Shades of Grey

Fickle? Me?

2012-01-27T17:03:00.002+11:00

The only knitting resolution I made for 2012 was that I would knit whatever whim and fancy suggested. But I'm beginning to wonder just how fine the line is between whim and fancy and fickleness. Being led by whim and fancy has a carefree, of the moment, feel to it. To be fickle is to be changeable or inconstant - altogether less flattering characteristics.

Inspired by my whim and fancy attitude I started a new project last weekend - Juneberry, Brooklyntweed's lace knitted small shawl for thicker yarns. (I'm using Madelinetosh 80/10/10 Sport yarn).

As usual for Brooklyntweed, this is a well-presented, easy to follow pattern resulting in a modern yet classic outcome. It's even a bit more technically challenging than my usual projects so I've been feeling quite virtuous about stretching myself and my capabilities. After discovering that the knitting was much easier with a generous application of stitch markers I've been steaming along, snatching time for some rows whenever I could. I thought I was totally absorbed in this project.

Then, surprisingly, yesterday, I was distracted by log cabin knitted squares - specifically, Mason-Dixon Knitting's Buncha Squares. I've had some Mission Falls 1824 cotton for several years. This yarn has a rather old-fashioned boucle texture that I've always thought would be perfect for a blanket. In fact, I've had several attempts at knitting it up in various ways but have never been happy with the outcome. Buncha Squares might be it. I've almost finished one square and love the outcome. It has the attraction of variation within an overall regular pattern that I always fall for. Now I only need to knit (how many?) more.

This yarn has been discontinued and though I know there are several part-finished projects with it in various places around the house I doubt I would have enough yarn for a useful blanket. But I'll see.

Whim and fancy, or fickleness, might take me in an entirely different direction at any time.

Bye baby bunting

2012-01-19T21:38:00.000+11:00

A colleague at work is just commencing parental leave for her first baby. Yesterday we had afternoon tea with her and gave her a number of presents for the baby. I love the opportunity to knit baby clothes and had fun choosing pattern and yarn for a little jacket. She'd commented many times that almost everything she's been given so far for the baby is pink (she's expecting a girl) and lamented the current pinkness of everything for girl babies. So it was easy to decide to knit in soft green yarn. I also wanted a pattern that wasn't aggressively girly as it was clear my colleague prefers plainer, less sex-specific designs.

Knitting designer Laura Chau (Cosmicpluto) has produced a very cute baby cardigan she named Sweet Bunting; a simple, bottom-up seamless design with a natty pattern of bunting at the base of the yoke. It would be equally suitable for a boy or girl.

I'm not a very experienced or very expert fair isle knitter and would like to have done a better job of controlling the tension of the simple fair isle patterning in the yoke. It's a little bit loose; though that's better than being too tight. Fair isle in a highly processed superwash yarn (such as the Morris Empire Superwash Merino 8 ply which I used for practicality with this jacket) does not sit as neatly as fair isle with catchy yarns. Still, I did learn to weave in the floats of yarn as I carried them across the longer stretches of the pattern, and I think I'm developing a desire to improve my colourwork knitting.

I decided to use up the remainder of a ball of green yarn by knitting a hat. Whit's Knits from Purl Bee often has simple but very effective free patterns. I used the size and shape of the hat from the Little Fair Isle Hat pattern, omitting the attractive fair isle design and substituting two row stripes of the contrasting colours. I'm very happy with the outcome.

I seem to be on a bit of a bunting kick lately, having made bunting for a Christmas gift swap and now knitting the bunting pattern on this jacket. I like simple, geometric, repetitive patterns, and bunting fits these characteristics.

I also liked the gentle pun in the name of this pattern. Bunting originally was the word for a rough fabric made with a glazed surface, ideal for flags and ribbons. Over time the term has transferred from the fabric to the flags themselves. But it has another association. There's the rhyme I remember from my childhood as a chant for rocking or jiggling babies

Bye baby bunting
Daddy's gone a-hunting
Gone to get a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby bunting in.

The internet informs me it's also a lullaby, though this is not part of my association for it.

So this is a playful pattern rich in associations. My colleague was surprised and delighted by the gift and I've had a great deal of pleasure making it.

Another world

2012-01-18T16:04:00.002+11:00

A few days ago I was half-listening to Radio National which was replaying an interview with Jeff Fatt, one of the Wiggles. He commented that one of the things he liked about his job was that it gave him access to the world that's inhabited by young children and their parents. His words reflected my experience of the couple of weeks I spent looking after my grand-daughter at the end of December and beginning of January. For those couple of weeks I inhabited a world I knew very well when my own children were small, but that I've not really lived in since then. To describe the world of small children and parents and carers as a parallel universe is going a bit too far; but it's certainly a space where your view of the world is transformed.

I found myself going places and doing things I've not done in a long time. I went to the beach and jumped over waves and swam in the sea and built sand castles

I went to the movies and saw two animated films (you have to know just how avidly I avoid animation in any medium to know what a departure this is from my usual practice)

I visited the local park and playground and hung out at the charmingly unpretentious Ithaca swimming pool.

I visited an animal park and exclaimed over the cuteness of the wombats.

I spent quite a bit of time in the children's section of both the City and State Libraries in Brisbane. Both wonderful.

[The children's section of the City Library, by the way, has views through its modern angular windows of the Brisbane Casino - a very elegant late nineteenth century building that used to be the State Treasury. Somehow that seems very appropriate and very Brisbane]

I went to a Dinosaur Picnic arranged by the State Museum where we made dinosaur masks and tails and listened to a performance of factually accurate songs about dinosaurs by Jurassic Joe. These songs are readily transferable as earworms and simply by typing this I have 'The Sleepy Stegosaurus Stomp' echoing through my head.

And of course we visited - twice - the very child-friendly Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), my favourite gallery. It currently has a large exhibition of works by senior Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama that extends in a most enveloping fashion through several of the Gallery's rooms. Of special delight to children - and to most of the accompanying adults - is the Obliteration Room where the aim is to cover all the white spaces of the walls, floor, ceiling and furnishings with dots (Kusama has a passion for dots). Everyone is issued with a sheet or two of dot stickers as they enter the room which they can use as they wish. It's fun to see children sitting on the parents' shoulders to reach the ceiling or crawling beneath the table to paste dots on the underside.

As you exit from the Obliteration Room (such a great title) you're inspected to make sure you're not transferring dots outside the room on your clothes or the soles of your shoes. Nevertheless, the dots have escaped to lots of other areas of the Gallery and the surrounding areas. It became quite a game to 'spot the spots' around the cultural centre precinct, and even at the bus stop.

GoMA also has an installation called 'we miss you magic land'. Ostensibly it's designed for children, though as the title implies, it's just as captivating for grown-ups temporarily inhabiting the child's world. To quote the exhibition blurb, Perth artists Pip and Pop draw on 'children’s stories, creation myths, Buddhist cosmologies, video games and folktales, (to) create large-scale fantasy worlds coloured with a bright, often fluorescent palette, using cake-decorating tools, intricate layers of sugar, glitter, modelling clay and mirrors'. (I wonder if any of the participants in the astonishing cake-decorating sections of the Royal Easter Show ever dreamed of putting their talents to such use). The magic worlds are arranged in clusters at various levels and can be viewed through small windows and by looking up at the ceiling.

You can even create your own magic world at home, which we did, several times.

Being an adult in the world of children means a change of perspective. Time stretches and contracts. Some things take much longer to accomplish than you could ever imagine possible; others you thought might be absorbing are passed over with barely a glance. You have to expect the unexpected. Things you find deeply boring can entertain a child for hours. Plans you make can be overturned in an instant. At the risk of sounding pollyanna-ish, I rediscovered that many of the most enjoyable things are free (other than the 'cost' of your time). Time at the beach - admittedly made possible by visiting a generous friend, imaginative games, playing with other children in the park or at the library, all cost nothing.

I'm back in my adult world with my adult perspectives - until the next time I visit my children and grandchildren.

Afterword...on my day off from doting I went back (yet again) to GoMA to see the exhibition Matisse: Drawing Life. There are rooms of Matisse drawings and you see the development from his already skilled early works to the late collages. Matisse drew and drew and drew - dozens of drawings each day - to refine his portrayal of the world. You see an artist continually honing his skill and vision. Definitely worth viewing.

And I popped in, as I always do, to see the wall of Ian Fairweather paintings in the Queensland Art Gallery. I love his paintings as design, but I also find them sad and nostalgic and somewhat tortured. Definitely worth revisiting.

[Ian Fairweather 'Kite-flying' 1958]

A big shawl

2012-01-15T00:19:00.002+11:00

For some time now I've been wanting a big shawl - one that's long enough to drape securely around myself and that's deep at the back to keep me warm. Finally I've achieved it.

It feels as if it has taken me ages to finish this shawl, but in fact I only started it at the end of October and finished the knitting just before Christmas. However, it was a lot of knitting. I didn't have time (or energy) to organise the blocking before I went away in late December, but inspired by this morning's Knitting Guild meeting and the chance to show it off to friends I conquered the blocking yesterday. That's what it felt like: a war, as I pushed and prodded and measured and pinned the shawl into submission across almost all the spare space on my living room floor.

The pattern is Stephen West's Transatlantic Shawl, and I just kept knitting and knitting till I felt it was big enough. Initially I'd bought four 50g skeins of the Rowan 4 ply wool for the solid dark graphite colour, but I needed to go back twice to Calico and Ivy to buy additional skeins to make it large enough. The variegated black and cream yarn is Schoppelwolle Crazy Zauberball where the skeins seem to go on forever. The pattern includes increases on every row at the edges, so the resulting shawl is very wide - and long at the front if I don't wind it around myself.

One of the great things about this pattern is its use of texture. I particularly like the contrast between the horizontal garter stitch ridges of most of the shawl and the strong vertical lines of the central slipped stitch pattern.

I'm very happy with my shawl, though as it began to grow I was surprised by its proportions...surprised and initially a bit dismayed by its width. But now it's finished I'm really happy to have such long shawl 'tails' to anchor the shawl as I wear it. A very good outcome.

Finally, I'm pleased to have a shawl in shades of grey. Clearly, it will match most of my clothes.

And really finally, thanks to DrK for the pics of me wearing the shawl

Five Best Films 2011

2012-01-11T16:19:00.000+11:00

It’s taken me longer than usual to compile my list of best films from last year – mainly because I’ve been finding it so hard to decide what to include. I don’t think there were any stand-out films for me in 2011, but on the other hand there were lots of high standard films that I’d recommend – possibly with some qualifications. My list today might be different from my list tomorrow, but if I leave it any longer there’ll be no point at all to the exercise.

The usual background to my film-viewing applies. I still don’t watch films on DVD. Apart from a few films seen in museums or on planes my movie-watching has been in the cinema. Maybe my list will seem a bit out of date as some of the 2011 films being talked about as possible award winners are still to be released in Australia, so maybe I’ve not yet seen the best for the year.

I watched 59 movies in 2011; an increase on the 52 in 2010. I’m quite surprised by this total as I was away from Sydney for half of last year’s Sydney Film Festival that is always a time of compressed film viewing for me. The distribution of the countries of origin of the films I saw is roughly consistent with past years’ viewing – 28 or just under half were from the USA, 7 were Australian movies, 9 were from the UK and the remainder were from other countries.

Even though I saw relatively few documentaries, some of them were remarkable, even though they didn’t make my top five. If ever anybody wondered why researchers need transparent, publicly justifiable codes of ethics they should watch Project Nim about the deluded 1970s project to raise a chimpanzee within a human context. The Australian film The Tall Man is a factually and emotionally accurate adaptation of Chloe Hooper’s book of the same title that outlines the tragedy of the death of Cameron Doomadgee in custody on Palm Island in 2004. Catfish is a film for our times. It’s a playful, maybe truthful, story of an attempt to unravel a false online identity – or is it? Page One is a dense, intelligent depiction of a year in the life of the 'New York Times'. I really had to concentrate to follow the wealth of information and ideas about the making of news that were contained within it. All these documentaries were innovative in the way they told their tales, as well as telling tales that needed to be told.

I’m pleased I was able to see more Australian films last year than the year before and that so many of these were good. Snowtown, with its depiction of how evil can so easily become ‘normalised’ in a marginal community, just missed out on making my top 5, and The Hunter, with a charismatic performance by Willem Dafoe, tells a suitably allegorical story for the grandeur of the Tasmanian landscape in which it is set.

There were also other brilliant performances that I could note, but that fell outside my top 5. Two such performances portrayed parenthood in its awful complexity - Tilda Swinton was heart-breaking in her portrayal of the reserved, tormented, unrelenting mother at the heart of We Need to Talk About Kevin, and Brad Pitt’s creation of the domineering, loving and unsuccessful father in The Tree of Life meant that, for me, the parts of that film in which he appeared were probably the most brilliant film moments of the year.

So finally to my top 5 films for 2011:

My first choice is endorsed by any number of prestigious international awards including the International Competition Award at the Sydney Film Festival. It’s an Iranian film, A Separation. It's deeply interesting because of its depiction of everyday life in Iran, but more particularly by showing Iran's dispute settling and justice system. A couple acrimoniously decide to separate because she wants to leave Iran and he wishes to stay to care for his father who has Alzheimer's disease. Their daughter is torn between the two. The separation leads to stresses in their daily life and unfortunate and damaging choices are made. The film probes with great subtlety issues of truth, ethical choice, and responsibility, while revealing differences of viewpoint and experience - by class, by gender and by religion. This film investigates universal moral dilemmas while providing insights into a very different world. I imagine it’s the kind of film that irascible Sydney journalist Bob Ellis had in mind when he argued that all politicians should be compelled to go to film festivals to learn about other realities and appreciate different viewpoints.

