Ula in progress

I finished the back of the Ula cardi, from the Iona book, some time ago, but have only just got around to starting the fronts; ribbing complete, I head into the st st next time I pick up the piece. Here’s the back:

 

Hardly an inspiring picture, I know – more just a record of progress. And neither does it convey just how lovely this yarn is to work with. It really is the ’super soft Aran’ just as the Colinette marketing proclaims.  I’m knitting this one as a shop sample, which means I rigidly adhere to the pattern directions (there’s no point displaying a garment if it’s not what the customer can expect to achieve) but the side shaping of this pattern is actually a bit topsy-turvy for my own pear-shaped figure. The hem edge width is actually designed to be a few cms narrower than the measurement at the bust, which seems a bit unusual even for a standard figure shape. Luckily this is not a full button-through front, but just a single button fastening at the V neckline, meaning it can be worn without the front edges meeting, so I’m hoping I’ll get away with the fit of this. Once it’s run its course on display, it will be going into my wardrobe!

On the trip-planning front, we’re already disagreeing over proposed intineraries within NZ! Me, I like a fairly leisurely pace, a day or two here, maybe three days there, and so on. I really don’t cope well with racing from one destination to the next, spending all day on the road. By the time I’ve actually got to where I’m going, I’m too buggered to actually enjoy what’s on offer. But Mr Knitterly Notions has put up a map and stuck pins in it on all the places he wants to get to (so far, people, I’ve had opportunity to place just ONE pin!). It’s not looking good from my viewpoint; could have been okay if we were going for 2 1/2 months, but to cram that lot into 21 days? Please no.

Basket-cases?

Earlier this month I photographed this little set up to submit as a promotional image for a craft show I do; the basket (made by a very talented friend, who I fear I’ve lost touch with) is full of Iona, which is the latest yarn release from Colinette.

Not long ago, I sent a hank of this same yarn off to Yarn Magazine for inclusion in the silk feature issue. Guess what? Today I received the magazine and they too have put it in a basket for photography. So….is it a question of ‘great minds..’? Or are we, I wonder, guilty of overdoing a cliche?!

Got a ticket for my destination…

But I’m not homeward bound.

Have finally given in to Mr Knitterly Notions and submitted to a holiday overseas. OK, so some might consider New Zealand more of an appendage to Australia, rather than some foreign land but, believe me, the angst it has caused me puts it into the league of somewhere far distant and exotic. My conscience is trying to tell me I should be headed to the UK instead.

You see, it’s 5 years since I have been back ‘home’ to the UK; I have all my family over there nagging me to visit, and I’ve been putting them off with just about every reason under the sun. In reality, a trip to the UK is out of my league at present – past visits have really put the pressure on my health and have generally resulted in me spending several months getting back to my particular level of ‘normal’ after my return. Added to this is the fact that I’ve purposely kept certain members of my family ‘in the dark’ about my medical situation, and that means I’ve dug myself into a pretty deep hole that isn’t easy to climb out from.  To the extent that one of my brothers appears to have disowned me, and isn’t playing speaks, because he believes I just don’t care about my family. Ah, the things we do….

So, it came to the crunch. If, said my partner, I wasn’t going to entertain going to the UK in the foreseeable future, then what about a real holiday in New Zealand instead?  Very short flight, very cost effective travel if you grab a Virgin special. 

I hummed and haa-ed, looked at the calendar to see what few windows of opportunity there were, and found a brief stretch after my last show of the year and before the warmer weather decends upon us. So, somehow I find myself with 2 cheap-as-chips plane tickets to New Zealand and a campervan hire booking for 3 weeks in October.

I’m actually looking forward to it very much. I’ve already taken several books out of the library to assess what’s on offer over there  and also hope to build some fibre-filled things into our intinerary. What I’m not looking forward to is having to explain to my family why it’s NZ and not UK.

Que sari Sarah

Last night I was invited to be a guest at a the local Rotary Club’s ‘Indian Night’ – the club’s President happens to be Indian, and they brought in a guest speaker who was a Melbourne nursing specialist in cardiac recouperation, who’d been headhunted by a cardiac surgeon from Hyderabad to set up a similar program in India.

My biggest challenge of the night was how to tie my sari successfully!  It must have been about 25 years ago when I travelled to India and Nepal, and the beautiful silk sari I bought at that time has never been worn in the intervening decades. I had every intention of making it into a dress, but could never quite dream up something that would make best use of the border prints. Thank goodness I didn’t chop it up ! It was somehow satisfying that I finally got to wear it in its intended fashion.

Last night was an evening full of statistics. Now, those sorts of presentations can be deadly boring, but the young nursing specialist who gave the presentation successfully avoided that by plying us with a good deal of surprising and interesting commentary.

