Big red wolf

Well, Monday turned out to be more interesting than planned; despite my forgetting my travel pass and having to go back for it, when I got to the station, the 0804 was still there in the platform. And stayed there, for the next hour... At 0930, when I realised there was no way if we even set off at that second I'd be able to make it in for the 11am meeting, I phoned my boss and arranged to work from home for the day. And it was all extremely productive.

I'm not the best worker-from-home, to be honest; I get distracted; the PC's in the middle of the living room, and there's just way too much yarny stuff about and things I'd rather be doing. So today, to focus my mind, I decided to work for an hour and then do something else for half an hour. Mostly, that was spinning - the work stuff was absorbing enough that after an hour, taking half an hour off for the sort of mechanical activity which leaves big bits of your brain free to think creatively, was perfect, and I got loads done (and still finished an hour earlier than I'd have got home on a normal day, due to only having spent 1 hour travelling rather than nearly 4). Wish I could have a wheel in the office!


I'm spinning Jacob, still; this is likely to go on for quite a while as I have at least another couple of carrier bags of it. It's proving surprisingly good fun, despite the amount of vegetation there still is in it - I'd say that I'd be pickier with my picking another time, but these sheep were pets from the next village, rather than animals raised for yarn, and the amount of straw and moss in the fleece was pretty extreme - this is not going to be a yarn for garments. Having said that, a fleece for £5 including delivery is not something you sniff at (previous years' shearings had been burnt or used for mulch). This is the second bobbin; I wound the first one off yesterday:

I think I'll wind the spun bobbins into cakes for the moment (unless anyone who actually knows what they're doing has a better suggestion, of course! please post in the comments), and then skein, wash, dye and ply them all at once, at which point I'll work out how much there is, and what it wants to be. I ordered a WPI tool along with an impulse sock-club purchase (the club is getting to the end of its life so they were allowing you to buy one month at a time); the package won't arrive until sometime next month, but that's OK - I spin glacially slowly.

To whit - this is the rest of this year's production. Not Jacob. Merino, and Blue-Faced Leicester, and much, much prettier.

The roving for the skein in the middle was a very kind gift from Franklin when he was here in the autumn. The colourway is Rufus lupus (which translates as Red Wolf, hence the title of this post); the dyer is Sakina Needles, who doesn't seem to be in business at the moment. Oddly enough, when I was trying to track down the name of the dyer (I couldn't find the card attached to the skein but could remember the colour name), I found this Etsy listing - the spinner is SO much more competent than I am, but her skein seems more pastel. Mine reminds me of the colours of Venice and the mosaics in San Marco, so the Latin name is even nicer.

I'd spun this by Textiles in Focus in February, and took it with me, hoping for something to match it. And needed to go no further than the lovely Alison at Yarnscape (she has links to her shops at Folksy and Etsy, but I think most of her production is going into shows at the moment; and Ely Yarn Shop has some of her batts and dyed yarns) for a couple of plaits of BFL which would absolutely do the job. On the left, Rosewood, and on the right, Denim. It was definitely one of those squee moments - the pinkybrown-ness was just perfect, and the blue was exactly the right colour, too. It was also one of those weird and serendipitous things where yarn given by a friend from Chicago, and yarn dyed by a friend from Cambridgeshire, worked together so perfectly.

So, I have 450m/200g of DK-ish weight yarn; pondering what to make... I might do something geometric-y to reflect the San Marco mosaics...

Big irritation

I pay good money to McAfee for virus protection... and you'd think that would give you protection? Hmmnnn... Turns out, not so much. Spent most of yesterday researching something called XP Defender, which had sent a little message-thingy out onto my computer which was popping up every 90 seconds or so to convince me I needed to download a programme to check for viruses... So did a little bit of research and found out it was malware, made sure my McAfee was up to date, and got it to do a complete virus check, and after 4 hours it came back and said "shiny! all clear!"...

Managed to find a detailed set of instructions for removal, but this did involve editing the registry, which isn't something a non-techy person attempts without Extreme Trepidation. Thankfully, I used to be married to someone who is a techy person, and who very kindly came over yesterday evening and sorted it out. But I do wonder why McAfee didn't spot it.

In a continuation of foolishness, managed to set out this morning and got halfway to the station before I realised I'd left my season ticket in my other bag. So I have a few minutes to rant about viruses before the next train!

Also, a couple of pictures. I should really have chopped this japonica and this berberis before now, but it'll have to wait until the flowers-and-leaves combination is less breathtaking.

And in a Bug update... Outside, therefore happy...

Not a big surprise...

... for anyone who's read this blog for any length of time; but if you were to characterise my general approach to life, it would probably be mostly chaos, with small pockets of hyperorganisation. So although I have stash Absolutely Everywhere, the stuff that ever makes it into the storage system upstairs is meticulously recorded on a spreadsheet; as are the Christmas presents. And my CDs and DVDs are alphabetised - the DVDs by title, the CDs by artist, as in the library.

Well; the CDs that are actually in the bookcase that holds them, anyway. Problem is, at the moment said bookcase is in the next room to the CD player, and behind various fibre-related impedimenta; so every now and then I end up with something like this to sort out.

Didn't realise how long it was since I filed any of these, but there are at least 3 Christmas compilations in this stack, so presumably quite a while...

2010 books, #21-25

Not a particularly cultured selection: a lot of my library reservations came in at once. I was meant to be reading The elegance of the hedgehog for book group, but I couldn't really get into it...

Gone tomorrow, by Lee Child [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Whitley Bay: Soundings, 2009.

A rattling good story if you can stand some quite extreme and gruesome violence; and taught me a fair amount about the Russian/Afghan war of the late 70s and early 80s. Jack Reacher is an... interesting character; ex-military policeman, loner, homeless and deeply amoral, except when he isn't. If you're happy with the Jeffery Deaver books, you'd like this one. And Jeff Harding's reading is as ever impeccable. (I get a kick out of his saying "Whitley Bay" when advertising the other Soundings recordings because it just sounds so incongruous....)

Blindman's bluff, by Faye Kellerman. London: HarperCollins, 2009.

Another Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus book; a good plot, and it chugs along solidly. I do tend to prefer the ones where their being Jewish comes into play in some way, which it doesn't in this book; but if you like these characters, well worth reading.

The girl with the dragon tattoo, by Stieg Larsson [audiobook]. Read by Saul Reichlin. Rearsby, Leics. : W F Howes, 2009.

Absolutely brilliant; and very disturbing. Having read the book, I don't want to see the film; maybe it's just me, but reading graphic violence is very different from watching it; and I have a mental image of several of the main characters I'd rather keep. A cracking thriller with additional elements; and while the characters are dysfunctional and strange, you do really care about them. Wonderfully well-plotted and -investigated; and I'm glad I know this is a trilogy because I really need to know what happened before, and next... Extremely well-read, too...

The vanished man, by Jeffery Deaver [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Oxford: Isis Audio, 2003.

The combination of Deaver and Harding works its magic even if you're "reading" the book for the second time. It's fiendishly plotted, and the development of the relationship between Rhyme and Sachs is always worth reading for.

Fever in the bone, by Val McDermid. London: Little, Brown, 2009.

One of McDermid's Tony Hill books, this one quite brilliant. The plot twists and turns like an eel, but McDermid's great talent is in making you actually care about the characters and situations. The relationship between Hill and DCI Carol Jordan continues to be fascinating. One of those books you close and just sit thinking wow...for several minutes.

Big sulk

Not that I blame it. It gets bitten, then it gets hurty, then it gets manhandled into a basket, taken to the vet and stabbed with a syringe, and then it gets shut in and forced to use.... shudder... a litter box. (I think it's more fed up with the final point than any of the others, frankly; but we go back on Saturday morning and maybe they'll lift the curfew then...)

