Mad Hair Day

I adore summer. I love the heat, the night-time showers of hot rain, the singing of the cicadas and the tropical flowers which are bursting out all over my garden. There are more and more birds putting in an appearance as our desolate acres of cleared orchard are slowly replaced by ornamental planting and many fruit trees. We aren’t sure which ones laid the tiny greeny-blue eggs (look in the yarn cake - their colour matches the Posh Yarn merino/cashmere perfectly!) we found abandoned in the grass, but every day there are more and more birds coming for the fruit and seeds we put out in the garden.

I’ve been knitting socks on the beach, watching the children making sandcastles and chatting with friends under the trees. These are toe-up using the round-toe from Charlene Schurch’s Sensational Knitted Socks. I’ve had to create a lace stitch (based on Oriel stitch) to make a leaf pattern as I couldn’t find one I liked. I call these Mint Julep as they make me think of cocktails on the veranda and cool leaves of scented plants in the shade. I love the 8pm evening light when the kids are in bed and we have a quiet hour listening to the doves in the trees settling down for the night. A cooler, hushed time of summer sleepiness when it isn’t too humid, or bright or busy to enjoy the moment and I can knit without interruption and enjoy the speed which which these socks are growing. And I love this yarn; it doesn’t hurt my hands at all.

The chocolates are Mochadamias from Makana, possibly (definitely) the most delicious chocolates in the world. I’ve eaten Godiva, See’s Candies, hand-made creations in Belgium, France and Switzerland. I’d give almost anyone my last Rolo but I’d fight you to the death for one of these.

I especially love the end of the summer holidays as the children go back to school and daycare. The peace, the quiet, the likelihood of something being where or how I left it five minutes ago. By 9am tomorrow morning all my offspring will be safely interred in the educational establishment of choice and I can sit back and listen to the silence. Hell, I might even take myself out to lunch. And if he’s lucky, I’ll take Him Indoors with me.

In addition to having three sweaty and irritable children underfoot for the last 6 weeks, I’ve also had a house full of visitors for the last fortnight, hence the bloggy silence. My ex-husband was the first to arrive. He stayed for two weeks, taking our son camping in the middle of it. It is one of the things giving me a happy glow today, that he and I can be in the same room without wanting to hit each other with crockery. And in case anyone out there is thinking that came about easily, I can assure you it didn’t. It is one of those things, like sticking to your diet/exercise plan (whoops!) and giving up smoking, that are hellish while you’re in the middle but so satisfying ultimately that it makes all the teeth-gnashing and tongue-biting and door-slamming worthwhile. Mr Ex and I separated 12 years ago, the divorce was final four years later and I got custody of the baby and the in-laws. We spent many years speaking civilly through gritted teeth and, after a decade, I guess it became a habit until, eventually, it became a pleasure and I can finally remember and appreciate some of the qualities that made me marry him in the first place ( yet without forgetting the qualities that made me divorce him either!) Extra nice is the way that Him Indoors and Mr Ex get along. Odd that I should find two men with things in common, all of which I loathe. Co-axial cable, Star Trek and camping, to name a few. They happily chattered away about sad sixties science fiction while I rolled my eyes and wondered what I ever saw in either of them.

I’ve also been enjoying the company of a very dear friend who I haven’t seen for 20 years. We went to school together in Hong Kong, a fact which is the source of yet more bliss as there is a 20 year reunion taking place there this September and she and I are going to attend. Now if there are any mothers of small children and/or teenagers out there who cannot appreciate just how glorious that thought is, let me spell it out for you. In the company of a woman I know from way-back, with whom I have so much in common; not just our joint childhoods but the similarities since like having children, running our own businesses, marriages and man-trouble, dozens of mutual old friends and a deep and abiding passion for shopping, I am going back to a country I love, to spend ten glorious days in a five star hotel, reminiscing about the 80’s with other old friends and, last but by no means least, shopping till we drop. And if you’ve never been to Hong Kong then really, you’ve never shopped. I have had the pleasure of shopping all over the world and nowhere, NOWHERE compares to Hong Kong. And all this without our children, our men, our daily responsibilities and in the full and happy knowledge that this school reunion is going to be a pleasure for us both.

