Tuesday, October 03, 2006

spring cleaning

having lived mostly in sydney and on the coast, living inland, and in a place like canberra, is a hard thing to get used to. but i do love the real seasons, and am enjoying spring, apart from the constant hayfever. the vegie patch has already taken off, only lost one bok choy and one lettuce and one bean in the planting.

and this morning i have been inspired to clean the house properly, ie, moving things and dusting/polishing the surfaces underneath. washing cushion covers. rearranging book shelves. putting knitting away. yes thats right, i have dismantled knitting corner and have put my spare needles and pattern books away. still have the stash basket and the socks-in-progress basket out but they will probably stay 'in progress' until after the warm weather has passed now. i just cant get into knitting at the moment so i may as well stop pretending.

instead this weekend i allowed myself to read a book, as in a novel, rather than some 3 tonne volume of psychoanalytic theory badly translated from obscure french. i read 'girl with the pearl earring' - i saw the movie ages ago and loved it and have never read the book but it has been reissued with colour plates of the pictures and vermeer is one of my favourite artists, and it was great, as good as the movie. and of course, it reminded me of amsterdam and standing in front of real vermeers in the reijksmuseum. the girl with the pearl earring is in the hague which i didnt get to but i saw the milkmaid up close, it is actually really small, maybe only a4 and dwarfed by this heavy wooden frame, but the detail and the colours is exquisite, even after 400 years.

and it was lovely to read something for pleasure again, so i have replaced knitting corner with book corner where i have put my catalogues from the fantastic exhibits i saw in amsterdam (esp the rembrandt/caravaggio) plus other novels i want to reread, eg portrait of a lady, to the lighthouse (there seems to be a painting theme emerging here!).

i am still exhausted from last week which was the most intensive writing session ive ever done, 5000 words in 3 days to finish the mammoth theory chapter by friday. its now 10,500 words with no conclusion and i am meeting tomorrow to get some feedback. *gulp* but it felt good to get it done, and by the time i said i would, and it was so hard that surely the rest will be easy in comparison!

vacuuming calls.

k

4 comments:

Taphophile said...

Ah, housework as displacement activity - wanna displace some more, come to my house.

Congrats on the 5,000 words - a huge effort.

Socks, BTW, are a perfect summer knitting project. Light, portable, don't sit hotly on the lap.

DrK said...

given my pathological dislike of housework im thinking i might be in need of psychiatric help. the theory thereof is causing more harm than good obviously!!

Margie said...

Wowza. That's a mammoth effort with the writing. Well done!

Denise said...

You wouldn't be procrastinating, would you? ;) I can totally understand - horrible endless job to do, with the weather warming up and the call of fresh air...

How did the 'feedback' session go today? Did you survive?