How was Yours?

Ours was, as usual, quiet. Nothing like the excitement this year of being in a foreign country and all being together to celebrate like last year, but that was always going to be a very special one-off.

And I wouldn't want to give the impression that we didn't have our own sort of quiet fun because we did. It was obviously the year of the gifted  clothing. I had put the word out and the OH got the Christmas jumper his heart has been craving

 

Son No 2 may not have been craving a Jedi bath robe but he was certainly delighted with it

 

as he seemed to be with his Dr Who Lego - I think they must have sold shedloads of this new box this Christmas

I had dropped quite a lot of hints about wanting a new dressing gown myself but obviously they fell on deaf ears. However this is not to say that I had a disappointing time, I didn't.

 

I don't have very many more pictures of Christmas as I didn't go wild this year with the camera, although there is a not very exciting one of the small cassata I did for dessert. I used to make one three times this size, but now there are only three of us to eat it, and given that you put on four pounds every time you walk past it I reduced the size this year. It was still lovey though.

 

 

 

 

Son No 1 and family Skyped late on on Christmas Day and we had phone calls form my sister and the OH's brother and mother. The weather was so disgusting that we didn't get our once traditional Christmas morning walk to the beach though.

 

And then it was all over for another year. I know a lot of people hate the 'hanging time' between Christmas and New Year but I love it because I get all sort of odd things done, that need doing but that I can't find the time for normally. Clearing out my deleted e-mails, re-organising my Ph D folders, both virtual and real, ridding the house of extraneous cardboard boxes (if we didn't need them for posting Christmas presents then they aren't needed at all) and catching up with letters that have languished far too long needing to be answered.

 

Oh and I may have booked a rather special holiday this morning as well.......

 

 

 

It's Not Just Knitting You Know...

I've tried various crafts in my time, and I was a serious cross stitcher back in the day before my eyes, or at least my right eye, betrayed me. And I still do the occasional bit of stitching. I have mountains of card making supplies too, although I haven't made a card in goodness knows how many years. And then there were these.....

 

In a way they remind me of painting classes at school. Because in the infants I could always see in my mind what my picture was going to look like. However as I cannot draw, not no-how, the picture my hands produced was always sadly inferior to the picture in my head.

 

It was the same with these. A friend linked on Facebook to some really lovely decorations made with twigs and ribbon, with the ribbon just tied around the twigs carelessly in bows and knots. They looked great.

 

Flushed with enthusiasm, and mindful of all the low scrubby trees that inhabit TWTWCTG I said to the OH, I need some twigs. Obviously the expected response to this was, 'I will go out at the weekend and cut you some willow darling'. The response I got was 'How many? How long? What width do you want them'. 'Just twigs' I said ' for decorating'. But that wasn't enough information evidently and no twigs were forthcoming.

 

But then I had a brain wave. I took the used reeds from an empty reed infuser and searched out all my Christmass-y coloured ribbon. I set to work, but sadly soon realised that my carelessly tied knots were not nearly as attractive as the carelessly tied knots on the Facebook link. It wasn't long before I was reminded of how rubbish I am at making bows as well. After several false starts I was reduced to cross winding two lots of ribbon round some old reeds and leaving it at that.

 

Like I said, infant school painting all over again. I did however pop these on the tree. And to be honest, they looked OK. OK enough for me to pack them away and use them again next year anyway.

Some good news.....

and you will find it, if you follow this

And why do I find that good news? Well, it's like this. You know how you get TV or radio programs sometimes and they ask a celebrity about the outstanding teacher they had as a child; the one who enthused them with a passion for reading, or art, or playing a musical instrument? I'm always surprised that everyone seems to have had one, because I didn't.

I had good teachers (and bad ones), interesting teachers (and boring ones) , teachers who may have been interested in their subject, and some of them who patently weren't, but none of them stood out to me as exceptional. Even at Uni, none of the 'experts in their field' who taught me kindled in me any interest in their subject beyond what I already had. Admittedly that was at quite a high level before they ever opened their mouths, but it's still disappointing to think that they couldn't add anything extra.

