To sum up

How was your Christmas? Ours was quiet. There were no shocks, no bad news, and no drama. We spent the actual day watching DVDs and then playing games with a friend who came over in the evening. We've visited friends and played "elf delivery service" to their children.

I've spent the last few days feeling grateful for the good things in my life. 2009 has been a hard year for many people. We haven't come through it unscathed, but I don't care. A bad year doesn't define who we are. So what if I'm still not pregnant, or that DH is unemployed? I can still count my blessings. I have a wonderful husband, a loving family and good friends who are almost family. I have a job that pays the bills, a car that works, a roof over my head, hundreds of books to read and a stash of yarn. What more could a girl want?

OK, ok, there are a few things (including the 2 I've already mentioned), but they aren't things that necessarily cost money. And most are within my ability to deliver to myself. They are things that cost time and effort. I'd still like to be able to converse with the Client's staff in their own language (French). I'd like my top C-sharp back ([cough] even B-flat would be nice [cough]). And I'd like to be fit enough to run a half marathon. Maybe that should be my list of New Year's Resolutions?

In an average year, at about this time, I'd have a list of New Year's Resolutions as long as your arm. I think in my best (worst?) year I had a list of 35 Resolutions. This year, I really only have one: to act thoughtfully throughout 2010. That way, if I'm going to be a b*tch about something, then at least I'll have worked out the consequences first. :o)

Seriously, though, "acting thoughtfully" encompasses working towards my goals, being kind to people and being conscientious about my commitments. If I do that, then I will be a better person than I am now, and I will be happier with my life (not that I'm unhappy now, but you know what I mean, don't you?). And I will achieve the things I want to achieve. May the same be true for you.

Happy New Year my friends. During the Havdalah ceremony to close the Sabbath each week, Jews wish each other "Shavu'a Tov: 'a good week, a week of peace, may gladness reign and joy increase.'" For 2010, I would like to wish us all A Good Year. A year of peace. May gladness reign in your hearts and joy in your lives.

- Pam

An open letter

To Wokingham District Council AND Reading Borough Council,

Why the F*** didn't you grit the roads?????

Why did it take me two and a half hours to go the 600 metres from the office car park to the bypass? It didn't need to. It wouldn't have if you had done the sensible thing and gritted the roads. It's not as if you didn't have sufficient time before rush hour - it has been snowing steadily since 11am this morning. And you were told this morning that snow would fall.

You didn't even grit the Bypass! Or the King's Road. These are the major roads in your area. Thousands of people travel on them every hour. I'm just grateful that the motorways are maintained by the Highways Agency, so that when I finally got to the M4, I could actually drive at more than 10 miles an hour.

Honestly, you are both a disgrace. The local ambulance service has publicly chastised Reading for not gritting the pavements in the Town Centre; they have had a huge number of call outs due to slips and falls on the ice.

THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

- Pam

Geek humour

I heard this on Lime & Violet and thought it was just too good not to share:-




Enjoy!

- Pam

Something turned up yesterday

DH was reading my blog last night while I was getting ready for choir practice. "Click on the link," I said, "so you'll know what the book looks like".

So he did. "Oh! That book."

"What do you mean: 'That book'?" I demanded.

"Nothing," innocent voice. "It looks familiar, that's all."

I go upstairs to brush my teeth. Three minutes later, I return to the lounge and a certain book is lying innocently on the couch. Guess who had "tidied" it away?

- Pam

Missing: One Book

Where the hell is it? I've been through the house THREE times and I can't find my copy of Knitting Classic Style by Veronik Avery. I haven't a clue where it's gone. Nor can I find my working copy (a photocopy) of the pattern I want to make from it. I've looked everywhere!

I'm sure there is a black hole in this house where books I want to read go to hide. Considering that this is a house full of books, at any given moment tracking down the one I want isn't easy, but I've checked all the usual places. It isn't in the "library" (our book-shelf lined third bedroom); it isn't on the coffee table; it isn't under the coffee table; it hasn't hidden itself in one of the three stacks of knitting magazines; it isn't hiding on or behind the stash (I've checked there too, just in case that's where the working copy is hiding); it isn't on the piano pretending to be music, or on the kitchen bookshelf pretending to be a recipe book. It isn't ANYWHERE!

I need this book. More to the point, I need a copy of the Beret Basque pattern if I am to make my MIL another one for Christmas.

