A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing

I’ve just got back from the local newsagent, after having one of those weird experiences where you think you see someone you once knew, yet you know they’re dead and buried.

There is a new issue of Australia’s Creative Knitting on the shelves.

I thought we’d all breathed a collective sigh of relief some months ago, when they inferred they would be killing it off ? Oddly, at that time, the publishers had finally found an editor (Penny Carroll ) who had the potential to turn around the misfortunes of this rather embarrassing example of  an Australian knitting magazine – then they let her go (fired, I presume).  Did anyone actually keep track of how many editors were hired and fired, or those who resigned in despair, through the brief history of this magazine? Must have been around 5 or 6?

But, of course, when I recall the notifications from Penny at the time,  there was mention that it would no longer continue in its present form.

Well, today it’s appeared on the news-stands as a sheep in wolf’s clothing – whilst the front cover, with the regular Creative Knitting banner, gives little away, inside it’s actually Simply Knitting – yes, the UK magazine. They’ve filled it with direct reprints from Simply Knitting; UK patterns by UK designers, using UK yarns. UK articles about UK products. A mere smattering of Australian advertisers. What also knocked me over in the aisle was that the copy is from the Simply Knitting issue that IS ALSO now on our newsagent’s shelves.   

Of course, looking through the credits list inside the front cover – I was searching for the name of the person who was only game enough to sign the editorial introduction as ‘THE EDITOR’ - but I couldn’t find an editor listed. Of course not! Why would they need an editor if there was nothing to edit and, after all, it would only provide an easy target for those nasty ‘letters to the editor’ that  I’m now wanting to write. Nor, I suspect,  would there be anyone listed there who has anything to do with knitting (aside from the possibility that their grandmother might have knitted them a matinee jacket when they were 3 months of age).

You’ll also find in the small print inside the front cover, the admission that this is indeed just regurgitated/copy & paste content from Simply Knitting.

Why ? What’s the point? What is in the minds of this publishing house ? Don’t they know when it’s time to roll over and play dead? I can only come to one conclusion – the poor subscribers and advertisers who pre-paid for a service they didn’t get, needed to be given their money back. But Derwent Howard, instead of cutting short the agony and just refunding their money and closing the books, perhaps determined it was in their own interests to keep these innocent’s payments and just shove out another inferior product into the market.

Please, Jim Flynn and Nathan Berkley, take note of the very public opinion that filled the papers, the internet and the knitting groups in the past couple of years.  Even your own Creative Knitting discussion board at Derwent Howard regularly canned the mag. It sometimes takes a very courageous person to admit they’ve got it wrong. I’m sure your mags on computers and boys toys are probably very good.  But please, steer clear of knitting. For ever.

Other Things

There’s not been a great deal of knitting going on around here recently; other things keep getting in the way.  Christmas ? Nah. I’m done with the commercialism and consumer frenzy that happens around Christmas time, so much prefer a low key affair with the minimum of fuss. Last year topped them all to date: my Christmas lunch was a cheese & pickle sandwich, sheltering behind a rock on a walking track out from Mt Kosciusko – it was 8 deg C, a bitter chilly wind, and I was swathed in Gortex jacket, beanie & gloves to keep the weather at bay. We’d been travelling and hiking in the High Country in the lead up to Christmas, living in my campervan and stopping overnight where the fancy took us.  Alas, the scenery in Northern Victoria and the Alps will be very different from this time last year. The mountains are under assault by the most awful bushfires – I think the toll is around 750,000 hectares at the moment, plus numerous properties, at least one human life, and countless thousands of native animals and birds. And for those of us not directly affected by the flames, we live with what’s now become a daily reminder – the smoke that’s drifted right across our state. The smell that we wake up to each morning jolts you away from the fantasy of your night-time dreams, back to the reality of this fragile relationship we have with our environment here in Australia.

Our relationship with our water supply is under urgent revision too. Whilst here in the country we’ve been on water restrictions for years, with most rural dwellers having developed an understanding for the finite resourse that water really is, some of our city-dwelling cousins are only just beginning to appreciate that we have a crisis on our hands. Very soon, Melbourne too will be on Stage 3 water restrictions – no washing of cars, no watering of lawns, no watering of garden beds, except by drip system or hand held trigger hose, for a designated maximum of 4 hours on each of 2 specified days per week.