I found second and third difficult to separate so somewhat arbitrarily I’ll place the Australian film, The Eye of the Storm, second. This is a tour de force of Australian cultural production. The film is an adaptation of Nobel prize-winner Patrick White’s 1973 novel of the same name by director Fred Schepisi and features many great Australian actors in major and minor roles. White’s novels are complex in their chronology and often very interior and have proven resistant to film-making; so much so that this is the first of his novels to be filmed. I loved this film. Elizabeth Hunter, played by the inimitable Charlotte Rampling, is dying. She has dominated, manipulated and emotionally alienated her children, Basil, a once-successful actor reliving his glory (Geoffrey Rush) and Dorothy (Judy Davis), the Princess de Lascabanes, whose title is the only remnant of an ambitious ‘European’ marriage. The film is melodramatic, beautiful, touching, scathingly hurtful, and occasionally slyly funny. Judy Davis’s portrayal of the betrayed, wanting to be loved daughter is raw and affecting. There’s so much in this movie. As well as being essentially a tale of family relationships it’s also a wicked depiction of class and naked aspiration in 1970s Australia.

Third is the much-acclaimed Coen brothers’ film True Grit. I’ve not seen the original John Wayne version of this film, or if I have, I’ve forgotten it. (I grew up in the 1950s on a movie diet of Saturday afternoon matinees in which westerns figured largely. When I became more sophisticated in my tastes, I spurned westerns. When I became more accepting in my tastes I realized that I liked a good western). The star turn of this movie, as with so many Coen brothers’ movies, is its tone. It’s wry, sarcastic, aware, kind and very funny. The centre of the movie is 14 year old Mattie Ross – brave, honourable and truthful. This is such a resolved and believable performance from Hailee Steinfeld. But all the acting is excellent. Even though I needed sub-titles (not available) for most of his utterances, Jeff Bridges as strutting, drunken, wily, but truly gritty Rooster Cockburn brought me to laughter and compassion; Matt Damon’s LaBoeuf was masterfully underplayed and had me chortling whenever he was onscreen; and finally Josh Brolin could play anybody and I’d willingly watch, but here his bumbling, heartless villain was perfect. Where do the Coens go from here?

My fourth choice is the documentary Bill Cunningham: New York. I liked this film so much I went to see it twice on consecutive days. Bill Cunningham works for the New York Times where he has two weekly columns - one of which documents New York high society at charity events and parties, and the other of which features street style. Bill Cunningham turns 80 while the documentary is being made and he still spends his days walking the streets of New York, lingering on street corners, photographing street fashion, and his nights bicycling from grand event to even grander event photographing the rich and well dressed. He refuses to photograph celebrities only because of their celebrity - they must also have style. As Anna Wintour says at one stage - to have Bill ignore you is death. Bill Cunningham gains admittance to the most exclusive of Paris fashion shows because 'he's the most important man in the world', but he dresses in a blue workman's jacket, only eats the simplest of foods in down-market cafes, and has lived for many years in a tiny studio in Carnegie Hall, crammed with metal filing cabinets of his photos, sharing a bathroom down the hall and with no kitchen. He's lived his life among the rich and famous but has a very strict code of owing nothing to anybody. He works all the time and is passionate about clothes and style. He lives a busy, honourable life devoted to the observation of clothes. There is nothing innovative or extraordinary about this documentary; it’s just that the subject is fascinating.

Fifth is a Spanish film called Amador, directed by Fernando Leon de Aranoa. I feel a bit reluctant to include this film as it hasn’t had a commercial release in Australia, however I hope and imagine it was widely distributed in the Spanish-speaking world. The film is set in a large Spanish city among marginalised migrant workers who gather discarded flowers from the markets and spruce them up for reselling. But Marcela and Nelson need money for a new fridge to store the flowers. Marcela, who is pregnant but reluctant to tell her philandering husband, takes a job caring for an old man whose relatives are building a house outside the city. He dies within a week of her employment, but she's already committed the money she will earn caring for him. What to do? This is a very gentle social critique that is nonetheless effective for its gentleness and moments of quiet black humour. It's much more in the tradition of a British film-maker such as Ken Loach than it is in the tradition of the exuberant and elaborate work of a film-maker such as Almodovar. This is a very plain film – simple, unadorned and spare. I loved this film with its completely unanticipated resolution.

So, there’s my five from 2011. I hope you don’t mind but I’ve repeated myself from previous posts in writing about some of these films – at least I’m being consistent. It’s a bit of an eccentric list as it’s inevitably shaped from those movies that have come my way in 2011. It’s a much less grim list than previous years. True Grit might be described as a comedy; Amador has its gently humorous moments and a Shakespearian happy ending; Bill Cunningham is very cheerful; even The Eye of the Storm is nastily funny occasionally. This year only my first choice is grim by the standards of past years. I wonder if I’ve changed or the movies have?

I’d love any thoughts or comments on this overly long post – or any suggestions of other good (or bad) films you’ve seen.

Knitting 2011

2012-01-03T18:18:00.001+11:00

I completed eighteen and a half knitting projects in 2011. The half is not an incomplete project but the additional rounds I knitted on my grand-daughter's blanket to match her increasing size.

This is a slight increase over my 2010 tally, but is somewhat meagre when compared with the prodigious output of some of my knitting friends. Still, the important things are that I'm still finding knitting pleasurable and that I've been happy with almost everything I knitted last year. The majority of the objects I knitted in 2011 (twelve of the eighteen) were gifts for friends and family and, to the extent I can tell, have been warmly received and frequently worn.

By broad category I knitted

2 cardigans (one adult; one child's)
4 shawls
4 pairs of socks
3 scarves
3 hats
2 pairs of mitts
and one blanket extension

My public knitting failure for the year was that I didn't complete the s62011 sock challenge of knitting six pairs of socks to group-chosen patterns. I managed three of the pairs for the year and then just departed on a frolic of my own (more of that later). I've decided I have sock ennui - a grandiose label for the fact that I'm a bit fed up with knitting socks.

So, my personal prize-winners for 2011:

First, the piece of which I'm most proud - Gudrun Johnston's 'Audrey in Unst' cardigan. I knitted this for my daughter and it was a perfect fit and style for her. This must be one of the best patterns ever - well written, classic and even a bit retro in its styling, and with knitted-in sleeves that create such a neat finish. Lovely.

The most favourited project on Ravelry has been the dotee's blanket already pictured above. I think this is one of those projects where the bright and unexpected yarn combines really well with the simplicity of the pattern. It's great fun.

Next, the item that's been most worn. While I can't count accurately how often my gift knitting has been worn, I suspect the winner has to be the dotee's striped yoke cardigan. Not only has she worn it when I've visited, but there are photos from kindy and other outings at which I've not been present where the cardi has featured. Again, this is a great knitted-in-one-piece pattern from Alana Dakos (though a distinct down-side is all the weaving-in of the yarn ends for the striped yoke!)

And finally, the project that was most fun to make. This is a hard one as some projects such as the "Audrey' cardigan were extremely satisfying to make, though all the stocking stitch could not really be said to be fun. I think my choice is my frolic socks - knee-high socks in stripes of Noro Silk Garden sock yarn and a vaguely toning maroon semi-solid yarn. These socks were begun on a whim and finished in ten days, so I must have enjoyed knitting them.

So that's it for 2011. I have a shawl I've finished knitting but not blocked and some almost completed socks to get me off to a good start in 2012. I have no plans for 2012 knitting other than to have no plan.

In 2012 I shall knit as whim and fancy dictate.

12 in 11: December and ...finale

2012-01-02T21:39:00.003+11:00

Did I succeed and reach year's end with only twelve clothing purchases across the year? Yes I did! I bought no clothes in December and so (with a little bit of creative counting urged on by my readers) I reached my goal for the year.

Across the year I've bought three pairs of shoes (Mary Janes that accommodate my heel inserts and that are already extremely worn; some Trippen sandals and glittery beaded slippers from Malaysia that need a particular occasion for wearing); two pairs of winter pants - beautiful fine wool Alistair Trung sale pants I've been wearing for 'best' and some indestructible heavy fabric grey pants I've just about lived in; a black Nicola Waite overdress that I wear either over pants or with thick tights (Nicola Waite makes such great clothes for larger women); three long-sleeved t-shirts for winter; a summer Marimekko oversized t-shirt that's currently my go-to favourite; and a grey Mandarina Duck handbag I've used almost every day since it was purchased. The final item is some earrings I bought on a visit to the Canberra Old Bus Depot Markets. I subsequently bought some additional earrings and a necklace while travelling but at the urging of my readers decided not to count these as they fall into the categories of both handcrafts and souvenirs.

So what have I learned from this challenge? Probably that it's good to have some external constraint on my clothing purchases - it's kept me honest to know that I need to publicly justify them. I've ended up with purchases that have been practical (as well as beautiful in some instances) and that - with the exception of the beaded slippers - have been well worn across the year. I'm surprised to find just how many of the items I've bought have been 'brand' items. As I wrote in an earlier post I've liked to think of myself as disregarding brand snobbery. I think I've now discovered that I just like to be selective about the brands I'm snobbish about!

I've enjoyed this challenge and what it has taught me; and I've enjoyed the comments it's elicited both within this blog and in person. I don't think the challenge can be continued indefinitely - my summer clothes in particular are just about falling apart and need rethinking. I don't think the challenge has brought a major change to my purchasing patterns; I've just been a bit more restrained. I've decided to keep an informal clothes-buying tally across 2012, but not on the blog, to see whether publicly acknowledging my purchases does make a significant difference to what I buy.

I was gloating about my success with this challenge to my daughter when she suggested that I should extend it for 2012 to an area of purchasing where I'd REALLY have difficulty exercising restraint - book buying. This brought me up short. Being careful about the books I buy would be much more difficult than taking care about clothes buying. I've thought and thought about this suggestion and have decided to set myself a 12 in 12 book challenge for the year. This will be really hard but just might make me thoughtful enough to use all the sensible alternatives there are to the indiscriminate book buying I currently practice. So, in 2012 I intend to

* use libraries. My local library is the excellent City of Sydney Library with its many convenient and interlinked branches, and I also have access to the library at the university where I work. I have no excuse for not using them.

* read currently unread books that I own. There are not many of these as I'm not a great browser of book shops unless I need something to read immediately. But I suspect I might find more of these than I think I own once I go searching.

* reread books I own. I have a great affection for nineteenth century literature and could engage in more systematic rereading. In particular, I'd like to reread some turn of the nineteenth century Arnold Bennett (a past favourite) to see what I now think of it.

* borrow books from friends. This really means making a strong resolution to return books I borrow from friends. In the past I've been reluctant to borrow books as I've not always been meticulous about returning them. This needs to change.

So, my 12 in 12: Books challenge begins now. Wish me the will-power and restraint I'll need to succeed!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

2011-12-20T16:31:00.001+11:00

Christmas. Somehow, this year, I've had a pleasantly extended and not too frantic lead-up to Christmas. I'm visiting Brisbane for Christmas and so other than buying (yes, buying - shameful) a Christmas pudding, I haven't (yet) been involved in shopping for or baking seasonal food. Anyway, we'll have a small, very informal family lunch so there won't be too much fuss.

There's been a number of Christmas parties and gatherings which have all been pleasantly low-key and fun. Gatherings with knitters; parties at work including a yummy yum cha in Chinatown yesterday with my immediate work colleagues where we found lots of vegetarian and vegan friendly foods to enable everybody to participate; and the annual year's end party for the building I live in where the courtyard was magically lit with candles and lights in the shape of Christmas trees.

And I've also caught up with old friends with whom I spend noche buena (on Christmas Eve) when I'm in in Sydney. We had a wonderful lunch of pumpkin and ricotta ravioli with fresh tomato sauce, salad, and cheese - all locally grown and produced courtesy of the Eveleigh produce markets, Veuve Cliquot I'd saved from my birthday, and pavlova with mango, berries and passionfruit sauce, courtesy of my guests.

Even though I'm going to be away for Christmas I did feel the need to make a nod in the direction of a Christmas tree. I bought some twisted willow and have hung it with the few Christmas decorations I kept when most of them migrated to my daughter's house.

This year I'm not knitting any gifts. Maybe that's added to the lack of stress. Whatever the reason, it's so far a very enjoyable Christmas season.

New York scarf

2011-12-08T07:29:00.001+11:00

It seems ages since I actually had a piece of completed knitting on my blog. I'm not sure why. I'm still knitting - quite frequently - but my BIG Transatlantic shawl has slowed down my completed output. So, here at last is something...

It's Brooklyntweed's Woodsmoke Scarf from 'Brave New Knits'. Like all the Brooklyn Tweed patterns it's a mixture of simplicity and carefully thought through embellishments. In this case it's the simplicity of a very plain garter stitch central panel (knitted sideways) with a repetitive lace edging. The only thing at all complex about this pattern is the beginning - a provisional cast-on of 302 stitches that took me a whole evening to complete. According to Ravelry I began this scarf in September! It hasn't really taken me two and a half months to finish it - the knitting was done quite quickly and then it sat around reproachfully waiting for me to block it. This seems to be a disturbingly frequent practice for me.

The scarf is knitted from yarns I bought at my 2010 visit to the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show - a combination of Pear Tree yarn for the central panel and Ixchel's BFL / bunny combination for the lace. I particularly like the subtle blue-grey / brown / cream colour mix in the lace edging.

I knitted the scarf as a gift for an old friend with whom I usually spend time at Christmas. But this year she's off with her family to spend Christmas in New York and I thought she might need a warm scarf. This scarf is very long - well over two metres - so there's lots of length to wind around several times and still have left-overs for tucking into a coat. I gave the scarf to my friend earlier this week and she really liked it. I count myself very fortunate to have friends and family who seem to like my knitted gifts.

Partying

2011-12-07T07:22:00.001+11:00

December is always a very busy month. An American friend of mine who now lives in Australia commented recently that Australians celebrate Christmas very enthusiastically - that every work and social group, and every group of friends seems to feel the need for a Christmas celebration. I think it's not that Christmas itself and its traditional meaning has special significance for Australians, I think it's just that Christmas gets caught up with other occasions of celebration - the coming of summer, summer vacations, the end of the school year, several days away from work. There's a general feeling of winding down, of laxness, of the pause that comes before a new year of new starts.

