Forum knitting
I keep thinking I’ll have a forum round-up post. At this point I need to have several forum round-up posts. . . .
blondviolinist
And looky! Almost finished legwarmers! (I really like the look of those knitting needles.)
They’re rosewood. I loooooove them. They’re my FAVOURITE. Hannah was telling me that her knitting mentor had emphasized that she was going to have to use wooden needles on airplanes* and I’ve kept forgetting to tell her that I don’t even like the bog standard metal ones. I have one pair because they were a size I needed RIGHT THEN, patience never having been one of my strong points, and this lack is probably at its most lurid concerning a shiny new obsession, and I disliked them so much I went back to the hellhound blanket till I could buy bamboo needles in the right size. And when I saw rosewood . . . of course I had to have them. They’re glorious to knit on. They feel as nice as they look.**
Have I mentioned here that the yarn for the second pair of leg warmers is the wrong size? Arrrrrrrrrgh. It’s a whatsit too small.*** I stared at this obstacle to happiness—I BOUGHT THIS YARN TO BE LEG WARMERS, SPEAKING OF BUYING YARN FOR A PROJECT—for a few minutes, and then cast on six extra stitches (it’s 3×3 ribbing) and got on with it. Feh. But the point is that my standard inability to follow directions is manifesting itself early in my knitting career.
Meanwhile . . . the yarn I want to use for my First Cardigan? Of course I don’t have enough. Of course. But—speaking of (not) following directions—I want it about eight inches shorter than the pattern calls for . . . so I still don’t really know if I have enough or not. ARRRRRRGH. Possibly the Right Front or One Sleeve will be in a different yarn. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. While I was contemplating these prospective traumas, of course I went on line and had a little cruise for yarn . . . and found some gorgeous streaky dark russet-scarlet-orange wool—real wool!—and on sale! And when I tried to order it . . . they didn’t have enough of it left.
Joseph-ine
I have a list now of shops – it’s growing larger after I did some googling the other day! I have to be near some of them on my travels around Manhattan surely!
We are expecting a report, you realise.
I was delighted by the mentions of the male knitters, and it reminded me that way back knitting was the domain of men (was reading something about the history somewhere but I am getting my info from some favourite childhood books). Written by Monica Edwards, one of her characters was a wonderful creation, sea-man, pirate (potentially), smuggler etc, also knitted, because as a man of the sea, you had to know how to make nets, and knitting was also their domain. . . .
The Romney Marsh books. Love love love love LOVE. http://www.monicaedwards.co.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Edwards
THE SUMMER OF THE GREAT SECRET was the one I read to pieces, and then read the pieces. The great secret is . . . smuggling. And the Guernsey-wearing fisherman-smuggler is a major character.
I don’t know what her books would look like to anyone, child or grown up, reading them for the first time now. But they were perfect for a horse-mad girl half a century ago. And I still read them with enormous pleasure—unlike, say, the BLACK STALLION books which I also read to pieces at the time. I kept the first one but (unless I lost my nerve at the last minute and they’re in a box in Third House’s attic) the rest of the Farley series(es) have gone to the great Oxfam heaven. I still have all the Romney Marsh books, and most of the Punchbowl books although I never adored them in the same way. And I still read them. In bed, with hellhounds, and the frelling dawn chorus chirping annoyingly away.
Lenni
I, alas, do not knit. But my girlfriend (who makes all of my Hawaiian shirts) learned to knit by making squares that were then made into a blanket.
I realise I have a frivolous mind, but I am riveted by the thought of what your Hawaiian shirts may look like.
Diane in MN
My first knitting project (in a class) was a sweater. It didn’t require a lot of shaping and didn’t involve fancy stitchwork, but I wanted to make something I’d actually wear. I don’t wear winter scarfs.
YAAAAAAY. SWEATERS. YAAAAAAY. Gods, that yarn store on Wednesday was a mistake. I’m all riled up again. I was going along nicely, a gentle little leg-warmer row at a time. . . . . I HAVE ENOUGH YARN. (Nooooooooo . . . I have this new pattern. . . . )
Reward yourself for finishing the leg warmers with some nice smooth wool yarn–it will be just as easy to knit with, and probably more forgiving if you have to correct any mistakes (but you won’t make the same ones anyway), and you’ll like it better. Especially if you find it ON SALE.
I’M TRYING.
Knitronomicon
. . . Nest in Crouch End . . . www.handmadenest.co.uk/ and they do mail order…
Oh gods. Oh gods. Oh . . . knitting gods. And goddesses. But I’m sure the blokes are crueller.
Katsheare
The first time I visited England I wanted to visit some yarn shops, see what cool local stuff might be on offer. Google search: nothing. . . . Because it’s WOOL here. Oh. ‘Wool Shops’ turned out results (no so many as I’d been hoping for, though in the meantime a very nice wool shop has opened in our town centre) and I’ve since almost entirely stopped using the word ‘yarn’. The opening sentence of your post today made me homesick in a way I’ve not really been yet.