Most of my garden is native – but for the last 5 years of restrictions I’ve taken the attitude that the plants, trees & shrubs must look after themselves if they are to survive. We keep bowls in our shower and in the kitchen, and use what we catch there to put on the shrubs that line our back verandah and keep our house cool in the summer months. Those shrubs I’ve also treated to a deep layer of sugar cane mulch over these last two days – the mask I use for mixing dyestuff  found itself with a new purpose, as the dust and fine pieces of cane would otherwise find their way into the lungs too easily.

We  use part of our allocated watering time to put water on our food plants – a small 3m x 2m vegetable plot, and about 2 pots each of  tomatoes and lettuce. I suspect that most of these vegetables won’t survive much past the new year – a great shame but, with only 2 of us living in the household, there’s really only so much grey water to be caught. I have a front loader washing machine so that uses minimum water anyway – but I have also been given to understand that our native plants will generally suffer if the water contains residue of washing detergents, so I can’t use it there anyway; they’re a fussy lot, these natives! Our friends around the corner had a mod done that despatches their washing machine’s grey water to a tank, that then pumps it into the lavatory cistern, so they use recycled water to flush their toilet. That’s worth considering.

Here’s what I’ve done with one redundant flowerpot – it makes a great bird feeder to hang from one of our trees. I’m usually reluctant to feed birds – they can become dependant on hand-outs – but I’ve noticed them struggling to find feedstuff in the garden this year, and they’ve been biting off large fronds from all our gumtrees, trying to get at the blossom nectar and nuts.

And here I am, worrying about a few veggies and plants. A friend with a farming property  in the Mansfield area recently had to sell all his sheep and cattle – apart from a few valuable breeders. He just couldn’t afford the time and cost to hand feed them anymore. We must remember, for the farmers this drought has been impacting for 10 years.  And this week he’s battling a fire at his back door; last time we heard, the CFA had bulldozed the equivalent of 4 motorway lanes as a containment line around his boundary, yet I heard on the news yesterday that the fire in that area had breached the defences. There’s clearly going to be some people who won’t be looking forward to a happy Christmas.

Latvian mittens for NATO

Those readers who already have the latest issue of YARN Magazine will have noticed the extraordinary picture on the contents page of hundreds of knitted Latvian mittens. The story behind the picture is that 4500 pairs were knitted by the locals in the traditional Latvian style, to be given to NATO delegates and press representatives at the NATO summit in Riga, Latvia.

For those interested in learning more, or seeing in close up many of the mittens that were worked for this exercise, go over to the Gallery pages at the Riga Summit 2006 website. You’ll be impressed!

In one way it seems fortunate that Australia isn’t a member nation of NATO (and unless global warming sends this country floating northwards, nor should we ever be).  Down here, we’re more used to seeing our leaders – and I use that word in the loosest possible context - parading themselves at APEC summits. Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation. At each summit it is de rigueur for each participant to be presented with an item of traditional dress from the host nation – all are styled exactly alike, but usually in differing fabric designs or colours.  It is compulsory issue uniform for the summit photographs. If you think of countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc, you’ll get an idea of the sorts of apparel that might be featured – sarongs, kaftans, brightly coloured silks, cotton prints and weaves…and so on. But it takes a certain ‘attitude’ to be able to carry off these styles of dress successfully. An attitude which western nations (in which I include Australia) rarely possess. So, each year the world is subjected to the cringeworthy group photographs from APEC, where we sight our representatives, such as John Howard or Alexander Downer, looking like total nerds, dressed as if they are about to take the stage at the local panto, and radiating a sense of acute embarrassment about the whole thing.

So, moving on…..do you think John Howard could carry off a pair of Latvian mittens any better? No, I don’t think so, either. In fact, the mere image in my head of him jogging on a chilly Canberra morning, wearing Latvian mitts is a frightening thing. To me, the image of John Howard in any context is a frightening thing.

Memo to self

Before I continue, I really should remind myself (and reassure you, the reader) that this is not a blog about sock knitting. It is pure coincidence that yet another post is about to be dedicated to that same subject.

