quelle erqsome...

at the end of a long week, only one thing can help me

The transcript at the bottom of this post totally made me squirt wine out my nose. Hee hee.

Ah Mimi, how ye saved my day.

knitting obstructing path, please use detour

So the other day I was knitting my way up the hill towards home when this voice rang out just as I was trying to squeeze past the enormous shape of a woman wearing slippers and carrying three Tesco's bags.

'OI! What you need so many knits for?'

[I look around in surprise and realise I am indeed the only person to be seen knitting on the street.]

'Because I'm making a sock.'

'So why d'you need so many?'

'To make it circular.'

'What you making a sock for anyway?'

'So I can wear it...'

'What, only the one?'

'No, I'm making a pair.'

'Why?'

'Because I have two feet...?'

I was going to ask her if she knew how to knit and that maybe she should try it when I realised that really she couldn't care less and that the very idea of someone attempting to make something they could otherwise purchase was alien.

Weird, isn't it? When I was growing up my mother would painstakingly put together costumes for Hallowe'en for me and my sister, despite the fact she hated sewing beyond all belief; yet today most people just go out and buy one without thinking. Mum did it because they simply couldn't afford to buy a witch costume, while a couple of metres of black cotton and a few hours behind a sewing machine... that she could manage. Even if she did hate it, it still meant that we'd be able to go on our elementary school's Hallowen'en parade and go trick or treating and never know what she'd gone through to get us there.

I'm fully aware that knitting is viewed as this trendy, middle class phenomenon by most people, just as aware that I'm incredibly lucky to blow money on hand-dyed yarns or even find the time to knit anything at all. And I don't have any real answer for it. I don't even know where to begin justifying/philosophising over it.

It's just that for a split second I could see something spark in that girl's eyes. Right before she nearly choked and turned back to her friend, screaming about what a loser I am.

erotica darkly

I'm currently editing the most hilarious book of erotica. The manuscript was sent in by a man, apparently the representative of the woman who compiled it. I say 'apparently' because I refuse to believe there are that many individual women for whom 'tongue bath', love juice' and 'engorged magnificant tool' are common vocab. Either he's some dude swimming in his own male fantasies or they all took the same writer's workshop. However it came together, it's still an inordiate amount of fun. How often do you have to argue over whether he deposited his 'seed' or 'seeds' in your job?

Matthew and I pilgrimaged down to Brixton this morning to fight through the crowd of fantasy geeks and sci-fi dorks to see a free preview of A Scanner Darkly. To be sure, and to steal from thousands of reviewers, it stars Keanu Reeves at his most animate. Rory Cochrane and Robert Downey Jr. are fantastic. Winona Ryder is pretty swell too and the animation is brilliant - not as good as Waking Life, but that may just be because I'd seen that first. I've not read the book yet (Lolita, A Tale of Two Cities and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency being first on the list), but Matthew can confirm that Linklater's adaptation is faithful almost to a fault. Actually, his exact words were: 'If I hadn't read the book first it would have been awesome, but as I have, it just didn't add anything to the experience.' I'm not sure if that's praise or not, but as I haven't read the book, I thought it was excellent. I'm even thinking of swinging my reading list a little more in the direction of Dick.

...That last line was so Matthew's idea, you know I'd never be that cheap...

all in the family

Somehow and at some point (I think back in May) I've been chosen as 'today's best blog post for the Family Kitchen' for my mushroom and rocket risotto, which is awesome, but I've no idea how the honour was met. Is there a committee somewhere, or is it at random? Have I at some point in my past joined the Family Kitchen and forgotten about it? This is possibly deeply worrying. On the other hand, it's entirely delightful and the Family Kitchen is a pretty cool place. Weird though..

dalarna the first

I am clearly, decidedly and completely converted: if there were a sisterhood, I'd have passed initiation and now be called in to look for new recruits. From The Road to Oslo, I took a step east to the May Fair loving town of Dalarna:

This one is far more fiddly than the Roads, but worth it I think. That band around the top comprises of a chain stitch (adding a new strand and looping it purlwise while knitting with the original every alternate stitch) and then seven rounds of ribbing action.

I've used Emerald Peacock Australian Sock Wool from the Natural Dye Studio. Unfortunately came with no weight or yardage attached (i.e. it could have done, but my wool bins is vast and cavarnous and kind of full -- things get lost), so I had to swatch very very carefully.

