a simple yarn

Right, it’s the end of SchoolFest 2006. Kids are finished. Schoolbags closeted. Lunch bags emptied.
Off we go then for a week of summer Family HolidayFest 2006 in the Lake District of England.
And while we’re so close to Cumbria, of course we ought to dash up to WoolFest 2006, don’t you agree?
Yes, I thought you would…!

Warning:another diversion to Irish-ised English ahead…

The word is spelled maths. Notice the s on the end? Why is that? As I grew up in the US, it was called math-no s. Is it from mathematics, where there is definitely an s on the end? Well then, fair enough. But why is is pronounced mats? Isn’t there an h? Hmmmmm…

Oh right, back to the topic at hand…

2 x 5=10 squares the have been completed on the cushion cover.
3 x 5=15 squares that have yet to be knitted.

There you go… maths lesson over. Class dismissed.

In my quest for outstanding cappuccinos, I now place Daughter-Kate, aged 9, in the rankings.

It’s Sunday…the day when Mama takes a well-earned rest and indulges in a luxurious morning lie-in. There is a barely perceptible knock on the bedroom door. Kate comes in with a made-with-her-own-two-hands cappuccino. ‘Here, I thought you might like this,’ she says and sets the cup next to my bed.

Wonderful presentation. Not too much foam. Not too sweetened. I’d say she’s nailed it on the first try.

Life’s not so bad after all in the post-Barista-Guy-era.

I am not a professional film critic. And I do not regularly say, ‘You oughta see this film!’ Frankly, I’m not really very astute in my observations of most movies. Hey, most times I go to the cinema purely for mindless entertainment purposes…escapism and all that. This was not one of those times…

Tonight I saw ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley,’ chronicling the painful, formative years of Ireland’s independence and civil war. I live in Ireland.

It won best picture at Cannes this year. Might be a re-make of ‘Michael Collins,’ I thought, but ought to see it, even if only for Cillian Murphy’s to-die-for cheekbones.

Wow.

It was disturbing.
It was painful.
It was an amazing representation of all the complexities of how this country was formed.

It was crowded.
It was quiet.
It was an indelible mark on the collective psyche of the people around me.

I can only say, ‘You oughta see this film.’ Full stop.

So what d’ya do when himself is out of the country and you’ve got no one to mind the kiddies which prevents you from going to the monthly love-to-get-together-for-an-excuse-to-knit-and-chat Stitch ‘n’ Bitch gathering? You do the next best thing, of course…

Fibre-Friend-Holly was in the same predicament as Other-Half was unavailable for kiddie-detail. So, we dumped all the children into a room at my house and had Fibre-Fun-Day! We set aside our knitting needles, coerced Tangelled Angel to join us and sat among 2 spinning wheels (with a spare in the corner), drum carder, bags of fleece in various stages of processing, cups of tea, biscuits and crumbs from lunch!

Actually, to be more accurate, We-Three locked ourselves in the kitchen/dining room while the The-Kiddies-Four had the run of the house, it being drizzly outside.


You’ve seen the drum carder in action (see 13 June), so instead, a closeup of F-F-H’s brightly-coloured-looks-rather-Mediterranean roving.

I think Ma Ingalls would be proud of the homespun yarn production going on today!

I was going to indulge in a bit of whinging…even thought of creating a ‘Whinge-O-Meter’ to track it. But as I thought about the state of knitting in Ireland, I found more cause for hope than despair. Now, I am not Irish…I did not live here in the 70s, 80s or 90s…my observations may be totally skewed, but here’s my own brief socio-economic review of knitting in Ireland.

I live in a land that gave the world the Aran jumper.

I live in a country where sheep are regularly featured on the surrounding hillsides.

I live in a culture where knitting was faithfully taught in primary schools.

Then why, may I ask, is it so difficult to find good yarn here?

Simply put:

Forty days and forty nights ago (see 11 May post) I was staring at a pile of wool, hoping and praying that some burst of inspiration would transform this formless and void pile into a miraculous creation for the Guild exhibition at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Dublin…

40 days have passed and I am now looking at a blank piece of paper…well, not exactly blank…it’s got little squares printed on it…graph paper, as it were.

40 nights have passed and I can now envision a design that will, with one threading of the loom, allow me flexibility in the treadlings to create an Irish landscape, albeit an abstract one. I settle on the tried-and-true-even-a-beginner-can-do-it Rosepath draft.

40 days have gone and I have located my coloured pencils, hoping that by taking them up in my hand I will be able to visualise the colour changes.

40 nights have gone and I find the series of treadlings that will give me an interpretation of the Dublin Mountains boasting their yellow gorse and multi-hued heather beneath a darkening sky.

40 days have elapsed and I roughly sketch my embryonic idea on paper…scrutinising and evaluating.

40 nights have elapsed and I now wind the warp to be put on the loom to begin the construction.

40 days and 40 nights have come and gone and I breathe a sigh of relief to have gotten over the first obstacle in the creative process…

Today was Art Day at my kids’ primary school. One hundred-thirty kids running around the school yard with access to paint among other things…Uh oh.