I like this time of year. I like the feeling of tidying up the year's activities at work and I catch up with friends I don't see often throughout the year. And I go to some parties. I no longer go to many parties, and sometimes I no longer feel enthusiastic about doing so. But at Christmas it's particularly ungracious not to make the effort and I know I almost always enjoy myself once I'm actually there.

This past weekend I went to two wonderful parties. On Saturday a neighbour held a party that was perfect. There were luxurious and generously sized canapes, waiters filling your champagne flute the instant the level in the glass lowered and, most amazingly, a piano and four singers performing songs from my favourite old musicals - Carousel, Kismet, South Pacific - and Cole Porter standards. We were even encouraged to sing along. And all I had to do to get home was take the lift up one storey. A perfect party indeed.

Then on Sunday there was afternoon tea with my knitting group. Lots of bubbles and tea drinking, finger sandwiches, strawberries and cream, scones with jam and cream and small cakes. And, of course, knitting and knitting chatter and knitting laughter. The high point of the afternoon was our Christmas gift swap. Everybody brought a hand-crafted Christmas decoration to be randomly received by another. The variety and ingenuity of the gifts was astounding. There were, of course, knitted and crocheted decorations - stars, baubles of many kinds, santas, Christmas trees, and tiny, delicately knitted garments. There was also embroidery, petit point (I received a perfect tiny petit point reindeer) and beading and probably much else I've neglected to note.

I'm not sure why, but I decided to make some bunting. I love the look of colourful bunting and like the idea that it can be recycled for various occasions. So I searched for my mother's old pinking shears (and miraculously found them) and proceeded to cut out triangles of bright fabric until I couldn't bear to cut any more.

I was very pleased with the outcome, and, if I can ever summon the energy to do more cutting up of fabric, would like to make some for myself.

12 in 11: November

2011-12-01T10:53:00.001+11:00

I have nothing to report. Nothing at all. I've bought no clothes or accessories this month. So, I'm still at 12 items for 2011.

However, I am deeply bored by my summer clothes choices. This is partly the result of my annual realisation that I really don't like dressing for hot and sticky Sydney summers, and partly because all the summer clothes I do like require a lot more washing and ironing and general caring for than my winter clothes. And the accessories (particularly the knitted ones) that make winter dressing such fun are impossible in summer.

Grumble, grumble. I think I might have to buy some clothes to cheer me up.

How much grey yarn is too much?

2011-11-29T21:24:00.001+11:00

I've been trying not to buy too much new yarn. I'm not a quick knitter and I already have more yarn than I can knit up in the near - or even longer term - future. However, all knitters know that it's almost impossible not to accumulate yarn and it just happens that most of the yarn I've acquired recently is grey. 'So?' I hear most of you who know me ask. 'So?' Of course, I love it. But all of it was acquired with no specific purpose in mind and so I now find myself wondering just what I should make with it. Do you have any suggestions?

I signed up for the Madelinetosh yarn club and chose to receive neutral colours. As it happened, the neutral colours were shades of grey - perfect.

So I now have three skeins (about 500 metres) of the Rambler colourway in 80/10/10 worsted, which is olive grey. I also have 6 skeins (about 2,500 metres) of Eyre Light, a fingering weight mixture of wool, silk and alpaca: 6 skeins because of a mix-up in delivery of the yarn that was generously resolved by Madelinetosh. The Eyre Light is a colour called Folklore - a subtle purple grey with a slight sheen from the silk. Exquisite. And then there's 3 skeins (690 meres) of 80/10/10 Sport (my favourite yarn weight) in Steamer Trunk - again a green-grey, but not quite so intense a colour as the Rambler.

So what should I make with all this beautiful grey yarn?

I also have around 650 metres of light beige-grey Isager 100% wool No1 that I acquired from a MissFee destash after she'd knitted her lovely Celes. So, another set of pleasurable knitting worries about what make. Maybe I should imitate Miss Fee and knit a most desirable lacy scarf.

As I continue to knit on my seemingly endless Transatlantic shawl I can browse and weigh the delights of one pattern against another and dither and maybe even eventually make some decisions about all this greyness.

Brisbane perspectives

2011-11-28T19:26:00.001+11:00

I spent several days last week in Brisbane. I forgot to take my camera, which I regretted greatly as Brisbane was at its gaudily sparkling best. The sky was an intense bright blue and every flowering tree bloomed strikingly. Most memorable was the modern arched walkway that meanders through the South Bank parklands that was densely covered with magenta bouganvillia. I regretted not having my camera, though I also felt the need of some as yet unavailable device that captured scents in the same way a camera captures images. In the warm evenings the mingled perfumes of all the flowering bushes, vines and trees evoked the essence of Brisbane.

I managed to visit my favourite place, the Queensland Art Gallery, to have a leisurely look at the exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs, that I'd hurried through on a previous visit. The photographs are wonderful. What's most immediately obvious is their composition. Even though most of the works are photographed in real time and in real light, they are taken at the most perfect time and with just the right light. But the photographs are not only beautiful, many of them also capture the spirit of a particular time and place.

I think I wrote previously that Cartier-Bresson had political nous that enabled him to bear witness to many great historical events - photographing Mahatma Ghandi minutes before his death; documenting the advance of Mao Tse Tung's army and the retreat of the Kuomintang in China in the late 1940s. And, of course, the second world war. Cartier-Bresson joined the French army at the beginning of the second world war and was soon imprisoned in a German prisoner of war camp, where he spent three years. After two unsuccessful attempts, he managed to escape and joined the French Resistance movement. At the end of the war he was Director of a documentary film, 'Le Retour' that recorded, in real time, the return of prisoners of war and even the survivors of concentration camps to their homelands. In the midst of the disruption at the end of the war millions of people made their way, often on foot, from west to east and east to west. The film is beautifully filmed and emotionally harrowing. Fortunately for me, very few visitors to the exhibition paused to view the film for I found myself in embarrassing streams of tears.

The neighbouring Gallery of Modern Art had a small exhibition titled 'Threads' that I was anxious to see. It is an exhibition of Pacific and Asian textiles drawn from the Gallery's collection. The Australian National Gallery in Canberra has an excellent collection of textiles from Asia - particularly from Southeast Asia - Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, the Philippines. I think my expectations had been shaped by this collection. The Queensland collection is, of course, smaller and more recent but what I hadn't really expected was its emphasis on the Pacific. In the southern states of Australia you rarely have a sense of Australia's place in the Pacific and its relation to the Pacific islands. In Brisbane you are much more aware of people of Pacific Island descent and the Queensland textile collection reflects this relationship. Its centrepiece is a 22 metre (yes, 22 metres) long Tongan tapa cloth - made from layers of very finely hammered bark, stained and dyed in traditional geometric designs. And it has a collection of hand-stitched quilts made by women from various parts of the Pacific where the quilts embody not only elements of traditional Pacific designs but also evidence of colonial traditions.

I think I mostly interact with the world around me through words - through reading and conversing, so it's a good change to spend time being absorbed by visual imagery.

Longevity and Style

2011-11-14T13:28:00.001+11:00

I'm still reading Ari Seth Cohen's blog, Advanced Style. Well, maybe 'reading' isn't quite the right word, because the text of the blog is minimal and not usually of great interest - unless he is quoting the 'life advice' of some of his subjects. But the photos are good, and the subjects of the photos are fascinating. For those of you who haven't yet discovered this site, it's a kind of Sartorialist of older people - people of 'advanced' age. It's an inspired idea for a blog, and the people it features are also inspirational (if often a bit worrying - but more of that later).

Recently, the blog featured a couple of posts of women who are a hundred years old. These women look elegant, superbly accessorised, and so, so coordinated. They look as if, at a hundred, they still take considerable trouble to present themselves to the world. One of the women, Ruth, was asked for her life and style tips and among them was the following:
"I make myself go out everyday, even if its only to walk around the block. The key to staying young is to keep moving. You are never too old to exercise."
"Invest in Quality pieces, they never go out of style."
"I dress up everyday and I don't wear blue jeans. I dress up even to mail a letter'

Every time the older people of the 'Advanced Style' blog are asked for advice, these items feature, and every time I read such advice - particularly the final piece about dressing up everyday - I can't help thinking about the time and energy this must take, and whether the goal they achieve is worth the effort involved. There are days when I'd love to be like these old women - and days when it seems as if it's a huge investment of time, energy and money for an ultimately frivolous end.

'Advanced Style' has led me to lots of idle speculation. I've decided the inhabitants of Ari Seth Cohen's blog must be rich - or, if no longer really rich, were once rich and are now financially comfortable. You can only advise people to invest in 'quality pieces' if you are or have been able to afford them - particularly when the 'quality pieces are by designers such as Issey Miyake and Yves St Laurent. Periodically, some of the Advanced Style characters discuss the virtues of 'thrifting' or of 'making do'. But I don't think their thrifting is done in the local Vinnies - but rather in the shops that specialise in reselling name brands. They're often good at making do and mending, but then the recycling is of beautiful fabrics and the 'making do' brings together lovely objects in unexpected ways.

I often wonder if you would find such a cast of elegant older people in many cities other than New York? Paris, maybe, or other cities where there's a dense concentration of affluent people and a vivid street life. You're much more likely to 'dress up to mail a letter' if there's a mail box within reasonable walking distance and people in the street to notice you while you do so. You are also much more likely to dress up every day if there is somewhere to go every day that's engaging and easily accessible. Driving in from the suburbs doesn't quite have the cachet of simply taking the lift to the ground floor.

The things I most envy in many of the entries in this blog are the accessories - the bangles, brooches and necklaces, the hats, the gloves, the handbags, the spectacles, the scarves. Getting old has to have some compensations, and the gradual accumulation of accessories is one of them. I guess many of these people are rich enough to keep replenishing their stocks, but some of the jewellery and other accompaniments look timeless - as if they've been worn for years. I think this is reflected in the nonchalance with which some of these women carry off their style - they've just had so much practice.

I've been thinking about such subjects a bit more than usual because I've also just been to see the documentary Bill Cunningham: New York. Do go to see it, if you have the opportunity. Bill Cunningham works for the New York Times where he has two weekly columns - one of which documents New York high society at charity events and parties, and the other of which features street style. Bill Cunningham turns 80 while the documentary is being made and he still spends his days walking the streets of New York, lingering on street corners, photographing street fashion, and his nights bicycling from grand event to even grander event photographing the rich and well dressed. He refuses to photograph celebrities only because of their celebrity. They must also be stylish. As Anna Wintour says at one stage - to have Bill ignore you is death.

Bill Cunningham gains admittance to the most exclusive of Paris fashion shows because 'he's the most important man in the world', but he dresses in a blue workman's jacket, only eats the simplest of foods in down-market cafes, and has lived for many years in a tiny studio in Carnegie Hall, crammed with metal filing cabinets of his photos, sharing a bathroom down the hall and with no kitchen. He's lived his life among the rich and famous but has a very strict code of owing nothing to anybody. He works all the time and is passionate about clothes and style. He lives a busy, honourable life devoted to the observation of clothes. I'm finding it hard to find words for what I find so fascinating about this. Maybe I'm a bit of a puritan and part of me thinks that the brilliance and dedication that Bill Cunningham shows should be devoted to something more worthy than clothes. But then, at the same time I listen avidly for his gentle observations and all the accumulated fashion knowledge of his 80 years.

I like to know that something that's so central to our lives and simultaneously valued and worthless - style - can be linked to longevity.

What would you hope for?

2011-11-10T13:51:00.002+11:00

Let's say you were dreaming about the ideal weekend away with people who shared your interests - let's say, knitting. What would you hope for?

High on my list would be an idyllic country cottage, perhaps even with a white picket fence; a garden sufficiently large to ensure privacy; and expansive views of surrounding paddocks and hills.

I'd hope there'd be space for everyone to sleep comfortably, and a communal space with comfortable chairs where you could sit and knit and periodically wander to a nearby kitchen for cups of tea or coffee or even glasses of wine. Somewhere you could leave your knitting project bag till you were ready to return to the knitting task you'd chosen.

An added benefit would be if the room gave you views to a calm, rural, outside world

and if that world immediately outside the door had lots of places for sitting (knitting) in the sun or shade, surrounded by late spring flowers - roses, irises, daisies...

The cottage should be located in a picturesque country town so there is easy access to cafes with good coffee and to shops selling easily prepared food for the weekend, and there should be a good bottle shop for the wine supply.

And if there could be a truly wonderful bookshop with all sorts of temptations, that would really be the icing on the cake

Some of us are fortunate enough to have very talented and organised knitting friends who, with a little help from their friends, are able to make such an ideal weekend a reality. Last weekend a group of knitters travelled to Sewjourn in Victoria, where the cottage and its gardens had all the characteristics you might hope for, and the village of Lancefield in which it is located had all the supporting services and pleasures you could need or want.

In a neighbouring town there was even a long lunch in an excellent restaurant that features locally grown food and wine. Such a treat. A pleasure to add to lots of other pleasures.

Others have already blogged about their experiences of the weekend. As I've written elsewhere, it was a perfect combination of hilarity and tranquility. I'd probably have achieved more knitting (and less unravelling) if I'd stayed at home. But it could never have been as pleasurable.

I nearly forgot - you might hope for perfect late Spring weather. We even had that.

12 in 11: October. I'm late, I'm late...

2011-11-08T11:04:00.002+11:00

A belated summary of my October clothing and accessories purchases: one item. This brings me to 12 in 11 - my goal for the year. I think it's fairly obvious that I'll exceed the year's ideal total, but I'll try to bring the same rigour to buying as I have so far this year and see where it leads me.

So what did I buy?

