch or so, I had a fairly presentable-ish flower. So crocheting is not a total fail either. Yay!

French Knitting
I had one of those cute little French knitting dolls when I was a little girl.

Image Copyright myriadonline.co.uk

Now, when you're little, French knitting dolls are GREAT. You can, in a relatively short period of time, create a nice long (let's face it) woollen earthworm-esque object. As a child, that's great. Doll/teddy scarves, woolly bracelets, too-stretchy-to-be-useful shoelaces, hair bobbles, you name it, as long as it looks like a woollen earthworm, you can make it. I even remember making a coaster by wrapping my French knitting into a spiral, which was neither use nor ornament, given that a) it served little use in protecting furniture from heat or moisture, being made of wool, and b) it was made of a particularly eye-burning shade of neon (practically luminous) acid green wool (it was actually made from remnants of wool from a cardigan my Nana knitted me. I'm a neon 80s child, don't judge me...).

Now, re-think French knitting as an adult. An adult who has little to no use for woollen earthworms. An adult who has to ask a pretty obvious question: What the fudge do you use French knitting for?! Once you've knitted it, I mean. Once you're sat draped in woollen earthworms like Rapunzel draped in hair. I have images of little French Grandmas, French knitting away with their little dolls, until they have about a mile and a half long woollen earthworm, and then painstakingly coiling a jumper for their grandchildren like a potter coiling a vase on a pottery wheel.

Image Copyright Pot Bank Dictionary.

I say all hail those who are good at knitting. I will probably be practicing well into my 90s, when I finally create a perfect knitted item.

So now the only question is: Do I want to be buried in my final/first successful project, or leave it as a family heirloom?

There's a thought...I could always try a loom...