Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Random thing the third

I once found a bat in my bedroom.*

My old bedroom had Victorian sash windows. Sash windows are often pretty much the height of the wall and have three states: closed; open with a 2-6 inch gap at the top or bottom; half open. So, for those of us who are security conscious, the window essentially had two states: closed, or open with a gap. My window was always kept open with the small gap.

I am also a hoarder, and used to keep random crap in plastic bags stuffed down the back of a chest of drawers which was in front of the window.

One evening, lying in bed (a very low bed, in a small room, so my head was next to the chest of drawers) I heard the plastic bags crackle. I started to freak out a little bit, since my window was only open at the top - near the ceiling - and the plastic bags were near the floor. I convinced myself that there was no way an axe-murderer could have fit through a 4 inch gap in the window (and even if one had, they wouldn't fit behind the chest of drawers).

It was only when I heard my windchime tinkle that I knew something weird was happening. My windchime was hung by my door in such a position that it *only* *ever* chimed when the door was being opened or shut. There was no way that a breeze from the window could move the chimes. And the door was shut.

There was clearly something in the room that way making the bags crackle and the windchime jingle.

So I went and woke up my brother, who felt that logically there was no axe murderer playing with my windchime. I lay on his floor for a while, uncomfortable and being unable to sleep, and eventually decided that it must've been a big gust of wind.

So I went back to my cofy bed, with all the lights on and with some music playing (and the covers over my head and firmly tucked in all round my body) and tried to get to sleep.

Then the windchime clashed again.

Completely freaked out I dared to glance out... and saw that there was a huge bat flying around my light.

Once I'd calmed down from the lack of an axe murderer, I decided that having a bat choose to fly into my bedroom actually upped my goth cred quite a bit, and was therefore totally cool. But I did go back and sleep on my brother's floor.

In the morning my mother & I found the bat sleeping on the back of the curtains, and, with its wings all folded up (it wasn't upside down or anything), it was so diddy! It must've been a pipistrelle, a tiny British bat with relatively long wings which is why I thought it would've been larger.

Later that day it had gone. I didn't see it again so I assume it found its way out of the window, leaving me with a pretty cool experience to relate (and a small amount of bat poo on my curtains).

* Yes, this is inspired by the current week in Ravelry round-up thing, which I've never read before, but discovered that it was an easy way to alleviate boredom when on my baby computer without bloglines.

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Sunday, February 15, 2009

Random thing the second...

...I am evidently not as good at updating my blog as I used to be. Huh. Whoda thought?

I've spent the weekend getting an old W-I-P ready for finishing,* going through my blog and adding labels to the all the old posts. The next step is to add all my FO pictures to Ravelry, since I've heard they've now implemented photo-upload now. I've been using the Ravelry queue over the past year, and I always check out what designs look like on other people, but other than that I don't really use it.

And then I guess I need to start some updates!

* including doing the kitchener stitch for the first time ever, and using it to graft live stitches to a cast-off edge. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. I'm not sure that what I did was 'true' kitchener stitch, but it looks pretty and it works!

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