Well not always: http://www.dragonyarns.co.uk/
I had noticed that the locals tended to say ‘wool’ rather than ‘yarn’, including when it was acrylic, which I found peculiar, but I can’t remember if I googled ‘yarn’ to begin with or not—but I usually google knitting and that works just fine. I also don’t know what time frame you’re talking about, but knitting has gone from something embarrassing your grandmother did because she didn’t get out much to madly hot and cool (so to speak) in something like the last ten years over here—I don’t know if America led the way on this or not. Or anyway that’s about what friends my age say about looking around on the tube and in staff meetings. Ten years ago, everyone scowled at their newspaper or their notepad. Now they knit. And Notepad is a software programme.† So I think pretty much anything remotely related to sticks and string now will bring a lot of crafty retailers out of the woodwork happy to sell you whatever you want to call it.
The thing I love about knitting is that there is always some new challenge for you . . .. You don’t have to, either. You can stay in your comfort zone forever if you like, but there’s more out there, if you’re interested. I love that.
Yes. Me too. You can actually knit something almost immediately. It’s not like horse back riding or bell ringing where it’s weeks or months before you have any real basic skill. As I say I took a fairly substantial hit in morale from overfacing myself with my Secret Knitting Projects last year, but I’m so silly over my leg warmers it’s a little alarming in a woman of my advanced years. And having graduated to ribbing I’m now convinced I can do anything. Eventually. Maybe starting with yarn overs. Meanwhile, I can make more leg warmers. I may even get back to the original leg-warmer yarn that was only making things worse by being too fuzzy so I couldn’t see what I was doing and noooooo I can’t knit I am too stupid. ††
nickithomas
I had great fun accumulating stocks of odd balls in sales etc and then using them in Kaffe Fassett type patterns, but I think my favourite UK yarn supplier for a single wool project was this one: http://www.colinette.com/
Yes! I aspire to this! I admit I haven’t quite had the nerve yet to start picking up odd bits of yarn on sale but I’m moving in that direction.††† And the only really big shiny hardback knitting book I’ve bought—I’ve bought quite a few modest paperbacks‡—is a Fassett pattern book—patterns for his blocks (you can see him coming from quilting), not for finished garments.
But . . . pardon me . . . I’m having a stupid moment . . . I can’t find where to click on the colinette pages to find the practical details. http://www.colinette.com/products/Zanziba-%252d-Rose-Garden.html for example. I want it, but what’s it made of? What’s the size and what’s the gauge? What am I missing?
CateK
You could combine your love of yarn and your interest in Japan, and visit Habu Textiles
http://www.habutextiles.com/
Oh my . . .
And . . . on another topic entirely, Oisin was encouraging about my singing today. It was really quite unsettling. I had to come home and knit a few rows.
* * *
* Which is a big step up from not long ago when, I have been told, you weren’t allowed any kind of knitting needles on an airplane. I’m not at all sure that hollow aluminium needles are any more physically dangerous than bamboo^, but whatever soothes the professionally paranoid.
^ They’re not expecting you to have put something in them, are they? Ugggh.
** I admit I have two pairs of vintage pink plastic ones . . . bought for about 69p on . . . wait for it . . . Etsy. But they’re little gauge and I don’t do little gauge yet. It’s not just a patience thing: the more stitches, the more opportunity for strange lumpy bodges.
*** J’accuse the shop. It was in the same bank of cubbyholes as the pink yarn. Unfair to the inexperienced and the stupid.
† Can anyone recommend an iPad stylus? I find writing with my finger dumb and inefficient, and while I resist the idea of another piece of loose kit I have to carry around and potentially frelling lose, I would like to try a stylus. But the reviews are contradictory and contumelious.
†† Nooooo I can’t [insert occupation of choice] I am too stupid
††† Possibly even starting with the russet-scarlet-orange yarn there isn’t enough of to make my First Cardigan.
‡ And on the subject of learning things out of books, which I almost never can, someone has to SHOW ME, the beginner knitting book that I can actually use, is this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Z-of-Knitting/dp/0975709445/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337387330&sr=8-1
I bought it because it was on sale because it was pretty shop worn, and because it was spiral bound so it would lie flat. You need two hands for your needles, you know? One of my many frustrations with pretty much all my knitting books^ is trying to make them stay open. You know, if you want to try something . . . And even if you decide to get serious, why should you have to Photostat the frelling pattern just because the blasted book won’t lie flat?^^ And then if your copying machine happens to be Possessed By Demons . . . ARRRRGH. Maybe I’ll take up hang gliding.^^^
Anyway. A to Z has photos that actually show. And the text actually matches what is being shown. This is rarer than you might hope.
^ Aside from the Nooooo . . . too stupid part.
^^ Granted if you’re going to want to carry it around, the two-page version as opposed to the 200-page with covers and a spine version is to be preferred.
^^^ Very sensible. I’m afraid of heights.
