Mockorange

I feel that A dog is guaranteed at some point. 

Well . . . yes.  Kes is, after all, a parody of me—Kestrel MacFarquhar?  Please.  At the same time she’s had a life of her own since the idea of writing about her first occurred to me—since the idea of writing about her revealed itself as possible.  And she wouldn’t be possible if she didn’t, if you follow me.   But I’ve told you that one of the ways I know a story is ready to stop slamming around the inside of my skull and start going down (more or less politely) on paper/screen is that I can read the first sentence in my mind’s eye.  That was true for KES too—and I have never been married to a Greek geek.  And, um, no, ‘Greek geek’ only occurred to me as I was settling down to write this blog.  But one of the things that makes her possible, makes writing fiction for the blog possible, is that every time I have to make a decision—every time I’m not sure what comes next—every time the story wants a little help from me, I think, okay, what would I do?  What would I want?  Very often the response from the story is NO WAY JOSE but it gives us somewhere to start negotiations.  I’m a kind of tent-peg to pin the flapping thing down in this frelling wind.  I don’t myself feel you get to rip yourself off quite this blatantly in, you know, real fiction.

            But when you’re guessing about what’s going to happen, well, keep me in mind, as it were.  Although I am not going to give her ME. 

b_twin

Or, to really make life trickier, she could find a stray alpaca. Good thing she has a van. 

Unfortunately the van is going home tomorrow*, although she’s going to end up with a somewhat unconventional (and possibly alpaca-friendly) vehicle.  Or anyway not the vehicle she had in mind.  The problem with alpacas is that I don’t know any.  I keep wondering what would happen if I tried to shine up to one of the local alpaca keepers.  ‘Hi, I write novels for a living, and I want to put an alpaca in one’.  I’m afraid they might back away from me slowly.  Or not so slowly.  I know lots of critters, so I’m happy to make one up till it comes alive and takes over—the dragons in DRAGONHAVEN are like that:  I knew that Jake was going to raise one, and I knew how that relationship began, and I could guess it would have a strong personality, but that’s about all I knew—but while your story is its own thing if it’s going to be worth reading by strangers, it can still only eat you.  If you haven’t got the vitamins and minerals it needs, it can’t grow that way.  I can’t grow an alpaca.  Maybe some day.  I love the whole guard-alpaca/llama thing. 

            There are a few alpacas at the critter shelter where Maggie works in SHADOWS.  But they barely have a (ahem) walk-on part.  Sigh. 

KathyS

Still imagining Wonderdog versus the Crickets of Doom.
With the cricket chorus breathing like Darth Vader. 

City Girl moves to the country for the first time at the age of (almost) forty?  And plans to live alone?  She so needs a dog.  I’d spent a fair amount of my childhood in the country, and then boomeranged back and forth between city and country for a while as a grown-up.  When I first left Manhattan and went back to Maine (this hadn’t been the plan, but that’s another story), I had housemates, and I still remember the way the nights sounded out in the sticks again.**  Then when I moved alone into my little house in Blue Hill—and that was even in a village, although it was (then) a small village and I was kind of tucked away in a corner of it—THE NOISES GOT LOUDER.***  

KatydidNL

Am I the only one who really wishes she had a copy of these Flowerhair books? 

I answered this already, didn’t I?  But since then . . . I’m trying to stay some eps ahead of what I’m posting, so I have some idea where I’m going†, and have recently written Kes remembering her first meeting with Flowerhair.  She’s like, what?  What’s happening?  —which is a fairly common author reaction, or at least this author reaction.  And I realised that I’m going to write that scene at least:  the what is happening scene.  At this point I have no idea if there will be more interpolations or not. 

b_twin

Roses.  Methinks our heroine may in trouble… After all, you generally just start with one 

Kes is already in more rose trouble than she realises.  Mwa ha ha ha ha ha.  

abigailmm

Don’t stop there! What DOES K stand for? Kareen? Kiss? Koala? Kaiulani? 

Snork.  I would have been devastated if one of you had guessed (and posted it) correctly, so I’m glad you didn’t.  At the same time . . . how many birds begin with ‘K’?  If you’d twigged that the parody was deliberate and, um, not very subtle.  I had various friends trying to suggest more mild mannered birds and I was all, No!  She is a RAPTOR!  Kestrel occurred to me very early on but I spent some time dithering (and reading up on raptors) in one of my fits of oh-gods-maybe-I’ve-only-got-it-half-right.  But she is Kes.  She just is. 

katinseattle

This is the woman who said she doesn’t like cliffhangers?  

The blog has ruined me in a number of ways.  I didn’t use to like puns either.  But I can’t imagine cranking out a blog without getting to play with the language punnily.  And cliffhangers . . . remember that torturing my readers is one of my pleasures.  The blog is a lot of work, and I couldn’t do it if it weren’t also fun.  And it’s not like I ever torture you extensively, or for long.†  

Mirkat

Oh small towns. How I love and loathe thee. No one ever used house numbers – we lived in the “Johnson” house for a decade. My husband’s family has now lived in the same small town for OVER TWENTY YEARS and had 7 kids go through the k-12 school and they still aren’t considered “local.”  

Sure.  But your nosy neighbour will also bring your washing in when it rains and you’re loading up at Godzilla Foods three towns away—possibly including picking up that package of frozen raspberry and onion lo-gluten bagels she asked for.  You can buy fresh lobster from the fisherman who’s a friend of yours at the end of the dock, and he’ll slip you a moose steak when he goes hunting that winter, even if he likes to pretend you’re too urban to deal with either one.  Myself, I’ll take my neighbours knowing who stays overnight at my house (ahem) in exchange for my knowing that if I’m ever snowed in, somebody will get me out.  And twenty years, eh.   Twenty years isn’t so long.  I’ve been twenty years in this particular five-mile stretch of Hampshire and I am certainly not a local. 

rainycity1

You mean like, ‘Kissy’? ‘Kasandra’? I wonder what other ‘K’ names we could come up with? An opportunity has been missed. 

Kalinda.  Kacey.  Kelly.  Katisha.  Remember I like Kes.  

rainycity1

Hold that thought.  I don’t write mysteries—although I think Cathy may have some evil plans, they may just be that it amuses her to see me jump and scream—but I’d be grateful not to have things given away.  But it’s probably only honourable to warn you that it’s a fair time before you see the shadow close enough to identify.  I’m not sure when myself.  It’s just that even tomorrow is still kind of a ways off and I don’t think it’s tomorrow. 

shalea

Would you have a problem with one downloading the episodes of the New Thing into one’s Nook? I’d hate to impinge on any sort of copyright whether it’s imposed by law or by the wishes of the author. 

