it's not over 'til it's over. and it's fine by me.

i wished for something and it came true. well, it could if i made the decision. i'm afraid to because that wish has another tied to it, and that one is potentially hazardous. quite likely so. but it's tempting.

i'm just not too sure about grasping another straw that happens to point like a sign. they are always the ones that break my back.

i don't want to have to decide. i just wanna watch snooker on TV but i can't. it makes me cranky. no chocolate, no ronnie o'sullivan, no nothing. what a lousy weekend. again. grumble grumble...

this house breaks my heart. it's been abandoned since the seventies at least, a testament to the building skills and materials of former years, as it still stands, although for how much longer i'm not sure... it was the biggest house of the village in its time, a grand mansion. i've heard they had a taxidermy swan indoors. i will never be able to comprehend that it's been all left to rot and have hated every year of watching it happen.

anyway, today i found a curious thing growing on a piece of wood outside the house. it looks like the bird's nest fungus, but the 'eggs' are on the outside. again, i just felt drawn to the spot where they were and waded through all those saplings that grow around the house. just call me the mushroom whisperer...

the bay is still frozen over. it's not much to look at after the ocean horizon. i miss ireland like crazy. i knew it would be bad, but i had no idea. i feel so misplaced all the time...and there's nothing to be done.

the anthill on our yard woke up today. this morning it was still all quiet, but when i returned from the walk it was crawling with ants. they looked busy but really they were just wandering back and forth. just like me. not knowing what to do, how to get things going.

i tried to get lost in the woods today but ended up exactly where i was headed. i found cranberry in the bud and last year's fruit fermented in the moss. some lingonberries were left on the stalks as well, much in the same condition. i didn't get to pick any in the fall, because i left for ireland just as everything was ripening, and it still bothers me, especially now that i've ran out of my frozen blueberries.

this orange slime mold was crawling all over the forest floor. which reminds me that there is a book about them i want... if i had it, i could tell you the beautiful finnish name of it. they have all been named officially just recently and the names read like poetry.

lovely lichens grew on the aspens on a clearing deeper in the woods. i sat on a warm, flat rock for a long time, it was so quiet there that i got a strange feeling about it and decided not to go further. i kind of had a hunch that a bear might be nearby, possibly with cubs in the nest. i kept hearing a sound that could have been a creaking tree or a crying baby. whatever it was, i didn't feel like finding out the hard way and left.

animals are shedding their winter coats, i found moose hairs and a tuft of white rabbit fur. i wish i could find some antlers, but i'm starting to think the deer have a secret stash just like elephants hide the ivory tusks.

finally, the pine bog, one of my favourite places in the world. the marsh labrador tea covers the ground, it's an evergreen but the leaves turn against the stalks for the winter. in the summer when it flowers, all of the above is a sea of white, and the amazing scent is literally intoxicating, causing nausea and dizziness if overdone. it's also a powerful repellent for moths and mice. i'm usually very scent-sensitive, but for some reason my tolerance for the wild rosemary, as it is also called, is really good.

on a completely different note, how did shakespeare originally sound like? fascinating and knee-melting if you ask me...

this is what happened right after i posted about it being spring: a tree-hour flurry of snow. they say new snow is the death of old, and it seems true, most of it has melted since, but not all. spring has come early this year, and with the tall spruces gone i'm expecting the sun to wake everything up sooner that usual, too. daylily sprouts are already swelling up.

forsythia is not yet in bloom outside, but the clippings just exploded in the vase. i've never been a fan of yellow, but the simplicity of the flowers and the fact that they open before anything else in the garden kind of wins me over.

these norvegian-style totoro mittens i made after a free pattern on ravelry. i altered it only slightly by reversing the colours on the cuff and thumb, which seemed more true to the original characters (the smallest one is in white out of sight behind the thumb). i hadn't done stranded knitting in a long time but now i want to do more. i found some good new books about different ways of knitting socks at the library, and i can't wait to try the methods, so many of them.

yesterday was the first real spring day (don't be fooled by all the snow in the photos!) the birds were singing like crazy and it was too warm to wear a hat while i battled the long-neglected apple tree that has grown straggly with the deer snacking on the branches all the time. i spotted the first mushrooms, the first caterpillar and three young ravens were frolicking high up in the sky.

i got a bit secateur-happy and clipped bundles of kindling from small branches. the springy maple shoots were irresistible, so i tied up some dreamcatchers, a traditional one and two minimalistic takes on the subject. i'm really inspired now to work with twigs and branches, especially when the resources are practically infinite.

