Mad Hair Day

This is my anniversary present.

This is not what he had picked out for me, that had already sold. I was glad.

This is utterly unique. One of a kind, because they made it especially for me.

This is not a sapphire.

This is tanzanite, I saw it in the jeweller’s tray and it sang to me. Really. Siren stones, I fell in love.

This is not a guarantee that we will be together forever.

This is likely to help though.

This is not the first piece of jewellery he has bought me. Far from it. One of the reasons I keep him is that Him Indoors actually LIKES buying me jewellery. Often. Really!

This is for me to wear everyday. Because the things you keep ‘for best’ are too precious not to enjoy now. If not now, when?

This is NOT an engagement ring.

This is a “Thank You for the last nine years, Thank You for three wonderful children, Thank You for working alongside me to build our business, Thank You for staying, Thank You for all the laundry, Thank You for agreeing to a second date, Thank you for doing the tax returns, Thank You for cooking vegetarian food every day even though you’ll eat anything with a pulse, Thank You for being nice to my batty mother, Thank You for not killing me while I sleep.”

This is not nearly as beautiful as the man who gave it to me.

Have you ever wondered what Dorothy felt like when the tornado picked her up?  I have, but no more. After the last week I KNOW how it feels.

It began with my birthday and the presents poured in. The next day is the anniversary of our first (blind) date and I was whisking Him Indoors away for three hedonistic days without the children. This means that I get lots of undisturbed knitting time as he hates my driving and we live a long way from anywhere. I should point out that I hate his driving too, only I can ignore it if there is enough yarn and scenery to distract me from the certain death that awaits around every corner if you drive like a lunatic. Like this:

This is the How Many More Times Am I Going To Start This Bloody Sock sock, posing on Orewa beach. The Whangaparoa peninsula is in the background. Its a warm, sunny day. It’s lunchtime. And yes, that beach IS empty. We have lots of beaches like this. We also have fab coffee, lovely food and ten sheep to every person. Can you see why we emigrated?

We spent our three days trying not to talk about work, eating, shopping for books, eating some more, taking the ferry to Waiheke Island for more eating and walking along white gold beaches where the turquoise waves crash onto the miles of sandy shore…

Whoops, came over all Mills and Boons there. Seriously, living in New Zealand is like living in a postcard. We ate dinner at the top of the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere (seriously fab revolving restaurant) and stood on the glass floor (which is when I realized I had brought the sock but not the camera) and watched the sun set over Auckland and the Hauraki Gulf while we ate hors d’oeuvres and pretended to be suave urban types who don’t really live in jeans and can’t find matching shoes most days.

I’m going to have to slap myself with a wet tea towel if I keep coming over all purple prose-y again. Seriously romantic place, New Zealand, even the flint-hearted melt a little here and agree to spending a day wandering around the art galleries and doing a little shoe shopping (as long as you keep them fuelled with cappuccino and muffins anyway)

We came home to piles of laundry, an exhausted babysitting sister-in-law, stacks of work piled up nose-high and three children who had not missed us One Little Bit.

The day after we arrived home I lost what little remained of my sanity and walked a half marathon. Walked. Half-Marathon. Those words don’t sound too scary, do they? Now if I said I’d run a full one I bet you’d be impressed. Well, I’m a middle-aged, desk-bound, more-than-tubby mother-of-three and I walked 21km in 3.5 hours in the pouring rain. Look in the picture below. You see that little Pink Thing? That’s another birthday present (didn’t I do well!) and it kept me going. The music made me want to dance every step of the way (I didn’t, I staggered every step of the way) On Saturday, after 12:30 when I crossed the finish line, despite being only 5′5″, I was ten foot tall.

At least, I would have been if my legs would have held me up a minute longer.