[sigh]

How do you tempt a book out from it's hiding place when it is clear it doesn't want to be found?

- Pam (exasperated)

It's my "birthday" and I'll blog if I want to

Hello, my name is Toy and I'm borrowing PipneyJane's blog. She's one of my humans. We've been together for 9 years now: me, her and the Boy (her DH). He's a nice boy - drives me quite gently, not one of those boy-racer types.

PipneyJane looks after me very well. Every 10,000 miles, she takes me to the doctors' for my checkup and servicing. When I've had bumps and bruises, she gets me repaired as quickly as possible. She's very loyal, too. We've travelled thousands of miles together and she never looks at another car. Not that way. No lusting after Porches or Fords (spit!). I'm hers and that's the way it's meant to be.

When you're a car, you don't really have birthdays - instead, you have milestones. I know PipneyJane has shown you a few of mine. Well, I've just passed a big milestone and I'd like to share it with you myself. So here you are:


200,000 miles as of 12.45am on Saturday 28th November 2009.

Playing engineer

I've told you, haven't I, that I work for a firm of engineers? A couple of months ago, I finally did the health and safety course that would allow me to walk the building site at Site. I've walked the site a couple of times since then. It's interesting seeing where all the money has gone and identifying those components for which I actually remember the vendor invoices. (Not many - we've had almost 6000 invoices since we started.)

Last time, I went out with two of the cost engineers - one is an accountant by training, the other a quantity surveyor. We wandered around and pretended we knew what we were looking at, playing engineer.


- Pam

Giving thanks where thanks is due

A big thank you to:

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo (Hello Jason Isaacs!)
Lime & Violet
Never Not Knitting

for keeping me sane on my 230+mile drive to Site this evening. Your podcasting efforts are much appreciated. It was a very long and boring trip, which would have been much worse without you to keep me company. How long and boring? Well, suffice to say that I got through THREE episodes of Lime & Violet after I turned onto the M1 and they run to almost an hour and a half.

- Pam (who had to spend the morning at her regular office and didn't escape until 3pm)

Touching base

For the first time in what feels like weeks, I've got the house to myself. DH has gone up to Town* to meet up with a friend. I had been looking forward to my alone time immensely, but when it finally arrived, I didn't know what to do with myself. There is nothing to watch on the telly. I don't want to watch the downloads on the laptop without DH in case there is something he'd like to see. And it's taken me two hours to drag myself out of my inertia and start blogging.

So, what has been happening? Last week can be summarised as two concerts, an NFL match, two deaths and a funeral. It was a busy, draining and highly emotional week. I'll write about the football later - there are photos to post, when I can find the camera - and much fun to describe, but I did want to say "Amy, got your email; I'm glad the program I posted to you arrived so quickly".

The concerts were Spandau Ballet at the NEC in Birmingham, and Fleetwood Mac at Wembley Arena. Again, I'll talk about them later. It is difficult to create a coherent post that ties together, when I really want to talk about the other things that happened last week.

I got a text message on Monday morning: P's mum finally passed away on Sunday after a years of battling with osteoporosis and, more recently, "chronic" breast cancer. She was 89 and, I think, had lived a long happy life, although the last few years had been filled with pain and disability from the osteoporosis. Nancy broke her hip last December and never quite recovered. P nursed her at home for the last few months, providing round-the-clock care. She did her mum proud.

The other news on Monday had me in tears sitting at my desk at lunchtime. Thank God I face the window when I look at my computer screen. Andy, the husband of one my net-friends, Dianakalt, fitted and died in hospital on Sunday afternoon. (Some of you may remember Diana from the Motley Fool.) They'd only been married a couple years. He was 40 and had recently been diagnosed with a brain tumour. No one had been expecting this; not yet. His diagnosis was recent - they were evaluating him for treatment - but he was well enough to be moved from a high-dependency unit to a physical rehabilitation unit to aid his recovery from the small stroke that led to his diagnosis.

How do you comfort a friend when your only medium of contact is words on a screen? What can you say? Losing a life partner is far more devastating than almost any other death - not only do you lose the person but all of your hopes, dreams and plans for the future as well. At least in real life, you can reach out and hug. And cry together.

I have something on my needles for Diana. It'll be finished soon. That is the best I can do - a gift, made with love, to hug her when I cannot.

