My serial obsessions

I've not been idle, nor uncreative

2012-05-25T17:59:00.000+12:00

I've been knitting a few things:

a cardigan for the boy, after he approved the pattern and the colour (boring dark green - the woman who sold it to me said she spins it especially for bloke's knits)
A berry-coloured cabled cardigan for me (if this one turns it will be only the second successful cardigan I've ever completed)
a pullover which I started months ago, which I become horribly pissed off with because the instructions were so hard to decipher and full of errors

The boy said recently that my knitting was not nearly as creative as some of my previous pursuits (i.e. painting, sewing, refashioning). That's probably true because when I knit I just follow instructions in a pattern, and the only creative choices I make are about what yarn and colour to use.

Does he know I blame him for my lack of sewing and refashioning? That he always made grunt-y complaining noises when I tried to use my sewing machine (probably because it was right next to him playing computer games), and felt neglected if I spent an hour sewing on my own?

I can't really blame him for my lack of painting though. I have to blame sheer busy-ness, lack of space and fear of mess that can't be removed because acrylic dry in, like, no time at all.

Holiday highlights and lowlights

2012-05-10T19:47:00.005+12:00

Here's a photo-less list of impressions and stuff which comes to mind when thinking back to our time in the UK:

The biggest and bestest highlight was most definitely getting to meet the boy's family. Fantastic people, and we've already pledged to save up and go back as soon as we can.

The jetlag was no fun. We were pretty much jetlagged the whole time we were there, and by the time it was over we had to come home.

I saw very few people with teeth like Austin Powers.

I found out after we got home that there's a specialty yarn shop in the very town where the boy's brother lived - where we stayed at the end of our two weeks. But I guess it must sound weird to you that I, a resident of a country known for it's sheep, would want to go shopping for knitting yarn in another country.

Springtime in England is no time to be frolicking about in floral dresses and pastel capri pants (so just as well I didn't have any). It's too damn cold.

TLM was not very nice to me while we were away. I put it down to her being super-tired and sleep-deprived, and feeling like I'm one person she can be a total cow to and I'd still love her. But still.

Tescos is absolutely massive. I recall a movie I saw once where in the future every restaurant is a Taco Bell. Well in the British version of the movie every grocery shop, petrol station, fashion shop, hardware shop, furniture shop, interiors shop, toy shop and book shop is a Tescos.

But at the moment there's tons of fun to be had at non-Tescos shops. Like Hamleys, where the boy and TLM bought a Hermione wand, a box of magic tricks and a set of 3-D felt pens (this was while I was looking for short ladies' trousers that aren't capri pants).

I could happily live in that part of England, especially after having read the local paper last night and discovering that my town is home to several infamous gangs, like Black Power and Satan's Slaves. How could I have not noticed? Like one guy was quoted in the article, we get more grief from bloody students who party every Saturday night and walk the streets speaking at top volume at 3am.

That is it for now.

Where the Gyptians live

2012-05-07T18:51:00.003+12:00

It's a complicated system which allows the boats to chug uphill, so to speak.

There's the boy making himself useful

parking

Gallery where there used to be an iron foundry

The boy's brother in law and mischievous niece

Ahh...beautiful canal...

argh! Murky canal water!

Apparently people like to decorate the roofs of their boats as though their personalities depend on it.

lock opens to let a gaily coloured narrow boat through

The boy and TLM leaping over the lock

I'm referring, of, to the waterborne Gypsy-type folk in Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights trilogy (and the move The Golden Compass). I thought it quite apt because these photos of the canals and narrowboats were taken in or near Oxfordshire.

They are quite beautiful until you get a bit closer to the water and see how gunky it is.

England is for lovers...of beautiful old buildings

2012-05-02T17:52:00.004+12:00

The Bridge of Sighs, Oxford

Also in Oxford

The Bridge of Sighs, closer up

Inside the natural history museum in Oxford

Some of the vast collection of dead animals in the natural history museum

An old castle somewhere between Oxfordshire and Devonshire

Glastonbury (I think) high street


An even higher street, in Ilfracoombe

We just don't get stuff this old in New Zealand, where any building more than about 150 years old is considered ancient and worthy of protection.

I just love old buildings, though I might not want to be a homeowner of one.

And a word about the natural history museums we visited - they are terribly sad places groaning with death and human arrogance.

