Return to Wick

We took a trip across The (Pentland) Firth last Wednesday. I took my camera but it never made it out of my handbag sadly. We went mainly to meet up with someone we had previously only known virtually; mainly because he designed and set up our respective web sites. If you want to look at his work then click the Poppy's Place and Orkney Archaeology Society links at top right. He's very good and his rates are very competitive. Should you be in the market for a website.

Anyway we met up and had lunch and although the plan had been to scour Wick afterwards for light fittings /wardrobes/ bookshelves and bathroom suppliers in the event we only had time to get to Homebase. Which was rubbish for most of those things but came up trumps in the light fittings department. As a result both OH's office and my study now have new multi light fittings with very bright bulbs which means we can actually see what we're doing. A great improvement.

 

We also have enough light bulbs to last out the millennium I should think. We bought LED's for OH's but I couldn't face getting another 4 for my new light at a tenner a pop so I got a pack of ordinary ones with 10 bulbs in it. Then when we got home and broke the fittings out of the packet it was to discover that they both came with bulbs in anyway. Of course, if we'd known we wouldn't have bought the other bulbs,  which presumably is why it doesn't say they have bulbs already on the box.

 

The lunch though was fine although be aware that if you ever find yourself in the rather twee- ly named Wickers World and order the ploughman's, which is fast becoming my default lunch order when I'm out, you need to ask separately for bread. Otherwise it's just a plate of cheeses and pickles. Nice ones, but they do  need a bit of something. Like bread.  

 

Nothing wrong with the company, but.

Vera

I think the new series of Vera finished last evening which is a good as reason as any to say that I've enjoyed it. I wasn't sure when it was first aired, and I know a lot of people moa about the accents, but really if that's the best you can find to moan about in a detective drama then they're doing something right. (Although I do think someone should have told Brenda Blethyn that no-one in the North East would pronounce her name Stan-Hope. It's  Stannup. And I say that advisedly with a Geordie mother and the first twelve years of my life spent in County Durham)

One of the things that I like about Vera is that in it people kill for sad yet understandable reasons which makes it a lot more poignant than some other detective dramas which are really just about inflicting gory and gratuitous violence mainly on women. In Vera, it's not always a woman who is murdered, and even when it is, it isn't by some random and terrifyingly sadistic serial killer who appears from nowhere with a mission to carve up every female who crosses his path. It's all a lot more sensible and intelligent than that.

What I Did (Finished) in August

I actually managed to do the Literary KAL in August  which was amazing because I haven't made that for a couple of months. This month's author(s) were The Brontes and I made this

 

The pattern is one I've had in my queue for a while and it suited this KAL because it's based on a shawl worn by the eponymous character (I'm sorry, I can't say heroine in this instance) in the latest film version of Jane Eyre. I loathe Charlotte Bronte's work*, and what I know of her as a person I dislike heartily; on the upside, I had the yarn and it's lovely and warm and squooshie and a good colour on me, and someone had just sent me that beautiful shawl pin so obviously (ha!) I needed to knit a shawl to use it in.

Next up the grandson's Faroe Isles jumper

I hope you can see why I had to knit it, despite the stripe issue.

Sadly neither of these patterns was without errors/ambiguities, and an inexperienced knitter would do well to avoid them. I know my shawl isn't quite right, but then I'm only going to be using it at home for an extra cuddly layer on winter evenings so I can live with that. There's something well off about the sizing of that jumper though, unless children in The Faroes are a very odd shape.

And then a couple of small items for my friend's Asylum Seekers Christmas gifts

a cowl and a scarf.

I may have shot my bolt as far as the asylum seekers Christmas goes as I'm currently working through some baby wool for another charitable organisation, but we'll see.

* I've said this before but it bears repeating, the best and most powerful Bronte book is Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. For the alert reader far more shocking, wide ranging and real than anything Charlotte ever produced. Sadly though I couldn't find a pattern called Wildfell!

