Every Home Should Have One...

Okay. Please admire this. (Shoe is for scale). This is Juno’s collar. It is finished, but unblocked (as you probably noticed). This is my first ever attempt at cables and I did nearly 6 freaking feet of them – four intertwined lines, edged with four more lines.

It looks like this when you get closer.



I can’t believe the sheer scale and gorgeousness of what I have created. I am continually impressed by the amazement of knitting. By the way – if you see any mistakes (I know there is one stitch in there that is not doing what it is supposed to and I’ve decided to live with it because it was 2 feet from the end when I saw it!), I don’t want to know – really, I don’t. (You don’t see any, do you – because – well I’d just have to cry at you and then we’d both be embarrassed and I look so awful when I cry – you know how it is – drippy, swollen, red nose – what do you mean you can’t see any difference from the way I look normally? I’m going to cry!)
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I like to think of that stitch as the deliberate imperfection included by a knitter. Japanese master potters always marred their work slightly, introducing a deliberate imperfection to make their work human, and to not challenge the gods. Every time we packed a kiln, someone would do something that made them bleed (accidentally, not on purpose – though if there had been no blood….), and we always considered that a sacrifice to ensure the firing went smoothly.

That misplaced stitch is my sacrifice. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.



On a different note, I thought I’d include this photo of the incredibly originally named Blue Lake. The colour has not been touched and it is a very grey day – isn’t that the most gorgeous aqua you have ever seen? Apparently the white clay at the bottom of the lake reflects the sky, but if that is so, by my reckoning the water ought to be a drab grey with dark grey overtones.

I have a theory. I have decided that the world consists of two types of people (stop me if you’ve heard this before). The first type is the instruction reader. When they receive a new appliance or gadget, they open the box, remove the instructions, read them from cover to cover, acquainting themselves fully with the device and its controls. They ensure they understand its quirks and the expected outcomes and results. Only when this process is complete, will they unpack the appliance or gadget, carefully removing all components from the box, assemble it and turn it on. My husband is this type of person.

The second type receives a gadget, rips the box open, whacks it together and turns it on. They may mutter things like ‘Yup – this bit goes here’ and ‘I wonder what that is for?’. They may occasionally look at the picture on the outside of the box – just a glance to check that it looks roughly right. They will refer to the instruction manual if, and only if, the device will not work, breaks down, or makes a peculiar noise. I am this type of person.

In 1998, we bought a 6 year old, second hand BMW. The Accountant had coveted a BMW since he was a teenager, and now he owned one (in both our names, of course). He read the 240 page manual from cover the cover several times, making sure he really understood this piece of German engineering perfection. Then he told me I wasn’t allowed to drive it until I read the manual. I didn’t drive the car for nearly a year. I still haven’t read the manual – I just waited him out.

I thought about this again yesterday, when a friend rang to ask if the Accountant would chauffeur her eldest son to his Grade 10 School Leavers’ Dinner. In Tasmania, you finish high school in grade 10 – except in some private schools which offer classes to grade 12. Grades 11 and 12 are offered at matriculation colleges, on separate campuses and with entirely different rules to high schools. They generally don’t require a school uniform and have a more relaxed attitude to pupils coming and going from school property.

They were originally designed as a bridge to the independence of university. Now they mainly exist to keep kids off unemployment lines and try to get them to stay at school until they’re 18. Tasmania has the lowest rates in Australia of school retention to grade 12, mainly due to this system.

But, back to the Leavers’ Dinner. I remember when this couple started dating. I remember when the son was born – the Accountant and I have been together longer than he has been in the world. This is a sobering fact – or perhaps the sort of fact which requires drunkenness – I’m still working on that one. Of course he can arrive in the BMW.

There is a tradition of arriving in exotic transport for these dinners. Rich parents have supplied helicopters and limousines. Inventive parents and children have used enormous trucks, tractors, horses (with and without carriages) and all types of cares – from the sublime (beautiful vintage cars) to the ridiculous (tuktuks and gogomobiles). It’s all part of the fun.

So he will get the BMW. He’s just got to clean it first!

Rubber Ducky, You're the One....

Sssssh! Can you keep a secret? I sneak off for baths! That’s right – I slope off at early hours of the morning when I waken early and can’t sleep, and submerge myself amongst bubbles with a book, a face mask and my glasses fogging up!

Why do I sneak off like that? Well, much as I love my children, the only way I can claim a little time for myself is to sneak down to the bath very early on a Sunday morning and spend an hour floating in bubbles. Then I get back into my pyjamas and sneak back into bed. If I don’t get the timing absolutely right, I end up with a 5 year old girl – screaming (literally) down the stairs into the bathroom, stripping as she runs until she jumps in with me.

I really don’t mind my little girl joining me in the bath, and playing games and splashing. It’s just that my baths are a quiet and relaxing time, and always, by the time she gets there, the water is starting to cool off and I have to stay for another half an hour in increasingly cold water playing boat, bubbles or whatever other game she invents!