How very nice of you to ask.  Thank you.  Extra points, a gold star and a very large chocolate brownie.  The short form is, as you already know, that I can’t stop you.  The very slightly longer form is . . . I want you to enjoy KES so if putting her on your Nook makes you happy, then please feel free.  The very, very slightly longer yet version is that I would like to hope that there will eventually be some official pulled-together version of KES, but I can’t see that far into the future, and at the moment she’s only about 20,000 words long ( . . . I told you I’m writing ahead).  You will be the first to know. . . . 

* * *

* Tomorrow in the story.  Tomorrow is a long way away in terms of episodes. 

** Right down the road from E B White.  Just by the way. 

*** Although it’s true I had a stream outside my bedroom window. 

† It also gives Cathy a chance to look over my shoulder before it goes public. 

† Unless you’re going to hold it against me how long it takes me to write proper published books.  Which would be very unkind of you.

Today has been a long spectacular hurtle that even almost six years with hellhounds ill-prepared me for.   I am expecting to fall off my chair and lie on the floor moaning and twitching feebly . . . probably before I finish this blog.  I can possibly semaphore to Darkness what buttons to press to hang it* but I do not guarantee my usual elegant peroration and epigrammatic finish.**

            I was so unnerved by Oisin’s praise last Friday that I’ve hardly known how to practise.  This is that old ‘something to lose’ thing.  The great thing about beginnings is that you don’t know how yet.  It’s all good.  Once you start learning anything . . . you have somewhere to fall.  Down.  It’s very frustrating having no particular talent—or in this case, voice—but it’s also liberating.  I don’t have to take it seriously.  I can obsess, because I will obsess, frivolously.  La la la la la la.  And (for better or worse) it’s not like I’ve discovered my inner Beverly Sills or anything.***  But there are increasing numbers of (fleeting) moments when there is maybe even something going on with my singing . . . and occasionally, thrillingly, a few of these moments string themselves together.  It’s not the high F in Che Faro—F is not high—it’s the terrifying sticking your head above the parapet.  This is your big moment . . . Noooooooo.  Eeeeeeeeep.  And I tend to sing it accordingly.†  Plus that ratbag ‘ben’ you have to sing it on, which is not singer-friendly and which does not help.  The other song I particularly wanted to look at is The Minstrel Boy—yes, I am a sap, sue me—because I start the run up to that first (unhigh) F without much trouble and it’s like ‘okay I can do this’ and then on the second run up to that same F I lose my nerve and get all thin and squeaky.  I think it’s something about emotional engagement—you may remember that this song got mixed up with Diana’s death for me—and it’s like suddenly, whoa, uh, no, maybe not.  But I love the song.  I want to sing it.  Singing is so frelling revealing, even when you do it badly.  Your Blasted Body Is Your Blasted Instrument, Get Used to It.  Um.  And I don’t know what Nadia did—I never know what Nadia did, even though she tells me††—but my last go through was rough and raw and rather awful, but there was something there, you know?  My problem is mostly about shutting down.  This was about opening up to the extent that I could no longer control it.  Speaking of eeeeep.  Eeeeeeep.

            The day was already going a lick.  I’d got down to the mews late (of course) and had my head down over my computer slightly longer than I should have and thus fed hellhounds lunch slightly later than I should have.  But they were milling around my feet looking for Mysteriously Dropped Chicken Bits Oops so I (foolishly) wasn’t expecting trouble.  Whereupon Chaos decided not to eat.  This was absolutely classic Chaos—he was clearly hungry, it wasn’t that he’d picked up some bloody tourist’s dropped chicken bones in the street yesterday—but some frelling ritual or other for a Monday in an even-numbered year when Aldebaran is in the ascendant and Jupiter aligns with Mars had been left incomplete.  ARRRRRGH.  At slightly after the last minute he ate after all YAAAAAAAY, and we then tore back to the cottage because I had an errand to run on my way to Nadia†††.

            I was at best going JUST to make it back to New Arcadia for Niall to pick me up and blast off to Curlyewe.  But I made it.  And then we sat outside the Curlyewe church for fifteen minutes because our handbell apprentices were late.‡ 

            We rang handbells till people started showing up for tower practise.  And then I grabbed my new tower.  And . . . the worst of it is, I like Curlyewe.  Nice bells.  Very nice bells.  And, furthermore, eight of them.  We rang Grandsire Triples.‡‡  The last thing I need is another Monday tower that is, furthermore, too far away. 

              And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to fall out of my chair. 

* * *

* No, you’re wrong.  If I can learn to circumvent the WordPress gremlins and hang a blog post . . . so can a moderately intelligent dog. 

               Of the local selection, Darkness is the one who is willing to find problems outside his immediate self-focus interesting.  Chaos . . . not so much.  Chaos does not speak the standard human-canine language.  There certainly are days when I shout YOU ARE THE DUMBEST ANIMAL I HAVE EVER MET . . . but I’m speaking to myself.^  Sighthounds have been bred for thousands of years^^ to make their own decisions.  They can’t be asking you for help when they’re flat out after a gazelle.  This has its drawbacks in modern urban life.  Darkness, however, is clearly trainable as most of the world understands dog training, and I am a Bad Owner because I am neglecting this because I don’t know what to do with his brother.  Chaos has his own view of the structure of the universe and while I am the centre of it—more theatrically so than I am Darkness’ holy altar of all—manifestations of his zealous dedication are his own and not particularly open to negotiation or adjustment.^^^ 

            Anyway.  If this post ends abruptly and there are a few short dark steely-grey hairs drifting across the margins, you know why. 

^ Today, for example.  I had a major hissy fit meltdown this afternoon—worst in some time.  Worst since I started singing when my computer is really pissing me off because screaming hurts my voice. +   The cause is that most of my ME symptoms, barring the really life-stopping no-brain, what planet is this, no-energy, never mind I don’t care worst ones, have all come back in a mean-spirited rabble, as a result of . . . wait for it . . . my daring to eat a little restaurant food with Fiona the other night.  I ordered carefully, it was a small meal and there was nothing in it I’m not allowed.++  All my joints hurt, sleep is something that happens to other people, and anything I eat makes me ill.  THIS IS SO GREAT.  THIS IS SO, SO, SO GREAT.  I was running upstairs at the cottage just before I shot off to a long rest-of-day series of events and one of my frelling knees gave out and I had suddenly  Had.  It.  Paroxysm ensued, complete with radical and substantial screaming.  This was right before my voice lesson.  It’s also a really idiotic waste of energy, when you already have ME. 

            I’ve never met a dog this stupid. 

+ I admit this works better some times than other times.  There was a fair amount of shouting at the Metropolitan Opera last night.  

++ Okay, what was in that tea bag? 

^^ No, really.  Salukis have been around recognisably since 7000 BC or so.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saluki 

^^^ See:  eating. 

** What?  

*** All right.  I admit it.  Siiiiiiigh. 

†  Siiiiiiigh.  Another category of sigh. 

†† Except occasionally.  When she invokes Teacher Secrets. 

