A Sad Farewell

 

Yes, my wedding dress has gone. After 40 odd years of lying in a box and being carried from move to move, when we cleared out the loft the other week I decided the time had come to let it go. To be honest this was more because the box had got damaged than anything else; I could just see it in another 20 years or so spoiled because the box had let in dust and dirt and possibly insect life. And I didn't want that to happen. 

I couldn't sell it or send it to a charity shop because on my wedding day someone put a stiletto heel through the train ( I'm sure it was accidental, but it was a pity none the less.) So it has gone off to Bonnie Babies to be cut up and made into beautiful little burial gowns and wraps for still born babies. It is doing more good like that than it would be lying in my loft for another few years, and I'm glad I knew I could do that with it. My veil has gone as well but I kept the head dress, and the comb that one of the bridesmaids wore in their hair, so I'm not totally without physical reminders of the day. 

That said I was a little bit sad, but then - why do we keep them? The suit the OH wore on the day has long since gone to the Great Wardrobe in the Sky and I don't remember him being loth to part with it.  We obviously imbue this particular outfit with some sort of special significance but I do wonder why. 

Changing the subject completely many thanks for the kind words from some readers on my Forth Bridges Hat, much appreciated. And given that it is the GSoY this coming weekend, keep your eyes peeled for a companion piece, coming to you in photographic kit form very shortly!  

September Wool Stats and Finished Projects

 I said to the OH the other day; it's not that I buy too much yarn, it's just that I don't knit quickly enough. I'm not sure he was convinced about that one. 

Anyway I was dreading totting up the stats for September because I did buy all that Aran wool plus  various other bits this month and that all came to a grand total of 1488g in. However it wasn't a total disaster as wool out came to 1342g, thanks mainly to a 'gifting opportunity' courtesy of my son. He worked for 6 months at a charity in Glasgow and still volunteers there two days a week, and it's just started running a year long fundraising campaign featuring knitting.  There are various ways to join in, one of which is donating wool. So a bag with 872 g will be on its way to Glasgow with us later in the week, and another 150g left the house as part of a swap. Total wool out was 1342g, which meant a net increase of 146g which was sad but not nearly as bad as it could have been. 

What with being away and then spending lots of time here clearing/cleaning the house I didn't have an awful lot of crafting time in September to be honest so I'm quite pleased, looking back, to see how much I did actually achieve. 

Starting with the non-knitting stuff, I made two cards 

they were brighter than that in real life and also not out of focus!

ThenI took a deep breath and crocheted the crib from my crochet nativity set

far from perfect but I'm happy with it. I don't claim to be a crocheter.

Then guess what? two pairs of socks. One for the OH

using some wool I bought in a destash on Ravelry. No, I don't know why I did it, except that it looked like this in the skein 

and I thought he would like the colours. Which, to be fair, he did. 

And a pair for me 

this wool was from ages ago. I'd started making a different pattern with it, but it was too complicated so it sat in time out for a while and when I could face ripping out what I had done I cast on these instead. It was unfortunate that I had forgotten that I had used this pattern once before and hated it. The finished object is fine, although not shown to its best advantage when not on a foot to be honest! but the pattern is very confusing to follow and I won't be using it again. 

I picked up the third of the four unfinished baby sweaters, the peach one, and completed it

and of course this meant that Poppy the Penguin got yet another blanket made from the left overs. 

She must be the warmest penguin in the world by now. 

And finally I picked out the kit for the Forth Bridges Hat, which I bought the last time I went to the Glasgow School of Yarn, and knitted it up. Like the Glasgow one from the same company, Wee County Yarns, this was a joy to knit . I have come to the conclusion that I must rather enjoy stranded colour work and I was very happy with the way this turned out. 

October is also shaping up to be a less than productive month, but maybe I'll be able to accelerate a bit once we're back from our next trip south.  

The Degas Exhibition

So while we were south for Bloody Scotland, and a bit of house related stuff, we also took in the big Degas Exhibition at the Burrell in Glasgow. It was actually an exhibition about Scottish Art Collectors  and their relationship to Degas' work, but Burrell was an early buyer so that fitted. 

I was a weeny bit disappointed to be honest. There was a lot of information about the men who bought Degas' pictures, and exhibits which detailed which ones they bought, for how much and sometimes how much they later sold them for. Interesting if you're digging through an archive and discovering it for yourself; not so much if you're presented with it  in a glass case. There weren't as many artworks by Degas as I expected and honestly the ones I saw in the Musee d'Orsay were much nicer. However there was a nice spread; some ballet dancers, some street women and laundresses, and some horses, so fairly representative. 

The two problems I had with it all were 1) it was spread over a large area and because my knee was still highly compromised at that point I had to keep finding somewhere to sit down. And that's personal to me and nothing to do with the exhibition. Secondly the lighting was at a stupidly low level. I read all the signs about fragility of the work and needing to protect it and that's fine, but I've never ever ever walked round an exhibition that was so dim. The lighting was so low that it meant many of the  colours in the paintings were completely wrongly perceived. And that problem was on them.

Finally, as always they never seem to have postcards of the paintings I like; the one above was the closest. I did like that picture which is rather more engaging in real life than in post card form but it wasn't my favourite. 

We're going south again shortly, mainly so that I can attend the Glasgow School of Yarn, but we're also planning a trip to the V & A in Dundee to see the Kimono exhibition there and I'm really looking forward to that. Hoping for some good postcards there! 

