damn summer.

being hot and getting in the way of my ability to wear my awesome new coats.

i've had my lovely red parka for a few years but i've always wanted one that was not red because i don't really wear red. also since meeting my lovely friend claire i've envied her hood-tail. this one came to my rescue. POLAR BEARS.

FABULOUS

do you ever go shopping (by shopping i mean thrifting) and see something that is wonderful and ridiculous and fabulous and too totally out-there to actually wear but you just need to buy it anyway because you can't stand the thought of it sitting there unwanted or going to some high school kid who just wants something ridiculous to wear to a dance? something that is a stretch for someone who is of your body type and living in a small town to pull off but if you were a 5'10'' and 100 pound model walking around new york for fashion week you would rock the shit out of it?

i have found that thing. well, i have found those things before, but this is the mother of "that thing"s:


and here i try to be fabulous like the kids on the fashion blogs.


SO GOOD, right? i'm beginning to feel a teeny bit guilty about the amount of fur that i own (yes, it's real) but it's not like i'm buying it new, i guess.

hello there.

i am such a useless lump. i don't know what it is i do with myself that manages to take up entire days.

well, i've been doing some things.

i re-did a chair that was previously covered in a horribly falling-apart black and tan stripe. the tan looked like it was supposed to be white but was really dirty. not a good look. also it was a jersey fabric. which was waaaay too saggy to use for a chair covering. while picking the fabric i told myself not to use another knit but i did. wool sweaters have a bit more elasticity, though.

also i've been cross-stitching. does it look like i did much to it since last time. did i? no. but what i did took a long time anyway. cross stitch = most time consuming thing ever.

i've also taken apart two sweaters, one t-shirt, four scarves, and a pair of gloves.

for those of you who have ever wondered "i wonder what kelly's room at home looks like?" (i wonder this about people, i don't know if that is something other people do) here is the answer.

it's REALLY ORANGE. and the floors are this hideous pink colour that was there when we ripped up the carpet. my mom always promised to paint it but i could never bother to get all my stuff out so that could happen. speaking of floor, can you see floor? yes? that means my room is tidy. my room in my apartment will not look like this. this room is six or seven years of hoarding useless brightly-coloured junk and clothes and toys and pictures of things that i used to like and am now embarrassed of.

(dig my MS Paint photo collage assembly skills)

i ordered one of these the other day even though i don't have a record player. it was an OMG THESE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE SOLD OUT impulse. when i bought it i was just thinking how it would be a good thing to own because it's limited edition and all and david horvitz is a cool guy and sunset rubdown is my favourite. but now i really want a record player. i'm not really the music nerd type so i never really considered it, but it was bound to happen sooner or later with my love for most things old-fashioned. and since i pretty much just listen to the same albums over and over again, building up a collection would not be so costly. i just need sunset rubdown. and maybe the soundtrack to cabaret. that would be cool. some flapper jazz. and maybe lady gaga. i wonder how many people buy lady gaga on vinyl.

dreams are fun.

i don't want to go to sleep.

i just want to cross stitch forever and ever!


we had a few days apart but i'm serious about this shit again.

(i don't think i've ever shown off how fabulously high-quality the webcam i bought far $3 is. now you know.)

i venture into a dreamland

i've started writing down my dreams when i wake up in the morning. i've only been doing it for four days, but i've already realized some things.

- i have teeth-falling-out dreams A LOT. i already knew that it was something that appeared a lot, but now that i'm making more of an effort to remember them i realize it happens even more than i had thought. sometimes it's the main, uh, plot point? but sometimes i'll just take a second to stop whatever else i'm doing and spit out a chunk of molar that just fell off. ew.

- things are usually "we did this" or "we were there" but i don't often know who the other people in the "we" are.

