Vivienne's Pastimes

Busy day

2011-12-03T19:14:00.005Z

Going

Today we, all three and a half of us, went to the local Christmas Fair. Mostly to hear Chris and his choir singing various Christmas songs (I thought they sounded lovely, he's still muttering about wrong notes, but it was a last minute booking and they had very little rehearsal time). They looked very smart in the freezing cold church:
Libby spent the time alternating between running up and down the aisle, and some very complicated dancing with much flapping of mittens. She did say she liked their music at the end though.

And we bought some Christmas decorations from the Norwegians who come over every year:
Wooden, so although breakable if Libby get too enthusiastic about them, not as dangerous as the glass baubles (still banished from our tree). There were a lot of knitted baubles too, most of which I recognised from Arne and Carlos' book, which I think I may well get. Two of the patterns are in the newest edition of The Knitter (with a fair isle tunic on the front, not the one that has a jumper with a rose-patterned yoke). Not breakable at all, and very festive.

Reading

I seem to have reached the reader's block stage of pregnancy again, although rather later than last time. In a wintry mood, I have been skimming through Icelandic Sagas, in a rather lovely Penguin edition with an introduction by Jane Smiley. I have also joined the DoveGreyReader's Team Middlemarch, as I'd been meaning to re-read it for several years. Far less intimidating read in small chunks, as originally published, and I'd forgotten just how easy to read a Great Book can be.

Gratuitous Libby Picture

I was checking that the new camera cable actually fitted the appropriate sockets, and she said "Libby camera smile", and did. I am partial, I admit, but the camera really does love her. Two years and one month old.

Making Monday - and I make a blog post

2011-11-28T20:14:00.008Z

It's been a while, and more than a while - seven months, in fact, and I can't make promises of amendment, say I'll be a regular blogger from now on, because all the various things that eat up my time are still there. Works is still there. The seventeen month old child is now a two year old, no less insane and even more energetic. And I've been busy making something else for the past 21 weeks:

Due somewhere in the general region of Easter, and one of the main reasons for my silence - it isn't the easiest of pregnancies. Nothing dangerous for either of us, just even more than the usual number of discomforts and inconveniences. I'm supposed to be in the blooming middle months now, but what with the never-ending sickness meeting the breathlessness of the last months, the only blooming I feel is blooming tired, and I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that women of five foot nothing probably shouldn't get pregnant.

There has been knitting too, of course. Various small things, various slightly larger things for a child who seems able to grow an inch in a week (she's 2'10" already, which is well over half my height). Mostly, however, I want to show off my Big Jumper. Way back in the spring, round about when I last managed to write a post for this neglected blog, I got hooked by The Killing on BBC4. Like half of Ravelry, I wanted a jumper like Sarah Lund's.

Only not quite the same, because although I frequently forget just how short I am, I didn't think three broad horizontal stripes would do much for me. So I trawled through hundreds of patterns, and finally came up with a free one from Drops that was cosy and Nordic and everything I wanted.

And promptly cast on the wrong size, because as well as thinking I'm taller than I am, I also think I'm bigger. I kept on knitting and hoping, and in the end it's worked out very well, because how else would I have fitted into it at five months pregnant?
Please excuse the expression, I'm trying to look serious and thoughtful and not at all as if I've forgotten both my NHS-issue support belt and my packet of paracetamol and the effort of standing up is beginning to catch up with me. It's a lovely big cosy jumper, I feel warm all over for the first time in a couple of months, and I may take up residence in it all winter.

Things we have been doing II

2011-04-14T20:28:00.001+01:00

Waves, a photo by tatiacamilla on Flickr.

Discovering waves.

Things we have been doing I

2011-04-14T20:27:00.001+01:00

DSC02181, a photo by tatiacamilla on Flickr.

Knitting a hat.

Ginger Fairings

2010-05-19T22:09:00.001+01:00

A Cornish biscuit.

8 oz plain flour
4 oz margarine (really margarine. 99.9% of the time, butter is better for baking. This is the exception)
4 oz granulated sugar
4 oz golden syrup (2 tablespoons or thereabouts)
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon mixed spice

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C/Gas Mark 6

EITHER sift together dry ingredients, rub in margarine, add syrup and mix together to form a smooth pliable paste

OR (what I do) bung everything into food processor and whizz until it forms a ball

By hand, roll into a long sausage. Cut off small sections and shape into balls (makes 32). Place on greased baking tray, leaving plenty of room for spreading. Bake on top shelf until golden (about 7 minutes), then on a lower shelf to drop and spread for 5 minutes. Cool on a wire rack (best left on baking sheet for a few minutes if possible - they're very fragile at first).

Nothing left to achieve...

2010-02-16T20:04:00.001Z

Yes, she really is that big already.

Matchy-matchy

2010-02-05T11:00:00.002Z

A little more than a year ago, the magazine Piecework had a beautiful baby bonnet by Alic Starmore on its front cover. I saw it and loved it, and immediately bought the kit from Virtual Yarns. And sat on it for quite a while, because first I was trying to get pregnant, then I was too superstitious to start it for a baby so nebulous, then I was too tired to think about it. Eventually I cast on, and in five days I had a not-so-little (I hoped, wincing in anticipation) bonnet for a baby head.

The kit came with a pattern for an adult beret too, which I firmly resolved to make, but never quite got to. And then I had a baby, and even her gigantic head was a little small for the bonnet at first. Then all of a sudden last month I noticed that she did fit the bonnet, and if I was ever to fulfill my dream of having matching mother-and-daughter hats, I needed to get knitting quite quickly.

Not quite the five days for the bonnet, more like a month later, and currently blocking on a dinner plate, we have a tam. Next time I am definitely weaving in ends as I go (2 hours yesterday, weaving). But so very very beautiful.

Once upon a time

2010-01-04T19:58:00.002Z

Once upon a time, I was a blogger. Then I was pregnant, which I found more exhausting than I had ever imagined. Then I had a baby, and redefined tiredness. First we had the jaundice, then the thrush, then the growth spurt, then a cold, then the sleeping 'problem' (a slight disagreement as to where she should sleep. I thought the moses basket by the side of the bed, she thought in our bed, I won, and now we're both a lot happier because we're both sleeping better, and I now have evenings with both hands free). This week it's first round of immunisations, so I'm braced for storms, Calpol at the ready.

Ladies and gentlemen, if anyone's still reading, I present Miss Elizabeth Sovay Upton (google Sovay if you're not a 1970s folk rock fan).
Two months old now, and a lady of decided likes (mostly milk) and dislikes (having her face washed, being ignored momentarily, being weighed). She was 8lb 5oz on the second of November, when she eventually emerged, 10lb 6oz three weeks ago at her last weighing, and certainly rather more now. The cardigan is one of the two I managed to knit for her whilst pregnant; mostly, her granny keeps her in knitwear. I do milk. And more milk. And still more milk. And yes-I-can-still-be-hungry-give-me-milk-NOW. It's just as well my housekeeping standards were low; they're practically non-existent now.

And we love her, because she's wonderful.

Little things, all good

2009-05-17T08:50:00.003+01:00

1. The weather has turned cold, so I got my winter coat out again. And found that it no longer does up.

2. On the other hand, I am wearing proper clothes again, instead of a ragbag of contrivances, and it halves my getting-dressed time in the morning.

3. This is due to the generosity of a friend-I-have-never-met, another slim midget, who packed up all her old maternity clothes and sent me the best-stuffed parcel I have ever had in my life. Next time I go on holiday I'm asking her to do the packing.

4. We think we have a moses basket (a free one, that is, because they're awfully expensive for something you only use for a handful of weeks, but very useful for those weeks). The baby up the road will have outgrown it before October, and when we've finished with it it can move on to another couple who are starting to think baby-shaped thoughts.

5. Actually, I'd quite like this baby to be a day late, which would make its birthday October the 31st. Easy answer to why we don't do Halloween, because actually, we don't. Not in a joyless, denouncing evil and picketing shops that sell devil's horns headbands kind of way, but just ignoring it. But it would make life easier to be able to say "no, we're not doing Halloween, because it's your birthday, and that is infinitely more important".

6. Over three weeks now without more than fleeting twinges of nausea. The sheer joy of being able to eat again

7. As a direct consequence of (6), finally putting some weight on. I'd been expanding merrily, but not gaining any weight, which seemed a little odd.

8. Also as a direct consequence of (6), drinking espresso again (only once a week, oh pregnancy food fascists, and it contains rather less caffeine than filter coffee anyway). I almost wept at how good it tasted.

9. Another direct consequence of (6), being able to get into to Norwich most Sundays to go to church again (hence the espressos, as Sunday morning buses are few and far between, and I have an hour or so to kill before the church doors open, which I spend in a cafe with a coffee, a pastry, and a book, pretending to be Continental).

10. I'm 99% certain I can feel movements. Quite a lot on Friday night, at a concert of early 17th century chamber music in an Elizabethan chamber. None at all during Eurovision. If movement indicates approval, this is a seriously cultured baby. If the reverse...

Pretty Things

2009-04-26T16:43:00.003+01:00

Not the wool (although that is definitely pretty - Fleece Artist sock wool in 'Mermaid', leftover from some gloves I knitted for myself a couple of years ago).

The needles - Lantern Moon Sox Stix (from Purlescence). Because my longer sock needles were proving awkward for tiny baby-sized socks. Yeah, very awkward. Practically impossible to work with.

Mostly because they're beautiful, and they come in a silk bag, and they're beautiful to knit with. And it took me weeks to decide that I was actually allowed to spend my birthday money on myself, rather than saving up for baby-gros, so when I spent it I decided to spend it in style.

There are an awful lot of utilitarian things in my life at the moment. Most of my clothing is held together with safety pins or contrivances of elastic, covered with jersey tubes to hide the half-zipped zips. I don't put together outfits in the morning, I ponder what still fits (but I'm not really big enough for proper maternity clothes yet). I don't plan delightful meals, I eat whatever doesn't make me sick today (and I don 't always get that right).

But my knitting needles are beautiful.

Whatever happened to E?

2009-04-20T15:51:00.005+01:00

Enough of the distraction posts, or the being totally distracted from posting non-posts (because there was only one thing on my mind, and it wasn't precisely bloggable.

E is for Expecting
Somewhere in there (mostly to the right) is a baby of 12 weeks and 3 days. Nicely beating heart, very active (if stubbornly refusing to get into the proper position for measurements to be taken). Due around the 30th of October.

If I had been posting over the last few weeks, instead of falling asleep, it would have been a litany of "felt sick, was sick, felt sick again". That stage, fortunately, seem to be ending gradually. Now we just have to do growing and waiting.

On Reading

2009-04-19T14:16:00.002+01:00

This has been doing the rounds, mostly on LJ, and it's more interesting than the usual book memes.

1) The worst reading experience that you have ever had?
My primary school had a shelf of books for each year group, and one of my teachers allowed me to skip straight from Second Year Infant books to the Fourth Year books, which was where real books (as opposed to graded readers) began. Unfortunately, she left, and when I went to her replacement to say that I had finished the Fourth Year books (at which point I was still in the Third Year of Infants), I was told that I would just have to go back and read the one I had skipped.

How not to inculcate a love of reading. Fortunately I had piles of books at home, and we went to the library as often as we could. But I still harbour a grudge.

2) The best reading experience you have ever had?
Not the first time of reading a favourite, because favourites tend to attain that status gradually, imperceptibly. Probably the moment when I realised that I was actually reading Latin (in a poem by Catullus) instead of rapidly translating as I went along. I'm not sure I could do it now, because languages rust and decay.

3) Which book has affected or influenced you the most so far?
All good Christians should automatically answer "the Bible", shouldn't they? This is a hard one, because I'd answer differently every time I'm asked, depending on what's on my mind. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'Meat' has made a lasting difference to what I will buy and cook; Rumer Godden's 'In this house of Brede' and Helen Waddell's 'Peter Abelard' are responsible for most of my theology; Germaine Greer's 'The Whole Woman' taught me that I am a feminist; Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' gave me the sanity to recognise things going wrong, although I could have done with working it out a little earlier.

4) Have you ever read a book that you got really scared of?
When I first read 'The Lord of the Rings' (aged 9 or so) I could only read it in daylight. And I remember reading 'Dracula' one very hot summer holiday, and having to sleep entirely under the duvet for several nights.

5) What do you use as a bookmark?
One carefully chosen one from my collection (a lot of Persephone freebies, some postcards, some embroidered by me or others). Or tickets, old shopping lists, receipts, when out and about. If there is really nothing to hand I don't turn down corners. I memorise the page number (I can remember numbers very easily).

6) When do you usually read? At home, work, while cooking, in the morning, noon, afternoon, before you go to bed...?
All of the above. My favourite way to spend a free afternoon is to take to my bed with a pile of books.

7) Do you remember the first book that you read?
'Roger Red Hat', first in the reading scheme my school used, on my first day of school. I could already read (and may well have read other books at home before that), and I can vividly remember thinking "this book is boring".

8) Which do you prefer - paperback or hardcover?
For practicality and portability, paperback (especially ancient Penguins), or old Oxford Worlds Classics. When I first started buying books in the mid 1990s not a lot of attention seemed to be paid to design of either hardbacks or paperbacks, and hardbacks were very expensive. They are much less so now, and there are lot more attractive books around. Plus, I have more money and less patience, so hardbacks are multiplying on my shelves (and when they are as well-done as 'The Night Watch' by Sarah Waters was, I really can't resist).

9) What are you currently reading? What page are you on?
'A Crown of Lights', by Phil Rickman. Page 107.

10) Do you ever leave "a mark" (deliberate and/or not deliberate) in your books? For example, write in them, underline quotes, coffeemarks or food crumbs and etc.
Not since A-levels (when we had to take the book into the exam). Through two degrees I worked with colour-coded post-it notes and index cards. This is why I can now sell the academic textbooks I no longer want for more money. I am just a little bit smug.

On the other hand, I read at the table. There have been some nasty soup-related incidents. And a few weeks ago I dropped Edmund Crispin's 'The Moving Toyshop' into a puddle when the bus suddenly turned up and I was fumbling for my change.

11) Does the title, amount of pages and the cover affect you when you are considering a specific book?
Title and cover - of course. That is, after all, their purpose. And I hate with a passion television/film tie-in covers (unless more than 20 years old) and will avoid if at all possible. Length not at all, as it makes very little difference to time taken to read a book (it can take weeks to read a hundred pages; I once read all three volumes of 'The Lord of the Rings' in four days).

12) Do you ever browse through to the last pages in order find out the ending?
Yes. And I hate myself for doing it. I nearly always read authorial endnotes before beginning the book, unless the author tells me to stop and go back to the beginning in the first paragraph (which suggests I am far from the only culprit).

13) Has knowing the ending of a book (example, through spoilers or a movie) ever made you decide whether you will read the book or not?
Not in the least. It's how they get there that counts.

14) Is there a book that you have read more than five times?
If I bother to keep a book, it means I think I'll read it again. Anything I've had more than fifteen years (quite a large proportion) has probably been read five times or more.

15) Have you ever been in an accident where the book was the cause? (for example, almost getting hit by a car when reading while walking, or having stacks of books falling on you from a bookshelf...)
Papercuts, heavy books falling from top shelves, falling off chairs while trying to reach top shelf, dropping book on head when dropping off to sleep after reading lying down, tripping over wile reading walking around the house, falling down the stairs while ditto...

16) Do you sell/give away your books or do you keep them, even though you don't like one of them?
I only keep books I think I'll re-read these days, and I cull every six months. The house is small, and it would actually be a real problem if I didn't do this. I don't always get it right, and the third time I re-buy a book, it stays for good. I often give away a copy of something I've bought for myself to someone I think will enjoy it, then buy myself a new copy. Most go to charity shops, but academic textbooks get sold - not because I think I'll make any money (I tend to price very low) but because it's a better way of making sure they get to the people who need them.

17) Do you have some kind of book system, where you write down what you are reading, have bought, will read, will buy and etc?
I list the books I own and am fairly sure I'll keep on Librarything (although there seem to be a few on there that I can't find and suspect I may actually have got rid of). Still a work in progress - I've done about half, I think. Last year I kept a list of books finished in a Moleskine notebook, which I am continuing this year. I also carry want-lists for myself and others, particularly of long series, to reduce duplication (there are between 58 and 62 Chalet School books. I challenge anyone to remember exactly which ones they have in a strange bookshop. Besides, some of the paperbacks were more butchered than others, so I need to know if it's one where a paperback will do, or if I'm holding out for a hardback).

D is for Dreaming Spires

2009-03-04T17:37:00.002Z

Sunday morning strenuosity on the river.

C is for Complete Lack of Snow

2009-02-07T18:11:00.002Z

No snow pictures, because while England has been "blanketed in snow", we haven't had anything more than some unpleasant sleet, and don't look likely to get any either.

Not that I need snow to create chaos and danger. Invisible ice on an ungritted side road will do the job nicely. Now my legs are the same colour as my new tights (ie purple), and knitting will be somewhat limited until my shoulder starts moving smoothly again.

Meanwhile, Mills and Boon, purveyors of disposable romance novels to the masses, appear to be taking a Ronseal approach to titles these days (for those who haven't spent most of the last three decades watching ITV, Ronseal is a brand of varnish whose slogan is "does exactly what it says on the tin"). Where is the mystery, the poetry of love in "One Night with the Rebel Billionaire"? Although it has to be said, "The Prince's Waitress Wife" is strangely compelling as a title.

B is for Buses

2009-01-31T12:46:00.003Z

Not an atheist (or more accurately agnostic, but since when has accuracy troubled the British popular press) bus, but an Anglican bus:
Get your own here.

