Yes, all right, I was writing an article, okay, I totally was. So I was writing away, tappy tap tap, diligently, writing about national literatures and cultural identity, like you do, when I got to daydreaming about London.
I only have nice thoughts about London, because I have never had to live there and thus hate it with the passion only someone who lives in a place can feel for it. London to me is sparkly Christmas (does anyone else remember the year that Liberty's wrapped the entire building in a big red bow?); showing Canadians around the best bits; doing this great big beautiful long walk that starts at the museums and goes through Knightsbridge and Hyde Park and up Piccadilly and the only thing that sucks about it is that you end up in either Leicester Square or Covent Garden, which I don't like all that much but which are part of the London craziness; eating soup and pudding in the crypt of St Michael in the Fields (it's a cafe; I didn't just take a thermos and a tupperware and sit me down among the dead); visits there with my mum which have always been awesome and memorable days (Royal School of Needlework; the King's Road to shop for the "pretty frock" I was told I'd need for Cambridge); visiting m'big sister when she lived there in a flat whose landlord thought I was her girlfriend; having sushi at one of those conveyor belt places; coming out of St Pancras station after going down on the early train and having to dash across to Euston to get breakfast before you collapse; Foyle's and the British Library and the giganta-Waterstones; having insanely expensive cups of tea in beautiful expensive tea places and giggling about the insanity and the expense...and anyway, I only have good thoughts about London.
If only our internet had stayed "down" (sometimes it kicks us off just to show us who's really in charge). But since I was here at the keyboard, and the modem was flashing its LEDs enticingly, I tappy-tapped in "Victoria and Albert Museum" just to, you know, see if there were any exhibitions about, erm, national landscape and cultural identity in the literature of Canada or New Zealand. Because there might have been.
What I found was a whole section on knitting, which is right and proper for a museum of fine and decorative arts. It's historical and modern and informative and interactive and all the things a museum website, or in fact any website, should be.
Anyway now it's time to go outside and see if the clouds have cleared, because what is a wee bite out of the moon for you tonight in the Northern Hemisphere is nothing less than a Total Eclipse here in the South.
I may write an article about it.
Tuesday 28 August 2007
Friday 24 August 2007
win, lose and draw
1. Win
And let it be known that Amber's Sweater For Mum is a winner. Entered unbeknownst to its creator into nothing less than the Evington Village Show (entry cost, 25 of your English pence), it WON the Knitting Category. No information has been provided to the knitter on the actual number of other entries. A photo of the finished sweater being worn by its recipient will be forthcoming once the recipient is home from gallivanting about the country on holiday.
2. Lose
And be it also noted that on Thursday last, this blogger did cycle up the Hill of Death and make it partway to work before thinking she may have left the iron on at home, turning round, and going back to check. Needless to say the iron was not on, but the checking necessitated a second run at the aforementioned Hill. The blogger was later that morning forced to borrow a kind colleague's car to drive home again having realised she had left a window open, it being the sort of window one could simply and easily push up from the outside and remove a sofa through (the kind colleague remembered seeing a cartoon of a woman parachuting out of an aeroplane with the caption "Dot thought she might have left the iron on at home").
3. Draw
And let it finally be noted that the felting of the children's Christmas present slippers, both orange-and-blue stripy and pretty-purple, despite two runs in a hot washing machine, has only somewhat occurred, and also that the slippers appear to be the wrong size and shape anyway, and that with two pairs done and three pairs to go, their creator is wondering whether to just give the whole thing up as a bad job and think of something else, or whether to carry on with the three other pairs and the washing and the agitating, bearing in mind also that the hot water bill this month is the highest she has ever seen in any country in which she has lived, and that takes into account the exchange rate, i.e. it is more even in pounds than in England.
And be it understood that the blogger realises that the above "item 3. Draw" is, upon reflection, actually another "Lose".
And let it be known that Amber's Sweater For Mum is a winner. Entered unbeknownst to its creator into nothing less than the Evington Village Show (entry cost, 25 of your English pence), it WON the Knitting Category. No information has been provided to the knitter on the actual number of other entries. A photo of the finished sweater being worn by its recipient will be forthcoming once the recipient is home from gallivanting about the country on holiday.
