I'm living by the river

it's a fashion hotspot  - this photograph is a typical example of daywear in Putney

Today I walked out in one of my Frankenstein jumpers - an orange one. I had stopped at a frantically complicated traffic junction - a car braked hard in the middle of the intersection, the driver wound down the window and, amid a torrent of honking, asked (in a way that sounded like she did actually want one) where I got that jumper.

So I made a gooseberry ice-cream

but I can't get it in the freezer because it's full of the wool that I've been hiding from the moths

so I haven't actually made ice cream at this point - just a sort of cold fool!

today

there was an academic seminar, the panel game sort where people take turns to speak for a few minutes about their research. From my limited experience these things are attended mainly by people with NHS haircuts and sensible shoes but this one was enlivened by two women, one who had come dressed as a Superhero and another as a sparkly land-mermaid.



I have finished knitting a tank top, it has a red neck area and a pink tummy area dark grey-and-pale stripes in between

a cashmere charity shop jumper

was too tight and being similar in colour to my own flesh, if I put it on, I looked like a raw furry sausage 

BUT IT'S CASHMERE!!!


I unknitted it and dyed the yarn and yesterday I finished the reknitting

It's like wearing a warm boggy cloud

Das Sein

I'm preparing for this new term that is rushing up to meet me,  ploughing through texts thick with references to the thoughts of dead men: French ones, Greek ones, Austrian ones and then those German ones and their very special words.

I've sought to lighten my load by interleaving the heavy boys with joy, such as a wonderful book called Evocative Objects by Sherry Turkle. Also The School of Life chops the likes of Heidegger and Plato into bite-sized pieces for kindergarten philosophers like me.




The mother thrush is letting her son walk around in our garden, she's up on the fence keeping watch. His head is tatty with the remnants of baby feathers and he looks like a drunken uncle at a wedding party, an impression that deepens when a failed attempt to perch on a flimsy branch has him swaying ninety degrees in each direction before he flops back onto the grass. He doesn't fly away when I walk outside and I can see her bobbing around in panic in case I pick him up and eat him.



On Saturday I set off to meet my step-daughter for lunch, passing her father on my way out.

I was wearing one of my re-knitted woolens - it's hairy orange with a la-di-da collar

I said  I'm going to see your daughter

he said  and I see that you're going dressed as a mad woman

Refreshment Events

Last week I took tea with Bird Lady, we looked at her carpet moths and then we walked on the path encircling her garden. She tests how good her legs are by doing ten laps of the garden which is the exact same distance as from her house to the shop, that way she knows if she's OK to go out for buns.

Today I met my new New Best Friend for coffee - a sculptor - her current work in progress is a large heart, knitted in sections while travelling on public transport or when taking coffee with friends

She produced a right ventricle while I ate a piece of parkin

lyfe wythout aye contnues

Have had busy week:

Just done transformyng a bubblegum-pnk-cardy to short-sleeved shell-top

Then went to see Farey-Godmother-Aunt and salute her new orange garden, we ate salmon and strawberry lunch then she heaped my arms wth fabryc and knttng wool and also lots of aynchant cotton sheets, foxed wth orange spots like pages of old books - aye fynd them very beautyful.

A new young man has come to stay at our house for a couple of months, barely twenty he answered our advert for a mddle-aged woman to take the spare room. He's from Ayes-land (north of Denmark) and frozen n my draughty house - geothermal hotness bursts out of the ground where he's from, heatng houses so hot that they all go around n just t-shrts up there - he's currently bundled up n several of my jumpers and can barely move - but at least no hyperthermya on my watch.

I should be driving to Italy

right now, annoying the Man by singing Cliff Richard songs and arriving somewhere near Verona in time for supper.

But that didn't happen.

I'd already arranged for Rabbit to cover my Brain Doctor days so here we are having a 'staycation' which in my case involves cleaning the kitchen, washing my jumpers and sulking. I am also knitting a garden chair with electrical wire.

The Man has channeled his disappointment into bee maintenance; having planted lots of 'flowers for bees' - his slug-defense strategy is getting progressively aggressive, he is photographing and logging all the insects that come into our garden, particularly the solitary bees and has identified around FIFTY different species of bee just in our tiny city centre patch.

This intense scrutiny also means that he has become an expert in bee First Aid, frequently placing tired bees near a source of food and rescuing rain-sodden bees. On Sunday I saw him taking a tiny glass of water out to clean a bee that was muddy and couldn't fly properly.

The Brain Doctor is away

so I am busy making things and visiting friends. I am reknitting a cashmere jumper donated by a friend because 'the colour is ugly' -  raw-sausage-pink. It is also too small for either of us.

In Cornwall this weekend, I walked in oak woods awash with a hairy lichen rumoured to be an excellent dyestuff, I put some in my pocket and for the last two days I have been boiling the lichen then adding urine and vinegar-soaked cashemere. The wool transformed into beige spaghetti so I continued with additives including and entire caddy of tea - if this doesn't work then at least we have something for supper.

The Brain Doctor will go away again soon and I think it will be safer if I go and look after someone's animals for that period - checking through the 'wanted' lists again, today's best advert is this one:

Responsible Couple needed for 6 cats in July

...We have 4 females and 2 males-2 mothers, 2 daughters and 2 fathers! One of the fathers is feral and hides so you will have to look for him in various places of the house and garden ... Although there is a garden it is lawned with no place for the cats to go to the toilet. The cats are enclosed in the garden but they do try to escape. It's important that a cat count is done periodically throughout the day.