My life as a bell ringer . . .
IS NOT OVER. You will be glad to hear. Well. You are probably blinking slightly, having not realised there might be a question that it was over. Let me repeat: last Wednesday’s practise was really, really, really bad. Bad bad. Bad to the bone. B-b-b-b-bad. I’d been planning to go to the pub after and . . . I told you I ran out of there. I ran out of there because I couldn’t face the rest of them. Granted I’m a trifle thin skinned about things. Still. It was bad. And I really did come home and wail and moan and wring my hands and consider spending more time on origami.* Gemma was a little late to handbells on Friday, so I had time to do a Sarah Siddons** at poor Niall, who was feeling a bit low himself for having been (according to him, although I’m not sure I believe him) instrumental in losing a (tower) quarter (peal) the previous Sunday. We had got to the point where we were about to swear off tower bells forever and cleave exclusively to handbells, and in another few minutes we’d probably have nicked our fingers and made a blood pact, but fortunately Gemma showed up. She was quite startled at my Lady Macbeth imitation.*** She must be a fabulous family doctor†: she does that calm, patient, rational-as-if-you’re-rational-too-and-just-had-a-bad-minute-there thing superbly. She very nearly cheered me up. And she did at least convince me that my ignominy Wednesday evening had not been complete.
As previously (often) mentioned, I sometimes think my single virtue is frelling obstinacy.†† Sheer mindless persistence I can do. So there was never any real doubt that I would show up at the abbey for Sunday afternoon service ring . . . but I can’t say I was looking forward to it. The not looking forward was getting pretty disagreeable by last night and by the time I got out of bed this morning I wanted to change my name††† and run away. It’s a beautiful gardening day.‡ I could stay home and garden.
What if I turn up and they stare at me in disbelief and say, For pity’s sake go away? —Even if Gemma keeps insisting this isn’t going to happen.
In the first place there were only, and exactly, eight of us. Including me. Which meant that with me they could ring triples. Without me they could ring doubles or minor with the seventh sitting out. Triples is much better. So yaay. I’m useful. (Which has been one of Gemma’s strongest arguments right along: they need Sunday afternoon ringers. You get lots of brownie points if you ring Sunday afternoon service. As well as more time on a rope.) So we rang Grandsire Triples—with me (relatively) safely on the treble.
But the best thing was that I had a chat with Albert. I wanted to tell him I wouldn’t be there for practise next Wednesday‡‡ but that after last Wednesday I thought I should probably revert to doubles and minor till I had adjusted a little more to the (frelling) abbey’s (frelling) bells. And he looked surprised and said oh no, you don’t have to do that, everyone has trouble getting used to these bells, they’re not the easiest bells anyway, the ringing chamber is huge, and the sound is muddy and erratic.
Well . . . yes.
And, he added, last Wednesday was a bad practise. People who have been ringing Grandsire Triples for thirty years were going wrong. It wasn’t your fault.
Oh. Um. I had actually thought there was a little variability elsewhere, but . . .
But the thing he said that really sent me away with a song in my heart if not precisely on my lips, was that when he’d first been ringing here he’d had trouble focussing on each bell rope because, the blasted room being so big, the ropes were so far apart.
Focus. Yes. That’s exactly the right word, and it hadn’t occurred to me (so not a word person as I am), because it’s counter-intuitive. Ropesight is the ability to see which bell you should follow next by PRECISELY where the person ringing it is in their stroke (since everyone ringing will be in a slightly different place than everyone else). Part of the problem at the abbey is that since it has ninety-seven bells, if you’re only ringing six or eight or ten or twelve, you’re in more of a queue than a circle, and you have got used, in smaller towers with fewer bells, to ringing in a circle,‡‡ and your ropesight has probably developed from looking around a smallish, more or less circular, group of bellropes. You would think that having them more spread out would mean each comes into much sharper individual focus but in practise, as I have dreadfully discovered, it seems to have the opposite effect: they all blur together.
So Albert and I have something in common besides being bipedal air breathers with opposed thumbs. Yaaay. And then he said, let’s ring a couple of plain courses of Grandsire Triples, and you ring inside, and you can practise looking. So we did that.
I may still have a future as an abbey ringer. . . .
* * *
* I was just writing to a friend that I’d bought a couple of books on basic origami to remind myself what folding feels like, for SHADOWS, since Maggie is a folder, and a couple of books of extreme origami to see what the . . . er . . . extremists can get up to, and that I could feel the attraction of another obsessive-friendly activity but that I didn’t have time for any more all-consuming pursuits and would probably stick to cranes, which are hard enough, frankly, if you are over-equipped with thumbs. The mere fact of possessing twelve thumbs wouldn’t stop me, you understand, since I don’t hold out for things I have some talent for. See: bell ringing.
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Siddons
*** Out, damned bell rope! Out, I say! One; two: why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky, just like my ropesight!
† Which is what she is
†† Not just plain obstinacy. The frelling kind. Which is much gnarlier.
