3:15 project update 4

New development. I took out a Pro account on Flickr. This seems to entail a Lot More Work with Blogger - please, if you can work out how to post a normal-size image with a link to the bigger one without loading it in two places, either e-mail me (see Profile) or leave a comment... Please?

Anyway. I think you ought now to be able to click on any photos to make them bigger, once I've enabled this... sigh. I had this idea it'd be easier...

I didn't think anything was going to get done on this when I woke up yesterday morning to the pounding rain and hail... However, today was beautiful.

I cheated slightly today - taking the photos at 4:15pm BST, because I'd nipped into town on the train and visited Focus, five minutes' walk from the station, when the handle fell off my trowel... But it was 3:15 in old money...

Photo 2, next to no change, but hey.

Photo 3 also looks less than stunning - the main work this week has been going on on the bed just under the patio, where I dug out everything and replanted.

You can see better here, in photo 4...

The japonica/Chaenomeles is looking stunning at the moment...

The box bushes are also in flower

These may be hostages to fortune but I can't resist at least attempting to plant lilies this year - even if they do get nobbled by lily beetles and their offspring again...

And this is the little Japanese maple I potted up a couple of weeks ago; it's starting to come alive:

The Bug has, of course, taken a keen interest in every stage of the process.

Back to my knitting...

Oddly enough, I'd never heard the phrase "getting back to my/our/their knitting" before this current financial crisis. Then I heard it on David Reidy's wonderful Sticks and String podcast in one of the essays, used in one sense; and if I've heard one banker/building-society manager/finance expert use it in the sense of "retrenching to what we used to be good at", I've heard a dozen...

It seems to mean getting conservative again, going (cringe) "back to basics". And while I think that's a great idea in the banking sense, given the current general balls-up, I don't think that's what knitters mean. Certainly not the seven knitters gathered in the I Knit basement on a glorious sunny Saturday for Gwen's Weird Techniques class anyway. Being a bad, bad blogger, I had my camera but was both too busy and too timid to suggest taking photos. As it turned out, I was sitting next to Joy from The Knitting Goddess Yarns who also had a camera with her but I don't think she took photos either... I learned to knit and purl backwards; and that although I'd been doing the Magic Loop technique correctly, I still didn't enjoy it. And that I really, really need to practice the long-tail cast-on, despite my complete failure at it in the class, because there are some seriously fun things you can do with it... And cabling without a cable needle finally made sense - I'll try it on the second sleeve of St Brigid and see whether things go faster... It was a whirlwind of new techniques, tips, ideas, shared experience; totally recommended when it comes round again... And my first ever formal knitting class (as a student!)...

I have also been knitting. I made the Seachange sweater [Ravelry link] from Gerard's book Knits to Share and Care. It's a lovely thing to make and only took a couple of weeks of train journeys and knit nights... Here it is on the line:

And here it is on. Yes, strange photo. I don't have a full-length mirror at home, so I stand on a chair and take a picture in the living-room mirror...

It's the most sensuous thing to wear - incredibly soft wool and silk. It may pill - I think it's already started - but I really don't care because I feel fantastic wearing it...

The thing I really couldn't get was how the underarm gussets went in. Here they are from one side:

and from the other:

Because it's not knitted in the round, you have to sew up the sweater. If you're tempted to do this gansey (and it's a really nice, quick knit), here's a construction diagram for the underarm gussets. Click to embiggen in Flickr.

I'm including this because it took me forever to work this out. I think it's a spatial awareness thing, maybe; but I had to do it at I Knit where they had the model in the shop, and I only finally worked it out when Laura took the sweater off the tailor's dummy and laid it across my lap; thanks, Laura!

I've also finally fallen in thrall to those Mason-Dixon ladies and made a couple of ballband dishcloths. Here's the first one - the second one is in the wash at the moment... Cool, simple. quick and practical...

3:15 project update 3

Slightly early this week - at about 2:45 the sky started to darken, so I nipped out and took photos in case it threw it down... Photos this week courtesy of the new camera. Last week I took a mixture, but it got tiresome downloading from both cameras for one post...

Last time you'll see this for a while - I'll carry on taking it every week but I'll only post once a month or so...

I'll carry on posting this - to motivate myself to keep the side clear, plant out the hanging baskets and maybe work out a way to get more colour into the area...

Aaaand here's the AoD shot. Main difference is along the left-hand side border...