A very loose Marimekko t-shirt in a dramatic camel and navy pattern. As the weather warms up for summer, it's already become one of my favourite pieces of clothing. I just love Marimekko. In the late 1960s I bought a length of fabric in their Poppies design that became the first of the Marimekko fabric cushions I've had across my life. I seem to remember my children having library bags for school that I made out of scraps of Marimekko fabric. I've had t-shirts and socks and, my favourite of all, a yellow and white striped ankle length t-shirt that in the early 1970s, when I was much slimmer, I wore both as a nightshirt and a party dress. Could anything be more versatile?

Ah, Marimekko. A most satisfying purchase.

Yet another shawl

2011-10-31T12:32:00.002+11:00

You would think that someone who has two full shelves of shawls and scarves in the bedroom cupboards would have a something appropriate for any occasion. However, I have the two shelves of shawls and scarves and still feel the need for yet another shawl with very specific characteristics - it needs to be BIG and it needs to be wearable with all my black and grey clothes without making a major contrasting colour statement. More than a year ago I knitted Mustaa Villaa's variation on the Wool Peddler's shawl and have worn and worn it. It's travelled with me several times and has been a shawl for many occasions. But even though it's reasonably large it's not really BIG, and the blue edging means it not quite as versatile as I would wish. So, despite all the half-finished knitting projects that I should be completing, I've cast on for a new shawl.

What I'm knitting is very predictable. It's striped, it features some garter stitch rows and I'm knitting it in a not-quite-black grey with shades of grey and cream. Ho hum. But the Transatlantic pattern also has the quirkiness of many of the currently fashionable Stephen West patterns with lots of lovely textural variation as well as the stripes. Another advantage of the pattern is that you can just knit and knit on the shawl until it is as big as you wish or till you run out of yarn - which isn't going to happen. I actually did some thinking ahead for this project and bought enough very dark graphite Rowan 4ply pure wool from Calico and Ivy so that I could combine it with the grey and cream Crazy Zauberball yarn I already have. Now all I need to do is knit... and knit and knit.

I already know that when it's finished this shawl will be my new travelling companion - but it will also be perfect for cooler evenings of tv watching.

A bit more accurate

2011-10-16T11:59:00.001+11:00

I almost feel as if I have to apologise for misrepresenting the colour of the socks in my previous post. The reality is never going to match people's expectations! This is a bit more accurate, though it still gives a richer blue hue to the grey.

What is it about socks?

2011-10-11T17:53:00.001+11:00

As I've noted before, I've not done well this year with the Super Special Six Pattern Sock Club for 2011. The patterns for the six pairs of socks were voted on for the year, and I ended up with a roster of socks that, with one exception, I'd not nominated or chosen. But being well-socialised as I am into accepting majority decisions, I decided to knit through the year's sock schedule without deviation or departure from the patterns. I've not been very successful. Pairs one, two and four have been completed. Pair three was a disaster, and I've been finding all sorts of reasons for delaying casting on for pair five, and already I'm passing negative judgments on pair six. In the meantime I produced some stripey socks that weren't on the schedule and then over the last couple of days started these:

[this early morning photo, while rather flattering to the socks, is a very inaccurate representation of the colours. The socks in reality are grey and mustard, though I'm so taken by this delft blue and cream combination that I might try it in the future!]

Maybe this sock knitting is telling me something about myself...

* I never think of myself as a person of extremes, but maybe this sock knitting club tells me something about myself I'd not realised. With sock knitting programs I seem to need to obey rules absolutely, or alternatively I go off on a frolic! Admittedly, a sock knitting frolic is hardly damaging to myself or anyone else, but I've been interested to discover that adjusting or amending the rules slightly seems to be beyond me. One departure from the program seems to license me to make any other departures as the whim takes me. I'm hoping I'm not like this in the rest of my life.

* I'm not an adventurous knitter. I don't really like learning new techniques and ways of doing things. I'm quite happy to think creatively within the range of knitting techniques I mastered long ago, but I seem to be resistant to adding to my skills. I know (to my regret) that I'm like this in the rest of my life.

* I would much rather trust my own design preferences (even if only for a sock pattern) than others'. Maybe this is a bit egocentric, but I have a lifetime of choices informing my preferences. This is definitely true of the rest of my life.

So, I'm knitting some plain patonyl socks, with the border taken from Kristen Kapur's Sockstravaganza pattern in 'Brave New Knits' to jazz them up a bit. A happy and satisfied outcome, but yet another departure from the program.

My community

2011-10-06T17:04:00.002+11:00

I must confess a rather eccentric fondness for the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act - not for the legislation itself which like most legislation seems clumsy, opaque and confusing to most laypeople - but for what it tries to achieve. I think it is inevitable that as populations grow and as infrastructure to serve sparse populations becomes more and more unsustainable we will have to find ways of living in closer proximity to one another. That's where the Strata Schemes Management Act comes in. It tries to set out a fair and manageable way in which people can live together - amicably - in shared spaces. It enables people to own or rent their own private living spaces, but regulates how the shared elements - gardens, swimming pools, lifts, exterior walls and roofs, services such as plumbing and cabling - are jointly owned and maintained.

There are horrendous stories about the evils of living in blocks of strata scheme apartments - pettiness, disputes among neighbours, legal action, failure to repair or maintain the building. But I've now been living in such a block of apartments for more than a quarter of a century and, across that time, we've had few such disastrous experiences. Some of us who've shared the apartment block for many years work quite hard and consistently to cultivate an ethos of sharing and tolerance. We've never employed a managing agent for the building and I think that this has increased the sense of shared responsibility - that decisions about the common good are being made either by the neighbours you know or by yourself if you're involved in the executive committee.

But from time to time all of this can be a lot of hard work.

The fabric of much of our building is more than a hundred years old - quite old by Australian standards. It was one of the first warehouse conversions in Sydney and has all the problems and expenses that repurposed buildings often have - nothing is modular and everything has to be purpose-built; the windows are all irregular and different shapes; the building was never constructed for domestic purposes and so requires work to adapt it to current standards. Just now we need to do a lot of very expensive work on the building and I've been part of the group scoping the project and costing it. We put together a very comprehensive document about the needed work and the options for payment, leading up to an informal meeting of owners to discuss the project and costs. I was dreading the meeting. I knew that the proposals would be very difficult for many of my neighbours to manage, and though rationally I accepted that there were few options, I dreaded facing my neighbours' distress and possible anger.

But I should have trusted them. No-one was cheerful, but after discussion almost everybody accepted the inevitability of the work that needs to be done, and even thanked the committee for the work and thought they'd put into the proposals. The 'we're all in this together' ethos prevailed. We still have to face the formal meeting at which decisions will be made in a week or so, but I'm now much more confident of a communally agreed outcome that will enable the work to be done. It's good to be reassured that groups of people can be trusted to act for the communal good, even if it is at a cost to themselves individually.

12 in 11: September

2011-09-30T11:50:00.000+10:00

I have one item of clothing to add to my total for 2011 - some Trippen sandals purchased at the wonderful Sole Devotion on a visit to Brisbane earlier this month.

They're made from dull brown leather (not dull as in boring but dull as in not shiny) and have an interesting shaped heel. And they're very comfortable.

I'm three-quarters of the way through the year and I have one item left to purchase if I'm to meet my target. Unlikely that I'll succeed. I think there's a pattern emerging here - I'm quite good at not buying clothing - so far only 5 items for the year - but not so good at avoiding purchasing shoes and accessories. Still, as commenters have noted from time to time, these totals would be much higher if it were not for the 12 in 11 challenge. It really has made me think, hard, before purchasing anything.

Clearly, however, there's a limit to how long this challenge can be sustained. I have lots of clothes I've been wearing for a long time, or that I wear frequently. Many of them are becoming rather tatty with wear and some, frankly, are boring. I'm sure I can manage some restraint till the end of the year, but after that - who knows? It will be interesting to see if this challenge has modified my clothes-buying behaviour in a more sustained way.

A Spring frolic

2011-09-21T22:17:00.000+10:00

' Frolic'...a playful antic...

I didn't plan to make these socks. The yarn was there, and I found a stripey pattern, and started knitting. They were fun to knit, and easy - a great distraction from more serious or challenging knitting, particularly when I wasn't feeling well.

The pattern is Spring Socks by Eveli Kaur and I knitted in 4 row stripes of Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn and Ewe Give Me the Knits! Sock Yarn. I altered the pattern just a little to make the socks knee high. They have a knitted-in hem at the top through which I'll thread elastic to help keep them up.

A frolic...but maybe a bit too much of a frolic for me to wear. Perhaps they'll make a playful gift.

Unscheduled socks

2011-09-11T11:36:00.002+10:00

These socks are one of those random, unexpected knitting projects. I had no intention of knitting socks other than those already on my schedule for the 2011 Personal Sock Club, but from one day to the next I found myself knitting these unscheduled striped socks.

I guess they're not really so surprising. For years I've admired other knitters' striped socks or mittens knitted from Noro yarns, and have frequently indulged in stripey projects myself. I certainly started this project at just the right time. Over the last few days I've had conjunctivitis - a highly contagious eye infection usually associated with children. I'm peering out at the world through swollen, gummy eyelids. I suspect it's one of those childhood infections that's worse if contracted as an adult. So this knitting project, which is essentially plain socks with stripes, has been perfect for a time when I'm confined to the house with limited vision, waiting for the antibiotics to work.

Some time away

2011-09-07T23:30:00.003+10:00

When I started blogging I don't think I ever anticipated that my family and old friends would use my blog as a way to keep up with my life. I think I expected it to reach a small audience of knitters and maybe of people whom I didn't know in the life I've lived so far. But I now have old friends saying things like 'I noticed you'd not been blogging for a few days so I thought you might be out of town' or family members commenting on an opinion I'd expressed in my blog as if it were part of an ongoing conversation with them. I guess I just have to accept that my blog has become an integral part of my life.

This is all by way of saying that I've been out of town and away from my computer for a few days and feel as if I need to account for my absence. I've been baby-sitting (or perhaps in deference to her four-year-old status I should say 'child-sitting') for my grand-daughter - the dotee - in Brisbane. The child-sitting went very well, although I've come away with an increased appreciation of why you have children in your twenties and thirties - maybe forties - but definitely not in your sixties. I've answered many questions; a few with expertise and many with creativity or confessions of limited knowledge. I was particularly chuffed by questions about word meanings; I love having someone around who's already so interested in language and how it works.

But I really meant this post to be about Brisbane. I think I'm probably repeating myself, but I'm always struck when I visit by how it seems to be more brightly coloured than Sydney. The vegetation is more riotous and brilliant, the sky seems to be a more intense blue, and it generally seems to sparkle. It's not a subtle city, but it's engaging.

So, some random things I like about Brisbane:

* The river. It's not the Seine or the Danube and it's not Sydney Harbour, but the Brisbane River is a central part of Brisbane's identity. I love the way it twists and turns upon itself so that so many suburbs have the river as part of their neighbourhood. And the river cat ferries often allow you to combine the pleasure of a river cruise with the necessity of travelling from place to place.

But then, of course, as the floods earlier this year demonstrated, so much of the city is also vulnerable because of the river. I imagine many people must still be suffering the ravages of the floods, but as you travel up and down the river there's no longer any evidence for the casual observer that the floods ever occurred. The recovery seems miraculous, though you know it must be the result of much hard and cooperative work.

* Queenslanders - not the people, although I'm sure they're as nice as people generally are - but the houses. My daughter has recently moved to an old suburb of Brisbane with lots of these modest and often modified wooden houses raised on stilts. Brisbane's hilliness always surprises me and these houses seem to perch precariously on the steep slopes. They're unpretentious and everyday and seem to sit very lightly on the land.

* South Bank. The cluster of museums, galleries, the State Library, and parklands, with its view back to the city, is such a gift for Brisbane. That it's well-served by public transport increases its pleasure.

The dotee and I spent an afternoon at the library that has a most wonderful section for children with books, cubbies, craft materials and dress-ups often thematically related to exhibitions in the arts complex. At the moment the theme is the sea and islands as the Museum currently has an exhibitions on the Torres Strait Islands. However, the main attraction for me just now is the extensive exhibition of photographs at the Queensland Art Gallery by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cartier-Bresson worked from the 1930s to the 1970s and travelled widely. He had the luck or good management to be present at events and within periods that were formative in countries' histories. His back and white photos, however, are not usually of the main historical players (though the exhibition does include some of his superb portraits) but of the bystanders, or even of the neglected and unaware. I'd love to go back for another look.

* Leaving the best things till last - the dotee. It was good to have extended time with her.

12 in 11: August

2011-08-31T22:37:00.000+10:00

Nothing. I bought nothing.

Well, more truthfully, I bought nothing that needs to be counted. I did buy some black and white T'boli beads during my trip to the Philippines. But according to comments on previous posts by my readers these need not be counted because:

(a) they're a souvenir
(b) they're handcrafts
(c) they're jewellery

So, the total for 2011 remains at 10.

Thankfully, socks.

2011-08-31T14:00:00.002+10:00

Thankfully, I've finished Nancy Bush's Fox Faces,the fourth installment of the super special six pattern sock club (s62011) socks, by the nominal due date. I'm ignoring the fact for the moment that if I'm really going to complete this sock club I need to knit a pair of socks to substitute for the third installment - the Leyburn pattern I wimped out on.

This is such an interesting pattern. It's almost as if Nancy Bush had designed them as a sampler to demonstrate a range of ideas you can include in a pair of socks. As well as the rather cute fox faces lace pattern itself, there's the lateral braid on the sock cuff; the honeycomb stitch for the heel; the dutch heel (love the dutch heel); and the unusual three sectioned star finish for the toe.

Any problems with these socks have been of my own making. This yarn - 4 ply sock yarn by Angel Yarns UK - has a slight halo and almost felted effect. It would make a wonderful traditional pair of plain or ribbed socks. But it's not ideal for this pattern, which would have been better with a tightly spun yarn with crisp stitch definition. Also, the socks are very snug on me. A sock pattern of 60 stitches on 2.25mm needles is never going to result in a generously (or even moderately) sized sock. But I have a neighbour with small feet who I'm sure would love some hand-knitted socks for next winter.