††† Possibly to K MacFarquhar. Hee hee hee hee hee hee.
‡ Old Blush is out. Barely the middle of May is early even for her. It’ll be another fortnight or so before she’s in peak hurrah, but she’s got three roses full out now. And I have two robins again, so there must be a second nest in prospect. Robin #1 was rushing around yesterday dispensing mealworms but robin #2 sat in the apple tree and stared at me as I galumphed haphazardly, potting things on and swearing. Robin #2 is gigantic. I am not seeing anything about size differential between the sexes in robins—having just hit three robin-info sites^—but if it’s true that dad sticks around to feed the fledglings, the gigantic one is mama. And she’s probably deciding if she wants to risk me. I don’t know if robins re-use their nests? I won’t clear this one away till the end of the year so it’s available at a very reasonable rate, not to mention all the mod cons, like trays of mealworms on the balcony.
^ One does mention that robins are so crazy about mealworms they will take them from human hands. That does, however, mean that the human hand has to be holding the mealworms. I will pick mealworms up when I drop them+ but the idea of standing there . . . um. Peanut butter for the chickadees back in Maine was less lacerating to one’s delicate sensibilities.++
+ And did you know they CLIMB? You want to be certain of your containment vessel.
++ When I first moved over here one of the things I missed the worst was all the wild critters I was used to. Chickadees were very high on that list. It’s hard not to love something that little and cheeky. British robins are out of the same box: little and cheeky. And the funny thing is that I feel that I’ve always lived with British robins.# I know my love of skylarks and brown hares and beech trees is only twenty years old. British robins . . . I can’t imagine life without them.
# American robins are fine. But British robins are the real deal.
‡‡ Fiona and I are going to get into trouble. Unfortunately there were only tickets available for trouble on Wednesday evening.
‡‡‡ Mind you there are some fairly strange layouts in small towers too. But the small part does limit the grievous possibilities.
Chirpity chirpity chirp chirp chirp
I rang my first ordinary Sunday service at the abbey this afternoon. Chirpity chirpity, etc. And I did not humiliate myself.* Quadruple chirpity. Sextuple chirpity. Icosahedronic chirpity.
I didn’t tell you this last night because there’s a limit to how much gruesome suspense I’m willing to share. Gemma has kept on telling me that the abbey is always short at Sunday afternoon service, and that last week, for example, they almost didn’t ring at all because only four ringers turned up—apparently they have a status to maintain, and with eighty-seven bells refuse to countenance minimus**—and then Wild Robert, who I believe shows at the abbey most Sunday afternoons except when he’s in London practising for the national twenty-six-bell demolition derby, arrived in the nick of time***. Indeed Wild Robert told me a similar story about Sunday afternoon at the abbey a fortnight ago. And then after the reification of the overgoddess last week I was thinking, okay, McKinley, they didn’t need you but they let you ring, when are you going to start paying your way† by showing up for ordinary service ringing?
Dither dither dither dither dither. The other side of service ringing is that you don’t get to do it till you’re ready. Till you can, you know, ring. Which I’m not showing really rampant signs of being able to do at the abbey (yet). I’m clearly improving, if raggedly, but . . . but if they’re that short-handed we could ring frelling call changes.†† Dither. Dither.
So last night, Saturday night, at the last possible minute for Sunday, I wrote—emailed—Ulrich, saying that I felt I should wait till I was asked but Gemma keeps telling me the abbey needs ringers for Sunday afternoons and while I’m finding ringing at the abbey a steep learning curve if/when they think I might be more of an asset than a liability . . . I could maybe come along.
Then I spent the rest of the evening twitching wildly every time my email pinged.††† But by the time I went to bed last night at seriously mmph o’clock‡ Ulrich had not answered. He could have clutched his forehead and reeled away from his email with a cry of dismay . . . or he could have a life and been out doing pleasant things on Saturday night. But apparently my Sunday afternoon was to be free to keep on with SHADOWS.‡‡
I was staggering around, perhaps rather late, this morning, grappling with difficult issues like tea and underwear, and I had Astarte on the kitchen counter. And she pinged. I stared at her with a wild surmise. That email ping could have been any number of people. It could have been my homeopathic mailing list. It could have been someone wondering where I was and why I hadn’t answered their last (a lot of choice here). It could have been first contact with a sentient alien species.
It wasn’t. It was Ulrich. Please do come along, he said.
So I did.‡‡‡
And I wasn’t brilliant.§ But I was okay.§§
* * *
* This is me, right? I don’t say ‘I did well’ or even ‘I did pretty well’ or even ‘I didn’t do too badly’. I say ‘I did not humiliate myself.’ Siiiiigh. I wonder if I could ask for a positive attitude for my sixtieth birthday?^
^ I could ask.
** Four bells. Remember that method ringing is about jumbling up the order, but that a bell can only move one place each row. There’s not a lot you can do with only four bells. People have been known to ring full peals on four bells . . . but they’re madder even than the usual run of method ringers. At New Arcadia, however, if there are four ringers for Sunday service, they ring minimus.
