Robin McKinley's Blog, page 142

Ask Robin: First Story

 

One of the several jobs I'm falling down on is answering Ask Robin questions.  One of the things that keeps happening is that I get a lot of questions that have already been answered, if perhaps not in exactly the same words*, then grangblattingly near enough, it seems to me, or that the questioner should frelling well take a little effort to find out for themselves,** and I get preoccupied with deciding whether I should shout and stomp and get it over with, or whether I'm missing some point or other from painful overfamiliarity with the whole writing business, and if I thought about it I could find a way to answer this or that question which I haven't used already and which might even conceivably be illuminating.  I do know from trying to learn other stuff—bell ringing, say—that there are flabbergastingly many ways to learn, and while a lot of it you may only be able to embed by grind, that grind may be occasionally brightened and clarified by someone saying something to you about the process that you haven't heard before, and that chimes or marches or knits with your experience.

            Meanwhile, I keep not getting around to answering any of the perfectly reasonable questions, that don't need any complex decisions about whether the asker should be offered a brickbat or a rose. 

After reading through your Ask Robin archives and pouring through your blog and your novels, I've been wondering what was the first ever memorable story you wrote/wrestled with? I don't mean the first one you had published, but the first one you can recall pouring your heart and soul into and deciding that you wanted to be an author/writer from that point on.

That's at least two questions.  Maybe three.  And is a pretty good illustration of the different ways different people think.  Because I've told you most of this, but it's coming in at a different angle, you know?  I grew up telling myself stories and when I got old enough, I started trying to write them down.  I was pretty old—I think right around the time I read LOTR for the first time, which was eleven—before I realised that not everybody did this—not everybody did anything more extravagant than imagine that they were that boring paragon Arwen.  My romance with Strider (not Aragorn:  Strider) involved a fairly complex series of adventures in which I started out as a Ranger, disguised as a man.  Of course I was discovered, in time for Strider to fall in love with me without having to get into sticky questions about his sexuality, but by that time I had proven myself so valiant in battle and cunning in pursuit that they decided to keep me.  Well, I had to be disguised as a man, didn't I?  A lot of my alternate-classics when I was a kid involved me disguised as a man.  ARRRGH.  Anyway.  That's another rant which you've heard before.  I also wonder to what extent my story-telling got off to a particularly muscular start as a result of both/either being a military brat—and an only child—and constantly moving on, or being five years in Japan, which is a very alien culture to an American kid whose idea of the Far East has been Boston, Massachusetts.  I was in Japan during those preteen years too, when you first start realising that you're a specific you and no one else, and that you're going to grow up whether you're ready or you get it or not.

            But my point is that there isn't really a first memorable story—and I never really did decide I wanted to be a writer.  It's like asking when I took my first memorable breath or made my first memorable blood, or decided I wanted to grow up to be Robin McKinley.  I'm a story-teller like I'm now a middle-aged female American émigré with bad vision, bad teeth, a cranky personality and a serious addiction to chocolate.  When I was eleven I was a shorter, fairer-haired version, but I still had bad vision, bad teeth, a contumelous personality, a scary capacity for chocolate, and a need to tell stories.

            Tomorrow, if I can't think of a better idea, I'll run you through a few highlights of those early stories.  And yes, the earliest ones all feature serious borrowing from my elders and betters.  Tolkien pastiche?  I had a corner on the market.

            You can all use a laugh, right? 

* * *

* I don't myself feel there's a significant amount of difference between 'Where do you get your ideas?', which is #1 on the FAQ on my web site, and 'I know what you said on your FAQ, but do you get your ideas anywhere in particular?'  What?  Did you actually read what I wrote? 

** 'What is ME?' is in the front rank of the latter category—which is still the one I hear oftenest—so is 'Who is Peter?', 'What do you mean, hellhounds?', and 'I don't get it about bell ringing.  What is change ringing?  Will you please explain more about it?'  All of this is in 'about', second click down on the left-hand column of the blog.  There are LINKS for the complicated stuff, like ME and bell ringing.^  Use them.^^   Good grief, people.  I am aware of the rush of blood to the head when you find out that someone you admire, or whose books you admire, or whatever, is more or less available their own self on line and you are suddenly seized by a passionate desire to have an answer to your question, your particular question, asked in your words—or you're so distracted by the fact that this person you used to admire is this crabby, disorganised maniac that you ask your question(s) in a vague, dizzy, trance-like state:  what . . . do . . . you . . . mean . . .  you . . . ring . . . bells—?

            But.  This is my rant on responsibility again.  When the info is readily available out there I feel that questioners have some responsibility to find their own answers.^^^

            Also . . . although this may derive from being woefully and wailingly easily embarrassed myself^^^^ . . . I would have thought the fear of making a complete and utter horse's butt of yourself by asking someone a question the answer to which is emblazoned all over the opening pages of her blog and web site would make you a little cautious.  Apparently not.^^^^^

^ Not that Peter and the hellhounds are simple.  

^^ And how many times and in how many ways can I say Google is your friend?  So is Wikipedia.  I can't trust what my Google gives me, because it remembers that I look up ME and change ringing references fairly often.  But on Wiki ME is easily found as soon as you eliminate everything that isn't medical, and the very first click on the list if you type in 'bell ringing' gives you a link to 'change ringing'.  

^^^ Note that everyone asking any variation on a theme of 'Are you writing a sequel to PEGASUS?' and 'When does the sequel to PEGASUS come out?' will be rapidly killed.  The paperwork came through recently and the first executions are already scheduled.  I don't know why these thrice-blasted people are still getting through to me.  I may ask Blog/Sitemom to insert a multiple-choice test that you have to pass before you can email me.  Question #1:  Does your email contain the word 'sequel'?  (a) yes (b) no (c) maybe.  If (a), your computer explodes.  If (c), it merely melts a little.  If (b), please continue.  Looking forward to hearing from you.+

+ Unless you want to tell me that SUNSHINE/DEERSKIN betrays my audience.  Or that BEAUTY is my best book and why can't I write more like that.

^^^^ Don't ask.  Just . . . don't ask. 

^^^^^ Although of course I have no idea how many people have paused with their finger  over the 'send' button and thought, hmm, maybe I should read that stuff that my glazed eye passed right over on its hellhound-after-a-rabbit trajectory.  —Oh, and the emails that say 'I got to the end of PEGASUS and panicked, but then I went on line and found out there's a sequel coming in 2012' are fine.  In fact, they cheer me up.  It's working.  At least sometimes.  So please write more of these.

I need a new phrase for 'not a good day'

 

So last night I did go to bed early.  I went to bed early . . . and read.  Till it wasn't anything like early any more.  Or rather, it was the wrong kind of early:  the military-bloke-across-the-road getting off to an early start kind of early . . . which is the kind of early that makes you think involuntarily of a John Le Carré novel, and also makes you want to be asleep not because the ungleblarging sun is already coming up again* but because you want to be able to say 'no' and mean it if any dark-suited guys with empty eyes knock on your door some day and ask if you've  noticed anything strange about your neighbour—although he's probably only trying to be quiet because he doesn't want to wake the neighbours**.  In terms of staying up late this overactive-imagination predawn twilight mystery scenario is still to be preferred to hearing the kid-across-the-road going off to school, but is still quite late/early enough.  So I'm a little short of sleep.  (Again.)  Make that a lot short of sleep.

            Meanwhile my voice teacher is still among the missing***, which means another unleashed Monday afternoon with a dog minder already booked in.  I've forgotten how to play hooky, how sad is that?  So I pulled myself together and went into Mauncester with a short list of three crucial items†.

            I failed to find even one of them.††

            I came home††† feeling snarly and out of sorts and mainlined frightening quantities of brutally stewed tea in the faint hope of being awake and alert for bell ringing tonight, which was going to be at Colin's garage—I've told you about Colin's mini-ring, haven't I?  He has an eight-bell ring of itty-bitty, small-bucket/large-flowerpot-sized bells hung in the roof of his garage—but they're proper change-ringing bells, they're in full-circle frames and the little ropes have little fuzzy sallies on them, they're just titchy.  You ring them like normal tower bells . . . only a lot more gently.   They make me crazy.  As the months pass and my reluctant experience on the dire little gremlins increases—Monday evening practise is held there only occasionally‡—I have gone from being totally freaking hopeless to merely paralytically erratic and prone to minor bouts of hysteria.  We got through most of a touch of bob minor and it wasn't me that fired it out.   —Whereupon Colin called for Cambridge.  And when that Did Not Go Well‡‡ he decided to drill me on . . . well, it's called 'making places', and it means hanging around at one 'place' in the row, instead of moving up or down through the pattern, which is what you're usually doing.  There's a distressing amount of making places in Cambridge.  It's basically a problem of bell-handling, it's what's zonking up my Cambridge in the tower, and I can't handle those frelling little tin cans anyway.   