2. Lose
And be it also noted that on Thursday last, this blogger did cycle up the Hill of Death and make it partway to work before thinking she may have left the iron on at home, turning round, and going back to check. Needless to say the iron was not on, but the checking necessitated a second run at the aforementioned Hill. The blogger was later that morning forced to borrow a kind colleague's car to drive home again having realised she had left a window open, it being the sort of window one could simply and easily push up from the outside and remove a sofa through (the kind colleague remembered seeing a cartoon of a woman parachuting out of an aeroplane with the caption "Dot thought she might have left the iron on at home").
3. Draw
And let it finally be noted that the felting of the children's Christmas present slippers, both orange-and-blue stripy and pretty-purple, despite two runs in a hot washing machine, has only somewhat occurred, and also that the slippers appear to be the wrong size and shape anyway, and that with two pairs done and three pairs to go, their creator is wondering whether to just give the whole thing up as a bad job and think of something else, or whether to carry on with the three other pairs and the washing and the agitating, bearing in mind also that the hot water bill this month is the highest she has ever seen in any country in which she has lived, and that takes into account the exchange rate, i.e. it is more even in pounds than in England.
And be it understood that the blogger realises that the above "item 3. Draw" is, upon reflection, actually another "Lose".
Tuesday 21 August 2007
how long have you got?
I went down the street in my lunch break today, to the TradeAid shop (like Ten Thousand Villages without the religion), to buy some sugar, and also as it happened a little choccy bar to lift my spirits. Imagine my surprise at being served at the counter by a lady who sounded suspiciously like she was from Derbyshire.
She was; Belper, to be precise. Although her accent suggested she arrived on the last boat, she has actually been here in New Zealand for thirty-four years. She'd just returned from a trip back to England for her mother's 90th birthday, where she had enjoyed, as she put it "rekindling friendships" - some with people she hadn't seen for fifty years.
Anyway, finding things a litle difficult today re: homesickness (and I don't even know which "home", though to be honest, a bit of all of them) I asked her to share her secrets of having well and truly settled this far away.
Here was the cup of comfort. She stopped wishing she could go home...
...after eighteen years.
The space was for you to digest that fact.
I wondered later what if, after eighteen years, you found you still kind of wanted to go home? Would ya give it another six months? Another year? Another eighteen?
I also wondered if she said anything at the time? "Gee, honey, I've been sort of unhappy for the last nine years. I'm not sure, but I think it might be more than just missing Tetley's tea and Ribena and Soreen malt loaf. Shall we check in again this time next year and see how I'm doing?"
What on earth do you do with eighteen years of homesickness? How can it not simply press you most utterly and completely into the ground? Or at the very least, make you really, really sick?
Other people's lives are so endlessly fascinating. It can't be just me that now wants to hear the story of those eighteen years (complete with three children, now all around my age). For one thing, sure, I'll bloom where I'm planted and I'll give things the old fair go, but I'm pretty certain that is a kind of strength I don't have - to keep doing something that makes you unhappy for that long.
The nice lady from Belper told me to drop in anytime for a chat, but I don't think I'll ask her about it.
She was; Belper, to be precise. Although her accent suggested she arrived on the last boat, she has actually been here in New Zealand for thirty-four years. She'd just returned from a trip back to England for her mother's 90th birthday, where she had enjoyed, as she put it "rekindling friendships" - some with people she hadn't seen for fifty years.
Anyway, finding things a litle difficult today re: homesickness (and I don't even know which "home", though to be honest, a bit of all of them) I asked her to share her secrets of having well and truly settled this far away.
Here was the cup of comfort. She stopped wishing she could go home...
...after eighteen years.
The space was for you to digest that fact.
I wondered later what if, after eighteen years, you found you still kind of wanted to go home? Would ya give it another six months? Another year? Another eighteen?
I also wondered if she said anything at the time? "Gee, honey, I've been sort of unhappy for the last nine years. I'm not sure, but I think it might be more than just missing Tetley's tea and Ribena and Soreen malt loaf. Shall we check in again this time next year and see how I'm doing?"
What on earth do you do with eighteen years of homesickness? How can it not simply press you most utterly and completely into the ground? Or at the very least, make you really, really sick?