††† My watchband broke.  Months ago.  It’s a perfectly good watch.  And they don’t make watchbands for it any more.  Finally about the third jeweller I took it to said that she thought their repairpersons could do it.  And they did.  But it still doesn’t close correctly and I predict the mend is not going to last long.  Then what.

            And so to cheer myself up, on the way back to Wolfgang, I made a lightning raid on WH Smith and bought . . . five knitting magazines.  Just to see what they’re like, you know?  The one I was looking for was Vogue Knitting, because they keep trying to sell me a subscription to my iPad, and I have this nostalgic craving to see it in hard copy first.^  On first glance, VK wins hands down for the yarn porn aspect.

            I need more stuff to read.

^ One of the ones I bought is American, so it’s not that imported knitting magazines are too subversive for the UK market. 

‡ It’s okay.  I was knitting. 

‡‡ Only a plain course.  But something went Horribly Wrong and I thought nooooooo I can’t even ring a plain course any more, kill meeeeee, but Niall told me afterward it wasn’t me, it was someone else.  Well, I’m sorry for the someone else, but I’m relieved to be permitted to go on living.  Even if I did make a, ahem, dog’s dinner of Cambridge.

I have just been trying to book next season’s tickets to Live from the Met(ropolitan Opera) and . . . ARRRRRGH.  Glasnost and jelly donuts THERE ARE A LOT OF FRELLING AWFUL WEB SITES IN THE WORLD.  The heavy hand of my suspicion falls on the shoulder of the Met Opera itself in this case, although the home site of the national Rapscallion Cinema chain is not my favourite battleground either arrrrrrrrgh.  But in the first place you have to book every individual opera separately.  This is such a confounded nuisance it literally loses them some of my custom—if I’m wavering about whether I want to see The Pirate, the Anglerfish and the Epipelagic Zone* I’ll decide against it just so I don’t have to groan through their horrible purchasing system again.  This includes timing you out if you take too long.  They timed me out three times tonight.  Once it was because their site had hung.**  The other two times I wasn’t anywhere near the end of their so-called time limit, they just threw me out for laughs.  And then I had to START ALL OVER AGAIN.  Now, I am a member of the sodding Rapscallion community, for the single purpose of being able to book Live at the Met a week or something early before rank and file are allowed in***—which system is at least finally working.†  When I log on it greets me by name, and is happy to present me with my back catalogue of many, many Met Live tickets.   But the moment I try to book another one . . . they want my name, several times, my email address, several times†† . . . you’ve got something like ten screens to get through FOR EVERY GODSFRELLING SODBLASTED TICKET, including things like ‘choose credit/debit card’ and you click the drop down AND THERE IS EXACTLY ONE CHOICE:  CREDIT/DEBIT CARD.  But if you don’t tick it, the page wipes itself and tells you you need to choose a credit/debt card.  There are also at least two screens that merely say ‘confirm’.  One of them is the one that crashed me.  One of them is also the screen that prevented me from booking Francesca di Rimini at all.  It hung for a while and then said Oops!  There’s a problem!, and crashed me back to the beginning.  I tried three times and gave up.  I don’t know whether I want to see Francesca di Rimini anyway.†††

            The day did not get off to a good start when we had a frelling tourist invasion.‡  Go.  Away.   I feel you notice the ‘not our town, we don’t give a rat’s ass’ much more strongly in a village than you do in a city—I remember this from Maine.  In New York City it’s the tourists who are at risk.‡‡  Today’s high points were (a) when hellhounds and I were rolling along the wide green way to the mews and found an SUV the size of at least one House of Parliament rolling down the PEDESTRIAN PAVEMENT straight at us.  He wanted to park on the grass so he didn’t have to pay the fee in one of the car parks.  Like it costs a lot in a town the size of New Arcadia, you know?  But most of the green way is blocked off from the road by trees.  If you want to be the world’s biggest asshole, you have to drive on the pedestrian pavement.  ARRRRRRRRGH.  And (b) when both hellhounds picked up chicken bones.  I want to kill people who throw their trash around anyway, and I really want to kill people who throw food trash around . . . but I suppose it’s just conceivable that some of our overweight not-at-all-wild‡‡‡ ducks might eat sandwich-ends before the rats got there, but CHICKEN BONES?  People who throw chicken bones on the street should be buried standing up under the cornerstones of important civic buildings, and thus be of some use to society at last.

            Okay.  I’m not in a good mood.

            But, speaking of wildlife—and of tantrums—cross-species adolescence, I love it.  After various responsibilities and crises had been dispatched I said THE HELL WITH IT and rushed out into the garden, where I dug and toiled and planted for . . . longer than I should have, but I came indoors much more cheerful.§  My adolescent robin was perched in the apple tree right outside the greenhouse—the greenhouse where the saucer of mealworms lives§§ having a complete paddy that dad wasn’t dedicated to bringing him mealworms.  Hey, you big fat turkeybutt, go get your own mealworms.§§§ 

* * *

* They all die in the end.  Including the entire crew of the bathysphere.  But the soprano goes out on some amazing top notes from the helium.  

** You’re sitting there, knitting furiously^, and glancing periodically at the large banner heading that says ‘do not hit refresh or not only will this transaction crash and burn but we will refuse to let you back on our delicate, easily disturbed site forever and your kitchen will blow up’.  So you don’t and . . . tick tick tick . . . eventually you time out, and then you get a snooty message telling you that if you’re going to frell about you deserve what you get.  ARRRRRRRGH. 

^ Got a couple more inches done yesterday, thanks to a forty-five minutes late bride.  Who as a result got about seven minutes of ringing because most of the band had to go on to another wedding.  Why it’s not in the contract that you’re hiring your ringers for exactly one hour from the time your wedding is scheduled to be over . . . I have no idea.  Us hoi polloi keep suggesting this and the higher-ups keep muttering inaudibly and not doing anything. 

*** After three years I have my seat.  If My Seat is ever already taken I may have palpitations.  I even found myself, this time, thinking, as I viewed with deepest gloom the six hours of Parsifal, that I wouldn’t book now, I’d wait till nearer time and if My Seat wasn’t taken . . . ^ 

^ This won’t actually help me much.  It won’t be taken.  The long Wagners are only attended by the faithful, which doesn’t often include me.  There are many valid excuses for staying at home and doing your knitting from the comfort of your own sofa.  I have ME.  ‘I can’t stand that misogynistic Aryan bully, I don’t care if he knew a few chords’ is also valid.  One of the things I have against Shakespeare is he goes on so.  Wagner??   Dear merciful gods.  

† First year I tried it, they took my membership money . . . and then declared ‘special events’, as for example the Met Live broadcasts, were not included.  GAAAAAAAARGH. 

†† They will also throw me out randomly for having ‘non matching email ID’.  The first time, maybe.  Typos are always a possibility.  The second, third and fourth times, no.  I guarantee my email address was accurate.  But the gremlins were clearly getting bored. 