At Nancy's funeral on Thursday, I said a quiet prayer for Andy. I don't think Nancy would have minded. And I hugged P and shared her grief.

- Pam





* Note the capital "T" on "Town"; a hangover from an earlier era which denotes London. All other towns in this country were once referred to with a small "t"; London was the Town. (Blame my mother.)

Still here

It's been a busy couple of weeks and I haven't had sufficient time to myself to put together any coherent thought, let alone write the posts that are floating around my brain. I think, at last count, I had six topics on my "to write about" list; I've just been too brain dead after work to string a sentence together.

On the upside (or downside, if you are our client), my work project is still growing strong and doesn't appear to have got any closer to completion than four months ago. It's entered the construction version of the "knitting black hole" (where you knit and knit and the piece your are knitting on never seems to get any longer). The current estimated completion date is nearly a year after the original one. Oops!

On the downside, DH is now officially unemployed. He was made redundant nearly two weeks ago. The parsimonious so-and-so's made him work his notice period (3 months), gave him the statutory minimum redundancy payment (£380 per year of service), and made it as difficult as possible for him to hunt for a new job. He's had more leads in the last week than he had in the preceding 3 months.

Oh, and I went to the Knit & Stitch Show at Alexandra Palace two weeks ago with BBAW* and was very restrained. I somehow managed to fritter away the money in my purse, but I came away with almost no new yarn. I did buy a skein of Buffalo Gold #4 directly from Ron Miskin (who's family owns the firm), and picked up 3 mill-end skeins of Colinette's Jitterbug from a basket on the Colinette stand. For £2 a skein, instead of the usual £9.74, I got enough for a three pairs of socks (the skeins weigh in at between 65g and 95g instead of the usual 100g). The colourways are Moss, Adonis and, I think, Turquoise, but they weren't labelled so I'm guessing a bit.

- Pam



* BBAW = Best Buddy at (former) Work. Neither of us work there now but, for four years, I got to work with one of my best and closest friends.

Autumn has started

It's cold here. The weather turned on the weekend. Yesterday was particularly brutal, with cold radiating through the office walls. Here is this morning's message from the Facilities Manager:

Just a quick note to let you know that the heating system has failed due to a defective pressure switch and we are urgently attempting to source a replacement part. As soon as we have it the engineer will be back to fix it.
Hopefully this will be today.

Translation:

I really have tried to switch the heating on. It's not my fault that it isn't working - it's broken. STOP NAGGING ME!

- Pam

This gardening lark is harder than it looks

If it was 1942 and we were reliant on the produce from our garden to get through the lean rationing years, then I think we'd starve. This has been a far from successful year for my gardening. I'm not sure what I did wrong, although I'll make some guesses. Feel free to contribute.

The onions and the garlic

At the start of March, I bought a bag of 100 onion sets. I planted out 50 in April, which was a bit late but it was the first weekend when it wasn't raining. By mid August, the "flags" (the onion leaves) had fallen over and died off, so I unearthed them. Out of 50, less than half survived. Of those that survived, the majority were smaller than a golf ball. I really don't know what I did wrong - they were watered every night that it didn't rain.

The garlic were cursed from the start. I bought three starter-bulbs (what do you call them?) at the same time as I bought the onion sets. I had to bin most of the cloves before I planting out - they were covered in mould. Instead, I planted out some sprouting garlic that I had in the veggie basket. From 12 cloves, I have just unearthed 5 marble sized bulbs of garlic.

Did I plant the onions and garlic out too late? Was that the problem? Or didn't they get enough water, even though they got 2-3 watering cans worth every night?

Broad Beans

I know I planted the broad beans out too late. From the first batch of seeds in April, I got one seedling. The seeds were old. So in early May, I started again and planted them out 3 weeks later. In early June, we got the big invasion of black fly - at the first sign, I got online and ordered ladybird larvae.

The larvae arrived over a week later. From the look of things, most were dead before they got here. We carefully decanted them onto the broad beans, but the damage had been done. We got maybe a dozen beans from the crop. (Two years ago, I planted out the same number of bean plants and got a couple of pounds of beans.)

I'm going to try potting up some broad bean seeds now and over-wintering them covered in fleece. Maybe that will work and beat the black fly?