On Monday, I went to the local Spinners and Weavers group for the first time. I also got my Pipy Sprite back, beautifully restored and working and set to spinning. Every muscle in my legs screamed in agony so I got the sock out. Nevertheless I met a lovely bunch of ladies who kindly explained things to me (like how my spinning wheel actually works and what the spring/string thing is reallly for and why my string turns back into fluff when I ply it) They also gave me fleece - see that curly stuff in the bag? That is from two coloured fleeces that someone had given to the group and we were allowed to help ourselves. I was in heaven. I’ve never been with LOTS of people doing yarny things all at once, talking about it, showing you how to do things and then giving you free stuff!

I was encouraged to try spinning this in the grease but I couldn’t do it. I brought back two carrier bags of fleece and parked it by the front door. An hour later three people had asked me why the house smelt of wee.

Reader, I scoured it. It went through the washing machine in the black sausage tights and it came out lovely only the tips of the locks were still slimey when wet and stiff and glued together when dry. Rather than risk felting it by washing it more vigorously, I sat and trimmed the tips off of every single usable lock of this fleece. What I have left filled one large carrier and I’ve been hand carding it ever since. See the dreamy fluff? Any suggestions what to knit with it? I’m trying to keep the colours separate in each rolag so that the yarn can be variegated as I’ll alternate shades of brown/grey/cream as I go along. I’m told this sheep was probably a ‘backyard Romney’ but it still feels divinely soft to me.

Talking of divine, Him Indoors gave me an anniversary present too. I’ll blog it tomorrow. It needs sunlight so I can Really Show Off. Intrigued? Prepare to be amazed.

When I was little and having a birthday party, my mother would never let me play with my new toys until after everyone had gone home. I can see now that abandoning my guests and my hostess duties would be reprehensible. Ignoring those who had turned up to celebrate my special day in favour of playing with my presents displays such bad manners that you really have to be a grown up to get away with it.

I give you: My Birthday Party

My adorable family finally listened to all that nagging, the anvil-heavy hints and the demands-with-menaces for skein-holding hands. Look at what I got!

Now, never having had a ball-winder before, I have been poo-poohing them as over-rated. What need have I for one of these when you can do the same job with the cardboard inner of a toilet roll and a little patience, I scoffed.

Bollocks! They’re fab! I’ve been winding my yarn, refusing to let anyone else have a turn and cackling like Bertha Rochester. I haven’t had this much fun since the popcorn maker exploded!

And look at what else I got: books, yarn and more yarn. My children bought me Posh Yarn’s sock club membership and the  ball on the winder and the green yarn below are the first two skeins sent by Dee. The red yarn is Touch Yarn’s 100% merino and despite the photo’s red-tones it is really raspberry/claret. I’m planning a lacy wrap to warm me up for the shawl project I’m contemplating. And the books? I actually got these over the last week - they are from my partner who couldn’t wait until my birthday to give them to me. The Pipy wheel ditto.

I also got chocolates, wine, a new cookery book and, as it is our anniversary (of our first blind date) tomorrow, I am also having three child-free grown-up self-indulgent days away with the Big Hairy Man of my choice.

I think I’ll take the one who buys me yarn. You know it makes sense.

There has been no knitting here. Not a stitch. In fact, in a new feat of not-knitting I have managed not to merely fail to progress on the current socks, I’ve actually gone backwards. On both socks. Different pairs. It turns out that despite hoping really really hard, despite the power of my will and the streak of luck I was having by turning out a wearable first pair, that knitting without swatching, measuring OR pattern was not a very good idea. Especially as I was knitting each sock with a new-to-me yarn which had unpredictable gauge.

Oddly enough, I didn’t see it coming. The thicker yarn turned out short row toes that were wide and shallow. Perfect for a foot with seven stumpy toes. I tried to ignore it and knit on. But the flapping ears of the toe section on either side of my foot were a little distracting. That and the unlikelihood of ever getting a pair of shoes wide enough to accomodate my room-for-a-little-one style of sockiness.

