Mad Hair Day

Whatever made me think I could knit? If the monstrous Sheep Jumper wasn’t bad enough, I have now been cursed by the Sock Gods, and rendered incapable of fashioning a toe up sock that fits my toes.

Thank you, no, my feet are not particularly deformed. But I can think of no other reason why I have now knit this sock SIX flaming times! SIX!

Up until now, I have successfully knit five socks (that’s five separate socks, not five pairs. You’ll notice that’s an odd number. Best not to speak of it) using three different yarns and three different toe-up techniques – I’ve managed short row toes, a weird version of short row toes (I forgot what I was doing but it fitted fine so I carried on. If I wasn’t such a complete dimwit I’d have written it down) and I’ve used the Round Toe from Sensational Knitted socks. All of which have been fine! Perfect!

This time I am knitting the Easy Toe (pah!) from SKS and using Posh Yarn’s Lucia in what I think is their cover colourway? It was the last of my Sock Club arrivals and I love it to distraction. I’m seriously adoring it, despite the tears and the whole how-many-more-bloody-times toe thing, I can’t keep my hands off this yarn. Look, isn’t it just lovelylicious? (I can’t seem to get the colours right on my photos today, the yarn is really a meltingly gorgeous blend of cherry pinks, lime green and other hints of other colours. It is scrumptious)

The Anzac biscuits were (very, very briefly) delicious too. Then they were gone.

Perhaps I’m being punished for neglecting the twin of my Mint Julep sock:

I haven’t blocked it yet but it fits beautifully and I’ll need to finish the other one (okay, I need to cast on the other one!) and compare them as I knit, in the hope of getting a matched set. I made the lace stitch pattern by altering Oriel Lace and it is pretty ribby really, having a bit of stretch and looking pretty on my foot. I’m hoping I can find the envelope (I use the back of an envelope for everything) that I used to scribble down the pattern. These were knit from Posh Yarn Lucia too. I’m loving this yarn. Thank goodness I have a stash of it – I tell myself that I’m still a knitter (even if everything does turn out wrong) as long as I have yarn. “Of course I can knit socks! I have sock yarn!” – just like “Of course we’re not broke! I still have cheques!”

Actually, I’ve been a little distracted lately. We have news (I’m NOT pregnant) and I’m knitting for a new arrival. Or two (No! Definitely NOT pregnant). I may have finally found a use for the superscratchy my-first-homespun-twine yarn! Yay!

This was originally intended to be sock yarn but it is like the rough stuff they used to tie up brown paper parcels. I had hopes of it softening once swatched and washed but no. It’s a pot scubber and as much as I love the barberpole red, peach and eggyolk colous, I can’t bring myself to inflict it on anyone’s bare skin.

But now, I have a plan. It may involve double-pointed needles (my nemesis) and it may not be pretty. But after the The Sheep, how bad can it be?

My brother is about to turn 40. That might not be earth shattering news to anybody, even those of us who know him, but it is a little disconcerting as just lately I seem to be being reminded repeatedly of my age. If my big brother is nearly half-of-eighty years old then that makes me (wait while I work this out on my fingers) (okay, fingers and toes)… middle aged.

Now I’m okay with that. Age is just a number, after all (you might want to check back with me once I hit the Big Four-Oh) but when everyone around me starts having mid-life-crises about grey hair, pension funds and crows’ feet it’s bound to have an effect. I’m not about to get a cosmetic surgeon to restore my once-perky-bits nor am I going to buy a red sports car and start groping the office juniors. I know that I have grey hair on my head (although I’m kept in a state of blissful and expensive denial, thanks to our friends at Clairol) and I don’t know about the grey hairs anywhere else thanks to a conveniently tubby tummy (Yay! At last! A justification for pot-bellies!) I wouldn’t swap my commonsense, fabulous jewellery and cleaning lady of today for all the pneumatic breasts and tight buttocks of my youth, even if I could.

But still, tempus fugit, and all that.