*** Which is not to say that he hadn’t been to London. He had. In several locations. Wild Robert spends all day on a train on Sundays, punctuated by bursts of ringing. By the time he gets to the afternoon ring at the abbey the edge, I believe, is wearing off, and he’s almost ready for the new week, which contains things other than ringing.
† I’ve said all this before but I’ll say it again because it’s important. Bell ringing lives and dies on a huge amount of volunteer effort. A huge amount of volunteer effort. Being a paid-up member costs you about £7.50 a year and if you are a cheap s.o.b. your church will pay your sub for you. The rest is the hours that you and the other ringers put into it. All those millions of hours ringing teachers put into teaching people to ring—most of whom will drop out again before they become useful ringers—are all gratis. All those hours the bands around those learners put into ringing for the learners to bounce off of are all gratis.
But we need bells to ring. Bells are housed in churches^ and maintained by church admin.^^ And we pay for the enormous privilege of having bells to ring . . . by ringing services. Ordinary Sunday services, and anything else the priest or semi-sacred minion or congregation member asks for—reification of goddesses, weddings, funerals, births of grandchildren, first official contact with sentient alien species^^^, whatever. It’s what we’re for. And yes, there are lots of ringers who don’t honour this unwritten contract, but they are all slime moulds.
And personally, as someone who needs endless practise grinding to frelling LEARN anything, I get anxious about payback pretty quickly.
^ There are, I believe, a few Catholic churches with method bells, but the overwhelming majority of method ringing goes on in Anglican church towers. I think this is true world-wide as well as the UK, but then method ringing as it is done in the UK is a British invention and British art form, and it tends to show up only in (chiefly) English-speaking ex-colonies: USA, Australia, South Africa. The UK and particularly England however is the only place there are lots of bell ringing towers.
^^ With occasional help from ringer-driven Bell Funds, especially when major work needs to be done. Churches haven’t been wealthy since Henry VIII. Ha ha.
^^^ I’m looking forward to this one. Perhaps they’ll compose a new method, like they have for the Olympics+. Spock Royal. Aeryn Sun Surprise. Vorlon Vector Double Spliced.
+But don’t get me started.
†† I’m not looking forward to call changes at the abbey. The ringing chamber, as I keep moaning, is gigantic, and the sound-carrying is dire. As it is I’m just about guessing when there’s a sharp barking noise during a touch that it’s the conductor shouting ‘bob’ or ‘single’. Now all I have to do is figure out which. Call changes are dependent on the conductor calling EACH change. Which means you have to be able to hear them. But call changes mean that people who haven’t learnt any methods^ can still ring.
^ Or are too panic-stricken or intimidated to remember them
††† It does this kind of a lot. I belong to a distressingly lively homeopathic list.
‡ I have many wicked friends who want the worst for me, and introduce me to evil computer games. I’m also rereading CHARMED LIFE for the umpty-mumbleth time, but I’m trying to read it as slowly as possible, which leaves me easy prey to evil computer games. Aaaaaugh.
‡‡ Speaking of aaaaaaugh. AAAAAAAAAAUGH.
‡‡‡ Note that I wasn’t sacrificing a good gardening afternoon or anything. The gale didn’t merely knock all my rosebushes over, it drove water both under my front door and through the stable-door crack in the middle. I hope the baby robins are hugging the ground. The hellhounds and I, attempting to hurtle, remained earthbound chiefly because they hated the whole situation so much that they became little anvils at the ends of their leads.
§ Brilliance, with me and bells, is not an option.
§§ I was half grateful and half amused, watching Og figuring out how best to handle me. He called an easy touch of bob minor while I was ringing inside. I rang the tenor-behind for Stedman doubles—at a tower that isn’t the abbey I can ring Stedman. And we finished with rounds on the back six, which was kind of a hoot. The last four bells at the abbey are all seriously, INCREASINGLY huge. I’ve told you about ringing rounds on forty-six, where you pull off and then have to wait till it’s your turn again, because there are so many bells that have to go first. In a way the effect of waiting is more pronounced when you’re ringing only the back six because it is only six, but the pauses between the big bells are so marked. I was, of course, on the treble. Dong . . . dong . . . . . . . dong . . . . . . . . . DONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DOOOOOOOOONG.
But it was also useful, this afternoon’s ring. I’m finding my feet at the abbey. I hope.
How New Thing Happened, More or Less
KatydidNL
I don’t know if I can describe how much I am enjoying this [New Thing], so I won’t try. You’ll just have to imagine.
Oh good. ::Beams:: And LAVISH, PROFOUND AND HEARTFELT thanks to all the rest of you who have forumed, tweeted, Facebooked or emailed similar sentiments. I hope there are a fair number of you out there, because the plan is that the New Thing should go on a while. It is, in fact the New Thing. I was going to do a nice tidy well-laid out How the New Thing Came to Be post but . . . when have I ever been nice, tidy or well-laid out?* Anyway, I think I’ve already told you that I’ve been aware for a while that I needed to do something new or different about the blog. But as to why it arrived in this particular New Thing package. . . .