I know that there are many people who are ambivalent about reunions. And I must admit to some small vanity-centred concerns myself (I’m too fat, where did all that grey hair come from, why do I suddenly seem to be growing a moustache and what are my boobs doing all the way down there?). But on the whole, I can return victorious. I run my own very successful business, I have a lovely family, I am in good health (-ish) and, overall, I can be pretty smug about my life. Clearly I should be touching wood or refraining from boasting too much at this point for fear of being run over by a bus or finding a herd of elephants have trashed the office and eaten the children. But stuff it, just for once I’m going to glory in this. I’ve done good (gosh, that’s such bad grammar) and I deserve this trip.

After all, wouldn’t you, if you could? Abandon your children, your sure-to-waste-away-without-you boyfriend, your work, your ironing pile- and all for ten hedonistic days of dim-sum, dear friends, retail therapy and Remember-When?

Too bloody right.

Lesson of the week: never underestimate my own sheer bloody mindedness.

There is nothing, nothing more likely to make me do something than telling me that I can’t. Even when it is those annoying voices in my own head doing the nay-saying.

“You’ll never walk 21km in the pouring rain.” Just watch me.

“No knitting for you, your hands are like hedgehogs.” I’ll wear gloves and cast on straight away.

“You’ll never give up wheat and dairy.” Umm, still working on that one…

You see, there is nothing I like more than a challenge (unless it is a big, hairy man bearing chocolates. I’m obstreperous, not insane!) and no sooner did I put aside my needles and feel sorry for myself than I was emailed by a dear friend to tell me that her new baby girl had finally arrived. The remains of the lusciously soft merino Sophie’s Toes sock yarn (fresh from the bastard-son-of-Pomatomus socks in the last post) were calling me. Her baby girl has deliciously brown skin and the pale pinks in my stash just weren’t rich and jewel-like enough for this little one. Only the Bouquet colourway would do on that long black hair (really, this baby has LOADS of hair. All my babies were as bald as eggs.) I couldn’t face more matted knitting so I dove into the cupboard and came up with a pair of cotton gloves. We used these at University when we did research and sifted through old documents. I slathered on plenty of hand cream, slipped on the gloves and cast on.

And promptly screwed up the lacy border. Twice.

Third time unlucky too but at that point I learnt to appreciate the individual beauty of my work and relish the unique nature of the stitches (translation: shouted Oh Sod It, and carried on regardless) and, I might be kidding myself here, I don’t think you can tell since the colours and softness of the final piece mask my buggered-up lace quite nicely. I’m rather fond of the bobble edge too.

Normally I could have done this hat in a couple of days. It took me a week. It was slow and I discovered that you can’t knit lace on slippery metal needles while wearing gloves. Save your sanity: use wood. Nor should Cosmopolitans be drunk whilst counting cast on stitches in poor light when watching thrilling films. (Somehow I bet you all knew that already. Sometimes I am truly a bear of little brain) Cocktails are de rigeur here in the summer evenings when I get to pretend to be a grown-up and wander around the patio with a cool glass in one hand and bug spray in the other. The Snow Peas (or mange tout, whatever you want to call them) were picked today. I grew those! Finally, a plant I can’t kill with neglect, ignorance or filthy looks!)

I’ve also knit some to-be-felted slippers, more of which another time. But I found that the dyed merino (my own) was not colourfast and they stained my gloves which are now soaking in various chemicals to remove the blue. Which leads me to another problem. No gloves. I only had one pair of research gloves and I can’t wait for these to be whitened and dried without shrinking. I have huge hands and they are already snug. So I’ve been stash-trawling to see what I can knit that doesn’t drag on my scratchy skin. And I’ve found something! Posh Yarn’s sock club Lucia, merino and cashmere – it doesn’t feel very soft in the skein but once washed and swatched it is luxuriously pillowy. But unwashed, it isn’t fluffy or ‘catching’ at all and, best of all, I can knit it without gloves or pain! Joy! If you haven’t found Dee’s site yet then head over to Posh Yarn and have a look. This Lucia is really easy to do complicated stuff with, it doesn’t split or fuzz up so much you can’t see the stitches, it is excellent for stitch patterns and lace because the stitch definition is excellent.

I’m planning something different for this next pair of socks. I’m sticking with toe-up (because I have visions of one long and one short sock from running out of yarn and an inherent inability to rip out a perfectly good sock just to even them up). Swatching is in progress. Stay tuned.