A is for Apples

2009-01-31T10:45:00.002Z

Golden russets on the golden cloth, by the window that has golden curtains.

Buying apples is an optimistic gesture at this time of year. The English apples are nearly done, and a good apple is now an oversweet, tasteless thing, not too mealy in the mouth. Every other one has gone too far, and a tracery of brown lace-like rot lurks just under the skin. My compost bin fattens. Russets are a slightly better bet than Coxes, but in a few weeks I will give up entirely, and live on dried fruit until the Granny Smiths begin to trickle in from the Southern Hemisphere. Boring, utterly predictable, but at least they taste of something (and they cook quite well if you want delicate distinct slices rather than the instant puree of a Bramley).

PS
Happy birthday Gill

Changes

2009-01-03T10:33:00.002Z

I went to Bury St Edmunds yesterday (and have not a single photo to show for it). I did new things - I sat in a restaurant on my own and ordered myself a meal and a glass of wine (and either I had a very good waiter or I'm only invisible when I'm with other people). Later, in an overcrowded coffee shop, I asked a complete stranger if they would mind my sharing their table (not in the least).

I did old things too. I bought books. My first words as I got through the door were "you know that not-buying-books thing? I'd be really really grateful if you didn't mention it until tomorrow". It was only 12 books, mostly secondhand. Besides, at my current rate, that's probably only about one months' reading.

Because something has changed, and it took me until yesterday to realise it. When I began blogging, I was a knitter who read. I had been a passionate reader, but that seemed to be in the past. I thought it was growing up. I was wrong.

I'm a reader who knits (and cooks, and very occasionally goes into the garden, has a fit of despair, and goes back inside to find a book). I finished 140 books last year (from 'King Hereafter' by Dorothy Dunnett to 'Curly Girl' by Lorraine Massey - oh how I tried to avoid making that one the last of the year, but to no avail. Besides, as a true reader I believe you can do anything in life if you find the right instruction book, and it had occurred to me that everything I know about haircare I learned from my mother, who does not have unmanageably curly hair like mine - rather the reverse). Two of the books I read last year have gone straight onto my list of all-time favourites ('Gilead' by Marilynne Robinson and 'Girl Meets Boy' by Ali Smith, which is so infectiously joyful that it should be available on prescription).

I didn't expect to read so many books. I thought I would be lucky if I got to 100. Some were very short (Neil Gaiman's Sandman series of graphic novels, for example) but some were extremely lengthy (various titles by Mary Gentle, which I put down as one book because they were one volume with a single title, but that were actually compilations of several earlier novels which could equally have been listed separately).

I am a very fast reader. To my own detriment sometimes - whilst plot details are absorbed instantly, the emotional weight of a book may take several re-readings. I also never ever get puns in print, because I don't hear the sound of what I'm reading at all. I absorb a sentence, even a whole paragraph, at once. I think this is what speed-reading courses teach, but I have always done it, untaught, and don't entirely know how to read differently. (Anyone who 'gets' puns in print may be a fast reader, but I doubt they're a speed-reader.)

It isn't a good way to read poetry - so I normally read that aloud. Unfortunately, I am quite capable of reading aloud and to myself simultaneously, so that my brain is several lines ahead of my voice. It takes an effort to disengage, to slow down.

So I start 2009 with two books underway - 'Master and Commander' by Patrick O'Brian (2009 being the year I will read the entire series at last, instead of having to keep skipping books because Bradford Libraries didn't have the next one), read in alternating chapters with 'The Greeks and Greek Love' by James Davidson (non-fiction tends to be slower - all that flipping backwards and forwards to the endnotes - even non-fiction with sentences like this: "The point is that a Greek of the classical period can talk of an eros in which there is not only no sex and no attempt at sex, but no physical interest, a passionate yet chaste admiration for a young man's beautiful personality, and errr...impressive muscular development...").

Eve

2008-12-24T18:19:00.002Z

There is wine.

There is 'A Study in Scarlet' (and there will be more Holmes soon)(meanwhile, I want to read up on the early history of the Mormons).

There are parcels expected and unexpected (L, this means you - the posties were obviously desperate to get their sorting offices clean and tidy before the break. Like me with my desk yesterday. Yours hasn't actually been posted yet).

There are things that are not here. There is not a tree yet. We may change our minds later, but the whole slow motions car-crash of the last six weeks has left us both exhausted, unable to face doing even one more thing, and the tree was the one thing. It hardly matters. There is no cake, but since this will be a stuffed monkey tomorrow will do.

It has been a week of singing. Advent carols in Norwich on Sunday. 'Shine Jesus Shine' on Monday, at the funeral of a dear friend gone far too young. Christmas carols at work yesterday (because this council has not banned Christmas). More carols tonight, at the midnight.

Finally, I am beginning to feel that it might be Christmas. Merry Christmas, one and all (or whatever you're celebrating).

Christmas Shopping 1924

2008-12-20T14:53:00.003Z

"Every year, in the deep midwinter, there descends upon this world a terrible fortnight. A fortnight, or ten days, or a week, when citizens cannot get about the streets of their cities for the surging pressure of persons who walk therein; when every shop is a choked mass of humanity, and purchases, at the very time when purchases are most numerously ordained to be made, are only possible at the cost of bitter hours of travail; a time when nerves are jangled and frayed, purses emptied to no purpose, all amusements and all occupations suspended in favour of frightful businesses with brown paper, string, letters, cards, stamps, and crammed post offices. This period is doubtless a foretaste of whatever purgatory lies in store for human beings."

Rose Macalay, Crewe Train

Insularity

2008-12-06T12:57:00.002Z

In her comment on my 'Bookish' post, Kendra has identified something which had occurred to me too - which is that an awful lot of my gaps are American authors.

To some extent this is inevitable. British schools teach British authors, American schools teach American authors. However, my own experience suggests that a lot of schools could do a better job of saying "this isn't everything - go and seek out more". And an awful lot of British people could beneficially reflect that being able to see a foreign country from your doorstep (on a clear day, if you live in the right place) does not automatically bestow cosmopolitanism. Nor does visiting said foreign country to buy cheap wine in a British supermarket. Particularly if the cheap wine is Australian.

Meanwhile, I find myself protesting that my reading is wider than that one list suggests. A very unscientific survey of the books I can see from this chair without getting up takes me to Canada (Margaret Atwood, Douglas Coupland), Australia (Miles Franklin, A B Facey), South Africa (Barbara Trapido), India (Vikram Seth), Singapore (Hwee Hwee Tan) and the United States (Barbara Kingsolver, Armistead Maupin, Donna Tartt, Harper Lee, Mary McCarthy, Annie Proulx, Jeffrey Eugenides, Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates). I've excluded translations (which would add Japan, France, Turkey, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland to the list). I've excluded authors writing about the past or countries other than their own. I've excluded all the books in other rooms, or which I've borrowed from libraries. But I'm only ever going to scratch the surface. No-one could read all the good books that have been written - but I can try to make sure that all the books I read are good.

And, apropos of school set texts, I would assume that someone educated in Britain would have had to read two plays by Shakespeare, probably a novel by Charles Dickens, a selection of War Poetry (mostly First World War) and either 'Lord of the Flies' or 'Animal Farm'. Contradictions invited. I would also love to know what the American equivalents might be.

By the way, Chris would like to it to be known that from the list that started all this off, he has read 'Brave New World' and 'Moby Dick', and is quite delighted to discover that there are books that he has read and I haven't. I point out that the missing word there is "yet".

Merry Christmas

2008-12-05T21:10:00.000Z

From the good people at Ship of Fools.

Bookish

2008-12-05T17:56:00.003Z

There are a couple of book memes going around, so I have arbitrarily chosen this list from The Big Read, because it makes me look better read than the other I've seen (Time magazine's 100 greatest novels 1923 to 2005). Green for those I've read, blue for those where I've read another book by the same author (these weren't the original rules, but like I said, I'm being arbitrary):

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (all of it, barring the Apocrypha, and bits of that too. Really)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (but I have read quite a few plays)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Some of it - but I have no idea how many there are these days, so certainly not all)
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (shurely shome mistake?)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Hello? Is there anyone there?

I blame my teenage obsession with the nineteenth century novel. It's taken me ten years to begin to catch up with the twentieth century.

Worn out

2008-11-30T11:51:00.002Z

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink

2008-11-09T14:41:00.003Z

(Or I can haz mobile blogging)

(The title is the first line of Dodie Smith's 'I Capture the Castle', by the way. It is not strictly factual in that case.)

It is even less factual in this case. Actually, I'm on the sofa, slowly getting used to using a trackpad instead of a mouse, and the fact that Linux Is Not Like Windows (main difference so far being that it works). The new toy I alluded to having been a netbook, and the wireless router having arrived yesterday.

Ok, knitting. I really need to do a big round-up and get everything photographed. My Ravelry projects page is wildly out of date, this blog even more so. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if I can locate any free time before Christmas. Certainly not any free time that might include daylight. In the meantime, here is a Crofter's Cowl for your delectation.
More Dream in Color, this time Classy (the worsted weight)(and did you know that the village of Worstead, whence the name of the spinning method, is only a few miles away from here?), colour November Muse. The background is a vintage tweed skirt I bought yesterday, which goes beautifully. Another free pattern, a quick and fun knit for those not afraid of grafting (the two halves are knitted separately from edge to centre, then grafted together, to produce matching edges). It rolls rather, which I might have expected. I still like it.

History

2008-11-05T19:43:00.002Z

Is this how it felt to be a young American in 1960?

I don't believe one politician can make a difference. I believe in the power of belief - that if enough people believe in a leader, they make the difference. I believe that we might be about to see that difference.

Most of history is a process. It's rare to be able to point to a day and say, "This is history happening now". When it happens, it's usually bad. I remember the Great Storm of 1987. I remember September 11 2001. I remember July 7 2005 - I was in London that day. I will remember November 5 2008, for far more pleasant reasons.

Forty years is not a long time. Forty years ago my parents were old enough to have been married a year. Forty years ago Martin Luther King was assassinated for his dream. Forty years later, America elects an African-American President, and around the world people rejoice. Where will we be in forty years' time?

I'm sad and angry about Proposition 8, and all the other less publicised attacks on the ability of humans to live and love as other humans do. But most of all, I'm still crying tears of joy, as I did at half past five this morning when I crawled out of bed and turned the television on, to hear John McCain's generosity in defeat, and slowly realise that the impossible had happened. Thank you, America.

If I show you my knitting will you pretend I haven't been neglecting you?

2008-11-02T11:48:00.003Z

It's an as-yet unblocked Adamas shawl (brilliant pattern, like all Miriam Felton's, and free too), in Dream in Color Baby in Purple Aurora, one skein, bought here. I don't tend to knit patterns again (this is not because I am a Superior Person, but because I can be very butterfly-like, always looking for something new and whizzy) but I think I would with this. I'd definitely use the yarn again.

Like all unblocked lace, it looks bedraggled, especially around the edges (but the second picture is closer to the true colour).
I would like to have it blocked by next weekend, if I can find a bit (or quite a lot - one skein goes a very long way) of floor. Meanwhile, I shall be getting to grips with my new toy (details forthcoming) and idly speculating on the next Doctor Who. I would like Rufus Sewell, but only in drag (like the updated 'Taming of the Shrew' he did with Shirley Henderson a few years ago). Just as long as it's not Alan Davies or James Nesbitt.

For fast results, try sewing

2008-10-11T14:51:00.004+01:00

One morning, £3.45 (for a cushion pad - everything else came from the cupboard). Reverse applique following instructions in this book, which is excellent (possible nepotism alert - although unlike my mother I've never actually met the author. And praising a book by someone fairly distantly related is not exactly trying to get one's sister's ex-husband sacked, is it?)

Close-up of the print:
It came from Shaukat, and may or may not be Liberty. The printing has their clarity, but the fabric is just a little thinker than Tana lawn, but not as thick as Country Cotton. I bought three metres, and still have nearly all of it left. I would make a circular skirt with it (there are instructions in the book mentioned above), but the background beige is one of the colours that I should never ever wear.

Photographing sewing projects is as difficult as photographing knitting projects. Fortunately, I tidied up the ottoman in the bedroom yesterday, and Chris hoovered the floor this morning.

Confiteor

2008-10-03T18:32:00.002+01:00

We turned the heating on last night. I still need to wear a jumper in the house, but only one. And after all, I can't knit when I'm wearing so many layers that my elbows don't bend.

Pedantry Corner

According to the new Lakeland catalogue, the Ancient Greeks called chocolate the food of the gods. I didn't think even the crystal skulls school of archaeology has Ancient Greeks in South America, but you live and learn.

And the parish magazine has an article by someone who has just been on a Bible course, with the interesting fact that the Bible was translated from Greek into Hebrew. I think I would be seeking a refund from the tutor.

Day Two

2008-10-02T20:09:00.002+01:00

I nearly cracked earlier, when my feet turned into little blocks of ice. Then I realised that I was still wearing my thin work socks (that fit into smart shoes). I changed into woolly socks, and felt better.

Not much better. I checked the thermometer. In the sitting room it is 14ºC (somewhere around 58ºF for the Americans). The dining room (where the computer lives) is marginally warmer, at 15ºC, or 59ºF. If I turned the heating on the whole house would become toasty warm in less than 15 minutes. It's terribly tempting.

Or I might just find the hot water bottle and go to bed.

Day One

2008-10-01T20:15:00.002+01:00

In these chilly isles, the heating is turned on on the first of October, whatever the weather may be doing. The first week of October is therefore generally a week of bright sunshine and soaring temperatures, as thousands of radiators wheeze, drip, bang and cough their way into life.

Not this year, not here. The heating at work may be turned on at the end of the month, if they manage to replace the pipes in time. And several weeks ago, terrified by the price of gas, Chris and I decided to see if we could hold out until November. A decision which I am currently regretting, as the temperature plummets and snow is forecast for the highlands over the weekend.

It's terribly stylish to shiver in three jumpers and wrap oneself in blankets to watch television this year. All the best people are rejoicing in poverty chic, and and discovering "the landgirl look". I wonder how many of them have actually spent a day working outside in January? I have, and it's not a look I particularly want to repeat. Fun as it might be to imagine all the home-made cakes we'll bake, the clothes we'll sew, how we'll gather round the piano and sing our way through the economic crisis, poverty isn't actually much fun when you're doing it. We were very poor when I was growing up, and what I remember most clearly is the number of things I could not do because we couldn't afford them. Poverty restricts, poverty is endless making-do, and not a lot of cashmere loungewear to be had. All the home-made cakes in the world (and sugar is pretty expensive) won't sweeten poverty. So I shall point you at this article by Caitlin Moran, which had me exclaiming at my desk "at last, somebody else knows what it's like".

It's a hot water bottle night, and for the authentic English experience the perished rubber should finally give way in the very small hours of the morning, filling the bed with cold water. Meanwhile the plaster on the ceiling will stop being distressed and become merely defunct, and begin to fall as the gale blows outside. On my face, for choice.

Marmite

2008-09-26T18:35:00.003+01:00

Observant readers might have noticed that I like Marmite.

They'd have been wrong. I've loved Marmite-flavoured things since I discovered Twiglets as a toddler (ok, they call it 'yeast extract' on the packet, but it's really just generic Marmite). More recently I discovered Fudge's Marmite Biscuits (available in good delicatessens, Fortnum and Mason, and Morrisons). They don't last. They may well keep, but I wouldn't know. Then there were the Marmite breadsticks (Morrisons and Sainsburys) that got me through all that flying. But every time I've tried actual Marmite I haven't really liked it very much (not quite as much as I dislike milk, but heading that way).

Until today, when I had a sudden thought that it would be the perfect accompaniment to the slice of Morrisons' Polish Bloomer (light rye bread) and butter that I was eating. Fortunately I had a jar in the larder, from my last experiment with Marmite-eating. Unfortunately, it was four years out of date.

I reflected that nothing containing that much salt can ever really be said to go off, and that any bacteria capable of surviving in a jar of Marmite would be so specialised in their adapatations that they would probably implode when faced with the human body. I spread it, I loved it, and then I had a worrying thought. Perhaps I only like four-year-old jar-matured Marmite? This could be a problem, if only because I should have started buying it three years ago. I think I'll have another slice while I reflect on this.

Twilight Barking

2008-09-25T18:38:00.002+01:00

I've mentioned blood donation before, and now Natalie is asking us to spread the word and encourage more donors.

I know that more than one of my regular readers can't donate for good reasons, but if you've ever pondered donating blood, please do more than ponder. I am reliably a total wuss about pain (L should spot that reference) and I don't find it painful. You get free tea and biscuits too, which has got to be an incentive in the current financial climate.

There are two kinds of people

2008-09-19T18:39:00.002+01:00

There are never just two kinds of people, whatever certain areas of the internet may feel like. Take the knitters - there are not just the Natural Fibres Knitters and the Acrylic Knitters. Both groups have many members, but in between there is a whole shifting territory of Other Knitters. The ones who aren't doctrinaire about the fibre content of their yarn, but make their decisions based on a myriad of factors. For example, what does this feel like, or who is going to have to wash it in the end? Or even, how many weeks will I have to eat bread and cheese every meal to pay for this?

So when I say that there are two types of people, the Opera People and the Ballet People, I know that in fact there are an awful lot of people for whom both Opera and Ballet are just incomprehensible poncing about on stage, and they could happily live without either.

But there are the Opera people and the Ballet People, and they don't seem to overlap much if at all. Chris is an Opera Person. Chris owns multi-CD boxed sets of operas, and follows the libretto in the booklet (and occasionally sings along with alto arias). I am not an Opera Person. I cannot bring myself to believe in the expression of emotion through song and horned helmets (let's just ignore my love of the Hollywood Musical, because it's different. I can't say how it's different but I assure you it is).