            I tell myself I have to be nice to Colin because he's my conductor for my new schedule of practise quarters GAAAAAAH.  And I had to be nice to Niall, who is the evil ratbag who (eagerly) suggested the charming educational method that has the poor slob on the four endlessly making places, because he was my ride home.  I was the poor slob on the four, of course.

            Extra chocolate has been needed tonight.  And a nice cold bottle of prosecco.  

* * *

* Didn't it just do that at pretty much this time yesterday?

** Having perhaps not grasped the depths of free-lance depravity occurring right in front of him.  And in front of his tender, innocent daughters.   

*** I just hope she's not damaging her throat, yelling at her builders.  YOU SAID YOU'D BE OUT OF HERE A FORTNIGHT AGO!  You also said that the floor and the walls would still meet at 90° angles, the door would still open, and the ceiling would be where it was before you arrived!  You weren't supposed to do ANYTHING to the ceiling!  And furthermore, the tiles I picked out of the catalogue were blue, not magenta!   

† That I've been failing to find on the internet.  It's scary how much of my shopping I do on the internet any more.   Other old people will remember when The Monster Mall killed off little local downtown shops;  what I'm wondering is if what I'm seeing now is the comeback of the little local downtown shops while the internet kills off The Monster Mall.  

†† There was also a deeply embarrassing moment when, having found something else to buy, and flashed my new-issue store card^ at the clerk at the till, she politely pointed out that I hadn't signed it yet and did I have some other card with a signature on it^^ that she could just look at . . . and I discovered that I hadn't signed any of them.^^^ 

^ Why do they do this?  I don't need a new card every three months when I only use the freller about twice a year.  And the shiny new logo isn't going to make me use it any oftener. 

^^ Preferably mine 

^^^ Please note I've now signed everything, including my library card, so don't bother to pick my pocket. 

††† to beautifully walked hellhounds 

‡ Thank the gods 

‡‡ We got through to the end on the second try, but Colin was hoarse from shouting.^

^ It's okay though.  He doesn't teach singing.

Shattered again

 

. . . No, no, that's just me.  I haven't run Wolfgang into anything else.  Sundays tend to be like this.  The real reason I'm starting this 'practise quarter peal' scam is so that I can schedule quarters not on a Sunday when I have half a hope of holding myself together long enough to get through one.   I haven't had a really brilliant morning since the ME nailed me eleven years ago, and since I have this indelicate habit of staying up till all hours* getting out of bed what-counts-to-me-as-early on Sunday morning to ring bells is this epic act of heroism every frelling week.  Which means that by noon I feel like five pm and by five pm I feel like . . . tomorrow, having stayed up all night.  Standard Sunday service quarters are rung around five pm.**

            And right at the moment my Sundays are being made increasingly hideous by lengthening Octopus and Chandelier rehearsals:  today's was four hours, and it goes up to six shortly.  The show goes on, ready or not, at half-term, the last week in February.  But the chorus doesn't have enough to do.  I read most of a novel today so excellent*** that I was absorbed in it in spite of all the banging and yowling going on around me, which on the one hand is very nice, because spending your Sunday afternoon reading is one of those things I used to do when I wasn't doing too many other things†, but if you're going to spend your afternoon reading, you want to be curled up on your sofa with your hellhounds or similar, and not have your concentration regularly if infrequently broken by demands that you sing something.  Wha'?  Huh?   There's a further problem:  us non-dancing chorus are a small, elegantly arranged coral reef in one corner of the stage, and what is the first important fact about coral?††  It's sessile.  It doesn't move around.   It just sits there.  Hour after hour.  After hour.  After . . . ouch.  I don't sit still well at the best of times but I mostly don't notice—because I don't sit still.  I twitch.  I fidget.  I get up and make more cups of tea.  I also rarely sit, as your director or your audience might define sitting;  I tend to have at least one leg folded up under me somehow.  I also slouch a lot.  At funny angles.  Not at all elegant.  By the end of the third hour of rehearsal, despite breaks during which we were allowed to lay aside our coral natures and reengage with bipedalism, I was so crippled I could barely move, and by the time I got home to hellhounds, who were delighted to see me and went and sat by the front door in a significant manner, it was Quasimodo all the way.†††  The things you don't think of when you decide to do something silly, like sing in your first am-dram performance at the age of 58.‡ 

            I'm so trashed I think I may go to bed early. . . .  Maybe I'll finish reading that novel. . . . 

* * *

* I tend to get my second wind at about one a.m., which is inconvenient.  But when you have one of these energy-stompers like ME you take what you can get and try not to argue.  People with ME don't generally last long in standard office jobs.^ 

^ And if any of you out there have ME and a standard office job . . . wow.  I totally salute you. 

** Niall and I walked down from the church to the main street together after ringing this morning, chiefly so Niall could gloat.  He did have one useful piece of information for me—that Penelope is delighted at the prospect of practise quarters and has offered to sacrifice herself on the altar of administrative support, should I feel the need.^    Other than that, he said, grinning broadly,^^ I'm just going to sit back and let you get on with it.  —The life of a Deputy Ringing Master is fraught with peril.  The life of a Deputy Ringing Master with bright ideas is . . . ^^^

^ Which is to say that organising ringers to do stuff is one of those cat-herding occupations, and at very least if there's two of us we each have someone to complain to.  

^^ I'm not sure I've ever noticed what a very wide toothy grin Niall has.  I wonder if he has a little goblin blood? 

^^^ I think possibly 'learning to knit' comes in this 'bright perilous ideas' category.   No, I haven't mastered the second row yet.   But I have a nice new knitting ap on Pooka. 

*** Yes, I will certainly blog about it. 

† and having ME 

†† Aside from the fact that the pink-orange range makes great jewellery.  

††† I swear Wolfgang engaged his own clutch on the way home.  Although I hung on white-knuckled as we went through the gate.  

‡ I've been sitting through operas for forty years.  I don't know.  The stress level is different.

On planning and planting an orchard (guest post by AJLR)

 

It's only a tiny orchard but we're very proud of it – the 'we' in this case being I and my fellow kitchen-gardeners, on the university campus where I'm a member of staff.

Three years ago the University decided to encourage students and staff to get involved in a project called 'creative campus'. All sorts of things have come out of this, including a grass maze, an arboretum, and the kitchen-garden*. This last is an area of about half an acre that has been set aside for use by those students and staff who are interested in growing vegetables (or learning how to do so) – and now fruit, as well. We have a number of vegetable beds inside a wire (anti-rabbit) fence – 15 plots, each of c.10' x 12'. The soil is very light and fairly sandy and dries out a lot in summer, so earlier this year we bought a lot of well-rotted horse manure and a big trailer load of spent mushroom compost and have been digging this stuff in and mulching with it ever since, to help the moisture-holding capacity and general health of the soil. I must admit that when I first pressed for us to get so much organic matter in I had some very doubtful co-volunteers. However, everyone can see now how our worm count is going up and how much healthier the plants have been this past summer so I'm glad we went ahead. As the person in the group with the most gardening experience (some of my fellow gardeners are complete beginners, though extremely willing and keen to learn) I really enjoy sharing information (the RHS site and forum are a great reference resource) and showing new gardeners something of how to get the best crops from their plantings. It's also great to get away out to the garden during summer lunchtimes when I'm on campus, as a change from being plugged into a computer.

A few months ago we heard that an external bid put in by the campus environmental co-ordinator had been successful and that we would have some extra funding to expand our operations in ways that would benefit the students. We decided that it would be good to get some fruit trees and bushes, as an interesting feature in themselves and as an aid to teaching people more (informally) about how easy it can be to grow some food of their own. After innumerable hours of online and face-to face discussion (really – the number of emails involved was stupendous), we finally settled on having apple, pear, cherry and cobnut trees, together with raspberries (both autumn- and summer-fruiting varieties), blackcurrants, redcurrants, loganberry and tayberry. We commandeered some of the grassed area outside the vegetable garden, some of our members got together and built a large fruit cage (for the soft fruit) from some old metal and mesh frames that were discarded near us, and we were ready!