A nation of dog owners

2012-04-29T14:21:00.001+12:00

check the eyebrows on that owl in the back!

yes, this bird is wearing a helmet

If our time in the English Home Counties is an accurate reflection of the Engish in general, then they really chock-full of dog-owners.

In our first week in Blighty we stayed with the boy's lovely big sister, her husband and their cheeky 3 year old daughter. They took us out every day. On our first day after arriving at their historic Buckinghamshire home, they took us to a local country fair.

Having watched a number of episodes of Return to River Cottage on the telly, I was fully expecting to see home baking competitions, tables laden with unusually oversized vegetables, and pet farm animals. What I did see was a large number of hunting birds (pictured above - no idea what they are called, except the owl with the enormous eyebrows is called an eagle owl) and ferrets, pony and trap races, and assorted huntin' n' fishin' wares.

And dogs. There were dogs everywhere - all beautifully turned out as though headed for a show. But there wasn't one. They were just well-looked after and on an outing with their owners. We spotted one lady with a ferret on a leash, but mostly it was dogs. (But alas, I have no photo of any of the dogs!)

The boy's dad has a jack russell called Tia, and she was a super-energetic pup who is apparently prone to weeing herself when she gets a bit excited. The boy's brother also has a dog, a big'un called Daisy who liked me better than TLM for some reason (maybe because I'm a bit allergic to her).

Half way 'round the world (and back again) in 18 days

2012-04-26T05:35:00.000+12:00

We just returned from our holiday in the UK. Actually, we've been back since Monday afternoon - but I've been too jet lagged to blog about it.

Now that my body is back to relative normality (i.e. waking up at 4am and then falling asleep just before the alarm goes off at 7.15am) I can say - hi! It's great to be home again!

I'll follow up in later posts with photos and more details, but it was great and worth being in the air for about 26 hours (plus about 5 hours in transit in total) each way.

I did miss our bed (which is probably not surprising as the boy and I are no longer young), and some things were just outrageously expensive (15 quid for 2 burgers, 2 fries and 2 drinks at a Burger King off the motorway!!). But I guess the biggest downside was that we didn't have enough time there. We didn't get to visit White Horse Hill, for example, even though it was not far from from where we were staying near Aylesbury.

However - the boy's family were wonderful, TLM loved meeting her cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.

I also got to experience a part of the UK quite unlike that which most Kiwis get to know (i.e. London and surrounds), a place which I think I'd enjoy living in (if we could afford to live there).

And - last but not least - I was able to buy trousers that actually fit me.

All about my dental trauma

2012-03-29T21:33:00.000+13:00

Dentists get a bad rap because they have to inflict pain on people who don't look after their teeth.

For years, I had no problem getting my teeth checked because most of my teeth got filled in with that silver and black amalgam when I was a kid - by adulthood, there were no more fillings to get.

So I wasn't too worried about having my first check-up since TLM was a bum-crawler. It was a bonus that my new dentist was young and cute - when my previous two dentists had been on the verge of retirement and - in one case - dealing with minor Parkinsons.

It was quick - he said my gums are in great condition, but my teeth should really get rid of that tartar build-up. When he told me how much it cost to see the dental hygienist, I realised why it only cost $45 to get a check-up including x-rays.

The woman whose job it was to scrape stuff off my teeth, was pleasant enough - a young black woman in a sexy-secretary sort of outfit. I lay back in her chair and started feeling drowsy. She gave me a pair of dark glasses to shield my eyes from the bright light.

And then she hurt me.

Hurt is not quite the right word. The scraping - oh, my sensitive teeth! The loud buzz of the suck-y thing in my mouth that was probably supposed to suck up my saliva bit felt like it was spraying my chin. The way the muscles on the back of my head and neck spasmed from wanting to clench but having to keep my jaws open like a big snake trying to spew up an ostrich egg (whole).

Finally, she finished. I tongued my teeth and felt gaps between them that I'd forgotten I'd ever had.
My teeth hurt.

When I got back to the office, I looked at her business card. It called her a "hygienist and therapist". Well, all I can say is - it was bloody obvious I was in need of some therapy after that experience, but she. did. not. offer. me. ANY.

TLM models her cardigan

2012-03-24T18:26:00.000+13:00

In it's finished form, with two red functional buttons plus two decorative ones.

Here it is on TLM

And here she is with her most mental pose...

