23
Facts About Me
1. Well, to start with,
my name is Anna.
2. That is a palindrome.
3. I am 23
4. I live in England
(half of the time in Durham and the other half of the time in Whitstable, a
small seaside town in Kent, famous for oysters and expensive beach huts)
5. I study Theology, I'm doing a Masters at the mo. Maybe a phd later. Maybe.
6. My laziness affects
my academic activity, my walking anywhere, my changing the channel of the
telly, this website, my career as a professional Iron Man tri-athlete (not
really), my poor diet and my keeping in touch with old friends, but also,
sadly, my knitting.
7. I am a terrible
knitter for two reasons. The first is laziness: I never do tension squares, I
join in a new yarn by tying knots (which according to Montse
Stanley one should never do, under any circumstances) I have never blocked a
pressed pieces before making up and my idea of making up is to use a lame sort
of running stitch. With some knots tied up for good measure.
8. The second reason why
I am a terrible knitter is that I am loose, The title
of this site is not just an invitation for my friends to cast aspersions on my
chastity. Oh no. My tension is that of a person who makes loops round her
wrists rather than needles. (Don�t worry, the needle size given in the patterns
are for normal knitters.) I didn�t think being loose mattered until some
disasters with cotton. Now I knit everything with two needle sizes smaller than
recommended by the yarn manufacturer.
9. However, knitting is
the reason I get out of bed in the morning. I use the term �morning� loosely.
10. I have also been
known to get out of bed to watch a test cricket match. Or tennis.
11. These are sports that
many people describe as boring. They are wrong! Both are irresistibly English,
not because of the cucumber sandwiches, but because of the ridiculously
complicated rules and terminology. Both sports (at the highest level at least)
involve wearing white rather than nasty primary coloured acrylics. Both sports
have a psychological element of going it alone (one bowler, one batsman, forget
the fielders and your partner it�s just you versus me, and don�t even speak to
me about doubles). Both involve insulting Australians because they�re better
than us.
12. I took up spinning my
own wool, as I foolishly thought it would save money. It has turned into an
addiction, and my love hate relationship with my wheel is akin to the
relationship one has with habit-forming narcotics.
13. I like whisky. Posh
single malts, or cheap stuff mixed with coke. Some say
this is all that runs through my veins.
14. Buffy the Vampire
Slayer � there is no limit to how many times I can watch an episode, there is
no limit to my love for her, Giles, Faith, Willow, Tara, Anya,
Xander and Spike. Currently, my favourite Buffy quote
is �I have finesse! I have finesse coming out of my bottom!�
15.I watch lots of
films, and would some day like to write one. My favourite films are Withnail and I; The Little Mermaid; Moulin Rouge and Mary Poppins.
16.Music. Saying �I like
music seems so anodyne. At the moment I am mostly listening to Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre, Belly, Kristin
Hersh, Joni Mitchell, Antony
and the Johnsons, Devendra Banheart, CocoRosie, The Arcade Fire, The Futureheads,
The Killers, Tom Baxter, The Clash, Talking Heads, Manic Street Preachers,
Suede, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, Muse, Super Furry
Animals, Tori Amos, BB King, Mercury Rev, David
Bowie, Bjork, Belle and Sebastian. I�m gonna stop
now.
17. I love charity shopping, Pre-Raphaelite art, cheap
jewellery, dry stone walls and Jesus (being a Christian is actually my life,
not just the end of a list, but I don�t want to talk about it in a silly
self-deprecating way, like the rest of the content of this page).
18. Other than Buffy, favourite TV is Black Books,
Father Ted, Six Feet Under, University Challenge and I�m a bit partial to
Coronation Street.
19.
Some writers I�ve recently enjoyed the work of are Naomi
Wolf, Margaret Atwood, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, CS Lewis, Garth Nix,
John Donne, Roald Dahl, Kate Atkinson, Germaine
Greer, Virginia Woolf, Iris Murdoch, Ian McEwan, Tolkien, John McEnroe
(not really), JK Rowling, Sebastian Faulks, John
Updike, Graham Greene, Peter Carey, Paul Bailey and George Eliot.
20.
I get righteously angry about things quite a lot. You know:
sweatshops, carbon dioxide emissions, the patriarchy, the arms trade, that sort
of thing. More often than not this leads to guilt rather than anger, however. I
use a Mooncup and make my own wool and feel all
self-sufficient earth goddess-y, breaking the capitalist economic structures my
engaging in a pastime for wimmin, mimicking the
creation cycle that us life-giving girls are part of by making stuff with my
hands, But let�s face it, I�m stuck in the cogs of The Machine. I can�t boycott
Nestle as I like Kit-Kats too much and sometimes I can�t resist the stuff in
the shops that I know has been (badly) stitched together by legless Ugandan
children. Even though I wish everyone would use independent little bookshops
record shops, I get stuff off Amazon all the time. I am bad, bad, bad.
21.
I have a Live Journal. You can read it here. It's not about knitting, really, sometimes I post publicly about feminism, but it's mostly Friends' Only. So my mum can't read it. She's tried to, you know. She's cheeky. I also have a deviantART thingy, mostly photos and knitted goodness. Go here.
22.
Another thing that I am is impressed if you�ve managed to read
up to here. So pat yourself on the back. Or email
me. T��would be much appreciated. 23.
I am very very slow at replying to emails but it doesn't mean that I don't read and appreciate them, and won't reply one day. Especially if you're knitting any of my patterns! Patternless Finished Project: Knitted Dalek! Patternless Finished Project: Lord of the Rings-Inspired Snood What I
Look Like 1 - in the sea at Lindisfarne What
I Look Like 2- a satanic Moomin What
I Look Like 3 - freezing by a reservoir in Weardale in November What
I Look Like 4 - modelling my cardigan wearing my sister's silly sunglasses What
I Look Like 5 - note the halo What
I Look Like 6 - getting drunk and sunburnt watching England win the Ashes
