It's just Not Right

It's beautiful, but it's not right. It's almost October. Where are the crispy leaves and bright autumnal mornings? The show-off fall colours giving their last resplendent gasp?

Yes, I did know this was going to happen when we came to this crazy upside-down world. And I am relieved that the days are getting slightly longer and I can wear slightly fewer clothes (current warmth check: ok; feet a bit chilly in 2 pairs of wool socks, but wearing only regular jeans with no tights or knee socks, with one merino t-shirt and one sweater instead of three and two, is maintaining normal body temperature). It has after all been a really long winter.

No matter that our emotional and psychological body clocks scream otherwise, it is most definitely Spring.

food/foot stylist

I was just reading this magazine called "Gourmet Traveller" (which is pretty funny, since I'm not really either). It has lovely pictures of scrumptious food, like most food magazines do, and each picture has in little words at the bottom the title of the dish you're looking at (e.g. "Apple Crumble With Cheese" - because really, the titles just describe exactly what it is, which is fine, because that's mostly what you want to know). However, on looking closer at the little words at the bottom, I discovered the dish title has a colon after it, and following the colon is a list. The list lists everything that is in the picture and tells you where it comes from. So the tablecloth is from Tablecloths R Us, and the silverware is from Forkerama, and so on.

Now here's what blew me away. In one picture, it tells you the name of the paint on the wall at the back.

And thus, the domain of the food stylist - as in the "other props" are "stylist's own".

Seriously. The name of the paint colour. And where you can get it from. I can just about fathom a realm, although it is definitely not one I inhabit, in which you might wish to replicate the setting when you make your apple crumble and cheese, and know where the napkins and tchotchkes came from so you could rush out and buy them, but - the paint? So, what, you can repaint your dining room to go with supper?

In other news, this Foot Stylist is back to the socks after two more pairs of slippers (one to replace the irreparably-deformed blue-and-orange stripey ones). Sock needles are even more slippery and pointy after playing for so long with big fat plastic children's needles on the slippers. Anyway I am now getting towards the end of all the balls and skeins I bought for socks and slippers, and am making every-more motley pairs as I try to ensure I have enough of a colour to do two matching feet. Hence quite a lot of stripes - because you can look at what you've got left and think, well, I can definitely get two stripes out of that for each foot, but I'm not sure about any more than that. If you did, say, a whole foot in one colour on the first slipper, you might run out halfway down the second. So the stripes get smaller and in a wider array of colours as I get down to the ends.

All I'm saying is, if you're the recipient of a pair of slippers from me, the more clashingly striped they are, the further you are down the hierarchy. If your slippers are a motley of single stripes of unrelated colours, you were about the last on the list. I mean, I love you and everything, but just not as much as the people who get single-coloured or intentionally two-tone slippers. In fact you might not even have been on the slipper list to begin with, but now I've got enough that I can add you, as long as I do crazy striped ones. Don't feel bad. Just, you know, aim for higher next year. You can attain the single-coloured pure alpaca level of friendship by emailing and writing letters and telling me you actually read my blog and sending chocolate and money (or even yarn). I can totally be bought.

Oh, but socks? I'm mostly using self-striping wool, which is purposely dyed in different colours all along the length to stop knitters from stabbing themselves out of boredom when knitting a particuarly repetitive bit of the sock pattern (say, the foot). So they're supposed to look like that.

Honestly.

Food/Foot Stylist Post: Font: Arial. Background in Electronic White. Cup of tea on the desk provided by TradeAid. Blogger's fleecy pyjama sweater from M&S circa 1999. Laptop from London Drugs, Saskatoon. Content: stylist's own.

the results are in

The computer is behaving itself this morning, so here is the final verdict.

From back to front:

1. Dark pink slippers

Result: excellent. This is the pair done in Canada. Felting good and tough and even; slippers stand up like boots. Minor difference in size.

2. Lilac fairy slippers (camouflaged on the step)

Because even dainty little fairies need big honking slippers to keep their feet warm in Canada.

Result: not bad. A little felting, though still slightly floppy. Small different in size mostly corrected by violent stretching; will have to check when finally properly dry. Look far too big for a four year old.

3. Mermaid slippers

If a mermaid had feet, that is.