The Bug is better today, though (limping rather than hopping); thanks for good wishes expressed on the blog and at I Knit this evening! And yes, Katie - my manager was very cool and I am grateful for that. Over two and a half years, I've not had to take a day's leave at less than a week or so's notice, including for things like funerals; so while yesterday was pretty inconvenient in business terms, I think I'd built up a reasonable record for reliability and she did realise that as far as I was concerned it was a genuine emergency! I'm sure being a cat-owner helped with the understanding, too, though.

This morning at work was fun - met with a fellow taxonomy specialist and had a good natter about common problems; it's always good to know you're not alone (or just a lunatic); and to remember how good it is working in an organisation which takes information seriously. The afternoon was less fun, getting to grips with the new Parliamentary constituencies ahead of the election, and recording what the boundary changes/previous constituencies were - surprisingly complex.

And talking of constituencies, I was leafleted-in-person by one of the Parliamentary candidates for mine at the station in the village, at 6:56 this morning as I headed in hoping to catch up with my e-mail before my meeting. I can only commend his industriousness.

Big alteration...

... in the plans today; last night the Bug appeared after a day or so AWOL (not totally unusual this time of year but she usually comes in for food), and wasn't putting weight on one front leg; when I looked more closely there was a rather unpleasant oozy hole in her leg... So I put the cat flap on "in only" and e-mailed work to say I'd be in late because I was going to need to take her to the vet's in the morning.

At which point I made that crucial mistake of forgetting that actually she's quite a bright cat when it comes to escapology - so when I got down this morning there was no sign of her. At some point in the night, she'd worked out that if she got a claw caught in the edge of the flap, she could pull it towards her and flee; I should have set it on "no entrance or exit". GAH!

So in the end, I took a day's emergency leave; and waited (and waited) for her to show up. I asked the neighbours if they'd seen her, walked round the block repeatedly, called for her, you name it. At noon or so (by which time the day had seemed endless) she hopped in for some dinner and I called the vet; a few hours later we were home with the inevitable week's course of antibiotics, an injection of anti-inflammatories and a diagnosis of a bite-induced abscess... Thankfully a friend offered to take me there and back... And the Bug already had an appointment for Saturday morning, supposedly for a blood test which might or might not happen depending on how quickly the antibiotics kick in... So she should be fine in a few days; and tomorrow I need to catch up on quite an important work seminar which was meant to be the main point of my day.

I'm very glad my manager is also a cat-owner - she realised all I could do was wait, was great about the fact that I was going to be missing a catch-up meeting and the seminar, and suggested that I could work from home for part of the day if I wanted to rather than taking the whole day as leave. But my concentration was completely shot...

While waiting, I could have put in some quality knitting time, but again, the concentration just wasn't there. Luckily, I unearthed this: a sock started at the folk festival last year, which was then lost in one clear-up and found in another... When I abandoned them they were about halfway through the broad yellow stripe, so a fair amount of progress was made while I was listening distractedly to audiobooks while waiting for the noise of the catflap!



These are my Nymphadora socks, knitted in the Tonks [warning; Harry Potter spoilers under link!] colourway from Opal's Harry Potter range, now sadly discontinued... for this reason alone, I think I might be keeping these for myself. Tonks was a favourite character even before I discovered the library/shapeshifter connection... I bet JK Rowling was aware of it though - it's just too good to be a complete coincidence.

Big announcement

SO, they're finally off! The announcement that even the PM admitted was unsurprising has happened and the phony campaigning can finish.

And the question of the moment - which genius decided that rainbow plastic knitting needles would form the BBC's election logo??

Despite all the election hype or possibly because of it, I think my favourite quote is in Sam Wollaston's Guardian review of last night's University Challenge final - "The dude is Wikipedia with a pulse".

Oh, there was some knitting, too. My Dad had a birthday on Sunday, and socks were knitted. I'm very pleased with these. They're the Maze socks [Ravelry link] from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks and they were very good fun to knit. The black yarn is Hot Socks, bought in Vienna for a song last year; the self-striping is Kaffe Fassett (of course...). I used just under one 50g ball of the self-striping and just over one 50g ball of the black. The leg is mosaic-knitted, and the foot Fair Isle pinstripes.


And apparently he really likes them.

Great start!

Well - I managed the daily blogging thing for 2 days... Oops.

It was a busier weekend than I'd anticipated - on Saturday I was working in the library, went knitting at the Devonshire Arms (lovely venue!) and had a friend over for dinner. On Sunday I had other friends for lunch (which ended at 5:30pm or so) and then spent the evening tidying the place up... Today, the same friends picked me up and we wandered around Ely. One of the things I picked up was a fearsome pruning saw to replace the one I borrowed last year and really need to return. When I went out to the garden to use it this afternoon, I found a wonderful thing - the dwarf tulips are flowering! (I have done nothing at all to this photo - they really are that bright!)


I totally hadn't expected the yellow centres - the picture on the bulb packet was the same as the one I linked to above; absolutely gorgeous... If you click to embiggen, there's a very happy and almost entirely pollen-encrusted ladybird in the top one...

I also have some narcissi flowering, and I hope that the others I planted in the same area, Professor Einstein, will be following suit soon... these are February Gold. The tulips were also meant to be February-March flowering, but it's been a cold winter, and I only planted them on 9th December! (And thankfully I took photos, because I can't find the packets, and had no memory of what they were!)

Inside, some knitting has been done - this is a test-knit for a friend... I'm not sure how secret this is so I'll refrain from giving the details. This was the first attempt...

in Helen's Lace, in the Get Knitted colourway. It's lovely stuff to knit - but with this pattern, it pooled horribly, so after the first 30 rows I ripped it out and have just got to that point again with a new yarn. This is Cherry Tree Hill Merino Lace in Peacock and it seems to be responding nicely...

Big box of tricks

My new toy arrived last weekend; the lady at the post office (who stitches) was very intrigued... I took an hour off last Friday afternoon because I couldn't bear to wait till Saturday...

They do things differently in New Zealand - can't imagine a piece of UK equipment for textiles being advertised by two blokes!

Fabulous minimal packaging - you just slide out the little bit of plywood at the left-hand side and take a wooden block out at the other...

Some (but not much), assembly required...

All sorted...

I know you can make lovely fancy batts with Angelina fibre and so on, and blend different fibres together, and I'll be trying some of that later, but for now, I'm very, very happy to be able to turn this (Jacob fleece from sheep which were reared in the next village)

into these lovely floofy cushions of fibre ready for spinning; all these were done in less than an hour, with a minimum of pre-carding on a hand-carder...

I'm going to be spinning up a lot of grey for the next little while, but I'm so glad to be able to card much faster than I can spin, rather than the other way round - and there are several fleeces around the place (as well as this Jacob, which is the only washed fleece, there are 2 Shetland fleeces, 1 Ryeland (thanks, AnnaT!), 1 Manx Loaghtan and one I bought when I first learned to spin... Unfortunately, the weather isn't really conducive to washing any of the others this weekend so far! The forecast isn't too bad for Sunday and Monday, and I can always finish the drying process in the greenhouse...

I've spun a bit each day over the last week and needed to card another basketful of fleece this afternoon; it's not going to be the finest or most even yarn in the world, but I'm going to try something different by dyeing the singles before plying...

Big undertaking

So, I've signed up for NaBloPoMo again. This month's theme is "Big". It's an optional theme, so you may just get me wittering about nowt; or you may get me trying to post and fizzling out, as in February when my head was in a different time-zone. I shall try.

