My 5s

Five minutes to yourself: how would you spend them, ideally?
Probably, knowing boring old me, in my parent's garden,, with a book.


Five bucks to spend right now; how would you spend it?
Right now, I would spend it on a (very cheap) person to make my dinner.

Five items in your house you could part with, right now, that you hadn't thought of already?
Probably, though I don't ever want this quoted back at me, the entire contents of my back room cupboard, which I haven't really looked at since we moved in here.
An old can of WD40, which has moved with us 3 times, and never seems to get used for anything.
Those bloody mice, that seem to go to enormous lengths to climb on all possible surfaces in this house, just to have a shit.
The entire population of the student flats surrounding us. Did I ever go through a phase of being unable to speak to people at a normal volume? I don't think so. Don't know if they count, though, since they're not technically *in* my house.
Whatever is causing the nasty smell in my fridge.

Five items you absolutely, positively could never part with in your house?
My My Neighbour Totoro DVD
The rats
My new comfy chair
This cool jug
Gregory Parsnip Jones, made by Sharon

Five words you love?
Kapuze
discombobulated
wee
moot
Uranerzbergbaufolgelandschaft

Five people I tag*
Well, Mixmaster Mike springs to mind, but apart from that I'm all out of people I know with blogs, so if you happen to read this, and you happen to fancy it, and you happen to have a blog, consider yourself tagged.

It has begun.

Oh, the joys of impending motherhood. Finally an excuse to make very tiny silly hats! After all, those teenage radges that are no doubt awaiting us should at least be founded on something.

On a completely unrelated note, I came across this piece of (really quite old) news the other day. St Johns Monastery and Uni in Minnesota are creating the first handwritten and illuminated bible in 500 years, using handmade inks and gold leaf and all that kinda stuff. Apparently, they even got the Queen's calligrapher to work on it (whatever that means...). I'm not much into the religious side of this, but it sounds like an amazing project from an arty farty standpoint, and I'd love to see it. The whole thing is going to include 7 volumes and is due to be finished in 2007.

Pink and Orange love each other

Having gone and become une etudiante de francais, I of course could not pass on the chance to faff about making some stationery. I just love this paper - I really wish more places sold interesting gift wrap, rather than boring crap with houses on! Who wants to wrap presents in paper with houses on??

Things that make me laugh

Three things made me laugh this week: (Well, there were a few more than just three things, actually, but these were the ones that stuck in my head...):

1. This Hedgehog Blog

2. "Fish [as in, pet fish] are basically just high maintenance posters." (quote from that blog)

3. And another quote, from a piece in a newspaper Dr. Mikenstein bought, talking about "the common preconception that heavily pregnant women are basically a couple of tear ducts grafted onto a space hopper'.

So there.

Ha!

I said I'd do it, and then, for once, I went and did it! So, on Saturday, just after buying two new lovely chairs, I made new covers for everything. And afterwards I was supergood, and only kept the scraps that were a useful size (useful by sane people's standards, that is)!

And because it wouldn't have been very nice to hog all the fancy stuff, the rats got their fair share too:

Granny-to-be's been busy...

My mommy and daddy were over for the last week, and it was nice. My mum's been busy knitting royal robes for the first free born citizen of Carmenland, and then discovered this fluffy yarn I had lying about, and immediately set about making cute socks. Not sure if the yarn is maybe a bit too fluffy for small human beings, but they're quite big. I might put some soles on them and officially declare them slippers.

I wanted to play about with a few more orchid pics. Didn't come up with anything useful for a while, but this one turned out alright. I made a set of note cards for Dr. Mikenstein's mom's birthday from them.

Oh, here's some exciting news! We're going to get comfy chairs! YAY! We've been dithering about buying a sofa for ages now. All the ones we've seen were made of ugly things and poo, but now we're going to get some lovely papasan chairs, and just let guests sit on the existing uncomfy sofa! Hooray! To celebrate, I got some lurvely fabric from John Lewis, so I can cover the chairs and our sofa in it. It was reduced from £10 to £5, and I still had some vouchers I got for Christmas, and it just all seemed so right!

Purchases of the week
Originally uploaded by King Carmen.

And finally, it has also been a successful week in shopping. I got some lovely green pearls and a cute brooch, which I don't know what to do with yet, from a charity shop for the grand total of £2.30! Also, I discovered Venus Magazine,
which has proven to be quite an interesting read. I didn't even check if you can get it in Britain, just ordered it from their website, and it hardly took a week to arrive! Must check out if Borders have it, though. Just because it would be nice to know that there *are* readworthy mags available for sale in this country. Only one of the many interesting things it mentions is the Magazine Project, which sounds like a truly inspired and badly needed bit of fun. Check it out: Models On Pages May Be Uglier Than They Appear.
And last but not least: shoes! I found them accidentally (looking for... err... shoes... but different ones) on the net somewhere, and, having no control whatsoever over myself, ordered them. I just love the cutsey flower. And the funky holes. And the pink laces. And everything else about them, too.