Yesterday was a lovely spring day – which can only mean one thing – spring cleaning! We attacked the courtyard, pulling up weeds, tidying the pot plants and planning plantings in the big bed against the wall. All winter, the courtyard gets no sun, then around now it starts trapping the sun, and the old red bricks of the wall start preventing frosts. So this year, instead of grass, I’m going to plant tomatoes and lettuces (and maybe a cucumber) in the bed to catch the sun. The warmth of the wall means no frost there as well, so even a late frost shouldn’t get my tomatoes!

On the Seven Things Challenge:
IN:
Well, the shoes – obviously – 2 pairs of Birkis (pls see previous post to admire their beauty!);
1 apricot top from the Op shop, and 4 patterns from same;
1 boys summer hat and 2 tops for children (winter sale at local children’s wear shop);
Vogue Knitting and Creative Knitting;
1 skein Marion’s sock yarn;
My Sublime lay-by paid off (plus the stash bag gift and 2 balls cheap Jo Sharp DK);
My Lay-by from Local haberdasher paid off - 4 balls leaf green Patons, 2 Christmas presents and buttons for the squatty sidekicks;

In: 17 balls of yarn, 15 other items

OUT:
2 bags cot sheets, baby blankets and ancillary stuff for the child care centre
1 toy also for above
1 bag of clothes for Lifeline
1 breadmaker (running) needs new washer and probably loaf tin – ready for Lifeline
3 Patons patterns – to Taph!!!
9 bags of childrens gear listed on Ebay (not yet sold – finishes tomorrow)

Out: 17 bags of stuff!

That has to be in front, doesn’t it?
I’ve also organised pram, cot, portacot, car seat and so on to be listed in the classifieds – though that will be next week.

We also attacked the wine cellar – although that does not qualify as de-cluttering because we work out what needs to be drunk, but organising it did mean removing and re-organising all the half empty boxes, so maybe it qualifies – 5 empty boxes gone!

Further to a post from a while back, I have seen two movies this week I really enjoyed – for entirely different reasons.

We watched 300 the other night, and I was very impressed. It was stylised and stylish, used lots of CGI as an integral part of the look, told an old story well (even if it did takes some liberties with Herodotus), and I really enjoyed it. Deeper than it looks – lots of allegory and poetry mixed with the mythology. I can see that it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was mine – and considering some of the pap I’ve noticed recently, a huge step up!

The second was ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, also a non-Hollywood production. This is Spanish (the Spaniards are making some noteworthy films) and set in the era of the Spanish Civil War – gorgeous, interesting, phantasmagorical, surreal. In the words of Molly Meldrum ‘Do yourself a favour’. It was beautiful, but not great for complex knitting (subtitles!).

Knitting. Here is one repeat of the cable pattern from Juno’s collar.

I am enjoying it, but I can’t let my attention slip at all! Luckily, the pattern is written out, rather than charted (I’m not great at charts), and is a 16 row repeat over 38 stitches. I’m having trouble coping with the cable needle – which keeps trying to escape, especially on the cables at the very beginning of the rows – first stitch goes onto the cable needle! So far, I’ve only had to tink half a row (although I’m sure that will change).

I love the way the cables look, and I’m very proud of the 3D nature of the knitting, but I cannot see any way in which I am likely to become a FAST cable knitter. In one and a half hours last night I did one pattern repeat. 16 rows over 38 stitches- hour and a half! – even the monkey socks I could do 2 repeats at least! (11 rows over 60sts on DPNS)!

All tips on increasing speed and growing 3rd hand gratefully appreciated!

The Lure of the Foreign Legion

Good afternoon.

I am hereby submitting my resignation as Mother and joining the Foreign Legion. While I realise this will force me to learn French, that’s OK – I also understand that there is very little toilet training involved and someone else cooks your meals and washes up.

I am also quite taken by the idea of solitude, hot desert sunshine, a complete lack of children and the possibility that someone else may have to do my washing and ironing. If I fail the recruitment test, I will immediately put my hand up to become a nun, preferably in a silent order. Although that may involve cooking, I can probably cope with that as long as I get some time to knit. I will also get some time where I am not:

a) Shouting;
b) Checking that people are listening to me;
c) Getting them dressed;
d) Putting them on the toilet
e) Being bitten on the face – in public;
f) Trying to give children a cultural experience while they run around like mad things, shouting;
g) Apologising to other adults and children for my childrens’ behaviour;
f) Hoping the floor will open up and swallow me when I am exposed as an appalling parent.

From the above, you will probably gather that it has been a BAD DAY.

Unfortunately, I don’t think they let you resign from Motherhood. I am counting the hours and minutes until the Accountant appears at the door and I can drink my first (and second and third) glass of wine.

It started out inauspiciously at 6.30am, with a gentleman ringing our doorbell to tell us that one of the neighbour’s cows was out on the road. Generally, cows on the road are considered a BAD THING. Anyone who hits a cow with their car, no matter how appallingly badly, stupidly or illegally they are driving is in the right and the owner of the cow is at fault. A cow can do a great deal of damage to the average small car (or even the above average large car. The cow also comes out of it badly.

