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!

2009 books, #6-9

Just catching up a little here...

Pobby and Dingan, by Ben Rice. London: Vintage, 2002.

This was one of the February books for the Kniterati group; unfortunately it met on the 3rd February, when my main effort was concentrated on getting home at the end of the day; so I missed it. I got this from the library, and it was a strange little novella - lots to say about 'illusion' and 'reality', within the setting of an Australian opal-mining town. I really enjoyed it while I was reading it, and it certainly wasn't something I'd have picked up otherwise... A couple of weeks later though, I'm having a hard time remembering anything other than the general impression.

Maxwell's Point, by M J Trow. London : Allison and Busby, 2008.

The Maxwell books are always wonderful, but I think Trow's excelled himself here. "Mad Max" is a history teacher of the old school and detective meddler extraordinaire; his trusty bicycle White Surrey and cat Count Metternich and his model army of Light Brigade figures might be enough to consign him to the realms of whimsical eccentricity. However, Trow's language and humour are superb, the plot's always extremely well-crafted, and Max's relationship with Woman Policeman Jacquie Carpenter and baby Nolan is tenderly done...

Blind faith, by Ben Elton. London : Black Swan, 2008.

I've always liked Ben Elton's novels. [OK, there, I've said it. I would say that's an unfashionable view, except they don't half sell well, so however snooty people are about Mr E's output, someone's out there buying it]. This one gives the reader a terrifying post-global-warming dystopia in which the urge for privacy is a sin, watching the neighbours' sex lives on wide-screen TVs is obligatory and failing to emote constantly and in public is a sin against The Love (made up of a duumvirate of Jesus and Diana). Elton picks up very well on the worst excesses of contemporary popular culture and runs with it to a nightmarish extent - blind religious faith harnessed to mindless sex and a diet of infomercials and propaganda. As with Brave New World or 1984, you can tell where it's inevitably going from the beginning, but it's a fascinating ride.

The suspicions of Mr Whicher, or, the Murder at Road Hill House, by Kate Summerscale. London : Bloomsbury, 2009.

There was a lot of fuss about this one when it came out, and I wasn't sure I wanted to read it, but after re-reading the afterword in The Moonstone which connects that book with Inspector Jack Whicher, I thought I'd give it a go. And it's a fascinating account if you like well-written true crime and the history of the detective novel - Summerscale weaves in historical account, contemporary speculation and literary influences. It's extremely readable - I started reading it on the platform on Monday morning and realised when I got home at the end of the day that I hadn't pulled out my knitting all day! I seem to remember the story of Constance Kent from something I watched as a teenager, but couldn't remember anything other than the name.

Next, some Rumer Godden and some Bob Woodward.

Washington's Day

I was having a conversation (or indeed convo, as they have it over on Etsy), and the person I was talking to mentioned it was a holiday for her in California tomorrow; so I went over and looked, and it's Washington's birthday/Presidents' Day. Which is a fine reason for having a holiday in the deep dark days of February.

Washington's Day, however, reminded me of the very good song by the same name from The Hooters which I have kicking around on my iPod. (Unfortunately, launching any sort of internet search using the word Hooters really doesn't work all that well unless you're a breast-maniac... rather like innocently starting a search for the film Free Willy, really...)

There doesn't seem to be anything on YouTube for "Washington's Day"; but there is this very good one for "Karla with a K" (can't embed it because of copyright...) The intro to this was definitely used for some BBC footy programme or other sports programme in the 90s... And, as you might expect, Serious Mullet Alert. And also a wonderful video for "Satellite" which I'd always assumed was an attack on the Prosperity Gospel from the lyrics, but 20 years later I have visual confirmation... (and while we're doing this particular walk of shame, let's not forget "And We Danced"... )

Anyway, happy Washington's/President's Day for anyone who does have a holiday tomorrow!

Believe it or not...

... some knitting has actually been going on around here (apart from the Lady Sweater which now has one arm which is long enough!); finally got round to taking some photos.

But first, the Eye all redded up for Valentines...

They had the Now Voyager quote "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars" across one set of wall panels, which you can just about seen in the photo above; and another quote "You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how" across the other set. I was pleased when I got home and looked it up that I'd correctly identified it. Anyone want to hazard a guess? (Answer at the end of this post...)

OK: the knitting. Two Helter-Skelter Scarves (my own pattern, which I'm looking at putting up on Ravelry after Textiles in Focus is over...)

Although if you know about short-rowing, the photos above and below will tell you exactly what I did without need for a pattern...

And one which looks even better photographed against my kitchen floor...

The yarn for both of these is Lang's Mille Colori - lovely stuff for decent lengths of colour. The only stockist I've used for this is RKM - colours 0057 and 0068 respectively (although my colour balance and RKM's are very different - there is some burgundy in the balance, which doesn't come out in my photo, but perhaps not quite as much as in RKM's sample...

I also made a little blue cowl. The variegated stuff in this one is Araucaria's Quellon; the solid is Regia silk sock yarn (4-ply weight). It's lovely and soft and for the first attempt at a cowl, I think it's come out very nicely. It's just feather-and-fan, 6 18-stitch repeats, random number of rows, random rows of knit and purl...

