Guilt Trip - Stash Enhancement

I do believe I have mentioned before that I have too much wool. Even for someone who knits almost every day, as I do, I have too much wool. Not too much wool in the sense of Wool BLE (which, for those of you who don't know, is knitters shorthand for Beyond Life Expectancy) but still too much in the sense of I don't know when I think I will find the time to knit it all up.

 

The sensible answer to this 'problem' (and believe me I know plenty of people who wouldn't categorise this as a problem at all) is obvious. I knit every day, right? So every day I am using up some wool, right? So, if I don't buy any more wool, but knit at the same rate, then one day all my wool will be gone, right?

 

Wrong.

 

Wrong in many ways but mainly wrong because there is no way you can stop a knitter buying wool. It is easier to give up smoking, than it is to give up buying wool. (Ask me how I know)

 

I try. I do try. And I used to be quite successful. Orkney isn't the best place in the world to buy anything much in the wool line, other than fairly standard big company stuff. And except for the occasional garment for my grandson, fairly standard big company stuff is no longer what I knit with. And in the days when I didn't do much internet shopping that was fine. Stash enhancement was a slow, almost imperceptible, process.

 

Then I discovered Ravelry. And got over my qualms about shopping on line.

 

We will draw a veil. I may have gone ever so slightly mad.

 

But then my sensible self kicked in  and it all slacked off. Nowadays I really only buy wool when I'm away, on the grounds that it's stuff I can't get at home. I also don't buy wool if I don't have something in mind to do with it, which I find is good for focused buying.

 

We were away recently, taking Son No 2 back to college - for his last term too, scary stuff. We spent a lovely day exploring the East Neuk o' Fife and I was very pleased to find the woolly brew; a lovely yarn shop in Pittenweem. Pittenweem also had a very lovely café called something like The Cocoa Tree. If you're ever in Pittenweem go to The Cocoa Tree. It's yummy.

 

Anyway in The Woolly Brew I bought some wool, to wit (as they used to say) this -

 

 

and this

 

and this

 

 

Obviously this is Not Wool. This is coffee and cake at The Cocoa Tree.

 

I'm not feeling too guilty about this little buying spree because the cream chunky wool is now almost a finished waistcoat/sleeveless cardigan thing for me  and half the brightly coloured ball on the bottom right of the second picture is a sock for the OH. I don't know whether I have previously mentioned his propensity for bright, hand knitted socks. If I haven't - well I have now. And he picked all three of those balls of sock wool himself. And made me buy them. And the stitch markers aren't even for me. So really, honestly, most of that has hardly hit the stash at all.

I Must Have Died and Gone to Heaven

because terrestrial TV could never be this promising...

Next week not one, not two, but three of my favourite actors come to the small screen; Philip Glenister (who I've loved since he was a brilliant  Dobbin in Vanity Fair) , Steven Mackintosh ( who I've loved blah blah blah John  Harmon/Rokesmith in Our Mutual Friend) and Iain Glen (ditto Mr Preston, Wives and Daughters)

 

However, tempting though it is to let joy be unconfined etc etc I am actually keeping my joy very strictly confined indeed until I see what the dramas they are in are actually like. Because I've been misled before - it's amazing how often  even good actors turn up in some real rubbish. Notorious examples include Richard Armitage in that awful Robin Hood  and of course Mr Glen in the truly appalling Breathless.

 

However it must be said that the timing is brilliant because the Mackintosh/Glenister duo are appearing on Thursday evening. Thursday afternoon will be seeing me in full 'Rabbit in Headlights' mode, because I have my Ph D Probationary Meeting then. Basically this means full supervisory team grilling me about a piece of written work I have submitted to them; in advance so they all have a chance to think up some horrible questions and some really snarky comments. If they don't like what I've written/what I say then they can recommend cancelling my Ph D registration.

 

Now I don't really think that they will. In fact, now that I am almost convinced that my subject supervisor doesn't think I'm as thick as a brick I'm a lot happier. But I don't like being a performing seal, which is what this session will basically be - Here Anne, here's a big brightly coloured ball of a sneaky question, how long can you balance this one on your nose? and I don't like what stress like this does to my body. By the time I get home I will be exhausted and feeling very frail, so the prospect of being able to curl up on the sofa in the evening and watch Part 1 of whatever it's called is quite appealing.

 

Oh and I forgot to add that Krister Henrikkson is back as the most compelling and credible Wallander on BBC4 on Saturday too. Next week - TV heaven.

 

 

A Really Quite Funny Story

Since we moved to Orkney I have written a short piece about our life here every quarter for the magazine of the church where I worshipped in Leeds. I recently came across this offering again from Summer 2012 and really it is too funny not to share.

