I so hate the place where we live...
It's very small (hallway-kitchen-diner in one plus bedroom-office-craftroom in one, 42 square meters).
It hasn't been properly renovated for over 20 years so you can imagine the state of the kitchen and bathroom... (we did some renovation on the bathroom when we moved in about 7 years ago but it needs a thorough redecoration).
It's on the ground floor, with a cold beaming from the basement (permanently cold floors), with millions of trees on one side blocking the light, and millions of people walking in front of our windows on the other.
It's close to the main door to the building and almost opposite the lift, so there are legions of people marching in and out, opening and shutting doors, with yapping dogs, kids shouting, ect, all day long.
It's not ours, but Robert's mother's, so we cannot just sell it and move somewhere else.
And now - not far from our balcony there is a small building and there used to be a grocery shop, but now somebody bought it and decided to install there games machines/flippers/whatever you call them, and there is a sign saying "Open 24 hours". How about that?...
I know people live in worse conditions, and I sympathize with them truly, and I don't know why it all just struck me today - a beautiful sunny not too cold day like this - but I feel down about our living space. Yes, we are planning to take a big renovation credit sometime in February or March 2008 and radically redecorate the whole flat, but it won't change the location, it won't change the size, the ground floor.
I so wish we could start somewhere new, the place we would choose and that would please us both. And yes, we could probably afford a two bedroom flat somewhere on the very far outskirts of Warsaw, with a 40 or 50 year mortgage...
I'm just not happy here.
(I'm sorry, I had to vent it somewhere, and Robert is already sick of listening to my ranting about it.)
Knitting
The new issue of Ulla, the Finnish knitting magazine is on and there are several great patterns to make, for cardigans, socks and gloves, and first of all, beautiful designs by Tuulia. Oh, I wish I knew Finnish!
Anyway, I bookmarked some of the patterns and I'll try to decipher them or at least be inspired by the pretty cables and colors! Tuulia, thank you for your offer of help in translating the patterns! *^v^*
I'm knitting my coral cardigan according to the design from Sandra Oct'07, but I've changed the pattern a bit - I don't like bobbles so I'll skip them and knit the stockinette or pearl stitch instead. I may also knit it a bit longer than the original. I named my cardi - Lucy - in honor of the cardigan Lucy Liu wore in the movie Lucky Number Slevin. It's knitting up fairly quickly (6 mm needles), but I wonder whether I have enough yarn for the whole sweater, it seems to magically disappear (one out of 10 balls is already in this piece)... I may have to skip the hood, we'll see.I also have the Secret of Chrysopolis Stole on the needles (and didn't add much since the last time I showed you the photo), and I thought I'd start the Secret of the Stole stole last Friday, but... after seeing some photos of the finished hint 1 I'm not so sure I like it. There is a lot of a stole and not much of a lace in it, just several single holes here and there. I'll wait and see what's it going to look like after the second clue this Friday. Even if it's not for me (a Christmas gift for some woman in the family), I don't want to knit and give something I don't like, it wouldn't be fair.
Painting
Thank you so much for all the nice words about my painting for Anna, she liked it a lot and I really appreciate your positive comments! (I think I need them so much because I didn't get them when I was a child...).
Anyway, I've been working on some new paintings, one of which is a surprise for somebody so I'll show it to you later. *^v^*
Have you seen this movie - Big Fish? I highly recommend it. It tells the story of a man with so much determination that he lives his life the way he really wants, he makes choices and sticks to them. The story about the man who perceives his life as a fairytale and it becomes one! ^^
And there's cute Ewan McGregor and Jessica Lange, and Helena Bonham Carter (all my favorites ^^), and many more.
I see Tuulia already offered to help but of course you can ask me, too. There's site with a (small) crafts dictionary, Finnish-Swedish-English, here. Maybe this would be fun to browse if nothing else :)
ReplyDeleteI've been looking at the patterns from Ulla too - a lot of great things!! If you look at the site below, you might tanslate from differnet languaages ;)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.garnstudio.com/lang/no/ordliste.php
I can understand how you feel about your place, especially with people walking by all the time outside your window and your door! And the New 24-hour arcade sounds Horrible. I hope it does not end up as bad as it sounds. How does Robert feel about it? do you think the renovation will help how you feel? it's hard when you aren't fully happy in your home where you always are. And you can always vent to us :) that's why we are here.
ReplyDeleteI really like the color you chose for your cardigan!
Can't wait to see your new paintings.
You are like me with all the many projects going on at once.
Big fish was a good movie :) Hubby and I really enjoyed it!
What Robert thinks :-):
ReplyDelete1. Logically speaking:
It's very small - yes, it is. But we can not afford significantly bigger one even with this 40-years montage.
It hasn't been renovated – true. But when we do as we plan it will be and many things will change. Especially there will be no cold floors because there are plans for thermo isolation and real wood planking, people staring from outside can be blocked without blocking the sun by kind of Venetian mirror windows (is sow this somewhere, will look for the solution for us), people on the staircase will not be heard since we plan to soften the wall and door on the staircase side and I have my perfect plan for bathroom that will be equipped with state-of-the-art-electronic-steam-cdenabled-shower with Cherenkov-blue lights and stuff :-).
2. But generally speaking I do not feel as uncomfortable there as my wife is. Because I was raised there, because I am not there throughout the whole day, because my “skin” is much more “thick” and I just doing my best to not bother by things I can not really change. And I am not bothered by staring people, I don’t give a heck about them. And I really like our small urban forest outside the bedroom window, I do! It blocks the light, true, but it blocks the noise also and its green. You saw the pictures taken from our balcony and commented them as beautiful.
3. And all that does not change the fact that I do not feel comfortable with my wife hating the place she spent most of her time and perfectly understand that she does not feel as it is the place of her own. After all it still (though not for long now) belongs to my mom. I only hope that after we do what we have planned for the place she will feel better there. If not we will have to move but hey! the place will have more value then so it will help to gather money for the new one. So Huni you got to soldier one till the spring!
Robert it sounds like you have some great plans there - I don't know if these are the blinds you were mentioning but I was thinking about the ones that come from the bottom and you pull them up to the top instead of the other way around - that way you could have it go high enough to block people viewing in but you still would get lots of light. And another thought would be some taking some thin wood that you could put on the walls that has the worst noise and you could cover it with batting and then a nice material?? Just a thought that may help a bit.... that woods outside your balcony is fantastic and you both would miss it I am sure.
ReplyDelete