Did you know, for example, that both India and China have a cardiac disease epidemic? That the rates of preventable cardiac disease apparently exceed that of Europe and the west?

Why has this happened? Because India has, and has very quickly, adopted the worst of our sedentary pastimes and poor  eating habits. Their boom in the IT related industries (and think too of all those call centres across India) has meant those who were previously having to work hard out in the fields in agriculture (thus getting a good dose of exercise at the same time), are now sitting at a desk all day. And they’re making poor diet choices, just like us (though I suspect theirs might be somewhat ghee laden too).

The poverty situation also got a mention – I think that about 27% of the population live below the poverty line (which, at present, equates to an income of something less than $10 Australian per month. And over 60% of the Indian population get by on under $1 US per day.

But the gap between rich and poor was never so well illustrated as by the program that this nursing specialist was employed to set up. It sounded impressive: a 2 week course for patients post bypass surgery, that included education about diet and lifestyle, as well as a tailored exercise programme. It cost each participant the equivalent of $300 Australian paid up front.  But, hey! Based on her previous stats, the majority of the country will be excluded from participation. Yes, that’s right – and unless India decides to dedicate more than just 2% of its funds to healthcare, looks like that’s the way it will stay.

unRavel’in

Today I had every best intention of posting about my weekend’s activities – I went and saw the wonderful Rufus Wainwright in Melbourne on Saturday, and also commenced a new WIP.

However, my intentions were lost once I found myself on the Ravelry site trying to upload a few of my designs. I didn’t expect it to take quite so long: searching out images, delving into my laptop to find the original pattern instructions that I wrote, and then trying to find the relevant links on Ravelry – yarn brands, publishers etc – in order to tie it all together. I haven’t finished yet, but have at least made decent inroads to the cataloguing of some of my designs. Even if some of them might be a touch obscure, it’s a really useful exercise in gathering together a bit of a portfolio of some of the handknitting patterns that I’ve designed and written.  I realised today that I’ve got extensive details and images of the knitwear collections that I’ve previously designed as ready-to-wear, but when I moved into pattern writing (generally freelancing for other companies or publications, but also self-publishing on a small scale) my record keeping is generally well hidden in the bowels of my laptop, with the master copies of my patterns filed away on CD back-ups.

So, Rufus will have to wait until I’ve got a bit more time. If you’re interested in the brief  version, his show was absolutely brilliant!

Hey diddle diddle, the sock and the fiddle

When I went off to the Lake School on 1st Jan, I took a bit of knitting with me. I’ve been turning over a new sock design in my head and decided to bring it into being, so gathered my notes, a ball of Jitterbug in Lobster Pinch and a set of the new Knit Picks Harmony wood circulars to work them on.

When I returned from the Lake School on 8th Jan, what did I bring back with me?

My notes, a ball of Jitterbug in Lobster Pinch and a set of the new Knit Picks Harmony wood circulars. No socks.

Why didn’t I listen to the little voice in my head that was trying to tell me that it was unlikely that the Harmony circulars would achieve the same tension as the same size in the nickel plated version? And why on earth didn’t I have the forethought to take along a selection of needle sizes? 

I don’t know what the general consensus on the Harmony fixed circular needles is, but I find them far less suitable for socks than the regular nickel plated Knit Picks. Firstly, there’s just too much grab from the wood for my liking, so knitting is generally slower, less efficient. But I also find the join (the little metal sleeve between cable and needle) to be less than perfect, so working as a magic loop is also more cumbersome. With my metal Knit Picks just one clean tug has all my stitches moved onto the needle tips ready for knitting, whereas the new Harmony needles required pushing and pulling and coaxing into position. Finally, because of the drag of the wood, the tension I achieve on the two different styles of needle – even though both are the same metric size – is quite different. The Harmony needles produce a looser stitch, and I would have needed to use at least one size smaller than I intended, and quite possibly even two sizes down.  Thus I returned from Koroit sockless, so to speak.

Remember this is just my own experience – and it’s only with regard to knitting socks with the magic loop - I suspect these needles will come into their own when working with slippery fibres, or with lace knitting . But what I do like from the new Harmony Range are the sock sets – the sets of 6 dpns in six sizes, from 2mm through to 3.25mm.  For those that enjoy working socks on dpns it’s a nifty little set that should cover most needs. Having 6 of each size is handy for those of us inclined to lose a needle or two down the side of the sofa ! 

For anyone out there who’s still pondering a Harmony purchase, we’ve still got a couple of sets of the Harmony Options Interchangeables remaining at our introductory special of $99 (email us for this special price), and our DPNS kits are available at $60

So how did the fiddling go?