. . . Meanwhile (this is not a non sequitur: bear with me) I should be hoovering. I haven’t done any housework since . . . uh . . . approximately since Hannah was here. Well, she gave me flu. I’m allowed a little slack. But Cathy arrives tomorrow for a few days. And I really don’t want her to blink a couple of times at my sitting-room and run away.** And one of the things we’ll be doing while she’s here (if she doesn’t run away) is playing with New Thing.
Shock horror. Someone is appearing under their own name in Days in the Life. Yes. Cathy. Cathy as in Cathy Hamaker, our own Black Bear.
Some of you have already heard how Cathy and I met at Wiscon several yonks ago, didn’t quite manage to have a cup of tea/coffee together, but kept in vague touch, each privately under the impression that we’d probably hit it off if we ever concentrated on it for a few minutes. And then I started Days in the Life, and she started reading it. Clearly the woman spends too much time on line, because she found it almost at once.
One of the things Cathy does in her copious free time*** is run RPGs—role playing games—as gamesmaster.† She’s been sending me hilarious abstracts of some of these games for years. I keep saying oh gods what a waste these should be fiction. And we’ve had a running conversation, also for years, about how we might somehow create an RPG for the blog, using some McKinley world or other, possibly one I make up specifically for the purpose. . . . But we’ve never been able to figure out a way to do this that wouldn’t make the blog even more work for me, as well as a way that would not send Merrilee off in fits of the screaming abdabs about copyright.
Then, a few weeks ago, I went down with flu. I’ve told you, possibly smugly, which would explain the result, that I can (usually) keep writing no matter what is going on in the real world with me. I could have beriberi, cholera, or a major invasion of bats,†† and I could keep writing. Well. There’s one rather important exception. That’s when I’m at the very, very, very end of a book, and trying to do the final comb and shine, trying to make sure all the screws are not merely the right size, but have gone in straight and been puttied and then painted over so you can’t see the join. To do this properly you have to attain and maintain a kind of extreme squeaky alertness, which includes being able to hold the entire book in your mind all at once.†††
I can’t do this when I feel like dirty river froth and neither my eyes nor my brain will focus.
I HAD TO STOP WORKING ON SHADOWS WHEN I WAS NEARLY AT THE END.
Try to imagine how—or rather what—this contributed to my sanity and peace of mind.‡ Especially after various other literary setbacks in the last year.
So, I’m lying there, between writing blog posts that make everything sound better than it (*&^%$£”!!!!! is, thinking, what do I do? What can I do? I can’t work. I can’t even get on with all that backed-up doodling, because doodling also requires a certain level of committed attention, as well as a hand that doesn’t shake. People paid me money for those doodles—I have to do them the best that I am able. Which is not now.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
And thus, from fever and despair, was New Thing born. I’ve thought of story-telling on the blog before, but I couldn’t think of how to do that either, without bleeding off real-story energy and, once again, making the blog more work.‡‡ But I thought three things more or less simultaneously (thus the splintering effect of fever): I could do a parody. I could do a parody of me. I could do all kinds of stuff I wouldn’t dream of doing in a real book. My heroine could write fantasy series. She could write fantasy series with cliffhanger endings. She could write fantasy series one of which, for example, features a protagonist named Flowerhair, who fends off attack mushrooms with an enchanted sword named Doomblade. Hee hee hee hee hee, I muttered to myself, my eyes gleaming with fever. She’ll have to write a vampire series too. Let’s say . . . oh . . . let’s say Vampire Virago.
The second thing I thought was: the individual posts can be shorter, not only because they’re fiction, which from a fiction writer counts as value-added whether it is (ahem) literally or not, but also because if I run long I can just put the overrun into the next post. This is one of my more intractable problems with Days in the Life: stuff I cut for later almost never gets used, because, because, well, because it’s Days in the Life. Once a day is over, it’s over. Even irrelevant footnoted asides tend to go all floppy by next day. And then they’re WASTED.
The third thing I thought was: if Cathy’s sense of humour stretches that far, she can gamesmaster me. She can prod me on into adventures and with characters that would never have occurred to me. She’d just sent me another one of her goofy summaries from a game she’s running, and there was a specific bit in it‡‡‡ that I thought (in my feverish way) would be perfect for an on-line blog serial. Fine, she said. It’s yours. No, no, I said, I want active input—if I can get it. If it would amuse you. Fortunately Cathy amuses easily. Which got us talking about how we might do this.