 

In fact I had to wait until I was much older before I encountered a truly inspiring teacher in Meg Bateman. She taught a module on my UHI M Litt in Gaelic poetry, and I will not lie, I floundered for the first couple of sessions. Then I had a lightbulb moment, and fell in love with Gaelic poetry, even though I can only access it in translation. I suspect it's a bit of a marmite thing, but I  loved it.

 

But it wasn't just the poetry that Meg taught me. In fact the two most important things she taught me were

 

1    that you can learn from everyone if you are willing to open your ears and close your mouth

 

2    that 'glib' is not only not clever (even though it can sometimes sound it) but more than that, glib is, in an academic context, shameful. A true scholar is never glib.

 

I hasten to add that she never said these things in so many words. I learned them from observing her own academic openness and rigour and contrasting them with my own attitudes.

 

So I was delighted that such an inspiring, knowledgeable, hard working, sincere scholar got the recognition she deserves.

 

And she's also an acclaimed poet in her own right; her work is well worth seeking out if you're that way inclined.

Christmas

 

 

It's Christmas. I can't quite believe how easy, for once, the journey to get here was. Cards all hung, presents from us and to us have all arrived, the cassata for dessert tomorrow has been in the fridge for hours, the turkey is defrosting, the house is clean, as are the inhabitants (except maybe for the odd cat paw) and I do believe we are ready.

 

I had an image in my head for a long time about how the Christmas tree would look in the new sunroom surrounded by parcels and stockings and how I'd have candles all along the windowsills and I'd sit there as it got dark and watch the flames. And lo! it even came to pass.

 

I remember someone once giving a talk in church about how easy it was to let Christmas become routine, but I don't think that's ever been the case with me. For many years it was just hugely stressful and I hated it, but aa time has gone on it has got easier. And as I've got older I think I've got easier too. And most years have been a little different to the previous one, so routine has never set in.

 

Perhaps for everyone as we stack up more Christmases it becomes less about the stuff and more about the intangible things that are the ones that really matter; being with the people you love, talking time out from ordinary life to reflect on all the good things of life, perhaps even to think about those who aren't as fortunate as ourselves.

 

Whoever you are with tomorrow, however or whatever you are celebrating, I wish you peace and joy and all that you would wish yourself, for that day, and all the ones that follow.  

 

 

Project 60 Number 17

Making ice cream. It is actually a wee while since I made this. It had been on the Project 60 list but I had sort of given up on it as ice cream makers of the sort I wanted were horribly expensive and I wasn't about to spend that sort of money on something just to make one batch of ice cream, which isn't something I'm a huge fan of in the first place. In fact you might wonder why I wanted to do it at all, but its partly down to watching too many cookery competitions on TV and partly because - well, you know, I'd never done it before. And at the end of the day that is what Project 60 is all about.

Anyway the OH took to haunting e-bay looking for ice cream makers and eventually he found one that he assured me was a bargain. It was still an eye watering amount of money but it was a good machine and almost brand new. The person selling it on e-bay said they had bought it but discovered after using it only once that her husband was lactose intolerant so that they had no further use for it.

This puzzled me a bit. Ice cream makers are not cheap and it seems to me that by the time you have the sort of disposable income that allows you to purchase one you are surely of an age where you have previously noticed that you are lactose intolerant?

However that might be, the OH purchased the machine and it duly arrived. He couldn't wait for me to mentally gird up my loins ready to use it and he made some ice cream almost straight away. It was very nice. Emboldened he tried again. The machine made a funny noise, a bit like 'phutt-bang' and died.

I was not amused.

I am now going to cut a long story very short and just say that due to helpful people; the lady we bought the machine from, and in customer services at both Lakeland and Sage , we ended up with a brand new machine, as the one we bought was still under warranty. It took a bit of doing, but only because it was hassly and involved people digging out invoices and till receipts and scanning them and e-mailing them about, but it was done.

I have now used it twice and although I am not one for blowing my own trumpet I will say that the ice cream produced was lovely. The OH has used it rather more often and has been more adventurous with his flavours. I have stuck to vanilla, while he has done raspberry, lime, and cinnamon and chocolate chip. Honours are however about even since he 'cheats' and uses cream, whereas mine have been custard based and therefore more difficult to do.