 

Well, it was a really great week over at Koroit. I was in the Beginner Fiddle workshop as well as the Irish singing group with Maria Ford. Ewen Baker, our fiddle tutor was a lovely fellow and his method of teaching was by ear, not using written music. So, to learn a tune, he’d play a bar or two then ask us to replicate it. Then the next couple of bars, repeated until we eventually had the full tune. Now, for someone like me, with only 2 months experience under my belt, that was a mammoth task so Ewen relented under pressure and allowed about three of us to take a copy of the notation to work from. It took me right up until the minute before our final concert to learn the piece (The Dawning of the Day) but I got there – and in the process picked up an enormous amount of useful information about technique and such. So, here am I (2nd from left), a brand new fiddler, playing my first gig in front of a crowd of about 200 people:

The people who attended the school were a delightful bunch, and all very sociable and friendly. All agegroups, all backgrounds, all levels of expertise. And mostly Irish or of Irish decent. I’m English, of course, and I suspect there were only two of us there, but it’s not the sort of thing you tend to shout about when the rest of the group is singing songs about aiming their canons at the ‘invaders’ from across the straits (yes, at us Poms!).  And that was just their national anthem:-)

Seriously, the whole group – over 200 attendees – was very harmonious. Constant music to be found wherever you went, spilling out onto the footpaths of Koroit from the pubs and cafes. The well known, such as Shane Howard, Vince Brophy, playing alongside the unknown. We were visited one day by the Irish Ambassador and his wife who seemed to be delighted to be in the company of so many of their fellow countrymen. He even sang for us, and I somehow managed to be positioned beside him in one of the photos of his visit that are no doubt knocking around the net somewhere.

So, yes, a very worthwhile week and an event that I’d like to return to in the future. Not only was there so much to be learned from the tutors, but the musical talent of many of the participants – including several youngsters –  was simply jawdropping. I suspect some of their names will not remain  unknown for too much longer.

 

Fiddling About

Christmas is over (hurrah!) and I haven’t even picked up any knitting for goodness knows how long! The break is actually refreshing, and my inspiration and motivation appears renewed. But there’ll still be no knitting for at least another week or two.

A couple of months ago I finally decided to realise a little dream I’d been chasing since childhood. To play the violin! Well, in truth, it’s the fiddle  – same instrument but different, less rigid, techniques.

Having never played any instrument before, the reactions to becoming a beginner at age 51 were varied. Many people were at pains to tell me that the violin is a particularly difficult instrument to learn and wouldn’t I be better off with something easier? Others appeared to doubt that anyone over the age of 10 was capable of taking the instrument up - so much harder as an adult, they say. 

But a few did actually understand my motivation, applauded me for taking on the challenge and wished me well on my journey.

So, I bought myself an instrument and looked for a fiddle instructor who’d be happy to teach adults (many aren’t) and booked in for a few lessons to get myself started. I’ve now had 6 lessons and am loving it. Sean Kenan, in Northcote ( Fancy Yourself Fiddling) is the fellow who’s showing me the ropes – he’s a very patient instructor, is a mine of fascinating technical and historical information, and he also seems to be able to deal well with the many challenges I present him. It’s an hour’s drive to the lesson and some days I get there totally buggered and fatigued and can’t seem to get it together at all. But on other days  much progress is made, and much information is absorbed.

In between lessons I try to practice each day, and have acquired a few books to help me on my way. Basics and Practice, both by Simon Fischer, and Essential Elements 2000 for strings, plus a couple of books of tunes and Irish ballads that I picked up in a second hand book store. Yes, I’ve now reached the stage where I’m playing tunes (after a fashion!), and am currently working on  The Star of County Down and The Parting Glass.

And tomorrow I’m off to the Lake School for a week of Celtic fiddling workshops. It’s held at Koroit each January and they conduct music tuition workshops – all led by reputable Australian musicians - for adults, both beginner & experienced, in fiddle, bodran, guitar, tin whistle, songwriting, singing, Gaelic language, Uilleann pipes and even Irish set dancing. It’s going to be uncomfortably hot, and I suspect my brain will be reduced to mush under those conditions, but I reckon I’ll still have a great time – and it’ll be good to meet up and play with other beginner fiddlers.

Incredibly, today is the final day of 2007. Just where did it go? Have a safe and happy New Year one and all.

The fat lady’s whinging, not singing

For most of Australia the election was over and done with two weeks ago but here, in our electorate of McEwen, the counting still goes on.

I had a vague notion on polling day that Fran Bailey, (former) Liberal Minister for Tourism & Small Business COULD get voted out of her previously safe seat here in McEwen. I have never liked Fran  – neither her political leaning and particularly not her modus operandi  – and that has made me a bit of a pariah around here, as a LOT of people I come into contact with, irrespective of their own political bent, do think she’s been a good local member and done much for the community.