Other people's lives are so endlessly fascinating. It can't be just me that now wants to hear the story of those eighteen years (complete with three children, now all around my age). For one thing, sure, I'll bloom where I'm planted and I'll give things the old fair go, but I'm pretty certain that is a kind of strength I don't have - to keep doing something that makes you unhappy for that long.
The nice lady from Belper told me to drop in anytime for a chat, but I don't think I'll ask her about it.
Sunday 19 August 2007
day of the...
...pretty knitty tulip, or the hairy scary triffid?
You decide. Is this the best use of the pinkness? Or could it be better employed (say, in a search-and-rescue capacity?)
Answers on a postcard.
Friday 17 August 2007
taking the air, a photo-story
In the breaks between the rain this morning, I thought it was time for the knitting to get some fresh air. So we hit...the driveway. (Hey, baby steps, okay?)
Fig.1 the violent pink montrosities nestle in the dewy grass waiting to strike.
Fig 2. The latest sock hangs out with next-door's orange tree. All my socks are a variation on Glenda's sock pattern from The Wool Emporium; the "variation" basically being how long I can be bothered to knit the leg for. Oh, and the variation I did on dad's pair was a big weird pointy bit around the toe of one of them, that I couldn't fix and will annoy me forever and ever (and probably my dad too, since he is the one who has a pointy exta bit of sock to tuck into the toe of his shoe).
Fig 3. This is not me rising to the challenge of the pink acrylic. (What it does look a bit like, though, is the pink acrylic rising into the air; you can see it's propped on the weird-looking bush if you look carefully, but it is so extravagantly bright that it does sort of just look as if it's levitating, magic-carpet style). Anyway. No, even I can manage something a bit more complicated than this. What this is, is for a window display at the shop, which required a bit of knitting, and since this was there and it was free and it's pink, which the whole window will be, I knocked this up yesterday lunchtime ready to do the display on Monday.
Finally, this morning I was wasting time surfing the net, and came across this blog: Bagatell. And now I want to move to Norway.
Thursday 16 August 2007
Avert your precious eyes
This photo has been taken under professional conditions, using several dozen light filters and shades. Do not look directly at the wool in this photograph. It may only be viewed through half-closed eyes in a sideways glance. Failure to follow these instructions may result in the complete and total annihilation of your retinas.
It's the filtering (and the non-natural light) that makes it look orange, but believe me when I tell you this wool shines with the pinkness of a million flamingos. If I turned off the lights, it would glow. It is purest pinkest 100% acrylic, which is basically the polar opposite of an actual sheep fleece. This stuff has never even heard the world "natural". It has apparently been knocking around in a box at work for some years following some long-forgotten promotion or other.
Pink acrylic, lo I kneel and accept your challenge.
Wednesday 15 August 2007
iz in ur bocks...doin ur filin'
Yes, folks, quite by accident, I've been taken over by lolcats; one of the few thing that is making me laugh these days.
To see what I mean, go here:
What IS the point of knitting or books, of writing or deciding what to do with your life, when you can spend all evening surfing through endles pictures of kittehs wid funny accentz, u no? There is literally no point at all.
It hardly bears telling you that I finally invested five bucks in one of those mesh laundry bags so I could put all my slippers on hothothot in the washer and have them meet their destiny at last.
Naw. Go see de kittehs. Iz mor wurthwiyul.
Monday 13 August 2007
sibilance
These stripy slippers come with a sense of sadness and stupidity, and substantial dissatisfaction, since they suffer from the sizes simply not being the same.
Tuesday 7 August 2007
the year of the foot
We had a genu-ine earthquake here last night, and the couch did a sort of jolt and juddered a bit, and then a few times for the rest of the evening it felt like a big gust of wind had hit the house with a whoomp. Oh, and lest you imagine I have finally stopped going on about the weather, it turns out that July was the wettest they've ever had here. Lucky us, hey?
But to get on to the real news, the knitting is back, as you knew in your hearts it would be.
It is astonshing that, even equipped with Chris's new kick-ass camera, I can manage to take photos that are such utter arse.
These little slippers, finished on the plane to the land of rain and chilliness (that is to say, here), are a beeyoutiful lavender colour, hand-dyed by me during my crockpot phase, and exactly the sort of colour a little girl could feel like a tiptoe fairy in. Instead they look mildly brown.