But the expression of emotion through wordless dance? Absolutely. Nothing wrong with that. perfectly reasonable. Which is why I am immensely excited about going to see Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray in Norwich tomorrow, and Chris is equally excited about a quiet evening at home. I'm overdue for a Live Cultural Experience, since it's almost exactly a year since we went to see Euripides' The Bacchae (starring Alan Cumming in a gold kilt, and not a lot else. In fact, rather a lot less at one point). I won't reflect on how many of my Live Cultural Experiences involve semi-naked men and a warning that this production is not suitable for under-14s. I'll just have another glass of wine instead, and ponder what one wears to the Ballet. Possibly my new coat. I'm hoping for colder weather, quite soon please. I'd also like a furry Russian hat.

Identity

2008-09-15T16:44:00.002+01:00

How to paralyse me totally for over a week? Praise my writing, as Anairam did. (In return, please follow that link and say "ooh" over the lovely things to be seen there.)

Who am I then? A reasonably competent knitter. A fairly competent sewer (although I don't entirely display the evidence of it, because sewing takes more time to set up and put away than I generally have to spare). A somewhat incompetent taker of snapshots, who has known some really good photographers, and is therefore painfully conscious of her inadequacy. But writer?

Writer is what I want to be, have always wanted to be, since I knew that the words on the page were composed by an actual person, not 'magic'. Much as I enjoy the various crafts I practice, I will never be more than a copyist of greater or lesser skill. I do not have that extra spark that would enable me to design for myself, and I would actually rather pay someone else do the hard work (because good design does not just happen, and it deserves reward). I used to draw, and became competent, but I never really moved beyond still-life or landscape. I could copy what was in front of me, but I could not add to it. I could draw a figure as it was posed, but I could not make it live as a portrait. I can't sing, I can't play any musical instrument, and my only musical accomplishment is that I feel physical pain when the wrong note is played.

Words are my tools. They do what I want them to. Not that writing is easy - when I get to the point of putting words onto paper (or screen), the process is fast, and I rarely need to revise, but getting to that point can take hours, days, weeks, and it hurts.

Tomorrow it will be a year since I started this blog. It's taken most of that year to find a voice, and I have no intention of going back to re-read my early posts, where I fumbled around, not sure who or what I was. I would probably delete them out of hand, like the sheaves of paper I have binned over the years, too trite, too pretentious, too anything for me to bear.

It's not just the writing that has changed over the past year. Last September I was doing a job I hated but had had no way out of. I did whatever it took to keep going, to get out of bed and walk to work, to earn the wage that bought my food. Now I have a job that I almost always enjoy and occasionally love. For the first time in years, most of the strands of my life are going well, and so I find myself feeling safe enough to begin to strip away the layers of self-censorship that have accumulated over the years. I have disguised myself, told the world to overlook me, pass me by, just leave me alone. I survived, but I had begun to wonder who I really was. Now, perhaps, I am beginning to find out.

i-Knitting

2008-09-05T17:55:00.003+01:00

I never got around to blogging this particular jumper. There's been quiet a lot going on over the past few weeks, and somehow it got sucked into the general morass.

Which is a shame, because I'm rather proud of it. Knitted straight from a pattern in Woman's Weekly of 28 February 1942 in Jaeger Matchmaker 4-ply, 5 balls. So very exactly 5 balls, that anyone with a nervous disposition would have been far better off with 6. I've never had to sort through my trimmed-off ends before to find those long enough to sew just another couple of inches.

I'm rather relieved to have finished it in time to wear tomorrow - Jane Waller is talking about knitting from vintage patterns, and I wanted to show it off (shallow little creature that I am). So if you're there, and you spot this particular shade of blue from across a crowded room, feel free to introduce yourself. Or run and hide.

First of September - official start of the spider season.

2008-09-01T21:49:00.002+01:00

Score so far - one giant scooped up from the 'landing' (so-called by the estate agents, really just a square of carpet at the top of the stairs) and defenestrated. By Chris, because I was too busy wibbling (it's been a trying day).

Danger

2008-08-30T10:30:00.002+01:00

It's only half past ten, and I've already bruised the back of my hand after the window shut unexpectedly on it, and shredded one knuckle changing hoover attachments. Housework is a dangerous business, and I'm not sure whether the answer is to do it less often, to minimise the damage, or more often and get better at it. I know which answer mum would give.

But there must be a balance between a house so clean that it's unwelcoming, and a festering pit. I've spent several years trying to find it without success, and having recently been diagnosed with asthma, I think I might need to move my bar a little towards the cleaner end of that scale. The less dust, the better I sleep, which has to be good (especially this week). So I've hoovered everything in sight, and incidentally disturbed several enormous spiders who were lying in wait to panic me once September arrives, the official season of mists, mellow fruitfulness, and gigantic hairy arachnids walking across the living room carpet in the evening. (This year I'm prepared - I have a plastic glass and postcard combo within reach of my knitting seat at all times.)

It's time for a cup of proper coffee and some more frantic knitting, because I have a totally ludicrous idea of what I can achieve in a week whilst still having a full time job. And I've been doing a lot of ripping lately, which I'd really rather not talk about. (Next time I am getting Chris to check that my buttonhole spacing calculations make sense. Or knitting a sensible pattern that works them out for me.)

Mythbusters

2008-08-14T15:58:00.008+01:00

This time last week I'd never flown. This time this week, I'm back, and if the vertigo would only go away I'd be absolutely fine.

Myths busted

1. There is nothing to see from the window of an aeroplane.I don't know where this was, because by this point my camera was having battery trouble, and I really didn't think I'd taken a picture. Somewhere between San Francisco and Chicago, nearer the former than the latter. Probably quite near the bits of desert that had large white patches in them, which can only have been salt-flats.

2. There is no public transport in America. Everyone drives (except in New York City).
This picture was taken from the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station, which was just across the road from our hotel. Those diggers are working on a Transit Village, to improve the public transport available. This is to say nothing of the cable cars (I liked the cable cars).

3. Food in America is bland and tasteless. Possibly. If one goes for the fast food option. But that holds true in most of Western Europe as well. We might have been spoiled, because the two main meals we had during our stay were (1) the wedding reception we actually went for, in a rather nice restaurant, and (2) a slightly scary-looking restaurant in Chinatown during our explorations in San Francisco itself. The best Chinese food I have ever had (but my experience hasn't really been vast). The first cup of tea I have ever drunk (and second, and third).

4. My baby brother is far too young to be married.
Apparently not. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I managed to take of the two of them. I'm looking forward to seeing the proper photos, taken on posh cameras by people who can consistently remember which button is the shutter and which is the on/off switch, and who pack spare batteries.

Myths that turned out to be true

1. Holy cow that is one big country.

2. Americans are friendly. Very friendly. They actually talk to strangers at wedding receptions (instead of muttering "who's she?" in disapproving tones).

3. American yarn stores are to die for. I don't have pictures. I only bought three skeins of yarn. Mum does and didn't. I found myself wondering if they'd let me sleep in here if I promised to tidy the skeins. I don't think there's anywhere in Britain with as broad a range of stock (Get Knitted would probably come closest, and they're not exactly handy), and I have no idea if this is an extra-special-wonderful shop, or if it's fairly normal to have that mind-blowing variety available.

4. Airport security is totally random. Gill and I packed our liquid in virtually identical clear cosmetics bags with zips, well under the maximum size. At Dallas Fort Worth I was ordered to take my stuff out and put it in a flimsy airport-supplied bag. In the other queue, she got through fine. Dallas Fort Worth want every item of metal and electronica you possess separately laid out in trays. San Francisco International are quite happy for you to leave it in your bag, so long as you don't wear it through the metal-detector. My favourite airport was Chicago O'Hare, just because it was an incredibly smooth transfer. In 50 minutes (which had been worrying me), we got off one plane (a Mcdonnell Douglas MD-80, which was the smallest and probably the oldest plane we flew on, but was our favourite for comfort and view - although I wouldn't be saying that if we'd been at the back by the loos), ambled down a corridor, through a shop selling water, through duty-free, through rest-rooms (with electric seat-covers!)(not quite as dangerous as I make them sound), up to another gate (without having to pass through security again, hence the water and duty-free excursions) and onto a Boeing 777 for the final leg. On which I got a window seat by myself. Michigan is an awful lot more watery than I'd realised.

The things I'd never have guessed

1. We all got a wicked case of the ear-worms from the place-names we were passing over. 24 hours from Tulsa, anyone? Wichita Lineman? Chicago, Chicago, it's a toddling [possibly] town? Michigan seems like a dream to me now, it took me four days to hitch-hike from Saginaw? Somehow 24 hours from Luton doesn't have the same ring to it.

2. Apparently there are people in the world who do not just get drunk at wedding receptions, then stand up and sway out-of-time on the dancefloor and call it dancing. There were some scarily good dancers there.

3. I never thought I'd be so moved by my first excursion into the wider Anglican Communion. Perhaps it's because of all that's going on at the moment, and the fact that the Diocese of California is known for being the very definition of liberal, but Grace Cathedral was much more than a building on the tourist trail to me. I'm very glad I got the chance to visit it.
(As you can see, it wasn't a "typical San Francisco day" for weather by any stretch of the imagination).

Listing, ferociously

2008-08-05T19:27:00.002+01:00

I have a list. My list has a list. Greater lists have little lists upon their backs to bite them.

It's like the first few times Chris and I went on holiday together, when we were still new to this being grown-up business, and it took three weeks to plan for every holiday and six weeks to recover from it. These days we have a routine, and it takes a couple of evenings. This year I found myself pondering what clothes to take for a week in Britain during what is alleged to be summer, and decided just to pack the same as last year. It worked. I know what I need for trains and boats and multiples thereof, I know what and what not to expect from self-catering cottages in picturesque surroundings.

But I haven't done planes (boiled sweets for take-offs and landings)(got) before, nor a country so disinclined to allow visitors in (is passport machine-readable?)(yes). I've decanted my liquids (is lipstick a liquid?)(opinions vary - put it in liquid bag to be safe)(get mini-mascara)(done). I have debated what the epitome of English tea-toweldom would be (you'll see). I have selected a Very Fat novel (can I knit on a plane?)(yes - but Heathrow won't allow knitting needles through, so no)(fortunately, I do do other things). I have reminded Chris to pack his musical goat for Dorset (don't ask. Really, don't ask). I have pondered the existence of airline food (whether we'll get any, and whether it will be anything recognisable as food) and gone to the supermarket (Marmite breadsticks, cereal bars). I have reduced myself to two pairs of shoes (paint toe-nails)(done but still drying, and the toe-separators are giving me cramp). I have taken five minutes to despair of the Church of England, and wonder whether I could become a distance-Episcopalian (since part of the problem is cross-border incursions, I don't think it would help). It will all work out in the end. Just give me another cup of coffee, I need to wind down.

Too hot for words

2008-07-28T17:55:00.008+01:00

I could write another grumpy post, because I'm hot and tired and have far too much to do. Instead, I'll show you some of the things I saw in Norwich yesterday when I was wandering around (with a new camera).

Summertime, and the living is ... tricky

2008-07-17T14:43:00.003+01:00

If ever a girl needed a flaming dustbin, it was this morning at seven o'clock on the picket line. (I'm on strike, and for the benefit of non-British readers, this is no big deal; here in local government we do it every couple of years). Not only am I a union member, I am actually a steward, so I'd probably better not say too much about it all (my views not always coinciding with those of my union, you see, which is why I decided to get more involved rather than less).

And this is the week I started to believe in inflation. I've been cushioned for a few months by changing to a better paid job. Then I'd noticed that my shopping bills were always towards the top end of my weekly budget, if not a little over, but I could always find some extravagance to blame it on. But this week the new monthly figures were published. Ouch. Particularly when it comes to food.

I don't particularly think of myself as young these days. I'm nearly 30, I'm just averagely grown-up. But through all the years I've been looking after myself, the price of food has been fairly static, or rising in step with my spending power. Now I'm having to shop slower, to always pick the cheaper option, just to keep the bill the same every week. This afternoon I made my usual pasta sauce. Last time I made it I used chestnut mushrooms instead of white closed-cap, and sweet ramiro peppers instead of ordinary red. I also cheated by getting the ready-chopped tinned tomatoes. This time I reversed all those decisions. All the pseudo-artisanal breads I like from the supermarket are now just a bit too expensive for comfort, and I think it's time I started baking my own again. If I'm having to make these decisions, in a household with two incomes and no children yet (albeit very extravagant tastes), how much harder is it for a single mother who can only work part-time because if she doesn't pick the children up from school no-one else will? Or a pensioner, who can't go on strike for extra pay?

In fact, baking my own bread sounds like a good idea right now. It would at least warm the kitchen up a little. Then I'll go and deal with the Sainsbury's Basics (ie Economy) strawberries, which consist of all the berries too small for the exacting standards applied to the normal punnets. The thing is, when it comes to strawberries, small tends to equal bursting with flavour. For half the price. It isn't all doom and gloom, you see.

Don't say I never finish things

2008-07-13T17:59:00.003+01:00

November 16th 2007 to July 13th 2008. Two and a half balls of Rowan's Kid Silk Haze (and frankly I don't care if I never see another ball in my life, such were the agonies of knitting with it. Quite like the results, though).

Book Review

2008-07-10T21:47:00.002+01:00

Owing to an unfortunately timed stomach bug yesterday (but, hey, I've done seven months without a day off sick. Seven months!) I found myself with more reading time than usual, and none of the books I was technically reading seemed to suit.

So I hit the pile, and found myself devouring Farthing, by Jo Walton (on loan from L, who as always knows exactly what I'll like). This is not a considered review; I read it far too fast for that. Actually, I'm not sure the book would benefit from a slower, more analytical reading. It was written fast (less than three weeks, the author says, which leaves me somewhat awe-struck), and in anger.

It's set in 1949, but not quite the 1949 we know. At school I was taught to call these counterfactual analyses; now I learn they're called Alternate Universes. The tipping point in Farthing's universe was 1941, where Britain standing all alone made a 'peace with honour' with Germany. Not that the differences are immediately apparent, as guests from the political elite gather for a country house weekend. It's no surprise when one of them is found with a dagger in his chest, the puzzle is that it took so long.

The chapters are divided between first-person narrative by Lucy, daughter of the hosts, and a third person narrative centred on Inspector Carmichael, the Scotland Yard detective sent down to Hampshire to tidy this mess up. But neither of them fits comfortably into this society. Lucy has married a Jew, and whilst this is not the Continent, and Jews are still allowed to go free, they find only bare tolerance. Carmichael has his own secrets.

But whodunnit is not really the point. As I said, these are the political elite, and a murder in these circles has consequences for the whole population of Britain. As Lucy says, "I wondered about the "extreme measures" [the new Prime Minister] meant to take, and shivered". With shocking speed, a happy ending for the novel ceases to be the unmasking of the murderer as everyone gathers in the library. The best the reader can hope for is the survival of favourite characters.

And the nauseating brilliance of it is the familiarity. I think every reader of Farthing could name the moment when the scales fell from their eyes. For some it will be ID cards, which I think was the author's main target. For me it was when inspector Carmichael reads a dossier on the corpse, who has most recently been Minister for Education. "Thirkie was sponsoring two bills in the House. One was the Higher Education Bill, expected to pass this session, limiting access to Higher Education to those educated in Preparatory and Public Schools. The second was the School-Leaving Age Bill, presently in committee in the Lords, lowering the school-leaving age to eleven in rural areas".

Not that the present Government are trying to lower the school-leaving age, rather the reverse. What I was so sickeningly reminded of was the current rush to vocational diplomas, promised to be as good as GCSEs and A-Levels. It may be that they require as much work, but what we seem to be doing is taking children and deliberately fitting them for a pre-determined job, which is perilously close to child labour. Education it isn't. Social engineering would be nearer the mark.

And it was my extremely traditional education that taught me to read between the lines, and to mistrust all governments. There may possibly be a connection here.

Ilkley

2008-07-05T14:47:00.008+01:00

Very briefly at home before a course in London on Monday. Ilkley was fantastic. We stayed here, and would thoroughly recommend it.
Five minutes walk (uphill. Very uphill) gave us this view. There were some extremely dishevelled sheep.
There was the shock of discovering that the centre of Bradford appears to have been turned into a big hole in the ground since the last time I saw it.
It's a very impressive hole in the ground. On the left of the picture you can see the Cathedral. If you walk up the road beside it (uphill. Very uphill) you get to the incomparable Texere. Which I did. I could have gone very mad in there, but I didn't (because I knew who would have to carry the suitcase on the way home). Just a 500 gramme cone of 4-ply (for a Thermal) and 2400 metres of cream laceweight, for no particular purpose yet.

There were also a couple of trips to Duttons for Buttons (handily located in Ilkley itself), where the choice is overwhelming. And some kknitting. I had slightly hoped to have done with the Big Heap of Red Fuzz, but not quite. However, it is at least garment-shaped now, and shedding like a cat in moult. I look as if I have acquired a burgundy Persian cat.
If anyone who knows me is curious as to why I own a garment quite as pink as the underneath top, it is part of pyjamas. I wouldn't wear it in public.

Finally, Chris found this kneeler in Wakefield Cathedral and photographed it for me.
Not that local government feels very peaceful at the moment. More tense, as we await the Big Announcement on Monday.

Frankly, I've had better weekends

2008-06-22T17:52:00.004+01:00

I need to go somewhere far away, with no newspapers, no lunatic bishops, no e-mail and no phonecalls, just me and my best beloved, before I can start looking forward to the huge number of things coming up in the next couple of months.