Result: perfect match in size, finally; slightly better felting than the fairy ones; dye colour has stayed more vibrant. Very happy.

4. Stripey slippers

Result: a complete write-off. Should have unravelled them the moment the monumental difference in sizes became all too apparent, but didn't. Vigorous hand-felting and multiple machine washes made little difference apart from to leach the bright orange dye and make them look a funny fleshy pink colour. Will need to chuck out and start fresh this weekend.

5. Giganta-motley slippers

Result: semi-felted; they would probably go a bit more but I don't want to wreck the dye again. The ankles felted better than the feet, resulting in a sort of bag effect. Not bad, but compared with the excellence of the felting on the first pair, floppy.

And here ends the saga of the slippers. The year of the foot continues.

defeated

So. I just finished reading a book I hated. I went to the post office to post a birthday present and forgot the address. I cooked a dinner in which the dip didn't set (it went like soup) and the roast potatoes didn't roast (instead they soaked up the oil and went like moist oily rags) and made the kitchen into a bombsite in the process. Which I haven't yet cleared up. Despite numerous "sorting out" phone calls to the phone company, we still received bills for two completely separate accounts for services we aren't using. I knelt in front of the fire for an hour cajoling it to stay lit and provide warmth. Now, the computer is playing up and refuses to recognise the existence of the camera on which I have the slipper pics. Which means that I cannot show you the only thing going right today, (and that by only a small margin, let's be frank) ie the knitting.

Oh, and yesterday, I cleaned the shower, which wasn't draining properly. If you can think of any more disgusting activity than de-gunking a plughole in rental accommodation when you know the gunk pre-dates you, kindly fax me an answer as to what it is.

I've felt better

Far too much talk and not enough knit lately. So I set to and finished all the slippers, felting and everything. Now it's night time and I can't take a photo, but here's the update.

1. The slippers were not felting in the washing machine. For those who are new to the saga, you know if you put something woollen in the washer on too hot, and it shrinks and goes hard and unwearable? That's felting, and with the slippers it is what I'm trying to do on purpose, because it makes them thick and fuzzy and hard-wearing. Possible causes for slippers not felting: lots. Probably not the wrong kind of wool, because I knitted one pair before we left Canada and they felted beautifully in Chris's mum's washer. Damn New Zealand and its crazy non-felting washing machines. Could be wrong kind of soap, not enough agitation, water not hot enough. So I set to "helping" the washing machine along with a little hand-felting.

2. Ingredients: a sink, a kettle full of boiling water, some laundry soap, two kitchen implements. Method: put slippers and soap into sink, pour on boiling water, "bien agiter" with kitchen implement 1 while the water is too hot for hands, move to violent scrubbing of slippers aided by kitchen implement 2 when the water is cooled enough.

3. I don't know who wrote The Book on felting knitting; I don't own one, preferring to rely on the oft-proven-inadequate means of a general understanding of how it works and some advice gleaned from the internet. Whatever that Book says, though, I'm willing to bet the farm it doesn't mention the use of either a potato masher or a cheese grater. I think this could be a startling oversight, though, because I put it down solely to the use of these implements that even the modicum of felting that happened, happened.

Yes, I used a cheese grater on my slippers.

What?

The final verdict tomorrow, with full-colour pictures.

gone missing

I had a flick back through m'blog just now looking for a photo, and spotted that last winter, in the brisk blue bone-dry chill of Saskatchewan, I was missing a misty moisty Midlands midwinter.

The irony.

I've got my misty moisty midwinter wish, complete with grey and damp and rains and mud and green green grass. I'm approaching spring-summer, after double winter in the Northern and then the Southern hemisphere...and what am I craving? A crisp autumn chill, burning off into a glorious cloudless sunny day, and then overnight that first big clean snow and the first take-your-breath-away cold day that means summer's gone for good.

Seriously. Is it me, or is it a general human condition, missing whatever you currently don't have?

For me, it seems, it's clinically impossible to remember accurately anything about any place I've ever been, and this leads to a) rose-tinted specs syndrome and b) if I'm not careful, wishing my life away. Example: last winter, on a day when getting across the street to buy bread and milk was an effort too great, after weeks of not being able to get to the public swimming pool or the library or the knitting shop or anywhere not within two feet walking distance of my door, after a ten minute walk to the mall resulted in facial windburn, I said to myself, "when at some point in the future we make it to New Zealand and I feel homesick, I must remember this moment, because I will be all rose-tinted and think I was happy to be doing this." And now, I just think, aww, it wasn't that bad really. I mean, not compared with being able to see your breath inside the house, and all your clothes getting wet in the rain and never really properly drying out.

