Books to Read poster No 48

 

Yet another example of 'why on earth did they choose this picture for that book?' because it was  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsen . Now, colour me obvious if you like, but if I'd been choosing an image for the book I'd have chosen a picture of a tattoo of a dragon. Or a tattoo of the Chinese symbol for dragon. I wouldn't have chosen a picture of a light motorbike which gets mentioned like twice in the book. But hey-ho, I'm not the marketing genius who came up with the idea of the poster in the first place so I have to bow to the choices of whoever was. 

As far as the book goes, I have read it before and didn't particularly want to tackle it again but I did. And my verdict was much the same as before; good plot, badly written. Well maybe not badly, more pedestrian. Too much tell not show, and the journalism background comes through in the style big time. 

And another one not in the plan

 was this

When I had finished my Bee Happy cross stitch I went to look at what other small Shepherds Bush cross stitch kits I had because I thought I had a few. I found this one and started doing it without realising quite how small the design was - about 3 1/2 inches by 2 1/2. I was a bit dismayed when I realised as it was far too small to be worth getting expensively framed, and then I had a bright idea and yesterday I turned the completed piece into this

a 70th birthday card for a good friend who I shall be seeing shortly. 

Talking of which there will hopefully be a couple of blog entries before Thursday, but on Thursday we are off south and my life is going to go super crazy busy. It will be quite like pre-Covid times except that I find myself less able to contemplate all the stuff quite as calmly as I used to. I'm convinced  I am going to forget important things like tickets, passport, where I'm supposed to be and with whom,  I used to take all these things in my stride but I'm just not used to doing so much in such a small period of time anymore.

On the upside there will be lots of exciting things to write about when I get back; it won't all be poster books, craft and jigsaw puzzles for a while!  

Books to Read Poster No 47

 

It's getting harder and harder to rub the silver cover off the little pictures without damaging them, I think the silver stuff must get stickier with age. I should obviously have read faster. 

This was another free to members Audible offering - there will be several more of those to come over the next few months, although not the ones that come in at over forty hours. I think, free or not, I'll have to buy or borrow those and read them off the page. 

Anyway it was The Time Machine by H G Wells. I've never read it, never wanted to read it, and now that I've listened to it I don't want to read anything else he penned either, which is a huge shame as he has another title on the poster. 

I think the best I can say of this is that it is of its time. All the genres it dabbles its toes in i.e. sci-fi, adventure story , political prophecy, sociological analysis, psychoanalysis and even, in an icky and roundabout way, romance, have all come a very long way since this was written. This is a mercy for which we should all be grateful. 

A Walk

 Honestly, for many reasons,  it is frazzle city here just now, not helped by the fact that I am absolutely frozen. 

I am going for a walk shortly which will doubtless do me good if I don't die of hypothermia before I get back,  but meanwhile it seemed a good opportunity to pop up a couple of photos from a walk the OH and I did at the weekend. 

It was one of our Covid lockdwn ones and while we were able to do it quite easily at that time, we have had trouble doing it all in one go since. We did however manage that this time which was a good feeling. (Don't run away with the idea that it's a long trek, it's less than 2 miles, although there are a couple of steep uphills in it. We're just not used to walking, having got out of the habit. 

Anyway, Orkney is famous for its daffodil verges in springtime but it's not just daffodils that grow there 

all the way along the roadside; daffodils, tulips, bluebells (in three different colours), fritillaries and not visible here but some poppy buds.

Here's a close up 

and although there weren't any lambs on South Ron that day, there were some different looking sheep. I don't think it was just the fact that they were wet, they are a different breed to the ones we normally see up there. 

Success from Failure (2) sewing lesson 4

 

This was the project I didn't have time to finish last week, a lined drawstring project bag. Eagle eyed readers with retentive memories may well recognise the decoration on the front form a post last month when I finished stitching  the cross stitch design.

I am really pleased with this, not least because it cost me very little; the cross stitch was a gift from a friend, the base fabric was left over from the backing for the bunting and the check comes from a small collection of material pieces that I bought many years ago when visiting my sister in Baltimore where she lived for four years. It was so good finally to find a use for some of it. 

I feel I am making progress with my lessons; my machining is getting better and faster, and I remember more things from week to week. Baby steps, but enjoyable ones. 

Also the teacher may just have mentioned somewhere local where I can take an introductory weaving course... 

Books to Read Poster No 46

 

Being on occasions a bit dense it took me a while to realise the significance of the picture to the text, but if I say that this is a picture of a Stopped Clock then alert readers will conclude that the book was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. 

I read this many ,many years ago although I had little memory of it and I had noted it would have to be a poster read at some stage.  I cannot deny that it called to me at this juncture in view of the travesty  that is the latest BBC TV adaptation. As an aside I do not think that Dickens can be well adapted for film or tv nowadays because we are too used to drama that reflects real life and real people and Dickens' characters, while owning a great deal of psychological truth are often a long way from being real in that particular sense of the word. The TV adaptation by the way, I abandoned after Part 2, and I gather I was far from alone. 

I listened to this on Audible ( one of their many free to member classics ) read by the very talented  Martin Jarvis. My mother always maintained that Jarvis was too conceited to be watchable  which coloured my own opinion of him for a while, but eventually I came to realise that a) a lot of actors come across as conceited/self absorbed b) if he was conceited he had a talent that he was perfectly justified in being conceited about and c) he really is too good to ignore on the basis of 'what your mother said'

He is incredibly good narrating Great Expectations and his performance added a lot to my enjoyment of the book. And yes, I did enjoy it very much (two in a row!). It's not mature Dickens, in parts it's a bit too sentimental for my taste and the ending leaves a lot to be desired, but you know, that said, it's a good book and I had a good time listening to it. 