All this sudden “Oh My God We Are About To Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil And I Still Haven’t Done Everything On My Things-To-Do-Before-I’m-Dead-List” has been brought on by having to sign my will. Definitely a good thing to do, especially if you have children, and I took the opportunity to compile a few notes (okay, more like a weighty tome) about funeral directions, dispersal of personal effects and cheerful stuff like that. It also brought on a little spring cleaning (just a little) – even though it is autumn Down Here. (The thought of other people rummaging through my deplorable underwear drawer was enough to make me have a bit of a clear out. You know you’re getting old when all it contains is corrective underwear made from industrial strength elastic) And one thing led to another…

In the back of the bedroom is what we call the Closet of Shame. ( I’m talking fugly knitting, not S & M) and I found this…

This, my friends, is proof positive that you should never let a man who hates shopping choose your yarn. Or the pattern (gauge, what gauge? I used the needles it said on the pattern!) Note the particularly attractive baggy arms – although it does occur to me now that the saggy flesh on my upper arms is likely to fill those soon (maudlin? me?). What the hell was I thinking? This took me hours and hours of my (rapidly diminishing) life- surely at some point it must have occured to me that furry yellow yarn is not a good idea on roll neck jumpers for chunky ladies?

Him Indoors came into the bedroom while I was trying this on. I shan’t repeat what he said, suffice to say it was an expression of appreciation for my assets. I expressed some disbelief at the possibility of anyone finding me attractive whilst I was dressed like a fat sheep.

He smiled.

Silly me.

He’s Welsh.

Baaaa.

Talking of little things, I have admitted defeat with my new mobile phone. Still can’t get the damn photos off and now I’m calling in the heavies. What is the point of having technicians lounging about the workshop, making the place look untidy if you don’t make them bully the computer into working properly for their boss? So here, finally, is a shot of the scarf, modelled by Thing One and Thing Two (you’ll notice the Mad Hair runs in the family).

As soon as these photos were taken I posted it off. My friend loved the scarf – she’s worn it every day since she opened the parcel, even appearing in public with it. I guess that makes it a hit!

So, giddy with success, I’ve been trying to make more laceweight, which is not a type of yarn that is stocked by any wool shop anywhere near me. I bought the lace flyer for my Ashford wheel but found it did a wonderful job of making me cry into my merino, which only encouraged the roving to dissolve into a felted mass in my sweaty little paws as the stuff is so slippery I couldn’t finely spin more than an inch of it without it breaking.

So I took some advice (I know! I can’t believe it either!) and learnt to spin laceweight on a spindle. Of course, I only had my dowel and Fimo clay homemade spindle which was too heavy for the finer gauge singles so I bought a new spindle from John, the Spindlemaker who has an Etsy shop. We discussed woods, whorls and shafts and, when I couldn’t decide between a top whorl with a hook or a bottom whorl with a notch, he kindly make me one with both.

It spins forever and so far I have turned the fluffy backyarn romney handcarded fleece into what feels like miles (but is probably only twenty yards) of incredibly skinny singles. I still haven’t got the knack of top whorl but as I can spin the spindle bottom whorl while drafting and producing 5 foot of yarn at a time, I’m not that bothered. The shaft is red cedar and the whorl is made from Rose Sheok and it is a thing of great beauty. If you fancy treating yourself to a custom made spindle then go and see John, he’s an absolute sweetie.

You know, despite the hectic pace of life just lately I do seem to have been very productive. As well as the scarf I’ve also plied and wound my Sprite-spun singles into two ply yarn (which is both scratchy and overspun, I’ve no idea what to do with it) and I’ve been sewing too. My sister, who bribes me with chocolate, asked me to make her a 1950’s style apron to go with her 50’s style house. Happy as ever to oblige a woman who understands about me and the whole cocoa bean addiction thing, I produced this – a slightly modified Butterick pattern – and am part way through making another for me. We decided too leave out the shoulder ruffles as neither of us needed the illusion of extra width (she’s going to love me for saying that! )

I’m very pleased with the way it worked out although I haven’t been able to resist making a few more changes to the pattern for my one – Him Indoors says he doesn’t believe I am actually capable of following any pattern – knitting or sewing – without making alterations of some sort or other. I like to think of it as Being Creative. He says it is Thinking I Know Better. Eldest Daughter, who was within earshot, agreed with him. “Mummy knows everything, Daddy” and Littlest One nodded sagely.

For a few precious years I am omniscient. And I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

I have a teenager, I know these things.