Luckily, that's exactly what I will be doing on Friday.

The trouble with not frightening the horses is that nobody's asked the horses if they could stop frightening me.

Not entirely a recommendation

2008-06-19T20:32:00.002+01:00

I know, what am I doing reading an anthology of Christmas stories in June? More particularly, what am I doing reading an anthology of Christian Romance Christmas stories?

Enjoying myself far too much, that's what I'm doing. I've only read the first so far. Entitled 'Under His Wings' it's a retelling of the Ruth, Naomi and Boaz story set in the Lake District in 1870. Without in the least taking issue with the religious aspects of the story, I have just a few minor problems with the rest of it. I've made a list.

Our hero is apparently the Earl of Beaumontfort. Really.
When first seen, he is slinging his "hunting rifle" over his shoulder, and having had no luck that day, will not be eating venison on the morrow. Given the extreme rarity of deer in the Lakes, I'm not entirely surprised he missed. Very poor staff he employs, too, it being the job of the deer-keeper to ensure that venison is available when commanded, such command coming well in advance, as the stuff needs to hang for a good three weeks. (A friend of my father's was the deer-keeper at Knole, I know whereof I speak).
In 1870 you wouldn't bother to describe an Earl as a Christian. It went without saying. If you felt the need to mention his faith, you might try for "very devout".
In this universe, the Lake District possesses thatched cottages.
With brick chimneys.
Lakes are not tarns. And round there they tend to get referred to by name, there being quite a number of both.
How do you actually articulate "t'tarn"?
People who skate up fast-flowing becks frankly deserve all they get.
Love, whether of God or man, may keep you warm, but a shawl does a better job of preventing hypothermia.
Our heroine is Welsh. Whilst I applaud the (American) author's efforts to make her say "mum" rather than "mom", I can't help feeling that "mam" would be just a little more likely.
If you live in a cottage with your mother-in-law in 1870, so poor that you eat potato peelings, you do not have separate beds. You really do not have separate beds.
Oh, and finally, one of the key points about the staff of a big house in that era is that they live in. They do not live in thatched cottages by the side of a beck with their mother-in-law, who just happens to be a distant relative of the Earl (but takes her time about mentioning it).

Somebody really needs to write a Rough Guide to the British Aristocracy for the sake of minor novelists everywhere.

Cheese Scones (for Silas)

2008-06-15T21:25:00.005+01:00

This is the actual recipe I used, but it is in English terminology, for which I apologise. It's a very basic unsweetened scone recipe plus cheese, so if you have a ready-converted version, use that.

225g/8 oz self-raising flour
pinch salt
5ml/1 teaspoon baking powder
5ml/1 teaspoon mustard powder (Colman's)
40g/1 1/2 oz butter, in small pieces
approx 15oml/quarter of a pint (5 fluid ounces) milk (full fat), plus extra milk to brush tops
50 g/2 oz finely grated strong cheese (I used farmhouse cheddar), plus extra to sprinkle on top

Oven at 220 C/Gas mark7/425 F

Sift together dry ingredients, rub in butter. Add the main amount of cheese, then cut in milk until the dough just comes together. Roll out on a floured surface to 2cm/three quarters of an inch thick, and cut into rounds with a 6cm/2 1/2 inch cutter. It should make about 8.

Brush with extra milk, sprinkle with extra cheese, and bake for about 10-13 minutes.

I do not entirely recommend eating four in a sitting. The other four will freeze well, however.

Edited to correct the milk quantity. And I know that American pints are different, that's why I put the fluid ounces as well.

Randomnicity

2008-06-15T16:41:00.006+01:00

You would think that someone who only blogs once a week would be able to think of something coherent to say. After all, I've had several days to consider the matter.

You would think that, but you would be wrong. So it's that old bloggers' stand-by Random Insert-Day-of-the-Week as appropriate. Sunday, in this case. With added pictures to try and cover up the lack of words.

1. Knititch, there weren't any Michael Caine types on my course either. And I've never actually seen Educating Rita, although I read the the beginning of the screenplay in an English lesson years ago. I really should try and record it next time it's on the BBC late at night.

2. Green things keep growing, and I have same tiny baby rocket seedlings. Apparently I can't sow evenly.

3. Next time I decide that I have to have a book Right Now, I might like to try walking not very far up St Giles' Street in Norwich. After all, the last three times I've had that particular urge, I've found the book in question there, after weeks of searching in places that are really no easier to get to. This time, it was 'South Riding', by Winifred Holtby, as part of my current reading theme of women's lives between the wars.

4. I should make cheese scones more often.

5. I managed to complete a piece of knitting without running out of yarn. I was so determined not to run out of yarn that I spent the entire second half of the piece weighing and recalculating every repeat. My calculations suggested that I would end up with one or two grammes of yarn leftover. I had five, enough for another ten repeats of the main pattern. But I didn't run out.
Flutter scarf, again, in Posh Yarn Eva 2-ply (55% silk, 45% cashmere), colour Rose Otto

Meme time

2008-06-07T13:05:00.002+01:00

Helen tagged me for a meme last week, and I intended to do it straight away, but walking across a stage in fancy dress and shaking the hand of a distinguished academic took far more time than I expected, and then I had to plunge straight back into work, and a week with enough meetings and deadlines for a month. Mum has already written up the graduation, I shall get on with the Five Random Things.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

Early June 1998. I was 19, and in the midst of exams at the end of my first year of university. I had a week between my first and second exams, and whilst having lunch with friends after the first exam the conversation turned to summer plans. People were going off all round the world having fun, but I already knew that I would be working in the local motorway service station all summer, in order to eat and buy books the next year (I got a full grant, I took out the full Student Loan, but that still left me with a choice between food and my reading list once the rent was paid). Somebody was going to Cornwall, and I found myself boiling with resentment. Cornwall was my place, and how dare they go in a year when I couldn't. And then I had a mad idea, mumbled some apologies, and fled in search of a phone and a suitcase.

Two hours later I was on the intercity train heading for Penzance, where Granny and Granddad would meet me. I did more revision than I would ever have managed n Halls, because going to bed at 10 every night enabled me to wake at six in the morning and do an hour's concentrated work before breakfast. Most days I managed another hour or so as a bonus. I ate better than I would have in Halls (I would lose half a stone every term in my first year because the food was so vile). And the weather was glorious. I had never seen west Cornwall in early summer before, only in August, when most of the flowers are over. There was only one foggy day, the last day, when we drove down to Cape Cornwall from the 'wrong' side, wondering if we would see it at all, until it loomed, like a great whale.

I never again arrived quite so precipitously, but I went back several times during my Exeter years, and it was on these solo trips that I got to know my grandmother as a person. A very special person.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today?

Do meme (doing).
Knit 10 repeats of scarf, weigh, get out calculator, furrow brow (I have no intention of running out of yarn again) (knitted but not weighed yet).
Water tomatoes (not done, but it's been raining for days, I doubt they need it, especially as they are out of their pots and in the ground).
Draft Documents X and Y for client Z. I don't usually bring work home, but on Friday afternoon the builders decided to start drilling and hammering and grinding the window frames of my office, and I had started the day with a headache anyway, so I gathered up my files and left, with my manager's blessing (not done yet, but they could equally well be done tomorrow. So long as they are completed before Monday morning).
Make lasagne for tea (waiting for Chris to come home with a small tin of tomatoes with that one).

3. What snacks do I enjoy?

Olives. More olives. Onion bhajis. Kettle Chips (especially the cracked black peppercorn ones). Garlic bread. Olives. (I like cakes and chocolates, but I can live without them. I have far more of a savoury tooth than a sweet one).

4. Where are some places I've lived?

Much as I might try to conceal it, I'm technically a Surrey Girl. I was born in Guildford and started my childhood near Cranleigh (in one of the lodges, I might add). We lived in Hampshire for six years, then returned to Surrey in 1989, to Oxted, where my parents still live (albeit in a different house).

Since I've had some choice in the matter, I've lived in Exeter (three years of university), Bradford (a gap year after university) and Norfolk, where I still am. In the past six years I've only had two addresses, which feels slightly wrong. Six years ago, I had had nine addresses in the previous six years. I'm quite good at packing.

5. What things would I do if I were a billionaire?

Let us assume Bill Gates levels of billionaireishness.

Fund a scholarship for people in their twenties and thirties who have only just worked out what they want to do, but find the funding drying up because they should have been more decisive a few years ago.

Apply to Cambridge again, to read Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic this time.

Learn to ride horses and sail boats.

Take a train trip all the way across Canada.

Build a library in every town that is full of books, not computers, that has single copies of unfashionable and out of print authors rather than ten or twenty copies of the latest paperback, which Tesco have for a couple of quid anyway.

Fund knitting lessons in schools.

Whom should I tag? Let us keep nepotism in the family, and start with my new sister-in-law Kendra, because I'd like to know her better, and my mother, because I may think that I know what she'll say, but I'd like to be proved wrong. Other people I'd like to know a little more about are Mooncalf, Natalie and Knititch. The 'rules' are answer the five questions, then tag five more people by leaving comments on their blogs. Break them if you want (which is heresy for a legal bod, but I'm a heretic in so many ways).

Busy Weekend

2008-06-01T18:42:00.002+01:00

Back soon.

It was a damned close-run thing

2008-05-24T13:58:00.003+01:00

And I lost. It's been a while since I put up a picture of the Gothic Hap, but I've been plodding on with it. Now I have come to a screeching halt, with only four border points left to knit, having entirely run out of yarn.

Not the fault of Posh Yarn at all, as both skeins were in fact rather heavier than their advertised 100 grammes. Not really my fault. I made up the pattern as I went along, which made it impossible to judge quantities required. If I'd knitted a slightly smaller centre, slightly shallower borders, or chosen a slightly narrower edging ... but I didn't, and I'm stuck. Posh Yarn do not repeat colourways, so my only hope is that someone somewhere has a tiny leftover nugget they can bring themselves to part with, and that they see my desperate plea on Ravelry. 10 grammes would do it. Either that or take off the entire edging and replace it with a narrower one.
It's looking quite pretty (the pink bit is preparation for grafting the beginning and end of the edging together in pattern, as demonstrated here). If anyone needs me, I shall be in the cupboard with the Glenmorangie.

Sunday Round-Up

2008-05-18T10:27:00.005+01:00

Adipose
After Wednesday's somewhat disingenuous post, I can report that the Adipose (Adipodes?) seem safe. I don't have anything as solid as a link yet (except a Ravelry link, and I think most of my readers aren't yet on Ravelry, whilst those who are can go look for themselves), but I am having great fun imagining an exchange of e-mails between the part of the BBC that actually makes Doctor Who, and the part that sends out legalistic threatening messages, since like most large organisations, internal communication will not be all they might. Something along the lines of "why are you harassing the fans? We like the fans, don't harass them. And Russell T Davies likes the knitted Adipose and wants one for himself. So there."

Garden
It grows.
These are baby redcurrants. At least, I hope they are. The bushes were definitely given to us as redcurrant bushes.
These are baby tomatoes, so all my hard work with the soft paintbrush ain't been in vain for nothing, and I should probably start looking for the bottle of Tomorite I know lurks in the shed somewhere.

Knitting
What knitting? Oh yeah, that I thing I do with the sticks and the string. Having discovered that Chris's first completed Ringwood Stitch sock weighed just slightly more than the remaining yarn, I ordered another skein. Now that's arrived I'm plodding on with the second sock. I'm also attaching an edging to the border of the Gothic Hap shawl, which is not the most exciting task in the world, but it slowly gets there. There are a couple of projects I'm itching to cast on, but I refuse to crack until at least one and preferably both of the above-mentioned are finished.

And finally, the weather
Which was dank and gloomy and bone-chillingly cold as only May can be for several days this week, but which is beginning to cheer up. To suit the general gloom, I appear to have developed a very unseasonal case of bronchitis. I can't really blame it on the weather, can I?

So should I knit or not?

2008-05-14T17:25:00.003+01:00

Who would have thought that the most illegal thing I've ever done could turn out to be knitting a soft toy. Twice.
But the Adipose are not just cute smiley blobs of fat. They're minor celebrities now, all over the Beeb and the Times this morning (Mum, before you point out that the Times' picture shows a crochet version, the picture in the paper was better). I kept my print-out of the pattern, and I was thinking of knitting another one, but are the police going to turn up and demand that I hand over the double pointed needles?

Dear BBC, you mess with the pointy-sticked community at your peril. It's a fight for freedom of stitching, and you'll only end up looking rather silly - unless of course you already have.

Springing towards Summer

2008-05-11T15:56:00.004+01:00

The weather is toasty warm, the columbines are out, and I've found the macro button on my camera again. On Friday morning I heard screaming in the sky as I walked up the road to the bus stop, and I looked up to see the first swifts. Only a few, and they seem to have gone again, but they will be back, and I will spend my summer evenings sitting slanted on the sofa so I can look out through the fan-light in the door and see them whizzing about.

I have also stopped procrastinating and finished the little jacket for the niecephew that I started on the 29th of March. It was a much quicker knit than the time it took suggests. I kept taking breaks as I worried about the colour (I thought it was neutral, Chris thought it was rather blue, and we eventually decided that it doesn't need to have the buttons sewn on until the child actually makes an appearance, so those you can see in the picture below are not stitched down, and will be replaced by something in navy blue if the infant is a boy after all).

Then I worried about the size. It seemed awfully small, even for a newborn babe. I found myself in Sainsburys, measuring baby-gros (doesn't everyone keep a measuring tape in their bag?) but was not fully reassured until I had shown it to mum, who as the mother of three ought to have some idea what size a baby is.

Then I worried about my ability to pick up stitches and knit respectable button-bands. I have knitted many things, but not a lot of button-bands, and I have seen some awful ones in my time. Finally I sat down to it this morning, determined to finish the jacket off so I could start something new, and did them. Several times over. They look alright now.
The pattern is the Mossy Jacket, and I re-sized it for a newborn by using a lighter weight yarn (Araucania Pomaire, one skein with substantial leftovers, fantastically even stitches) and smaller needles (4.5mm and 5mm). Without the crippling attacks of self-doubt, it would have taken a week.

Now I am going to have crippling attacks of self doubt over my ability to handle cobweb-weight yarn. And watch more Battlestar Galactica. But not at the same time, because BSG demands concentration, as does cobweb, and I only have so much brain to go round.

Quodlibet

2008-05-06T17:46:00.004+01:00

(Or, what you will)

Mum came to stay. We went to Bungay. I don't have pictures, she does. On the other hand. I do have a picture of the revamped front garden (an awfully grand word for such a tiny space), to prove that all that wear and tear on the suspension of mum's car and the muscles in my back was ultimately worth it.
My first thought was that it will make an extremely convenient background for the photographing of knitting. I don't imagine the neighbours are under any illusions as to our sanity, so I will simply be confirming their opinion of us.
Like this, in fact, which is a Gentleman's Sock in Ringwood Stitch from Nancy Bush's 'Knitting Vintage Socks' (I have been to Ringwood, when I was very tiny, to a livestock auction. Dad bought a cock and two hens, white with black spots). The yarn is Araucania Ranco in a solid shade, and I am beginning to be a little concerned by the smallness of the ball. This is only the first sock, and normally 100 grammes is plenty for a pair for Chris, but with every third round consisting of Knit 1 Purl 1, it's getting eaten up rather fast. I shall be doing some careful weighing when I get to the toe.

A Link

The Woolworths Virtual Museum. Hours of fun. I found this when I was googling for the Scotch Wool Shop (which I did not find out much about).

Long silence

2008-04-25T19:22:00.005+01:00

That was longer than I intended. The problem was, I noticed that my next post was going to be the hundredth, and I became paralysed, unable to come up with an idea worthy of the occasion. It's taken me nearly a fortnight to decide that a blog which expired prematurely on its 99th post would be Even Worse. Then today I finally found something I had to blog right now.

Mysterious Shirt

I bought this shirt in the Salvation Army shop for £3 this lunchtime. It's a heavy plain weave cotton (rather like vintage sheets in feel). The seams are machine-sewn, finished with zig-zagging rather than an overlocking stitch. The embroidery is hand-done, quite well despite the screaming colours. it's obviously a traditional pattern. Almost every shape is a rectangle, with extra fabric being dealt with by pleating (there is a box pleat in the back as well as the front).

The question is, where does it come from? It looks central or Eastern European to me, which is perfectly plausible - Yarmouth has sizeable Polish and Hungarian populations these days. On the other hand, it could have been made by someone British in a folkloric, hippy, mood - the fabric feels old to me, and I can picture it being worn with flared jeans and bare feet in the 1970s. I'll never know - the shop had no idea where it had come from.

My next task is to wash it carefully, with some vinegar in the water because I do not trust the embroidery threads to be colourfast. I'd leave it alone, but it has some staining at the back of the neck, and that musty charity shop smell.
The only curve in the garment is at the front neck. The shading in the flowers seems to be due to variegated threads. The buttonholes are machine-sewn, clumsily (like the ones your Elna produced, Mum).

It will join the other items in my miniature Museum of Clothes I Don't Wear (although it's a slightly more credible fit for me than most of those).

Happenstance

2008-04-12T16:24:00.007+01:00

The sun shone this morning, the washing up was done by ten o'clock, and as I was sitting at the computer Chris asked me if I knew what time there was a bus to Bungay. "Ten minutes, at the end of our road", I replied. Ten minutes later, we were on it.