Anyway, it’s looking like my vague notion is going to become a reality. After a count and a recount, Labour candidate Rob Mitchell has polled just 7 votes more than Fran. It’s apparently the second closest call in Australia’s electoral history (where some poor sod was pipped to the post by a mere 1 vote – he/she must have been particularly peeved at that result!).

But the Fat Lady hasn’t sung yet – she just keeps whining:   Fran has asked the Electoral Commission for a second recount as she clearly can’t accept that the people of McEwen have had enough of her. Actually, I suspect that the truth is that a large proportion of local voters weren’t so much intent on evicting ‘their’ Fran from her seat, but were voting instead to remove the Liberal Government from power – Fran may well be just one of the casualties required in order to achieve that end.

Today is the day to….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vziDROl_MJo

This timely link, filmed in Melbourne, was sent to me today by the director of the a cappella group in which I sing . Enjoy! (But, more importantly, please heed the directions.)

Bad hair daze

From the moment I was born I knew what it was like to suffer a bad hair day (I sported a goofy cow lick on the top of my almost naked head, and nothing else).  Every day was a bad hair day for me,  many being immortalised in time through the wonders of the Annual School Photo. Who was this poor child who had wispy hair that poked out in all directions (mostly bent along the shaft at 90 degrees to her scalp)? More to the point, which adults were failing in their duty of care by permitting her to be photographed in such a state that would surely haunt her for the remainder of time?

Here I am, at the age of 51, still dealing with the ongoing frustrations – the combined effects of genetics and hormones - of bad hair.

I have very fine, very thin, and very straight hair. Combine this with the dodgy mix of hormones that I was dished up with and I also have lank, greasy hair that requires a daily sudsing to keep the oil slick at bay. When I wake up each morning my hair not only looks like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards (twice!), but is also coated in sebum enough to fill a deep fryer.

I guess you learn to live with what you have. You learn that you’ll never be able to wear your hair anything other than short (though darn it! It doesn’t stop you trying). And you develop tactics. You avoid staying overnight anywhere that you’re likely to be sprung before you’ve had a chance to retreat to the bathroom and restore order. When you go camping you wear a hooded sweatshirt to the toilet block each morning. And you develop a a yearning to find the perfect hat .

But it feels more akin to love unrequited because, you see, as well as challenges with my hair I’ve also got problems with my head. Hhmm. Yes. I have a very SMALL head – much smaller than the norm for an adult woman.

Thin, fine, short hair + small skull = PINHEAD.

So the challenge increases – it’s no longer just about how to disguise the hair, but how to enhance the head too! Now Mr Knitterly Notions says that a paper bag would do the job nicely, but me, well I’m still on the trail of the ultimate in flattering headwear for pinheads. 

Remember too, that they generally only make children’s hats for child sized heads like mine - but I need a grown up’s style of hat, not a school boater or a baby’s bonnet!  I did find one hat that I loved – made by Wild Trout Downunder – a 1920s cloche style, asymmetrical, with a flared brim that added the illusion of fullness. But, while the maker trimmed it down to size for me, and added grosgrain ribbons to pull in the crown closer to my scalp, there is still so much air-space between the hat & I that my head just rattles around inside it. There’s this very strange phenomenon that arises when I turn my head to the side: the hat stays looking straight ahead (and could surely lead to some confusion about which way I’m facing?).

Knitted hats are, in the main, a non-starter. The last thing a pinhead needs is a head hugging beanie. I recently tried knitting up the  Chullo earflap hat that comes free on the reverse of the Iona  ballband, but even my most beautiful of mannequins looks dorky wearing the finished thing, so I knew there was no hope for me. Then there’s the felted knitted options, but they can look a bit daggy and unsophisticated. I’ve also tried those head wrap thingeys often found for sale at folk festivals – they’re a multi-dyed cotton knit that you twist & place like a turban. They add a bit of bulk, and the wider ones conveniently cover the hair. But that just frightened all my nearest & dearest, as they said it looked like I’d just come home from the chemotherapy ward.

Then finally, after many years of looking, this week I found an old wooden hat block & stand in MY HEAD SIZE. At a realistic price too. I’ve dabbled enough in felting to know that I can at least give it a go, have armed myself with Chad Alice Hagen’s ‘Fabulous Felt Hats’ and, just maybe, will find of my own making, that elusive headpiece for which I yearn.

Ah. But then another problem presents itself.  Those of you who suffer the same follicular problems as I will probably know it all too well. Whilst you may spend time each morning trying to incorporate as much air into the little hair you have  - just to encourage the teensiest bit of ‘lift’ and ‘body’ – as soon as you put a hat on your head your hair will be in trauma from the weight placed upon it. Glued to the skull. Flat as a tack.  It means you can then never take the hat off. At least not until you reach the safety of behind your own bedroom door again.