 

Some of my cookery based Project 60 things have been one offs, but I have enjoyed making the ice cream, despite the minor panics around issues such as 'why is that mixture so foamy?',' is this custard thick enough' 'why is the machine playing that stupid tune? and so on. So I fully expect to make much more nex year and am already planning how best to try making it coffee flavoured.

Nae socks. Nae Gaelic.

 

 

 

Regular readers may have been surprised to note that there has been no breast beating over the Gaelic learning and found this surprising in view of the fact that the course started up again in September and I had previously fund it a struggle.

 

As it happens the course did start up again in September, but without me. I had booked a lace on it, downloaded the material for the first unit looked ta it, gave vent to a noise much like 'Waaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh' and ran screaming for the hills. Well I didn't literally run for the hills, I just e-mailed the office and said Sorry I cannot face this.

 

I am not sure if this proved that I am sensible or just a quitter. The little amount of Gaelic I had learned had taken a huge amount of time, money and energy, time which it seemed to me would be better spent working on my thesis. There are two major chapters to write over the next twelve months, and although I had managed to run the Gaelic study and writing the draft of my first chapter in parallel I had always felt that the draft would have been better had I not been spending so much time on learning a language so incomprehensible that the OH refuses to believe it is real, and contends that people just make it up as they go along to bamboozle English speakers when they hove into view.

 

The intention is that I will keep at it on my own, for 30 minutes only per day from January until next September and may pick up part 2 then. Meanwhile for the many who won't get the Nae Socks, Nae Gaelic reference: -

 

the image above comes from a Scottish Comedy Series called Chewin' the Fat. It was a sketch show that was often screamingly funny and had these  sock puppets as recurring characters. They spoke Gaelic after a fashion, and were often heard to be recounting stories of their (mis)adventures, many of which ended with them being thrown out of places with the words 'Nae socks'.

 

If you don't know them, well worth seeking out on You Tube, although I will sound a note of caution. While not adhering to any  theory of racial stereotyping, in my experience the Scottish sense of humour is very particular. I find the Sock Puppets hilarious, as does Son No 1. The OH on the other hand, finds nothing funny about them at all. In fact he didn't find Chewin' the Fat funny. Or Scot Squad. Or any other comedy program to come out of Scotland ever. He does have a sense of humour, but it's not attuned to the comic genius that resides on this side of the Scottish/English border.



The New Star Wars Film.

No I'm not going to see it. The OH and Son No 2 are in town watching it in 3D even as I write but I can't be bothered. The thing is I liked the first three in a 'Crash Bang Wallop and oh look! there's Harrison Ford' sort of a way. But the next three were, to me, absolutely dire.* I know I am not alone n this, and in fact a lot of big fans of the first three films agreed the next three were not up to standard. The difference between them and me, as far as I can see, is that many of them are prepared to forgive and forget. Myself - not so much.

 

*For those readers inclined to take issue with this I have three words. Jar Jar Binks. QED, I think.

 

I daresay a few years down the line, when it turns up on TV, that I'll watch it. And they do say that this new one is up there with Episodes IV - VI. But I'm not paying out real cash money as the phrase goes, on the off chance. Not to mention the fact that for a long time now in the cinema I've missed half the dialogue because the sound quality these days is appalling.

 

So why am I blogging about a film I'm not going to see? Well everyone else is. Who am I to struggle against the Zeitgeist.?

Lergied and Laptopless

I really am going to have to stop saying 'That's our last trip south until we go away in Feb' because that does nothing but jinx things. I really thought that after Gdansk I was a fixture here until February but that's not how things worked out and we had another quick trip to Glasgow at the beginning of this month. It was great fun, mainly. However....

For coming home we had booked the final ferry of the day from Gills Bay at 6.30. We like this one, it means we're actually back in the house for 8, and if we're only coming from Glasgow then we don't need to be off at the crack of dawn but can leave about ten, and have a proper lunch break somewhere, do a bit of shopping in Inverness (well browse their out of town Tescos and fill up the car) and still make it to the north coast with time to spare.

