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!

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

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.

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.

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.