A day of one's own

2012-03-06T12:40:00.000+13:00

Today I have been watching brain-numbing television, knitting, and surfing the web for interesting knitting patterns to use on my Rowan Summer Tweed yarn. Soon I'll put on some Buffy and have my lunch.

It would be a blissful day if I wasn't headache-y, feverish and coughing up unspeakable yuckiness.
I have TLM's cold - it didn't affect her like this.

The little shit - the next generation

2012-03-01T20:27:00.001+13:00

Most of you weren't reading my blog back in 2004, when I wrote about the time a little kid assaulted me on the library bus (and I wasn't even trying to make him pay overdue fines).

But that's what the title of this blog post is referring to.
This isn't a sequel exactly. But there's certainly a little shit in this story.

The story, to cut a long one into a short one, is that TLM was punched in the chest yesterday by a little shit in her class. This little shit is the same boy who last year kicked another classmate in the groin so hard that she bled, and was off school for a week.

TLM wasn't so badly injured, and seems to be over it. But I've known about this kid and his propensity for violence and foul language for about a year. I can't give any details because it's all confidential, but the school has been trying to deal with the kid and keep him under some kind of control while still giving him a chance to change his ways.

Part of me (say, about 90%) just wants him out of my daughter's class (and preferably in a special facility with trained supervisors and lots of padding).
The other part of me thinks that, for a 6 year old kid to be this anti-social, he must have been raised in a truly horrible environment.

I don't have an answer for how someone like this ought to be dealt with. But there are about 20 kids in his class who need to feel safe.

Cardigan finished

2012-02-28T16:59:00.001+13:00

You know that saying "the camera loves her"?
Well the camera has really got a grudge against me, because since adulthood the only two photos of me I haven't hated have been taken in low light and from about 10 m away.

Anyway, the cardigan's finished, just in time for our trip to the UK in their spring. I'll be wearing it over long sleeves of course, so protect my dainty skin from wool-irritation.

It will probably look much better over a black t-shirt rather than the shiny green thing pictured here.
If you want the the whole gory knitting story, go here.

non-knitting books I've been reading

2012-02-24T18:49:00.000+13:00

It was a sewing book.

Just kidding. After a long stretch of narrowly focusing on that particular aisle in the public library which starts with interior design, moves onto cross-stitch, weaving and knitting before finishing with crochet - I decided that I had enough cardigan patterns.

So I read David Sedaris' When you are engulfed in flames, which I loved. It's one of those blackly funny memoir-type books which I would have loved to write myself (but my protagonist would not have been a gay American ex-smoker). I liked it so much I went back for another one - which title I forget, but it's full of animal stories (as in, there are no people but the animals are people, if you get my drift). It's also funny, bleak and makes me nod my head and go "yes, that's right".

I also have The Freedom Manifesto by Tom Hodgekinson. But it's not as interesting because it's too simular to his How to be Idle. I suspect the author's a bit of a libertarian, as he's always going on about how the government is controlling the population. But he is also anti-capitalist, so that's alright. I can't help feeling though that his way of living only works if you are a free-lancer and if everyone else is still part of the "system".

On popularity

2012-02-17T20:37:00.000+13:00

I've been worrying about TLM because, even though she's the nicest, cutest, most imaginative and charming 6 1/2 year old I know, she is sometimes friendless.

At school TLM has tons of friends - no worries there.
But at Chinese School (which is weekly), if her cousin isn't there then she has no chums amongst her classmates.

After each Pippins meeting lately, she tearfully complains that the other girls won't talk to her. It hasn't put her off going, and it's probably due to her being the only girl in the group who doesn't go to school there. But the thought of her sitting all by herself while gaggles of girls giggle around her, makes me sad.

TLM also does a bit of Chinese dancing. And it's a really similar situation there. They don't all go to the same school or anything, but they are pretty clique-y.

Probably, if I don't do anything, she will eventually either make more friends just by being her lovely self - or turn out to be one of those types with a really small number of wonderful friends rather than a hoard of casual friends. She will probably be fine.

It's hard not to try to make it better though.

Is this how yarn stashes begin?

2012-02-02T20:07:00.000+13:00

When I buy knitting yarn, I usually have a project in mind already - like a specific pattern I want to use. That way, I know exactly how much yarn to buy and what colours to use. It also minimises the risk of building a huge stash of yarns that I don't necessarily know what to do with.