We'd had a look around during the summer to see where we might be able to get good stock from (it has to be certified as virus-free) and eventually decided on Brogdale – well, with the National Fruit Collection there being only eight miles away from the campus, it seemed the obvious place. We kept everyone interested in the kitchen-garden informed about what the steering group was planning, asked for volunteers who'd like to come along and learn how to plant trees/soft fruit so as to give the best start, circulated an RHS video about the way to plant trees**, and planned our planting day.

Of course, the day we'd picked as the planting day (27 November) turned out to be three days after the start of the current mini-Ice Age in the UK. After a couple of hours of preparatory groundwork the morning before by my Noble and Nice-Natured Husband ('You want me to go up there and do WHAT?! In these temperatures!! Are you joking, woman…?!') and myself, we found ourselves at 10 o'clock on the morning of the planting day standing on a just-thawing area of pasture and with 14 slightly chilly volunteers in attendance. The man from Brogdale, with all our beautiful trees and soft fruit stacked behind him, gave a practical demonstration of 'how to do it' (including such elements as making sure that the supporting stake went in on the side of the prevailing wind, so each little tree's trunk would be less likely to rub against it),  my husband gave a brief demo of how to take turf off the ground first without either a) taking too much soil with it or b) laying oneself open to a slipped disc, and we were off. I'd asked people to work in twos and threes and for each little group to plant a tree according to the layout and measurements we'd agreed and just then marked out (15 feet between trees, which are on semi-dwarfing rootstock). Everyone was very keen to get started – and to warm up! After the first 30 minutes they all seemed to be getting the hang of stripping the turf off where their tree was to be planted (I was building turf stacks with what they took off) and the first planting holes were starting to appear. Everyone looked much warmer and there was a lot of chatting and good-humoured comparison of techniques going on, which was great.  As the trees went in one could see how much care people were taking and the general enthusiasm for what they were doing, despite the -2oC temperature around us. By 12.30 all the trees were in and we went for a quick lunch and warm-up in the students' cafe a few minutes walk away. Knocking the mud off our boots (mostly) and going into that warm room, engulfing food/fuel at a rate of knots, we were all feeling really good about the day.

Going back out into the cold 45 minutes later was, of course, not quite so much fun. Some of the volunteers heard the siren call of essays waiting to be written and left, but enough remained for us to go back as a group and get on with planting the soft fruit bushes and canes inside the cage. I'd done a planting plan, showing what needed to go where, and once we'd got more turf stripped off, the ground dug over and loosened up in the new beds, the remaining plants went in fairly quickly. My N&N-NH went off and brought back a pack of pastries, one of the group went across to the Plotting Shed*** and brought mugs of hot tea out to us and, by the time the frozen grey dusk started to envelope us all at 3.30, every plant was snug in the ground. Now we've got even more of a reason to long for the Spring.

* * *

* The campus is around 300 acres in extent and there's still quite a lot of spare land round the edges. We'll also have two bee-hives out there, near the kitchen-garden, from this coming Spring. I'm so looking forward to this and to my bee-keeping training.

** We were planting bare-root grafted trees, in which case one has to be sure and keep the grafted area – where top and rootstock join – a couple of inches above the ground. The general planting technique is just the same as shown in the video though.

*** There is an old (brick-built) shed on the edge of the kitchen-garden that we've got kitted out with water, power, chairs, wall-charts, etc. When this potting shed (as it was before) was renovated for us last year by the University's maintenance staff, we asked the k-g group what it should be called. The 'Plotting Shed' it then became…

Noises, various

 

It's a great pity I didn't LEARN TO KNIT a few months ago.  The Octopus and Chandelier rehearsals kick into high gear on Sunday, and we have a six hour dress rehearsal in—I think it's a fortnight.  Six hours??  The sad truth is that the back row of the chorus doesn't have enough to do, and rehearsals were making me kind of crazy, and Minnie, our fearless director, has let me off the last two, on the proffered excuse that I was getting the music from Oisin and could learn the back row of the chorus at home.*  This sounds quite plausible.  Except for the 'getting the music from Oisin' part, which greatly resembles getting two blog posts from Oisin.**  I've been reduced to writing him menacing emails.  He punished me for this discourtesy today however by making me WAIT for my cup of tea while he printed the pages off.  Tea . . . tea, I said feebly:  it was already late, Oisin having had a funeral to play organ for***, and if I don't get my second mug of serious tea by 4 pm I start blurring around the edges.  Mwa ha ha ha ha, said Oisin.

            But if I knew how to knit, I'd have something to do for the five hours and forty-five minutes of the dress rehearsal that they don't need the back row of the chorus for.  I'll probably try to read, which means I'll get home and discover that I haven't taken in anything except a vague sense of the passage of words, with a lot of 'a's and 'the's and I can't remember what else.  Although I suppose if I took knitting I'd come home with a lot of dropped stitches and strange lumpy . . . things.

            Meanwhile . . . I told you that Niall and I had hatched a Cunning Plan.  I don't ring quarter peals because of the ME.  While—as blog readers know—I get through a remarkable amount of stuff in an average day† I have no stamina, and I never know when I'm suddenly going to have to sit down in the middle of whatever.  At the computer this is not necessarily either tragic or conspicuous, although I'd probably have fewer superfluous clothes†† if sale catalogues, on line and off, weren't a favourite retreat during phases of brain mush.†††  On the end of a bell rope, you're in trouble, and so is your band—and people tend to mind losing quarters, when they've turned up to ring one.   But I miss ringing quarters—I particularly miss the spectacular practise opportunity a quarter is:  forty-five minutes of the same method.  A ten-minute touch on practise night is good going.‡  So I've kept muttering to myself about practise quarters—where the goal is forty-five minutes of the same method, and if you get a quarter out of it, great, and if you don't, you just ring as many touches as you need to fill up the forty-five minutes, depending on how many times you break down.  You can put the woman having her ME moment on the treble or the tenor as necessary:  my autopilot, after six years of tower ringing, probably just about is strong enough.  And it's way less pressure, and less-good ringers (including those that don't also have ME) have an opportunity to ring too.

            I'd begun to think that perhaps my opportunity was coming round at last, because New Arcadia used to ring a lot of quarters and now rings hardly any‡‡ and I have been able to watch Niall getting increasingly twitchy and a few of our other ringers perhaps a little wistful about this.  So I brought up the idea of practise quarters to Niall the other night in the car‡‡‡ coming home after handbells and he went for it.§  First stop:  a conductor.  We tackled Colin about this last night after handbells and Colin, who is not only a bell junkie but probably too nice for his own good§§, thought about it for a minute and then said that he thought it was a good idea, and he'd be happy to conduct.  Second stop:  permission from our tower captain and tower secretary, who is Vicky.  We approached her (one does not tackle Vicky) tonight . . . and in hindsight I think she agreed too quickly.  Our idea is to have a practise quarter once a month on a set day, like every third Friday before ordinary practise, but Vicky, with perhaps a fell light in her eyes, is suggesting that we sometimes have them . . . on Sundays, like our old service quarters, as if for service.  No, no! we say.  If we're ringing a quarter for service, it has to be a good quarter.  Oh, says Vicky insinuatingly.  If they're not commissioned, they can just be ordinary quarters, that would be fine.  And then Niall, with an even more fell light in his eyes, says, well, maybe on those months we could have two practise quarters . . .

            I may have created a monster.  Stay tuned.§§§

 * * *

* Note that the back row of the chorus doesn't move around or anything.  Presumably we will be told when and where to come on and when and where to come the hell off—and adjured not to trip over or break anything which I have to say is worrying me a lot more than the music is. 

            What I am aware of carefully and painstakingly not thinking about is the whole on-stage thing.  I'm the back row of the chorus!  Barring throwing up or going off in fits, no one is going to notice me.  Also, we mostly sit down, so the white knuckles and the rubbery knees should be inconspicuous.  But . . . even the back row of the chorus has to come on for at least one curtain call, don't they?  Do I have to smile?  Ewww.  I should so not be doing this.  It's all Oisin's fault.  I told him we needed a nice little singing group.  Twelve or so.  I'll sing anything from high baritone to second soprano as long as there are at least eleven other people around.^ 

            Or maybe it's Blondel's fault, for not bursting out laughing^^ at my first lesson and telling me to go home and . . . learn to knit.^^^  Or Blondel's for leaving.  I'm still waiting to hear from my second new voice teacher, that the kitchen refit is complete, and she can get into her studio again, or whatever.  If a second singing teacher spurns me I'm going to start developing a complex.