This meant throwing on clothes, calling the farmer (who lives about 25 minutes drive away) and walking quickly the 500 metres to the cow, whereupon the man who’d come to the door had already got the stupid animal into a paddock – entirely wasted walk in the cold.

I compounded the awfulnes of the day by opening the refrigerator door and having an entire, unopened bottle of wine fall to the floor and smashing, meaning massive and delicate clean-up operations involving 750ml of very nice wine and a shattered bottle worth of glass spread all over the floor while trying to get lunch for children. I am shattered at the idea that this bottle was wasted, but luckily it was in the back room on lino, not in the kitchen on floor boards - with children (perhaps it would not have shattered if it hit floorboards? A depressing possibility).

I took the beasts – sorry – children to the school performance of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, a particular favourite book of ours. It was sweet, the Preps (5 and 6 year olds), Grade 1s and Grade 1 & 2 combined class (it’s a small school) each doing the same piece, with increasingly more speaking and singing as the age group increased.

Why is it that other children sit quietly, watch the performance and clap at the end, while mine crawl all over each other, other children and any adults unwise enough to sit near us? I am so going to make it my life’s work to embarrass the pants off them as they get older. Destructoboy even found an alternative route out of the hall, and took off at high speed across the school grounds.

So I’m tired, grumpy, and in need of caffeine and wine (not necessarily in that order). And knitting. I definitely need the calming and restorative powers of knitting. I finished the first side of Juno the other night and got up to the increases on the second front. I actually thought I’d done the left front and was working on the right, but closer scrutiny (I’m really bad at telling which is the right side when knitting rib) suggests that I’ve finished the right and am working on the left, so there you go. Regardless, one side is done and I’m doing the other. Probably finish that tomorrow night (frogging and the knitting godess permitting) and start sleeves. Hurrah – looking forward to taking a great leap into the unknown and knitting that collar.

No, no little discreet cables for me to practice my first cabling, Uh uh – I’m going the gusto – it’s a huge and very visible cable collar for my foray into this new skill.

Off to herd cats – sorry – children. Have a nice night – I intend to get these munchkins into their beds at the earliest opportunity. And then sit knitting quietly until my bedtime. I even start a new book in bed tonight – just finished Kim Harrison’s ‘For a few demons more’, great fun.

I’m wilting at the sheer excitement of my life!

Peace...Quiet....ACTION

The house is quiet. The TV is off, there is no music playing, I can hear birds outside, the sun is shining through the window, the frost has melted, I have just finished my first ever chai latte - I have the house to myself....

Let's Party!!!!

Well, not really. On Tuesday mornings (plague permitting), I have one child at kindergarten and one at child care - this is my morning off - 3 and 1/2 hourse of my time - that's it for the week. Occasionally I have a massage,mostly I clean or gardden, generally I frantically run errands without 2 children to get in and out of the car, into strollers, into shops - some days it's like herding cats!

Today is MY day. I cleaned at the weekend. I have washing on and I've been having a bit of a blogfest. I have discovered a wonderful blog - Black Dog Knits! What a woman! She has the most wonderful patterns up on her blog - Free! Gratis! Gorgeous! How could I resist! I'm now thinking that the swing jumper has to be made - will it come before Juno or after?

Last night I did 3 pattern repeats on the Monkey Socks - now for you experienced lace knitters, that's probably not much - for me that's my whole 2 hour knitting period - that's 33 rows x 64 stitches - that's 2112 stitches! in 2 hours! that's over 1000 stitches an hour. I'm impressed! Usually I can only do 2 repeats of the pattern in that time.

I'll let you into a secret. I'm not a natural lace knitter. I have to concentrate on every stitch (except the knit rows) I have to have the pattern in front of me (except for F and F), The 2112 stitches does not include the half rows tinked because somehow my count got out in an exciting bit of the movie or conversation. But I love knitting lace. I love the way it looks, I love the feeling of accomplishment I get when I finish a repeat, or even better a garment or sock.

I had no idea, back in the dark ages of the 1980's that fair isle and intarsia were supposed to be hard. I had knitted 2 jumpers and just went for it! and I finished them - and decided they weren't that hard or terrifying after all Mind you, I still have half a sleeve to do on the intarsia jumper - but all the rest is done!). But I've always been scared of lace and of cables. Now I knit lace - the Cherry bomb, a shawl, the F and F socks, scarves, the Monkeys. I'm brave - I love knitting.

I adored knitting this - Bianca's Jacket from Interweave, Fall 2006, in Jo Sharp Silkroad in Butternut, on needles a size larger than the pattern says (my usual strategy for getting a larger size without doing any maths - Please don't strike me down Oh Knitting Goddess)

Still haven't knitted a cable. What an admission. So that is why I have decided to knit Juno. I love it - love the pattern and I'm trying to get back my youthful insouciance. I look at the pattern and say 'I can do that'. But deep down - I'm afraid I can't. So that's why I'm going to.