Progress report

It might seem that not much is happening in my life but  I am actually being very productive:

Firstly: I underwent bicycle light training and have now successfully mastered 'switching the lamp on and off' and also 'blinking mode'

Secondly: I have received a package of moth pheromone strips to lure male moths away from the girls and into a sticky trap I also have some scented pads to strew among my rugs and jumpers.

I heard on the radio that when a pest controller comes to your house he uses a pencil to test if a hole is big enough for a mouse - I'm not strong enough to think about mice yet.

Thirdly: I have embarked on a new reknit - someone gave me a nude-colour cashmere jumper saying that the colour was ugly. It is a bit raw-meat-like but I can't resist the softness. It was also a bit small for either of us so I am reknitting the top part on extra big needles - if it ends up looking like chicken mince I shall have to dye it.

knitted bedspread

All those charity shop jumpers have yielded tons of odd assorted yarn so I've used it to make a knitted patchwork blanket. It's all in thick ribby garter stitch which is very springy and lovely.

I'm back at the knitting

 this one's by Agata Oleksiak

Wig Lady moved in last night, I cooked roast vegetables and bouncy chicken for us.


Wig Lady told us about the men who harvest hair from the heads of east european maidens, this is the second most desired hair (first most desired hair is scandanavian) east european hair usually ends up on the heads of people appearing on really bad television shows.

it's knitting season again

I knit to while away the hours at the Brain Surgery; people arrive, I knit we chat, when we've chatted for the right amount of time I direct them to a consulting room, when they have closed the door some of them take off their clothes and lie down.

Yesterday I did not pay proper attention to the schedule and sent a lady to a room to take off her clothes and lie down. and then another lady arrived .... who had an appointment before her.


I'm blaming my inattention on over-biscuiting

Since Meeting Space Lady

my dread of being buried by things has increased. Over the winter a lot of jumpers were needed to feed my  jumper unknitting fetish - my cupboards are bulging. Today I collected up lots of sad-but-might-be-useful t-shirts, impractical dresses and over-optimistic-trousers when I'd filled a sack I took it to the charity shop.

I have come back with a wild flame-coloured mohair cardigan, it's too long and has a collar that needs un-ridiculousing. When I've fixed it, it will be magnificent.

Unraveling

Manning the desk at the Brain Doctor's today. I took one of my charity shop finds with me - a bubblegum pink belted cardigan - if I put it on and tie the belt I look like a pair of raw pork sausages on legs. 

I unraveled the garment on my lap trying to be discrete about it while chatting with the crazy people who sit on the sofa in front of me. When I was alone I viewed the pink crinkle on the floor and thought it looked like my own innards were leaking out



Two big trucks are parked outside my house running a generator. It's late in the evening and I'm too cross about them to concentrate on anything else

Maybe tomorrow I'll discover that a life-saving operation was being performed - one that needed lots of lights and other electricity.

Dominant Spinach

spinach 'dominant'
healthy dark green erect leaves
quick to mature and slow to bolt

that's the kinda spinach I like in my bed

The cardiganengineeringproject is done spring is here and it's all about the garden now.

I have a brand new career as a doctor's receptionist where I will be sitting knitting little squares with mimsy needles so I don't take up too much behind the desk space but right here right now on this sunny day in my garden I will be digging for victory.



Yesterday I attended a seed swap, I didn't have seeds to swap but I had smallbeans money which I left in return for handfuls of DEREK'S RUNNER BEANS - NICE AND EARLY and SHIRLEY'S SUNFLOWERS and a packet of that dominant spinach which I shared with the freckley girl in shorts.

A man in the seedy tent showed me how to make an origami seed envelope out of a quarter sheet of newspaper and once I had my confidence up I was folding and tucking and the only thing I was in too much of a hurry to do was write proper notes on them so now the kitchen table is littered with things that I'm not quite sure what they are.

Style Blind

I have nearly finished knitting my reknitted cardigan. I can't tell if I like it because I made it or whether it is actually quite good

Knitting Obsessive

bodysuit Andrea Crew


The dyeing and remodelling of charity shop woollies might be getting out of hand - but I will not be suffering in this cold weather.

Dirty Conspiracy

The house and the weather are trying to make a fool out of me;  rain and wind keep happening whenever someone has a bath - then the weather sits back and has a good laugh when I run around shouting

THIS LEAK IS DEFINITELY COMING FROM THE BATH!!!


in other news i am trying to knit a cardigan in one big piece, sleeves and all - my big wool-engineering project

I am working next to the window that looks out onto the garden, I should be finishing that bee book and I nearly have but I am also watching a new cat that has appeared in our garden, being new she doesn't understand that we don't want cats in the garden but she has such an air of astonishment at finding herself in this world and she is so astonished and so young that she's useless at getting the birds so I haven't started shoo-ing her yet.

Sneaky Water

Image: Guy Bourdin

Water started dripping through the ceiling into the thin slice of a room on the ground floor last week, above the slice room is a bathroom - maybe this was the source of the leak.

I called plumbers but none answered, today I unscrewed floorboards and sawed through bits of supporting woodwork  - it was all dry.

I enlisted help from an equally unqualified person, we agreed to clear the slice room then run water through the bathtub to see if we could re-enact the leakage. We drilled a hole in the slice room ceiling to ease the passage of any water wanting to come downstairs, three holes were made in our damp and stained ceiling.

No leakage happened -  maybe it was the rain surfeit creeping into wallspaces and running around the interfloor areas only coming out when the house was fully saturated.

This afternoon I am unravelling one of my charity shop jumpers, nearly all unravelled I  arrived at a pocket - where I  found a condom.

It's ok it's in an unopened packet - but really out of date, so no use