^ There are reputed to be eight in the back row of the O&C chorus, if we were ever all there at the same time.  Eight is enough when there's all this nonsense going on stage front. 

^^ Speaking of providing good laughs.  See below.     

^^^ You realise that I spent years coming away from bell practise threatening to give it up and learn to knit?  I only stopped saying this . . . probably when I started wrestling with Cambridge.  If you're trying to learn your first surprise method, you've come too far for frivolous comminations.  But this empty threat clearly had some protective quality, and now . . . 

** Minnie is married to him.  She knows what he's like.  Never mind.  She probably got a good laugh out of my foolishness.  I wouldn't deny a good laugh to the director of a small local theatre society in the middle of rehearsals for a new show. 

*** He came in to me picking out another of my strange, crabbed little tunes on his piano.  I've got sheaves^ of manuscript pages of strange, crabbed little tunes^^ scattered all over my piano.  I hadn't realised till I said it to Oisin today that the reason for this is that as soon as I put them on Finale they become serious.  And PEG II is so dedicated to kicking me in the head that at the moment I'm a complete wuss about giving anything else the opportunity to behave similarly.  Sigh.  The music I write is a lot more legible on Finale. 

^ Er—sheafs? 

^^ For a variety of instruments.  Including organ.  Oisin told me today he's finally getting ready to order the manuals—the keyboards—for The Beast.  But he's planning on buying the wrong ones.   He's trying to placate me with a lot of whining about cost.+  I am not moved. 

+ We're talking the approximate difference between Third House and Kensington Palace.  All right, all right.  It's not my bank account.  But a woman has her (slightly bizarre) fantasies.  Yarn pets?  One of these hand-crafted-by-enchanted-goblins organ manuals would be a fantastic pet.=  Or rather, three, since Oisin needs three of them.  We could name them. . . . 

= I wonder if anyone has tried to yarn bomb an organ.  

† I don't think I actually know what an average day is.  

†† Is a cute little cashmere-blend cardie ever superfluous?  Discuss. 

††† I can somehow still punch in my credit card number.  Damn. 

‡ Although a ten minute touch on service ring morning is a generous plenty, thank you. 

‡‡ Chiefly because service schedules got juggled, but I suspect also because even Vicky has an upper limit on the amount of hassle she wants to go through organising quarters. 

‡‡‡ You will doubtless be relieved to hear that the driver's door has been reattached and the gremlins chastised. 

§ I'm so persuasive.  No, he's so a bell junkie.  I'm a little anxious that there's going to be some quid pro quo in invisible ink in the contract, however, concerning handbells.  I've rung four handbell quarters so far and none of them voluntarily. 

§§ Ask his wife.

§§§ There are towers who ring quarters every week—I know one or two that ring two every Sunday, for morning and evening service—but we don't, and we don't really have the ringers.  If we go from the occasional quarter to two quarters a month it will be a lot.  Well, I think it'll be a lot, and I'm in the firing line.

One of those twenty-four hour things

 

 I don't know why it's been a day, but it has.  I mean, aside from the twenty-four hour group aspect of dayness.  It's been one of those days that from the moment your feet hit the floor* you're not moving fast enough.  Blah glub.**  Because they are threatening us with snow again I was determined to get out of town for our morning hurtle in case we can't tomorrow.  On our way back to Wolfgang after a ramp and wander relatively free of untoward incident*** we saw emerging from the crossroad ahead of us, a dog.  And then a second dog.  They milled around for about thirty seconds—were presently joined by a third dog—while hellhounds and I slowed down . . . and down . . . to a dead halt, and I started muttering imprecations.  There were eventually four dogs at the crossroads before the human appeared.  She saw us all right, but did she make any move toward the collection of leads round her neck?  She did not.  She wandered off down the path we were on . . . and we walk a lot faster than almost anyone else in Dodge City.  She looked over her shoulder at us a couple of times—yes, lady, we're gaining on you:  I'd have to get down on my hands and knees to walk as slowly as you're going—and started calling in that bright chirpy voice you know means that her dogs will ignore her completely.  Which of course they did.  She managed to get a lead on one of them . . . the other three sallied back up the path, tails high, to interact with the hellhounds.  At this point, still calling what I assume was their names†, she broke into a run.  I guess this was out of some dog training manual.  It's quite a good ruse with puppies, who usually will follow you:  full grown, undertrained dogs for whom your newness wore off long ago, not so much.

            She disappeared around a corner of the path, with her single dog on a lead.  The other three accompanied us jovially back to Wolfgang.  Good job about the jovially.  I waited till they had dispersed before I drove away.  I have no idea.

            The rest of the day has been taken up by reading contracts††, talking to Merrilee about contracts†††, and ringing frelling handbells.‡  I'm starting to worry that Niall is going to think that our plain courses of bob major are becoming not too bad and we should start thinking about ringing a touch.  He was getting all excited about touches of bob major on the way home on Tuesday. They're much easier than you think! he cried.  All you do is—ungle mungle blah blah blitherump drool!  And my answer to that is:  Noooooooo.     

           Ratbags—what with all the other excitements‡‡ I forgot to ask Niall about his car.  Never mind.  I can ask him tomorrow, while we're gearing up for our assault on Vicky, officially our tower secretary but more accurately our Great High Panjandrum in Charge of Everything.  We have a cunning plan. . . . ‡‡‡ 

* * *

 * Possibly because the phone rang before you were ready to get up. 

** Never did get the floor hoovered which in my presently dustpan-challenged state is a more critical activity than usual.  One of these Thursdays my handbellers are going to show up in precautionary diving suits.  

*** I've had it drummed into me by Jackie Drakeford and Penny Taylor, my sighthound, lurcher and longdog goddesses, that your sprinting-into-the-next-county hellhound will come back looking for you at exactly the place he left you, so it behoves you to stay there, unless you're absolutely dead sure you're following him accurately.^  My guys—so far, please all the gods, goddesses, gremlins and imps of the perverse—have always come back to me pretty quickly.  But it is interesting, not necessarily in a good way, just how strongly they mark where they left you and are expecting to find you.  If the three of us are walking/hurtling along the edge of a field where they can have an eye on me ('we keep her for the roast chicken but she is so slow') they track me just fine.  But if I've been out of their line of sight for only a minute or so, they can't immediately find me again if I've moved.  Chaos gaily reemerged from the hedgerow the other day and looked for me—but I'd walked on a dozen steps and had then stopped and turned around to look for him—and he couldn't see me.  I know all dogs see motion much better than they identify anything standing still, and I'm under the impression sighthounds are particularly extreme this way.  I felt I was standing there in plain sight—but he was staring at the spot I had been, and I could just see him starting to worry when I realised—and waved and shouted his name.  Hellhound joy.  Darkness trotted up alertly at this point:  Problem?  Was there a problem?

^ And you'd probably be wrong. 

† I admit my hearing is deficient, especially on a cold day while wearing a bright pink balaclava and a double-wound scarf, and with Emmylou Harris pouring into the single earphone I have in one ear, so for all I know she was invoking the ravine goddess to open a crack in the earth and swallow all pursuit.  In which case I am pleased to report she was not doing it at all well. 

†† Uggggh.  I hate contracts.  They're full of publisherese which is sort of upside down and backwards Sanskrit with occasional Pictish in mirror writing and the bits you manage to decipher despite their best efforts only make you hate publishers.^  Every time I read a contract I wistfully contemplate all those happy, carefree authors who figure that's what their agents are for, flick through the pages thinking of something else^^ and sign obediently on the dotted line.  I'm sure Merrilee wistfully contemplates those authors too, as she's answering my 1,000,000 still-clueless-after-all-these-years and anal-retentive questions.  I suspect she goes home, restrains herself from kicking the dog, and says to her husband, Have you ever thought about running a B&B in Schenectady? 

^ There's a quote I'm failing to find on Google which I have on a wall in my office back at the cottage which says something like:  Contract:  a document legally binding only to the weaker party.  

^^ Possibly HOW WELL THE NEW NOVEL IS GOING.   GAAAAAAAAAAAH. 

††† See previous footnote 

‡ On one of the new knitting threads on the forum^ some experienced knitter has said soothingly that I and any other beginners following the New Dark Side story should remember that acquisition of a new skill is always slow, laborious, and containing great swathes of going backwards.  I RING HANDBELLS.  I KNOW HOW TO FAIL.  REPEATEDLY.  IT DOESN'T GET ANY MORE HUMILIATING THAN HANDBELLS. 