I recently asked around for some recommendations for books about sock knitting. What I was looking for was essentially an encyclopaedia-style book from which I could extract the methods for producing a variety of heels and toes. I didn’t need stitch patterns (I either tend to invent my own, or use one of the formidable array of  stitch ‘dictionaries’ that I already have on my shelves as a jumping off point); I didn’t really need sock patterns either. Just certain mechanics and technical info would have suited me well. Anyway, as a result, I’ve a few books on order, all yet to reach me (including that one cited in the previous ‘French knitting?’ post).

But then I discovered this:

It’s Weldon’s Practical Stocking Knitter, and it was written around 1920.

One of my passions is vintage fashion from this particular era but it had not, until recently, occurred to me to look for sock/stocking knitting instructions from this period.

The copy that I have is an authorised reproduction of the original publication, created by and available from Iva Rose Vintage Reproductions, and it cost significantly more than the ‘twopence’ on its header, but a whole lot less than any of the other books I’ve ordered. It has everything that I was seeking, including ten different heel types, seven toe styles, and clearly detailed images of each.

I have (so far) two other of their reproductions from my favourite period, and I can’t recommend them highly enough. Where necessary, they have carefully restored the images digitally, and the printing is of a very acceptable standard. Don’t expect to be able to follow the directions exactly as written, as allowances for varying yarns and needles will need to be made, as well as sizing adjustments to suit the changes in our contemporary bodies. The stockings may sound a little frightening to some, eg, those knitted in fine silk on size 20 needles, but the techniques are clearly explained, and the language used is absolutely beautiful.

Whilst I firmly believe that one can never have too many books, I suspect Weldon’s Practical Stocking Knitter will turn out to be the only one on the subject of sock knitting that I truly needed.

French knitting?

My thoughtful brother in the UK asked me for my Christmas list recently, so that presented me with the ideal opportunity to knock a couple of titles off my Amazon Wishlist, including a knitting book or two.

Within a matter of days, parcels started arriving here - not from Amazon, but from the Book Depository in the UK. It was not a site I’d come across before but, of particular interest to residents of Australia (and, indeed, most other countries outside the UK), is that they send their books POST FREE ! No, that doesn’t mean they inflate their prices to cover the cost, as many of their book prices are actually below the cost of Amazon (whose prices they kindly show alongside their own, by way of comparison).

But one of the packages had me baffled -  not of book size, or book weight – I eagerly ripped open the packaging to find:

How odd. An advanced French language course. Quite frankly, I have to say I was extremely disappointed. Clearly not something that was on my Wishlist – though maybe this was somehow (very remotely) related to my request for some world music? So I looked at the attached invoice and there, in black & white, was written ‘Sensational Knitted Socks’.

Oh, come on now – surely the Book Depository could tell the difference ? And it wasn’t even as if they had similar catalogue numbers or ISBNs. Maybe their ‘picker’ had decided that I might prefer to spend my time with Michel Thomas, thinking I was some spinster sitting at home alone knitting ? Worse still, perhaps there is some poor soul, somewhere else in the world, who’s been eagerly awaiting his 5 hour advanced course in the French language, only to find he’s been sent a knitting book instead ! Yes, I suspect they dropped two articles into the wrong packages.

But what to do ? I emailed my aforementioned brother and, trying hard not to sound ungrateful, told him that I really would prefer to have Sensational Knitted Socks. I wondered too whether the Book Depository, with their free delivery policy, might expect me to return Michel Thomas at my own cost. But no ! They very kindly said I could keep Michel and that they’d send out the correct order as soon as possible. Now that’s what I call good service. Three cheers for the Book Depository.

Alas, I really don’t think Michel Thomas is for me, so will pass on this package to someone more appreciative. I’m also a touch baffled how anyone might choose to put the following endorsement on their product (as spoken by the renowned Emma Thompson):

“Learning Spanish with Michel was the most extraordinary experience of my life – it was unforgettable”.

Hhmm – I’ve had some extraordinary & unforgettable experiences too, many of which I consider to be distinctly unpleasant. Whilst his French (& Spanish) may well be impeccable, perhaps Michel Thomas hasn’t quite mastered the little nuances of the English language ?