I like this pattern so much I intend to knit it again in a more suitable yarn.

The fabric of the past

2011-08-29T22:51:00.000+10:00

I've been interested in traditional, usually handmade textiles for many years - particularly those from Southeast Asia. I've never been able to afford to buy very valuable textiles, but over the years some of the bits of cloth in my collection - a grand word for the piles of fabric around my house - have become rare or are no longer available. It's sad to see such beautiful creations disappearing, but making hand-woven or richly embroidered textiles, except for the grandest occasions, is just no longer financially viable. Raw materials are expensive, markets need to be regularly supplied, and even low-paying jobs often generate more income for a family than handcrafts.

So I always have some trepidation when I visit Silahis, a wonderful multi-storey treasure store of Philippine crafts. There are always lots of baskets and wood carvings for sale but, over the last years, the variety and quantity of the available textiles are dwindling. I was delighted this visit to find some modern reproductions of Gaddang textiles, made by the Gaddang people of northeastern Luzon. I'd seen beautiful old expensive Gaddang textiles but hadn't ever bought any; these reproductions, handwoven and traditionally decorated with tiny white beads are lovely and very affordable.

The shop also had some reproductions of Kalinga textiles from the mountains of northern Luzon, and I was unable to resist some tiny black and white T'boli beads from central Mindanao - the southernmost island of the Philippines.

And finally, some embroidered handkerchiefs made from (imitation) pina cloth - the cloth traditionally used for men's formal shirts, the barong tagalog, and the beautiful shoulder-framing shawl-like collars of Spanish-influenced traditional dress for women.

Pina is very fine fabric woven from fibres extracted from the leaves of the pineapple plant. In the 1970s I actually saw women handweaving pina fabrics and marvelled at the patience required to knot the short fibres into a warp and then weave the translucent cloth. Nowadays pina cloth is more likely to be made from a mixture of fibres or from synthetics as I think my handkerchiefs are. But I love the fine embroidery and I like them as a memento of the past.

Nine days in the Philippines

2011-08-25T12:41:00.001+10:00

I've been travelling again. Though I've only recently returned from my Malaysian trip, this time I had a very special reason for travelling. Three months ago, my son, who's living in the Philippines, and his partner had a baby boy - Joshua John. The baby was born two months prematurely and he initially had quite a tough time with lots of setbacks. I really felt I had to visit so I could get to know Joshua at this stage of his life. Fortunately, over the last few weeks he's really flourished and is now a picture of health and contentment.

So I spent most of my week or so in the Philippines just admiring Joshua. But I did manage a few other activities:

* I visited Intramuros - the oldest part of Manila and once a walled city where we saw a wedding with very grandly dressed guests in the late sixteenth century church of San Agustin;

where we were ushered across the street by a guard dressed in an 'historic' Katipunan uniform to my favourite craft and textile shop (but more of that in another post);

and where we strolled through the ruins of Fort Santiago and remembered Filipino hero Jose Rizal whose one hundred and fiftieth anniversary year this is.

I'm not sure how useful Rizal's advice now is. The Philippines' complex and often unfortunate history is certainly useful in understanding the present state of Philippine society and politics, but history doesn't provide any easy answers for how to exist in modern Asia. [Just as an aside - one of the unexpected minor pleasures of visiting Manila is the newspapers. Clearly I'm limited to English-language newspapers, but the Philippine press must be amongst the most free in the world. Most of the news stories are so partisan or so local or so convoluted I can't really appreciate them, but I love the comment columns...everything from sophisticated and informed sociological commentary on a current debate about art and blasphemy through to impassioned pleas from overseas Filipino workers arguing they should not be compulsorily expatriated from Libya because their families need the income they're generating. A window to a very different world].

* I had a two day trip to Magdalena, about 150k south of Manila in the province of Laguna where I stayed in a bahay kubo - a house of traditional materials. The house has grown somewhat since we spent Christmas there a couple of years ago so this time there was a separate living room where Joshua and I spent most of our time

and a brand new bedroom where I, (probably because I'm fussiest) had the honour of sleeping

There's lots to like and admire about a bahay kubo. It literally sits very lightly upon the ground. Almost all the materials are either locally gathered (the bamboo for the walls and floors; many of the support posts) or locally crafted (the lovely window frames). Reluctantly, after the thatched roof had been twice destroyed by typhoons, the roof has been replaced with a kind of hardy corrugated plastic. I particularly love the textures the local materials provide and the softness of the bamboo flooring that gives slightly beneath your weight. I love showering and having the water run through the bamboo slats to the luxurious undergrowth beneath the house. But I don't like the insects! My visit coincided with the season when termites grow wings and go hunting for new nests. Any attempt to read at night was thwarted by the surprisingly large winged termites attracted by the light. And there are ants and tiny bamboo inhabiting insects and...other things I could (and did) only imagine.

The area of Laguna in which Magdalena is situated is steeped in Philippine history. The large lake, the Laguna, that's the centre of the province, was a major transportation hub for the Spaniards who colonised the Philippines from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. It's partly the setting for Rizal's novels of nationalist sentiment that every Filipino school child has to study, Noli Mi Tangere and El Filibusterismo, and a major site for resistance to the Spanish in the late nineteenth century. The area is also just beautiful - but vulnerable. Overpopulation, over-fishing, periodic floods, pollution from fertiliser and pesticides, and growths of water hyacinth haven't quite destroyed the laguna (lake), but its health is precarious.

On the drive down to Magdalena we made a short detour via the town of Pila where luck or circumstance has enabled the preservation of a largish number of old houses around a charming town plaza.

Some claim they're houses from the Spanish period, but I suspect a number of them date from the early twentieth century when the Philippines was a US colony. Anyway, the town has charm and I'd like to visit again - preferably when it's not raining.

* I did some malling (as in spending time in shopping malls). I malled in our local, crowded, cheap and cheerful mall

and I malled in the most beautiful, echoingly empty malls where every exclusive and expensive international design company is represented. I can't imagine how such places stay open. I certainly couldn't afford to shop in them and I've rarely seen others shopping in them. But they do have beautiful settings and meticulously cared for gardens.

By the way, all I bought, (apart from traditional crafts), was baby clothes and baby paraphernalia, so there are no additions to my clothes tally for the year.

* Otherwise, I just hung around the house with Joshua, with brief forays into the local neighbourhood.

* And, as always happens when you visit Manila, I spent lots of time in traffic jams.

This is Aurora Boulevard, just around the corner from where I was staying. Eight lanes of traffic (in a road meant for six) with queues of jeepneys transporting people around the city, as well as two tracks for the ever-crowded light rail overhead. I guess transportation is always going to be a problem in a city of around 15 million people.

I'm not sure when I'll be back for another visit, but with Joshua's arrival I guess it won't be too long.

Simple

2011-08-22T15:04:00.003+10:00

A few weeks ago I took the brief walk from work to the station with a colleague I no longer see very often. It was in the midst of the un-Sydney-like cold spell we had a few weeks ago and she was saying how much she felt the cold. She was wearing a pair of fingerless gloves and extolling their virtue.

Coincidentally, I'd just finished my Zumthor hat using Brooklyn Tweed's Shelter yarn. I'd had to break into a second ball of yarn to finish the hat and had kept the unfinished skein on my coffee table. You know what it's like...if you put the partly used skein away 'safely', it disappears forever. I didn't want this to happen, but, wonderful though the yarn is, I also didn't really want a partly finished skein of yarn as a constant feature on my coffee table.

So, I decided to make my friend some more fingerless gloves. At least I knew she would wear and appreciate them. Two evenings later and even I, slow knitter that I am, had finished the mitts.

The pattern is Leslie Friend's much-knitted Toasty. The yarn is Brooklyn Tweed's Shelter in 'Nest' colourway. I used 5.00mm needles and the knitting was super-quick for a very satisfactory outcome.

And - best of all - my colleague seems to like them.

Just right

2011-08-11T07:13:00.001+10:00

I'm very very happy with my latest completed knitting project. I don't often attempt what I think of as 'large' garments - jumpers or cardigans or (heaven forbid) dresses. I'm rather a slow knitter and, for myself, have a preference for quite plain knitted garments - which are then boring to knit. But the popular Audrey in Unst pattern, by Scottish designer Gudrun Johnson, really appealed to me. It's an ideal balance of plain elements - the stocking stitch body and sleeves - with decorative details - the deep twisted rib basque and cuffs and the seemingly smocked front yoke.

Once you start knitting, there are additional pleasures. The pattern is beautifully and clearly written with just the right amount of information, and the cardigan has been designed with such neat finishes - the ribbing, the perfect set-in sleeves, and the i-cord edging at the neck.

I had only four skeins of the Madelinetosh Sport weight yarn - not enough for a cardigan for me, but just right for my daughter. The yarn is just as pleasing as the pattern and for similar reasons of balance. The gradations of colour in the yarn, appropriately named 'silver fox', bring variety, but its neat twist and clear stitch definition give regularity.

I'd bought some beautiful old glass buttons that were a perfect match for this colour, but had to abandon them as I didn't have enough of them. I then bought shell buttons, which were also a perfect match, but they were too large. Eventually I bought the buttons I've used from the ever-reliable All Buttons Great and Small in Newtown - just the right size, just right mottled grey colour, and the right number. And I still have some beautiful buttons to be used for later projects.

I put the cardigan in the post to my daughter yesterday. Now all I have to hope for is that it fits.

Crime fiction echoing life

2011-08-10T17:26:00.002+10:00

I'm not quite sure how or why it happened, but at some stage my blog became my public conscience on a number of matters. There's my public accounting for clothes buying in 2011, and public disclosure of my successes and failures with my sock knitting. And then a few months ago, overwhelmed by shame at my reading habits, I made the resolution to read ten non-crime fiction books before I allowed myself to return to crime fiction. And then promptly forgot about my challenge to myself.

But I must have internalised the intention because, of the next eleven books I read, ten were not crime fiction. A victory of some sort.

However, sometimes reading crime fiction is very rewarding (and very often it's distracting and enjoyable). I've just had a rather freaky reading experience.

Rather belatedly, I've been reading Jo Nesbo's 'The Redbreast' - originally written in Norwegian in 2000 and then translated into English in 2006. [The cover of my edition of the book promotes Nesbo as 'the next Stieg Larsson', which must be rather galling for Nesbo as he was writing to great acclaim well before Steig Larsson published the 'Millenium' trilogy.] A key focus of Nesbo's novel is the story of a group of young Norwegian men who supported Hitler's view of the world and chose to fight with German troops on the Eastern front during the second world war. Also part of the story is modern neo-Nazism, influenced by the stories of these men, and its resentment of modern Norway's values. Nesbo implies that there is a long minority history of pro-Nazi views and affiliations hidden behind Norway's current peace-seeking stance. I was reading this book just as the horrific recent killings occurred in Norway. There was an uncanny parallel between the speeches and views of the some of the characters in Nesbo's novel and those of Anders Behring Breivik. Given it was written in 2000, 'The Redbreast' seemed very prescient.

Sometimes it's easy to justify my reading habits.

A golden anniversary

2011-08-05T17:54:00.000+10:00

Several weeks ago I received a most unexpected invitation. I was asked to give an address for Education Week at my old high school. In case you are thinking this is a great and meritorious honour, I should give you some context for this invitation. I grew up in the small town of Grenfell (population around 2,000) in central-west NSW - about 370 km due west of Sydney.

[Grenfell's Main Street]

It's fifty years since I finished high school and in my final year at the school it was formally reclassified by the Department of Education as a High School and took on the name The Henry Lawson High School (the renowned, pessimistic bush poet, short story writer and drunkard Henry Lawson was born about 100 metres from the school's present location). I was school captain during that year and so I guess someone deemed it appropriate to ask me back fifty years later.

I drove up to Grenfell one day and back to Sydney the following day - a real achievement for me as I really don't like driving. But despite the going and coming it was a wonderful visit. The high school has always been small - around 180 kids when I attended and nowadays around 240. My first real job was teaching in a country high school at Narrandera which was a bit bigger than Grenfell, but shared many of the same characteristics. I like the comprehensiveness of such schools. There are girls and boys, intelligent and not so intelligent, rich and poor, those skilled at sports and those (like me) who suffered through games and physical activities. You can't attend such a school and have any illusions about the diversity of people and their skills and opportunities. I also like the way such schools are embedded in their communities and serve as a focal point for many community groups and projects.

At the school assembly the school band played and the choir sang; awards were presented to community members who had assisted the school; the final of the school spelling bee was held with participants so nervous we were all sitting on the edges of our seats with tension; awards were presented to students; and I gave my speech. It was easy to find things to say about an experience that had played such a formative role in my life - and also that of other members of my family. Not only did I complete my schooling at this school in 1961, but my brother was school captain in 1966, my father attended there till he left school aged 15 in 1931, and his mother left the Grenfell Superior School (at age 13) in 1899. Such a rich line of connection.

I stayed overnight with a friend from my school days and her husband who live on a farm in a gracious 1910 traditional Australian homestead.

My friend is the third generation of her family to have lived in this house and it will pass on to her son and possibly other generations. Even though I seem to have broken with these lines of tradition by moving away from Grenfell I like to know that such continuity is possible.

The house has a wonderful big old garden where early spring flowers are just emerging. There are lots of nostalgically scented plants and my friend brings them inside in vases throughout the house. My bedroom was scented by some sprigs of daphne which evokes memories of my mother who always cultivated a daphne bush.

And there were the lambs. Because of all the rain last year and the rich pasture it produced, my friends have been overwhelmed this year by the very high lamb birth rates. Inevitably, a number of lambs have lost their mothers or the mothers have had difficulty feeding and so some of the lambs need to be bottle-fed.

This handsome group are just about ready to graduate from milk to pasture and are looking very plump and healthy. This variety of sheep - called Dorper - are not wool sheep but rather are being bred to eat. Almost seems a shame when they're so cute, but for those of us meat-eaters, it's the cost of having our lamb cutlets and roasts.