††† And I decided I really can’t face Rigoletto in 1960s Las Vegas.  Gods, demons and bell-bottoms.  Why are directors allowed to pull idiot feckless crap like this?  WHY?^  Stick to Broadway, honeybun.  They love you there.  

^ If every critic in the solar system gives it five stars, I’ll reconsider.+  

+ But My Seat will have been taken, for a five-star Rigoletto. 

‡ Trippers who stroll up my cul de sac because it’s quaint and part of their Sunday afternoon expedition should have boiling oil or at least hot borscht poured on them from an upper storey windows.  I keep thinking about it.  You know how beetroot stains—?  So, you want a memento of New Arcadia?  It can be arranged. 

‡‡ ‘Hey, wanna buy a nice bridge?’ 

‡‡‡ And Darkness is going to nail one, one day.  I’m just hoping he doesn’t take both himself and me into the river in the process.  There would be language.  

§ Until I decided to tackle the Met Live. 

§§ I wouldn’t dare show my face in the garden if I didn’t top up the saucer both when I come out and when I finally go in again.  In between I may be sworn at, but there are some limits. 

§§§ Although speaking of the robin’s unbridled passion for mealworms:  while I was inconveniently using the potting table in the greenhouse, I’d put the saucer farther in, on a shelf near the other door.  Dad robin was not best pleased with this arrangement, and kept whirring in and out trying to dodge around me (and the paddying offspring in the apple tree.  Dratblast it, where is the new nest?).  I’d come back to the greenhouse when, apparently, he wasn’t looking, and was bending over to fetch a trowel off the ground as he came fizzing back in again—more or less as I was starting to straighten up.  Both of us were dismayed—and neither of us stopped fast enough, and I briefly had a robin on the back of my neck.  He trampolined off again . . .

ELEVEN

It was still early, and there was nothing back at the Friendly Campfire for me but a rose-bush and a screaming skull.  And some promiscuously rustling trees, and maybe some threatening crickets clicking their mandibles.  (It’s not their wings, you know.  It’s their teeth.  Hmm.  Note to self:  Flowerhair Six:  Crickets.)  Warily I ordered tea, trying not to hope that the Eats’ management responsible for the subtlety of the meatloaf, the perfection of the cole slaw and the ecstatic climax of the cherry pie might extend to include the awareness that imprisoning good tea in bags is a criminal act, and that bad tea is . . . my mind wandered.  Perhaps Flowerhair, escaping from the attack mushrooms, might meet a marching army of camellia sinensis bound for world domination. . . .   Billie pointed to another chalkboard displaying a list of teas.  At its foot was a glass teapot containing a mesh infuser.   I blinked.  She was looking at me, smiling faintly.  “We also have floor-sweepings in bags, if you prefer a vicious toxic rush.”

“No, no,” I said hastily.  “I’ll have . . . uh . . . Golden Tippy First Curlicue Doodah Supreme Whatsit.”

“Mug or pot?”

“Oh—mug,” I said regretfully.  But the mug, when it came, might have passed for a ewer, and it had a red Chinese dragon on it—the hairy, bristly kind.  The tea was glorious.  As I was rolling it around in my mouth like an oenophile engaging with a charming little chardonnay, I ran a finger down the dragon’s shiny enamelled back.  I was tired, and my eyes had been staring at cars and roads and highway markings for far too long, which is probably why the dragon winked at me.   Well, why shouldn’t a dragon enjoy a stroke occasionally?   I rubbed its whiskery forehead.  And it’s a funny thing, but my tea stayed hot to the last mouthful.

I didn’t quite need the wheelbarrow, going back to the motel, but I may have stopped and leaned on a fire hydrant or a phone pole once or twice.  It was a fine clear night and . . . cold.  It was also only nine o’clock and the streets were nearly empty.  I had a sudden dizzying, disorienting, miserabling wash of nostalgia for my town, where at 9 p.m. the evening would be barely starting.  If you went for a stroll at 9 p.m. in my old neighbourhood you’d be knocked down by joggers so blissed out on endorphins and whatever was playing on their iPods that they never saw you, and then trampled underfoot by the diamond-encrusted brigade whose life contract stated that they would not recognise, acknowledge nor intermingle with the hoi polloi.  Sometimes if I was struggling with a plot point (had Aldetruda brought her collapsible stake in her tiny, clearly-too-small-to-contain-professional-weaponry evening bag when she agreed to meet with the virago’s vavasour’s vassal at his box at the opera?  The vassal wouldn’t be alone, of course, and not only can you only wedge one collapsible stake in a bag made to contain a lipstick, a lace handkerchief and a Saturday night special, the drawback to a collapsible stake is that you need an extra second to shake the thing out and make it lock, and extra seconds while dealing with vampires tend to be in short supply) the competition for sidewalk space could be pretty annoying, but it did serve to keep you alert.

Doubtless it was lack of alertness that was making me see shadows that didn’t have acceptable reasons for being.  Maybe it was something to do with starlight and moonlight and too few streetlights.  Or nostalgia.  At home—no, where I used to live—between headlights and store lights and the reflective sequins that might grace your current pair of All Stars and the rhinestones that might be gleaming from your t-shirt plus the local contingent of the diamond-encrusted brigade flinching away from you, there was always an acceptable reason for shadows.  I looked sharply to my right—down, indeed, Schmitz Street, the street that Homeric Homes was on—and the low trotting shadow disappeared.  If it had ever been there in the first place.  Maybe I should get my rhinestone t shirts out.   They were one of the things I had kept.

I was moving idly.  This had nothing to do with shadows, and everything to do with the fact that it was only 9 p.m. and I didn’t think any good would come of my plugging in my laptop at the motel and pretending to do anything—and the fact that I’d just eaten enough food for six Mastiffs and a Chihuahua (the Chihuahua would probably be stuck with the cole slaw).  I wandered a few feet down the side street and stopped in front of Homeric Homes’ window.  I wasn’t really checking out my peripheral vision.  I was looking at the house posters hanging in the window—New Iceland, Amity, Bittern Marsh, Cold Valley.   I could see a couple of other houses in Cold Valley, but the descriptions of aluminum sidings and septic tanks were failing to engage my interest.  I’d forgotten to ask Serena where she lived. . . .

There it was again.

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.

We rang a quarter peal tonight. 

            Huh?  Yes, my reaction exactly.

            Handbells are in some slight disarray at present, chiefly on account of Gemma being so inconvenient as to change surgeries/clinics and therefore change her Thursday evening schedule.   At the moment Niall and I are double-booked for Thursdays with Colin and Fridays with Gemma, and I have said, in a squeaky, high-pitched voice that I can’t do two handbell evenings a week*, but people’s lives keep getting in the way** so what is getting rung (or wrung) from week to week mostly isn’t two evenings on handbells anyway. 