As I write now, we’ve already done two stints on Skype IM with her typing things like: okay, there’s a funny noise, and me typing back, FUNNY NOISE? WHAT DO YOU MEAN FUNNY NOISE? I DON’T LIKE FUNNY NOISES. Cathy: It’s a sort of scrape-thump-thud noise. Me: NOOOOOOOOOO. —I should perhaps add here that we’ve played a two-person RPG a couple of times but I am hopeless because I spend all my time afraid to do anything because I’m sure I’m going to die. Characters do die in RPGs, you know. One of the things that is going to make Cathy’s augmentations possible is that I said: First rule. You can’t kill me.
So. Anyway. I haven’t got to Cathy’s first injection of storyline. It’s . . . um . . . several ep[isode]s off yet.§ I’m writing as fast as I can.§§ I’ll tell you when we get there. But after that you’ll just have to guess. The story is the story. The story is always the story, and I’m still writing it . . . even if there’s some extremely silly collaboration going on just out of sight.§§§
* * *
* OUT. I said OUT. I said well laid OUT.
** Colin and Niall were here for handbells yesterday. I had got home barely ahead of them and was still doing things like tearing harnesses off hellhounds when they arrived. Shall I pick this up? said Niall, referring to the green plastic garden sheet on the floor of the sitting-room which is where ALL MY BABY PLANTS COME INDOORS TO SLEEP EVERY FRELLING NIGHT. Sure, I said, but fold it up so the dirt all stays on the inside.
Pause.
Oops, said Niall.
*** HAHAHAHAHAHA. Copious free time. HAHAHAHAHAHA.
† She also plays for other gamesmasters, but I don’t hear about those.
†† Not yet.
††† Not to mention my bank balance which, regular readers will remember, is a problem right now.
‡ Or rather, this is how I’ve always done it. Which is why the idea of writing a three-volume story freaks me out so much.
‡‡ Remember, when I’m whining about how much work the blog is, two things: I enjoy it too. It’s just way too frelling much work. Which leads to the second thing, which is that I have limited range to change this. I’m an obsessive personality: I pretty much only do things I can be obsessive about. This includes the blog. Shifting to posting every other day or declaring I won’t write posts over 500 words will not work. I either do it obsessively or I won’t do it at all.
‡‡‡ Which I’m certainly not going to tell you about because we may yet use it.
§ Slightly after when you finally find out what my heroine’s name is.
§§ Which is never fast, even when I’m essentially ripping myself off.
§§§ Note that when Cathy originally booked her time over here, it was planned carefully for after SHADOWS was going to be finished . . . and well before New Thing was a flu-addled gleam in my deliquescing brain.
A whangblamming thunderstorm and dazzling blue sky kind of day
. . . in more ways than one. In the first place yes, the weather is completely crazed. Because of other issues* the hellhounds got a series of short hurtles today rather than one long and one medium-length one, and trying to fit these in between cloudbursts was all part of the jolly fun. So I’d just had the latest bit of bad news about the weekend’s Adventure** and I was blitzing around the cottage in a dangerous, bruising torpor because the archangels were due ANY MINUTE*** . . . and I finally thought to check my email and the archangels were going to be an hour later than scheduled.
I could have had a little more sleep.
I could have given the hellhounds a little more hurtle.
I could have hung from the rafters screaming about the reality of Sunday travel a little longer.
I did make myself a second cup of tea, left it on the Aga to stew, and took hellhounds for their second sprint of the day. And got back to the latest parcel of little live green things, longing to be potted up and too tender to leave outdoors. I’m hauling in trays of the little ratbags every night—and back out in the morning. I’m running out of trays. And the sweet peas, which arrived weeks ago, are starting to need repotting. ARRRRRRGH.
The archangels arrived†, were here for two hours . . . AND COULDN’T DO ANYTHING I WANTED THEM TO DO. With the exception of a few bits and pieces, and getting the kanji-support Japanese download installed.†† But I need both Pooka and Astarte, both i-gizmos, frelling updated . . . and they couldn’t do it because my broadband is TOO SLOW. Meanwhile, my so-called provider has changed hands, changed its name and logo, raised its prices and lost my Direct Debit details. And claimed never to have received the archangels’ email, attachment and fax from a month ago about upgrading . . . they plainly raised their prices to pay the designer for the new logo which is undoubtedly larger, flashier, and in full colour, and which will cost more money to produce every month at the top of your invoice.
So the archangels sent it all again, and then went back to wrestling with various gremlins, ogres and unidentified snarly things.††† Raphael checked in with my nonproviders in about fifteen minutes. No, they hadn’t received the resend. Half an hour. No, they hadn’t received it. An hour. No, they hadn’t received it, hahahahahahahaha, isn’t this comical? Meanwhile Gabriel had taken the lid off my phone housing, or whatever you call it, where the wires come in from outside, and did a hissing-between-his-teeth equivalent. You will remember when this came up a week or something ago, that there’s nothing I can do about Brit Telecom’s utter indifference to the connectivity trials and tribulations of a small cul de sac in New Arcadia, and BT owns all the wiring. Gabriel stared thoughtfully out the window at the telephone pole that various hysterically-laughing linemen have nearly fallen off. Your Problem Is Obvious. However between them they think that Raphael can bedevil my provider into providing something, and Gabriel can do something about the connection between Outside and Inside.