Visiting Grenfell always reminds me of my family roots and upbringing. It's all so familiar and yet now so distant in my life. I inevitably made a bit of a pilgrimage to places that are integral to my memories of growing up and the family stories I was told...

[The 1930s bungalow my parents lived in from 1948 onwards and where I lived until I left home for university. My dad's garden would have had fewer shrubs and at this time of the year the first spring annuals]

[The farmhouse outside Grenfell built by my grandfather sometime around 1920. This is where my mother grew up and my grandfather wrote his diaries]

[The cluster of trees near the farmhouse above where my great-grandfather built a slab hut sometime in the 1880s when he settled this land and brought his family to live here.]

And a final country story. I pulled to the side of the road on my way into Grenfell to take the two photographs above. I'd not been there more than three minutes before a farmer came out of a nearby house to check that I was OK. It's what I both love and fear about country towns - that you are generously cared for and helped, but that you have no anonymity whatsoever.

12 in 11: July

2011-07-31T21:13:00.001+10:00

My 12 in 11 project is looking a bit shaky.

First, there were the hand-beaded slippers I bought in Malaka while on my holidays.

Aren't they lovely? The beads are hand-sewn to crescents of fabric that then become the toes of the shoes. Most of them are high-heeled and in smaller sizes, so I counted myself fortunate to find some large-enough flat slippers. They fall into the category of 'I have no idea when I'll wear them but I can't resist beautiful traditional crafts'.

Then just a couple of days ago a friend led me astray by telling me that my favourite designer was having a sale. This shop almost never has sales so this was just too much to resist. So I have a new charcoal long grey t-shirt with very long sleeves, and some drapey black pants in fine wool (yes, finally, fine black wool pants). These are from the season before last and were a fraction of their original price.

That makes a total of ten clothing items I've bought so far for 2011. Not good - but I do like my new clothes.

Architectural details

2011-07-30T22:41:00.001+10:00

I've had fun knitting this hat.

The designer of the pattern named it 'Zumthor' for the architect whose clean geometric designs won him the Pritzker prize for Architecture in 2009. Like Zumthor's constructions, this hat is all neat and squared off. I've knitted it in Brooklyntweed's Shelter yarn in a rich tawny colour called 'Nest'. Altogether, most satisfactory.

As I was preparing to start knitting I was very puzzled that some of the photos in the pattern showed the hat in reverse stocking stitch while the pattern clearly instructed me to knit it in stocking stitch. I read and reread the instructions only to discover belatedly that I'd somehow missed the word 'reversible' in the introduction to the pattern. What a great discovery. Two versions of the hat after knitting it only once.

Thank you to 1funkyknitwit for the photos, taken at a most pleasant afternoon of knitting with some SSK regulars.

It's all about the yarn

2011-07-28T13:39:00.001+10:00

My latest knitting project is all about the yarn. I was fortunate enough to have a skein - 111 metres - of 1funkyknitwit's unique corespun yarn. The core seems to be a rich browny natural fleece that has then been spun with all sorts of seemingly random bits of wool and silk and fleece and sparkly stuff. I've described these bits as seemingly random because when you look at the outcome you realise that this mixture and balance could only have been achieved by someone with the unerring eye for colour and tonalities that 1funkyknitwit possesses.

I knew I wanted to use this yarn to produce a wearable outcome and so I decided to make a scarf. I wear scarves all the time. I like the yarn so much that I didn't want it gradually moving to the bottom of my (very large) pile of scarves because it was too hard to wear and so wanted something I could just throw on rather than something I had to 'style'. I was also sensible enough to realise that I needed a very simple stitch pattern to highlight the yarn. The process of achieving the final outcome reinforced for me all the reasons I'm not a knitwear designer. I actually knitted this four times. First, I had in mind a kind of rhomboid shape so there would be asymmetrical tails to the scarf but, when it was finished it was just too hard to wear in any way that looked natural. Then I decided to broadly copy a scarf 1funkyknitwit had made and knitted a rectangle in moss stitch. But somehow I misjudged the proportions of the length and width and it just didn't work. Then I tried a Baktus in garter stitch, but the designer of this pattern is right - it works best in fine yarns and somehow my finished product looked skimpy. Finally, after much trawling through Ravelry I found Jane Richmond's free pattern for her Mustard Scarf, and this is the final outcome. It's a simple pattern of a row of knit two together, then a yarnover, followed by a row of plain knitting.

I've finished the scarf with an old button I bought from Peppergreen Antiques in Berrima when I was, most fittingly, accompanied by 1funkyknitwit. I hope my knitting has done justice to her yarn.

Personal Sock Club... Fail!

2011-07-26T14:32:00.001+10:00

Sometimes it's good to have knitting goals and timelines. In 2009 and 2010 I devised my personal sock club, where each two months or so I rediscovered some sock yarn I already possessed and knitted it up into socks. Across those two years I completed more than a dozen pairs of socks - usually within or just beyond the time limit I'd set myself. This year's sock club has had a variation - a group of people voted upon and chose the patterns for the year. Even though they weren't patterns I would normally choose, I managed the first two pairs of socks for the year. But the third pair of socks - Leyburn - completely defeated me.

They were my first ever pair of toe-up socks, and my second ever short-row heel - and I hadn't enjoyed the first one. I'd decided at the beginning of the year I'd knit each of the patterns chosen and that I'd knit each of them exactly as written, hoping I might learn some new techniques and nudge myself out of my rather unadventurous approach to sock knitting.

However, the Leyburns proved to be a bit of a challenge. They've made me ask myself what is reasonable to expect from a free knitting pattern. If you buy a pattern you expect it to be at least accurate and clear. If it is also well presented and easy to follow you consider it praiseworthy. I'm not sure if you can have the same expectations for free patterns. I can imagine some adventurous knitter trying out their new ideas for a sock (or a scarf or a cardigan, etc), having it admired by friends or acquaintances, and being urged to 'just make a note of what you've done so we can have a go at it'. And then the pattern gets noted on Ravelry or other internet sites and used by others.

Then some of the others - me, in this particular case - have problems with the pattern... it's not detailed enough, it's not clear why I have to do things in a particular way, or it tells me to 'use your favourite short-row heel' when this is the first time I've knitted a toe-up short-row heel and I don't know enough to have a 'favourite'. With the benefit of hindsight, this was clearly a mismatching of pattern and knitter.

Added to which, this is the knitting I took on holidays with me. At the very time when I needed knitting that was unproblematic and could be picked up and put down easily, I was searching the internet for examples of short-row heels and trying to work out how to incorporate them into the overall pattern (I think this took three attempts and three unravellings). With hindsight, clearly a mismatching of project and location.

So, I don't want to blame the pattern-writer. It was a free pattern, which I think is an invitation to knit at your own risk. I should have been much more careful to prepare myself for the challenges of the pattern and should have realised these socks weren't a good holiday project. But even so, I did not enjoy knitting them. I've abandoned them for the moment. I will have no socks finished for the May-June project for sock club. I have to declare a 'Fail'.

So I've moved on to the next pattern chosen by the group for the sock club - Nancy Bush's Fox Faces.

I've heaved a huge sigh of relief. Nancy Bush - a guarantee of a clearly written pattern. Top-down - my preference. Dutch heels - love them. Round toes - yippee. I'm not using the yarn I drew randomly for this project as it seemed a bit short of the yardage required, so am substituting yarn that was a prize from MissFee's blog anniversary - Angel Yarn in Denim Mix colour. It seems as if one departure from the rules I set for myself has licensed me to make others.

I'll report in on progress at the end of August when they're - hopefully - done.

Belatedly, 12 in 11: June

2011-07-18T19:59:00.001+10:00

With my holiday disrupting my everyday life I forgot to report on my 12 in 11 progress for June. So belatedly, here's the update.

I like to think I'm not seduced by brands and brand names. It's a kind of reverse snobbery. But I think I should face up to the fact that sometimes I'm just an old-fashioned snob about some brands. I needed a handbag for my holiday. I wanted something light, neutral enough go with any of my clothes, that was big enough to hold all the necessities of day-to-day travelling life (wallet, sunglasses, foldable hat, guide book) but not so big that I'd be tempted to fill it with other less necessary stuff. So I went shopping and decided I just had to buy a Mandarina Duck handbag.

I think this must be the fifth or sixth Mandarina Duck bag I've had in my life and I've loved every one of them. They're not at all flashy, but I enjoy their quiet, functional Italian design. Fortunately, with the increase in the value of the Australian dollar, they seem to have come down in price, and this combined with a 25% reduction at my favourite handbag and travel shop meant that the price wasn't too guilt-inducing. And did you notice it's grey?

My other purchase in June was some very old-fashioned delicate filigree silver earrings I bought from the silver workshop in Kota Bharu.

They're in the traditional hibiscus shape - the national flower of Malaysia. They're not at all the kind of earrings I usually wear, but I just can't resist something that preserves local traditions. But I don't have to count these, do I? You, my dear readers, have previously agreed that earrings don't count.

One additional item for June - a total of 7 items so far for the year. Quite restrained.

Malaysia: five best things...

2011-07-12T23:50:00.002+10:00

I'm now home and feel a need to capture some of my final impressions of my time in Malaysia, so I'm revisiting what I did for my Paris trip early last year and risking a list of the five best things - or at least, the things that gave me most pleasure.

1 The first is a bit complicated - it's Malaysia's cultural diversity. I feel that if you were going to create a nation state, the Malaysian model would be one of the riskiest you could choose. The state is made up of people with distinctly different cultural, religious and language backgrounds, where the differences have been fostered and cherished for generations. No effort is made to integrate the groups - in fact, intermarriage is often explicitly discouraged - and there's positive discrimination in favour of Malays and Islam, but nevertheless everyone is expected to buy into the notion of '1 Malaysia', and to a large extent, everyone does. Nowhere is this diversity more immediately obvious than in the number and range of religious edifices.

[The exquisite Ubudiah Mosque in the royal town of Kuala Kangsar where we were allowed (as modestly clad women) even into the central domed prayer hall]

[The elegant 1817 St George's Church in Georgetown, Penang - supposedly the first Anglican church built in Southeast Asia.]

[The 1883 Sri Mariamann Hindu Temple in Georgetown, Penang, proudly maintained by its generations old Indian community]

[Buddhist Chinese Perak Tong Temple near Ipoh - built into an immense limestone cave]

[The early nineteenth century Taoist/Confucian Goddess of Mercy Temple in Georgetown, Penang. This is my favourite. I call it the Temple of Chaos. It's full of people all the time, burning incense, burning candles, burning "pretend' paper money. Smoke and bowing everywhere in every direction. For no apparent reason there was a stage in the temple forecourt and a performance of Chinese opera. People sitting, chatting, eating, sleeping. Chaos]

2 The natural world. Anybody who knows me knows that I'm not a great fan of 'nature'. I'm usually much happier in the built environment that I am in the natural one. But Malaysia's natural world is so much larger than life - so bright, colourful and exuberant. I've already posted about the wonderful wild life of Sarawak and Sabah - so definitely worth the visit - but even in a big city such as Kuala Lumpur there are wonderful parks and gardens. We particularly loved the butterfly park in KL with the sheer delight of being surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of fluttering butterflies:

and, at the risk of boring you with yet more photographs of orchids, we were overwhelmed by the profusion and colour and variety of the plantings in the KL orchid garden:

3 The food. You quickly learn that in Malaysia, almost everything will taste wonderful. It may astound you with its chilli sharpness, but it will have a very fresh, complex flavour. Lots of ginger, lots of lemon grass, coconut milk, a coriander-like herb and everything so fresh. There are, of course a few exceptions to the tasting wonderful rule - durian and jackfruit whose decadent tropical taste I can't bear, and fish paste which I happen to like, but which can be overpowering in larger quantities. There were lots of different presentations of laksa with local variations as we travelled around, and my favourite comfort food Hainanese Chicken Rice. We had afternoon tea at a grand hotel and discovered it came with a particular Malaysian twist - finger sandwiches and petit fours, accompanied by satay, samosas and chicken pies:

And of course there was the kek. Lots of kek. The keks ranged from the Nyonya specialities of cakes made from glutinous rice and palm sugar, through wonderful pastries and such things as very good banana kek, to the most astounding kek lapis we found in Kuching - extraordinary constructions of fine layers of kek to form almost op-art patterns.

4 The architecture. I knew I would be attracted by the traditional wooden architecture of Malay houses - whether it is the simplicity of kampung (village) houses or the intricate grandeur of such structures as the early twentieth century Istana Kenangan (now a museum) at Kuala Kangsar - completely constructed without nails.

I also knew I'd see some wonderful colonial architecture such as the 1917 Railway Administration Building in Kuala Lumpur and the Town Hall in now-neglected but once-grand Ipoh

and the shophouses and grand Chinese merchant houses of Penang.

What I hadn't expected was to be bowled over by some of the modern architecture. The much-famed Petronas twin towers are much more beautiful than I had anticipated. Even though structurally they're built from concrete, the external cladding glitters metallicly. They're reminiscent of the modernity of New York's Chrysler Building. We were fortunate to have them as part of the view from our hotel window in KL where at night they looked like two glittering upended chandeliers.

Just as beautiful though not so immediately impressive is the elegant Dayabumi complex that integrates Islamic design elements with modern skyscraper architecture.

And then there was the building whose interior really stole my heart - the Museum of Islamic Arts Malaysia. This is one of the most wonderful museums I've ever visited. Precious and beautiful displays of pottery, textiles, furniture and objects from Islamic countries around the world, along with finely hand-written and decorated, centuries old religious books and scrolls. It's rare to see so many exquisite things grouped together so well and displayed in such a fitting space. Definitely worth a visit.