            Today has been somewhat overshadowed by yesterday’s extreme excitements and I got moving [sic] late even for me.  I had also promised to take Peter to the garden centre this afternoon, this afternoon being the only time even remotely available for the foreseeable future, and if I didn’t do it quickly, this being the time of year when you really don’t want holes in your borders, and anything you plant will, if you’re lucky, riot and burgeon***, Peter might do something drastic like buy a garden gnome at the farmer’s market.†

            I’m broke and my garden is already full of Little Things Waiting to Be Potted On (Again)†† and the only thing I wanted was pink snapdragons†††  so I’d brought the hellhounds because while Peter was cruising I took them for a hurtle.  The only problem with this diversion tactic is that the footpath possibilities around this particular garden centre are unusually excellent, so the temptation is to come back for a nice hellhound hurtle and while I’m in the area . . . ‡

            So we zapped home again and I’d repotted the horrifyingly rootbound viola, which will probably reel and stagger a little and then come on again famously, when Colin showed up early.  Niall usually is early.  So we sat down and Niall started unveiling handbells and said, What do you want to ring?  And I said, well, due to circumstances more or less beyond my control I have No Brain so it had better be undemanding. 

            I know! said Colin brightly.  We should ring a quarter (of bob minor)!  Just to prove we can!  Since it’s just the three of us again!

            What?

            I think I agreed‡‡‡ because it was going to be less awful than trying to struggle through plain courses of frelling Cambridge, which, now that Thursdays are the three of us again, is going to make my life a misery. 

            And it was less awful.  It was even (whisper it) kind of fun.

 * * *

* Which doesn’t take into account the occasional evening at Curlyewe.  Curlyewe tower practise is Monday, so Niall has begun tentatively trying to get over there one Monday a month, they ring handbells before tower practise, and then he stays on—and Curlyewe, like pretty much everywhere else in this area, is hurting for ringers, so they’re glad to have a visitor, especially a good ringer like Niall.  I’d quite like to ‘grab’ Curlyewe^ and supposing there’s nothing particularly strange about the tower or its bells I’m a good-enough mediocre ringer I can probably contribute something to the practise.  Probably.

            Except for the little fact that Monday is my voice lesson, and Curlyewe is well on the wrong side of Mauncester.  Niall leaves New Arcadia at six . . . and I usually get home five or ten past. Niall suggested helpfully that I could just come straight on from my voice lesson, which would probably make up the time . . . uh huh.  It’s twice as far as any of Colin’s towers, there’s handbells as well as tower bells and no break anywhere. . . and I’m shattered on a Monday that I have to drive myself to Colin’s practise and I’ve had a cup of tea and a sit-down between voice lesson and bell practise.  I don’t think so.

            And so, because I am deranged and Niall is my bad angel, I’m going to try to blast back from voice lesson on Monday, pick up an apple and a cup of tea with a lid on it^^, and be flattened into the passenger seat of Niall’s car^^^ as he stamps on the ‘go’ pedal a few minutes later than usual.  

^ Grabbing a tower is going somewhere to ring where you’ve never rung before, specifically to say that you have.  Quite a few good ringers do this in a low-key way because they’re good ringers and like to travel around ringing in different towers and that’s fine.  Obsessive tower grabbing is kind of frowned on, but ringing somewhere you haven’t rung before because the opportunity arises is normal, in so far as bell ringing and bell ringers can ever be considered normal. 

^^ Whoever suggested knitting a slightly oversized egg cozy for a tea mug cozy—thank you.  I’m going to try that.  Supposing I can figure out how.  And whoever said that the steam from the cup is going to soggify the cosy past usefulness, well, I won’t know till I’ve tried it.  I drink my cups of tea pretty fast+ but not quite fast enough, and I like it hot.  Maybe I should knit several, and then I can string up a little tiny washing-line where I peg them out to dry . . . . 

+ If I drank them SLOWER I would drink FEWER. 

^^^ which is only a few years younger than Wolfgang, and has more miles on it 

** Although, life . . . in Niall’s case this probably means that he’s had an offer to ring a handbell full peal of Snarkalepsy Draggleharrow and is cutting us. 

*** Did I tell you WE HAD ANOTHER (*&^%$£”!!!!!!!!!! FROST A FEW NIGHTS AGO?  THE MIDDLE OF UNGLEDAGBLAGUNDERING MAY IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND AND WE HAD A FROST?  I’m assuming it was not severe and the stuff still underground is fine.  That’s FINE. 

† Which attracts some pretty disturbing riffraff.  I haven’t seen any garden gnomes yet but then I’m usually hellhounded, and we don’t linger. 

            I could always knit the gnome something . . . inappropriate.  Although ‘wire’ and ‘garrotte’ are the words that come first to mind, which, in relation to garden gnomes, are highly appropriate. 

            . . . Although I’ve always kind of wanted a flamingo . . . 

†† And at least one juvvie robin.  Yaaaay.  Bumptious little so and so.  There may be more than one, but so far I’m only seeing one at a time, and he’s so breathtakingly foolhardy—as far as he’s concerned, I’m the Mealworm Lady, and there are no ifs, ands or buts—I’m assuming the one I’m seeing is the same one, although I’m still hoping there may be a slightly more sensible, reserved one or two still lurking in the shrubbery.  But he, and siblings if any, are clearly flying.

            I’ve also clearly got two adults . . . where are you nesting this time?  I’m not going to supply mealworms to ungrateful robins that go nest in other people’s gardens.  Mum’ll be disappearing any minute now, I assume, to sit on the new eggs.  Whiiiiiine.  

  ††† I did very well.  I somehow picked up a variegated-leaf so-called hardy fuchsia, which they never are with me, but if I keep ’em warm they usually do very well, and a fabulous rusty-orange osteospermum AND THEY HAD PINK SNAPDRAGONS YAAAAAAY^ so I dumped these three modest acquisitions in Peter’s cart and ran out the door. 

^ I’d bought yellow and white elsewhere, but they were all out of pink which will not do.  

‡ We got back to find Peter unloading his cart into the boot and I picked up the gorgeous black-leaved cimicifuga and said oh gods, I almost bought this, I love black leaves, and Peter said, helpfully, I can go back and get you one, I remember exactly where they are.  Oh . . . all right, I said, folding instantly, and then, while he was off finding me a black cimicifuga, I was finishing unloading his cart and oh gods, they have dierama, I adore dierama, they just frelling keep dying on me . . . and I COULDN’T STAND IT so I locked the car (with hellhounds and my knapsack in it, and all the rubbish from the boot on the roof waiting to be restowed) and raced off to find Peter and the cimicifuga to ask where he found the dierama^, and then on the way back from the dierama I fell over a table of (horribly rootbound, just by the way) violas and HAD TO HAVE ALL OF THEM (I also adore pansies and that entire family) but pulled myself together and only bought one . . .