^ Not that I meant to start knitting, er, threads on the forum 

‡‡ Hellhounds wouldn't eat their lunch and handbells were starting early.  When I got back to the cottage all three of the others were already there. 

‡‡‡ You're all Blackadder aficionados, I trust?

The horror. The horror.

 

So, whatever night it was that I brought my new demon* home,  I opened one of the It's Easy!  It's Fun!  You'll be knitting Fair Isle masterworks by the end of chapter two! books, and attempted to grapple with Casting On.

            I got as far as one stitch.  

            I thought, this is way too much like work.  I already know enough about work.**  So I took a photo—waste not, want not—and shoved the whole nonsense back in the plastic shopping bag.***

            And then blondviolinst told me about www.knittinghelp.com   And I went there, in a crabbed, sidelong sort of way, and clicked the Long-Tail Cast On† video and thought, oh!  That almost looks . . . familiar.  I think this is the cast-on my over-achieving knitter friend in Maine showed me, twenty-five years ago.

            So tonight†† I thought I'd give it a try. 

            So, is this casting on?  If it is, I can do it.†††  What I'm not telling you is that I did it straight off, first time.  And I thought, oh.  How very odd.  So I pulled the little row off the needle and tried it again . . . and couldn't do it to save my life.  There followed two hours you do not want to hear about.  I got a little work done on a guest blog due this week (erp).  I fed hellhounds (and they ate).  I tried to cast on again.  Nope.  More displacement activities.  More casting on.  NOOOOOOOO.  At this point I had a serious headache and my vision had gone all kind of fuzzy and my stomach hurt.‡

            Then I figured it out again.  Long exhaaaaaaaaalation.  Also:  GAAAAAAAAH.  IS THIS WORTH IT?‡‡

            So what do I do now?   I can't make head or tail of the knit and purl videos—and the book illustrations look like particularly unpleasant intestinal diseases.  I want to know what I do right now, with only one cast on row to my name.  I don't want instructions that start with half a potholder.

E Moon writes

Noooooo….!

I get that part.

OK. Yes. My mother knitted. . . she knit like a fiend. She taught me. . . .but (of course) since she died I have forgotten how to cast on.

Why am I not surprised you knit?  What do you not do?  Listen, woman, if you put a ring of bells in your garage and start grinding out full peals of Cambridge and Pudsey I am going to ban you from the forum.

           Penelope also knits.  She's another of these wretched do-everything women.  And she rings bells.‡‡‡  But I have to be nice to her because she's married to Niall.  Who was wearing a pullover she knitted last night (he said).  Siiiiiigh.  At least now I know I have a local resource.

But yes, the knitting talk here has me yearning to pick up the needles (I inherited ALL my mother's needles, for which she built a cabinet)

I AM SO JEALOUS.  If you find you have spares of anything. . . .

and yarn again but…I can't cast on.

Yes you can.  www.knittinghelp.com  Double doodah Continental whatsit.  If I can do it, anyone can do it.  I suggest you omit the two-hour plunge into the void however. 

And when would I do it? 

Indeed. 

There's the garden . . . , the land, the horses, the book, the music, the camera…plus of course the cooking, the laundry, the other stuff. I don't NEED anything else to do. I need more TIME.

Yes.  Rant on, I'm with you all the way.  Don't forget the part about wanting not to need sleep.  Silly business, sleep.  And the time to READ.

But I want socks that are comfortable and fit, and I know if I could only remember how to cast on and refresh my brain on knit and purl, I could somehow cobble together nice thick socks. . . . Grump at self. Knitters say it's easy. Non-knitters think it's hard. Former knitters know is SHOULD be easy, and having the easy become hard is seriously annoying. 

I never got past the listing-with-curly-edges phase last time.  I'm a sort of recidivist beginner . . . which is how I introduced myself to Vicky six years ago.  I tell myself that I never broke ringing inside the first time I tried change-ringing either and . . . look at me now.  I can't decide if this is a comforting thought or an appalling one. 

Judith

I love reading this blog. It makes me feel far less guilty about all the pursuits I've taken up and then let go for lack of time. . . .This summer I came across a book named something like "The Idiot's Guide to Knitting and Crocheting" and bought it from the bargain bin. I read it through completely and then went so far as to go through a craft store and pick out a yarn in a texture I like, along with a set of bamboo knitting needles and a crochet hook that match the yarn, plus a needle for finishing off ends. They're all sitting in the bag they came in on a counter in the living room.

You're made of stronger stuff than I am.  I have to hide the signs of lapsed avocations.  My drawing gear is at Third House.  So is my fencing kit.  (My riding stuff is still at the cottage though . . . sigh.)  I think I got rid of my FIMO when we left the old house.  I was good at FIMO. 

Diane in MN

Dear gods above, woman, you are worse than I am for Adding Things To The List!   

I'm glad to hear I'm at the severe end.  I'd worry about the future of humankind if mine were only an average case.

But I still have quite a nice stash of yarn, and last summer I bought a handy little fit-in-your-knitting-bag Q&A reference book, 

Have I mentioned that knittinghelp has an iPhone ap, for pity's sake?  I don't yet follow them on Twitter, however.  I have some pride. 

so I imagine that sooner or later I'll have something on needles again. . . .  I like your yarn choices. . . . But if you're going to make leg warmers, why not knit in the round and save the sewing-up part?

jmeadows

To avoid the trauma of circs or dpns just yet! 

Of WHAT?  ::Feels trauma approaching::

We want to ease her into this, and flat will be good practice.

I confess flat feels a lot less intimidating.

(Plus, she will be able to use the rose needles if she knits flat. And she already knows how to seam up.)

I do?  I can sew up a hem or a button back on a sweater.  And darn socks, except I never do.

Black Bear responded

          Mrs Redboots wrote:  (although I, personally, prefer to make practical things I can use).

          blondviolinist wrote:  Amen. Hence my original whine about the silliness of yarn bombing. (I believe I called it a waste of good acrylic.) I could have three sweaters in the time it takes to yarn bomb a car!



Well, as an art teacher and a museum dork–er, professional, I'd like to point out that many of those creations are what I'd classify as public art. And public art is a great use of resources. Does the world NEED three more sweaters, or does it need a volkswagen whimsically encased in a giant mitten? There's room for both in the world of acrylic yarn, I think.

This conversation may fascinate me more than the knitting does.§  I love the yarn bombing.  I think it's fantastic.  If I got that far, I'd want to do it.  I think it's so fantastic I keep thinking blondviolinist must be joking that she says it's a waste of time (and acrylic).  It is public art to me.  And while as another Cold Person I entirely sympathise with the appeal of three more sweaters, public art gives more people pleasure—well, supposing it does please them—than the private ownership of three sweaters.  Which as Black Bear says is a good use of resources. 

southdowner

and if anyone can show me a way to stitch up my knitting with soft seams…

What am I missing about this sewing up stuff??  What unknown, unguessed Cthulhuan unspeakablenesses await?

Black Bear

Sadly, I too am in the "allergic to wool" category–though as I'm getting older I'm finding it bothers me less, so long as I'm wearing a thick cotton shirt underneath. . . . but I still don't think I could actually knit with sheepswool. Lanolin on hands = hives.

Fiona was worrying about this for me.  I'm someone who can't wear a heavy knapsack over a wool sweater, even with two cotton turtlenecks under—but I can wear wool gloves, as long as I don't wear them too long.  I'm assuming I can cope with knitting wool . . . I'm planning on finding out, anyway.  And my leg warmers will go OVER socks and jeans.   If I get that far I will be aiming ultimately for cashmere, which I can certainly wear—and do, as often as possible.  Mmmmmmmm. 

* * *

* Knitting is more of a demon horde, I think.^

^ Hee hee hee hee+

+ You all know SABLE, right?  'Stash Accumulating Beyond Life Expectancy'?   Fiona told me.  Fiona, you know, the woman who left the yarn shop with more yarn than me.  Of course she's also a quarter-century younger.

** I've also already decided I hate metal needles.  They're so ugly.  There are two problems here.  The first is, I don't want to deal with ugly in a volunteer activity.  My hoover is pretty ugly too, but the floor has to be dealt with.^  I don't have to knit.^^  The second problem is . . . all those gorgeous frelling hand-made knitting needles out there.  I DON'T NEED ANY MORE COLLECTIONS OF THINGS.^^^

^ Yes.  It does indeed.+ 

+ I don't think I told you I finally remembered to buy a new dustpan after my old one cracked in the cold, shovelling snow?  It doesn't work.  I bet you didn't know a dustpan could not work, did you?  Neither did I.  I didn't think to check.  Get down on my hands and knees in the shop and sweep something.  But the leading edge is bowed, and if you press it down toward the floor it bows worse.  So you sweep toward it and the dirt and doghair shoot under the arch with tiny maniacal cries and re-disperse over the floor ARRRRRGH.  The old cracked one works better. 