5 The taxi-drivers. I expect like most travellers, I'm very suspicious of taxi-drivers when I travel, but in this case I've decided that taxi-drivers are one of the unacknowledged treasures of Malaysian tourism. Given the limited time we had in each city we visited, and sometimes the fact that there was no readily accessible alternative, we used taxis quite a bit on our trip. Even though meters were rarely used, we didn't have a single case where the fare quoted by the driver was more than marginally different from what our guidebooks or hotel had suggested or, if meters were used, where the metered and unmetered fares were different. But as well as their trust-worthiness, the taxi-drivers were an invaluable source of advice and information - often they became either formal or informal guides for bits and pieces of our sight-seeing.

We discovered that Malaysia has a compulsory retirement age of 55, so that a number of our drivers were retired civil servants or business employees who wanted to continue to work, and (we speculated) whose wives did not want them around the house. They were always knowledgeable about what to see or do, often willing to comment on or explain aspects of Malaysian society, and generally a very good source of information about the region.

So that's my list . Except for the very very hot and humid weather it was an excellent holiday. Malaysia is simultaneously fascinating and yet safe and easy for travellers. English is widely spoken, the food is safe as well as interesting and sophisticated, and you can even drink the water (well, I did, safely, at least). But we did set rather a cracking pace - or alternatively we're beginning to feel our age. Maybe we needed a few more 'quiet days'.

Terimah kasih, Malaysia

A long-held travel ambition

2011-07-07T02:01:00.001+10:00

I've long had an ambition to visit Melaka (or Malacca as it was spelt when I was at school) on the southwest coast of Malaysia. There's something very romantic about the cities in Southeast Asia that were ports and settlements for European travellers and traders over the last five centuries or so - such as Macau, Manila, Goa, Cochin. They've been very cosmopolitan settlements for generation upon generation. I managed through sheer good luck to visit Macau in the 1970s before its harbour became the victim of landfill to settle more people, when Portuguese was still heard in the streets and the Portuguese buildings, though crumbling, were used for their original purposes rather than as museums. I think I've left it too late to visit Melaka - though I keep telling myself that's not a very sensible way to think. Towns and cities inevitably change and develop; they're dynamic and need to change to meet people's needs and desires. However, the enthusiastic capitalism that's so obvious in Malaysia does endanger the preservation of historic sites in cities such as Melaka.

Nevertheless, I'm pleased, finally, to have made this visit. Melaka has such a rich history - layer upon layer of culture, language and influence. Originally settled by a fugitive Sumatran prince in the late fourteenth century, in the early fifteenth century it came under the protection of Chinese eunuch Admiral Cheng Ho who opened trade with China.

[The statue of Admiral Cheng Ho in grounds of the 1795 Chinese temple, Sam Po Kong. Of course, if you rub his tummy it brings good luck]

The Portuguese were attracted by tales of Melaka's trade and riches and invaded and ruled the area in the early sixteenth century, only to be defeated by the Dutch in 1641.

[The ruins of St Paul's Church - originally built by the Portuguese in 1521 as 'Our Lady of the Annunciation'. When the Dutch took Melaka they renamed the church St Paul's and it became a protestant church]

The Dutch occupied Melaka for the next 180 years or so, but with the decline in the fortunes of the Dutch East India Company, in 1824 Melaka was ceded to the British, though by then Melaka's importance as a trade centre had given way to Singapore and Penang and the city faded to relative obscurity.

Except for a few historic buildings,

[Christ Church built by the Dutch between 1741 and 1753 fron bricks brought from Holland. The church has an elegantly austere interior and beautiful original pews that we were strictly instructed not to photograph]

[Faithful restoration of an eighteenth century Dutch house. Many 'restorations' are much less faithful, though often more colourful]

modern day Melaka bears little direct trace of this rich cosmopolitan past - though it's still a culturally and ethnically rich melting pot. There is vibrant evidence of the city's rich Peranakan (Straits Chinese) population as well as the Baba Nyonya (mixed Chinese and Malay) traditions.

[Baba Nyonya Heritage Museum - a grand Peranakan house from 1896 with its original furniture and fittings and displays of costumes from the early twentieth century]

And of course there is the Malay majority.

[A Malay-style house in Kampung Morten - a settlement built by the riverside in the 1920s to house poorer families. Nowadays, by agreement between the state and the residents, the Kampung is preserved as a 'living museum']

As in so much of the rest of Malaysia the different groups live differently, side by side, in apparent harmony, under the rubric of 'One Malaysia'.

Melaka has become a tourist town - an easy day trip from nearby Singapore, a destination for groups from Hong Kong on short holidays, and stop-off for a few errant European travellers. And all the things that happen with tourist developments have happened - golf courses, new shopping malls, international hotels and backpacker guest houses, tarting up the historical buildings, opening pedestrian streets to stalls selling cheap trinkets and souvenirs, and having public performances of the dances and music associated with the city's history.

But one wonderful tourist development has been dredging the Melaka River that flows through the town, building walkways along about 9 kilometers of its edge, and having cheap small ferries regularly plying its length. When the day is hot a boat ride makes a welcome way to see something of the town.

But as I wrote earlier, I'm please to have made this visit. Coming from a country where European settlement is so recent I find it a bit humbling to be reminded of the diverse and rich settlement histories of our near neighbours. Even though little remains of its past grandeur Malaka does still evoke its romantic settlement history.

Breakfast

2011-07-04T00:54:00.000+10:00

Most people who visit Malaysia comment on how wonderful the food is - and who am I to disagree? You can choose between Malay, Chinese and Tamil cooking traditions or, as so often happens, just mix them together. What I hadn't anticipated was the freshness of the food - vegetables that look as if they've just been picked and seafood that clearly was swimming only hours ago.

Undoubtedly, the star turn of our meals has been breakfast. People in Malaysia clearly believe in the benefit of breakfast. We've had good and interesting breakfasts wherever we've been. But for a variety of reasons mainly to do with not organising ourselves far enough in advance, in Melaka we've been staying in a rather more upmarket hotel than is usual for us and breakfast here is unmissable - a performance. There's a big open kitchen in the centre of the dining room with displays of food ranked around it. You can always begin with fresh fruit...

melons, sweet pineapple, papaya, apples, oranges, starfruit, watermelon - or, if you'd prefer, whatever fresh fruit and vegetable juice mixture you happen to fancy

I think I've already written that I'd fallen in love with roti canai dipped in sharp vegetable curry sauce or dhal for breakfast, but I've been fickle. Even though I love watching the roti chef knead and and cook her fresh rotis at breakfast time

I deserted the rotis first of all for nasi lemuk (rice cooked in coconut milk with toppings of hard-boiled egg, fresh peanuts, tiny dried fish and cucumber slices - and I can't resist adding a spoonful of chicken curry rich with coconut milk)

but then this morning I found a new passion - noodles of my choice with fish balls, crab sticks and bean sprouts cooked on the spot,

then moistened with chicken stock and topped with coriander and shallots. I wimped out on the chillis of varying strengths that others added to their noodles.

I haven't even managed to sample the egg man's wares. He's a most flamboyantly efficient cook - cooking eggs to people's individual specifications, managing at least two omeletes and eggs of varying kinds at any one time. A great show.

Then there's salad and sliced meats and baked beans and french toast with maple syrup and hotcakes and sausages and, and, and.... but no bacon. All the food is certified halal and there's no bacon or pork to be seen anywhere.

However, just in case you're still not satisfied by what has been on offer, you can fill up with freshly made bread or cake or pastries (or 'kek or pastris' to use the local spelling). The Malays have a great enthusiasm for kek and it's almost always good. Here at our grand hotel it's excellent.

Going home to muesli and toast (prepared by myself) will be a real come-down.

The right people...

2011-07-01T02:20:00.003+10:00

We've been to Kota Bahru in the far north-east of Malaysia - almost on the Thai border. It's not part of the normal tourist track, but when we were planning our trip one of the aims was to try to see as much of the diversity that makes up Malaysia as was possible in the time available. Kota Bahru is the capital of Kelantan state and is the only state that is not governed by the ruling UMNO party or its coalition partners. Kelantan is said to be Malaysia's most conservative and traditional state and has been governed since 1990 by the hard-line Parti Islam. Islam is much more immediately present and obvious in the everyday - most women wear headscarves with their riotously coloured long skirts and overdresses, the call to prayer is omnipresent in the streets, the weekend is Friday and Saturday, and it's almost impossible to buy alcohol, even in up-market hotels.

There was not much about Kota Bahru in our guidebooks, and what there was either confusing or out of date. We spent most of our first day in a bit of a daze - trying to match the street-scape with our maps, being frustrated by the lack of street signs, and generally wilting in the oppressive heat. But as inevitably happens even when you're disoriented and a bit lost, we inadvertently saw a number of the sights. We discovered the central market with its riches of fresh vegetables, fruits and fish...

We explored the textile market opposite the wet market and saw the blazingly colourful local batiks and fabrics - and watched young women applying iron-on diamantes to already gaudy fabrics

and we happened upon the most prolifically stocked haberdashery I've ever seen - buttons, braids, sequins by the zillion, every colour of sewing thread you might ever want, metallic and gold thread for embroidery, and of course the iron-on diamantes we'd already seen in action.

We peeped around the gates of what we think is the Istana Balai Besar - the palace used for ceremonial occasions (no entry; no photography)

and visited a museum of royal customs - showing the clothing, fabrics and objects used for royal ceremonies associated with birth and marriage.

The Lonely Planet Guide to Malaysia describes this building as 'achingly beautiful'. I wouldn't go quite so far, but its symmetry and fitness of style make it very pleasing, though the sketchy and sometimes puzzling descriptions of the exhibits in its interior leave much to be desired.

Late in the afternoon of this tiring and somewhat frustrating day I went across the street from our hotel to withdraw money from the ATM. I inserted my card and - horror of horrors - the machine confiscated my card! I think this is every traveller's nightmare. It took a couple of minutes to realise I had actually inserted the card in a machine for making or transferring payments rather than an ATM - the likes of which I've never seen. You can imagine the scenarios playing in my head - having to cancel the card and organise a replacement while travelling, having to reorganise scheduled payments from my account while travelling etc etc. I reported what had happened back to the very obliging staff at our hotel and they advised me to contact the bank - Bank Islam - the following morning. This seemed a rather futile plan of action to me - my experience is that banks work to rules of their own making - but I decided to go along with their advice.

The next morning - enter Mr Roslan. We'd already decided we needed some help organising our sight-seeing in Kota Bahru and had contacted Mr Roslan's company to organise a tour of local craft-making sites. The hotel entrusted Mr Roslan with our visit to the bank to report my problems. 'No worries, mate', said Mr Roslan in an accent somewhere between Malaysian and Australian and off we went - not to a branch of Bank Islam, but directly to the office of the Regional Consumer Branch. I told my story and expected to be told to go away, but the delightful young woman we were dealing with made several phone calls then went to see the Regional Manager - a slightly older woman. We were called into her office, my story was told again, and much to my astonishment she told me not to worry and to return in an hour or so. So off we went on the first part of our tour with Mr Roslan and when we returned an hour or so later, she produced my card. Vast relief! Then followed e-mail swapping and much taking of photos with the all-female staff, with the Regional Manager, with and without Mr Roslan. I can't imagine such a scene in an Australian bank. Between Mr Roslan and the Regional Manager I encountered the absolutely right people at the right time.

Mr Roslan also proved his worth as a tour organiser. Kelantan is renowned as a traditional craft area, but it's not really organised for tourists. Together with a driver in a rather battered but minimally air-conditioned taxi we were taken to places it would be impossible to find without such a local guide such as Mr Roslan. We saw loom-weaving to make songket - the local fabric that's traditionally made of silk, intricately patterned with gold or silver thread, or, in more modern songkets, in iridescent thread

Men wear such rich songkets on formal or grand occasions as a wrap-around skirt over loose shirts and pants; women have the fabric made into long skirts and over-dresses. The woman in the second photograph above is weaving a white and gold songket that will be worn for the inauguration of the new Sultan of Kelantan later this year.

We visited a kite-maker where the interior of his ramshackle workshop glowed with the colours of his exquisite kites:

The kites are made from colourful paper glued to fine bamboo frames. Patterns are cut free-hand into the paper and then differently coloured papers are glued behind. As someone who has practiced decoupage some of these techniques are familiar to me, but seeing them applied with such ease and confidence in this context was a wonderful surprise. This kite-maker is apparently widely known as a master and has been invited to kite festivals around the world - including the Bondi Festival of the Winds.

We saw silver-making where some of the silversmiths were making very fine filigree silver jewellery (I bought some ear-rings)

and we finished up at a batik workshop. Batik making is hard and laborious work. In this workshop the wax was heated in large vats that looked as if they were centuries old, using wood fires in an extraordinarily hot climate.

Some of the batik was hand-printed using traditional tin blocks for cotton or copper for silk

and some was decorated using wax to define and outline freeform flower and geometric shapes for the more modern, popular Malaysian batiks we'd seen in the fabric market the day before.

A day when I'd anticipated disaster turned out to be one of the great days of our travels. Meeting the right people at the right time makes all the difference.

Of primates and other things

2011-06-29T10:04:00.002+10:00

Most people visit Sabah in north-west Borneo to see its unique and increasingly endangered wildlife. We were no exception. We wanted to see the orangutans that we knew could be visited at the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre just outside Sandakan (where we spent time at the war memorial). But we hadn't realised there is an organised and quite expensive travel industry built around viewing Borneo's wild-life. Some of the areas where you may be able to glimpse the rarer animals such as the Sumatran rhinoceros or wild elephants are only accessible through quite exclusive guided tours. And from the size and complexity of the cameras we saw, I suspect some people plan their holidays around opportunities to use their equipment to photograph the wildlife. We felt quite amateurish.

But even with our limited time and money, we did have some wonderful experiences. We stayed for a couple of days in a resort on the edge of the orangutan rehabilitation centre and were twice able to see the orangutans at feeding time in the afternoon.