You can almost see the clock pattern running along the leg here. I found myself going into zones while knitting down the leg. At times I'd be one fire, whizzing through the rounds, catapaulting along at breakneck speeds ready for the next set; but when it came I'd suddenly be fighting with the yarn, it would spear itself upon the needles, tearing and splitting the ply, my fingers would bcome heavy, like someone had taped banana skins to the pads of my fingers and corsetted up my knuckles. I also broke a needle in my bag, snapped clean in half, and had to switch to one half a size larger because I knew I wouldn't be able to replace it until today (which is what I'm going to do as soon as I've finished up here) On and on, soaring fluidly and battling helplessly, it went for eight and a half inches and then the heel began and I remembered why I wanted to knit at all.

I have no pictures of knitting the heel flap -- likely because it was so involving, so engaging -- but I'll try to remember to take some during the second half. Nancy Bush has both delightfully and ingeniously created a pseuo-rib in which you slip-one-knit-one on the right side and work evenly going purlwise. The effect with varigated wool is beautiful.

And there you have it: the fruit of my fingers, the milk of my needles, the flower of  ..erm ..I can't finish that. Where was I? My foot on the window ledge encased with the first half of the first pair of socks I have both knit and been allowed to keep HURRAH!

While I was over the moon with the last pair, I feel like I've made a turning point here, or hit a milestone, or something. My camera's not good enough to really illustrate it, but the heel flap and gusset are marvels. Not conceit, but marvels in a I Can't Believe It's Not Falling Apart kind of way. I feel so shimmery for having done it!

The next one is but a glimmer in my knitting basket as of yet, but I've got the skein all set for rolling.

sock knitty

A murky picture of the start of my very first sock as completed by myself. It's at this moment that I decide if I don't get a decent digital camera soon, my knitterly efforts will only ever be able to be appreciated in the cold light of real time personal interaction.

Then I discovered that if I moved over to the window, things come out a little bit clearer. A lesson in camera phone photography, perhaps even in life.

All those wee bumps and squiggles are my cheatin' way of getting around having to use intarsia and going purly where new colours are supposed to be introduced instead. Sneaky, yes? Yes. Unfortunately, the pattern would show up a whole lot more if I had just stuck to the original plan. However, and most sadly for my sock, my yarn only came in one colour. Or at least the yarn that was purchased for me by my lovely editor was only bought in one colour.

Two great pictures of Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road, and one of the person sitting across from me on the Silverlink one morning when I suddenly recalled I was actually supposed to be documenting the procedure rather than just knitting it. This one is my favourite though:

Yes! A perfect shot of the dude sitting next to me. He very kindly sat through five whole stops with my elbow in his face as I tried to get a decent picture. And I did. Just not of the sock-in-progress.

This is the best I could come up with for a How to Begin Your Heel Flap illustration.

Back to the window ledge and a complete heel! No need to know the bit in the middle, you just should be happy I got there at all. It really is that easy. The Houdini of Sock Knitting is me, we go from heel to:

 
  

A complete pair! A complete pair not falling off my feet, without holes or any other visible mistakes and ready to send off for my dear friend Florence's birthday. Huzzah!

what not to write

If you ever thought writing fairy tales would be easy, please please please think again. I've had to edit FOUR this week and none of them have been better than mediocre*. The worst was fucking awful.

I'm not sure why people seem to think that writing children's stories will be easier than writing for adults, perhaps it's the length (or lack thereof) or the breadth (or the enormity thereof), but it's not. The fewer words there are, the more you have to make sure you get precisely the right ones. My grade eleven English teacher taught me that and it's become a sort of ideology for me; something I have struggled to remember throughout my academic career and my various stints as music-journo/arts editor, and something I hope to remember as I begin to write more widely. Writing for children is one of the hardest things in the world to do successfully, and - perhaps more heed-worthily - it is something that, when done right, appears to have taken no effort at all, but has nonetheless been an agonising turmoil that has kept the author up for weeks on end. Writing a children's story is not going to make you an immediate Barbara Cole or Roald Dahl unless you are able to stop writing like an adult writing for children and start writing to them. (Even then it's not likely, have you any idea how much crap there is in the children's section of any given library to sift through? Tonnes.) This doesn't mean that you have to dumb things down (biggest error), rather write from a different perspective. Better yet, write something that you would have wanted to have read aloud as a child. The bottom line is this: do not try to get your children's story published unless it has been approved in a triplicate of triplicate. And only then after you rewrite half of it.

O I don't know. I only edit the damn things, I always give up halfway through writing them. I admire anyone who can do it and do it well, I just wish those who attempt it would take it a bit more seriously than most of my authors.

*Actually, one is awesome. It's about a cat and the ancient Egyptians. The woman who wrote this is very talented and deserves to do very well, and I hope she does. I'll post more about it when it's nearing publication, although clearly I can't say all that much. Anonimity being my middle name and ... sorry, I couldn't even finish that sentence. If she ever came close to this blog she'd know it's me. So yeah, cats and Egypt. Bear it in mind, it'll be out in October. The end.