You can see the result of the slash-and burn a little better in this shot. Except that of course, In This House we don't burn. We fill the green bin and send it off for compost.

One very large and rather dead honeysuckle and a huge number of last year's angelica stalks removed, while listening to Uncle Tom's Cabin on the Forgotten Classics podcast ... (Anyone want angelica seed later in the year? Would be happy to oblige before I dig it all out!)

Clearing this lot means that I can at least look down into the bottom half of the garden. Want to see?

Hmmm.

Yes, if you thought the top half of the garden was bad...

That is, in fact, yes, a greenhouse at the bottom. I know - who'd have guessed... I was even mildly surprised myself and I constructed most of it...

To replace photo 1, I'm going to start taking from another angle, now I can actually stand down by the box-bushes... Not the most focused shot, this first time... the stuff on the right is wildly overgrown box; the stuff in the middle is wildly overgrown ivy...

Some extra photos - the local flora

And, of course, fauna.

St Patrick's Day

Says it all, really.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

2009 books, #10-14

If you get an incomplete copy of this post via Bloglines do click on the link. Blogger published the first half and binned the second...

Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. London: Vintage, 2008.

This is the first graphic novel I've read all the way through - I tend to get defeated halfway through, so reading this for the March Kniterati meeting was great. I read a lot about the Islamic Revolution at the time, having been the sort of teenager who reads the papers (and being at a school which actually provided them in the library - I'm not sure how that was achieved; maybe teachers donated their own copies...) but that's very different from a first-person account from someone only a couple of years younger. The group generally enjoyed it but felt a bit alienated from Satrapi herself; we couldn't work out whether we felt blocked out because she was a teenager, or because she'd been through this terrible experience, or just a bit of everything; but it was very interesting and I was extremely glad I'd read it.

The bodies left behind, by Jeffery Deaver. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2008.

I love Deaver. I love the way he pulls the rug out from under you at one point, or more, in each book; I love the pace; I love the spareness of the prose. This one was... odd. I think it was the balance of the thing - three-quarters of it happens over one night of frantic chasing in Wisconsin forests and the rest over a longer period of time. But it's a cracking read, as ever... (It's not a Lincoln Rhyme, for Rhyme fans)

Cromartie v. the god Shiva acting through the government of India, by Rumer Godden. London: Macmillan, 1997.

I don't know why I didn't really get into the mood of this book - it ought to have been good, Rumer Godden writing about India. It might have been the inconclusive or downright incomprehensible dénouement, or I may just have been in the wrong mood at the time, but I completely failed to engage with this one...

The vows of silence, by Susan Hill. London: Chatto and Windus, 2008.

The Simon Serrailler novels are simultaneously claustrophobic, infuriating and utterly un-put-downable. The detective element (although well-plotted and -paced) takes second place to Hill's ability to draw characters and expose the tragedies of everyday lives, and never more than in the latest two books in this series. This is a superb novel whether or not you're interested in detective fiction; and a perfect one for Lent - there are shafts of brilliant light in the dark, and there's a lot to think about; Hill "does God" with a light and deft touch. I would recommend starting at the beginning of the sequence though, with The various haunts of men, to fully understand what's going on.

devil bones, by Kathy Reichs. London: Heinemann, 2008.

Reichs's consistency amazes me. She's frequently compared to Patricia Cornwell, but I've always enjoyed her characters and settings more, not least the Montréal settings of some of her 11 books; I was slightly disappointed to find this one was set entirely in North Carolina after my trip to her other locale last year, but it turned out not to matter too much after all. I took a while to get into this one but once I did, it rocketed along very interestingly; and had interesting things to say about santeria and Wicca. I'd probably start at the beginning of this sequence, too, with Déjà Dead, for the biographical detail; doesn't matter quite so much for the detective content though...

3:15 project update 2

It was lovely and warm while I was actually doing gardening today; unfortunately this didn't last until 3:15 and pictures!

I'm starting to wonder about taking this one every week - maybe I should just do it monthly!

Here's the other view of the side - which has become marginally tidier since last week, due to the drastic haircut of the passion-flower in the pot by the trellis (it was looking a bit motheaten and sorry for itself), and the removal of the two pots containing a rosemary and an acer which had been sitting there for 18 months...

The AoD shot - not much change from last week; as I said then, I filled the green bin with stuff last weekend and although I managed to squeeze another container-full of debris in there this afternoon, there wasn't enough space for Serious Slash-and-Burn.