^^ No!  I don't!  Ravelry hit a million members without me!  So sue me! 

^^^ Although knitting needles take up less space than, say . . .  books. 

*** I need a Knitting Bag.  There was a really cute one at the yarn shop.  It had cupcakes on it. 

† Which should be about monkeys or ponies or hellhounds.  Also called the Continental Two Step, I mean Cast On, which ought to be about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. 

†† It being a bell-free night, and Peter was playing bridge, and the hellhounds are used to me screaming, and don't try to differentiate words or causes or probability of threat to the furniture, etc.  

††† If it isn't . . . I have no idea.  But knittinghelp has half a dozen alternatives, and my two books have at least that, and Fiona comes again in a fortnight, and . . . and some forum member, I think it was, said she knows someone who knows thirty ways of casting on.  It seems to me I could just become a Casting On Expert and never get to the stressful business of projects and finishing them. 

‡ And the furniture is in serious danger. 

‡‡ How badly do I, hellhounds, or babies want legwarmers? 

‡‡‡ She doesn't write novels.  But I wouldn't put it past her. 

§ I'm not denying it.  There is lots of stuff out there to get interested in.  I have to be SERIOUSLY intrigued to give something a shot.  See:  E Moon on time.

Just another day of infamy

 

I think Niall's car takes the weevilly biscuit, but we'll get to it in due course.

            The badness of the day began with a phone call.  I was bundling hellhounds into harnesses earlier than usual because I had a dentist's appointment this afternoon and I had some errands to run in Mauncester first.  I almost didn't answer the phone because it was going to be the plumber managing to fit me in today after all, and I didn't have TIME to be fitted in by even a plumber I've been chasing for at least two months.  But since it's been two months, clearly I'd better cooperate. . . .

            It was Peter.  He had a dentist's appointment this morning* and he'd just missed his bus.  Could I run him in?  GRAH GURG ARRGH BLAG NO.  NO.  ARRRRRRGH.

            I'll be there in a few minutes, I said.  I finished bundling hellhounds into their harness, and bundled them into the back of Wolfgang, picked up a Man in Black waiting ominously by the side of the road opposite the mews, and shot off toward Mauncester. 

            Peter said, I can be back in. . . .

            No, I snapped.  That's much too late.**  You can take the bus home.*** 

            So Peter went off in one direction, and I went off in another, effulgent with hellhounds.  I'd decided I'd try to do a few errands now, since I clearly wasn't going to have time later, but I needed to run a little of the overnight build-up of jollity off the hellhounds before I expected them to mind their manners† on crowded pavements. 

            It was a beautiful morning and there are some very nice walks around the outskirts of Mauncester if you manage to avoid the aggressive off-lead dog brigade.  We started off along the river, and then took a turn (partly to avoid some off lead dogs and their attendant morons) to climb Citadel Hill.  We got about halfway up before we met the first fence.  There has been a row about Citadel Hill going on pretty much as long as I've lived here;  farmers want it for grazing, and irresponsible dog owners want it for letting their slavering nightmares off lead for fun and mayhem.  Citadel Hill is huge.  I could see if the dog walkers wanted to lobby for a fenced off area where their dogs could riot—a lot of cities have dog play areas—but nooooo they want it aaaaaalllll so their dogs can be freeeeeeee.  Spare me.  Anyway.  The farmers have won, at least this year. 

            On the fence there was a large sign that said CATTLE IN THIS FIELD.  Uh.  I don't like taking predators through fields with cattle;  cattle are too sodding big.  I've been chased by heifers, and haven't enjoyed it at all, and people—and dogs—do occasionally die of being trampled.  I don't want to contribute to that statistic.  So we turned around and sidled through some undergrowth (still avoiding dogs with morons). 

            But, as I say, Citadel Hill is enormous.  The main entrance is farther along.  I had a good look around, and mainly what I saw was a hillside covered with lying-down sheep.††  And I thought I remembered that we could circle to yet another gate and eschew the cattle-infested section.  So we had a glorious if literally breath-taking slog to the top of the old hill fortress, toiling up wave after wave of grassy ramparts, scampered (slightly rubber-legged) across the top, with the wind tugging at us in several directions, down the far side . . . to another gate in another fence a short stone's throw from the one we'd turned away from about twenty minutes ago, also saying, CATTLE IN THIS FIELD.  I stood there staring at it, and wondering if they'd done something funny with the fencing or I was just remembering wrong, but why is there now a narrow cattle-ring round Citadel Hill?  To a dog walker this is a bit like being expected to walk under a portcullis when you can smell the oil boiling.  And as I stood there, a Very Large Hairy Black Cow ambled into view.  Followed by another.  Followed by another.  Followed by another. . . .  Not only are they large, they have horns.  The crescent-moon type.  The type that, with suitable decoration, Charlemagne and Roland would have wound at each other.  I would much rather have them in the hands of epic soldiers several thousand miles away in another century, than on the heads of cattle between me and escape. 

            We cast back and forth along the fence a bit, but clearly what there was was this gate.  (So much for my memory.  I should know better than to think I might have remembered something useful.)   The Four Large Hairy Black Horned Cattle have settled down to eat a tree that happens to be slap next to the gate hellhounds and I need to get out through.  We stood there for about five minutes while I dithered. . . .

            Eventually I cranked hellhounds in to ultimate short lead, and we marched through the first gate . . . eased quietly past the cattle . . . and the second gate STUCK AND WOULD NOT OPEN.

            No, this is not written from my hospital bed, with hellhounds in traction across the room.  We got through eventually.  We got through eventually in one piece.†††  We were also nearly half an hour after Peter back to the car.  He was mild-manneredly reading his newspaper.

            Dentist from R'lyeh was running late this afternoon, of course.  I then spent an hour and a quarter in the frelling chair‡ to essentially no effect whatsoever:  I was supposed to come out with a full set of teeth on the lower right, for the first time in two or three years . . . but the D from R decided that the teeny-weeny transmitter that is going to make me a mindless slave of the star-spawn wasn't working properly, and sent my new teeth back to the lab and me shambling home to mourn and detox from the sixteen gallons of anaesthetic.  With a fresh appointment in my diary to do it all over again because it was so much fun the first time.

            I had just enough time to take hellhounds for a final sprint before Niall was picking me up for us to go put the fear of handbells into a fresh vestal—I arrived at the mews perfectly on time to Peter telling me that Niall had phoned and Peter had told him he wasn't sure I'd be back in time or not—AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH—and when I tried to ring Niall his PHONE WAS BUSY.  Having then wasted several minutes trying to ring to say I was here, I was late bolting down the extra-long grand-house driveway and met him driving in after me.  As I climbed in, panting, he said, in the best laconic British manner, I'm going to have to get out on your side.  The driver's door just fell off.

            WHAT?

            It's okay, he said.  It only fell off halfway.  I lifted it back into place and—locked it.  And got in from your side. 

            I don't think you've heard much about Niall's car.  For as long as I've been a frequent passenger it (a) has  leaked and (b) has no indoor lights (yes these two idicyncracies are related) and a few weeks ago he and Fernanda spent two hours sitting by the side of the road when the gearbox fell out.  I was supposed to have been on that journey to handbells.  My good fairy was looking out for me that evening.  I stayed home.  But I think possibly the car is trying to tell him something:  like 150,000 miles is enough. 

            Three miles down the road the petrol light came on.  Fortunately we were going in the right direction for the only petrol station in rural Hampshire open past six p.m.  We stopped.  Don't get out the driver's side, we said to each other.  While the tank was filling we felt the driver's door all over and compared it to the passenger side and decided it didn't look too far out or low or twisted or bent or likely to fall off in the middle of the road.  We got back in the car and kept going.  Thoughtfully.  It's noisier, isn't it? said Niall.

            Yes, I said.  But it's not any noisier now than it was when I got in this evening and you told me the door had fallen off.

            Oh, okay, said Niall, cheering up.

            We got there.  We rang handbells.‡‡

            We got home.  Nothing fell off.  Niall is taking his car to the garage (again) tomorrow.

            You will forgive me if I don't practise my knitting tonight.