- i never have sex dreams. my dream-brain's equivalent seems to be kissing people in bathtubs. i just realized it has happened a couple of times.

spare time.

i've been trying to make things but they've been frustrating me so i decided to take things apart instead.

i have a huge bag of clothes and scarves and shit that i tell myself i'm going to make into better and more useful things but really i'm never going to. so i'm taking it all apart thread by thread.

it's being collected in bags and i might do something with it eventually but for now i'm just doing it because it feels good.

i'm closer to my 20th birthday than to my 19th. i have an apartment with a lease in my name and a chequebook and i can drive on the highway and i'm halfway through my degree, after which i'll likely be moving to a city. i don't know how to live in a city. i don't know how to even visit a city.

i'm not ready to be an adult. i'm still 15 years old in my head and years round down to 2000 rahter than there having been a full decade passed since then. i still stay in my room wasting time all day and plaster my walls with pictures of my favourite celebrity figures (though now they're nice hand-processed prints of my own photos rather than ratty magazine cutouts of captain jack sparrow) and whine to myself about not getting invited to hang out with the cool kids.

i was reading spencer krug's dreams and there was one where he sees his sister naked and is disturbed because for one he saw his sister naked but also because before he realized it was his sister he just saw it as some middle-aged woman. because that's what she was now. being 33 is not quite middle age of course and it's very different from being 19 but it's still kind of the same sort of realization i've been having. i'm not a child anymore and that's very strange. i realized that when i was the age my sister is now i had a boyfriend and went awkwardly to parties where people knew who i was and therefore weren't confused my my presence but they didn't actually know me. my sister is a lot like i am in terms of social awkwardness and such but i don't think she does these things. i think that's better, really, because having the boyfriend and going to the parties were not really things i actually wanted, just things i thought i did.

social circles seem to be pretty much defined by the music people listen to. i never feel like i listen to enough music to fit in.

i also always want to whine in blog posts about these sorts of things. i don't know if i do too much of it. i definitely think of myself as an introvert and i suppose everyone would, but when i spend too much time alone i get to thinking about too many things and getting in strange moods that are not necessarily good. but then when i attempt to be with people to fix it i usually end up awkward and flustered so maybe that's not good either and i guess i am totally an introvert. maybe i'm neither. i can't be alone or with people. that's kind of unfortunate.

i don't really know what i think i'm getting at here.

but i'm getting pretty serious about cross stitch.

i'm not going to tell you what it is unless you're claire, in that case you already know. it will hopefully eventually begin to look like something. it will hopefully be finished some day.

old cameras i love youuuuuu!

RANGEFINDER.

it doesn't work, though. the shutter is sticking. i'll have to see when i'm back in school if it'd be worth getting cleaned/fixed. for now i like to just look through and focus on things because it's a rangefinder and it's cooooo. i love it because it's a huge brick of a camera and the brown leather case and short little strap are SO GOOD. and it came with film in it, but sadly it had been opened so i won't be able to salvage the photos. i've always wanted to get mystery photos from an old camera.

AND


an olympus om-1 slr, which appears to be in perfect working condition! i'm not sure about the light meter; it came without a battery and i tried sticking the one from my other camera into it and it moved but it was like "who you're overexposing everything!" even though it was set at 1000 and f16. i should figure this out. because my yashica has an irritating light leak sometimes and though i think i figured it out i'd like to have a camera that's leak-free. and i like the way this one looks better, haha.

$5 each, bitches.

happy birthday!

happy birthday spencer krug luv u 4eva<3 <3 !!!!1!1!!1

i'm a few hours early. maximizing my hopeless fangirl status with abbreviations and exclamation marks.

photo II and some other things.

Unibrow

Thick Ankles

Pit Stains

Man Hands

Large Saggy Boobs

those are the rest of them minus one that stayed in sackville to hang on a wall somewhere. probably the second most embarrassing one apart from the boobs, actually. it showed my naked back and some side boob and fat rolls. hmmm.

other news:

i drew something today. just for the sake of drawing because i haven't really been doing that lately. it's pretty half-assed but i just needed to draw something to see if i still can. i can never tell if my self-portraits actually look like me or not.

the other day i went to st. andrew's to see the exhibit my mom has in a gallery there, and we went to this wool shop that had these amazing toys made of their handwoven wool fabric. they were made by ladies who have been making them for decades, which is why they're so wonderfully old-fashioned looking. i wanted them so badly but they were for display only. and they had these bags with little houses embroidered and felted on that were so wonderful.


and i finished a sock. i'm really loving scratchy old wools.