I will post with Actual Fibre Content tomorrow. Tonight I was knitting in Ely, with a group of very nice people; I was glad I hadn't taken my camera, given how wet I got on the way home...

But I had one of those OMGILovetheInternet moments on the way to knitting.

I am a bit snobby about ordering meat for Big Occasions online with the rest of my shopping, because I want to be able to see the thing before I cook it and work out what size it is, whether it looks OK, whether it will fit in my oven, etc. So I did my online order for Easter Sunday lunch without the main attraction, and relied on Ely Waitrose to have some lamb from some part of Britain. Preferably leg, but shoulder, breast... anything big enough to roast and feed 4 people. Went in there and looked at the pre-packed stuff; nope - everything, and I mean everything was from New Zealand. Went in and looked at the stuff on the butchery counter and they had a couple of dinky little racks, but nothing which said "Easter Sunday" to me. The experience was compounded by the assistant looking at me as if I was an Alien from the Planet Zog for rejecting their NZ lamb. (On the offchance that any New Zealanders look at this - I know your lamb is very, very nice; I just don't buy, or knowingly eat, any non-British meat, and am aware I'm a bit strange like that. I also don't knowingly eat non-British asparagus, or sprouts, or strawberries, or apples).

I live in a village where there is no bus service on Good Friday, and I'm busy all day on Saturday, and visitors are coming on Sunday, when there's also no bus service. At no point will I be near a supermarket or a butcher I trust to have good lamb. And then hallelujah; I was trudging toward the knitting group and realised that the library at Ely was on its late opening night. So I went for second best, ambled in there, added a chunk of leg of Welsh lamb to my online order for tomorrow afternoon, and will see what I get when it arrives. I'm aware I could have ordered something wonderful from one of the London butchers' in advance, but I've only just found out friends are in town this weekend...

I just love being able to wander into a public library out of the rain in a small town on a Thursday night, and order groceries to be delivered from a supermarket 16 miles away to a home 11 miles away... and then go to the local hotel and chat with knitters and crocheters and stitchers... The combination of the global and the local the Web allows continues to astound me.

Pink (or not)

I've always thought of myself as a non-pink girl; but tonight, as I unpacked my pink Stanley flask and my bright pink phone, and my pink work notebook which I'd incomprehensibly brought home, I realised something weird has happened ; but maybe pink technology might not count.

However, I'm reserving judgement on whether my new acquisition in tools is pink or purple.

In the centre, said new acquisition - KnitPro interchangeable set with acrylic tips. They might be pink, they might be purple - even the manufacturer doesn't seem to be able to decide.... On the top, my smaller DPNs and some other thingummies, in a box which is described as purple on the sticker on the base. On the bottom, the fixed circs in a Happy Bag which is definitely purple in regal fashion. I wish I could link to this manufacturer - I've never managed to find them, or reference to them, online; this was a gift from a friend in Texas several years ago and while similar things exist online, the combined strength and practicality of this one is unbeatable; very heavy-duty nylon, big enough pockets for several needles the same size, really nice tabs for size info....

I should explain about this particular splurge - it's one of my annual treats when I renew my season ticket. This year, because of the terrible weather, I had a number of compensation vouchers for delays, which I cashed in when I bought the annual ticket - and the main ticket price is a loan from my employer, which I pay off monthly. Last year I bought gardening tools. This year I replaced my food processor and bought these needles and a remote shutter-activator-thingy for my camera; I really like the idea of buying something intensely useful with the money saved by the vouchers, which would reflect hours of enforced uselessness (if, of course, I hadn't had my knitting with me). And the weekend before last, I had the additional joy of going to Ely Wool Shop and picking up a set... I'm used to the glory which is I Knit but the idea of being able to take a trip up the road on a Saturday morning and pick up something like this locally, on a whim, used to be a distant dream....

2010 books, #16-20

The time-traveler's wife, by Audrey Niffenegger [audiobook]. Read by William Hope and Laurel Lefkow. Bath: Chivers/BBC, 2004.

OK; the first sentence of the blurb on the back sort of summarises this: This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student and Henry, a librarian*, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty.

[*I shall assume that Henry being a librarian is enough to guarantee his own beauty].

This was March's Kniterati book. I'd previously borrowed it from my boss but hadn't finished it by the time she went on her maternity leave; and at the time I wasn't convinced I would finish it. But, book club and all that. I went for the audiobook version which was a very good choice; you can tell instantly who's speaking and you can't get too hung up on the timescale. Helped by finding out that one of the Incredibly Significant dates in Henry and Clare's lives is also one in yours and for the same reason, but that gives a good grip.

As someone who is in general a bit of a snob about not reading books which have been massively popular or won big awards, I'm really glad the Kniterati chose this one because it's one which will really stick in my mind, and the discussion was very interesting. I loved this book in the main; but there were bits of it I also hated.

(Skip to the next review if you'd like to avoid spoilers).

The title tells you a lot about Clare's life; she's always going to be waiting for Henry, in the way that the wives of fishermen are always in limbo on the shore. It's incredibly poignant, and very manipulative, at the same time. It plays very nicely with the sort of human issues with time travel which are touched on in Doctor Who - the impermanence of relationships and the unfairness to the time-bound partner; the uncertainty of where you're going to end up next and who you'll be when you arrive there - but explores them in one particular relationship with serious consequences. It's pretty light on the science and the conventions of "what happens if you meet yourself while travelling", but that's not really what the book's about (and to my mind, it's not all about Clare, far from it). Definitely recommended; and if you're in my local library area and have a cassette player, 17hrs and 51mins of book for £2.20...


Tokyo year zero, by David Peace. London: Faber, 2007.

It took a long time for me to convince myself to continue reading this book (and Ros, I carried on with it!). Peace wrote the books which turned into The Red Riding Trilogy and The Damned United. His trademark repetitive style of hallucinatory despair prevails here too, but it's almost too much - this is Tokyo in 1946 where no-one has enough to eat, seemingly everyone has lice and the bodies of young women are appearing all over the city. This is an entirely visceral book; you're ingested out of a horrified fascination and then spewed out at the other end no wiser than you started, possibly less so. I think it'll leave an impact on me in terms of the sheer horror of scratching out a living in the defeated, Army-of-Occupation-ridden husk of Tokyo of that period; like The Killing Fields or Empire of the Sun, it's a book you feel you ought to read, even if it's a disgusting and occasionally degrading experience. I'm not sure I have the stomach for the second part of what is due to become another trilogy, though.


Killer tune, by Dreda Say Mitchell [audiobook]. Read by Ben Onwukwe. Rearsby, Leics.: WF Howes, 2010.

I would normally steer clear of books whose blurb says A fifteen-year-old boy firebombs a building as he listens to Vivaldi's Winter Concerto splicing behind a red hot R 'n' B track and a veteran is found dead in an alley. Rap sensation Lord Tribulation discovers his new found stardom threatened when he finds himself in the middle of both incidents... But it was an audiobook returned to the village library last time I was working there by someone whose judgment I respect, so I borrowed it. (Weirdly, after I'd got through 4 disks and was really enjoying it, Dreda Say Mitchell was an impressive and entertaining guest on Saturday Live talking about community involvement and educational projects... Strange coincidences)

I have a bit of a prejudice against thrillers written about music and musicians; somehow it never feels quite right even when the writer is good; and I have a bit of a prejudice against people who change their names to silly things when they become musicians; and this has all of that. Lord Tribulation, or LT, the son of King Stir-it-up; it ought to have been an instant fail. But this works; because the plot is compelling; because it's talking about history I know (1970s to the present); because you genuinely like LT from quite early on...