But meanwhile . . .
I took hellhounds for another sprint and fulminated. Work did not go at all well in what remained of the afternoon. Also meanwhile . . . I had to go to Forza tonight. I’d missed last week’s practise due to family arrivals and Morse-code electricity, the week before was some rangleblagging scheduled cancellation or other, and I’m going to miss next week because they’re having one of their forty-six-and-a-half bell practises.‡ I didn’t want to go tonight. I didn’t want to go a lot. I’m completely demoralised on the subject of tower ringing and I’ve pretty much turned the fact that I can’t deal with the abbey into a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom, and I’m short of sleep, dreading the pogo-stick journey on Sunday, and totally furious with my technology. I’m clapped out on adrenaline and I’m exhausted.
I had to go.
I went.
Oh, and did I mention it was TIPPING it down? On the way over in Wolfgang we were creeping along in third gear because I couldn’t see out of the frelling windscreen.
And when I got there there were people crawling around with cameras. What? Leaving now. And the Scary Man was in charge. Whimper. Why was I ever born?‡‡
The Scary Man swooped down on me and said, Come ring some Grandsire Triples. —Wait! No! I was going to run away!
. . . I actually haven’t dwelled on how bad it’s been, the last few times at the abbey. I had what I thought was that little breakthrough ringing on six bells rather than eight a while back . . . and then it went away, and I couldn’t ring on six either. I am not joking about the demoralisation. If it weren’t that it felt like either go on facing the abbey or give up ringing, I’d be staying home with a good book.
Anyway. Yeah. Clearly I’m setting you up to say . . . it was okay. It was okay. I didn’t ring frelling Grandsire frelling Triples flawlessly, but I was ringing it. I wasn’t just blindly pulling on a rope and doing what my minder was shouting in my ear, which is mostly what it’s been so far. I am going to do this. I am going to learn to cope with the abbey. Which is to say I may even have a bell tower again. I’m sorry it’s a frelling abbey . . . but it remains the nearest tower that rings methods if I’m not going back to New Arcadia and, hint, I’m not, and therefore my best option is an abbey. . . . where things like BAFTA-winning documentary makers come round and frelling film you. Apparently we’re going to be part of a son-et-lumiere deal for some Hampshire festival. We had exactly thirty-seven ringers for our thirty-seven bells and the Scary Man told us all to catch hold which therefore . . . included me. We just rang rounds . . . but I’ve told you about this before: when you’re ringing rounds on four hundred and twelve or even only thirty-seven you pull off and then hold up for frelling EVER while you’re waiting for the other thirty-six bells before it’s your turn again. This doesn’t happen on six. It’s very disconcerting to someone who is used to ringing on six and finds eight a stretch. Oh, and if you see the film . . . I’m wearing a bright turquoise cardigan which would not have been my choice if I’d known I was going to be immortalised. I’d have gone more for dark brown and a bag over my head.
I also have to say a big fat shiny word for Gemma here. She’s an abbey ringer, and she knows what a struggle I’ve been having. She’s the one who’s kept saying, no, no, they will not tell you to go away and furthermore you will catch on. She’s also the one who suggested that I try a different bell for triples because she found it easier to see from . . . and she’s right. I think that’s one of the things that helped tonight. She does keep smiling at me in this Rather Amused Fashion, but I have this effect on some people for some reason. And I was so giddy tonight that I let her convince me to come to the pub after. . . .
I may have a bell tower again. My life is not over.
And the OTHER THING? I HAVE A NEST FULL OF ADORABLE FLUFFY BABY ROBINS IN THE GREENHOUSE. They’re so cute you could die. I rushed out and bought mealworms.
* * *
* Including sleeping really badly because I’m starting (early) to stress out about an Adventure I’m slated for this weekend that I am dreading extremely. So . . . of course. I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep in one fluid movement. The sleep I’d spent the last x hours not getting.
** You cannot go ANYWHERE on a Sunday in this country. They close the roads^, they close the railway lines, they lock all the barn doors before and after the horses have fled, they glue the wheels of all locally-flying airplanes to the runways, and the Sunday dog sled teams are booked years in advance. Maybe if I started walking now. . . .
^ Including bicycle paths and rickshaws.
*** And I’d overslept. See above.
† Gabriel reported that they had been given a very suspicious look by one of my neighbours. Hey, two young men in hoodies. And Gabriel has a two-day beard.
†† Do I even have to tell you that this did not go the way it was supposed to and I would have gotten totally screwed up and berserk if I’d tried to do it myself? Whatever. They pulled out one of their Magic Discs and made the software(s) talk to each other. And now my Learn Japanese site isn’t mostly little empty rectangles.
††† I sat on the floor and knitted. With some help from hellhounds.
‡ The half is the tower captain’s gerbil.
‡‡ Don’t answer that.