I'm not even going to touch on the mediocrity of my writing lately. No, I'm talking about a different hobby: knitting. I realize that things take practice and nobody's a genius their first time out, but... I can't stop making tight stitches, and purling is an absolute bastard to try to work from, and I'm pretty sure I'm turning wrong at the ends of rows, and I can't even do a stupid four-inch swatch let alone follow a pattern that involves even the slightest complexity, and it is pissing me off every time I have to unravel what I've done, which is three times now and will probably be a dozen by the time I finish this project if I ever finish it at all.

I just hate doing things I'm bad at, and I am really bad at this, and I was never good at it when I did it more habitually anyways.

The only physical making-things-that-last craft I'm really good at is making jewelry, which is about as simple as it gets-- put bead on string, repeat. I used to make friendship bracelets with embroidery floss, I was okay at that too. Just, once needles get involved my competency plummets.

I also suck at drawing. I did it for years and I never got any good at it, so I stopped doing it. Sometimes I regret that. Usually when looking at the work of amazing artists like sadynax and shirozora. I do wish I could draw a decent chibi. I'm not aiming for realism, I'd just like my sketches to look anything like their subjects, which they never did, so I gave up on it.

The only hobbies I have I'm willing to claim any sort of competency with now are baking and making podfics, and one of those doesn't translate well outside of fandom-friendly space.

I just get frustrated so easily now, and it makes me want to either cry or throw whatever it is I'm working on out the window (which could fly with a ball of yarn but not so much with my laptop) and neither of those are very mature responses to failing at something.

It doesn't help that my dad is getting on me to start packing my room up. He wants to turn my bedroom into his own personal TV room when I'm in college, which seems premature to me because I'm going to be coming back on the weekends and for breaks, and it's going to bother me if my room isn't my own any more. Not that I can tell him that.

Wow, I am just severely emotionally unstable these days. I don't think I've had one day out of the past week where I haven't wanted to cry about something. It's getting to the point where I don't even have any sympathy left for myself. I need to get a grip on myself in the next three weeks or I'm going to be fucked when I start classes.

I made a vlog in the tub again, but it turned out to be almost 20 minutes long. YouTube won't go over 10 minutes, so I uploaded it to Megavideo... and I'm still waiting for it to process. Basically I went from blackberries and took a rambling trip through my school years and hit on Prop 8 and my thoughts on marriage as relates to me, the Salvation Army and how my parents got into it, and a bit of rambling appreciation of you, my friendslist. Also a request for further vlog topics. Like I say in the video: seriously, just ask me to talk about something, I will talk about anything you request. (not necessarily in the bathtub though.)

Like dougs said: this is the vlog your vlog could smell like, if your vlog was recorded in the bathtub. With Lush bath bombs. Mmm.

I started trying to knit. I cast on thirty stitches with no problem and then... problems started happening. I don't want to have to unravel it but I'm thinking I'm going to have to do a lot of things I don't want to do before this calorimetry is done.

Julia made me a hemp necklace today. It has a dragon medallion on it. She swears hemp stops itching if you wear it for a few days, so I'm just not going to take it off unless I'm bathing and see how long it takes to soften up a bit. It's not actually irritating my skin, but it's... weird to have a weight around my neck. It's been a long time since I've habitually worn any jewelry-- the last one I used to wear constantly was a lizard necklace moorishflower gave me, which I'm not positive the location of at this moment, but it's still one of my favorite necklaces. My favorite is the teardrop garnet on a silver chain, which matches a silver (I think steel actually) ring with a red jewel in it that doesn't quite fit on my finger any more. I only ever wear silver, if you ever see me wearing gold it's a shocking occasion, I hardly own any gold. I do have one string of pearls I inherited from my grandmother, that's about the only proper jewelry I have.

I don't even have my ears pierced, and that seems to be an oddity for a woman my age. The assumption is that everyone has pierced ears. I just never saw the point in putting more holes in my head than the ones I was born with. I'm not big on accessorizing, it would bother me having something in my ears all the time, I think. Sometimes I admire my mother's earrings, but never in an "ooh I wish I could wear those" way. I'll be honest, it used to be a fear of needles, but four tattoos and over half a dozen blood donations have pretty much cured me of that particular problem. Still, I don't feel the need to get a piercing, even though I've been told I'd look good with a more unconventional piercing like a tragus (which Julia has) or a daith. Someone told me to get an industrial once but that isn't happening while I'm sane.

Tomorrow's supposed to be revoltingly hot again. With, again, thunderstorms on the forecast that I doubt will materialize. I'm dying for a good thunderstorm already. Yes, I know I talk about the weather a lot, I promise as soon as it stops trying to kill me with humidity I'll stop talking about it.

Pretty soon I'm going to have to start unloading my bookshelves into plastic totes. I'm not looking forward to it. Books need to be displayed, not stashed away where nobody can look at them. When I get my own place, my bookshelves are going to be more prominent than my television in my living room. I own a lot of books and I love most of them quite a lot. Although I keep acquiring new ones I have no place to put... oh, and I still owe saena17 a book, I'm sorry Saena, I'll get right on that, I've had it set aside for weeks now, I just need to wrap it up and address it. Anyways, I'm pretty sure I can fit my favorite series all together in one tote, even though Harry Potter takes up a lot of room since they're all hardcovers (and I don't even own a copy of Deathly Hallows, I just read Kristin's), and Harry Dresden takes up a lot of space because there are so darn many of his books (and I include all the compilations with just one short story by Jim Butcher in this number, I could get rid of most of them after Side Jobs comes out), and there are quite a few Young Wizards books too... maybe I'll need more than one tote.

Okay, time for bed. Tomorrow I'm going to spend some quality time with knittinghelp.com and then maybe I can take this ball of yarn out to the hammock and chill out in the shade when the heat in my room is too bad to bear.

I've come up with a new theory: the reason people are so unhappy is because they don't lie to each other enough about the right things.

I think why people like me is because I have no hesitation in lying to people if I think that's the appropriate course of action. Hell, sometimes I do it for fun, just to see how long people will believe me (but I always fess up when I do that, and usually the lies are pretty fantastical then). Look at it this way: if my mother and father just lied about how much they liked each other, my house wouldn't feel like a war zone. If my sisters did the same thing, maybe there'd be a little peace. If people could just lie and say it's okay, maybe they'd get over whatever is making it not okay.

Or maybe I'm just an asshole. Either or.

Anyhow, yesterday I learned how to purl, and I started working on my stockinette stitch (messy. so, so messy and ugly: but still recognizably stockinette) on some yellow yarn Kristin had. I'm going to unravel the whole thing when I'm done and then do it again, which is going to suck, but I need to practice if I'm going to get any good. (Hell, my garter stitch still looks awful.)

Speaking of garter stitch, would anyone with an iPod like a cute monster iPod case for any December-arriving holiday? It takes me like two days to make them, and they just look like adorable little anime monsters when they're done (I'll post a picture later...) and I can do worse things than send slightly-sloppy-but-made-with-love things to my friends for the holidays. Also if anyone would like a postcard, I got eight from the Peanut Butter & Co, and I have some from the Kent DeLord house somewhere.

I always dry out in the winter, but my lips are already uncomfortably dry and it's only October. Looks like I'm going to have to do some serious looking-around at Bath and Body Works next time I'm there.

Another time it's good to lie: when you feel like making a cryptic, passive-aggressive comment in your LJ. So instead... Man, did you guys see Lost last night? That show is AWESOME!

...yep.