And also because the reader is wonderful. He can hold a conversation between four people with different accents and ethnic origins; he can do a voice which says "this is the character you heard just now but now he's trying to be down wid da kidz"; and the main narrative voice

is wonderfully easty to listen to.


Liars all, by Jo Bannister. London: Allison and Busby, 2009.

A Brodie Farrell/Daniel Hood/Jack Deacon story, set in the seaside town of Dimmock, somewhere in East Sussex. This is a series which needs reading from the beginning, but the latest instalment is, as ever, utterly unputdownable. I read it all in a day, and as with a very good meal eaten too fast, am regretting this because it'll be another year or so before another comes long. The characters are compelling (although the relationships are slightly strange and twisted, and I find myself understanding Brodie less and less); the plot rattles along well enough but is frankly secondary; and you're left wondering what's next...


Fatal last words, by Quintin Jardine. London: Headline, 2009.

Another Bob Skinner mystery, and the best one for a while. Combines recent history, Scottish politics, police politics and the deaths of two thriller writers at literary festivals. Skinner comes over more sympathetically than he has in the past few books, when frankly he's been a bit of a hard old bastard.

MIA

And of course the week IKnit link to this blog on their newsletter, it's been "move away, nothing to see here...". The reason they linked was that the Cambridge Ktog was featured as the Gallery group in The Knitter magazine for March; Delle, the group's Ravelry moderator, did a lot of the work and I did the final bit of blurb and so on. I submitted a freeform wrap devised for a class at White House Arts and it came out pretty well in the magazine (and made it to the table of contents!).

While I'd love to scan the whole article in - some of the other projects were stunning - I think the good people at The Knitter wouldn't be very happy if I did. If you're in a local knitting group and they approach you, or you feel like approaching them, they're really good to work with; there's a lot of communication, they seem to have styled all of our projects quite nicely and they were returned promptly (in my case, before a workshop I was teaching on a similar theme). They don't offer payment but you do get a copy of the magazine at the same time as subscribers receive it...

The reason I haven't posted for so long is that work stuff is moving at supersonic speed; we're about to move the thesauri I manage into another software package (one which was actually designed for the purpose) and so I've been frantically making changes before we have to send the import version over to the suppliers; because after that I'll be maintaining the same vocabularies in two separate and parallel packages for up to 18 months... there's been a bit of extra hours and a lot of brain-being-elsewhere.

However, it turns out the work I did on software testing and so on at the end of last year was enough to earn me a bonus; and if I didn't spend it, I'd just blow it on a frippery like the gas bill... so one of these will be on its way to me as soon as ParcelFarce gets its act together... I have a lot of fleece in this house. I believe there are 6, including the one in the shed; and carding is my least favourite activity in the whole spinning process (I tend to spike myself. A lot.) so I'm hoping to play with the machine next weekend and hope it motivates me to wash a lot of the raw stuff lurking in bags around the house.

I also like the style of a shop-owner who signs off as Your dealer in addictive substances - I like the way she thinks.

A tale of two appliances...

So; once upon a time there was a basic food-processor, and it lived happily in a cupboard in the kitchen until called upon to make coleslaw or pastry, or puree some soup; until the little plastic nubby thing which locks into the base and allows the motor to go on broke off for a second time and couldn't be glued on again, despite its Owner's friend Gill's heroic efforts in relocating said little plastic nubby thing.

Nearly a year went by, during which the broken food-processor sulked in its cupboard and its Owner vacillated over ordering a new bowl versus replacing it, and fretted occasionally on the lack of coleslaw. Eventually she decided on the replacement option, and proudly brought home her new food processor. "Oh, dear", the Owner said. "Now I have TWO sets of useless plastic thingies for juicing lemons, beating egg-whites and all sorts of things which I'd much rather do with low-tech tools. I will sort out the drawer of plastic appliance thingies forthwith". So she did, and threw away many peculiarly-shaped items for which she had no use.

Two and a half weeks later, the Owner decided to use her new (Christmas gift) ice-cream maker for only the second time, the weather not having been conducive to the consumption of ice-cream. She made the mixture; she got the bowl out of the freezer; she found the motor. She looked for the paddle. She looked, and looked and looked; and then located the manual and stared in horror at the drawing of the item she was looking for. It was a peculiarly shaped white plastic item; one she distinctly remembered throwing away...

I'm sure you were way ahead of me on that last bit. It does turn out that a) the refrigerated bowl will freeze lemon and passion-fruit sorbet successfully even without the paddle, if you stir the mix every few minutes for an hour or so; b) the machine is on sale again and was not a hugely expensive purchase to start with; c) having two bowls would work better for my somewhat erratic ice-cream-making pattern anyway. So I'll be on the lookout for another. I'm still kicking myself regularly in the meantime though! The ONE TIME I decide that hoarding just-in-case is unnecessary!

And I know of at least two readers of this blog who also know my aunt (who does not have a computer, and who gave me said machine for Christmas). Do not, I beg you, tell her, or I'll never hear the last of it...

Comments on comments

Navel-gazing, I know...

Wibbo said

I rather enjoy entertainingly bad as read by Jeff Harding ;o)
Honestly, I rather enjoy anything as read by Jeff Harding...

Lixie said (and you need to follow this link to her blog - the woman has just learned to make her own leopard-patterned knickers...)

Have you tried the jill paton walsh/sayers collaborations? 'Thrones, dominations' isn't too bad - and ian carmichael reads it in the download from audible.co.uk. The second one, set during WW2, isn't as true to the original sayers feel but it's still worth a look. Can't rmeember the title right now though.

I couldn't remember the name of the thing, either; but I've just gone upstairs and found it's called A Presumption of Death. I think they're both very well done, and as well done as they possibly could be (and I love JPW's other detective novels with Imogen Quy, and she lives in the next village and all that); and I have both in hardback. But they can't ever quite be right just because it's not entirely Sayers....

Rosie wrote:

I fail to believe that you have to wait 'til half way through to discover that The Lost Throne is about a Lost Throne.

I gather it's been a bit of a best-seller. It had its own stand in the Trafalgar Square branch of aa Certain Bookshop Chain just after Christmas, anyway, which was why I looked for it on audiobook in the first place...

A couple of people wrote about Michael Wood. Agreed. Weirdly, I know Michael Wood's sister-in-law, and meet her regularly at Textiles in Focus; she's really nice. (And I sort of hope she doesn't read this.)

Thanks also (while I'm on) about the comments on the Ravelympics FOs, and also "well dones" on weight loss. I have been entirely crap about the latter over the last year but did very well to begin with; and am determined to have another boost on it before Knit Camp this year - there will be knitting-themed T-shirts on offer...

2010 books, #11-15

A crop of three audiobooks and two actual books this time - combination of winter-bluesiness, class preparation and Ravelympics means the only actual book-reading has been on the Tube...


Busman's honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers [audiobook]. Read by Ian Carmichael. Bath: Chivers Audio/BBC Audiobooks, [n.d.]


I love this book, and either read it, or get the audiobooks out of the library, every couple of years. The final of the Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane books, and probably my favourite even above Gaudy Night. Sayers described it as 'a love story with detective interludes', and the central mystery isn't particularly convincing; but the characterisation is such that I never really care... Additional poignancy was lent to this one by the death of Ian Carmichael last weekend; I heard the news just a couple of minutes after reaching the mid-point of the book... I preferred the gravitas Edward Petherbridge brought to Peter Wimsey in the TV adaptations, but Carmichael will always be the voice I associate with the books...



The stone monkey, by Jeffery Deaver [audiobook]. Read by Adam Sims. Rearsby, Leics.: W.F.Howes, 2003.


