My favourtie author

I have just read the first interview given by Anne Tyler in 35 years. Her new book is due to be released soon and has been on my pre order list on Amazon ever since I first heard about it. I cam across Anne Tyler many years ago when my husband bought Morgan's Crossing home and suggested that I might like it. Since then I have read all her works and bought the last half a dozen or so in hardback on the day of publication - that is devotion to an author for me. My impressions of Baltimore first came from Anne Tyler and have only been, slightly, amended by The Wire. I still want to visit and can still somehow see myself as a resident of one of the shabbier yet genteel neighbourhoods - but then I am a romantic at heart.
Today I have worried, a little, that my knitting passion is waning. From finishing the log cabin for E and M I have just finished some doll's clothes and done a couple more of the green log cabin squares. My heart has not been in it. I have been busy, however, sorting out the dining room and a couple of bedrooms and taking a dozen bin liners of clothes to the charity shop and piling up another dozen of pure rubbish and I have been reading. Since probably last September I have been trying to read my latest Richard Russo. I must have read the prologue six times - again my heart was not in it but this week I have picked it up again and now am two thirds of the way through and enjoying it immensely. Does this bout of spring cleaning and reading mean that I am losing the knitting passion or that I have just been otherwise occupied? I don't really know what is going on in my world at the moment. I sometimes have times when I feel unsettled and perhaps this is one of them. I try to make the most of the extra bursts of energy and the periods of feeling unsettled I know will pass. In the meantime the house is looking tidier and leaner and cleaner, the stash has been moved and sorted, the reading bug has been revitalised and there is a new Anne Tyler to look forward to - and there is not so much knitting littering the sitting room.

Knitting in the March sunshine

The log cabin for E and M has taken most of this month of March to complete and now it is done, sitting proudly on the sofa awaiting an excuse to take it down to them and I am debating what to do next. There are many options - Charlie's cardigan being at the top of the list yet somewhere near the bottom too and various other works in progress. However, today, with the sun shining, I decided to dress Chickabiddy. A simple dress and bonnet pattern would not take very long and was small enough to sit outside to complete. The green log cabin work in progress would have been too big - too many balls of wool to contend with and Charlie's cardigan, being so dark, would have been difficult to see whilst wearing sunglasses as it was, surprisingly, the kind of March weather when the wearing of sunglasses was essential. So today's project has been completed. Chickabiddy is dressed and sitting on the top of my knitting box. I cannot decided if this is a seriously weird thing to be doing. Knitting doll's clothes for a doll who was lost but now found, having a dressed doll sitting in our living room, actually admitting that this is how I have been spending my day! I imagine that I will now move her upstairs and she can be hidden away again. The husband is obviously rather disturbed by her presence and I have to accept that she is not the most attractive specimen.

Finished log cabin

Three needle cast off

I am thrilled to have discovered a new knitting technique - the three needle cast off. Completing the final square of another log cabin blanket, this time for the eldest and her boyfriend, I was pondering the possible ways of joining the squares and finishing the blanket. The neapolitan one was finished by a mixture of blanket and slip stitch joining the squares with a plain knitted border. This one I wanted to have a neater finish so I decided to try the 3 needle cast off to join the squares and it really works. The join is neat and provides a little ridge in between each square. I have chosen to use the red wool to provide the joins and, if there is suffcient wool left, then I am thinking of a couple of rows of red around the edge before finishing the border in the deeper of the two browns.
I seriously over estimated the amount of wool for this blanket and probably have enough for a second one. The ideas going around my head at the moment are for another log cabin but this time with a uniform pattern, a contrasting colour for the 3 needle cast off and another contrast for the border. I may start on this new blanket as soon as this one is complete or I may finish the green one in progress or I may revert to Charlie's cardigan, the bamboo cardigan or the baby clothes for Chickabiddy. Whatever I decide to move on to I am delighted to have extended my knitting knowledge especially one which works so well.

Chickabiddy

Yesterday Chickabiddy was found. She had been missing, presumed lost, for over 20 years but yesterday, whilst cleaning out part of the loft, there she was. She was discovered in a bag containing one old sewing pattern, three knitting patterns and a stash of Phildar and Winfield wool. The contents of the bag confirm the date of her disappearance. The local wool shop sold Phildar wool when my eldest was a baby - she is now 30, and Winfield, as I recall, was the brand name of Woolworths where I may have bought wool in the late 1970s.
I had convinced myself that Chickabiddy had been left behind when we moved house in 1989. I even recall where she had been in the old house - in the cupboard at the top of the stairs. As I had never seen her in this house then this dated her demise and my delight in finding her again after all this time was immense.
Chickabiddy was my first doll. I don't recall exactly when she appeared in my life but I do know that she has been around for over 50 years. I remember finding her again when my first daughter was born but her limbs have a tendency to fall off and so she was consigned to the cupboard at the top of the stairs in the old house many years ago and there she stayed, and, I believed, there she had been left - until yesterday.
I am so delighted that she has been found. I know that she could well do with a trip to a dolls' hospital - if such places still exist but I have managed to reattach her limbs on a temporary basis with the aid of a number of rubber bands. She is old and quite brittle and not really a "playable" item but I feel the need to clothe her and take care of her again. I know that I used to have patterns for dolls' clothes but I cannot find any suitable ones. I do have a book of patterns for premature babies so I may see if the smallest size will fit.
My husband commented on the name - Chickabiddy. We wondered where that had come from. He said that it sounded like a name my mother would have given the doll. I decided to google the name and was quite surprised to find so much use for a name that I had thought was sort of unique.I know wonder what happened to Betty and Susan but nothing will quite take away the delight of finding Chickabiddy again.