In a car it might take half an hour to get to Bungay, if you were unlucky enough to get stuck behind a particularly slow tractor. The bus takes over an hour, being one of those delightful rural ones that can't see a turning without going down it. Chris, who has been travelling this route to work for several years now, gave me a running commentary on the finer points of church towers along the way (one was Saxon, several were round, all were flint and lovely). Then we got to Bungay, which both of us have been through many times but neither of us had actually stopped in before.
Bungay, as can be seen above, is a small market town in the Waveney valley, almost too pretty to be true. It has ancient houses, a ruined castle (with an excellent café attached, where we had lunch and talked to the waitress about knitting), and two sizeable churches staring at each other across a road.
Chris and I play a game in towns like this, pretending we could afford to live there and choosing our ideal home. I'm not sure I actually would want to live in a town so small and perfect. It strikes me as the sort of place that could start a petition if you decided to paint your front door pink or didn't plant daffodils. I'd rather live somewhere a bit scruffier, somewhere easier to live up to. Besides, even if we could afford a house, I'm not sure I could afford the temptation.
The ironic thing about today's trip is that the reason I knew the bus times for Bungay was because I thought about going there two Saturdays ago, but decided against it because I wanted to see Araucania sock yarns which I knew were stocked by Norfolk Yarns of Norwich. Turns out Knit and Yarn also have them. So I now have more. I should even have something to show for my new obsession soon.

Apologies

2008-04-07T17:13:00.002+01:00

If anyone else has had a nasty persistent ear-worm brought on by the title of my last post, I am sincerely sorry, and if it's any consolation, I am suffering too. It's currently being used for an advert on British television, which is probably 'inspired' me. I have no memory of what the advert is actually for, but the earworm lasts for days.

Helen, I am reading 'Voices', and have 'The Draining Lake' to come. Previously I have read 'Jar City'/'Tainted Blood' (which I then passed on), and 'Silence of the Grave'. Are there any others? "Scandinavian Detective Novel" is one of those phrases that is practically guaranteed to make me buy a book. There seem to be so many excellent writers in the Nordic countries. For all I know there are as many excellent British authors, but I haven't read a lot of modern British detective fiction. I'm much more at home in the Golden Age, with Allingham and Sayers.

Bibbety bobbety

2008-04-06T18:35:00.002+01:00

I now have a grand total of four bibs out of the seven I'm aiming for. The one with green leaves was finished several weeks ago, but I don't think it has been photographed before. The twigs and the vegetables were thrown together while Sunday lunch was cooking (and these two haven't had their final pressing yet, so they look a little less finished).

I've scarcely left the sofa this weekend. It's just as well I walked home from work on Friday, otherwise I would have had no exercise at all. I have been variously saying goodbye to Torchwood (I cried), welcoming back Doctor Who (much better than I expected, but my expectations had been pretty low, mostly consisting of spending the last nine months saying "Catherine Tate! No!" three times a day. I couldn't stand her character in 'The Runaway Bride', but I liked her last night. Liked her a lot, in fact. And then there was the moment when my jaw hit the floor, and I did a fantastic impression of David Tennant as I cried out "What! What! What!" Anyone who saw it will know of what I speak). I got lost in Tudor England with Matthew Shardlake (C J Sansom's series of detective novels: 'Dissolution', 'Dark Fire' and 'Sovereign', which I highly recommend). And I knitted socks. Quite a lot. It's been snowing again today, so socks are urgently required. Perfect weather for a trip to Iceland, in fact, and I have two novels by Arnaldur Indriđason on the pile as well as Betsy Tobin's Ice Land, which comes highly recommended by my mother as well as the Dove Grey Reader. If I didn't have to go to work tomorrow it might be another week before I left the sofa, in fact.

Knitting one garment to the pattern of another

2008-04-01T18:15:00.006+01:00

I didn't just spend the Easter weekend moaning about the weather. I also invented a new game, based on that old favourite from I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, 'Sing One Song to the Tune of Another'.

This is at one and the same time a baby Cobblestone and a February Baby Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmermann's 'Knitter's Almanac'. I saw a new yarn, you see, when I was in John Lewis. It is Twilley's Sincere, an organic cotton double knitting, and I used just a smudge over two balls. I bought 4, not knowing what I wanted to knit other than a top for the impending niecephew, but in the queue for the bus home I suddenly thought "Cobblestone!". ( I may even have shouted "Cobblestone!". It helps deter other passengers from sitting next to me). But Cobblestone is knitted in an aran weight and sized for adult men, whereas I had a double knitting and a baby to knit for. A Proper Knitter might have sat down with a calculator at this point, and swatched and sketched and worked it all out properly. Me, I just thought what the salient features of Cobbestone were (garter stitch circular yoke, garter stitch bands, and those garter stitch stripes from armpit to hem), and tried to remember what they reminded me of. Somewhere around Acle I thought of the February Sweater, which shares the circular yoke, and wondered if it could be modified to suit. Six days later, I found out.

My modifications (from the February Sweater)

Used DK rather than sportweight, on appropriately sized needles (4mm) for the yarn I had. This makes a slightly larger sweater, but babies grow, and better a loose sweater this summer and a cropped jacket next than a tiny little thing that gets worn once before it's grown out of.
Did not use lace pattern, but knitted mainly stocking stitch, with an 8-stitch wide panel of garter under each arm.
Like so many before me, made the sweater entirely seamless by knitting the sleeves in the round.
Only did 3 buttonholes.

I hope Jared doesn't mind.

ETA It isn't lopsided really, whatever the photos look like. It was quite windy out there, I was having enough trouble keeping it from blowing into next door's garden, I couldn't keep the fronts straight.

The wonders of google

2008-03-25T17:28:00.002Z

Compared to Rabbitch and Franklin, the google searches that bring people this way are relatively tame. Most , in fact, are searching for "viviennes pastimes" or variants thereof, in which case I humbly suggest that most web browsers have a bookmark facility. If you're on a public access computer, and can't use bookmarks, then please don't take offence.

On the other hand, over the past week there have been an awful lot of searches for "Charlotte Mendelson" that have ended up here (and my writing about it isn't necessarily going to help the situation). I assume this is because her latest novel, "When We Were Bad", is on the Orange Longlist. If you're here looking for my opinion on it, then I'm sorry, but I can't help you yet. "Love in Idleness" and "Daughters of Jerusalem" are two of my favourite modern novels, but "When We Were Bad" is still on a Heap of Books Not Yet Read. Even when I do get around to it, I may not get around to writing up my views on it for months, if at all.

And if I'm going to have an entirely accurate premonition that the heating at work would entirely fail to function today, on a bitterly cold morning with a couple of inches of snow on the ground, couldn't I have the premonition a little earlier in the morning? Like, early enough to put on thermal underwear, instead of just as I was picking my way along Hall Quay?

Credo - non angela sed anglicana

2008-03-24T19:43:00.004Z

I don't often post twice in one day, and I scarcely talk about religion on this blog, for all kinds of good, valid, and complicated reasons. I am breaking all my self-imposed rules today, however, because I have been reorganising (subtly, and you may well not have noticed) my sidebar, and there is a new category called "Believing Blogs".

I chose the name for entirely frivolous reasons, because all my other headings contained participles. I don't intend to privilege my own faith over any others, but it would not be inappropriate in the circumstances to define my faith a little further, for ease of reference.

I am an Anglican first and foremost, but in the current state of the Anglican church further labels are sadly necessary. I am very much at the liberal end of the Anglican church (happy to ordain anyone willing to wear a dress, which would pretty much mean women and gay men). (That is a very cheap joke. Sorry). In a past life I tried to be an evangelical of a rather fundamentalist persuasion. It didn't work, but it left a nasty taste in the mouth. These days I tend to find myself in Anglo-Catholic services, because that is where most of the liberals hang out. Whilst I like a bit of incense as much as the next man or woman (and more than the local fire brigade do), I actually quite like guitars, modern music, and gratuitous tea-lights. In a happier former life, I was involved in what was then called Alternative Worship. I also like a bit of Palestrina, even if singing it leaves me with the feeling that my vocal cords have been tied in a celtic knot.

I love the Church of England for its shabbiness, humanity, uncertainty. I love its embrace of all kinds of faiths. I want it to stay that way. Sadly, I'm not sure it can. But if the Schism comes, sign me up for the Episcopalians.

"For now we see as through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known."

In the bleak mid-Easter, frosty winds made moan

2008-03-24T11:07:00.003Z

What I have read this year (so far) (not in order)

King Hereafter - Dorothy Dunnett (re-read)
Love in Idleness - Charlotte Mendelson
The Middle Kingdom - Andrea Barrett
Mrs Simpson - Charles Higham
The Far Cry - Emma Smith
They Found Him Dead - Georgette Heyer
Dusty Answer - Rosamond Lehmann
A Reluctant Celebrity: The life of Fanny Kemble - Rebecca Jenkins
The Accidental - Ali Smith
White Crow - Mary Gentle
The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood
Rosamond Lehmann: A Life - Selina Hastings
1610: A Sundial in a Grave - Mary Gentle
Fight the Good Fight: From Vicar's Wife to Killing Machine - Catherine Fox
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood - Marjane Satrapi
Persepolis: The Story of a Return - Marjane Satrapi
Dissolution - C J Sansom
Swordspoint - Ellen Kushner
Anything Goes - John Barrowman with Carole E. Barrowman (signed! Oh glorious sister!)
Through a Glass Darkly - Donna Leon

It's a very female-dominated list, really. Only one re-read, and I would give all of them four or five stars out of five.

I appear to read only fiction and biography/memoirs. I'm sure that isn't entirely true, but other books tend to get read in bits and pieces, and don't make it onto lists. At the moment I am reading 'Dark Fire', by C J Sansom (sequel to 'Dissolution'), and 'Knitting America', by Susan M. Strawn.

It's not Easter Saturday

2008-03-22T15:14:00.002Z

Easter Saturday is the first Saturday after Easter. This is Holy Saturday, and the weather is fifteen kinds of horrible, as I discovered when I was sent out to buy Easter eggs, none of which are precisely egg-shaped this year. One of them is tractor-shaped, and another is a Tardis with an over-sensitive sound-chip, which kept on going off every time I got jostled, which was frequently. What with the eight foot multi-coloured scarf and the outbreak of ringlets, I looked like a bargain basement Tom Baker impersonator.

White stuff keeps falling from the sky. Some of it is snow, and some hail. The easiest way to tell the difference is to stand outside, as the hail hurts more when it hits you. Even when the precipitation stops precipitating for five minutes and the sun comes out, the wind is vicious. Perfect weather for curling up on the sofa with a good book or five (that dent I made in my to-read pile? All gone now).

Giving Up Giving Up

2008-03-18T09:58:00.006Z

Lenten abstinences always tend to peter out for me. Part of the problem is that my birthday is on one of only ten or so days in the year that cannot fall before Ash Wednesday or after Easter Day, and it would be monstrously unfair to have to deny myself on my birthday every single year. Wouldn't it? At least this year we're well into Holy Week before the question arises.

So I have been buying books, and having books bought for me, and will be buying more books (my colleagues gave me book tokens, I have no choice in the matter). No yarn has yet come home, but I devoted a birthday cheque to signing up for the Yarn Yard Sock Club Plus, because I love Natalie's colours so much. I couldn't deny myself cake any longer, because what is a birthday without cake? About the only thing I haven't buckled on is alcohol. I had two glasses of wine on Refreshment Sunday, and that was it. I don't feel as if I've particularly achieved anything with that, though, because I haven't felt remotely tempted.

There are new resolutions concerning books and yarn. I am acquiring relatively freely until the end of March, but after that I am trying to make a new, permanent, resolution not to buy either unless I plan to read or knit them immediately. Or they're stupendously reduced, of course. I might even manage it, if yesterday's trip to Foyles is anything to go by. I found myself walking round the fiction section, knowing I could spend (relatively) freely, and bought just three books, only one of which I hadn't been specifically looking for.

I am planning to celebrate my birthday by staying in. Outside it is cold and hailing, and Chris just came back from getting the paper singing "I'm dreaming of a White Easter". Spring has retreated again. Saturday at Penshurst Place in Kent was lovely, though.

Feel free to ignore this

2008-03-13T20:54:00.002Z

Terry Pratchett has donated a million dollars to Alzheimer's Research. My first thought was "hmm. If everybody who's ever enjoyed one of his books gave a quid, we could easily double that". So I've done my little bit. You can too.

Two Scarves and a Recommendation

2008-03-09T16:54:00.004Z

Thanks to my inexpert pruning, the buddleia has plenty of convenient stubby branches to hook knitwear onto, such as the Tilted Blocks scarf that I finished last Saturday. Two balls of Silk Garden gave me 75" of scarf, or long enough to go around my neck twice and give me tails to play with at the bus stop. I do have a sort of plan for a hat, but I got interrupted by the other scarf in today's parade.

This gives a much better idea of the colour than the last picture. I started it on the 26th of February and finished it yesterday, so it took 12 days of fairly concentrated knitting. I really want to get it blocked this week, if I can find some spare floor. At least it's not a shawl (I sometimes think people who live in small houses shouldn't knit shawls). One end is much greener than the other, but I don't think that matters too much. I am a bit of a multi-coloured laceweight tart, and unpredictability comes with the territory.

One of my favourite books is 'The Egg and I', by Betty McDonald, and Radio 4 has a programme at 11.30am on Thursday looking at her work. Definitely sounds promising.

Velcro Desk (with acknowledgements and much gratitude for such a useful phrase)

2008-03-07T23:02:00.002Z

As one project ends, another, even larger, hoves into view. This one has a Working Party.

And I seem to have put together the most depressing playlist imaginable for my iPod, which is slightly strange given my current good mood. It starts with Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris singing 'Love Hurts', carries straight on with 'Boulder to Birmingham', and gets worse. This time I made it all the way to R.E.M ('Everybody Hurts') before starting to howl. Usually I get caught at 'Love will Tear Us Apart' (June Tabor, not Joy Division, because I'm a folky really). About the most uplifting song on there is 'Meet on the Ledge'.

I'm going to put on 'It's Raining Men' and turn up the volume, before I run out of tissues, and think about adding some cheerier numbers to the Sad Songs playlist, to dilute the angst somewhat.

Life and stuff

2008-03-05T20:33:00.002Z

A week went by. I had a Landlord's Inspection thrown at me (one of the disagreeable rituals of side-stepping the property ladder) so the house is unwontedly tidy. Come and visit now, it won't last. I had a Special Project passed to me at work too. Rather flatteringly, they seemed to think I am the only person in the organisation with the necessary skills. Not true, I could name you the other, but she's in a different department and unlikely to be released for the time necessary to get this done. I also discovered the lovely phrase "teflon desk", for the super-delegators amongst us. I wish I had one of those, instead of the little sign saying "good at time-consuming tasks needing extreme attention to detail". And whilst most of the time I am glad to be a woman, proud of my womanliness, not in the least resentful if those born with dangly bits, last night I had one of those nights that makes me start looking for the end of the queue for testicles. Ibuprofen and a hot water bottle cure most things eventually, but a little more sleep would have been good.

On the plus side, I have three quarters of a lace scarf. Will I get it knitted and blocked in time to wear it on my trip Down South in a week and a half's time? Possibly, if I can stay awake.

Oh Frabjous Day!

2008-02-26T21:15:00.002Z

The Yarn Harlot is coming to England. I haven't been this excited in I don't know how long. If you heard a curious sound last week, it was the collective realisation of thousands of British knitters that one of their daydreams was going to happen. Followed by a hurried attempt to recall whether they might have made any rash promises, such as "I'd sacrifice my firstborn for a chance to see her this side of the Atlantic", promises that might now be called in. I'm fine, I don't make bargains like that. I just indulge in a rich and vivid fantasy life in which I might actually make it to North America myself, conveniently forgetting that doing so would pretty much require me to get on an aeroplane, which is one of the many things I've never done. I'm not scared of flying - well, I don't think I'm scared of flying, but never having tried it I'm reluctant to commit myself. I've just never visited anywhere that can't be reasonably reached by a train (Chris's obsession) or a boat (my obsession) or both (mutual bliss), and these days there is a certain amount of smugness to be had from never having flown. So bang goes my fantasy (don't worry, I have plenty of spares), and as a firstborn child, I'm looking over my shoulder a little nervously.

Such an occasion positively demands impressive knitting (competitive? Me?). But it's the beginning of September, and it may well be warmish (it may well not, but such is England, and most of us are used to it by now, although I heard a fifty year old complaining last summer of the horrors of having to wear a cardigan in June). It certainly won't be aran weather (the beginning of October last year was bad enough for a girl with a pure wool jumper she wanted to show off. Fortunately for everyone wool is deodorising, but I've never had to wash a sweater twice in a week before). Lace would seem the obvious solution, proper airy lace (not the Hap, which will be a wonderful comforter next winter, but which is the reverse of light). So I reviewed the laceweight (without having to fight my way into the wardrobe, thanks to the joys of Ravelry). I reviewed my lace patterns, then ordered another that I've wanted to do for a while. It hasn't quite got here yet, but I'd chosen the yarn and found the needles. Then this morning I fell over another pattern, and it was love. I spent the day trying to persuade myself not to knit it, with such little success that as soon as I'd hung up my coat I started winding cashmere. After all, what does it matter if I have another work in progress? I wasn't knitting any lace (apart from the Big Heap of Red Fuzz, which is millimetring along. It's far too slow to be inching). Looks like this September I will be wearing a cashmere scarf (or possibly carrying a cashmere scarf, should the weather be warm and the hall be crowded). It might not be the show-off project to display my technical skills that I'd thought of, and although as a very new pattern there aren't may around yet, by September I confidently predict that it will be all over the blogosphere like a rash. But it was love, and can we ever choose where the heart truly leads us?

It's time I went to bed. I know I'm too tired when I start quoting Cabaret. And before anyone comments, there may very well have been a special offer on brackets today. I'll leave you with a truly awful flash photograph of my new baby. Believe me, it looks infinitely better in real life.