Also not in the plan ...

 ...were these. 

keen eyed readers might recognise the wool as two of the balls I bought in Madeira. 

It's slightly thicker wool than I'm used to using for socks, not that that was a problem. They're very cosy and comfortable, and I'm very happy with them. 

It should have been a longer post about something totally other, but something came up and I am short of time. And they had to make it here at some time. 

Random Reflections on the Coronation

 

1. Words cannot express how much I loathe Walton's Crown Imperial, not especially for the music itself but for the triumphal imperialism it reflects and represents.

2. Floella Benjamin has come a long way since Playschool.

3. Blush pink is obviously 'in' this season.

4 On which topic, Mme Macron knows how to dress. 

5 Cherie Blair does not. (but then she never did) 

5 Nor do the daughters of Sarah Ferguson

6 Clare Balding has an unhealthily wide knowledge of the names and habits  of ceremonial horses.

7 Street liners is an unfortunate term

8 Bryn Terfel can still sing, plenty of younger baritones would envy his ability still  to float quiet notes through the Abbey

9 Amazing how retentive the memory can be for some things; as a teenage choir girl at my local church we sang both Zadok the Priest and I was Glad and I can still sing bits of them, and recite all the words. 

10 It would have been a good day for a foreign power to invade ( as long as they didn't start with London) as a huge proportion of the country's armed forces appeared to be got up in fancy dress and be poncing about the capital.

11 The most enjoyable bit of the whole thing was the OH's insistence on adding 'third of his name' every time they mentioned King Charles. 

In view of the above, the question 'why did I watch?' is a reasonable one. Three reasons, two of them being the same as the reasons I watch royal weddings;  the frocks and the music. And then curiosity. I may get to see another coronation but then again I may not, so I took the opportunity to watch this one. I didn't expect to be quite as revolted by the whole archaic and bonkers display as I was. 

Success from Failure (1)

 So yesterday being a very horrible day weather wise I sat down with a poster book on Audible, access to The West Wing which I have never previously watched ( I know, there's late to the party, and then there's just ridiculous) and I had a good go at the jumper. Et voila

It is done. I'm quite pleased with it on various fronts. a) it's finished, b) it fits c) I fiddled the neckband and although it took me three goes I'm really happy with how it turned out d) it was really cheap because it's a discontinued Rowan yarn which is basically half wool and half silk and I bought 12 skeins of it from a local designer when Rowan discontinued it,  at £1.00 a skein.  I used nine for the jumper so it cost me £9.00. Also a lot of frustration and heartache, but learning takes effort, yeah?

If I were to do it again, I wouldn't bother with the short row shaping on the back because it made hardly any difference to the height of the back in return for a lot of effort, I would make the sleeves slightly longer and the body even shorter, and I would use a toning sturdier yarn for the rib because this yarn is very soft. That said I won't be doing it again because it was an absolute pain to knit, I got really bored with it several times over and I have come to the conclusion that,I prefer to knit jumpers bottom up rather than top down. In view of the fact that many of the jumpers I swoon over on Ravelry are knitted top down that's a shame. Maybe I just need more practice. 

Although I didn't get it finished to my self imposed deadline of 30th April I didn't do too badly by finishing it on 4th May. The next one on my list is part done, and has been for several years,  so I'm hopeful I'll get that finished by my goal date of 30th June. Time will tell.

Fail, fail, fail

It can't be denied we're feeling a bit down just now, since life seems to have been composed of a constant stream of failures just recently. I didn't get the cross stitch finished on time, I didn't get the jumper finished on time, I didn't get my sewing project finished at my lesson yesterday, I gave up on a jigsaw puzzle, I realised how long it is since I bought the poster ( five years) and I'm not even half way through it yet, I haven't managed to either stop enhancing my stash or indeed knit down a significant portion of it. 

I am attempting to fight back  - look out for a few more positive posts over the next few days. Or even hours. 

Another Craft Plan Fail!

 I had hoped to finish another jumper by the end of April. Didn't quite make it as you can see.

It still needs a neckline and half of the second sleeve.

I'm a bit peeved that I couldn't keep to my plan. But on the other hand I'm not beating myself up too much as this was in the nature of an experiment to see if I could follow the principles I learned in the Carole Feller class at Glasgow last autumn and adapt a pattern to fit me properly. It's sort of a dry run for making one of Carole's patterns in one of her own wool lines. 

I checked my tension and then chose the pattern size to make based on what fitted most of  my measurements, not just the bust size, which meant doing two sizes smaller than I normally would. This  worked for the body and I made that slightly shorter than the pattern said - I like my jumpers long  but I don't want them round my knees! That was all really straightforward. The sleeves however were a problem. Since the body size had been fine I thought the sleeves would be fine too, but sadly that was not the case. and when I had finished the first sleeve bar the rib I tried it on and discovered that it was far too wide and flappy. Daunted by the thought that I was going to have to do some serious arithmetic, not to mention the pain of taking out almost a whole sleeve I bundled the whole thing up, stuck it in a project bag  and knitted some socks instead. 

I took it out about ten days ago, did some maths, knitted the second sleeve two sizes smaller even than the body. making notes as I went. I'm not 100% happy with the result but happy enough. Then I ripped out the one that was too wide, and started it again. I've just started the decreases so in theory that shouldn't take too much longer. Then there's the neckline which looks far too wide to me, but I'm hoping that by the time I've knitted it it will be fine. It's supposed to be low; not quite a boat one, but almost. 

I hope that I'm going to get a wearable jumper out of this. If not it has cost me next to nothing as I got the yarn very cheaply from a local designer when the line was discontinued by Rowan and I've learned some useful lessons about patterns and fitting. 

It would be nice if my next plan came in on time though!