Just Popping In Briefly

 to say, like Granny Weatherwax, I ent dead. I am however dead tired and have not had access to my laptop for several days while my study was being decorated. We managed to put bits of it back together yesterday as the decorator finished in here on Friday. I even have a photo

It will not look this tidy/sparse ever again, The best bit about re-assembling it was having a heavy prune of the CDs as I put them back into the racks. We even have a little bit of space, in the unlikely event,  that we ever buy any more, to put them, and they are all so beautifully arranged that it should be easy to find any particular CD without problem. After the photos are done on Tuesday I am hoping to persuade the OH to put at least one of the bookcases back in here and hang a couple of pictures too. 

The decorator will be back tomorrow for a final lot of painting in the kitchen but there's not much needing to be done in there and the rest of the house is in various stages of readiness. It will all be fine by Tuesday. I should mention that the OH has worked very hard outside, clearing weeds from pavements and the patio and washing the windows,  generally a thankless task in Orkney because of the salt in the wind, but they do look fab. 

This afternoon, and my heart sinks slightly as I type the words, I shall be 'having a go' at my craft room. I am expecting it to take a while. 

Just a Quick Entry today

 

Yes, I made some cards yesterday which was mostly quite relaxing. I've been away from the computer for a few days because we are working hard getting the house ready for a) a decorator who is coming next week and is going to paint and paper my study and paint the kitchen and b) the agent and surveyor who are coming the following week to get the house on the market. So we're sort of doing three things at once; clearing the rooms for the decorator to do his stuff, starting to declutter other rooms ready for the photographs the agent will take, and staring a prune of 'stuff' that we won't be wanting to take with us when we move. 

Hard work, time consuming but as ever, all worth it in the end. We hope! 

'Bloody Scotland' (1)

 

So that's a not very good photograph of Richard Armitage, the actor turned thriller writer. This was the second session that Doreen and I went to; we were a very long way back hence the short comings of the picture. Well that and the lighting. I had been delighted to see that RA, an actor who I have long admired, was to be at the festival and even obtained a copy of his book Geneva to read (well, listen to) before the event. It's a multiple POV and he and the amazing Nicola Walker were the main narrators. I did not find it either thrilling or engaging and in fact gave up part way through, contenting myself with the final chapter and the epilogue just to confirm to myself that I was right about who was good, who was bad, and what the bad guys were trying to do. I was very pleased that the book had been an Audible freebie, as it meant that I hadn't had to waste any of my money on it. He has now written a second book, but I won't be bothering Audible for that. To be honest I think it's probably an OK book, I'm just not a fan of thrillers. We were very amused when it came to the questions because they were almost all from women who all said something along the lines of 'Good evening Richard, my name is xxx' which was funny because in the previous session no-one had felt it incumbent upon themselves to give their names when asking questions!!

The session before this was a two hander of Peter James, who writes the Roy Grace series of detective novels set in Brighton, and Elly Griffiths who recently brought her Ruth Galloway series to a close. I've heard Griffiths before and she's delightful, I hadn't heard Peter James but he was good value. He also told a couple of funny stories about Martin Amis, which almost reconciled me to the hours of my life I wasted reading Amis' book London Fields. Almost, but not quite. 

And then it was back to Doreen's for an overnight stay. 

 

Estate Agents, A New Coat and a Pipe Band

 

Well, what do you know? My photo program is allowing me to crop again. I probably shouldn't have mentioned it, just in case I jinxed it. 

So we drove down to Glasgow a week past  Thursday and on Friday we got up quite early and went over to Stirling. We visited two estate agents, both of whom we had been in contact with already, sampled an Italian cafe and bought the OH a new coat in the Mountain Warehouse sale. Him needing  a new waterproof thing hadn't really been on the agenda until we were ready to leave Orkney at which point we saw that the sleeve on his current one was ripped in several places. As it was waterproof there was no way I could just sew it up, and to be honest, he must have had it for years so, as my mother used to say, it didn't owe us anything.  I think the shop we bought it from in Kirkwall has had three changes of business since then! We decided to have a look in M and S when we got to Stirling, but then spotted Mountain Warehouse opposite and checked there instead. The coat is very nice and there was a lot of money off it so win, win. 

While we were in the cafe one of the agents we had been talking to sent us details of four houses on their books that she thought might suit. One we discounted immediately, and the other three we drove to and checked out the outsides, dismissing a further two, which left us with only one in the running so we arranged a viewing for that.

And that filled the day, by then it was time to go and meet my friend Doreen  for an early dinner. I had my first alcoholic drink for months, I think possibly the last one before that was a glass of wine in Finland last summer; we're not big drinkers. And after the meal I transferred an overnight bag from our car to Doreen's and the OH wended his way back to Glasgow. Doreen and I drove into Stirling, she dropped me by the Albert Halls while she parked the car and I joined what seemed like the longest queue I'd ever been in, to pick up a ticket. Just as well we had the pipe band to entertain us. I could have done without Mairi's Wedding, but there again, it wasn't Highland Cathedral. 

I had got to the Box Office but hadn't actually got my ticket when Doreen arrived from the back of the queue, which says something about the efficiency or otherwise of the box office staff. Actually it probably wasn't them. You know when you go to the bank and there are two people at the cashier's  desk and one of them is banking £742 in copper coins and the other one is demanding to know why the bank can't  send a tiny amount of money free of charge to a country which is so suspicious of foreign bank transactions that it demands a five page form filled in in triplicate, countersigned by the sendee, the cashier and two independent witnesses in good standing in the community? It was a bit like that. 

Anyway despite the huge numbers of people in the queue we all got in and we all got a seat and the entertainment began. Of which more another day.