You will notice that you can see all the stitches, and this is because (as I mentioned before) I haven't dared to chuck them in a super-hot washing maching to make them not only lavendery and pretty but also cute and fuzzy. So they will in fact be quite a bit smaller and less floppy and more fluffly than this in the end, and hopefully I will manage to put something pretty on like beads or sequins or sparkles or other things that your average adorable Ontarian four-year-old would like at Christmastime. Then I might show you another picture, and hopefully I will have figured out by then how to unbrownify my photos.
I am also currently reading a very wonderful and magical book, and I might tell you about it sometime, but at the moment it is too precious and fragile.
Thursday 2 August 2007
folding, formatting, and the logo that broke the bookseller's back
It's easy to lose perspective when you're, you know, me.
Over the last week I've been producing a Great Big Newsletter to mail out to no less that a thousand people, along with a few other publishers' catalogues and lists. My Great Big Newsletter is 4 pages of book cover pics and blurbs, a covering letter and an order form.
Given that the programme I'm using of necessity is simple old Word, I've not done at all badly with my text boxes and my tables and my logos and it looks a pretty bang-up job, though I says it as made it. However, when it came to the order form, my tables and my text boxes began disagreeing with each other, and since the computer picked that exact moment to implement a go-slow, the frustration started mounting.
As we all know, that is the moment to go for a walk, or at the very least a cup of tea and a flick through the jobs section of the Dominion Post, imagining we'd really prefer to go for that "Sophisticated Lady Hostesses - earn a thousand dollars an evening" advert, or in fact anything that didn't involve a computer ever again, before taking a deep breath and starting again. And as we all know, none of us accept that at the time, and continue to sit and click and click and sit and click...
Eventually, due to the disagreement between the table and the text box, and their insistence that our fax number and email simply didn't belong in either of them, the computer made a final decision that an illegal operation had occurred and it must immediately close down and not let me back into my document.
Twice.
This meant bringing home the rest of the afternoon's other work to do in the evening, and it was while working on the general store newsletter last night that the final straw came. I duly downloaded the New Zealand Book Month logo (September, since you ask), and...it disappeared.
When I tried to put it into my newsletter, I couldn't find it. My little doggie search icon with his magnifying glass shrugged and said he couldn't find it either. Yet it was downloaded, and squatting insidiously like Philip Larkin's toad somewhere on my hard drive.
This is what finally brought me to tears last night.
I'm feeling much better now. I spent much of this afternoon folding a thousand pieces of paper from Auckland University Press in half and realigning my perspective settings.
Knitting? What knitting?
Over the last week I've been producing a Great Big Newsletter to mail out to no less that a thousand people, along with a few other publishers' catalogues and lists. My Great Big Newsletter is 4 pages of book cover pics and blurbs, a covering letter and an order form.
Given that the programme I'm using of necessity is simple old Word, I've not done at all badly with my text boxes and my tables and my logos and it looks a pretty bang-up job, though I says it as made it. However, when it came to the order form, my tables and my text boxes began disagreeing with each other, and since the computer picked that exact moment to implement a go-slow, the frustration started mounting.
As we all know, that is the moment to go for a walk, or at the very least a cup of tea and a flick through the jobs section of the Dominion Post, imagining we'd really prefer to go for that "Sophisticated Lady Hostesses - earn a thousand dollars an evening" advert, or in fact anything that didn't involve a computer ever again, before taking a deep breath and starting again. And as we all know, none of us accept that at the time, and continue to sit and click and click and sit and click...
Eventually, due to the disagreement between the table and the text box, and their insistence that our fax number and email simply didn't belong in either of them, the computer made a final decision that an illegal operation had occurred and it must immediately close down and not let me back into my document.
Twice.
This meant bringing home the rest of the afternoon's other work to do in the evening, and it was while working on the general store newsletter last night that the final straw came. I duly downloaded the New Zealand Book Month logo (September, since you ask), and...it disappeared.
When I tried to put it into my newsletter, I couldn't find it. My little doggie search icon with his magnifying glass shrugged and said he couldn't find it either. Yet it was downloaded, and squatting insidiously like Philip Larkin's toad somewhere on my hard drive.
This is what finally brought me to tears last night.
I'm feeling much better now. I spent much of this afternoon folding a thousand pieces of paper from Auckland University Press in half and realigning my perspective settings.