Now, you’d think it would result in absolute chaos, but I have to confess it was great fun! For such a small school I was extremely impressed with the level of art and creativity that was happening today. Not just slap some paint on paper…are we all having fun yet?…let’s call it ‘art’! Nope. They had 21 (count ‘em 21!) different activity stations where the kids could work, experiment and create…including glass painting (to attract butterflies in the wildlife garden), bog oak sculpture, turf sculpture, pottery wheel, paper making, metal working, digital photography, tie-dyeing, performance art, mural painting, and printing among others.

Then there was, of course, weaving and spinning. Weaving-Instructor-Máire loaned me her Louet Klik loom and a stack of weaving sticks. Kids made bracelets with the sticks and had a go on the loom. Fibre-Friend-Holly brought her spinning wheel to round out the fibre corner! Oh, the kids had a great time winding yarn around the sticks for a take-home souvenir and loved slipping the shuttle through the shed and beating the threads.

But once, maybe twice in the course of the day I think I saw it…

Perhaps one or two out of all those kids who tried the loom stayed for ‘just one more go’ and then came back later in the day for more! There was something compelling them to come back time and again. And they definitely had ‘the knack.’ So tell me, is this planting the seed of interest in the heart of a future weaver? Is it cultivating a new crop of weavers and spinners? Who knows? But I’d like to think that it’s a great first step to pass along the art of the craft to the next generation!

I am heartbroken.
Not to mention devastated.

I’m in Avoca sitting in front of a cheese/tomato scone and a large cappuccino. The cappuccino is ‘ok’ but, I have to say, not up to its usual high standard…no snazzy artwork. I look up…nope, Barista-Guy is not making ‘em. Well, I can live with that. Certainly everyone deserves a day off. Oh wait…he is here. So as I pay and get ready to leave, I tell him how I’ve immortalised him in my blog (see 13 June). It’s not his first publicity, to be sure, and certainly not one with the most notoriety, but out there nonetheless.

And then he says as if he didn’t have a care in the world, ‘Tomorrow’s my last day.’

Stunned silence.

‘I’m going to Canada.’

Now tell me…I’d like to know…what exactly did we ever do to Canada to tick them off that they’d take our Barista-Guy? Isn’t it a huge country? Don’t they have other baristas?

And so, like all good things…my days of lovely Avoca cappuccinos are over as I bid farewell to Barista-Guy (and begrudgingly wish him well), who by the way did tell me his name but as I was still reeling from the shock didn’t catch it, and will forever be Barista-Guy in my book.

I’m in greater London…in Loop as a matter of fact…Islington. I love that shop! Can I rent space and just live there for a while? Not only does it have luscious, yummy and scrumptious yarn (okay, I know it sounds like I’m having it for dinner, but ya know, it’s so delectable!), but it also has a way-cool assortment of knitted and felted products. A veritable feast for all my senses!

And then I saw it…

THE cozy.

Not your run-of-the-mill tea cozy, but, would you believe it, a cafetiere cozy! I had to have it! Not the cozy, mind you, I’m a knitter! I had to have the pattern. I’ve been wanting to make a cozy such as this for a long time! But they didn’t have patterns. Only the cozies. So, I did what every knitter does. Okay, I didn’t sketch it out…this is the 21st century! I took out my handy-dandy picture phone and surreptitiously snapped it and have subsequently destroyed any evidence of it. But you can’t copyright ideas, can you? At least Dan Brown would say not.

Great! Have needles…have yarn…have (picture of) pattern…ready to make some prototypes.

Version 1
WAAAAAAAAY too big! Made it out of Lopi…not a good choice due to fuzzy-felted-endproduct-factor. Could easily fit around a soup pot. Or perhaps fill it with water as a paddling pool for the kiddies. Nope. Try again.

Version 2
WAAAAAAAAY too small! Used some Gedifra yarn…lovely choice in an appropriately themed cappuccino-brown but didn’t have the dimensions sorted out. Kind of hard to retro fit what the pre-shrunken size ought to be. Not good at that. Too many variables…needle size, yarn gauge, how many stitches to cast on. I’m scratchin’ my head…

So, feeling a little like Goldilocks, I try for..

Version 3
JUUUUUUUUUST right! Yep, I’ve finally gotten it right and have come up with a cutie cafetiere cozy.

But what about the first two?

Well Version 1, found a good home with Aideen who has a party sized cafetiere. Didn’t know they made a 12 cupper! But she was happy to have it. It can also double as a shrug for her in cooler temps!

Version 2 was using up its shelf-life in my yarn cupboard…until one day, after I had dropped my PDA for the umpteenth time cuz it falls out of the holder, I thought, hey, why not give that little-cozy-that-wasn’t a second chance? So out it came to be sewn up and embroidered with a little Manos del Uruguay and there you have it…instant PDA diary cover with the all-important snap closure.

So I’m once again feeling good for having saved the environment by reconfiguring the wannabe cozy into something useful by giving it (am I anthropomorphising?) a new life!