Another re-read; part of my readthrough of the Lincoln Rhyme/Amelia Sachs series. Even knowing the twists and turns in the plot, this is gripping stuff - Deaver is brilliant at pulling the rug out from under you, repeatedly, without making you feel as if you're being played... Adam Sims is a very good reader, and I'll be looking to see what else he's narrated.

Over the edge, by Jonathan Kellerman. London: Headline, 2008 [originally published 1987].

An Alex Delaware book - and one I didn't really warm up to. The plot was somewhat one-track; none of the characters (including Delaware himself) were really all that sympathetic; and the dénouement is predictable a little too early for comfort. I've given Delaware four chances to impress me (and the only reason I've done that is because Wibbo prefers them to Faye Kellerman's Peter Dekker/Rina Lazarus books and we're usually in synch with likes and dislikes...); I suspect that might be it for a bit...

The lost throne, by Chris Kuzneski [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Bath: Chivers Audio/BBC Audiobooks, [n.d.]

Gosh, this was eye-bogglingly, astonishingly bad. Entertainingly bad, in fact, because Jeff Harding was reading it with the same sort of edge he gives to Dan Brown books, as if he's trying to convince himself, as well as you, that this is not a total waste of our mutual time ... But, as I've said before, Mr Harding could read the Yellow Pages to me and I'd listen, which is why 13 hours and 30 minutes of knitting/cleaning/tidying/ironing/etc. time has been spent listening to this tosh...

You do know what you're in for with a book when the first sentence of Chapter 1 reads "The monk felt the wind on his face as he plummeted to his death, a journey which started with a scream and ended with a thud." Yes folks, it's the whole creepy religious/conspiracy theory/bad writing trifecta. And of course there are experts in a particular field, supposedly talking to equally learned colleagues, who feel the need to say "As you probably know...." and then bang on at great length without the aforementioned colleague either interrupting, or hitting them over the head with something heavy...

I think the thing I particularly loved about it was that you get to the halfway point in a book called The lost throne to discover that A) it's all about... a lost thing; and B) the lost thing is.... wait for it..... a throne. Now, who'd 'a thunk it... Or OMGWTFBBQ, as the kids would have it.

In my defence, another reason I kept listening was that it has more than a tangential connection with Heinrich Schliemann and Troy, which always conjures up memories of Michael Wood's not-unattractive rear view wandering up hills in 1984 or so, which was the thing which reminded me that in my primary school days I'd got interested in Roman archaeology (due to a mad, inspirational teacher called Pat Cassidy who spent the school's entire excursions budget on taking us off to various sites on Hadrian's Wall, making us write songs about the latrines at Housesteads, the Mithraeum at Carrawburgh and so on, to the tune of The Blaydon Races) and made me sign up for a Gallo-Roman archaelogical dig in my gap year; which in turn made me realise I was good at classifying things and taxonomy; which eventually got me the job I have now. So thankyou, Mr Wood, for your fascinating facts and your nicely-fitting jeans.

I shan't, however, be going back to Chris Kuzneski's works again, unless Jeff Harding continues to do the audiobooks and I'm doing another major decorating job over a holiday weekend!

Moonshine, monster catfish and other Southern comforts : travels in the American South, by Burkhard Bilger. London: Arrow, 2002.

It would have been so easy to make this some sort of comic "let's-make-fun-of-the-rednecks" book. There are chapters on advanced marble-throwing, cockfighting, frog-rearing, coonhunting, catfish-noodling, moonshining, the eating of squirrel brains and other more haute cuisine offal...

But Bilger is genuinely interested in the people involved in the activities and their passions; he brings the same degree of friendly curiosity to his subjects as Stuart Maconie does to his investigations of Middle England (although without quite as much of Maconie's humour); he isn't intending to denigrate or belittle, even when the activity seems pretty appalling to an outsider. These are great documentary essays written with a journalistic flair - you can hear the people speaking.

'Tis done...

So. The torch will be passed on to Sochi at Vancouver tonight... and I've managed to finish my Olympic projects. This was looking very unlikely last weekend but I squared up to the challenge and have spent most of the weekend knitting away...

Exhibit 1: St Brigid.

The start date on this of January 05 was very approximate - I can't actually work out when I did start it... but anyway, she's finished. And I've been wearing her all day during the miserable, cold, rainy weather. I'm regretting lengthening the sleeves by half a repeat, but mainly because I've lost nearly 3 stone since I started her; I'm sure this was a sensible decision when I made the first sleeve! That was my Cambridge KTog project; and here's my medal!

And then tonight, right under the wire at 11pm, I finished the IKL project, a Clapotis for the UK Knit Camp Clap-o-Tea party in August...

Exhibit 2: the Summer Silk Garden Sock Clapotis...

The table is 165cm/5' 6" long, so it's going to be a nice length...

Phew. It's not been the greatest fortnight really in Actual Life; but it was nice to achieve something and clock up some serious knitting metreage...

Ravelympics, the halfway point (ish)

The Ravelympics progress is, well, progress... Neither of these pieces of knitting existed until last Saturday morning, so I've knitted a fair amount this week, given that I spent time sampling for and teaching a couple of classes! But I'm still only just halfway through, so will have to speed up a little...

On the left, St Brigid, which is four-and-a-bit repeats in (needs 7 repeats before the neck shaping start), and on the right, the Clapotis in Noro Silk Garden sock yarn (about 60% complete). I'm using two balls of the same colour, one outside-in and the other inside-out; and wondering whether it's going to be too short and too wide...

2010 books, #6-10

The lovers, by John Connolly [audiobook]. Oxford: Isis, 2009. Read by Jeff Harding.

Charlie Parker finally investigates his past - we've had inklings of this in previous books, but the truth is even weirder than you think it's going to be. Usually, the introduction of any hint of supernatural force into a crime novel is a complete turn-off for me, but somehow Connolly can do it (Greg Iles is the other one); the only balance against Parker's very skewed morals is the sort of pure evil he's fighting. Jeff Harding's reading is, as ever, spot on - but then, frankly, the man could read the Yellow Pages and make it sound riveting.

gods in Alabama, by Joshilyn Jackson. London: Hodder, 2005.

I've ranted about this book before but re-read it for the London Kniterati's February meeting (having suggested it in the first place!) Everyone who turned up had read and enjoyed it, which made me extremely happy. And yes, it easily stands a fourth read-through!

Walking money, by James O. Born. London: Robert Hale, 2006.

I looked into James O. Born after reading a short story of his in Michael Connelly's anthology from last year. This is a book which really begs to be made into a heist film. Unfortunately, I think it would make a much better film than it would a book - the plot is great, twists and turns galore; but the characterisation isn't always strong enough that you can work out who's who without going back a page or two; the violence is somewhat cartoonish; and you feel very little real sympathy for any of the characters.

Thai die, by Monica Ferris. New York: Berkley, 2008.

This is a quick, fun read; a mystery set around a needlework shop. Probably not strictly what they'd call a "cozy" in the US, given the high body count, but interspersing needlework details with international criminal activity and slayings is interesting! Definitely recommended for a nice, light read if you like crime and crafts...

The Lords' day, by Michael Dobbs. London: Headline, 2008.

A group of Islamic extremists storm the Chamber of the House of Lords during State Opening; a group of hostages including the Queen, Prince Charles, the Prime Minister, his son and the son of the US President raise the stakes, and the person in interim charge is the wildly ambitious, self-serving Home Secretary. The geographical details of the House are impeccable, the plot is gripping and the characterisation is as good as you'd expect from the author of the House of cards series. Highly, highly recommended.