But I have discovered Deramores. They have a subsite for New Zealand, so all the prices are in NZ dollars. And the prices are so low compared to local retail prices that it's hard to believe they are in NZ dollars rather than pounds.

It's very very tempting to buy just about everything, especially the Rowan yarns which are prohibitively expensive here (like, $18 for a ball of Rowan Jeans for example). But I want to support my local yarn shops and New Zealand yarns etc, so I'll try to stick to yarns that I can't easily get locally - like cotton or silk types. And Rowan.

It's so very very tempting...

You can tell it's the start of a new year...

2012-01-31T18:20:00.000+13:00

The weekend of the 11th-12th February is going to so busy I'll need naps:

On the Friday I have to go to Taupo to train some people and be back in time to tuck TLM into bed
On Saturday I need to take TLM down to a school across town to enrol in music lessons
On Sunday mid-morning her best friend from daycare is having a birthday dance party.
On Sunday afternoon she's in a group performing a ribbon dance in the Chinese New Year Parade
and some time before then I have to enrol her in swimming lessons...

I think TLM might need some naps too.

A winter cardie for TLM

2012-01-20T20:53:00.000+13:00

I know it's the middle of summer here, but I reckon it will be very handy for when WE GO TO THE UK IN APRIL!! (yes that's right, the flights are booked, the insurance is bought and the UK family have been warned)

p.s. if you're a knitting nerd like me you can check out the progress on Ravelry (even if you ain't a member).

Better than Cosmic

2012-01-20T20:15:00.000+13:00

Until recently, The Little Madam's favourite place to go was the Cosmic shop. It's a loud and funky place where a DJ plays music to nod your head by, and you can shop for a leopard-print fedora, an ice cube mould shaped like UFOs or a bong (but not the stuff that goes in the bong). It's bright, it's colourful, and the staff look like they love being there. They always give TLM free stickers too.

But now TLM's favourite place is the Marine Education Centre. I took her there last Sunday for one of their regular open days, and they have this high, shallow basin where rocky shore creatures live. You're allowed to touch them, even pick them up and stroke 'em like pets.

TLM was particularly struck by the sand dollar starfish, which she like way better than the hermit crab and the sea cucumber. She'd pick it up, put it on the back of her hand and let it's little feelers tickle her skin. She probably spent at least an hour there, perched on an apple crate and wearing one starfish after another.

My favourite bit was watching one of the (ex-household pet) turtles attempt to climb on top of another, lose its balance and fall over backwards, it's flippers waving around like it was doing a "dead ant".

Mushroom hunting in the shadow of Ruapehu

2012-01-01T23:06:00.000+13:00

TLM loves going on holiday. That's probably because she associates it with staying in a reasonably comfortable motel unit and going on day trips with mum and dad.

She was probably quite disappointed when we went to Tongariro National Park for our Christmas/New Year holiday and had to share a small bunkroom in a scout camp.

There were about 50-60 other people, all of whom where friends and family of the guy whose 50th birthday we'd gone up to celebrate. There were loads of children (and even a fellow knitter).

So despite the lack of privacy and sleep, we did have a very sociable time - maybe even more than we could cope with, being a small and normally quiet little family.

We went for walks at the foot of Mt Ruapehu, shopped for thermal underwear (for the sudden and unprepared-for drop in temperature), and used our mushroom identification guide to name the various fungi that we came across.

But sleep deprivation won out in the end, and we came home a couple of days early. Just to show how much sleep I needed to catch up on, I slept in until 10am today - unheard of!

Dollhouse

2011-12-26T20:49:00.000+13:00

Argh...we've been watching Dollhouse, which has taken this long (2 years!) to arrive on New Zealand television (but at 9.30pm when I'd normally be gearing down for the night).

I found it quite dark and sometimes a real downer because I hated the concept of men and women essentially being pimped out to rich people to fulfill their fantasies. It was also kinda confusing - characters seemed to disappear with no explanation and others changed from being bad guys to not-so-bad guys and back again suddenly.

If it weren't for the fact that I was browsing a Joss Whedon magazine (a run-down of every episode of every tv series he's ever done!), I would not have realised that the tv network has been showing us the episodes in a completely mixed up order. Like, Epitaph Two coming right after Epitaph One - when they are each the final episodes to 2 entirely separate seasons. That might explain all the sudden disappearances and character changes!

Now I'm gonna have to order the DVDs from overseas so I can watch them in the proper order.