The courgettes

I mentioned earlier in the year that only one courgette survived (the other was snipped off at ground level by some nasty bug). For a long time, I thought the plant wouldn't survive. It just sat there for weeks with two or three small leaves and didn't get any bigger. Finally, it came good but unlike the first time I grew courgettes when they started cropping in June, this one didn't commence cropping until the start of August!

The sweetcorn

Eight corn survived planting out and grew. Six of them formed cobs. I managed to harvest three. I caught a fox eating the rest!

The potatoes

I had high hopes for these. We finished earthing up at the end of June and they had a healthy crop of leaves growing until a couple of weeks ago, when they started dying back. Tonight, DH and I unearthed our crop. Twenty potatoes. None larger than the palm of my hand and most of them smaller than a golf ball. What did I do wrong?

Fennel and pumpkin

I thought I got the timing for the fennel spot on, since I planted it out the day after they told me to on Gardeners' World. From two 18-inch drills of seeds, I got two seedlings and, nearly three months later, neither is more than three inches high.

The pumpkin is even worse, so doesn't deserve a section on its own. [sigh]

- Pam (So what did I do wrong?)

Showing off the shopping from I-Knit London Weekender

There is a new love in my life - Blacker Designs Blue Faced Leicester 4-ply. Isn't it pretty?


OK, this is the True Confessions Time where I 'fess up about what I bought at the I-Knit-London Weekender.

I didn't set out to buy yarn, really I didn't. My shopping list was a copy of Alice Starmore's new book, a swift and a ball-winder, if I could find one. (I succeeded.) I was quite happy wandering around looking, touching and not buying. And then I stumbled upon the Blacker Designs booth. Blacker Designs are also known as The Natural Fibre Company (when they spin yarns for others). Earlier this year, they very kindly sent me 20-or-so 2-gallon ziplock bags, which are virtually unobtainable here. So when I saw the stall, I popped over to say "Thank You" in person.

I was chatting when the Blue Faced Leicester caught my eye and wheedled its way into my stash. Earlier, when I was queuing to get in, I'd been chatting with a staffer from The Knitter Magazine, who showed me a preview copy of Issue 10. The Blue Faced Leicester spoke to me and told me that it would be perfect for the cover sweater.


I dashed off to find the girl from The Knitter and begged her to tell me the yarn requirements for the cover sweater (called Virginia (rav-link)). The pattern said 10 x 50g balls plus 2 for the beret. Back at Blacker Designs, I told my contact "I'll take 14 balls. The pattern calls for 12, so I'll have two insurance skeins". The yarn diet was broken.

Of course, once you've broken a diet, you binge. Don't you? I was enchanted by Angel Lace by Bluefaced.com. It was soft and silky and they had a beautiful stole on display made from it. Next thing I knew, it made its way into my stash together with a copy of the Jessica Stole pattern.


My final purchase is all Annie Modesitt's fault. I know she didn't deliberately do it, but Annie is a Yarn Pusher. In class, we had to do a provisional crochet cast on. Annie provided the scrap yarn, a yard or so of Fiberspates' Scrumptious in a gorgeous charcoal colour. Yarn lust gripped me. I had to have some.

I left the show soon afterwards, before any more damage could be done.

- Pam

Pilgrimage

It's all Ted Egan's fault.

Or maybe you could blame Howard. He gave me a copy of The Dish for my birthday, which I watched with DH and was stunned when I discovered that DH had never heard Russell Morris sing "On the Wings of An Eagle" before. That lead to me buying the movie's soundtrack as a download off Amazon, which lead to a further "I wonder if I can find...." session, where I looked for more obscure tracks. It was then that I purchased Ted Egan's A Town Like Alice album.

Maybe you can lay the blame further back, on the shoulders of the coach driver who played A Town Like Alice constantly on the school Central Australia trip, all the way from Port Augusta to Ayers Rock and then on to Alice Springs.

Me? I'll stick with blaming Ted.

Anyway, there I was driving back from Site a couple of weeks ago, when Ted Egan began singing about John McDouall Stuart dying at his sister's house in London, a few miles from where I sat stuck in traffic. Stuart is one of Australia's greatest explorers, the man who successfully mapped the route south to north across the heart of Australia, from Port Augusta in South Australia to what is now Darwin. Apart from the highway named after him, I knew nothing about him until I sat listening to Ted. If you asked most Australian school kids of my generation who mapped the route for the telegraph, they'd tell you, wrongly, that it was Burke & Wills. In fact, it was John McDouall Stuart.