for some reason i always feel a sense of guilt for doing random things when i should be working on something specific, but rarely when i'm just comatose in front of the computer or TV. maybe it's the thinking that the little energy i have should be spent to accomplish something worthwhile. sharing surely makes things so, so here you are, a rose pattern copied from a vintage potholder, spotted over at fine little day. (i'm kind of inspired by the clover one as well.) the pattern is a nicely asymmetrical square and it goes something like this:

x x x o o o o x o o x x x o o o o x x x 

x o x x o o x x o o o x x x o o x x o x 

x x o x o x x x o o o o x x x o x o x x 

o x x x o x x o o o o o o o x o x x x o 

o o o o x o o o x x x x x x o x o o o o 

o o x x o o x x x x x x x x x o x x o o 

o x x x o x x x o o o x x x x o x x x o 

x x x o x x o o x x x o x x x x o x x x 

x o o o x o x x o x x x o x x x o o o o 

o o o o x o x x o x x x o x x x o o o o 

x o o o o x o x x x x x o x o o o o o x 

x x o o x x x o x x x o x x x o o x x x 

x x x o x x x x o o o x x x x o x x x x 

x x x x o x x o x x x x x x o o x x x o 

o o o o x o o o x x x x o x o x o o o o 

o x x x o x x o o o o o o o x o x x x o 

x x o x o x x x o o o o x x x o x o x x 

x o x x o x x x x o o x x x x o x x o x 

x x x o o o x x o o o o x x o o o x x x 

besides filling in squares and toying with typing, i did bake rye & cheese scones with dried mushrooms and nettle, and wrote down some loose leaf recipes onto my cookbook. spring is on its way and i don't feel like going out at all with the stormy wind and glaring sunshine. most people seem to get really excited about it but i just want to crawl into a hole. it feels so treacherous, too much, too bright, too cruel.

no mess, i admit, but my super-neat wrapped twig is still a random sculpture. the 'eye' of the bud makes it oddly human-like but there's also something foxy going on there. i wrapped it the wrong way up for the sculpture to stand on its own, which makes it a bit of a mess-up in the end, after all. yay for success.

days have been quiet, although i did go to IKEA with my dad on thursday. i needed a couple of their flip-top bottles. or, to be fair, i wanted them and needed to get out of the house, to put on nice clothes and pretty shoes. in turku, i ate a veggie bagel while the city philharmonic orchestra played at the shopping centre. quite grand but then again i had craved for that bagel for half a year so it felt fitting, the kettledrums and all. i don't miss living in that city at all though. after a bookstore and H&M, i was wiped out.

i was looking for a swimsuit, but they didn't have the one i had seen in a magazine somewhere, a black halterneck number. there were some nice ones in what i call mermaid green, a really deep, dark emerald. only in larger sizes, of course, and in the end i ordered a kiddie-sized bikini online. in silver. and its march. most likely it won't be until july that i need a bikini. and i have them, i've made plenty. i was looking for a swimsuit. and what for, i'm not at all sure.

unless i sensed that i'll win a lot of money tonight in the lottery. then i'll be off to tahiti in no time.

oh, i bought this in dublin. i'm terrified of it. but i'll go ahead. i want to learn how to make mistakes on purpose (instead of just messing everything up thinking i'm making the right choices). it'll be hard, the cover is so pretty and perfect...

all i can say is... i am never alone! say hi to my dismayed rhubarb quark friend, and my buddy out in the snow. cabin fever can be cute, too.

i'm desperately lonely but don't want to see anyone. that's a bit of a pickle. there's no one who's quite where i'm at, i feel very disconnected. depression took on very fast after coming back home. ireland was a nice, warm kiddie pool compared to this hole in the ice i have sunk into. all my plans have been washed away, the simplest things are impossible and there seems to be nothing i want. i'm getting tired of wanting a home of my own, it's never going to happen. and for me it's the only thing that really matters. my own space, my things arranged the way i want them...

i give up. on love as well, just for the record. i no longer want anything from life. i wish i cared about people more, i wish i had it in me to help others in need, but i just don't. i'm useless. my brain only approves of such specific things i know i can never be happy.

i can't even write about depression in a way that could shed some light on the subject. when it's not on, it's unreal and unreachable, and now, growing on, it just makes me pathetic. and it twists things around. if i imagine my life perfect, with my country house and chicken coop and lifetime lover, i flinch in horror. it disgusts me, in a way that is impossible to explain.

if i ceased to exist, it would make no difference in anyone's everyday life. of course there would be sadness and feelings of loss for some, but nothing would really change. nobody relies on me, i am no one's partner or owe anything to anyone. i don't have religion to tell me that life is sacred, i don't see any reason to stay in this stale existence when i could be moving on in the circle of life, dust to dust.

it's just that i see myself failing, like i always have, like i always will. i don't see a way in, and i see no way out.