Kickstart

It's all been quite slow around here at Knitting on the Green. The Seasonal Thing I usually get has been absent for the last couple of years, only to come back and kick me in the head with a vengeance this year. The NHS site says that staying warm is part of it, and that's been all-but-impossible with the temperatures this year, so maybe that's it. Anyway; although I've been here, and knitting (mainly on stealth projects), I haven't been talking about it... or anything else since my spate of invective about the railways in early January!



But the Olympics are here, and with them the Ravelympics.

The idea was originally kicked off by the Yarn Harlot, who is also running her original Olympic challenge again - and if I hadn't become co-captain of the KnitCambridge team and a member of the IKnitLondon team before she announced she was going for it again, I'd absolutely have been doing that one, not least because Franklin will be designing the medals again (see sidebar for the beauty of the 2006 one...)

Three Olympic challenges = too much, given that I'm teaching two classes on February 19th (yes, it's Textiles in Focus time of year again!) and one on March 7th (at White House Arts) - all freeform type stuff, which you can't really stop sampling for...

I'll introduce/re-introduce you to the Olympic projects as we go along... I'm aiming to knit one new project and finish one long-neglected one...

Poetry for St Brigid 2010

It's the fifth annual cyberposting of poetry to celebrate St Brigid/Bridget's day. Officially this is tomorrow; but depending on where you look, the day is either the 1st or 2nd February...

I took a break last year, after a somewhat mixed reaction to my choice in 2008. This is another one about babies, but a cheerier one, and has been rattling around in my head as three of my friends have had babies since Christmas. This is for Thomas, Katharine and Emma.

Born Yesterday
for Sally Amis

Tightly-folded bud,
I have wished you something
None of the others would:
Not the usual stuff
About being beautiful,
Or running off a spring
Of innocence and love -
They will all wish you that,
And should it prove possible,
Well, you're a lucky girl.

But if it shouldn't, then
May you be ordinary;
Have, like other women,
An average of talents:
Not ugly, not good-looking,
Nothing uncustomary
To pull you off your balance,
That, unworkable itself,
Stops all the rest from working.
In fact, may you be dull -
If that is what a skilled,
Vigilant, flexible,
Unemphasised, enthralled
Catching of happiness is called.

Philip Larkin

And thanks to caughtknitting, who sent me a St Bridget's Day card!

Calling Anonymous Rachel...

Hi, Anonymous Rachel: you won the blog competition last week, but I haven't heard from you - do please send me an e-mail to liz AT lizmarley DOT co DOT uk so we can sort out getting your prize to you?

2010 books, #1-5

I had a phase before Christmas where I was getting very near the end of several books, but had so little to read of each that it wasn't worth taking them backwards and forwards on the train. However, I took this first one down to Jan's on the 30th and read most of it in one go.

Blood line, by Mark Billingham. London: Little, Brown, 2009.

Mark Billingham read the first, hair-raising, chapter of this at the Winter Wordfest event in November, and it was un-put-down-able. Tom Thorne is a wonderful creation, and this is tightly plotted with a twist in the tail to give you whiplash... As ever, his descriptions are graphic but not gratuitous, and you genuinely care what happens to his characters right from the first few pages...

The people's music, by Ian MacDonald. London: Pimlico, 2003.

A series of collected essays in music, with subjects ranging from Bob Dylan to The Supremes; the essays on Dylan and Nick Drake are particularly fine. The title essay talks about the passage of popular music from the essentially amateur process of folk music to the professionalism of writers such as Cole Porter and Irving Berlin and the manufactured artists of Motown; and then tracking its descent into amateurism again with the Beatles and Stones, and later the punk era. The piece was written in 2002 or so - it would be interesting to hear where MacDonald thinks we're going in the era of The X-Factor...

Little face, by Sophie Hannah [audiobook]. Oxford: Isis, 2007. Read by Charlotte Strevens.

Alice returns to her house after the first outing without her new baby, and claims that the baby in the cot upstairs isn't hers. Her husband is equally convinced she's lying, and her very controlling mother-in-law loses no time in weighing in. I don't think I'd have carried on with this after the first couple of chapters if it hadn't been an audiobook; I didn't really feel sympathetic to any of the characters, the final dénouement was a bit of a disappointment (and I couldn't make the reasoning add up), and some of the mental and physical sadism was just unpleasant. Strevens is a good reader though; now we can search the library catalogue by narrator as well as author, I'll be ordering up some more she's read.

Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville. London: Pan, 2008.

One intended for young adults; this is a wonderfully inventive trip through London and unLondon, with some great inventions such as the binja (fighting waste bins), unbrellas (ever wondered where all those broken umbrellas go?) and Webminster Abbey (populated by giant spiders). The style of it is much simpler than Miéville's complex prose when writing for adults, but none the worse for that, and the London cityscape is skewed just enough to make it magical without it becoming unrecognisable.

Scarpetta, by Patricia Cornwell. London: Sphere, 2009.

I didn't have a lot to say about this one, really; it's a Scarpetta. It is, however, less ridiculously angst-ridden and more plot-driven than some of the more recent ones. I keep reading these, despite vowing that I won't; I always come out of them feeling a little bit disappointed...

BEST foot forward - competition results

Thanks to the 8 people who put in estimates/guesstimates for the end-of-year competition; there was a good span of guesses, none of which were wildly off! I do really appreciate people putting in their entries, and commenting, and generally making me feel as if I'm not wittering madly into a void. And I've been stash-diving and am reluctantly parting with a couple of prize items...

On the number of projects knitted:
Actual number: 50
Best guess: 51, by Yvonne. Well done! I'll wait until I see you at IKL sometime - Thursday, maybe?


For anyone interested, and because I hadn't worked this out before, this breaks down as :
8 lace shawls/stoles/scarves
7 children's garments
7 pairs of socks
5 cowls
5 sweaters/cardigans
4 non-lace scarves
3 potholders (crochet!!)
3 washcloths
2 hats
1 baby blanket
1 bag
1 Christmas stocking
1 cushion
1 pair of mittens
1 tea cosy
and 0 partridges in pear trees, although I'm sure the extraordinarily clever Alan Dart has a pattern in development...

Yvonne wins two skeins of CTH Potluck Worsted (4 oz and 280 yards per skein; you'll have to work out what that is in British) in colour scheme Water.






On the metreage knitted up:
Actual figure: 21,120
Best guess: well, actually Yvonne got this one closest too with 21,000m (I'm beginning to think she's slipped some sort of monitoring apparatus into my knitting bag at some stage... that's only one ball of DK out, which is frankly just frightening).

However, I think she's the sort of nice, lovely, public-spirited person who would put her second winning raffle ticket back in the pot, so next closest is anonymous (and first) poster Rachel with 20,513m! I don't have a way to contact you, Rachel - so I'm hoping you're a regular reader. Please e-mail me at liz AT lizmarley DOT co DOT uk and send me your snail-mail address so I can get your prize to you.

For anyone interested; this averages out at 1760m/month; which is, according to Google (and don't you just love that you can put "1760m in miles" into Google and get an instant calculation?) 1.094 miles. I had a vague target for myself of a mile a month, because I was pretty close last year, but didn't calculate whether I'd reached it until the end of the year. My "worst" month was June with 845m and my "best" December with 2945m, but that's because I only count projects once they're finished, so it's all a bit random...

Rachel wins a scarf kit: 3 balls of Schoeller and Stahl's lovely Limbo in the blue/green colourway


and a PDF of my Helter Skelter scarf pattern (which isn't linked on Ravelry yet because I have yet to figure out the becoming-a-designer thing, but is proving very popular at I Knit London, who have been selling them pretty steadily for the last six months or so - I keep seeing people working on them and wearing them when I go to knit there, and it's lovely!).