A couple of weekends ago Andy went out to the byre and as he walked back through the front door he said ‘I found a really strange bird lying on the floor of the byre by the door; it’s very pretty but I’ve no idea what it is’. My response to this was to grunt ‘Oh’, in the semi-interested tone I use when I know something has enthused him but which really doesn’t excite me at all. In fact I didn’t even look up from my knitting. As it turned out, that was a mistake as it  meant that I was perfectly unprepared to have the said  bird thrust under my nose for inspection.

Now I am not particularly fond of birds close up. A lot of our friends and neighbours keep chickens and point out that, with all our land we could do the same. We could keep lots. Tens! Hundreds! Egg factory! (Well perhaps they don’t go so far as the egg factory). When this happens I mutter something about the form filling, and the general susceptibility of poultry to a myriad of bizarre diseases and what a tie they are when, like us, you really are rather attached to holidays. I never say that hens actually creep me out with their wicked little eyes and their sharp pointy beaks and their nasty head bobbing habit. In fact one of the worst moments of my life in Orkney came when an overenthusiastic friend, showing off her newly acquired poultry, bent down, scooped up one of birds and thrust her into my arms exhorting me to  ‘say hello to Henny-Penny’. I’m really rather proud of the fact that I didn’t immediately drop the luckless Henny-Penny and run screaming in the opposite direction.

So you will understand that I wasn’t best pleased to have a dead bird, however pretty, waved around six inches from my face. I may have expressed a certain amount of displeasure, possibly in a higher than usual voice and possibly quite loudly. I know I asked him to take it away. Asked him several times when  he didn’t seem to be  responding quickly enough (like at the speed of light) to my initial request.

He took it out as far as the hall and laid it tenderly on the window sill; then he took a photo and started looking it up in his bird books. I pointed out that now he had the photo, he didn’t actually need the bird itself in the house for identification.

‘I hope it’s not a corncrake’ he said, ignoring my comment completely. ‘ It looks a bit like one and you’re supposed to report sightings. It wouldn’t look good if we were reporting a corncrake that one of the cats had got.’

This was undeniably true. ‘I don’t suppose for a minute’ said I dismissively ‘that it’s actually a corncrake. The only reported sightings on Orkney have been over by Marwick.’

‘Well it looks very like this picture’ he said. ’Come and look’.

‘I am not coming anywhere near that dead bird. Take it away, and I’ll come and look at the photo and your book’.

He sighed but picked the bird up and took it out. I looked at the photograph and the picture of the bird. I was relieved to see that clearly it was not a corncrake.

‘It’s not a corncrake’ I said ‘The colour’s wrong. And the feet’.

‘Are you sure?’ he said, in a  tone of voice that suggested he would really rather that it were a corncrake, albeit a dead one, than not. ‘I think I’ll just take the book back to the byre and have another look. And before I could ask him why on earth he had returned a dead bird to the byre, he was gone. I went back to my knitting.

And then he came back, very quickly. ‘You’ll never guess what just happened. I went  over to have another look at that bird and as I got close it jumped up and ran away. It gave me quite a turn’.

I reflected silently that it hadn’t given him half as much of  a turn as it would have given me had it jumped up and run about while inside my house. That really wasn’t something that I wanted to think about.

‘Anyway’ he said ‘I’m almost sure it’s a water rail, and they’re related to crakes’.

We sent the photo off to the local RSPB office and the staff there confirmed it was indeed a water rail, which is a skulking sort of bird rarely seen, although more often heard. So we were lucky to have seen one, although a shame the poor thing had to stun itself first. And to be honest even I thought it was quite pretty, in a chestnut/buff sort of way, although take it from me, it has really ugly feet!

 

 

A Few Images of Spring

 

I once waxed lyrical (literally, as I had been obliged to write a poem) about Orkney's spring daffodils and the tutor told me to be a bit more original in my choice of spring flower. I tried to explain the significance of the daffodils that populate the verges here but he talked over me, which he did quite often, said dismissively that he had lived in Glasgow for n years and could see daffodils in spring on any roundabout he drove round. 'Shut up Anne, I am not interested' was the basis of his song and although I was annoyed at the time I'm past it now and can write it off as his loss. He then had the nerve to describe me at the end of the module  as 'a challenge to teach', which I think is teacher code for 'suffers from independent thought'. Anyway for those who might be interested, miles and miles of roadside verge in Orkney are lined with daffodils every spring, and the story is that they all stem from a gift of free daffodil bulbs dished out  a few decades ago by a generous hearted person who thought that they would cheer the place up. The ones in this picture line our drive and they do make a heart lifting sight in early spring.

 

The pheasant who took up residence a few years ago is still about and there have been several chicks raised in the WWCTG (wilderness we call the garden) since then, despite the depredations of the cats.  This year he has been amusing himself spying on us through the kitchen window. It can give you quite a turn if you walk into the kitchen and see him looming outside, especially if he's tapping on the glass with his beak. Which he does do.

 

Mango and Honeycomb fool, made on request for Son No 2 when he was home for the holidays. I used to make this a lot when he lived at home, although the fruit is a new and (relatively) healthy addition.