Writer's block

I've got a Portuguese assignment that has to be handed in on Thursday. It's a relatively simple task: write a travel guide of around 500 words about "an area local to your school" and stick in a few photos stolen from random websites. So I'm choosing London, which is fairly local to my school, given that my school is in London. Actually it's in Bloomsbury but I'm not sure what I could write about that, apart from the British Museum. Unfortunately, I've hit a snag. It seems I really don't know how to write in Portuguese. In fact my Portuguese is not very good at all, but it's too advanced for the beginner class, and the gap between the beginner class and the next class (mine) is huge. From nothing to post A-level in a year. And that's not great when you've got to sit and write something and your head goes straight into Spanish mode. There are penalties for plagiarism (I think death is one of them, they get pretty pissed off about it) so I'm really trying very hard not to copy stuff, but it's quite difficult as I don't actually know anything about London hotels. I live here, I never need to stay in a hotel. And my mind has gone blank about pubs and shops and exciting places to go. So I'm procrastinating by surfing the internet for interesting blogs (I really need to update my list), daydreaming and trying not to succumb to temptation and read my new book that I bought today. It's called Terry Harrison's Complete Guide to Watercolour Landscapes, and one of the great things about it is that he shows you how to mix brown. When I try to mix brown using primaries, I get either muddy blue, muddy red or muddy yellow. In the absence of any photos to add to this post, here's a picture of the book I've stolen from Amazon.


Other things I am procrasting about at the moment include blocking two scarves I've made for Christmas presents (is there anything more tiresome than actually finishing your knitting once you've finished knitting it?), writing Christmas cards, and sorting out our wedding photos, which are still sitting on memory cards and have been since we got married in August. There's no excuse really. I was off work for three weeks with the Evil Arthritis and what did I do with myself? Watch Life on Mars. Watch NYPD Blue. Knit (but not finish) scarves. Make bottlecap pincushions. Mindlessly surf the internet. I'm really rather cross with myself for being so unmotivated.

Today's happy news is that my latest gnome from Craftster's Roaming Gnome Swap has arrived! She's called Ruby and is from Germany and is made of nallbinding. I don't actually know what that is. The last two gnomes I had didn't have a very good time. I was stuck indoors and consequently so were they. But little Ruby will be different, she's going to have some fun! I'll post photos soon.

Wow, what a wordy post. Time flies when you're not getting any work done.