And the other vital statistic for 2009:

Yarn knitted up this year: 7,659 grammes (equivalent of 153 50g balls; which is only 21g a day, but I'd refer you to the 8 lace shawls/scarves/stoles...).

I started counting up yarn acquired in the course of the year and gave up in mid-February.

However, with UK Knit Camp looming this year, I need to cut down, so I'm going to be counting yarn in as well as yarn out this year. Gifts and purchases will count as yarn in; but destashing and knitting up of yarn will count as yarn out... And I'm probably going to embarrass myself by posting a monthly total here... I shall, as ever, not be counting needles/magazines/books in that total, so IKL shouldn't suffer too badly...

And tomorrow, I vow to start blogging the Christmas Knitting (both given and received).

BEST guarantee...

... of a thaw, seems to me, is knitting of a hot water bottle cover... I'm sure that by the time I do the decreases on this one over the next day or so, and knit its polo-neck sweater, the weather will be balmy and springlike. Surely tempting fate has to work the other way round sometime or other?

I haven't used a hot water bottle since a very cold winter 22 years ago... They didn't have Dream in Color Classy then... and hot water bottles came wrapped in very bad pseudo-polar-fleece from Boots (one cerise, one turquoise, IIRC)...


Interestingly, three people on the train asked me what I was knitting and said how beautiful the colours were. Dyers, take note - normally I get No Attention Whatever, and I think I usually use pretty yarns...

Ah well... and competition reminder.

NaBloPoMo isn't really working for this month. Partly it's the freezing temperatures; mostly it's spending 6+ hours each day just ploughing back and forth to work.... I shall keep trying. It's not as if knitting isn't being done...

And if everyone can Think Good Thoughts to prevent trains hitting people in my local area, that would be good too. I've no idea whether this was suicide or an accident (although I understand you would have to try very hard to end up on the line accidentally at that particular point); but please, let's just hope people stop doing that.

On a more cheerful note, my brother sent me a YouTube clip of Gypsy Girl by Cruella De Ville. At the time, we thought this was a really good video. How times change... In return, I sent him a YouTube clip of possibly the most absurd Christmas recording ever.

And I realised I never gave an end-date for the annual competition. Let's say Sandi-o'clock on Friday (i.e. 6:30pm GMT this Friday, January 15). I'm hoping I'll be enjoying a drink with colleagues at that point, but it's as good a time as any...

BEST comment of the week

Gave up entirely on my normal train route today, and went both ways via Liverpool Street, doubtless to the distress of the people who normally do that route, putting up with really quite nasty trains and a slow route in favour of actual reliability and then having dilettantes like me swarming all over the place...

Anyway. I got onto the train this evening and removed (a) over-mittens (b) fingerless gloves (c) hat (d) coat (e) scarf and (f) sweater (I still had many layers of clothing, thanks), and piled them all into the gap between seats. The woman in the seat opposite watched this with amusement and said, "you've seen that card, haven't you?" I admitted I had. "So this is sort of Knitters' Revenge Week, then?", she said.

Made me feel ever so much better about the whole thing.

BEST achievement of last year...

... was definitely taking the garden in hand. I went out there today, and although it's pretty desolate at the moment (and covered in the thin layer of snow which stopped me getting into work this morning*), at least parts of it will come back in the spring, and it won't make me feel guilty and ashamed, as it would have at this time last year.

Over the last couple of days, mainly clad in many, many knitted layers while waiting for the house to warm up, I've put together a Flickr slide show of all the versions of this shot in date order - some of them turned up on the blog but not all...

So if you don't have any paint you could be watching dry (or just want to have some reassurance that warmer days will come), or you're trapped under something heavy while reading this, do have a look.

While looking for all the versions, I found the photo below, which I made last year but never posted. It also makes a change from the current state of my small resentful house-mate, who is spending 22 hours a day sleeping next to a radiator in the bedroom at the moment, emerging only to eat or dive briefly into the garden to answer the call of nature...

Keep warm, all.

*Bet you were wondering why I was more positive. I'm not the most disciplined worker-from-home, but after yesterday, only wasting 90 minutes of my day dealing with trains, with the knowledge I was only 10 minutes from home at any time, was just fine and I got a fair amount done.

BEST thing said about today...

... is nothing. Well, about today's transport, anyway. Oh, OK. SIX AND A HALF HOUR RETURN JOURNEY TO WORK. I think that's all anyone needs to know really.

Except that, as if you didn't know it, knitting is very, very cool. I sat there, and knit reams on a secret project, while reflecting on the fact that if I wasn't knitting I would actually be lying on the carriage floor weeping at the sheer lies which were coming through the announcement systems, from people who weren't as well informed as the people who had Blackberries etc. in the carriages. Not the fault of the employees; but they have walkie-talkie radios and the people on the train have Bluetooth and WiFi...

(Oh, and podcasts are also very, very good, for the whole distraction-from-reality-thing. I was going to add some actual extra positive examples here). But it's frankly too cold; and I need to be up stupidly early.

Apologies - this was not meant to be NaBloPoMoWhinge. Tomorrow I shall Put on My Happy Face. And Ye Shall All Fear Me...

One of the BEST and worst things about living in the UK?

The railways. (I typed failways in originally - I nearly left it there).

The best thing about them - actually, on my line, normally, they really do work. And I'm saying this as someone who's used them a minimum of 10 times a week for 120 weeks now. That's 1200 journeys; and maybe 15 of those have been nightmarish; and those which are merely more than 30 minutes delayed get a small refund (I have 8 refund coupons so far this year, two of them from one day which, in my memory, is extremely happy other than the rail journey. I get a loan from work for the season ticket amount and buy myself a small treat from the amount saved on the coupons). It's not a bad record. It certainly beats planes for punctuality, in my experience.

You also get to see some of the most beautiful British scenery by train. Last night I put up a post on Ravelry about registering for Early Alerts for cheap fares on the East Coast line for the upcoming UK Knit Camp - you can travel from London to Edinburgh for about £20 each way if you book really early. (OK, it will cost you way more than a much more polluting plane journey if you have to go to something totally short notice and obviously inessential like, say, a funeral or job interview, but let's not disturb the bucolic peace of the moment for a second...) If you travel from points south past Berwick, you get the most beautiful view from the train - which you can probably tell from this picture of the train going over the bridge. At the other end of the country entirely, if you travel from Exeter to Plymouth, the view is equally spectacular when the train hugs the coastline .

However (and you knew there was a however coming...)

Tomorrow there is snow forecast for my area in the afternoon. So from 0300 a "snow timetable" will operate... I understand that there is snow forecast in London this evening, but I don't quite understand how that affects the early trains to London from my area, where there is currently no snow; not a flake...

It seems that if I set off from home at 6:15am or so, there is a chance I may be able to reach London by 9 or so. Possibly. By changing trains several times and sitting on endless stopping trains. Maybe. I'm not due in until 10, but then the snow's due at about 3pm, so I may have to leave early...

A colleague who lives not far from London found out at 4pm that most of the trains on her line (not one in the flagged "severe weather warning area") had been cancelled tomorrow. Again, without a flake falling...

I can't work out what's worse - advance scaremongering, or abject failure once the event's happened. But hey, they've tried both in the last month, so I'll let you know which is preferable.

(And yes, it is, additionally, that time of the month, thanks for noticing...)

BEST behaviour, and not...