Consumed with a sense of sadness that Stuart died unappreciated and forgotten, miles from his beloved Australia, I decided that the only thing to do was to mount a pilgrimage to his grave. On Saturday, I dragged DH down to Kensal Rise Cemetery to lay a branch from a gum tree on Stuart's grave.

It was the best that I could do. You can't get wattle, or Sturt's desert pea, or bottle-bush around here, and a European flower just wouldn't have been fitting.

We stood there silently for a couple of minutes, paying our respects. I hope, somewhere, Stuart knows.

- Pam




PS: When doing my research to find Stuart's grave, I was pleased to discover that some people haven't forgotten him. The John McDouall Stuart Society ensures that he isn't forgotten.

I-Knit London Weekend

How do you distill two busy days into a single post? I've been asking myself that since Sunday. Friday and Saturday, I spent at the I-Knit London Weekend at the Royal Horticultural Hall in central London. Since Sunday, I've tried to make sense of it all.

In summary: I did 5 classes; met a couple of very nice teachers; spoke to several very nice knitters; walked across St James' Park in the dark; blew my budget; fondled a lot of yarn; purchased a ball winder and swift; blew my budget; bought a couple of books; broke my yarn diet; bought a multi-size pack of Knitpicks DPNs; and (did I tell you?) blew my budget. So, where to start?

Classes

I did 5 classes: two with Annie Modesitt, two with Alice Starmore and one with Marjan Hammink a.k.a. Yarnissima.

Alice Starmore is a lovely, soft spoken, gracious Scottish lady, with an innate sense of colour and an appreciation of the history of her craft and her people. Alice's first class was about fair-isle knitting techniques, but it was far more than just learning how to knit two colours in the same row. We talked about fair-isle garment construction, changing colours, using both your right hand and your left to hold different colours of yarn. Alice showed us steeking and discussed techniques for setting a steek, picking up stitches from the steek, and finishing off the cut edges. The choice of yarn is one key to success - the traditional wool is soft, springy and felts a little when it is first washed.

Alice's second class was about her design influences. She talked about the history of the Isle of Lewis, including her own family history, and her love for her island and her craft. She talked about her own design history, the patterns and the yarn line that she now runs (both of which can be brought directly from her website). Next birthday, I want my present to be one of her kits.

There is a core of steel to Alice Starmore - she is a fierce defender of her land, fighting to protect the ecology of the island from developers. However, she was very gracious to me and to the rest of my class, signing copies of her books (including my pre-publication copy of her Book of Fair-Isle Knitting) and posing for photos.


(Me and Alice Starmore.)

Thanks to the Yarn Thing podcast, I've listened to Annie Modesitt talk about designing and book publishing several times. each time, I've found myself nodding along in agreement, so I was curious to meet the person behind the voice. I am very impressed. Annie is lovely: warm, friendly and very welcoming. After six hours of teaching, she was still as interested in her subject and her students as she was at the beginning.

I learned so many techniques, I'm not sure I could list them all. Annie is an amazing teacher and a thinking knitter's knitter. She didn't tell us to "do X because that gives you Y", Annie explained why X works and what would happen if you chose to do Z or T instead.

My world is richer for the six hours I spent in her class; I hope that I get the opportunity to take another Annie Modesitt class one day.

(Me and Annie Modesitt.)

The final class I did was Socks from the toe up, with the sock designer Marjan Hammink/Yarnissima. To put it bluntly, if you get the opportunity to take one of her classes, don't bother. After Alice and Annie, I was so disappointed. Yarnissima didn't teach us anything; she just handed us a worksheet to knit through. She barely spoke to us as a class and never spoke to me in person. There were no explanations of why you do something or tips and tricks to make toe-up socks better. We weren't even taught a cast-on for toe-up socks - I had to rely on the knitter next to me to cast on for me.

In 3 hours, I learned nothing from Yarnissima that I wouldn't have picked up from following a randomly chosen toe-up-sock knitting pattern. It was so bad that I've written to Gerrard and Craig, the guys behind I-Knit London, and told them exactly what I've just told you. (I also thanked them for a lovely weekend and raved about Annie and Alice.)

I haven't got time to talk about the rest of the weekend, right now. It's after 11pm here, I'm really tired and I need to go to bed. Can I leave you with a one word summary? It was brilliant!

- Pam