Spring is here ...

2008-02-24T15:44:00.004Z

And I planted primroses yesterday. They looked a little shell-shocked this morning, but the slugs didn't seem to have found them yet. I also discovered an unexpected crocus in a corner by the shed, which is certainly none of my doing. Every autumn I resolve to scatter the lawn with crocus bulbs, but the season for bulb-planting passes long before I get around to doing anything about it.

This is the third Sunday in a row that I have featured garden pictures. Partly this is a consequence of the run of sunny Sunday mornings this month (it was far brighter this morning than the photos suggest), and partly because I have done more gardening this month than I managed all last year, and I am feeling rather proud of myself. It isn't remotely an attempt to distract you from lack of knitting, because knitting also proceeds apace.

I have just started the second ball, and it is time I thought about the matching hat I threatened. Originally I meant matching as in using the same yarn, not anything closer, but I have had an idea for a hat which would echo the design of the scarf. I'm not sure it will work, and I'm fairly certain I'd never be able to explain it if it did, but I mean to try.

Most depressing sight of the week

A girl of 10 or 11 on the bus, carrying her PE kit to school in a bag which read "WAG in training". (A WAG is the wife or girlfriend of an England footballer, for those who were blissfully unaware. They are famous for their boyfriends, for extremely labour-intensive glamour and for going shopping. Apparently this can be a career).

This blog is missing something

2008-02-17T14:15:00.004Z

It took me a while to work out what was missing, but this morning it hit me. I need gratuitous cat pictures!
We don't have a cat. This one belongs to a house in the next street, but he has always treated our garden as his won, despite our best efforts to dissuade him. He was sitting with his back to the house, but he turned round when I opened the window to glare at me.
I also need knitting pictures, so here is 'Tilted Blocks', from Knitting New Scarves, in Noro Silk Garden. Only one knot so far, which wouldn't ordinarily bother me much, given the ease with which it spit-splices, but I was on a train to Cambridge when I found it, and I am fairly sure that spit-splicing is one of those things no lady does in public. Fortunately I am no lady, so I coped, discreetly. People do many worse things on trains.

Cambridge was crisp and beautiful and very crowded, and I found the boots I was looking for half price. I also emerged from Heffers with my reading pile unincreased, despite their tempting Three for Two offers (Heffers' Three for Two offers are responsible for far too much of my reading pile as it is). I seem to be starting a list for an Easter book-buying spree, though, so I obviously haven't yet succeeding in changing my underlying acquisitiveness.

I knitted my love a scarf

2008-02-14T21:28:00.003Z

If not for his birthday, then for Valentine's Day. And it took a lot of love to get me through six feet of mistake rib. Now I just need to find a clear patch of floor, six feet by five inches (variable) (it's rib) to block it on.

The Anti-Archaeologist

2008-02-10T16:05:00.001Z

Until we had a garden of our own, I never understood how archaeology happened. How could stone and brick be swallowed up by the earth? After two and a half years of battling against the twin forces of grass and periwinkle that threaten to overwhelm all the solid structures in the garden if you so much as blink, I begin to see how it happens.

After our combined strenuous efforts this weekend, we have cleaned out the paths and patio, all the better to reveal how drunken these slabs actually are. I have pulled up periwinkle until my shoulder muscles cried out in protest, but there is still plenty left.
The Dove Grey Reader saw it as a harbinger of spring this morning, but I don't think I have ever seen ours without a flower somewhere. And it's not even really our periwinkle. It creeps under the fence from the even scruffier garden next door, and is trying to take over the world, in alliance with the grass. They insinuate themselves between slabs and bricks and can never quite be pulled out. There is always enough left for them to return (although the 'lawn' boasts large bald patches).

It has been a glorious gift of a weekend. Sometimes I don't manage to leave the house between Friday evening and Monday morning, but this weekend I fell as if I have spent more time outdoors than in. Playing around with the zoom on the camera I caught this.
They may 'only' be starlings, but they were beautiful and glossy and singing in the sunshine.

'Snowed in'

2008-02-03T16:08:00.000Z

There was an actual proper blizzard in progress when Chris came back from choir practice on Friday night. Howling winds and snow being hurled all over the place. When I woke on Saturday morning and was struck by the unusual brightness of the light I was certain that I'd been snowed in. There might be whole centimetres of snow out there!

Turns out I'd overslept by an hour or so. There might have been as much as half a centimetre of snow in discrete patches, separated by grey icy pavements. But I was determined to be snowed in. My body craves cold (unlike Franklin, my genetic inheritance was designed for windswept western rocks. Cold makes me feel alive. Briefly, before my extremities cease to function). If I squinted at the garden the snow patches almost joined up, so I refused to go out, and wrapped myself in a blanket on the sofa with a Time Team marathon and my hap shawl.

Have you noticed yet that we've seen this picture before? There's a reason for that. Apparently I can't do simple lace. Four rounds before picking up the hap again, I had missed a yarn-over, and only noticed it in this next patterned round. "No problem", I thought, "I'm a confident knitter. I shall simply drop down a stitch and manufacture a yarn-over somewhat after the event. It'll be easy". So I carefully converted one missing hole and a one-stitch shortage into an cats cradle of loose threads, still one stitch short, and with no idea what went where but a painful awareness that whereas the previous error might have passed in a dim light, nobody could possibly miss this. It takes a very long time to unknit four rounds of around 400 stitches each, especially when you have no real conviction that you will be able to fix the problem when you get there, such is the mess.

It is fixed. The tension is not all it might be, but the holes are all present and correct, there are no random loops, and all the knits are knits and purls purls. I am now slightly past the point where all my troubles began, and I have almost forgiven the hap.

For those who were concerned, the book piles have been reprieved for the present, because this week I finally achieved a noticeable reduction in the height of one of them by finishing a lengthy biography of Mrs Simpson, which has left me with the conviction that the Establishment that rejected her as Queen may just possibly have had a point, what with the multiple affairs and spying for Nazi Germany and so forth. I am now reading Rosamond Lehmann's 'Dusty Answer', stating firmly in period.

Books for Gill

2008-01-31T20:12:00.000Z

My big little sister is 24 today (and I'm trying not to think about how that means that this little big sister is 29 in six weeks time). She's the big little sister because she's five years younger and eight inches taller than me, which makes me the little big sister. Other than the height thing (and the hip-length hair thing) we actually look far more alike that we liked to think a few years ago. And we get on far better than we did a few years ago, now that five years difference in age isn't the chasm it used to be.

Happy birthday Gill. I would have bought you books, but I suffered an attack of uncertainty as to what you read, so it was book tokens instead. But here are some of the books I was considering, that I thought you might like (all in print and in paperback, just for a change).

Disobedience by Naomi Alderman

When the Rabbi dies, worlds collide. His estranged daughter flies back from New York. His nephew Dovid, the Rabbi's appointed heir, and Dovid's wife Esti, have their own reasons for apprehension. Sounds terrible? It could be a dreadful novel, populated entirely by cardboard cutouts. It isn't. None of the characters are quite who you thought they were. None of them behave quite how you think they will. The ending was entirely unexpected, and far more satisfying for it. And if you buy the paperback it comes with recipes.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

Do you remember how Dad was incapable of watching a film from the beginning all the way to the end? We'd see the last third of a film, then a few years later the beginning third, but there would always be an elusive central section, without which nothing made sense. This novel is a bit like that. We meet the characters in 1947, variously marked by their wartime experiences, and instead of travelling forward to find out what happens to them, we ravel back to find out how they got there. I read it in one glorious sitting, then went straight back to the front to read it again. Wiser brains than mine have pointed out anachronisms (very few), but I think they're missing the point. It's fiction, not history, and it gets the exhausted, melancholic atmosphere of the late 1940s right. If this is a hit, you may also like Graham Greene's The End of the Affair.

The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter

Fairytales for grown ups? Nothing is what it seems, anything can happen. Putting on your mother's wedding dress and walking in the garden at midnight will bring about the end of your comfortable life. It isn't quite the world we live in, it's more like the world we dream when flu strikes and our temperature climbs. Intoxicating.

Love in Idleness by Charlotte Mendelson

Just-graduated Anna is trying to work out how this being a grown up business works, as she spends the summer alone in her aunt Stella's flat in London. Her mother doesn't provide much of a model, but Stella is mysterious and entrancing, and Anna has far too much time on her hands to speculate about her aunt, to become obsessed. Then Stella comes back. It's far funnier than I made it sound, and there are moments of hideous recognition (maybe all bookish 21 year olds are basically the same).

These are four books, but I could have listed many others. Don't feel bound to try any of them. After all, you live in the same city as Blackwells, which I imagine to be like Heffers in Cambridge, the sort of bookshop that gives you hope for the world (as L put it).

First baby item completed

2008-01-27T16:31:00.001Z

Whatever else I may or may not get done, the impending niecephew will have at least one handmade item from me now. I don't particularly enjoy sitting at a sewing machine (although the new one is a lot quieter, so I might be able to play music while using it) but nothing beats getting from fabric to finished item in about an hour. The front is a Japanese quilting cotton that I almost certainly bought at the Knitting and Stitching Show a few years ago, the invisible back is some off-white winceyette (a soft brushed cotton) from John Lewis, and the (free) pattern is from here. I decided not to do the instructed top stitch, and instead did hand running stitch in a khaki shade of DMC Coton à Broder. Chris hammered on the poppers for me. I am exceptionally pleased with how this turned out.

My needles are longer than your needles

2008-01-26T15:39:00.000Z

The hap is in the process of acquiring a border, as you can see. I haven't counted the stitches yet, the total would only frighten me. There are quite a lot, and it's a very good evening if I get three rounds done. I am using the longest needle I have ever found, 150cm or 60 inches, the same length as me. It is a Hiya Hiya circular from the very lovely people at Knit'n'Caboodle, and whilst not quite as wonderful as an Addi Turbo, it is a lot pointier. And quite a bit cheaper. I don't absolutely need such a long needle (in the Knitter's Almanac Elizabeth Zimmerman says that the Pi Shawl can be knitted to the very end on a 32" circular, but I found I wanted to go up to 40" when I did mine) , and I'm sure many knitters would prefer to use a shorter one, but I've always found large objects easier on longer needles. It doesn't make for portability, alas.

Not buying books

I didn't put up a book ticker when I put up my yarn ticker because I couldn't remember the last date on which I bought a book. It was slightly before the last yarn I bought, however, so it's probably been two months.

When I say not buying books, there are reservations. Some objects with pages have crossed the threshold, most of them to exit swiftly, encased in wrapping paper (so they don't count). There may possibly have been some that went straight onto the shelves because I'd already had them from the library, loved them, and wanted to own them (so they don't count). Books for looking at rather than reading cover to cover might also have crept in under the radar.

And I didn't buy this one, I won it (although I suspect I would have bought it before very long anyway). The lovely Knititch sent it to me, and it's been following me around the house since Thursday. I've loved cables ever since I was a very small child who used to feed her fingers into the delicious holes left by the cable crossings on her jumpers and cardigans.

The not buying books thing is getting harder, though. My original intention was to make a dent in the piles (plural) of books to be read, and I have read a grand total of five since I started. A very small dent so far. There are two months still to go, but I think I need to stop reading reviews and stop going into bookshops, before I need a new notebook for the list of books I will buy as soon as Easter arrives. It might also help me to stop getting cross with the books in the piles for not being what I want to read right now.

Either that or it's time I decided that if I haven't got around to reading them in two years, they should go straight back to the charity shop unread, and no guilty feelings either.

How did it get to be Sunday already?

2008-01-20T17:18:00.000Z

My lovely employers (there is not a hint of irony in that phrase) have given me some extra time off to go with the longer hours I'm now working. I used some of it up on Friday, did nothing in particular yesterday, and I really can't work out what happened to my weekend. Apart from two meals in restaurants in two days, which was fun, if not wonderful for our current attempts to get rid of the physical evidence of Christmas.

This afternoon I decided I needed to conquer my fear of the new (to me) sewing machine, which has been sitting untouched since mum handed it over in early December, simultaneously removing my old trusty machine, that clonked a bit and couldn't entirely cope with denim, but whose workings I understood, and whose bobbin I could thread. I didn't do anything exciting, just edged a couple of pieces of embroidery fabric that I may not get to for several years, but I left the machine set up on my desk. Seeing as how I don't need the desk for dissertationary purposes any more, and seeing as how I have Plans for sewing this year. I also found the copies of Ottobre and a certain Burda special edition that I had been looking for, which was a relief.

The same Plans caused me to spend several hours on Ravelry, browsing patterns for Very Small Garments, and pondering softness and machine washability and gender neutral colours. You can tell where this is going, can't you. It's baby time.

Not ours. Not this year, and maybe not for several years. But at the end of June we're having a Niecephew, and as the keen maker of things that I am, I want to welcome it with handknitted and machine sewn (I'm no Luddite) goodness. I've been browsing and contemplating since we heard at Christmas, but last night I was able to ask the Niecephew's mother, my lovely sister-in-law, what she had in mind. Yellow, green and cream, apparently. "Purple?", my mother-in-law (also a knitter) and I asked hopefully, but purple was too feminine. At which we all laughed, since we had two Church of England priests at the table, and in the Church of England purple is for bishops, and bishoping is for men only. Fully machine washable (ie not a delicates cycle only) is also important. That's fine. It's not my baby, so it's not my job to say what it should wear. So I'm researching cottons and synthetics, and going through the several Debbie Bliss books I seem to have accumulated. The stash isn't helping (it's all wool, and precious little green in there), so I am going to have to buy yarn as soon as I'm allowed (oh hardship). In the meantime, I really ought to have enough 4-ply for these somewhere.

(For the record, should it be my turn to reproduce someday, I think purple is completely gender neutral, likewise red, and I'm more likely to dress a boy in pink than a girl. I also think wool, even hand wash only wool, is fine for babies, so long as it's soft, but I also think I own more hand wash only garments of my own than my sister-in-law does, and therefore already live with a pile of garments in the bathroom to be washed one at a time when I have a spare ten minutes).

Denmark

2008-01-15T20:36:00.000Z

This summer it will be 21 years since I first visited Denmark, aged 8. My parents had been lent a house in the middle of a forest by Danish friends, otherwise we could never have afforded it. We went on the DFDS ferry from Harwich to Esbjerg, then drove all the way across Jylland and Fyn to a small town in Sjælland called Mørkøv.

I can't remember all that much about the first trip. I remember the excitement of the ferries (even then I was boat-obsessed). I know that we went to København by train, which ought to have been memorable (I hadn't been on many trains then), but I only know that because I can remember the model railway in the station. I remember walking through an archway, and winning some money from Dad because I correctly guessed that we were going to see the "royal palace" (I didn't feel equal to pronouncing "Amalienborg". I know that we went to see the Little Mermaid, but I can't remember seeing her.

Sad, but inevitable. Only a few months later I would have my eyes tested, and get my first pair of glasses as everyone suddenly realised just how short-sighted I was. But until I was 8 I walked in a very foggy world.

We went back next summer, and spent days on a beautiful beach. You walked through sand dunes covered in wild roses to get to it, and the water was the clearest I have ever seen. We built the best sandcastle ever on a sand bank a long way out, wading through the shallows. On one of these trips I stayed up until midnight for the first time ever, at Midsummer. Dad said that it was light enough to read a newspaper, but I didn't know that this was strange.

For years Denmark was a lost paradise for the whole family. I read every book by Danish authors I could find, watched every Danish film (I got a somewhat undeserved reputation for extreme sophistication at University thanks to this). During my brief Interail excursion as a student I got to Denmark twice (I chose my route so as to have the maximum distance to travel between cities each night, so that I could sleep on trains), and went back to København on a cold grey Palm Sunday, which is when I first noticed the cigar-smoking ladies I mentioned yesterday. I also noticed that instead of the palm crosses people would have been carrying in England, there were willow branches with catkins on them.

The last time I went to Denmark was six years ago this summer, on my honeymoon. We stayed at a hotel very near the Rådhuset. "Nice and central", I said, "and don't worry about it not having air conditioning, we won't need it". There was a heatwave, so we had to keep the windows wide open all night. Which is when we discovered that the fire station was just opposite us, and fire engines rushed noisily out all through the night. I am not all that good at choosing hotels. This was shortly before I took up knitting again, so I didn't look at anything to do with knitting. I did embroider, though, so I went to the Eva Rosenstand shop on Strøget to find that they were closing down that summer. I bought several cross stitch kits there. I also bought a kit for a cushion cover with a design of gooseberries by Gerda Bengtsson in a shop that from the location I think must have been 'Sommerfuglen'. I remember noticing that it sold knitting wool too, and ignoring that. I didn't knit.

Six years later, and shamefully I haven't even started any of the embroidery kits I bought that summer, whereas I have knitted I don't know how many items. Even more shamefully, I still don't know any more Danish than "tak". One day, not too far away, I'll be back, I know.

PS. I hope the Danish place-names are correctly spelled. Chris showed me where to find the special characters on the keyboard, so I have tried to give Danish spellings for those I know.

I don't just knit

2008-01-14T19:42:00.000Z

I also embroider pictures of women knitting. At least, I've always imagined that she is knitting, sitting by her canal on a grey Danish winter day.

I've been trying to photograph my embroidery lately. I did this picture three or four years ago. It really is tiny; the frame is about 6 inches square and the picture itself more like 3 inches. It's a Permin of Copenhagen design (which is why I think of the canal as Danish).

Perhaps she isn't knitting. Perhaps it just a handbag she is holding. She might be one of those elderly ladies who wear fur coats and huge amber beads, and sit on benches smoking cigars. But I like to think that she is knitting.