The other sock was actually two at once on a Magic Loop. This idea sounded great. The possibility of no Second Sock to knit and the chance to do the same thing on each sock at the same time so I didn’t have to write notes and remember to repeat the instructions by not losing those notes - that was sooo tempting. But did it work? No. It turns out you need a really really long cable on your circs to do two at once. And I didn’t have that. It felt like I was knitting in a cupboard with my elbows tied to my sides. There was no slack on the cable to hold the needle comfortably, I was angling the knitting to allow stitches to move along to the points and knitting from both ends of the yarn cake (again, sounded like such a good idea) meant that I spent more time untangling my knitting than I did actually working on the socks! Such a shame because I’m loving the yarn (Sophie’s Toes sock yarn in Bouquet)

So I frogged them all. For the second time in a month.

I think I’ve lost my knitting mojo. If anyone finds it, could you send it back?

My new indulgence arrived on Thursday afternoon. She’s a little battered and rather rusty around the hooks. The leather hinge which connects the footman to the back metal bit of the wheel (I have no idea what that is called) has perished and one of the two remaining bobbins did not survive the journey intact.

But she is mine. All mine (insert maniacal cackle here). And here she is, posing by the apple tree:

I am in the awesomely lucky position of knowing the lovely Mr Poore, the creator of the Pipy wheels. This is a Pipy Sprite and there were only a few made. (I have no idea why, I’ll have to ask him.) Mr Poore has kindly agreed to recondition my shabby baby and sell me some new bobbins for her. I can’t wait to have her home and spin something on her!

In the meantime, there has been spinning going on here. Remember the tropical blue/green fluff? I’ve been carding it with my op shop carders (I do love a bargain) and it has turned into the most divine candyfloss. My homemade spindle has been getting some action with the fluff:

I’m assuming that I am doing it right. I’ve got some string stuff wound around my stick. It spins, I draft, I spin some more and I hope I’m not making a pig’s ear of it.

I have to admit that this stick of colourful twine is a clumsy testament to the power of the internet fibre community. I learnt all about these from reading other blogs, and wonderfully instructive they are too. I have never actually SEEN a spindle, you know. Not one made by someone else. Never. And while I could have sent away for one, paid for it and been reasonably sure of getting one that had a passing chance of doing the job right, I had the distinct impression that while it was a hard-won skill making these divine things (I crave one of the Golding Midnight Sky spindles, I think they are gorgeous) it couldn’t really be that difficult. Everything I read about it (online) kept mentioning lumps of clay and potatoes stuck on twigs. 

I made two from some dowelling and some Fimo polymer clay I had lurking in the bottom of the craft box. Craft Box; that makes it sound to organized and Earth Mother-y, like I have a resource of interesting things available with handy forethought for making stuff with my children to enrich their learning experiences. Sadly, my craft box is the packing crate still living in the back of my cupboard (2 years and counting!) which contains all the odd bits and pieces that emigrated with us and for which I have never found a suitable home. You know, the handbag that clashes with everything, the collapsible stairgate that didn’t foil my children’s dastardly escape plans for a second, the Christmas cards I bought in the January sales that I forget about every November and the tub of hair curlers (Why? In God’s name, Why? It is no accident that this blog is called Mad Hair Day. That is a family joke about me! My hair looks like a small and frightened animal landed on my head and has been clinging on despite frequent electrocution. The last thing I need is hair curlers!)

Good grief, how I do ramble. So, I made spindles. I even made an extra whorl which can be added for extra weight for thicker yarn. Look at what a little bit of research can do! I’ve read about spindling, I’ve spent several evenings with cosy murders on the telly and I’ve spun up this little lot. I’m planning to ply it with some white spun the same way. If I have the patience. And if I’m not lured away by the siren call of my little Sprite.

And in case anyone is tempted to think “Gosh, she’s a clever old stick” in the interests of modesty and honesty I should tell you that my dyeing didn’t quite go according to plan. The dye isn’t entirely fast, methinks.

Either that or I’m turning into a frog. My hands have gone green.