* * *

* Different dentist, mind you.  He has the Nice Dentist who threw me to the mutant lions and tentacled loathsomenesses of Dentist from R'lyeh when she decided she couldn't cope.  My teeth are probably even beyond Lovecraft's imagination.

** You leave your car at the edge of town, if you have any sense.  You do not want to get tangled up in the one-way system in the medieval heart of Mauncester.

*** I am a cow.  This is not news.

† Their what?  What was that again?

†† It was raining by midday.

††† Well, three pieces.  One Darkness piece, one Chaos piece, one hellgoddess piece.

‡ Mostly I have not noticed the physical excesses of yesterday.  Except for the hour and a quarter I spent lying in the Cthulhuan chair.  During which I swear every muscle groaned and my bones were on fire.  I think I may have a little problem with tension. 

‡‡ We were hanging out in Caitlin's kitchen while she made tea^ and I happened to notice that she had the line for Pudsey Surprise on sixteen [bells] lying nonchalantly on her counter.  Pudsey looks like a snake that's just been plugged into a power socket at the best of times, but on SIXTEEN??  Oh, she said off handedly, we're going to try for a peal this weekend in Birmingham.  And I'm helping teach this woman handbells??????

^ There were also excellent flapjacks.+  I'll come back to Caitlin's house any time.

+ British flapjacks are a kind of sweet chewy oatmeal bar.  Usually there are dates and nuts and things too.  Mmmmm.

Frelling knitting

 

You guys.  I have a life you know.*  I am not going to embrace knitting to the exclusion of all else.**  Although the dominance of that gene that links McKinley and knitting is beginning to frighten me.  What else is on it?***  Is the world ready?  Meanwhile, I think I've had more tweets about my latest demonstration of going to the bad than I've had for anything, possibly including the publication of PEGASUS.  Many of them are so uplifting and supportive too.  @casemama for example says:  Please anticipate never resurfacing after joining Ravelry. I forget to feed my children when knitting patterns are involved.  —I think I'm probably pretty safe.  The hellhounds might let the occasional manifestation of neglect pass, but my bell ringers wouldn't.  And @knitronomicon says: Doomed! Doomed! Mwuahahahahahahaha!!!  —So encouraging.  And her user name fills me with confidence as well. 

            @jaimeleemoyer takes a different approach.  She says:  Blame Jodi. I know I do…and did. All things yarn related are her fault.  —Yes.  All you forum readers will have seen how she introduced last night's blog post thread:  In other words, knitters, VICTORY!  —VERY FRELLING FUNNY.  And the very first comment was from . . . blondviolinist:  I'd try to write a cogent reply, but I'm too busy rolling on the floor laughing. (To set the record straight: I didn't know Robin was online when I posted my whine about yarn bombing. All other accusations might be true.)  —I like that might. 

            Black Bear writes:  Casting on is dreadful.  —Hmm.   I don't actually remember casting on being dreadful.  I remember the going on and on and on and on and on and on afterwards being at least slightly trying.†   Not that I've figured out casting on again this time.  Yet.††  But the version on the opening page of www.knittinghelp.com looks familiar.  That index-finger polka . . . I've seen it before.  It may be the way my demon knitter friend from Maine showed me, a quarter century ago.  If I get this blog post written soon enough I'll go practise.

            Fiona—Fiona!—writes:   I'm still trying to work out whether I'm a bad influence on Robin, or she's a bad influence on me…

            Oh?  You're wondering?  Who keeps sending me emails about concerts?  I feel it is only getting a little of my own back that you left the shop with more yarn than I did.  She goes on, blithely:  Have you had any more thoughts about my suggestion of hellhound legwarmers?

             With little strings over their backs to keep them up?  No.  I haven't.  No.†† 

             Only I saw a post on Ravelry earlier today from someone who'd knitted some for her dog…..

             Thank you for not sending me the link.  Meanwhile, remember I told you recently that I have a pregnant friend?  She emailed me this today:  Let me first say:  hahahahahahaha! I knew it would only be a matter of time!  Secondly, if you want to practice on a smaller scale first, you could certainly try your hand at something like THIS:  http://www.babylegs.com/Leg-Warmers.aspx ‡

            Jodi compounds her evilness by writing:   The other needles are lovely and I think you should have them too! Not that I am a horrible enabler anything.

            Yes, I keep thinking about them.  For Some Reason I had favourited that page—silly person—and I swear I was trying to go somewhere else and—‡‡

            (At any rate, you have an entire list of people you can ask if you get stuck. Or an entire list of people to blame if you get stuck.)

             I've already started on the blaming.  You may have noticed.  But yes, @rockharp suggested I view my capitulation as becoming a member of concerned and nurturing community:  ENDLESS FREE KNITTING TECH SUPPORT!  And @CymruLlewes has the spectacular effrontery to suggest that joining Ravelry is efficient:  Ravelry is good for seeing just why you shouldn't knit that pattern or use that yarn. It does save time.

              Save . . . time?  SAVE???  TIME???? 

* * *

* Slightly depending on your definition of life.  Of course I went bell ringing tonight.  It's Monday, isn't it?    It's usually South Desuetude on Mondays, but Colin is also responsible for Glaciation, Hampshire's coldest frelling bell tower.  Usually ringing warms you up.  Usually having hands too stiff with cold to ring accurately is only a problem before the first touch.  Usually after your first touch you have to take a layer off.  Tonight at Glaciation after every touch Anthea and I sprinted for the electric fire while the others stood around blowing on their hands and complaining about the cold.   But the electric fire is only two people wide . . . and you'd be mad trying to dislodge either Anthea or me.  We're fierce when we're cold.  And bells don't much like being that cold either, and these are more old, plain-bearing (rather than ball-bearing) ones which means the moving parts are full of surplus WWII grease the RAF didn't get around to using in their Spitfires.  Iron is more gorblimey pliable.

             And I have somehow been talked into ringing more frelling handbells tomorrow night.  Somehow.  Niall and I are going to go drill the glurp out of one of the beginners from last Tuesday.  My problem is that Niall likes me for a partner in beginner-bashing.  As I was trying to explain my awful predicament to a somewhat hostile husband^, Peter said, you're Niall's favourite pedagogic aid.  Well, yes.  The globe, the chalkboard, and the McKinley.  As I keep saying, I don't ring much^^, but by golly and crabgrass what there is of it I can ring.  Barring no sleep the night before or the ME eating my brain—the two things are frequently related—this makes me ideal for beginners because I can't be knocked off my line.  And while in terms of morale this is a mixed blessing—because I know that I'm as steady as I am because it took me so dranglefabbing long to learn it at all—I also remember what it's like being a beginner.  Although Caitlin is another of these overachieving tower ringers, and as soon as she gets her head around handbells she'll be off in a blaze of small brass dingdong glory.   Sigh.  Well, she won't be ringing Cambridge by the end of tomorrow night because I can't. 

              But there is another reason I will be glad to do something indoors and sitting down tomorrow.  I've already got my dogminder booked for regular Mondays, in anticipation of voice lessons^^^, and having bagged Monday afternoons I didn't want to upset any functioning systems.  So this afternoon I went up to Third House and started moving backlist.  I spent two hours carrying large heavy boxes full of books upstairs and trying to stack them both neatly and in some manner by which it will be possible to find what you are looking for, should you be so unfortunate as to need a copy of something from the McKinley or the Dickinson backlist. Why is so much of our respective backlists in large boxes.  Not your standard, slightly-heavier-weight cardboard books boxes, but the next size up, the general all-purposes stuff boxes.  The answer is, I think, that we used what the mover provided, six years ago, when we left the big house, and movers aren't accustomed to people the majority of whose worldly goods are books.  New packing boxes cost money, and I think I remember that if we were willing to have used ones, they were free.  They were, however, what he had to give us, which is to say too low a percentage of book boxes.  I can handle a proper book box full of books.  These big things . . . gaaaah.  I'm not too bad tonight, but getting out of bed tomorrow morning. . . .

^ About an hour later he said in his mildest, most British tone, Please reintroduce to Niall's attention the possibility of rebellion in the non-ringing spouse.  —Oops.  Niall and I had been discussing just this on the drive home tonight, because he's sustaining a certain amount of strife and restiveness from Penelope.  I thought I was going to get away with it this time because our regular handbells on Thursday are early so I'll be back down to the mews at what passes in my case for normal supper time. 

^^ I was saying gloomily to the demon in the driver's seat tonight, I keep remembering that the plain bob methods—so the one method I do know on handbells (bob minor) and the one method I'm learning (bob major)—are more educational tools rather than methods rung for their own sake.  Nobody rings any of the plain bobs for the music:  they ring them because they can.  Because they're extremely teachable.  And as handbells go, learnable.