Knitting? What knitting?
Wednesday 1 August 2007
cold is a concept
...and if I tell myself I Am Not Cold, then I won't be. Repeat: cold is a concept.
Here's a nice toasty picture of that wool I dyed using the magic of the crock pot and the food colouring many aeons ago, in a country currently suffering from 30 degree summer heat. Much of it has now become nice toasty slippers, unfelted as yet as I am too scared about buggering up our rented washing machine with fluff. We really can't afford a buggered up washer on top of everything else right now.
Anyway there has been no need lately of toasty slippers, nice or otherwise (the motley pair is definitely on the "otherwise" side of the equation, though they are totally free because they come from the ends left over from other projects), because we just had a weekend in the seething metropolis of Auckland, where it is several degrees warmer. It also helped to be staying in a rather nice hotel, with duvet, bath, thermostat, and tea-making facilities. This all came courtesy of Random House publishers, who were kind enough to sponsor me to attend the national Booksellers' Conference. They provide a sponsorship each year for someone who's never attended this esteemed event before, and as I've only been in the country a month, that definitely meant me.
Not only did I get to go to the Conference, meet everyone who's anyone including a whole lot of Awesome Folks Who Do Stuff With Books, AND stay in a rather nice hotel with the above warmth-related facilities, but I also got to go to TWO posh dinners. The first was the industry awards night; the second, the Montana Book Awards, a super-glittering event involving bigwigs and prizes and gourmet food and the Prime Minister. I felt quite whelmed over, though it was mostly by the niceness of all those aforementioned Folks (and also by starting the days at eight a.m and keeping going till after midnight). Lordy. What an introduction after only four weeks in the country.
Oh, and when I got home, the local freebie paper had a little bit about our Harry Potter event and there was a picture of me on the front page.
However, today we came back to earth with a bump - the gas company had come to cut us off. We didn't even know we had a gas water heater, hence not paying the gas company any money. We're all right now, but it's another hundred bucks "set-up charge" to add to the bills...what is that for? Typing your name and address into the system? What a bargain. But since the gas, electric, phone, internet and rental companies (both house and appliances) all demand it, it'll be a hell of a month. Better turn off the heater. It's a good thing cold is just a concept.
Here's a nice toasty picture of that wool I dyed using the magic of the crock pot and the food colouring many aeons ago, in a country currently suffering from 30 degree summer heat. Much of it has now become nice toasty slippers, unfelted as yet as I am too scared about buggering up our rented washing machine with fluff. We really can't afford a buggered up washer on top of everything else right now.
Anyway there has been no need lately of toasty slippers, nice or otherwise (the motley pair is definitely on the "otherwise" side of the equation, though they are totally free because they come from the ends left over from other projects), because we just had a weekend in the seething metropolis of Auckland, where it is several degrees warmer. It also helped to be staying in a rather nice hotel, with duvet, bath, thermostat, and tea-making facilities. This all came courtesy of Random House publishers, who were kind enough to sponsor me to attend the national Booksellers' Conference. They provide a sponsorship each year for someone who's never attended this esteemed event before, and as I've only been in the country a month, that definitely meant me.
Not only did I get to go to the Conference, meet everyone who's anyone including a whole lot of Awesome Folks Who Do Stuff With Books, AND stay in a rather nice hotel with the above warmth-related facilities, but I also got to go to TWO posh dinners. The first was the industry awards night; the second, the Montana Book Awards, a super-glittering event involving bigwigs and prizes and gourmet food and the Prime Minister. I felt quite whelmed over, though it was mostly by the niceness of all those aforementioned Folks (and also by starting the days at eight a.m and keeping going till after midnight). Lordy. What an introduction after only four weeks in the country.
Oh, and when I got home, the local freebie paper had a little bit about our Harry Potter event and there was a picture of me on the front page.
However, today we came back to earth with a bump - the gas company had come to cut us off. We didn't even know we had a gas water heater, hence not paying the gas company any money. We're all right now, but it's another hundred bucks "set-up charge" to add to the bills...what is that for? Typing your name and address into the system? What a bargain. But since the gas, electric, phone, internet and rental companies (both house and appliances) all demand it, it'll be a hell of a month. Better turn off the heater. It's a good thing cold is just a concept.
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