            So, having gone for one plant^^, I came home with six.  Which is really VERY GOOD. 

^ WORD YOU RATBAG WILL YOU FRELLING STOP AUTOCORRECTING DIERAMA TO DIORAMA?  IF I MEANT DIORAMA I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN DIORAMA 

^^ Well, one tray of plants.  Snapdragons are plebeian annual bedding plants.  You buy them in trays.  Six snapdragons counts as ONE PLANT.  Yes it does.   

‡‡ And I was fine with Ascension Day as soon as I was sure it was about Jesus and not the queen.

IT’S HALF PAST MIDNIGHT, I’M FINALLY EATING DINNER* AND I STILL HAVE TO WRITE THE BOONDOGGLING BLOG.**

            Fiona had booked tickets for the Gigspanner*** concert months and months ago.  And months.  I think she booked them slightly before the tour had been confirmed or the dates settled on.†  This is also before the doodle situation broke down under the strain of trying to write a novel in five months††.  Our previous set up has been when there’s a concert in view she takes the day off her real job††† and comes down for a few hours during the day and terrifies some corner of my office/files/desk/attic into behaving itself, and then we frolic in the evening.  But while I still have many, not to say numberless other corners of my life that could use Fiona’s services, with 1,000,000,000 doodles‡ hanging over my head like 1,000,000,000 Damoclesian swords I can’t frelling face my office, let alone sort out something for Fiona to do in/with it.‡‡

            But it’s a long frelling way for Fiona to come for a concert—even longer when it involves better than an hour of surplus driving to come and fetch me.‡‡‡  And then another one to take me home.  So I was casting about for something to make the day more value-added . . . and devised the cunning plan that we could go see AVENGERS ASSEMBLE in twoD at a theatre that involves the Greater Footling Triangle, a lesser known but statistically more savage area of geophysical mayhem than the better known Bermuda.  The attraction of this theatre (aside from the straightforward appeal of 2D) is that, if it weren’t for the geophysical mayhem part, where you turn right and find yourself on Mars, it would be my best option for some of the other live-streaming opera broadcasts that are becoming increasingly popular. 

            Fiona, who is agreeably broad-minded, agreed to this plan.  And then the frelling theatre changed the times on us.  And we were no longer going to have time to scamper from the cinema to the concert several towns over before Roger started beating up Peter’s fiddle.§  A mad flurry of emails ensued.           

            We compromised.  We decided to go to a new yarn store. 

            But the yarn store happens to be in pretty much the same area as the cinema, so Fiona offered to take us past the cinema first, so we could find it—who knows, we might even go to a film there some day—before we went on to the yarn store.§§  So she fired up her satnav and . . .

            I think possibly I have been rude about her satnav before?  Shut up, Billy.  Shut up, Billy.  You get various choices for your voice.  Fiona has Billy Connolly.  The Scottish accent, when he’s saying sensible things, is pleasing.  He rather too frequently deviates from the path of virtue however.  Clearly satnav tech is not proof against the Greater Footling Triangle.   Or the Greater Footling Multidimensional Roundabout, where, whichever exit you take, it’s the wrong one, and Billy will be telling you to turn around in a minute.

            HE EVENTUALLY TOOK US TO A SEWAGE STATION AND THEN CLAIMED WE’D ARRIVED AT OUR DESTINATION.  I know most modern films are rubbish but . . . §§§

            We finally saw the theatre—on the wrong side of the dual carriageway [four lane highway] of course—on our way back, retracing our steps to find the yarn store. 

            The yarn store was extremely satisfactory.  Extremely.#  Oh dear.  And as soon as I get this posted I am going to race upstairs and discover that . . . I haven’t got enough of the yarn I want to use for the new pattern I just bought## with the idea of it being my first cardigan.###

            And the concert was fabulous.~  It was also long, which is why it was half past midnight before I even looked at my computer, but it was the kind of long that when you finally look at a clock you think, it can’t be that late.  That second set was short, I know it was.  Live music is just . . . necessary.  Technology these days is so amazing (sometimes even for good) that it’s easy to sit at home with your 1,000,000 favourite CDs and think that’s all you need.  It isn’t.  You need it live sometimes too:  you need to see the musicians doing it and hear it as they do it.  You need to pick up the electricity of what they do together—which is not recordable.  Oh, yes, certainly, some performers can put over that fresh vibe to be caught for the ages by the latest equipment. ~~  But it’s not the same.  And these guys really connect, with each other, with you the audience.  Love love love.  Why aren’t they famous? 

* * *

* Well, we had a dinner-like meal at about 6.  But I don’t eat dinner at 6. 

** Yes, I did think of holding New Thing 10 one more day because I knew I’d be back late tonight.  But I didn’t think I’d be this late . . . and I also knew it would be a day rife with blog material.  I possibly didn’t know how rife. . . . 

*** http://www.gigspanner.com/ 

† What?  She hired a good prognosticator.  How do you think? 

†† Which I also have signally failed to do.  Siiiiiiiigh.  It has not been one of my great years. 

††† What?  Oh, she makes jgrrmgles.  To order.  There’s a long waiting list.  She’s the best jgrrmgle maker in Britain, and possibly the world.  

‡ And a few other random items 

‡‡ Hellhounds and I occupy a narrow strip near the door.  The rest is . . . AAAAAAAUGH. 

‡‡‡ See:  I don’t drive much.  Especially to anywhere I don’t already know.  Yes, this means that anywhere I hadn’t already learnt the route to by the winter of 2000, when I went down with acute ME, I probably won’t drive to now.  And don’t I hate it when they change the road layout. 

§ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Rx2KSW3-c&feature=youtube_gdata

Blondviolinist, avert your eyes. 

§§ Film and yarn possible in the same expedition.  Hmmmmm. 

§§§ Which was being renovated or expanded or something.  We sat there while the giant thing with caterpillar tread trundled around moving heaps of rock in an aimless manner and Fiona fired up her iPhone—Pooka, I might add, was refusing to connect:  the signal was fine but she was sitting there going Can’t! Won’t! And you can’t make me!—and ascertained that the post code on the cinema web site was wrong.  Oh.  That’s helpful. 

# Ask Fiona. 

## Yes, I know you don’t knit from stash.  Stash is stash.  If you want to knit something you have to go out and buy yarn.  But I find that—um—sometimes you do want to knit up some of your yarn.  That sometimes you bought yarn not merely because it was gorgeous and was clinging round your leg and refusing to get back on its shelf and what can you do when it knows your name?, but because you want to wear it or throw it over the back of your sofa or something.  That you bought it sure that the pattern it yearns to become is out there somewhere, just possibly not in this shop and besides you’ve already been here six hours fondling yarn and your hellhounds need walking and your husband wants to know where you are and if you’re ever coming home^.  But you want to, you know, knit this yarn up, even if maybe it will have a sort of interregnum period of looking like stash.  Um—does this mean I’m not a real knitter? 