The main change is in the paving here - which was previously pretty mossed-over.

And those two plants from the side-passage? Planted in the empty pots on the patio.

The Rosemary in front is Mrs Jessop's Upright; the maple behind (which looks dead, but does have leaf-buds on it) is acer pal. diss. Inaba-shidare according to the label on the pot (seemed easier to blog it than to have to remember it later...).

So, what else did I find out in the garden? Well, there was this little heap of self-satisfaction, squeezed into a shred of sunlight between a defunct barbecue and an overgrown box-bush:

And there were Brimstones, two of them, although they weren't going to stop for the camera - unbelievably daffodil-yellow at this time of year, and exotically large; always harbingers of spring. And a huge bumble-bee, out way too early and desperate for nectar... And someone pootling around in the sky in a light aircraft...

And the japonica's in bloom, looking amazingly exotic against the steel-grey sky... London's weather forecast is for 17C tomorrow...

Stream-of-consciousness...

The post arrived a few minutes ago, complete with ticket to Waiting for Godot at the Haymarket in the summer. Thanks, Yvonne, for the heads-up - I'm in the Gallery (as usual) and it'll be fabulous.

Anyway, it came with a flyer for Steven Berkoff's current production of On the Waterfront - and it's doubtless a reflection on my age that I instantly got Lloyd Cole's Rattlesnakes running round in my head; so I went over to YouTube - and found the whole extent of the current enormous row and subsequent blocking of clips to the UK - the only Lloyd Cole versions were "not available to your country".... apart from a couple of people's phone-camera clips from Wolverhampton City Hall or wherever...

So here's the magnificently weird Tori Amos with her characteristically quirky version which is available to those of us outside YouTubeLand...



And also, the people of Victoria, Australia are trying to get back on their feet after the bush fires and we're sending them misery-meisters Coldplay?!? Ah well.

Oh dear; it's curtains for me...

This is realistic and sound advice from the Yarn Harlot; it really is.

Unfortunately, it comes too late for some of us... I don't thankfully have a wall of windows in my living room; but I do have this one

(and you do not want to hear the noises I made when I realised I could now take a picture of the inside and the outside where you could see both! Thankyou, Mr Nikon and your aperture-prioritisation setting!!)

I also have these:

One large cone charity-shop cotton (thankyou, Peterborough Oxfam); two Kinsels and two Walker treasuries. There must be a suitable lace pattern in there somewhere...

Bug is, unsurprisingly, unimpressed. And moulting. And, at the time the picture was taken, sans breakfast.

Signs of spring

The advantage of last year's pay deal having to go to ACAS was a nice little cheque last week; some of which I blew on a digital SLR. I need to learn how to use it properly (and go back to basic principles on aperture v. exposure v. ISO), but here's an initial pic... this is without flash to test how good the anti-camera-shake feature on the lens is on a long exposure. Pretty good, as it turnd out

Tonight I might even photograph some knitting (I know, gasp; knitting has been going on, quite a lot of knitting as I'm being scarily monogamous to the current sweater; it just isn't all that interesting to photograph at the moment)... I'll probably carry on carrying my little compact camera around with me in London, and only take this one out when I know there's going to be something worth photographing...

3:15 project update 1

Not a great deal of progress, but some sun! I got about 45 minutes' work done on the garden today before being stopped by a massive hailstorm, but an hour later when I came out to take the photos it was sunny again... No leaves on the limes yet, obviously - they come in pretty late...

In those 45 minutes I did manage to fill the wheely-bin though, so will have to do something more tidying-uppish (like scraping all the moss off the patio) next week...

The Abomination of Desolation shot looks better for a bit of sun, too. The main difference here is on the right-hand side where I've got rid of most of a climber and a chunk of rambler rose...

I managed to unearth some of the things that had been growing under the dead creepers, too - I can't actually remember what I planted here! Some sort of bulb... hyacinths, maybe?

Despite the appearance of sun, it's deceptively chilly out there; and the sky's starting to darken. I'm going to have a quiet afternoon doing some of this.... Knitting, tea and Jeffery Deaver - just what you need on a cold Sunday afternoon.

The 3:15 project

Hello - long time, no blog etc... I had a good time at Textiles in Focus, with Gill, Rosie, Sue and WyeSue last weekend; my photos of the weekend weren't great so the best place to go is the Art Van Go blog entry - yes, that's me in the first one... Unfortunately nowhere near as lucrative for our stand as last year - finished items didn't really move although we sold patterns and yarns...