Some dyeing also happened last weekend; a kilo or so of aranweight wool, now reskeined... I need to price this up for Textiles in Focus; but I think I'm reasonably well set-up for this year's show. Next, finalising the instructions and samples for the classes I'm teaching on Friday and Saturday (there are places left, particularly on the Friday!)

And the answer to the mystery, or not-so-mystery, quote? Rhett Butler, in Gone with the Wind. The full quote goes "No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how." (Although possibly not by someone with that moustache...)

The glory of rail

If I'd written this on Friday, this would have been an entirely ironic post. However, hang on to the end for some pretty pictures...

After 19.5 hours just sitting on trains between Monday and Thursday while the UK capital totally failed to cope with half a dozen inches of the white stuff, I was not feeling enamoured of rail, the rail authorities, and First Capital Connect in particular.

(My absolute favourite moment this week was Monday afternoon when, having battled my way down to work and found the weather getting worse by the moment, I attempted to get home again in the early afternoon with some project work - only to find that the shuttle from London to Cambridge failed to connect with the hourly shuttle from Cambridge to King's Lynn by THREE MINUTES. Both emergency timetables, both run by the same company, meant to join up; left hand, right hand, etc., etc., etc.

Although that was nearly eclipsed by my second favourite moment on Wednesday night, when, having foolishly gone knitting, rather than telepathically working out that the overhead lines would go down at Hitchin in the intervening 90 minutes, I was sent from King's Cross to Liverpool Street because there was going to be a special 20:58 service directly to King's Lynn. I really shouldn't have believed the FCC worker, but after the preceding three days I was gullible and desperate enough to try. On arrival at Liverpool Street, predictably, this train turned out to be some sort of cruel fiction; but I did manage to get home an hour earlier than the alternative bus-and-train service, so even being lied to has its uses)...

That's nearly it on the snow; except to say that when you get concerned enquiries from friends in Toronto and Chicago, both cities which regularly laugh in the face of severe weather, you might as well create possibly the first LOLtrain image

HOWEVER. The trains did let me get down to Hove to see Jan, and to Brighton for the ICHF show. Yvonne and Fred were both there, as was Ness from I Knit. Purchases were made (particularly when offered Sublime angora/merino for £20 a bag...), very good Indian takeaway was eaten, and the trains back worked fine yesterday. Being a Bad Blogger the only photo I took was this one of Flossie...

And then to cheer me up still further, I had half an hour to spend and went to St Pancras station, which reminded me of what rail travel ought to be.

See this departure board?

I love this. You can go to Sheffield, or to Paris or Brussels. It's like the departure board in other proper stations in Europe, which laconically advertise local services alongside the Grandes Lignes to Milan, Vienna or Berlin...

The ground floor is utterly modern; but once you head up in the very efficient lift, or up the escalators, you get to the Eurostar floor and a wonderful combination of the ancient

... and the modern... in this case the John Betjeman bar facing the Eurostar platforms (note the blankets...)

A Eurostar train coming in...

The man himself...

And some of his words.


And that's why Trains Are Good.

I'll try and remember that this week..

FLS again, and some advertising...

Thanks everyone for the lovely comments on the FLS. I am going to make the sleeves longer, because I get really old-fashioned about having a cardigan with shorter sleeves than the top I'm wearing underneath it - it seems like having your slip showing would be for an older generation (or exposing your bra-straps, for mine, but that ship sailed a long time ago). Totally personal opinion... Most of the cardigans I'd be able to buy in the shops in my size would also be three-quarter-length sleeves, which is why I don't buy them... (I'll just have to remember not to wash up in this one - but as I generally get changed when I come home from work, I'm hoping that won't be too much of a problem). Jayne, the buttons came from Peter Jones. I gather they have them in other colours at John Lewis in Cambridge...


In other news, I've been dyeing up a storm for Textiles in Focus. Blatant plug here. I shall be sharing stand-space (as Knitstuff) with two other local Ravelers and one not-so-local. It's a really nice smaller textiles event - about as much knitting-to-everything-else balance as there is at the Knitting and Stitching show (i.e. about 10% knitting, but when that means Woolly Workshop and 21st Century Yarns, it's good company to be in!), but they're all proper stands - you don't get all the papercrafts-and-miracle-cleaning-products stuff - the exhibitions are always very good, and there are probably workshop places left! The details:

Textiles in Focus

Cottenham Village College, High Street, Cottenham, Cambridgeshire

20-22 February 2009

10am-5pm (Friday/Saturday), 10am-4:30pm (Sunday).

£4 entry fee on the door

I hope to make a post with Actual Pictures soon!

2009 books, #5

When will there be good news? by Kate Atkinson. London : Black Swan, 2009.


"A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen", says Jackson Brodie towards the end of this book, and coincidences abound here. As ever with Kate Atkinson's fiction, the simplicity of her style contrasts with the complexity of the plot and the intertwined lives of a cast of wonderfully quirky characters. Many of the people in this book are living quietly tragic lives, but there's great humour here too, and not a moment when the story flags. The previous books featuring Jackson Brodie, Case Histories and One Good Turn, were excellent, but this one is at a different level entirely...