^^^ We're now waiting for a kitchen refit, and the builders to go away.   Working at home has serious drawbacks.

** Even in my wildest agonies of despair I do not dream of forsaking story-telling.  Even PEG II, which is seeing just how far it can push me.

*** Besides chocolate.  Creative cursing?  Accident-proneness? 

† It also developed a kind of list to one side.  As well as curly edges.

†† I'm trying to convince Fiona she has to come again really soon.

††† Dog froufrou is so limited.  I think that self-striping yarn would be fabulous.  Red, gold and maroon for Chaos . . . blue, green and teal for Darkness.  Perhaps.  Darkness would also look good in red.  And Chaos would look terrific in rust and burnt orange . . .

‡ And yes, too frelling cute or what.  So get pregnant again in a couple of years or something when maybe I've figured out casting on.  And knitting something that doesn't list and curl.

‡‡ No, I HAVEN'T ordered them yet.  But speaking of things that are only a matter of time.  Uh.  I wonder what size . . .

The New Dark Side

 

So.  The Dark Side.  The new Dark Side.  I know you've spent the last forty-eight hours in breathless anticipation of the revelation of (b).*

Yep. That's what you think it is. And the boots in the lower left are a legwarmer pattern. A SCARY legwarmer pattern. (Fiona has given me a TRANSLATION.)

Stop that laughing.  You'll do yourself an injury.**  Yes, I am wondering when I'm going to fit frelling knitting in.***  I have fantasies of spending more time on the sofa† watching the eight hundred and thirty-seven operas I've recorded off Sky over the last, uh, probably several years†† . . . but if I had time to watch them I'd be watching them.  Sigh. . . .

            I have known that my days were numbered, about knitting.  I had too many friends who read Yarn Harlot before I started the blog . . . which is when I discovered there seems to be some kind of genetic bond between reading McKinley and knitting.  And I've twice had a brief stab (so to speak) at knitting before this.  I like yarn.  I already have the Petting Reflex.  And I used to do hand sewing.  I enjoyed it.  I used to embroider pillowcases while I listened to Live at the Met when I was young. 

           And I've been shown the basics of knitting before.  But I permitted myself to be distracted.  To drift away from my knitting needles.††† That was also before the internet, let alone the blog, and while I've always had friends who knitted, they didn't run in packs.  Third time is the charm, right?  Or possibly the curse.

            But I didn't know it was going to happen now, when PEG II is driving me so mental that I've pretty well stopped composing and only play Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes and There Is A Tavern in the Town on my poor piano but I'm about to start voice lessons again, and I have a fancy new camera I still haven't spent any real time figuring out, and in another month it'll be rose-planting season‡—and there's the Octopus and the Chandelier get through, uh . . . February sometime.  I'm trying not to think about it.  But rehearsals hit the frenzy level next Sunday, which is an ominous sign.  Also I have hellhounds.  And a blog.  And I ring several kinds of bells. ‡‡  And read in the bath.  Occasionally I sleep.  Or make brownies.

            What happened is that I was hanging out on a thread I sometimes hang out on when PEG II has driven me out beyond the Wall and slammed the gates shut ‡‡‡ and I don't feel like sweeping the floor or taking hellhounds for an early hurtle. §  And blondviolinist made a disparaging comment about yarnbombing.  Yarnbombing? I said innocently.  And she sent me this link:  http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2kSMb8/www.buzzfeed.com/melismashable/25-amazing-yarn-bombs  In hindsight I've decided that this was all a nefarious plan.  Clearly yarnbombing would amuse me.  And (in hindsight) I don't believe blondviolinist isn't amused by yarnbombing.  I was set up!  I was set up!

            And I fell, splat, like a rather small muskrat into a tiger pit.  I said, I think it looks like fun.  And then I may have said something about Wolfgang . . . or pianos . . . or rosebushes . . . or swords.  But I added, fatally, but someone would have to teach me how to knit.

            And they were all over me like wolves on a stray lamb:  chiefly the evil Jodi Meadows and the fiendish blondviolinist.  Don't ever cross these women.§§  Your life will not be worth living. 

            The funny thing is that . . . I thought I'd get away with it.  I'd said something indiscreet about knitting a few months ago and the roof didn't fall in, nor did the Spanish Inquisition show up with the comfy cushion.§§§  Jodi and blondviolinist must have been at a knitting convention or something, and off line.  Anyway.  I compounded my idiocy by admitting that Fiona knits—and she was coming on Friday.  I think I may still have been resisting at this point, but then Jodi, the Evil Queen, sent me this link:  http://www.etsy.com/listing/34687662/pink-rose-bamboo-knitting-needles-fr3e  . . . at which point I knew I was lost.#

            Fiona showed up Friday morning expecting to work.  Yes, yes, I said, thrusting copies of PEGASUS and mailing envelopes at her, hurry up, there's a yarn shop in Mauncester.  A yarn shop? she said.##  Yes, I said.  I've decided that my life will not be complete till I've knitted myself some legwarmers.###

Mmmmmmm. Yarn. I was saying I still haven't figured out my new camera? One of the things I haven't figured out is shooting in indoor light without the flash. That flecked pink is a true pink, and the plain one is deepest, vividest rose. The blue and lavender tweedy one, while perfectly nice, is mainly because it's the right size for the frelling pattern. Fiona pointed out that a thicker-gauge yarn would knit up FASTER.

            Now all I have to do is learn to cast on.~ 

* * * 

* Any sad, confused, about-to-go-somewhere-else person just happening on this blog for the first time:  http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2011/01/22/more-adventures/

 ** At a guess, what do you suppose is the percentage of knitters in the readers of this blog?  No, that's too difficult.  The percentage of forum members.  I'd say about 87.5% . . . maybe more.  Or maybe they're just noisy. 

*** Forgot to tell you the other night . . . during the break, after I'd bought my album and had my pee^, and there was nothing else to do^^, I pulled Pooka out and had a fast blast of the 3-4 to bob major.

^ This particular venue is noteworthy for two things:  that the queue outside the men's is longer than outside the women's, which has never before happened in the history of architecture and gender-specific loos, and was the cause of much comment on both sides of the divide;  and the most appallingly poor design, so that as soon as there's more than one person involved, no one can get in or out any of the doors.  And did I mention the queues?

^^ One of the disadvantages of the front row is that you may find yourself sitting next to Not The Good Kind of Really Enthusiastic Fan.  Protective colouration may be necessary. 

† Of course with hellhounds.  There is no such thing as Sofa Without Hellhounds, unless there are an unseemly number of live handbellers involved.  I keep the puppy gate—now permanently nailed into the wall—to the kitchen closed on handbell evenings, or there would be hellhounds.  I didn't tell them about the cat the other night, and fortunately they don't read the blog. 

†† If they haven't been eaten by invisible gremlins.  If you have something on DVD, you have it.  I'm not at all sure what happens inside Sky's black box.  And sometimes, late at night, there are these small giggling voices. . . . 

††† I found the yarn I'd brought over from Maine in the back of a closet when we moved out of the old house.  It went to Oxfam. 

‡ For those of us who didn't get it done in the autumn 

‡‡ Niall was not at Sunday service ring this morning.  EEEEEEP.  He is not allowed to do this to me without warning.  No wonder I've been dazed and inclined to jump at small noises^ all the rest of today. 

^ Including giggling from the satellite TV box 

‡‡‡ Yes, they get shut in Part Two. 

§ Ha ha ha.  Or like learning the trebles to Cambridge minor. 

§§ Or carelessly say 'knitting' to them 

§§§ Of course you know this.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSe38dzJYkY 

# Yes.  I ordered them yesterday.  But it gets worse.  I was looking for the link to post here and found this:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/65917807/rose-quartz-handmade-knitting-needles-us

AAAAAAAAUGH.

            I could try to be positive about this.  I don't have to knit anything.  I can just have a lot of really nice yarn and some fabulously pretty knitting needles. 

See? Rose coloured.

## Note that Fiona came out of the yarn shop with more yarn than I did.

 ### This is part of the whole awfulness of the situation.  I want some legwarmers.  My old ones disintegrated years ago and until Britain entered the New Ice Age last winter I rarely gave legwarmers a thought.  I thought about them a lot this past November-December.  And even I ought to be able to knit a short fat scarf and sew it up the back.  Oughtn't I?

 ~Yes I know about http://www.knittinghelp.com/  Blondviolinist told me.