 

#Ihateknittinglace*

In fact I don't know why I bother trying. A friend was mentioning some cashmere that she had knitted up recently and that reminded me that put away somewhere I had one precious skein of Mongolian Cashmere Laceweight yarn.

I thought, now that I was minded on, that  I'd do something with it so I poured over patterns in Ravelry for hours, wound the skein into a ball - by hand, lest my lovely winding machine break the stuff  - and yesterday I cast on and did the first 14 rows of the selected pattern.

Do not be impressed with this, as the first 10 rows were garter stitch. I did one repeat of the first section of the lace pattern. It's Orenburg lace apparently. Who knew? Who cared?

Tonight I did one and a half rows of the pattern and discovered I had gone wrong and was 6 stitches short. I took back one row and was 4 stitches short. I took back another row, and those of you have been paying attention will realise I am now one row down on yesterday and it still wasn't right, probably because I had lost some of the knitted together stitches as I took them out. So then I pulled out the whole thing and picked up a different and much simpler project to work on.

 

The thing is there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to knit lace. I can do cables, and fair isle and if pushed intarsia.  I'm not incompetent. Maybe it's just a question of concentration. Or practice. Maybe one of these months you will see a picture on here of the beautiful lace scarf I have managed to produce from my Mongolian cashmere.

 

But as Aragorn almost said, That month is not this month.

 

* And coming soon unless they get their fingers out and respond to my 5 day old complaint -  '#IhateInterflora'

M-A-L-A-Z-A-N!

No it's not a war cry, although it would make quite a good one, and a change from Banzai. If anyone ever did use Banzai as a war cry.

Malazan is the name of an empire which is at the centre of a ten book series of fantasy novels by a guy called Steven Eriksson, overall title The Malazan Book of the Fallen. I tried book one ( Gardens of the Moon) a couple of years ago and gave up about two thirds of the way through, but for some reason, possibly the long wait for what will doubtless be yet another underpar offering from George R R Martin when he can be bothered to churn it out, I decided to give Eriksson another go. A lot of GRRM fans and former fans spoke/wrote very highly of Eriksson's work so I thought maybe it was worth giving it another chance.

 

 

And as it turns out it certainly was. I am reading the series as rapidly as I can and am about two thirds of the way through Book 3 with Book 4 on the shelf waiting. Erikson trained as an anthropologist and an archaeologist and the depth of his world building really reflects that. I am in awe of his apparently limitless imagination and the originality he brings to the genre.

 

Given the overall title I decided right at the very beginning that I was not going to get attached to any of the characters since chances were that even if they survived the book in which they first appeared they wouldn't survive the next one. Despite my best efforts some of the characters have drawn me in and when one of them describes the story of Book 2  as one  'to make your heart break', it's not too much of an exaggeration.

 

Fantasy isn't everyone's cup of tea I know, and given some of the authors I've encountered while exploring the genre I can't say I'm surprised. If you're reading this and you like fantasy I would urge you to read Eriksson, but I won't, because I suspect I'm the last one to the party and you already have.

I'm Tired.

For a few weeks now I've been having some pretty unpleasant medical tests, and although everyone along the way assured me they were being ultra cautious and there was 'probably nothing to worry about', and although on the surface I was reassured by that and 'not worrying', it wasn't until last Thursday when I saw the consultant and got the all clear that I realised how much I had been worrying.

 

The Cat Lorenzo has also decided that it's much more fun to bring live prey into the house and let it go than just lay dead voles at our feet and this has led to some very disturbed nights. Especially since the OH feels obliged to capture and rescue the said prey which, in the case of some rather nifty fast moving Orkney mice, takes some doing.

 

And today I went into college and did some concentrated work. And met someone new to talk to - my study mate as it were. And came home on the bus with some people I know and who I talked to all the way home.

 

I assume all these things have contributed to the fact that I feel absolutely knackered and am already contemplating bed at the very early hour, for me, of 10.30.