Lent

After much cogitation I decided to "do" Love Life Live Lent this year. I considered giving up chocolate, but decided (charitably) that this would be unfair on my work colleagues, who would have to work alongside me in a chocolate-deprived state for several weeks. Last year's carbon fast attempt was fairly disastrous - I ended up having so many accommodation problems in Windsor that I went away every weekend and drove between 200 and 500 miles every weekend for the whole of Lent! Oops.

So Love Life Live Lent seems much more do-able. I've also signed up for the daily updates on Twitter, which are a good reminder...

So far, I've successfully accomplished:

• Give up your place in a queue to someone else. (I let cars in ahead of me at various Slough junctions. This is causing pandemonium - Slough drivers aren't used to people being nice).
• Say something nice about someone behind their back. (This was quite easy as everyone is so flipping nice at work that we don't go in for being bitchy).
• Say a prayer for someone who is unwell or is in need. (In theory easy, but I did try to spend a bit more time actually doing it).
• Give a homemade gift to a loved one. Easy peasy for a knitter. I posted off a dishcloth for the Happiness Swop on a Ravelry forum for Christians with depression.

but have had a few problems with:

• Skip a meal and give the money to a charity working overseas. a. I'm skinny. I don't DO skipping meals b. My daily food budget is £4, which is going to make a massive difference to some charity, hmm. I decided to eat the meal as normal but donate a bit more than normal to charity this week .
• Take things to a charity shop, recycle or Freecycle. I have piles of stuff waiting to be sorted (a large wodge of clothing, and there are currently 3 computers sitting in my living room waiting for files to be transferred before I recycle/Freecycle 2 of them), I just haven't had time to sort them yet...
• Have a TV-free evening and do something with your household instead. TV-free evening = easy. Spend evening with my household? Less easy. My household is me. So I thought I'd write this blog post instead and then read my book ("The Road Home" by Rose Tremain).

Twitter

So, there I was, reading blogs, when I stumbled over the Yarn Harlot talking about Twitter. Now I'd read about Twitter, but mainly in incredibly dull librarian things that don't inspire me to go and investigate further. But if the Yarn Harlot's doing it it's got to be cool, right? So I investigated and discovered exciting things like several other online friends using it, plus Stephen Fry, plus the Today programme and Greenpeace. Then I joined in myself.

I don't think my updates have changed the world. Was anyone actually interested in my desperate hunt for paracetamol in the event of Extreme On The Blobness Galloping Gut Rot? Or the headache-that-turned-into-a-migraine? Or the fact that I'd arrived at work and it was raining? Probably not. But I like other people's updates!

In other news. I've just started reading "Everyman" by Philip Roth, for reading group, although I'll miss the meeting for this one as I'll be on holiday. Ironically the only copy left was the large print one, which caused great hilarity among the other members, almost all of whom are a good 40 years older than me! When do you read books? I'm trying to keep the time I get to bed for reading books, and to keep reading newspapers and magazines to other times, but I always seem to end up with a backlog at the end of each week!

Most of my files are now on Claudius, although a few remain on Caligula, and I haven't tackled Nero yet... I haven't worked out how I want the file structure to look yet, so things are in weird places. Knitting pics seem to have ended up in a variety of folders, so I'm having trouble finding things!

I've unearthed the pics of White Lightning (but in green):


finished for a swop before Christmas. A quick and also fun knit! I used 2 skeins of Debbie Bliss Cathay, which feels lovely.
Just before Christmas I discovered Folksy (thanks to Nic!) which is like Etsy but in the UK. I bought a bag like this as a Christmas present from Nic's shop and have since been stalking various other exciting items!