Going public-er

2011-12-16T20:07:00.000+13:00

I just spent an hour uploading my knitting projects to Ravelry. It was very satisfying to revisit my successes (my failures having nearly all been unravelled so there are no photos) and to have another brag about them.

Not that I'm saying you have to revisit them with me. Because I haven't figured out how you'd do that.

I think this means that the camera DOES lie

2011-12-14T20:29:00.000+13:00

My recent passport photo has been haunting me ever since I first laid eyes on that horrid image. How could I have aged so much since the last one, taken five years ago?
I toyed with the idea that maybe I shouldn't have grown out my fringe after all.
And I should have done it on a day when I washed my hair, for maximum volume.

Then I decided to have 'em done again, only this time I went to the pharmacy where I'd got my photos done five years ago. See, this pharmacy doesn't insist on you putting your hair behind your ears.

And you know what? I think I look just five years older after all.

If Santa was a knitter...

2011-12-11T13:26:00.000+13:00

I would get a year's subscription to Interweave Knits and Knitscene magazines, and every member of my family would receive hand-knitted expressions of love from me for Christmas.

If the boy reads this blog post there's a chance of the first one coming true.
And I'm working on the other one - this pair of heavily cabled cushions are for my brother and my sister in law. The colour of the yarn is more of a ginger colour than how it looks in the photo.

And this vest is for my mum. Yes, it is mid-summer. But she feels cold a lot.
The kids and the boy will be getting something non-knitted, because they prefer toys...

Surprisingly edible gingerbread dinosaurs

2011-11-28T15:10:00.000+13:00

TLM brought home a wee notice asking for help with her school's fundraising sweet stall - as you do.
I didn't fancy spending 4 hours of my Saturday selling cakes and biscuits, because if it turned out to be a windy day my eyes would be bloodshot all day.
So I decided to use the dinosaur cookie cutters that TLM got for Christmas last year and make biscuits. The theory is, if you can make 'em look pretty they won't notice if they don't taste good.
Then, of course, I mentioned it at work and next thing I know there's an Alison Holst recipe for gingerbread men on my seat.
Turns out, it makes a very nice biscuit.

The photos are of the proportion I kept for home consumption, so you can't see that I made Tyranosaurus Rexes to go with the Stegosauruses (which, to be honest, look more like chameleons).

We went by the stall on Saturday (after voting in the general election), and it looked like most of 'em had been sold. A hit!

p.s. I won't copy the recipe for you because 1) it would probably break copyright laws, and 2) I can't possibly be bothered doing all that typing. But I think it was in last week's Dominion Post if you're interested.

a seedling girl scout

2011-11-19T16:16:00.000+13:00

I really want TLM to learn self-reliance and how to survive in the bush.
I want her to have a wider circle of friends and I want her to have opportunities to go camping.

So last Tuesday evening I took her to a local Pippins group meeting. (Pippins is the section of Girl Guides for girls aged 5 and 6.)

(I did think of calling the Scouts too, as an alternative, since they take girls now. But in the end I was too lazy to make that extra phone call.)
And she loved it. They went tree-planting at a neighbouring school, sangs songs, went for a rainforest walk and a ride on a flying fox.

Apparently they don't do the knot-tying and camping until Brownies (for the next age group up) - which is okay - and it's not God-fearing as it would have been in the old days - which is a relief. They might even teach her to crochet animals (fingers crossed).

Never get your passports photos taken on bad hair day

2011-11-15T17:38:00.000+13:00

We're planning on visiting the boy's family next year, in the UK. Hooray!

But then I realised that my passport, and TLM's have both expired (because the powers that be - bastards! - decided that NZ passports only last 5 years).

Which meant that it was time for my 5-yearly photo.

It probably wouldn't have made a difference if I was having a good hair day.

Maybe it's the harsh light, or the fact that I blank out anything truly ugly I see when I look in the mirror, or the fact that the photos are so severely cropped that there's absolutely no hope your fabulous outfit will distract the viewer from seeing your inglorious flaws.
But, ye gads I was shocked.

You know how certain sects recruit new members by offering free personality tests, whose purpose is to expose (or make up) all your terrible character flaws?

Well, I reckon if Botox-ers and cosmetic surgeons offered a free passport photo service, they'd become Bill Gates-level billionaires. Because when I returned to my desk I started looking up anti-aging products...