On the domestic front this has been a busy week. Learning new ways to eat has been ‘challenging’ (this means I’ve lost my temper a lot. Even more so than usual.) Him Indoors has perversely found it to be very pleasurable (he tells me that I cook more varied and interesting food when we are on a diet so he is thrilled that I’m having to join him on a dairy/eggs free diet). Personally, giving up milk in tea (I’m sorry, that Rice Milk and Soy milk in tea is just foul) is proving the hardest so I am weaning myself onto Green Tea. Given that I have been fuelled by Tetleys for 30 years and my children know never to turn their backs on me till I’m on my second cuppa, this is no mean feat. Bread-avoidance is difficult too although I love baking so I’m experimenting with different flours. Cornbread, it turns out, is delicious. How did I never discover this before? It does require two eggs (which we are trying to avoid because of the cholesterol and egg-substitute is not available here in NZ and sounds pretty yucky anyway) but I’m working out ways to cut that down to just one, and one loaf between 6 of us means that I think we can get away with a sixth of an egg each for Him and me.

My ex-husband has been to stay with us this week (we’re awfully civilised and modern here. He comes for Christmas and stays for a week or two to visit our son) and, it turns out, is also on a no-cholesterol diet and avoiding saturated fats etcetera. And the more friends and family I speak to, the more of us are on this kind of diet for health reasons. This is a little scary. I’m 38. Am I going to have to spend the rest of my life avoiding pizza and discussing soluble fibre with my contemporaries? Is this what old people do?

Talking of old, it’s been 20 years since I left high school. I know this because they taught me arithmetic. Also, there is a 20 year reunion this September. And I’m going! I’ll witter on about this in the next post but for those who have read this far and patiently listened to my moaning about health-led diet changes, hang on to your hairpieces because now I’m doing it for vanity. The diet has started. Time to dust off my treadmill (or at least excavate it from under the ironing) and get wobbling. There is no way I’m going to be anything less than seriously glamorous at that reunion.

Do I have time for a facelift, I wonder?

This blog has just swallowed an entire post which was HUGE, people, HUGE! Those who might have noticed my tendency to loquaciousness have good reason to be pleased, it was my longest entry ever. And in it I carefully outlined my plans for 2007 and the reasoning behind them. Because I am too damn lazy to even try and re-type the entire thing (yes, I KNOW I should save more often!) I’m going to give you the selected highlights instead. There’s good news coming soon so if today’s post makes you want to fall on your dpns then hang fire. Things will get better.

I have finally finished the Dear God Will They Never End socks. They took ages because, unbeknownst to me, knitting two at once means they take twice as long. Oddly enough, that didn’t really occur to me before. The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that they are a bastardization of Cookie’s excellent Pomatomus socks. I knit these believing that I was too sockily-inexperienced to tackle the real thing but discovered, much to my ego’s delight, that they weren’t too hard for me (though my YOs could do with some work, these socks having more holes than a bad alibi) and my illegitimate version where the pretty pattern is only worked on the leg (using Chart A) are rather lovely. I prefer short socks so only did one and a half repeats. I will wear them during winter in the carpeted office where we remove our shoes; socks being so much more professional than the fluffy pink slippers I normally wear. (Gosh, I’m just so damn chic.)

I found that the ribbing pattern simply ate width and my admittedly chunky ankles were rather strangled by the tight socks so I blocked them: first I measured the circumference of my ankle, subtracted an inch or so, divided by two to calculate the width of my sock blocker which I cut out of the bottom of an ice cream container. Insert into soaked and squeezed sock, hang on washing line, and voila!

While finishing these socks off I have been planning my next project and coming to some conclusions about my New Year’s Resolutions. Notwithstanding my mother’s recurring phone calls requesting a comprehensive List Of Ways To Mend My Ways, I’ve had to do a little bit of hard thinking recently and the New Year was an opportunity for an epoch. You see, just lately, Him Indoors and I haven’t been as well as we might be. There were, of course, plenty of warning signs: shortness of temper, tendency to snarl in Grendel-type manner, knuckles dragging along the floor behind me… you know. Also the dizziness, shaking hands, high blood pressure, insomnia and an inability to think in a straight line before, during and after our usual 14 hour working days. In short, we have been Not Looking After Ourselves and, as inevitable as the regrets after a boozy blind date in a dark bar, we are faced with the consequences.

Cue our annual healthcheck and some quality time with a man in a white coat. Him Indoors has scarily high cholesterol and, given that I am reasonably fond of the man (he gives me jewellery, after all) I’d rather not have his arteries clogged up just yet. The doctor has given us two months to get the numbers down or face the consequences (medication) and with his parting advice to eat more fish and avoid animal fats, my lifelong vegetarian and I came home to consider our options. Cutting out the fatty meat and animal fats isn’t exactly a hardship as he doesn’t eat any. He’s been a vegetarian longer than I’ve been on the planet and, given the blood tests, it’s just as well, really. I’ve been doing lots of research (one of the reasons for my recent silence) and have come to the conclusion that we are going to have to remove some things from his diet and substitute them with nutritionally balanced alternatives. So, little riddle for you: What do you call a vegetarian who doesn’t eat eggs or dairy products?