Comfort baking

There are few things more appealling than the smell of a cake baking in the oven and, as I am writing this, the  house is full of the aroma of 2 date and walnut loaves which will be ready to take out in about 20 minutes. I have been attempting to watch my weight recently and have not been baking much. Today, however, a trip to a local farm shop produced some rather lovely looking dates ( amongst other things) and the hens are laying well at the moment so I succumbed.
Thinking back to appealling smells I noticed a posting on Facebook recently by a cousin's wife who commented on how she loved the smell of freshly laundered sheets that had been drying outside. When the children were small and spent so much time outside in the garden I used to love burying my head in their hair to breathe in that freshness. I have a very sensitive sense of smell and can pick up perfumes at quite a distance. Familiar scents on the "wrong" person often cause me to stop and frown. A friend once picked up on the frown and I had to explain that she was wearing my elder daughter's distinctive perfume and it had rather thrown me to smell it on her. My grandmother was an Estee Lauder fan and my mother liked Chanel. My younger daughter is currently wearing the same Chanel and it follows her around the flat.
Some of my favourties:
wood burning
strawberries
Chanel no 19
baking bread
fresh coffee
coal tar soap
bacon
freesias

Surprising elders

A delightful day spent in the company of family. Colin is approaching 80 and had baked a cake in readiness of my visit. It is an old recipe, he told me, given to him by a farmer's wife he had met when he had been conducting inquiries during a murder investigation ( he is a former police officer - perhaps an obvious comment). Did I want my fruit loaf buttered, he asked - it was moist but he liked it buttered so I had mine the same way. Such an easy recipe, he said, boiled, and he had printed out a copy of the recipe to give to me.
Conversation wandered to his impending holiday to Greece, on his own, and just a few months from open heart surgery. Did he have any photos of where he was going back to, I asked. Of course and the laptop was produced and a slide show was quickly run on the latest television screen. I don't know how to do that and really want to be able to.
I could not help but be surprised by him, though slightly ashamed to be so predictable in my thoughts about the abilities of an older generation. I suppose that my views have been shadowed by my own father who would rarely have made a cup of tea let alone bake a cake but, thinking about it, even he really enjoyed using his computer and, before his stroke, would often be found sitting in front of the screen playing card games and looking at photographs of his grandchildren, leaving e mail, however, to my mother. He was also quite keen on his mobile phone, usually only to call my mother to say that he was on his way home and to put the kettle on but the idea appealled to him and he was keen to embrace the new technology.
Spending years caring for the elderly and sick does tend to polarise expectations and today it was a delight to see, once again, that age does not necessarily mean infirmity. We spoke of Beryl's 85th birthday celebrations in Las Vegas and such an event would not seem improbable for Colin. I thoroughly enjoyed his company, the conversation was stimulating and the cake was lovely.

Oh no - how did the stash grow?

A birthday is an excuse for many things. Calories consumed on the day don't actually count - but then nor do they on the days around the birthday, and any wool purchased on the special day, and the days around that day don't really count towards the stash. The reasoning being that any new yarns are a treat  (as are the calories) or they must be for a specific project. So the extension of my stash over the past few days has included:
4 balls Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino in green - fall into category of treat
3 balls of the same in a pale green - same category
2 balls Adriafil Azzura - green - had to buy something in a new wool shop I found so justified
A considerable number of balls of browns and creams and reds to make a log cabin square blanket - specific project - and balls left over can be used for something!
Perhaps it is not so bad as it looks. Having just written down the truth, the whole truth it was not such an extravagant week after all. The fact that the bag containing the "considerable number of balls" is so huge just  makes it seems like an inordinate growth of the stash.
I can feel quite smug that I did not buy any patterns and the two new books in my knitting library were presents. The only small problem is that I really need patterns now to go with the new wool and there are a couple of patterns in the new books that need wool specifically for them and, naturally, nothing in the stash matches. Perhaps I can finish the existing projects? It will be 12 months before I can use the same excuse again.

St David's Day

March 1st - St David's Day and my birthday so, as these things should be, I am spending the day in Wales. I feel the need to buy daffodils in celebration or just because I actually like them and they are the most inexpensive flowers. Perhaps someone will buy some for me?