For some reason, and very fortunately I had packed everything up last Tuesday night, ready for our 10.00 am departure which was fortunate as, at just before 8.00 am we had a phone call from the ferry company. Our 6.30 ferry was now the 3.30 ferry and that would be the last one for the day, weather the next day looking not very good for ferries at all,  they hoped that was OK....We chucked what was left of our coffee down the sink, picked up our bags and fell down the stairs to the car park. In the car, heading north as fast as we could ( remember this was Glasgow morning rush hour!), we had got almost to Inverness before realising that in the rush my laptop had been left behind. Son No 2, who came home for Christmas on Thursday, brought it with him. I didn't quite fall upon it with cries of joy ( I kept those for the lad himself ) but I was very pleased to have it back.

 

Truth is I have been lost without it (a reflection that opens up a whole new world of reflection and self recrimination) , and that partly explains the lack of blog posts. I could have used my Hudl to do them of course , but somehow couldn't quite work up the enthusiasm.

 

And that was partly to do with the lergy. I had a terribly sore throat all the way back, to the extent that, not only did we stop off at the local shop and buy throat sweets from The Lovely Victoria but  I actually used them. I am hopeless at self medicating and normally manage to talk myself out of  throat sweets, cough medicine and paracetamol but on this occasion I was more than happy to break into the packet of blackberry flavoured Menthols or whatever they were.

 

Over the next few days I developed a temperature, aches and pains, a runny nose and a bad cough, as well as a feeling that there was nothing in the world worth doing ever again except perhaps sleep and even that was problematic since it proved elusive. Last Saturday was definitely the worst and although I am still not quite right I am much much better than I was. Bit of a residual cough (which is annoying because I never get coughs) but otherwise about 90% on top of things. Which is good. Because apart from anything else I can update the blog.

A Funny Thing Happaened on the Way to the Conference....

if only that could have read Forum....

I was scheduled to arrive in Gdansk at about 7.00 pm which I sort of half realised before I went was going to be after dark. I had instructions for getting to Sopot by bus and rail, but there seemed to be some doubt about whether the new bits of the TriCity rail system would actually be working, or even finished, and there was still the problem of finding my hotel in a strange town after dark  in a country whose language I do not speak. The conference organisers had seemed doubtful about getting a taxi, warning darkly that the price should be agreed before you got into the cab, (people always say this although how you are supposed to know what is a sensible price for a taxi ride before you know how far it is going or anything about local taxi licensing, or indeed fuel prices is quite beyond me). In the circs a taxi seemed the most sensible option, but being a bit wary as a single woman of jumping into a car on my own with a stranger I decided to keep my eyes open as I travelled for likely sharers.

 

I thought I had it sorted when I heard a couple of men talking in Copenhagen as we waited at the gate to board the flight to Gdansk. They had been on the Edinburgh-Copenhagen flight, they were taking with Sottish accents and as I got closer to them I heard them talking about the timetable, panel scheduling etc. Bingo! I introduced myself, ascertained that they were indeed en route for the conference and asked if it would be possible to share a taxi with them when we landed. They looked a bit sheepish then the big man from the photo in the previous post said that he would have been happy for them to share a taxi with me, but as it happened the organisers  were sending a car for him and they'd both be going in that. I was welcome to tag along if there was room though.

 

I then said something really daft. I can only suppose that I was tired, and disappointed and a bit apprehensive about what I was going to do when there wasn't room in the car, which I knew for an absolute certainty was not going to have room for me and so I said with widened eyes 'They're sending a car? You must be someone important'. Obviously channelling some vacant ingénue from an ancient film. And even as the words dropped out of my stupid mouth and he said 'Well I've been invited to read a few of my poems tomorrow night' I realised that he was the Guest of Honour, Scottish novelist and poet John Burnside. And I should have known because not only have I seen the occasional picture, not only did I know he was going, but I did actually have to study one of his novels on my M Litt course.

 

Fortunately I managed not to confound my error by confessing to this latter thing since he would presumably then have asked for my opinion, and as it happens I was not over enamoured of it. In fact it was in my bottom three of all the books on the course,* but as I say, I managed not to mention it.