I am a little ambivalent about technology. It offers many delights, not least of which is blogging, along with the limitless source of information from online libraries, websites and the experience of others freely shared. Technology also provides a source of fairly constant guilt. There is always something new to be learnt and when your livelihood depends on keeping abreast of new developments it is easy to become convinced that every breakthrough has been orchestrated with the underlying intention to make your life difficult: a new protocol to be implemented, new architecture to be adopted, more and more complex programming languages to be absorbed, as if by osmosis, during my already chockablock days. We wade through this technology like running through treacle and nothing is simple anymore. Even my new toaster came with a manual – how difficult can it be to scorch bread? But then sole purpose appliances are the dodos of our modern age. When was the last time you bought a tool which only performed one task? My food processor can be forgiven for chopping as it grates as it blends as it whips, but my breadmaker doesn’t just make bread – it kneads and proves and bakes, yes, but it also makes jam, pickles, porridge and soup. Is it any wonder that, surrounded by these multi-purpose robots, we choose to blinker ourselves, shun the manuals and only enjoy a small percentage of their potential benefits?

Technology overload is a common ailment in our particular industry. When you work with computers it is particulary tempting to become selectively stupid when it comes to the innovations available in the home. How else to account for Big Hairy Man’s laudable skills in bullying computers to bend to his will and explain his well-documented inability to understand the mysteries of the washing machine and the wildly confusing ‘Start’ button which requires single event user interaction to activate the pre-programmed process to achieve the desired result. Or the dishwasher which has the complexity of THREE wash programs in conjunction with a binary operating system (On/Off).

But I can’t complain too loudly as this would be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I can’t cope with gears on a car (I can’t cope with ratios on a spinning wheel either, it seems there is some common concept which eludes me here. But then, I can’t work out the point of Scotch tension or how to get rid of it). It will come as no surprise to anyone then that I have still not managed extract my photographs from my new mobile phone. Him Indoors bought me a new cellphone because my old one ran out of battery power within hours and I deliberately left it behind whenever possible although the digital camera is never far from my hand. He insists that it is necessary to to be in touch constantly and I must admit it has turned out to be very helpful at odd times (like when wandering the supermarket in my usual daze and wondering, as I do on every visit, whether or not we have any toilet rolls and buying another 2 dozen, just in case. Rest assured, when next the flood hits, we’ll be well prepared. I’ll just build a 2 ply, cottony-soft, absorbent dam). Recent events down here have brought me round to his way of thinking and, in a startling display of shrewdness, Big Hairy Man got me a camera phone – 5 megapixels, bluetooth (somehow that just doesn’t sound hygienic) and texting-capable and with a really easy menu that even I can cope with. I should point out that I’m not completely hopeless with this whole technology stuff. I have a Master’s Degree in Computer Science, yet until a couple of weeks ago I had never sent or recieved a text message. My old phone remained a mystery to me and I kept the phone numbers of my nearest and dearest on the back of envelopes which lurked in the recesses and corners of my handbags, needing bag-excavation like an archaeological dig whenever I wanted to call anybody. But oh, my new phone…

I love texting! What on earth was I so afraid of? It’s like emailing (and I love emailing) – only I can do it anywhere, albeit with an annoyingly small keyboard. I also refuse to abbreviate words, misspell anything or omit the punctuation. This is driving my sisters nuts – but then, that’s what sisters are for.

I love it, I truly do. In fact, I love it so much that I have now made it two phone-cosies to protect it from the dangers of keys, hair clips, swiss army knives, nail files, knitting needles and assorted other spiky things that lie in ambush for the unwary in my handbag. The first was a speedily sewn double-thickness fleece sleeping bag with drawstring that was finished before the battery completed charging. The second is this:

Knitted on thin needles with chunky acrylic and cabled for snugness. I wrestled every stitch, I really did. Knitting with too-skinny needles means that you are fighting the yarn at every stitch – and cabling was a tussle requiring a cable needle, brute strength and arnica for my bruised fingers. But it resulted in a very dense fabric which is pretty much impenetrable by the nasties.

I’m now working on weaving another cosy – I don’t have a loom but am occasionally tempted and, in a fit of Blue-Peter-ishness, made one from the lid of a shoebox, a fork, two metal rulers and a wooden spoon. Here it is, warped with some blue acrylic and wefted (?) with my lumpy white singles for texture, the product of my first attempts at spinning.

I shall back the woven fabric with something dense and make an envelope-style case for my new pet. It must be quick to unwrap, stay closed despite my rummaging around in my purse and be attached by a cord or ribbon to the phone itself – otherwise I shall lose it on its first outing when I discard it to answer a call. The loop also serves to tether the camera to my wrist when photographing as I am a notorious butterfingers. It says something sad about my obsession with my new toy that the next cover is already planned, a sashiko quilted case with red top-stitching and a yet-to-be-decided closure. Odd that my mobile phone should be better accessorized than I am.