You call them a sodding vegan.

No disrespect intended to the many happy, healthy vegans out there. I admire your choices, I envy your determination in the face of an overwhelmingly omnivorous society. I just didn’t plan on having to cook for one. I love to cook. And I love meat. I adore fish and have, necessarily, had to change the way I cater to suit my partner. We eat vegetarian food, as a family, more than 3 times a week, it’s no big deal. But cheese and eggs, though not to excess, have always been part of that. And before anyone writes me a snotty email about how you can live well and longer by only consuming the plantlife, I KNOW you can. It was just never going to be at the top of my list of Fun Things To Do With My Life.

You’ll have to forgive the whingeing. You might even be wondering why my man’s new diet should affect me. I can still eat eggs and dairy products, yes?

Actually no. The same annual healthcheck that told my partner that he was toting too much artery-cement told me the same thing. And, to top it off, I can’t knit.

Yes, you read that right. I can’t knit right now. Want to see why? Look:

This, my friends, is psoriasis. A delightful skin condition I’ve been enjoying for 20 years. Some lucky types get it on their elbows and knees. Others get it under their nails and the lucky few have it in their joints as psoriatic arthritis. Occasionally it occurs on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. Others get it on their scalp. Oh joy, dandruff without the dandruff! You have no idea how many people sidle up to you to suggest Head and Shoulders. Really. Some of them even say things like “Can’t you ask your doctor to give you something for that?” to which the only correct answer has to be “Yes, of course I can. But I like to shed my skin like some oversized lizard and enjoy the light frosting it gives my shoulders when I wear black. I like leaving little trails of skin behind me like Hansel and Gretel in the forest, allowing me to find my way home. The doctors can fix it but I LIKE being like this!”

Whoops, sorry, ranting again.

Well, lucky me, I hit the jackpot. I have them all. And, up till now, I’ve tried just about every treatment going - with the exception of the new biologic drug treatments which are terrifyingly expensive. Mostly I avoid dermatolgists (successfully, for the last 5 years) which hasn’t done my psoriasis any harm - it’s the same as it has always been. Everywhere. Only now, despite quarts of moisturizer, my hands are once again too dry, cracked and peeling to touch my yarn. Notice the fuzziness to my socks? That lovely merino was PILLING as I knitted it. Not the yarn’s fault at all, it was never intended to be handled by Velcro Woman.

Now you’ll have to excuse my wallowing in self-pity for a moment. Normally the psoriasis doesn’t bug me - quite frankly, after two decades you rather get used to it. But, as it is stopping me from knitting which is my stress-safety-valve, I’m a little uptight. Which leads me onto my New Years Ruminations.

For various reasons, I have to consider my health. “Live well or die young” they say. Well, I’m not young any more (as my little sisters keep pointing out. The cows.) Wish though I might, I’m not going to wake up one morning and find that I suddenly have the body I always wanted. Neither will I magically become elegantly slender by eating soup for a week or getting on the treadmill once in a blue moon.Nor can I justify mortgaging the children to pay for a new medical treatment until I have tried, REALLY tried, all the alternatives. Given that the dermatologists’ unholy trinity of drugs, creams and light-rays are out (been there, done that, had the liver biopsy) that leaves the naturopathic, holistic route. I’ve been researching that, too. And, in true karmic coincidental fashion, it looks like a vegan diet is the most hopeful of the alternative food-centric approaches.

Can anyone guess what is coming up next? Well, you’re wrong. I’m not giving up meat. Or fish. But I am giving up everything else. Dairy products, eggs, wheat, processed food, coffee, alcohol (mostly) and all those lovely empty calories that make life so sweet. I have learnt more about nutrition in the last week than I did during two years of study for my A level in the subject. I’ve learnt about nuts, about amino acids, about gluten (that’s going too. Sob.) and the joyfulness of raw food.

I started a week ago. The thought of a cream bun makes me want to cry. And, dear God, how I miss bacon butties. I know I’ll feel better for it (just not yet) and I know my children will be glad (maybe, probably, if I stop snarling) when I don’t drop dead of a heart attack from all the sausages and chips. But, just for now… let me whimper in my lentil hell.