^ And when, bringing your purchases into the house, if you will fit through the door.  

## Hint:  open front.  No buttons.  No buttonholes.  And with only a few changes.  Like about six inches shorter^ and the sleeves will be STRAIGHT not belled.  Ugh^^.  The sleeves will probably also be longer to accommodate my gorilla-length arms.  Sigh.  I am looking FORWARD to sleeves that are LONG ENOUGH.^^^ 

^ Maybe I’ll have enough yarn after all. 

^^ Maybe it makes a pretty line.  All I can see is ‘gets into your tea, your soup, the mouth of the dog you’re petting’ etc.   It’s like Fiona was wearing lady shoes today and then complaining about the stairs.  You’re wearing lady shoes.  

^^^ And for anyone with a memory so good you ought to be ashamed of yourself, yes, I have at least one other First Cardigan, and I even bought the yarn for that one at the same time I bought the pattern.  The problem with it is that it pretty much trumpets EASY KNIT FIRST CARDIGAN, which kind of puts me off because I’m like that.  I still like it and still plan to make it (!!!) but . . . I think I’d like to make something that isn’t quite so obviously holding my hand and saying ‘there, there’ first.+ 

+ Says the woman who is about a third of the way through her third leg warmer having still not sewn up the first two.  But I started sewing up last night and . . . it’s working.  Sewing up was my downfall last time—my squares looked reasonably okay individually, but as soon as I started sticking them together their jolly little eccentricities became serious vice and corruption.  Sigh.  Some day I will have the world’s largest knitted hellhound blanket.   Also the most irregular knitted hellhound blanket of any size. 

~ And I have a crush on the drummer.  Just by the way.  And none of the youtube clips do him justice, so don’t give me that ‘ewwww’.  

~~ Gigspanner has two excellent albums out themselves^ . . . but it’s still not the same. 

^ Although they’d better record their Tom o’ Bedlam soon or I shall grow rude and violent

The Story So Far…

TEN

Very briefly I considered saying Katie or Katherine or Klytemnestra.  No.  I was getting enough of a new life as it was, without adding a drastic name change.  Besides, my name was on my books, although I could probably claim it was an alias.  “Kes,” I said, and hesitated again.  “Short for Kestrel.  My mother breeds dogs and she was in her birds of prey phase when I was born.”

Billie laid two menus down on the table between us and said, “Specials on the chalkboard.  The pork chops are really good.  Ryuu made the applesauce today.”

“Go on,” said Serena to me.

I picked up the menu.  “It could have been a lot worse.  I could have been White-Rumped Vulture or Crested Serpent-Eagle.  Or Dark Chanting-goshawk.  Or Pale Chanting-goshawk.  D’you suppose they’d let me have the meatloaf with the applesauce?”

“Yes,” said Serena.  “I like Chanting-goshawk.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “So did Mom.  One of her foundation bitches was Chanting-goshawk.  Chan Five is winning stuff now.  And there was a time when my nickname was Bat-hawk.  Don’t ask.”

“Why do I have the feeling your mom and my mom would get along?”

I grinned.  “Well, they stopped with me,” I said.  “You’re the youngest, right?”

Serena laughed again.  Between the prospect of real food and the sound of real human laughter I was beginning to feel almost good.  “Next youngest.”

Serena had the pork chops and I had the meatloaf.  Billie put a tureen of applesauce on the table between us, and another tureen of cole slaw.  Serena was deep in conversation with the offspring when the food came.  “No you may not have microwave popcorn for supper.  More microwave popcorn.  This isn’t getting you the sympathy vote from me, you know.  So climb on your bike and come here.  If you order and eat some green vegetable I’ll treat you to Ryuu’s cherry pie.  I saw it in the window as we came in.”

Urgent noises on the other end of Serena’s cell phone.  If I was going to guess, I’d’ve said teenage boy.

“And why haven’t you replaced your bike light?” said Serena.  “I gave you the money last week.”

More urgent noises.  Serena closed her eyes.  “Okay.  Whatever.  I’ll be home soon.  I’ll bring you something.”

Quack quack quack went the phone.  “You will not starve to death.  Her name’s Kes.  I’ll find out if she has a lawn she needs a nice young man to mow at an extortionate rate.  You too.  Bye.”  She sighed.  “Sorry.  I know you only said coffee and didn’t say anything about a teenage boy.  But I think Eats has a spell on it, or I do.  I can’t walk through the door without being instantly ravenous.  And it’s true, there isn’t anything in the house for a starving sixteen-year-old boy to eat except microwave popcorn, never mind it’s because he’s already eaten all of it.  It’s frightening, keeping a teenage boy fed.  And he has friends . . . they’re like a plague of locusts.  I expect to come home some day and find them barbecuing pieces of furniture because I didn’t get back from the store fast enough . . . oh, there’s a Godzilla Food at the mall, if you need anything.  When you need anything.”

“I need a car,” I said, looking regretfully at my empty plate.  The food was divine.  I was going to take up long-distance running so I could afford the calories.  Another approach to the gas-price problem.  “I’ve only got the van for two more days.  I was going to ask Hayley tomorrow if there’s a used-car place around here that will sell me something that runs for longer than it takes to drive it home.  And starts the next morning and stuff like that.”

“No,” said Serena bluntly.  “Rick at Odin’s Autos is a lying snake who will steal your ass and sell it back to you.  Let me ask Jan.  He knows things like who has a car for sale.”  Billie had reappeared at our table.  “Double of the special steak platter to take home to Gus,” Serena said.

“Double green beans?” said Billie dubiously.

“No, single green beans,” said Serena, “but double cherry pie.  And I’ll have a piece while we’re waiting.”

“Me too,” I said.  “Do they provide wheelbarrow service back to the Friendly Campfire?”

“The fresh air will do you good,” said Serena, digging in her knapsack.  “You want an appetite for breakfast tomorrow.”  She pulled out her wallet.

“No, hey,” I said.  “This was my idea.”

“Coffee was your idea,” said Serena.  “Besides, I recognise the signs of a woman in crisis.  Or aren’t those all your worldly goods in a van only slightly larger than a four-slice toaster?  Given that I work for somewhere that displays neon campfires in public I will pass silently over the interesting logo.”

I winced at the reference to the size of the van.  “Is it that obvious?”

“Possibly only to someone who’s been there.  It gets better.”

I smiled faintly.  “I’ll be sure to specify a lawn that will need mowing regularly to Hayley tomorrow.”

“Gus—short for Angus, by the way—will be thrilled.  I forget what he’s saving for this week.  It might be the class trip.  It varies.”

“Say hello to Mrs Jennings for me.”