Now if only I could work out how to upload the photographs from it, my life would be complete.

Despite March being the month from hell, I did actually manage to get some knitting and spinning done. In fact, now that I try to assemble all of my FOs for their mugshots it turns out there was quite a lot of stuff worked on and actually completed. Including my first piece of laceweight. Now before anyone gets excited and thinks that I have actually managed to produce a lace stole in gossamer yarn let me put you straight. This is the variegated scarf I was knitting for a friend. After trying many different lace stitches and loathing them all in the stripey yarn, I chickened out and did a 30 stitch garter stitch rectangle which used up only half the skein of Touch Yarn merino/mohair that I bought on impulse and loathed on the needles. It’s also, believe it or not, the only scarf I’ve ever knitted. Partly because I avoid going anywhere cold enough to need one and partly because I have a very low boredom threshold and just the thought of knitting an endless rectangle is enough to send me into a coma of ennui.

I had my doubts about this scarf all the way through. A doubting Thomas at every inch. The colours pooled (but consistently and I didn’t mind) and the length worked up quite quickly and, being a mindless knit, I twiddled away through one crisis after another trying to ignore the colours which I know my friend will love but are giving me a headache:

It’s massive, folks! 62 inches long and just 5 inches wide. I doubted you see, I had no faith in the bloggers of the worlds overwhelming evidence despite their careful photographs, meticulous documentation and vast experience. I knew better. I knew it wouldn’t get that much bigger because I am a tense woman (the Quasimodo style twist in my neck can testify to that. I’m so stressed I’m wound up like a pretzel) and my knitting is tight. Damn tight.

The stitches weren’t doing it for me either. My friend knits and although she isn’t fibre obsessed she can tell the difference between garter stitch for dingbats and brain-bleeding cables. She’d know that this was a psychedelic pot-scrubber ill-conceived creation which clearly indicated a lack of love and respect on my part for the glamour and Vogue-worthy wardrobe on hers. Obviously the fact that this yarn contained all her favourite colours was no mitigating circumstance. It look like muppet vomit and I should be restricted to single solid colours until I learn some taste. Look:

Actually, it doesn’t look too bad in this photo – maybe because there isn’t much of it in view. I was taken with the idea of blocking wires to get a straight edge but didn’t actually have any so I raided Dad’s shed and made off with some fishing line which I threaded through the edge stitches with a wool needle. I was clearly channelling a better knitter at this point as it did occur to me to do this before soaking it. The yarn wasn’t dirty and I’ve been carrying it everywhere in a bag as I was sure I’d snag it on something and ruin it, so it only got an hour long warm soak in fabric conditioner before a quick rinse soak. Then I wrapped it in a towel and stood on it.

At this point I lost confidence again and sought comfort in the blogs of others. I read about Juno’s blocking foam tiles and remembered the interlocking Dora The Explorer hopscotch floor tiles my girls had got for Christmas. I laid them out in a long line, covered them in a clean white towel and pinned out the scarf.

It was at this point that I discovered that everyone else in the knitting universe was right and that I was a nitwit. It had indeed grown. From 62″ to 74″, 5″ wide to 9″ (with a little encouragement) (I’m fighting the urge to make some remark about many things getting to 9″ with a little encouragement but I shall resist)

Then I pinned the ends. Then I pinned the sides as the fishing line did not stop it from curving in towards the centre. Then I pinned some more. Then I tried to get the edges parrallel and failed. Then I found I could stretch it a little more. People, tell me, how do you know when to stop the pinning? When all your pins are bent? When the blood to your feet is cut off and you can’t hobble to the cupboard for tins of beans (don’t ask. You’ll see)

I pinned till I couldn’t stretch it any more, despite the ends being an inch wider than the middle. But…

The scarf was under such tension that it was curling up the foam tiles. So, with true Blue Peter badge winning resourcefulness, I raided the larder and weighed down the tiles with every tin I could find. It worked a treat. Then I set my alarm clock for Godawful o’clock in the morning so I could be up and unpinning before the girls woke up.