 

And it all had a happy ending as there were several people there to meet him, and a car, and a taxi was summoned as well and as I was staying in the same hotel as he was we did share a taxi after all, while the other guy was whisked away to where he was going in the car.

 

It was embarrassing though.

 

* Oh alright then. Born Free by Laura Hird, Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun and The Devil's Footprints by John Burnside.

Sopot

Did I say that the conference actually took place in a small seaside town called Sopot, rather than in Gdansk itself? Courtesy of the lack of fights at sensible times back to the UK on Sundays from Gdansk airport, a friend and I had decided to stay on after the conference finished on Saturday night and the idea was that we would take the train into Gdansk and have  a look around. However when the day came we were both far too tired to contemplate it, so we contented ourselves with a gentle walk around Sopt, taking in the beach, the pier, and some bits of the town we hadn't had time to see previously.

Under her influence I may have overdone the photos of architectural detailing and I won't upload them all here. But her are some pictures that will give you a visual taste of the place.

I could label them all...

 

but you know they're all a bit self evident...

 

 

and you really don't need me to write out...

 

 

 

The Grand Hotel, the beach and pier,

 

 

 

a church, a garden and balconies, now do you?

 

 

And because I see I haven't posted any before here are a couple to prove that we were

there to work.

I have a funny story about the big man in the middle of the bottom picture which I will save for another day!

 



It may have been a dark and stormy night

but we still went out on Monday evening.

Regular readers will now be saying to themselves, well of course they went out, Monday night is her yoga night, and this is true but it wasn't Yoga I went to.

In fact yoga has been more honoured in the breach then the observance lately. I did four weeks, then there were two weeks off for half term, following which I was away in Glasgow for one week, the OH was away ferrying Son No 2 about one week, then we had an AGM one week. And this week there was a talk at the library.

 

Now there are often talks and groups and all manner of exciting things going on at the library, most of which I avoid like the plague because I can't be doing with people talking about books in a way that's calculated to show everyone else how clever they are/or talking about what they've done lately to show off what an exciting life they lead. I may have mentioned before that I do not 'do' pretension in any shape or form and have learned that, whatever the temptation, it is better to keep away from things like book groups, knitting groups or indeed any sort of group based around an activity which I enjoy because the other people there, however nice, will just irritate me. Obviously there is some fault here on my side, because no-one else seems to be affected in this way, and I daresay that I have missed out on friendships and opportunities by not taking part in such things. But discretion being the better part of valour I know it is better for me simply to Stay Away.

 

However I got a bit carried away by local enthusiasm last week and bought tickets for Arne Dahl's gig at Kirkwall Library. I'm not really sure what came over me to be honest. I watched the first AD series on TV and found it a bit dull, bought the book on which it was based and found that a bit dull too. We're currently 'watching' the second series by which I mean it is on and I divide my attention almost equally between it and my knitting. And guess what - it's fairly dull as well. But you know it's not often we get internationally successful crime writers coming to Orkney and it was less than a fiver for two tickets so I bought them and we went.

 

Mr Dahl, like his book and his TV series, was dull. Pedestrian may be the mot juste. I wanted him to be understated and funny like so many Scandinavians are, but although he just about scraped through on the understated front, he failed miserably when it came to the funny. I probably realised this very early on when he declared Paul Hjelm to be his alter ego in his books. Paul Hjelm is the dullest most uncharismatic, featureless non-personality in Dahl's police squad....nuff said.

 

As a side story the woman who sat in front of us had just come back from the weekend Shetland Noir crime writing festival, an experience she related in some detail to the lady on the OH's right. It had featured AD (so why on earth she had shelled out to come and hear him again in Orkney is totally beyond me ) but the most exciting thing that had happened the whole weekend was that Douglas Henshall (known, as regular readers here will again recall, in this household as The Woodentop) had been a surprise guest, courtesy of his TV role as Jimmy Perez - and don't get me started on how bad a fit that is- and she had had her photo taken with him.