Serena stood up, cradling the huge brown-paper parcel Billie had just delivered to our table.  After the cherry pie, which had been the most divine thing of all, I wasn’t sure I could stand up.

“I will,” said Serena.  “She’ll appreciate it. . . . You’ll forgive me if I run.  I might just get this home while it’s still warm.”

I had just a moment to wonder about the look she gave me before she turned away, pushed the door open, and disappeared.

In the first place:  

http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s320x320/423615_272724886138698_100002035654088_610973_443590055_n.jpg

 Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee.  (Peter’s publishing daughter sent me this.) 

Okay.  That was your light relief. 

Now, in the second place, a lot of you will have seen this already, including anyone who follows me on Twitter: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/in-e-reader-age-of-writers-cramp-a-book-a-year-is-slacking.html?_r=1

The headline reads:  In E-Reader Age of Writer’s Cramp*, a Book a Year is Slacking.  And any sane author’s reaction is:  Killlllllllllllllllllll Meeeeeeeeeee.  (Maureen Johnson’s retweet says:  Here’s an article in the [New York Times] about how everyone is trying to kill authors.)    

            Well.  Yes.  I would love to attain a novel a year.  Or a novel most years.  Or a novel every eighteen months.  Or something.  And there are writers—a few—who can write two novels a year at least occasionally** and still stab you in the heart with their amazingness.  Or if you’re producing stories that genuinely aren’t supposed to do anything but while away an hour or two—I hope I’m not getting myself into too much trouble here, but I do think there’s a place for stories that are only trying to divert:  and, if I’m not getting myself into too much more trouble, I might suggest Agatha Christie as the sort of thing:  I don’t think anyone goes to Agatha Christie for empathy or catharsis, do they?—then maybe, that’s maybe, you can write more than one book a year and keep your quality (and your pride in your work) up.*** 

            But for the rest of us . . . for those of us who essay the occasional well-rounded character, who wish to evoke rather than report, who hope for readers who don’t quite shake the dust of our stories off their page-turning fingers at the end . . . I’m a slow writer.  I know I’m slow.  But I flatly don’t believe any mere human can produce two good books every year and go on doing it.†

            I had a lot of lovely tweets from people†† saying they’d rather wait for books that have been written rather than not wait for those that have been churned out to an anti-human schedule.  And I don’t really have a choice:  this is how I am.  This is how I write.  If this doesn’t work, I am going to have to run away to the circus.†††  I tell myself that the world has always claimed to be on the brink of final breakdown of one sort or another—I imagine this dates back to gossip around the fire just after that seditious object the wheel had been invented.  But I admit that the particular part of my world that is disintegrating as a result of what is in many ways a great invention, the internet, worries me . . . more than a little.

            To end this post on writery things, I give you, in the third place:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/books/review/the-writer-in-the-family.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

I don’t, in fact, agree with a lot of it, but then I’ve also never been a member of the standard family, with growing-up children I’m somehow part responsible for and all that, so my view is skewed.  But I love the exchange:  ‘Would I have read anything you’ve written?’ from some clueless dweeb you’ve just been introduced to, and Rosenblatt’s reply, ‘How should I know?’  I’m going to remember that one.‡

            But the paragraph that had me in hysterics is the one about E L Doctorow trying to write an excuse slip for his daughter, who had missed school the day before.  YEEEEEEEEEEEES.  This is exactly what happens when you pull your specialised, carefully conditioned, writery bits out of the rarefied atmosphere of fiction and try to make them produce a grocery list or a thank-you note or an email to the department store that sent you a toaster instead of an electric blanket.  Yesssss.

            Hee hee hee hee hee hee.  Which is a much better place to both come in and go out. 

* * *

* Which should be recategorised anyway as writer’s repetitive stress injury 

** Peter did this more than once 

*** Is this writing as craft rather than art?  Sometimes you don’t want to be engaged.  Sometimes you just want to sit quietly and drink your tea and read a rose catalogue.^  Sometimes you want your chair to have four legs and a seat and not be a dazzling heirloom for the ages when you stagger downstairs in the morning and reach for your electric kettle. 

^ Credit card engagement is a different issue. 

† Even Charles Dickens, for example^, took holidays, and the quality of his writing is drastically variable, from the mind-explodingly tremendous to the diabolically awful.  

^ I’m reading Claire Tomalin’s biography of him right now.  I knew he was—erm—a complex character and not all of it good, but the thing I probably find the most fascinating is how narrow the line is between socially aware and engaged literary genius with some personal issues and WHINING, SELF-ABSORBED COMPLETE TICK . . . who by the way wrote some fabulous stories and did some amazing things.  You may have guessed I incline to the latter opinion.  It’s all about him, all of the time.  And I don’t deal well with the sins of the extrovert. 

            Fascinating book however.  I recommend it.  And it’s not that Dickens didn’t have to cope with more than one human’s fair share of bulltiddly:  he did.  I’d have drowned his unspeakable father, for example, and I’d’ve had apoplexy if I’d been trying to earn a living as a writer back in the days before there was an international copyright law.  I am riveted by the standard accusations thrown at Dickens when he had the balls—and good for him—to stand up and say stealing people’s work is wrong.  He is being greedy, sneered the newspapers, and he should be grateful that people want to read his books.  Plus ça frelling frelling change.   And we’ve even got, or anyway had, international copyright law for quite a while—although the whole e thing is busy taking that to bits too. Greedy?  Grateful?  How, pray tell, are us storytellers supposed to earn a living?  How do you think we frelling eat and pay the mortgage if we don’t sell our stories?   Leprechaun?  Printing press in the cellar for counterfeit money?  Wealthy indulgent lover?  What?  What?  I get really bored with people who think that all writers are wealthy, but at least these people are acknowledging that being a professional writer involves money.  The people who think that writers^ are supposed to give it away and be grateful if anyone wants it . . . should frelling try it some time.  Show me someone who is giving it away and doesn’t have either another, paying job, a trust fund, or a joint bank account with a Fortune 500 CEO, and I’ll show you a hologram, an alien from another dimension, or a homeless bag person who is about to die of starvation.

            Which is more or less where we came in . . . 

^ I assume that painters, sculptors, jewellery-makers, knitters and so on have the same problem.  Maybe it’s that we work in words that it seems to me we get so much (wordy) stick.   Maybe it’s just that I’m a writer, I notice writer-aimed stick more. 

†† Including a gratifying rant from our own Maren.  Thank you.  And a horrified fellow-feeling my-fingers-are-shrivelling from Jodi, who had already seen the article. 

††† And to you who tweeted me about this too:  hellhounds would love the circus, once they got a little used to the uproar.  And if New Thing’s heroine can haul a rose-bush around in a pot, why can’t I?  I can put it (or them) on the steps of my trailer every time we stop. 

            Peter, I admit, is a problem.  I don’t think he’d like the circus at all.  

‡ I can hear Merrilee clutching her forehead.

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.