Bright Shiny Morning

2008-01-12T18:37:00.000Z

For anybody who knows the song 'Bright Shiny Morning' (on Norma Waterson's album of the same name), don't worry. For anybody who doesn't, it's a folk song, so the narrator goes inevitably a-walking, but instead of meeting a young maiden of a greater or lesser degree of willingness, he encounters instead a funeral procession. The title just seemed to fit the weather today, which, contrary to the forecasts, was sunny, along with my mood. My job seems to be going well, I'm not completely prostrated by working five days a week instead of three and a half, I haven't made any significant mistakes yet, and I like my new colleagues even more than I thought I would. The bump on my forehead has gone down, too.

So I didn't entirely mind that my first finished object of the year has become two skeins of yarn drying over the bath, in a picture that Blogger won't let me upload tonight.

Not the pattern's fault; it is excellently written. Not the knitter's fault; I followed the instructions and my finished beret looked very much like the picture on the front of the pattern. The problem was that I had knitted the largest version, described as slouchy, because I thought I wanted a slouchy beret, as seen all over the place this winter, but it quarrelled rather horribly with my face. I looked like a non-hat wearer trying on a hat: an expression of acute discomfort, like someone trying urgently to disassociate herself from the object on her head. It wasn't improving, so I took the awful decision to pull out the hat, and knit the smaller, 'regular', version as soon as the wool has dried. Better than having a beautiful hat that I won't ever wear, and I wanted to knit the pattern again anyway, as it was such fun the first time.

Dear Knititch

I bought another album on your recommendation today (Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, 'Raising Sand'), that I love already. Then I opened up Googlemail and found your comment about the amount of money you've been encouraging mum and I to spend. Well, I can't speak for mum, but I don't mind at all. 2007 was a year when I broke out of various ruts by following recommendations that I trusted, and I look set to carry on in 2008. Why would I stop, when I'm discovering such wonderful music and books that I wouldn't otherwise have come across? So carry on recommending, you're doing a wonderful job so far!

Now excuse me, I'm off to get drunk and watch 'Primeval', a very silly series about dinosaurs which features a former member of a choir that Chris was also a member of wandering around in her underwear.

Wednesday

2008-01-09T18:12:00.001Z

I'm going for really exciting titles at the moment, as you can tell.

My life has been quite exciting enough today. Pretty much the first thing I did after getting into work was get hit on the head by an inanimate object, which started hours of fun with first aiders, report forms, and even a trip to the surgery to get a medical professional to shine a light into my eyes to confirm that I was not concussed, just quite understandably shocked. No wonder the public sector is accused of being health and safety obsessed - but on the other hand, people shouldn't really be getting hit on the head at work, and all these forms are in fact documenting that that the incident has been investigated and steps take to make sure nobody else gets hit on the head. By a metal toilet roll holder, if you really want to know. So glamorous.

Natalie has reminded me that her Buy a Friend a Book draw is still open. I spent quite some time debating whether I should enter, as someone who is Not Buying Books, before deciding that given today, I was highly unlikely to be drawn, so could quite safely enter. I also wished that I had got myself organised a little sooner to run my own draw. Next time, I promise (and I don't make promises lightly).

Sunday

2008-01-06T15:47:00.000Z

I'm feeling slightly less than inspired today. I don't even have gigantic parsnips to blog about (I did have a parsnip roasted with my lunch, but it was entirely unremarkable in size and shape).

I finished Gretel on Friday evening (I might have finished it a little sooner if it had not had the magical effect of causing the telephone to ring every time I picked it up), and blocked it yesterday. Although it's lovely, I'm a little nervous of wearing it as yet. I made the 'slouchy' size and it is, as the name suggests, on the large side. It seem silly that I should suddenly become nervous of looking silly in a hat; I've been looking silly in hats for years. I think the answer is to keep it handy until a cold day dawns with no other suitable hat to wear, and I shall just put it on and go. I also intend to make another in the 'regular' size, to go with one of my other coats.

Perhaps it is Chris's scarf that is disinspiring me. I looked at various cabled patters, but none were quite right, so I've ended up working 35 stitches in a stitch I have seen named as "Farrow Rib", "Seeded Rib", "Mistake Rib" and "Broken Rib". It looks like corrugated iron to me. I used it for a scarf for myself a few years ago, that is no full of holes from being caught in doors and on fences, and I love it for the way it stretches and moulds itself to the neck. It has to be said that it is not the most exciting stitch to knit, however, and there's a very long way to go before this will be done.

The yarn (Classic Elite 'Kelso', bought from Texere) is very scratchy at the moment. Not in the Herdwick league, but enough to make it a little bit of a chore to knit. It softens immensely on washing, so I have no fears for Chris's neck, but my fingers are feeling it. Time to push on. Fortunately there's a lot of promising television this week, including the return of 'Time Team' tonight, and even more next week ('Torchwood' is back!), which will help.

First day in my new job.

2008-01-02T17:58:00.000Z

Right now I want to scream and run away. But in a good way.

The forecaster just said "tomorrow's forecast looks as if it could be interesting", which roughly interpreted means I should be looking for my snow boots.

And my mother has started blogging too. Go and admire her in her lovely cardigan, with a distinctly grumpy looking cat.

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T14:44:00.000Z

I can be a lot more certain of what I knitted over the past year than I was of what I read, because I have been keeping track in a dedicated notebook. On the first of January 2007 I had on the needles a pair of socks for Chris, a Rogue, and a River Stole, i.e. the one garment, one pair of socks and one piece of lace I have been struggling to get back to ever since. They were completed by March (although it took me until the end of August to block the stole, and I still haven't managed to photograph it). In the course of 2007 I cast on and completed one hat, two pairs of gloves, two shawls, three jumpers (one sleeveless, and one baby-sized), four squares for blankets for the families of Utah miners, five scarves of varying lengths (I wear scarves a lot) and seven pairs of socks. That is a grand total of 24 items (not including those ripped out) that belong entirely to 2007, which was a year when I felt I was hardly getting any knitting done.

On the needles today I have my Gothic Hap (technically not on the needles, as I have finished the centre square and have yet to pick up for the borders), the lace Skater's Over Top from 'Knitting Classic Style', and a Gretel beret, which is advancing so fast that any photographs are out of date long before I get around to moving them from the camera onto the computer. Three items again. I have had a request for a new scarf from Chris, which I want to do as a birthday present. I ought to get a move on, because the awful date is the eighth of January, and even aran weight takes a little time to knit.

I also have a vast pan of Bolognese sauce bubbling, part of my New Year's intention to be more efficient about freezing meals, as befits my new status as a full time worker. I need a hair cut, so as soon as the heating has kicked in and taken the chill off the bathroom I will go upstairs and get out the scissors.

Books

2007-12-31T14:34:00.000Z

I can't tell you how many books I've read over the past year, because I don't keep formal lists. I have done in the past, and every time I find myself in a reading slump, unable to enjoy any book, going days without even opening one. This will go on for several months until I abandon the list, at which point normal service is resumed, and the pages start flying past again. It has happened too many times now to be a coincidence, so no more lists.

This time last year I know that I was in the middle of Dorothy Dunnett's 'House of Niccolo' series, because I was attempting to read all the Lymond and Niccolo novels before getting engrossed in dissertation. I clearly remember that I didn't quite succeed, which means that I must have been still reading them at the beginning of April. It's a Dunnett New Year again, because I am currently engrossed in 'King Hereafter', for either the second or third time.

I re-read a lot, which is why I am not particularly enthusiastic about getting rid of books, but I also read a lot of 'new' books. New to me, that is, not necessarily newly published (I tend to only have a hazy idea of what has been newly published, since most of my money is spent in secondhand and charity shops. Hence the quantity problem). The following are the books that impressed me most this year.

Best Novel 'As Meat Loves Salt', by Maria McCann, which I attempted to review rather badly here.

Most Eagerly Awaited work of Fiction 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows', which was better than I had expected. The predictions I made while reading 'Prisoner of Azkaban' eight years ago in Ireland were surprisingly accurate, too.

Novel I was most surprised at enjoying 'Mrs Dalloway', by Virginia Woolf. Probably all intellectual teenage girls feel they ought to read Virginia Woolf. I certainly did, and I couldn't stand her then. "What's actually happening?" I uttered, all the way through 'To the Lighthouse', 'Orlando', and 'Jacob's Room'. I only forgave 'Flush' for featuring a Cocker spaniel. Ten years on, having lost my addiction to narrative certainties, I had enjoyed 'A Home at the end of the world' by Michael Cunningham,. and wanted to read his 'The Hours'. But I knew it was inspired by 'Mrs Dalloway', and I felt I ought to read that first. For months I couldn't even bring myself to buy the Woolf. Finally I cracked and chose the cheapest Penguin edition, without any notes or introduction, to see if concentrating on the text itself rather than what I ought to be thinking about it would help. Obviously it did, I whizzed through it, and even quoted from it in my dissertation (never one to miss an opportunity to show off my reading. I also quoted from Tolkein and C. S. Lewis. All made perfect sense in the context). I then loved 'The Hours'.

Best Children's Books Two very late entries, 'Little Katia' and 'Ellen', by E. M. Almedingen, a Christmas present from L that kept me up until the small hours of Boxing Day. I thought I had at least heard of if not read all the best children's books of the twentieth century, but obviously not. (I had also thought that it was compulsory for any book set in nineteenth century Russia to sigh and remark how all this has been swept away by the Revolution now. These didn't, and were all the better for it).

Best Non-Fiction I'm afraid my choice is wilfully obscure, but if I'm being honest I have to say it was a book called 'Space, Geography and Politics in the Early Roman Empire' by Claude Nicolet, which turned out not to be relevant to the subject I ended up researching, but which was surprisingly readable for an academic work, and dealt with one of my main academic obsessions, which is notions of 'borders' in Roman thought. Sadly it was not an obsession that suggested a topic suitable for research in 18,000 words or less, so I ended up writing about Virgil and politics and a bit of "wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff" instead. Obviously to good effect.

Slightly less obscurely, Katherine Whitehorn's 'Selective Memory' was a fast and fabulous read, and Jane Brocket's 'The Gentle Art of Domesticity' is my coffee-drinking book (not a coffee table book, which I don't do, but a book that I look through while drinking coffee in order to feel refreshed and inspired. It has too much meat to it to be a coffee table book).

Re-read of the year Norah Loft's trilogy featuring a lightly disguised Bury St Edmunds, 'The House at Old Vine', 'The Town House', and 'The House at Sunset'. I hadn't read them since I was 15 or so, and found they were far more subtle than I had remembered, as well as far more vivid when read shortly after a trip to Bury St Edmunds, with a street map on the side of the sofa.

Funniest read of the year Not books, technically. This was the year that L introduced me to the Lopiverse. What is the Lopiverse, I hear you cry (well, actually I don't, but I'm imagining it very hard)? If Dorothy L Sayers were alive today and (for some reason) writing sequels to the Harry Potter stories for grown-ups (mostly on grounds of emotional explicitness rather than sexual, I would add), then you would have the Lopiverse. I have come across some dreadful things perpetrated in the name of Fan Fiction. These are not in that class. In fact, they make the originals look like hackery. I live in fear that they will somehow disappear before I get around to printing out copies to read in the bath.

Kniting Book of the year A very close-run thing between Lynne Barr's Knitting New Scarves and Veronik Avery's 'Knitting Classic Style'. 'Knitting New Scarves has it by a whisker because almost every pattern has me exclaiming "What! How?" and needing to know just how it was done.

The threatened Cultural Review of 2007

2007-12-30T22:05:00.000Z

Music

2006 was the year when I tentatively ventured out from my folk and classical backwaters and realised that actually some of this popular beat combo stuff was quite good, and that these days I could afford to buy it. 2007 was the year when I really embraced popular music. So much so that I own 2 of the top 3 albums of the year (although the Amy Winehouse was a Christmas present last year, so I can't technically count it as one of my albums of the year, which otherwise it might well be). No, I don't own an album by Leona Lewis. The other is Mika's 'Life in Cartoon Motion', which was certainly a candidate for my rock/pop album of the year, along with Rilo Kiley's 'Under the Blacklight'. But then towards the end of November I finally followed up Knititch's recommendation of Rufus Wainwright's 'Release the Stars', and at that point the competition officially closed, and I went off in search of his complete back catalogue. For sheer musical audacity it cannot be beaten (I mean, who thinks "I know what this song needs, it needs some borrowed chords from 'Phantom of the Opera'. But wait, that's still not enough, it needs, it needs - incredibly distinguished actress Sian Phillips declaiming in the grand manner, that's what it needs!"). But there's also the apparent simplicity and miniature perfection of the song 'Going to a Town'. I could go on for hours, but I won't.

Classical album of the year is a lot simpler, because I only bought one, Elin Manahan Thomas's 'Eternal Light', which Chris and I heard reviewed on Radio 4 and immediately decided we had to have. The best way I can recommend it is to say that I don't really like Baroque arias, I tend to find them ponderous, and this is an album almost entirely made up of Baroque arias. My personal favourite is the fabulous final duet of Monteverdi's 'Pur ti Miro' with a counter-tenor whose name I cannot find, but which leaves me needing a lie-down.

Films

I only saw two films at the cinema this year, which is probably the lowest number for a decade, but which reflects how most of my year was spent either shut in my study with a pile of books, or in a library with an even bigger pile of books. The films in question were 'Atonement' (excellent, as I've already said) and 'Stardust' (very good).

Television

Once I've watched every repeat going of 'Doctor Who' and 'Torchwood', then spent several hours on the rolling news services watching nothing happen, accompanied by lengthy discussions, then flicked over to 'The Hits' to watch minor pop stars of ten years ago gush about how much they love the list of videos they've just been given, there really isn't time to watch much actual television. I flirted briefly with Coronation Street, but got bored after six weeks of people arguing about the same thing over and over again, never making any discernible progress, until something unfeasibly dramatic happened. I also discovered that I have an unerring John Barrowman location device - I can find him on some channel somewhere whenever I switch on. Is it a supernatural gift? Or is it because he is ever so slightly ubiquitous? 'Doctor Who' was fabulous, and I even liked the Christmas Special (I could have forgiven Kylie practically anything for not being Catherine Tate, but she turned out to be rather good).

Theatre

I went to the theatre, for the first time since my school days. We went to the Lyric Hammersmith to see the National Theatre of Scotland's production of 'The Bacchae' starring Alan Cumming (in a gold kilt and not a lot else) as the god Dionysos. I'd read that it was being produced at the Edinburgh Fringe, and thought "what a gloriously right bit of casting" but I was in the final stages of dissertation writing then, and couldn't possibly get to Edinburgh. By the time it transferred to London for a very limited season I was on the point of submitting the dissertation, and it made the perfect treat for finally getting the thing in the post. It was a wonderful production; funny (as this play should be) but also terrifying, and very very moving at the last. I only hope it isn't another ten years before I go to the theatre again.

Books

Books are too big a subject for tonight.

Plenty of nothing to do

2007-12-27T15:45:00.000Z

Christmas Day is over; a quiet day, just the two of us and the ponciest meal I cook all year, accompanied by the most expensive wine Chris will buy all year (both wonderful). Boxing Day has gone, a day spent with his family, eating the traditional turkey meal and playing silly games. Now we're in the nowhere days between Christmas and New Year, not at work but with nothing more to do. Days when it's fine to sit down on the sofa with a book at breakfast time, and not get up again until three o'clock. Days when we might not ever get out of pyjamas. They sound formless and empty, but I look forward to them all year. Just a few days free of demands, to reflect on the year that has gone, and gather our strength for the year to come (which looks like being an exciting one for more than just us). I'm trying to write a mini review of my 'cultural' year (that's a very fancy way of describing a list of favourite books, films and music), but I might equally do nothing at all. I'm relaxing, you see.

There are no Christmas Police

2007-12-23T16:26:00.000Z

'Tis the season for female journalists to write about the trials of Christmas, and in particular the Christmas Cake, which, they will swear, nobody actually likes. If that's true, then don't do it, nobody's going to come round to check. Similarly mince pies and mulled wine, also frequently cited.

Actually, I like all three, and Chris hates all three. So we rarely have mince pies, and when we do I make him jam tarts (which I also like, so I eat them too, which is fun for me, but a bit unfair, and not terribly good for the waistline). I don't bother mulling wine myself, but take full advantage when it's offered at carol concerts and the like. And some years (but not all, because it is labour-intensive), I make myself a Christmas Cake.

In Britain Christmas Cake means only one thing, but I know I have readers from other countries who might not have the same associations (thank you, Google Analytics). It's a dark, spiced cake with vast quantities of dried fruit, mixed peel, and almonds, held together with a very small amount of batter. It can contain alcohol (my family recipe doesn't) and is made at least a month in advance. When I bother making one, I do it as the weather starts turning cool at the end of September. This year I wasn't going to bother, but changed my mind at the last moment, which meant the end of November. Alcoholic ones are 'fed' with more alcohol while in storage. Apparently this is necessary to keep it from mould; all I can say is that there's no alcohol involved at mine at any stage, and I've never lost one to mould yet. It is first covered with marzipan and then a couple of days later with a very stiff white icing (which is why my hands hurt this afternoon - you really have to fight with it to get it spread). Ideally this gets a couple of days to really dry before the Big Day, but most years I end up doing it on the evening of Christmas Eve. The really accomplished make the icing all smooth and neat. I go for an effect as of wind-sculpted snow, as can be seen above. My mother tends towards a 'hedgehog' style, which is when you give up on smoothness after quarter of an hour's battle, and use the palette knife dipped in hot water to raise peaks all over the surface. Wonky plastic robins are an optional extra.