I went into Peter Jones last Tuesday in my lunch hour, and stumbled, swiping my John Lewis card on the way down. The main purchase was a whole bag of Rowan's Felted Tweed at half price, in a colour which matches at least two of my skirts (I also picked up five balls of Scottish Tweed 4-ply to add to the Donegal/Scottish Tweed stash box - they're the sort of bright colours which liven up otherwise dull colourways). 1750m/1910 yds of tweedy niceness.

I love Felted Tweed, and have made a couple of scarves for my Dad from it, but at £5.50 a ball it's a little bit above my price range for garments, unless it's in a sale. (I'm not saying this is an unreasonable price, just that I'm a cheapskate generally when it comes to clothes, as those who've trawled charity shops with me will attest. One of the skirts this cardigan matches was a cast-off from my mother - who has very nice taste in clothes but bought too large a size - and the other was a charity shop find for the princely sum of £2.75, which is the cost of one ball of this yarn even on sale...)

Anyway; Felted Tweed is a fine-ish DK, nearer to a US sportweight, and has fabulous metreage, and I realised I have just the pattern for it, Véronik Avery's Nordique Swing from the Fall edition of Interweave Knits. As the name of the pattern implies, it's meant to be knitted in Avery's new yarn, Nordique, which seems to be a sportweight, but as Classic Elite who distribute the yarn don't sell outside North America and have no plans to, I thought I'd wait until a likely substitute yarn came along. I was thinking about the lovely Jaeger Trinity, but I have plans for that already...

Anyway; the best behaviour thing was - look!! I swatched!! (And then I felt very bad about myself. Not, you understand, for the action of swatching - but because actually what I was doing was knitting a tension square; we have a perfectly good phrase for this process in British English... in the same way as, thank you Google Chrome spellcheck, "colourway" is an actual word. Having said that, the spellcheck fails to recognise "Google", "spellcheck" or "swatching" as words either... Anyone know how to turn it off?)


Anyway, I knitted a square, and measured it, and washed and dried and blocked it, and patted myself on the head, and measured it again - and there was absolutely no difference. I did not get gauge because I'd given myself a talking to by then. Sadly I also did not achieve the appropriate tension, as UK knitting patterns used to have it. The tension demanded by the pattern is 24 sts and 32 rows to 4"/10cm. I got 21.5 sts and 34 rows to 4". But look, isn't it a pretty thing? And the fabric feels very nice and wearable. This sample is also done on a 3.25mm (US3) needle - I am not going to be knitting an entire garment for someone with my degree of, let's say, décolletage, on a 2.75mm needle... and anyway, then the row tension would be even more off and it might feel like wearing armour-plating...



I shall, nevertheless, be knitting Nordique Swing - having done the maths, the one three sizes down works with the number of stitches I need; with any luck that means I'll save a bit of yarn and have enough to work the sleeves till they're bracelet-length...

NB: Reading it back, this post sounds like an anti-American rant. For which, apologies - this was not my intention at all.

But my job is language (not grammar, by the way; I know my grammar's pretty awful when I'm not watching it like a hawk), and the beauty and variety of language, and being able to cope with how that language is used by actual human beings day-to-day. In my day job I take care that if someone types Roadside bombs or IEDs into our database to find information on what we've decided to call Improvised explosive devices, I've done as much second-guessing as I can so they still find what they need without even realising we've done something clever behind the scenes to help them; in my not-day-job I like the principle that you could have a US knitting thesaurus with Tension, see Gauge in it, and a British one with Gauge, see Tension; it's just nice to keep using both regional variations and everyone being aware of all of it because that's just interesting! Or indeed, all regional variations, if you think of British DK, and Australian 8-ply and US light worsted... And you could have entries for sport (French) and sportweight (US) which would alert you to the fact that the first is somewhere between a DK/8-ply/worsted/light worsted and an Aran/worsted/heavy worsted, and the second somewhere between a DK and a 4-ply/sock/fingering weight...

Hmmnnn. A Universal Knitting Thesaurus. Now that would be fun. And actually, I suspect that those wonderful people over at Ravelry have already done an awful lot of the work - they've sorted out most of the yarn weights, for instance, and you can enter either "tea cosy" or "tea cozy" into a search and get exactly the same results in the same order; which made me inordinately, geekishly happy a couple of weeks before Christmas when I was looking for just such an item...

BEST things about a lazy Sunday morning...

A nice pot of Hattiali, from Palais des Thés (thanks, Wibbo!), with my favourite crockery, while listening to Broadcasting House, The Archers and Test Match Special...

A new lace project (stealth, so just visible on the right)...

And a new pair of mittens, the last finished object of last year... These are the Eleanor Roosevelt mittens from this time's Knitty, which accompany Franklin's fascinating interview - the yarn is the lovely James Brett merino I bought on Christmas Eve at Boyes in Chester-le-Street...

Heaven. I have to do all sorts of things this afternoon, but every now and then a couple of hours of total laziness is called for...

BEST laid plans

I don't tend to make big New Year resolutions. Usually, January and February are just months to be endured rather than enjoyed, and putting any extra pressure on myself seems a bit silly.

I do have some things I'd like to do this year

• I'd like to keep the garden under control, and plant some more things in it rather than just hacking back. (Having said that, after the couple of weeks we've just had, I'm glad I didn't plant anything which needs much care this year - it was all under several inches of snow for over a week...)
• I'd like to tame the back bedroom which is the pit of hell. It's so bad that I won't be posting "before" pictures (although I will be taking them) until there are at least "during" pictures to show!
• I'd like to knit something steeked - this was also on my mental list last year (along with knitting something from the top down, which I achieved with the February Lady Sweater in January). I got as far as taking an Alice Starmore class at the I Knit Weekender and seeing how it's done; and found a very lovely pattern. However, I'm also intending to continue losing weight, and making a cardi in 4-ply which can't be unravelled once steeked doesn't seem very sensible until that's done. Sometime later in the year, maybe; meanwhile I've seen some nice patterns for cushions and rugs which are steeked.
• I'd like to finish St Brigid - I only have the front to go, and she's been in my WIP pile longer than I've had this blog!
• I'd like to knit from my stash more. This is rather difficult with both the wonderful I Knit on my doorstep at work, and rumours of a lovely new yarn shop in Ely. However, I've just shelled out for classes and accommodation for UK Knit Camp in August, and will want to go to the I Knit Weekender in September (10th and 11th, I believe). So I'm not promising anything because that would just be foolish.

So, nothing dramatic - I rather like my life at the moment and have no desire for radical change.

Being able to get into the back bedroom without a block and tackle would be good, though...

BEST wishes for the New Year, and a competition...

Happy New Year! 2009 was a reasonable one for me - no major changes, no terrible events for me personally although several friends went through the mill this year; lots of knitting and many things I'm grateful for.

I've signed up to NaBloPoMo again - a few people have commented to me over the holidays that they liked the daily blogging, and actually I quite liked doing it too. Sometimes the theme for the month doesn't grab me (and I know you're not required to follow it anyway), but this month's theme is "BEST", and we all really need something to celebrate in January...

I had a very good Christmas - the best one for a while. Here are some of my fambly - Dad, SIL, Mam and Nephew - opening presents on Christmas Day.

I was allowed to cook Christmas dinner, and it seemed to go well...

OK; the competition. I will be doing 2 prizes this year, and simplifying it a bit. There are only 2 questions:

1. How many finished objects did I produce this year (NB this blog is not an accurate guide and nor is Ravelry - you probably just need to make a guess)?

2. How many metres of yarn did I knit this year (NB for visitors from North America, add approx 10% to a yardage estimate...)?

For some sort of idea - this was the roundup of last year's stats...

Happy competitioning... I won't bother doing an anonymous e-maily thing this year, just leave answers in the comments if you're so inclined!