Even at 6am the next day, despite my Don’t-Do-Mornings grumpiness, even I was impressed. This thing is transparent. It is light and airy and so delicate that I daren’t touch it. I took photographs with my new camera but have entirely failed to install the drivers for it on my computer so I can’t show them to you today but tomorrow, well, prepare to be amazed. I was a fool to doubt you! You were all right! Lace is miraculous!

Many years ago I was told by a dear aunt that she was not celebrating 40 years of marriage, despite what it said on the big pink cake – she was only celebrating 20 of them. This was because for the other 20 years she had been married she’d wanted to throttle my uncle and make off with the life insurance. Being a newlywed at the time I had expressed some surprise at this sentiment and she gave me some very sage advice:

She told me that anyone who loved their husband for every moment of their time together was either mad or drugged. That normal people pissed each other off. A lot. And that that was okay. Sometimes you hate them, sometimes you love them. As long as it worked out about 50/50 (or the sex was seriously good) then you could count yourself lucky. She wasn’t far off the mark there. I spend some nights lying awake, scared that he might die first. I spend others awake planning how to dispose of the body.

You might have gathered that it has not all been wine and roses around here lately. And you’d be right. In times of great stress, in the absence of a common uniting enemy, Big Hairy Man and I shout at each other in order to solve the problems of our world. Oddly enough, it has never occured to us in the last ten years that this has not solved anything but only makes us more cross with each other. You’d think that two reasonably intelligent people would find alternative ways to cope with the trials of modern life, three children and small business management. You’d be wrong…

Until this Thursday when the schizophrenic weather gave us a karmic kick up the arse. It rains a lot here in New Zealand. You might have noticed. But this time, the heavens outdid themselves and dumped three months worth of rain on us in a mere 36 hours. That’s over 400mm of water. And you know what? That little flood we had before turned out to be a blessing in disguise because if we hadn’t had that inch of water in the carpet we wouldn’t have had the frenzied over-zealous ditch-deepening done and without that the entire house would have been washed out this week.

This time it was much worse. It started raining the day before and got heavier and heavier. Then the flooding began. The State Highway was closed, there were frantic phone calls from the daycare centre and schools to come and collect our children before they were unreachable as the roads flooded. I was stuck an hour and a half south of town, babysitting my nephew and niece. Big Hairy Man was uncontactable (I found his mobile phone when I called him and found my handbag vibrating) as he’d taken our youngest to get her arm x-rayed for a suspected fracture (I know, I know, it never rains but it pours. It turns out her arm is fine but I didn’t know that at the time) and I spent a frantic half hour sobbing in a gift shop trying to contact anyone I knew to get them to collect my other two children and get them home safely. The roads north (to home) were closed as were the ones south of town so my brother and his wife could not get home again either. I eventually got hold of my sister who drove to the rescue and then got stranded herself as the waters got too high for her car. She had to be rescued along with her car-full of kids by my brother-in-law and Him Indoors in their four-wheel-drives.

By then many of the roads were closed off, rivers having burst their banks, ditches and streams overflowed in many places washing debris and branches onto the road, blocking off routes from one area to another. Further south, train-tracks and sections of road were being washed away entirely. Having rescued my sister and loaded the kids up in the four wheel drives, they all drove off in convoy up through the back roads and through the forest, up to the turn-off where, at 3pm, my sister and her husband waved good-bye to my partner and kids who drove off down a windy, steep dirt road which would eventually get them back home. And that was the last we heard of my family… the phones were out, the mobile phone coverage was down and the whole area was cut off.

People, that was the longest night of my life. I knew that he was a good driver and would have pulled over if the road had been too bad. I knew that there were a few houses and farms along that road where they could have sheltered. I knew other cars would have taken the same route and probably seen and called for help if anything had gone wrong. I knew they had probably reached home and were safe, dry and not really upside down in the car at the bottom of a cliff under a landslide of mud. I knew all this but I still spent the night desperately trying to call home and rocking back and forth in a corner.

The phone finally rang at 7 the next morning, he’d been trying to call me all night too. He’d been worried about me driving back to my brother’s house from town – a 20 minute drive which took 70 minutes of white-knuckled steering-wheel-strangling terror over winding flooded roads in the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen.

I eventually got home the next day, having driven through green valleys that had huge lakes which weren’t there two days before. I hugged my family. Hairy Man and I haven’t argued since. I’m not saying we won’t because I know we will, it’s just there’s nothing like staring into the abyss to make you appreciate what you’ve got.