 

Now here's a thing. Going back to what I said at the start about finding it difficult to cope with people who wanted to trumpet their exciting lives, here s a prime example. What specifically is so exciting about meeting a total stranger, a middle aged man known mainly for his attempts to pretend to be someone else, and getting some other random stranger to take a photo of the two of you together? I genuinely don't get it. Why is that so exciting that a) you do it and b) tell other people about it? I could just about understand it if she herself  had taken a photo of DH when he was on a panel, as something to remind her of the occasion, but having her photo taken with someone who would have forgotten all about it in two minutes? Is that really squeak worthily exciting? Well maybe it is. But I wouldn't find it so.

Carmen

One of the things we fitted in along with the trip to Huddersfield for the dyeing course was a performance of Scottish Opera's Carmen at the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness.

Now I love Carmen, and we are huge supporters of Scottish Opera, but it has to be said that this Carmen was problematic.

As a plus the female singing was all of a very high standard. Everyone raved about the Carmen herself, perhaps a little over enthusiastically to our mind, but she was very good indeed. The Micaela was excellent. I remember someone once telling me what a thankless part Micaela is - you get a Big Tune in Act 1 then have to go backstage and fill in time until your second Big Tune which isn't until Act 3 and then you're done, but you can't go home early because you have to be there at the end of Act 4 for the curtain calls.....

 

Having said that, well,  the men were a bit lacklustre in the vocal department, except for the tenor who certainly had  a Big Voice. It was not a particularly beautiful voice, but it certainly was Big. Nor, unless you were wanting someone to impersonate middle stump, could he act. Wooden really doesn't cover it.

 

The big problem though was with the production. Minimalist I can do, and let's be honest, no-one expects that when the curtain goes up on Act 1 that the audience will see a meticulous recreation of the old cigarette factory in Seville ( now part of the university and well worth a look, should you be in that neck of the woods) . However given that it is supposedly midday in that most sunny of Spanish cities what you also do not expect to see is a three sided black box. The same three sided box that subsequently does duty for the tavern of Lillas Pastia in Act 2 and the mountain side in Act 3. Admittedly some light was shed in Act 3 by the presence on stage of what looked very much like a real camp fire, but can't have been.

 

It was not an overwhelming evening. For the first time ever I understood what Carmen's original, and highly dissatisfied, audience meant when they wrote the opera off as sordid. It was sordid and uninvolving and actually  a huge disappointment. And it gives me no pleasure to say that.

 

There was a funny moment though. There was a couple to my left and before the performance began the female half was craning her neck and looking all around her. She then turned to her male companion and said 'I was looking for the xs, but I can't see them. Maybe they're sitting in the cheap seats'.

 

Which goes to show that there are still people who can give opera audiences a bad name!

Project 60 Number 16 - Dyeing

I've been wanting to try a new fibre craft for a while now and swithering between spinning, weaving and dyeing.

 

Spinning is one of those things that I feel I will eventually learn to do because it is somehow written in my stars - not that I believe in things being written in the stars to be honest - but it just has a dread sort of inevitability about it. It's not as though I am totally without the opportunity to learn to spin here in Orkney because I'm sure that if I looked hard enough I could find several people who could and would teach me, but I am rather put off by the amount of equipment, the expense, and knowing that in no time at all I would have a collection of fleece and fibre to rival my current wool stash. I am in the process of adding the latter to Ravelry and although it is a useful exercise (who would have thought you could forget about so many beautiful skeins of wool, you have bought or been given) it is also quite depressing in a 'when will I ever have the time to knit this into something useful or lovely or both' kind of way. So I resist spinning as well as I can, even though I know that one day the wall will be breached.

 

Weaving also comes into the 'too much stuff/taking up too much space/ too much expense' category; also I am not convinced I have the patience to do all the setting up properly in order to produce a set of wonky table mats that I wouldn't know what to do with. Again I haven't necessarily written it off for ever, but just now it seems like far too much hassle.

 

So all in all it was fortunate that I saw a notification a while back about dyeing classes being held by the indie dyer known as The Knitting Goddess . So OK they were in Huddersfield which is a long way from Orkney, especially given that they lasted slightly less than four hours, but I would get the chance to try something I've wanted to do for a while, I'd learn something and I might even enjoy it. I booked before I could change my mind.