Then the other day, when I went off on that nice little morning walk because the sunrise was so pretty, I thought, "I must remember this moment later in the day when I feel defeated and cold and homesick, because at this moment I feel happy and I know there are nice things about New Zealand that I would not experience elsewhere." And then I get defeated and cold and homesick and I recall that moment, and I think, shpfff. Wasn't that great. You can get a nice sunrise in anyplace, especially ones that are not this far away from everyone and also only cold on the outside.

Considering I have now lived in three different countries, in several different cities and towns and even a village or two, and considering that in the future the chances of us internationally up-sticking again are quite high, I wonder exactly how much missing can one person realistically do? Supposing we are ensconced back in Canada or England, and I think, okay, yeah, I've got my family and friends right around the corner, and a nice warm flat, and then suddenly start remembering that really nice coffee place here, and how cool it would be to go up the cable car somewhere that isn't geographically flat as a pancake, and how lovely it was to have a real fire blazing in the grate, which wasn't all that hard to light actually...

It can't be healthy to carry on like this. Advice on living in the moment, please. Immediately.

Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes

September 2nd/3rd commemorates the horror of the Great Fire of London in 1666. It decimated a city of 100,000 people, destroying over 13000 dwellings over an area of a mile and a half by half a mile. The story goes that by forgetting to douse embers in his oven that night, the King's baker set off a blaze that raged overnight through a city built of timber, thatch and pitch - basically a tinderbox - and that was to continue for several days before it was finally controlled mostly by pulling down the buildings in its path until there was nothing left to burn.

It's a relief to know that we could never be the cause of any Great Fire of New Zealand, because despite the many hours we spend kneeling in front of the woodstove, poking and rearranging and joggling and blowing on embers, logs, kindling, copious amounts of firelighters and a publishing house-worth of newspapers, our fire takes at least four hours to even begin thinking about providing actual heat, and mostly instead simply chooses to give up the ghost.

I think our stove is depressed. It just shrugs as we carefully stack the logs, pile up the embers, twist the newspapers, position the kindling and firelighters, as if to say, "look, why bother? We all know I'm going to blaze with the glory of a thousand suns while the newspaper's still in here, and I'll give the impression that the logs are catching fire as the kindling burns out, and after that I'll just sigh and fill up with smoke and eventually suffocate myself. You won't get any warmer, apart from the energy you'll expend in blowing on the embers. Put on a hat and another pair of trousers, grab some mittens, find a blanket, and get over it." Sometimes the blaze gets going, and we get excited, and dance in front of the stove to show our happiness, and say encouraging and loving things to it about knowing it could do it and always believing in its ability, and we tell it it's strong enough to start the next Great Fire of London, and it cheers up for a while, but ultimately it sighs sadly, "but I know I'll never keep this up, and I'll only disappoint you in the end, so just get the blankets out and leave me to wallow in my smoky underwhelmingness."

The trouble is, cold is my absolute worst physical condition. Give me hunger or exhaustion over cold any day. When I'm cold, I have much less patience, and eat far more chocolate, and have a tendency towards tears and despair that I don't ordinarily exhibit. As you can imagine, with both the fireplace and me wallowing in misery Chris is having a fair old song and dance of a job keeping us all going. He's seriously going to have to break out the Songs That Won the Second World War soon.

Luckily The Big Sister of Chris has given to the cause by knitting me the above mitties in a warming blend of merino and silk. Their most important function is keeping my rings on my fingers, because when my hands get cold they simply slide off (the rings, that is, not the fingers). The mitties keep my hands just nicely warm enough for the retention of the rings. And that in itself is a triumph over the Great Lack of Fire of New Zealand.

Oh, by the way, September 2nd is Father's Day in New Zealand. We now have 2 different mother's days (March and May) AND 2 different father's days (June and September). Isn't there some sort of International Council of Observed Days that can sort this out, so that ex-pat children don't end up disappointing their parents?