However. Having somewhat recovered, I've had a really productive weekend sorting out a couple of years' worth of paperwork and filing it all, catching up with some e-mails and so on. One of the tasks I gave myself this weekend (and yes, I do make a list if I've got a weekend at home)

was to sweep the side passage which still has all last autumn's leaves in it (and I'm not entirely sure I actually cleared up from the previous autumn), along with many, many other things. I've had it on the list for a long time, but this afternoon I actually did it.

The garden used to be beautiful, but I really didn't ever do much of the physical work on it, having married into a wonderfully green-fingered family. Over the last six summers, when I've had it to manage on my own, it's slowly gone to rack and ruin, and has been Colonised by Borage, which has enormous taproots; and last summer I couldn't bear to go out there at all once everything started growing again.

This year will be different.

So I've decided that one day over the weekend (preferably Sunday but I can't bet on that if I'm away) I'll take photos at 3:15pm from the same spots, and see if I can spot the difference... 3:15pm just because that was the time I thought of the idea.

So here's the view up the side of the house towards the Green - we can check for progress of leaves on the lime trees (I'd already removed one of those green containers of leaves from it)

and the view in the other direction towards the rest of the garden

and the view from the edge of the patio - this is what I like to think of as the Abomination of Desolation shot...

However, when I typed in the title for this post, I thought "that looks like something you'd see outside a Baptist church or something" and went to see what chapter 3, verse 15 in the different books of the Bible had to say about gardens.

Genesis 3:15 is garden-related as it's addressed to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, but a bit grim, particularly given the number of worms I'd just accidentally killed. "I will make you enemies of each other/You and the woman/your offspring and her offspring./It will crush your head/and you will strike its heel".

Leviticus 3:15 is, Bible-readers will be able to anticipate, about entrails; and Deuteronomy 3:15 about territory. So, no surprises there then.

After that it's all a bit dull until Judges 3:15: "Then the Israelites cried to the Lord, and the Lord raised up a deliverer for them, Ehud the son of Gera the Benjamite; he was left-handed". Yay; probably the first leftie role-model? (I note that my teenage self underlined that bit, and then promptly forgot about it...)

2 Chronicles 3:15 is unmemorable in itself, but 3:14 is striking - Solomon is building the Temple in Jerusalem: "He made the Veil of violet, scarlet, crimson and fine linen; he worked cherubs on it". I'm not entirely sure he'll have sat there personally with his embroidery hoop; he probably had chaps who did that sort of thing for him, but the image is rather pleasant...

Isaiah 3:15 is predictably on-message on social justice "By what right do you crush my people/and grind the faces of the poor? It is the Lord Yahweh Sabaoth who speaks". In contrast in Lamentations 3:15 we find that "He has given me my fill of bitterness,/he has made me drunk with wormwood"; the history of absinthe is evidently more ancient than I thought...

Nahum 3:15 has the somewhat unnerving message "increase like the locust/increase like the grasshopper" which doesn't bode well for gardening enterprises. Habbakuk has the arresting image "You have trampled the sea with your horses,/the surge of great waters" which sadly reminds me of Echo and the Bunnymen...

In the New Testament, although I know there are lots of gardening-type analogies in the parables, it's all a bit prosaic where 3:15s are concerned.

So, the winners:

Wisdom 3:15 - "For the fruit of honest labours is glorious,/and the root of understanding does not decay".

And although Zechariah, in common with many of the minor prophets, doesn't actually have a 3:15, the last verse of chapter 3 says "On that day - it is the Lord who speaks - you will entertain each other under your vine and fig tree".

A bit of hard labour, and a bit of sitting around eating and drinking - sums up gardens for me.

And a bonus pic for those who've got this far - I'd hope to do the three pictures above and then an extra each time: the Bug in full winter fig. This won't last very long - she's about to moult. I can tell this because it's the only time of the year she ends up with knots in her ruff-fur I have to comb out. Eleven months of the year, I can completely ignore the comb...


Oh and also, having gone all biblical and organic, back to normal now - one of the things I realised as I was sweeping is that some git has half-inched my stepladder from the side of the house. I mean, who steals a cheap, rickety, paint-encrusted, 15-year-old ladder? Gah!