 

In the event we built a lot of other things round the trip to Huddersfield, of which more over the following days. I was once again led to use the expression 's*dding satnav' as it took us with unerring inaccuracy but excellent timing to the wrong place, some twenty minutes from where I needed to be. I was not amused. I hate being late for things. I'd mostly rather just give up than turn up late. On this occasion however even I could see that not turning up at all rather than turning up twenty minutes late would be childish and self defeating in the extreme so we got back in the car and found where we needed to be.

 

As it turned out I had only missed the boring Health and Safety stuff and so I spent a happy three hours or so painting yarn and watching other people do it too. We had all been asked to take something to inspire us colourwise and it was interesting to see all the different things people had chosen to take.

 

I had worried that I would hate the whole experience and that all it would do would bring back unhappy memories of art lessons at school where my inability to draw even a stick dog made the weekly double period absolute hell. I am so inept at arty stuff, and when people say things like 'just have a little play and see where it leads you', which is a very common thing in crafty circles,  I inevitably find it leads me straight down the road to Brain Freeze Territory.

 

However it turns out that even I can mix colours and then put them on plain undyed yarn with a paintbrush to some effect. As proof of which I offer the following picture of my inspiration, some of the publicity material for the current Scottish Opera production of Carmen whose colours I loved, and the yarn I dyed from it.

 

 

 

 

Given the inspiration I feel I should knit it up into a shawl, so I'm currently looking for the perfect pattern. I'm sure I'll find it one day.

 

Going Away Again! (Sigh)

but with any luck it will be the last time until next February.

In any case I can't complain as it is almost totally a pleasure trip. We leave tomorrow (winds and waves allowing) and drive to Inverness, where we are seeing the Scottish Opera Carmen at the Eden Court in the evening. Then onto Glasgow on Friday.

 

Saturday I am nipping south of the border for a course (part of Project 60, report to follow). Sunday the OH comes back to Orkney while I chill out with Son no 2.

 

Monday I have a meeting with my Ph D supervisor  :-( .

 

Tuesday I'm hoping to meet up with my Glasgow dwelling Ravelry friend A.  Wednesday I'm going to  this, with my Edinburgh friend V. It looks fantastic and it will be interesting to see if the Restaurant at Kelvingrove is back up to standard...

 

And Thursday Son No 2 and I come back to Orkney via trains, a bus and a ferry - once again weather permitting.

 

I'm looking forward to everything about it bar the supervisory meeting and the packing!

 

 

Project 60 Number 15 - Going with the Flow

I have never been good at not being organised - although a look at the current mess that is my study might make you doubt the veracity of that statement. But what I mean is I've never really been spontaneous. Especially in unfamiliar surroundings and with people I don't know. I never go somewhere without knowing how I'll get back for example.

 

But here's a thing. In Gdansk I made a decision to go with the flow and see where it took me. One afternoon  it took me to a rather nice cake shop in good company. Another time it led me to say an encouraging word to a young female student who had been unfairly treated by a much older male academic. And on the final evening of the conference it took me to the most enjoyable time.

 

We wound up at 5.00 ish and a suggestion was made by someone near me that we should go somewhere for a drink. I thought yes, why not? And here some of us are having said drink....

 

 

 

Regular readers may not be surprised to learn that I had a cocktail - and very nice it was too, although it could have done with being either shaken or stirred

 

But the drink was just the start. Two of the French academics taking part had opted for renting a flat rather than staying in a hotel and even as we were enjoying ourselves they were back there cooking to feed us later in the evening. When the time came to leave the bar I thought about going back to the hotel before it got really dark and  then I thought No, dammit, I'm enjoying  myself and who ever thought that I would be included in this sort of thing so  let's just carry on being carried along.

 

We went off to a supermarket to pick up some more food, blocking aisles and having long discussions about which sort of plastic cheese looked least plastic and tasteless and letting the French choose the wine and then we wandered off into a part of town we hadn't been to before to look for the flat where Sarah and Benjamine were staying.

 

Finding the flat was easy, getting the door to open with the key code they had given us was a different thing, but eventually a text message brought Benjamine to the door and we staggered up two flights of stairs laden with food and wine.