Interestingly, the traditional British wedding cake is identical, which suggest to me that it is a very old recipe, though none of my recipe books comment on this. My family recipe was clipped out from a magazine in the mid to late 1950s by my grandmother (the back of the page has gossip on Shirley MacLaine, and adverts for circular skirts). I used to have one as my birthday cake when I was a child, made by mum just after Christmas (my birthday is mid-March). Now that I do my own baking I've practically given up on birthday cakes, although this may be going to change since Chris has taken up baking and turned out to be far more enthusiastic and better at than me. (That just might be a hint. I rather liked the Nigella Lawson Triple Chocolate Cake we had a few moths ago, by the way).

I've finished my wrapping, apart from the not-quite finished socks. I'm onto the toe decreases 24 hours early, though, so it looks like I'll be calmly knitting more shawl centre tomorrow evening, instead of sweating and swearing as the clock ticks. It wouldn't have been the first year I've had to wrap socks with the needles still attached. I am developing the usual eccentric Christmas Eve shopping list (so far: Dill, Wrapping Paper). Every single year I vow to buy everything in advance, and not to go near a shop on Christmas Eve, and every single year I forget something that is actually vital. Unless we wrap the remaining presents in newspaper? It's a tempting thought right now.

Ceci n'est pas un Christmas Cake

2007-12-22T17:14:00.000Z

1. I don't only make it at Christmas.

2. It's Jewish in origin (it is a Stuffed Monkey. I use the recipe in Jane Grigson's 'English Food'; a similar one can be found here).

But the combination of rich cinnamon-scented pastry and a filling of ground almonds and candied peel (preferably the sort you have to cut up yourself, which is no longer available in any supermarket. I found it in my local health food shop today, and danced for joy) fits very well with the season. And if you are in a pagan mood, the golden circle could well be the returning sun. At Christmas I make it for Chris, who is not a fan of the "wall-to-wall fruit" of the traditional British Christmas Cake.

Other than the baking, today has been all about The Sock. I knitted three inches of foot today on the second sock of Chris's Christmas pair, helped greatly by the Scissor Sisters concert on Channel 4 this afternoon. It sometimes strikes me as slightly incongruous that despite never having worn a sequin in my life, I should prefer my pop camper than a row of pink marquees. Maybe it's the falsettos. I go all woozy over that male voice variously termed counter-tenor, male alto or falsetto (I looked it up on Wikipedia to see which was the correct term, and emerged even more confused than before). I'm sure you know what I mean, and I shall go on saying falsetto for pop and male alto for Chris when he uses his. And try not to get too jealous of the fact that he has a better alto than I do.

Special greetings today to Sarah (I think that "quite a while" since we spoke may be in the order of a decade, which is deeply shaming. Glad to hear from you); and Gill, who has sent me my favourite card so far.

Sorry, what was that you said?

2007-12-21T12:39:00.000Z

Anything you do more than once at Christmas is a Tradition, so here is a new one of ours.

The King William's College Quiz 2007

This is set for the schoolboys of King William's College on the Isle of Man. They are allowed to use reference books (the Latin phrase at the top can be very roughly translated as "knowing where to look things up is the greatest part of learning"), and in this day and age that surely includes Google. Knowing what to google for each question is another matter entirely. The questions have quite a lot in common with cryptic crossword clues. It is helpful to know that each round has a theme, and if you can identify that it becomes a lot easier. Round 12, for example, involves hymns.

Last year the combined efforts of 10 people, Google and the finest brains of the Guardian's talkboards got us about 75% of the answers between us. We're hoping for better luck this year.

The answers are published in January.

Midwinter Magic

2007-12-20T20:15:00.001Z

These are not new, but eighteen months after finishing them, they are still one of my favourite pieces of knitting. Since I put them up on Ravelry, I've discovered that other people seem to like them too. Sadly, non-knitters rarely notice them. It's immensely annoying the way you can slave over something, only to find that the general public assume you bought it in Gap. Four evenings of garter stitch on ginormous needles, on the other hand, and suddenly you're in demand (not that I mind all that much).

These were knitted from Carol Rasmussen Noble's 'Knitting Fair Isle Mittens and Gloves' (out of print). At the time I was annoyed by how much work I had to do; the book provides basic recipes for mittens, gloves and fingerless gloves, and separate charts for the individual items pictured. The knitter is expected to use her (or his) common sense to put the two together. These were my first excursion into fair isle knitting in the round, in fact my first fair isle beyond isolated stripes on solid coloured jumpers, on 2mm metal needles (which I bent, such was the tension in my hands), and I would rather have had my hand held a little more. Now that I understand how the book works, however, I've forgiven it.

I coped, as you can see, and I've never managed to entirely follow a pattern for gloves again. I always seem to end up improvising, and it always seems to work. I think this is because while superficially a hand may seem a much more complicated shape than a foot, we are far more familiar with the geography of our hands than we realise. These days I gaily shift the thumb around towards the palm, and start the little finger well before the other fingers, and barely register that I'm ignoring the pattern again. I know what shape a hand should be, after all.

These were also one of the first items I blocked properly. I wish I had taken a photo of the lumpy uneven mess they were when newly finished. I spent quite some time with a cable needle teasing the most misshapen stitches back into order before I got bored, and a gentle soak in warm water fixed the rest.

I really want to do some more two-colour work soon, probably more gloves (or just possibly mittens). I certainly have plenty of odd balls of 4-ply in a wide choice of colours.

Today's Post

Needles for the shawl have arrived, so I can relax about that, and one of my other worries is over, as there was also an envelope with an Open University logo on. Not only did my dissertation pass, it got a distinction, which was somewhat unexpected. Sometime next May, after I've put on the fancy robes and collected my certificate, I will be able to call myself a Master of Arts (although I'd prefer to be a Mistress of Arts).

Getting There

2007-12-19T18:47:00.000Z

This is a very appropriate colour for Advent, of course. I am progressing so fast that I am beginning to worry a little about running out of centre before the needle I have ordered for the border arrives (I am using 4.5 mm needles, so there isn't an Addi Lace needle available, and I will be making do with bamboo).

Jean, I am so glad I am not the only 'late' decorator. I try to do it to the accompaniment of the Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College when I can, but this year I will be at work until 4 o'clock. I don't think my employers are particularly Scrooge-like for opening on Christmas Eve, but as I don't have a houseful of over-excited children home from school I do think I should be the one to volunteer to work that day. I actually quite enjoy walking home from work at 4 o'clock (we do get to go earlier than usual), knowing that Christmas is really here, like the end of term. Besides, it's one way of preventing me from ending up in Tesco in a panic. The feeling will be more intense this year than ever before, as it is the last working day of my old job, which I've been doing for five and a half years. I was a callow 23 year old when I started it, engaged to be married, not at all sure what she was doing in Norfolk. I've had three job titles, five office moves, two heads of department, a departmental name change and a corporate restructure since then, but this is the first time I have actually changed job (I work in the public sector, as is probably obvious).

Entirely selfless

2007-12-18T17:19:00.000Z

I would like to assure everyone that I don't at all enjoy my ongoing quest to find and sample the best in British confectionery and biscuits. It's all for the benefit of my readers (well, those who are based in Britain and share my tastes).

Today I have been trying Thornton's Limited Edition Almond and Amaretto Fudge. It's rather good. Marks and Spencer's new Black Forest chocolate bar is slightly disappointing, however, as it seems to be filled with Benylin rather than the promised cherry conserve. And they seem to have done away with the dark chocolate cherries for Christmas, which is very mean of them.

No more Bah Humbug

2007-12-17T17:11:00.000Z

I bought a cakeboard and a couple of lengths of tinsel today. I feel so much more prepared.

Campaign for a shorter Advent season

2007-12-16T17:47:00.000Z

Because it just goes on too long.

Well, for our way of celebrating Christmas it does. We're near enough to Christmas for me to begin to feel worried about getting everything I want to do done, but not near enough for me to start jettisoning unimportant things, like vague thoughts about decorating new areas of the house (which every year I think about, but never quite manage) and baking new kinds of Christmas goodies (ditto). The peak season for carol concerts and extra services has begun, so Chris is exhausted and I'm beginning to forget what he looks like. I've done my early preparations as far as possible, like sending out cards and the majority of presents, but there are enough loose ends left that I'm gently twitching, and feel the need to write Lists of Everything.

And yet it's still too early. We don't decorate until Christmas Eve (the picture is from last year). If I baked Chris's Christmas cake now it would stale before the day arrived. I had meant to relieve some of my frustrations by applying the marzipan I have to my Christmas cake this weekend, but I forgot to get a cake board, so that didn't happen. I wanted to get further on with his Christmas socks (the only bit of knitting I have with a deadline, and they're about 65% done), but my tense shoulders and the small gauge were not agreeing, so I was forced to turn to the hap shawl to relax my muscles again. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. He's got his Christmas socks with needles in before now, and he won't mind a bit. I will, though.

How can time move so fast and so slowly simultaneously? It happens every year, so I know that some time in the next week it will click into place, and I will begin to feel like I know what I'm doing. I'll calm down, pour myself a whisky, and go through the Radio Times Christmas and New Year Double Issue with a highlighter pen, marking all the programmes and films I want to watch. In the end I will watch about a quarter of them at their transmission time, remember to video about half the rest, only a handful of which I will ever get round to watching. But I won't mind, because about halfway between listening to the Nine Lessons and Carols on the radio on the afternoon of Christmas Eve and going to midnight mass I'll have remembered yet again that Christmas isn't a competition, and there is no wrong way of doing it.

Old News

2007-12-13T20:06:00.000Z

People who know me in other contexts will probably already know this, but it is now official enough to be announced. I have a new job. From the beginning of January I will cease being a part time Typist and become a full time Legal Assistant, still with the same employer, for 12 months (or possibly longer if it takes off, which I sincerely hope it does). It's a slight promotion as well as extra hours, which will make a big difference to my income. It will also, inevitably, make a big difference to my amount of spare time. I have no intention of giving up blogging, but I might not be able to post quite as frequently. We shall see. At the moment I'm overwhelmed with excitement about actually getting the job, and for the first time in several years really looking forward to the Christmas break, knowing that I won't be going back to a job which has been less than stimulating.

I might be swatching

2007-12-10T19:35:00.001Z

Last in, first out. This is the yarn I bought eight days ago.

I love the colours used by Posh Yarn. I don't do the whole Sunday night frenzy thing, when the shop goes live at 6 o'clock and it's fastest finger to the checkout gets the goodies. Far too fraught for me. I wander in late on a Sunday night, or on a Monday even, if I'm feeling a bit flusher than usual and fancy a treat, and see what's still there. That was how the first skein of Helena 4-ply came into my life, two weeks ago. The colour is 'Emperor', and it is a truly Imperial purple, mush more vivid than the photo, with streaks of ultramarine. The Emperor must be Constantine, I thought, who transferred the Imperial capital to Byzantium (what a gorgeous name for a yarn that would be). His mother was Saint Helena, who ought to be the patron saint of archaeologists, being most famed for digging up the True Cross.

100 grammes was a generous quantity for gloves, or maybe even a beret. I didn't have a purpose in mind, I just kept it on the arm of my chair and stroked it every so often. Until Friday night, a week and a half ago, when I knew what it was going to be. I ran upstairs to find the vintage (11 1 ounce balls) Patons Purple Heather to confirm that it would be as good a match in weight and softness as I thought it would be. I found my copy of 'Heirloom Knitting', and begged the loan of Mum's 'Shetland Hap Shawls'. I even drew pictures. Finally I decided that to be safe I would need another skein of 'Emperor'. There were four left, but I would need to be there at 6 o'clock on the Sunday night to make certain of mine.

After squeaking and swearing and frantic pushing of F5, I got it, and last Thursday I cast on. Then ripped and cast on again on smaller needles, because 5mm were making too loose a fabric. Then ripped and cast on again on larger needles because 4mm were making too firm a fabric. Fortunately 4.5mm needles are working just fine, because there aren't any other intermediate sizes. I will also need a slightly sharper pair than the everyday Addis I'm using once I get onto the lace, for lace there is.

I am not a Goth. There were none, or very few, when I was a teenager, or I might well have been one. I had grunge instead, and never knew the joys of black eyeliner and floor-length crushed velvet coats (I'm describing a particular local boy here, who makes my day every time I see him, because he looks so flamboyantly fantastic and uniquely himself. Tends to horrify old ladies on the bus, but that I think may be his intention. I bet he's a vegetarian and really kind to kittens). So when I call this my Gothic Hap it is because the combination of purple and black calls Gothdom to mind, but it is meant as sincere tribute, not mockery. I was hoping to find a suitable name of a Gothic figure connected to Constantine, but could find none. Alaric and his mates were rather later, and Radegunde, which I rather wanted as a definitely female name, turned out to be a Frankish rather than a Gothic princess. I will have plenty of time to think, while I slowly garter-stitch my way to the centre, then decrease back to a single stitch, and worry about what I'm doing with the lace border. Making it up as I go along, largely, it usually works. The second skein of 'Emperor' is because after the purple centre, and the charcoal Old Shell border, there will be a purple edging, to tie the whole thing together, and I'd rather have generous leftovers than have to calculate how much to leave once the centre is done. I think I'm aiming for a small bedspread size rather than a ladylike shawl anyway.

Stash, pledges, and the joy of ripping

2007-12-07T17:34:00.000Z

Slightly edited, because I got interrupted in the middle of proofing, and some sentences really didn't make sense.

I was eavesdropping on a fascinating conversation on Ravelry, discussing stash and materialism, and I found myself reflecting on how the knitter's stash is never just wool (or cotton, or silk, or acrylic). It can be emotionally charged within the home if partners, offspring or pets dispute the space it takes up (not a problem here). It causes tensions when talking to other knitters, as those who manage to buy yarn for each project as they begin it take the moral high ground. It can begin to oppress the unfortunate yarn owner too, as they calculate just how long it will take to knit it all. It's never just about balls.

I am a stasher of yarn. Before I knitted I was a stasher of fabric, of books, of attractive embroidery kits. Partly this is a consequence of growing up poor by British standards. When I had money to spend on the things I liked, I spent it, so I could (and did) use them up in the lean times. My mind hasn't yet caught up with the fact that although we are by no means wealthy, we have a steady income now. The lean times aren't coming from that direction.

The other thing my mind hasn't caught up with is that some time around 2001 a whole lot of hours got removed from the day. I still buy books at the same rate as when I was a teenager, staggering home with a carrier bag full on a regular basis. When I was a teenager I'd have read them all by the end of the week. I worked my way through the 19th century English novel in a nest made of an old duvet and all the spare pillows in the house, reading solidly for eight or more hours a day. I don't have that time any more, but part of me seems to think that I do.

There are other lean times too. I grew up in various remote parts of the countryside, far from any shops. Before the internet, mail order was a lot more complicated. I can also remember the 1990s, when knitting was disappearing, and only brightly coloured acrylics were available in the few wool shops open. The current revival could easily go the way of previous revivals, and all the pretty sock yarns and laceweights disappear. So I'm buying insurance.

I'm not ashamed of my yarn stash. I've had fun rediscovering its further reaches recently, as I photograph it for Ravelry. But I'm displaying it for my own benefit. What I was ashamed of was the number of balls I had simply forgotten. Lovely yarns, chosen with care, that I had forgotten all about. I hope that having the pictures to remind me what I own will stop that from happening.

But I don't want it to grow any more, because this is a small house, and Chris has a right to own some possessions too. And I want be able to remember what I own, which won't happen if it gets much larger. So I'm stating here and now that I will not be buying any more yarn until the end of March 2008. There are no get-out clauses, not even for sock yarn (I have more of that than anything else). If my favourite yarn, the sadly discontinued Jaeger Matchmaker, comes up in the January sales, then so be it; it's time I learned to love a new yarn (and besides, I have a whole jumper's worth in a plastic bag upstairs). I might miss out on some treasures, but there will be other treasures another day, and this way I might get around to knitting the ones I already have. No more yarn then, until the first of April next year.

My book piles do bother me, however. Books on shelves don't worry me in the least. Already read books that can't quite find space on the shelf are fine too. But the three teetering piles of books-to-be-read worry me. I know why I buy so many (mostly from charity shops, so they don't cost much), because I still think that I have time to read them all. But I'm not keeping up, and I won't, unless I also give up buying reading books until the end of March. Reading books are any that I would start at the beginning and read to the end straight through, so novels, short stories, travel writing, biographies and popular histories all fall under the ban. On the other hand, books that, although they contain fascinating reading, might well get put straight on the shelf don't count. So I can buy Sharon Miller's 'Shetland Hap Shawls' when I get paid, for example, and Mum can have her copy back. I need it for the shawl I'm designing.

While I was hurling around cardboard boxes and making worthy resolutions, I came upon my oldest unfinished object. It should have been finished three and a half years ago, and it's a bit too late for the intended baby. Probably just as well.
It's a quite attractive baby blanket knitted in a vile colour of grubby beige, featuring fun sheep in Trinity Stitch that I got wrong, and a moss stitch border that wavers all over the place because I hadn't heard of stitch markers then. Nor had I heard of Addi needles, so it's on horrible stiff-corded Pony needles. What is more, my best row counter has been out of action for over three years because of this blanket. There was only one thing to be done. I wouldn't even wish the needles on anyone, so I broke the yarn off (45% acrylic to 55% nylon and I didn't even wince, that's how angry I was with the blanket) and chucked it. The spare yarn can go to a charity shop to find someone who loves it. The blanket is in the bin. And I feel just great.
(If I were to knit another baby blanket I probably would still use a synthetic yarn, but in a nicer colour. Anything that a baby will be sick on really ought to be machine washable, and I don't mean just on a cool wool programme).