 

The girls had cooked quiche and chocolate cake and apple crumble and there was salad and olives and hummus and bread and cheese and really it was an impromptu banquet. The conversation was wide ranging and generally hilarious, in a fairly high minded and academic way. It was wonderful. It's not every day you find yourself in a spirited but friendly discussion about the finer points of  The Mill on the Floss with a senior lecturer from The Sorbonne!

 

And here we are gathered round the food

 

 

 

And we stayed there till very late and drank lots of wine and I didn't worry once about how I was going to get back to the hotel even though it was late and dark and eventually we left and we all got back safely to where we were staying and even though I normally don't do this sort of thing, this time I did and I am SO glad because honestly it was about the best bit of the whole conference.

 

Maybe I should make a habit of spontaneity (ahem!)



 

But, but, but

what about Poland, do I hear you cry? All that build up,  you've been back nearly a fortnight and you leave us hanging with nary a word.

This is all true. I think I had to get some distance because academic conferences, however dry they might sound to the outsider, are actually quite intense experiences, involving as they do a confined place, a compressed time scale, some very high powered presentations and some equally high powered academic egos.

So overall the conference was overwhelming, exhausting, stimulating, enervating; but ultimately a beneficial and positive experience. My paper was well received, possibly I benefited here from being 'on' early.  I restricted myself to asking only two questions during  the entire three days, which I think is a good sign that I haven't turned into a Question Asker, which is a possibility that haunts me as I have mentioned before.

There were some other excellent papers too; it would be odious to make comparisons, but the presentations that stay with me for the right reasons, mainly because they were about writers or writing in which I was already interested were from a) a young Czech scholar talking about the poetry of Derick Thomson and b)  a lecturer from the Sorbonne talking about The House with the Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown. But there were many other good things.

 

A really positive thing for me was learning that the organisers had turned down a third of the papers they were offered, which makes me feel good to be chosen and banishes any lingering suspicion I might have had about being asked along to make up the numbers.

 

And here is the conference venue itself

 

 

Project 60 - Number 14 - I did what?

I did this.

I saw a piece of art ( a figurine ) in a gallery in Dunkeld, I fell in love with it, I bought it after only about five minutes consideration and I didn't feel guilty about it.

Here it is

 

The artist called her Kathryn, but I have rechristened her Sine which for some reason that I cannot fathom is my favourite female Gaelic name.

 

Son No 1 said she looked totally miserable and she does a bit look like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. But don't lots of girls feel like that when they're twelve and someone important to them has just demonstrated yet again how actually totally out of touch they are with how it feels to be twelve? She's misunderstood and it hurts.

 

Anyway I didn't buy her for that. I just loved her to the extent that I couldn't leave her in the gallery or indeed bear to think of her going home with someone else. It's not an experience I've ever truly had before ( not even for my Yoshi bags - and yes that's a plural and I am very aware that that means there are three Yoshi bags that never made it to the blog.... ) I assume that this is why I am still not feeling guilty despite the fact that she was Not Cheap.

 

It will however be a long time before we  go to Dunkeld again. We'd promised ourselves a visit for ages, and it was an attractive little town with a lovely river running through it. But there were far too many  other lovely things in that gallery; I don't think we can afford a return visit!

More Knitting for Marcus

As the Canadian branch have now received the parcel with the warm weather clothes we sent for Marcus I can show off the knitting that was included in it.

That said I have no idea whether either my son or my daughter-in-law do the really uncool thing of actually reading my blog, but just, you know,  in case, I didn't want to spoil the surprise.

Anyway there was a fairly standard jumper

 

I fiddled with the neck a bit but otherwise it's more or less as the pattern appeared in the magazine.

 

And then there was the gorgeous Drops jacket. When my sister saw this in the summer when it was only partially completed she laughed at it, although I don't know why. I think it's a fantastic design and I am knitting another one, for someone else because I like the pattern so much. That said it is a bit of a slog to knit but the pay off is there is hardly any sewing up to do, just the sleeves, so that's a bonus. And it looks, I think, really good.

 

 

Sent some fleecy trousers as well to go with them. Well, it is Canada and over there 'Winter is Coming' isn't just a typically mordant reminder from Sean Bean before he had his head chopped off!