The rehabilitation centre takes young orphaned orangutans or those that have been captured by planters because the orangutans eat the palm-oil trees. And it takes orangutans that have been kept as pets and become dependent on humans. The orangutans are gradually taught to lead independent lives. At a transition stage they are released to the forest but are fed every day (which is when you can view them) but eventually they are re-released in wilder areas. A few of them never manage the full transition and remain in the feeding area. Orangutans breed very slowly - each female may have only two to three babies across her life span - so the role of the rehabilitation centres is important as the orangutan's habitat is decreased through plantation clearing.

[I felt some envy of the photographers with their huge-lensed cameras who must have had wonderful photos of the orangutans. But the bother of carrying them around literally outweighs for me the regret that I can't get better photos from time to time.]

The forest is filled with families of noisy, greedy, fast-breeding macaque monkeys who descended on the left-over food once the orangutans and the rangers had departed:

We also saw more of the proboscis monkeys we'd seen in the wild in Bako National Park.

Much of Sabah - indeed, huge swathes of Malaysia - has been cleared and planted with palm-oil trees to supply the world's increasing needs for oils in food and many other products. The area around Labuk Bay is one such plantation, where the narrow fringe of mangroves that was the proboscis monkeys' habitat was increasingly threatened. The plantation owner fortunately recognised this was happening and left a buffer of forest for the monkeys, as well as introducing a supplemental feeding program for them. I'm not sure if the feeding is a good thing for the monkeys in the long run, but it did provide us with a great opportunity to see the bizarre long-nosed (male) monkeys up close,and whole families of proboscis monkeys noisily enjoying themselves.

So, we've had a glimpse of the world of nature tourism and, as usual, my response is a bit ambivalent. With the rate of clearing for plantation farming the habitats of many of the Borneo species are being invaded. Were it not for the rehabilitation centres and sanctuaries such species as the orangutans and proboscis monkeys would be more endangered than they are. They're not in enclosures and the aim of the orangutan rehabilitation centres is to enable them to be self-sufficient. Both the orangutans and monkeys are breeding well which I imagines indicates that the situation suits them. But they are, to varying extents, dependent on feeding by humans and they come to trust people and are comfortable around them, which must be dangerous in some contexts. But even with these doubts, I'm very happy to have had these experiences.

We stayed a couple of nights in the very beautiful (though not very luxurious) Sepilok Nature Resort so that we had easy access to the orangutan sanctuary.

The resort is a series of huts made from local wood, clustered around a small lake. One morning as I went on a walk around the grounds there was a very active, cheeky family of macaques at the end of the walkway in the photo above. The gardens of the resort are especially wonderful as they've been planted with lots of flowering plants and luxurious trees. All the plants you see often languishing indoors in Australia, are here in their natural habitat and are bigger, brighter and infinitely more healthy. There are orchids scattered throughout the garden and even though it's not really the orchid season there were enough blooms to keep me happily admiring.

Museums and memorials

2011-06-25T23:37:00.212+10:00

My friend Jan and I like to visit museums when we travel. Maybe that's an understatement. We're very easily diverted and if we aren't strict with ourselves we can linger much longer than we intended. Kuching is full of museums. We happily missed the wood museum and the cat museum, but we did go to the internationally renowned Sarawak Museum which has existed since 1891 and has had a number of respected curators.

I love the story of the design of this building. It's a copy of a Normandy Town Hall, designed by the valet of the second 'white rajah', Charles Brooke. It's a very old-fashioned museum whose ground floor is full of beautifully constructed cases with rocks, minerals, shells, and rather scruffy aged samples of the amazing animals and birds to be found in Sarawak. Upstairs, in a rather elegant space, is the collection of ethnographically rich material culture from the peoples of Sarawak that the museum is most noted for.

It's the kind of museum that tempts anybody who has ever had the slightest temptation to collect anything...'wouldn't it be wonderful to have a set of old Chinese dishes?', 'I wonder if I could buy baskets like those...' But ultimately, I found it somewhat unsatisfying. However beautiful or unusual or representative the exhibits are, I want to know more of their context. I want to know how they were used and by whom, and whether the decorative quality of the object has a meaning. Nowadays, the Sarawak Museum is a rather lovely historical example of an ethnographic museum.

Maybe others had also felt the need for context for in 1990 the Sarawak Development Corporation constructed the Sarawak Cultural Village outside Kuching in a superb natural forest. I think most of us are very wary of the cliched 'recreations' of ways of life, but I think this one works surprisingly well. There are traditional buildings - including longhouses - built by and for each tribal group, and handicrafts such as weaving or carving are practised by people living or staying for some time in the houses.

Orang Ulu Longhouse verandah

Iban Longhouse

Iban woman frying rose pastries

Melanau Tall House interior

Malay House

Penan House

The Cultural Village clearly has a political purpose. It was filled with people the day we visited. There were a few Western tourists, but most of the visitors were local people - some from the area, some of them internal tourists from peninsular Malaysia, and groups of high school and college students. The Village provides some public validation for the tribal groups in Sarawak and their customs and way of life, within a community where they are otherwise the most disadvantaged. There is also a public presentation of Malaysia as unified within its diversity - which is an aspiration for how the society could work but sometimes falls short.

We enjoyed our visit to the Sarawak Cultural Village and the opportunity it gave us to see something of the architecture and artifacts of the traditional peoples of the Sarawak area. We also loved seeing the responses of others to these displays. But I guess the uncomfortable thing is that this is after all a display, and to find the right line between objectifying the groups of people whose cultures are displayed and accepting those customs as a natural part of the wider culture is very delicate and difficult.

There were no such dilemmas when we visited the Australian War Memorial at Sandakan in Sabah in North Borneo. This is a park with a simple pavilion with well-designed, simple, text, photos and illustrations telling the story of the Sandakan POW camp and the death marches to Ranau during the second world war. The exhibition in the pavilion has been put together by the Australian War Memorial and is impressive in its simplicity and understatement. It's a story that doesn't need exaggeration or embellishment because it is so shocking. In 1942 and 1943 the Japanese brought about 2,700 prisoners of war to the Sandakan camp to work as labourers to build an airfield. The climate, disease, infection, starvation and harsh treatment took their toll. Towards the end of the war the Japanese retreated from Sandakan and forced the POW's to act as carriers for the trek through the jungle. By the end of the war, all except six of the 2,700 POWs were dead. These six Australians had escaped during the march or after reaching Ranau and it is their stories that reveal the full horror or the Sandakan camp and the marches.

The memorial works because it's simple, and tells much of its story in the six survivors' own words and because, as well as remembering the POWs, it acknowledges the assistance given by the local people and their suffering and resistance during the Japanese occupation.

Another simple, but much quirkier museum we've visited in Sandakan is Agnes Keith's House.

Agnes Keith was a writer who lived in Sandakan with her English husband from 1934 to 1952 - initially living the life of an expatriate wife in a rather backwater colonial outpost. She wrote about these experiences but became much better known after the publication of her book 'Three Came Home', based on her own and her family's experiences when interned for three years by the Japanese during the second world war. The Keith's wooden house was built on a hill overlooking the town, but was destroyed during the war. A replica of the original house was rebuilt by the government after the war and Henry Keith and his wife came back to Sandakan.

The house is decorated with furniture of the 30s and 40s and with photos of the Keiths and their work and social lives. I'm not sure why this museum works so well. I guess it's because it evokes a way of life that no longer exists and that seems almost inconceivable when contrasted with today's Sandakan. It very successfully creates the context of Agnes and Harry Keith's lives.

I'm sure there'll be more museums before our trip is finished.

'made by nature for herself'

2011-06-22T01:30:00.000+10:00

Many of the people who visit Sarawak do so because of its rich biodiversity. Its heat and humidity make it an ideal environment for lush tropical growth. Much of the island was originally covered with dense forests and and despite the depredations over the last century or so of loggers, drillers and miners, a significant part of Borneo is still wild jungle inhabited by species of wildlife found nowhere else in the world.

So, even I have felt motivated to see something of Sarawak's rich natural world. We've made a couple of trips out of Kuching that have proved to be very rewarding. We visited Bako National Park - the first of Sarawak's national parks and accessible only by a most interesting boat trip along a river estuary lined with the elegant shapes of fish traps

and then along the coastline of the South China Sea.

At Bako, our tour included a walk along a jungle trail, across and around rocks, up and down small ladders, and criss-crossing tree roots. I was very hot and bothered and left the group about half-way through the walk to return along the track at my own pace. I was so pleased with my decision because as well as enabling me to potter along slowly, I was able to stop from time to time and really see the detail of the layers of plants that form the luxuriant vegetation.

And even better, once I'd arrived at the end of the trail and was sitting quietly in one of the resting places near the mangrove flats that edge the sea, a whole family of eight proboscis monkeys ran across the mud in front of me.

Seeing the rare proboscis monkeys is one of the main reasons for visiting Bako, so I felt very lucky to have seen the family procession across the mud. We later saw several of them up close in surrounding trees. They are apparently unable to digest sugar in any form and the leaves of the mangroves form the major part of their diet.

We had an extremely fortunate visit as not only did we see the proboscis monkeys in the wild but also saw silver leaf monkeys, a long-tailed macaque, wild pigs, green vipers, a flying lemur and the local squirrels. Having grown up short-sighted, I'm normally not very confident of my ability to see quickly-moving animals in the wild, so I was very pleased by all the day's sightings.

We also took a boat trip at dusk along the Santubong River to where it emerges to the South China Sea. In the afternoon light both the heights of the nearby mountain, Gunung Santubong, and the fishing village on the Salak River were magical.

The major objective of the trip was to see the Irrawaddy dolphins who are often found around the area near Santubong. The dolphins proved elusive, so we visited the nearby mangrove-edged coastline where we were fortunate to see more proboscis monkeys moving through the trees and pausing to laze as if they might never move again. The boat then made its way back to the dolphin area where there were wonderful moments, absolutely quiet, drifting on the silvering ocean as the sun set...

...and then we did see the dolphins - three of four of them - emerging and submerging and huffing. Their huffing breaths as they broke from the water were moments of great delight. It made them seem very immediate.

So, for someone who doesn't often venture into the natural world, I've had some very pleasurable times in the last couple of days. My guidebook quotes Charles Darwin's description of Sarawak as 'one great wild, untidy, luxuriant hothouse, made by nature for herself'. I count myself very fortunate to have been able to visit this particular hothouse.

Kuching

2011-06-21T01:05:00.000+10:00

We're in Kuching, the capital of the state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, in Malaysia. This is a great place to start a holiday. Even though it's a city, the pace is relaxed and many of the things we want to do are within walking distance of our hotel and close to one another.

Kuching spans the Sarawak River, and there's a wonderful riverfront walk with luxuriant tropical gardens along one side of the river. This means we can stroll into the old city centre along the Main Bazaar without having to deal with traffic and the usual busyness of a city.

Kuching's not an old city. Well into the nineteenth century Sarawak was inhabited by people of different language and cultural groups - some, such as the Penan were hunter-gatherers; others such as the Dayaks lived in extended families in longhouses and were renowned for the ferocity of their warriors. The British explorer James Brooke sailed into the Sarawak River in 1839 and by 1841 had become the first 'white rajah' of the area. He encouraged Chinese immigration to provide trade and labour for the community. Even today Kuching is a culturally diverse city with Malays, Chinese and indigneous peoples in roughly equal proportions.

Some of this diversity is reflected in the architecture and streetscapes of Kuching. There are buildings from the colonial period, the most beautiful of which is the stately Courthouse complex with its solid pillars and wide shady verandahs:

The buildings are still partly used as a court, but also now house the Sarawak Tourism Board - probably the most beautiful tourist information office I've ever been in. Next door is the ornate Pavilion building whose chequered history includes use as a hospital when it was built in the early 1900s and then later as an information and propaganda centre during the Japanese occupation during the second work war. It's recently been converted to a lovely textile museum with examples of the rich, wonderful, old and more recent textiles from the groups of people who inhabit Sarawak.

There are the intricately patterned warp-dyed cloths of the local Iban people with their deeply significant designs, richly gold-embroidered silk Malay songkits, and batiks overlaid with floral designs from Chinese nonya costumes. Beautiful examples of the textiles were supplemented with old and more recent photographs of people wearing costums made from the fabrics. Sadly, we weren't able to take photos inside the museum, so I'm trying to remember and recreate them in my mind.

There's the chaotic but just-right scale of the streets of nineteenth century Chinese shopfronts selling gold jewellery, haberdashery, tinware, car parts and sweets, biscuits and local pepper:

and temples around every corner in the old, Chinese part of town.

This one, the much-renovated Tua Pek Kong temple, is one of the oldest and is located at a very busy intersection in the centre of town. The Chinese seem to inhabit mainly south of the river, and the Malays to the north. Quite close to the city centre there are still Malay kampongs on the banks of the river:

Just today I learned that Kuching has two city halls and two mayors - one, Malay, to the north of the river and the other, Chinese, to the south. I'm having difficulty deciding how to think about this. Such categorisations might seem to be a recipe for division and wastefulness, but in its day-to-day life Kuching provides an image to the observer of people living peaceably, but differently, together. The state of Sarawak recently built a new State Assembly building that is highly visible from the riverside walk. It's extremely grand - though I'm not sure how to describe its ornate architecture - part Islamic, part gothic, part folly, altogether decorated, and very proud.

And for the food aficionados - we're eating well. Our hotel does great breakfasts and I seem to have found my favourite combination - fruit followed by excellent bircher muesli and then freshly cooked roti with vegetable curry. How's that for east meets west? Since we've been in Kuching a number of people had recommended eating at the Top Spot, which is near our hotel. I'm not sure what we'd expected, but certainly not the enormous food court style roof-top restaurant seating hundreds of people.

You choose your very fresh seafood from the extraordinary array and it is then cooked for you. We had a flat, John Dory-like white fish steamed with ginger and soy sauce, crisp fried whole prawns in pepper, and quickly stir-fried mixed vegetables including the local edible jungle fern shoots.

Lots more to report, but I'm dropping with tiredness - and the heat! Most of the time I'm bright red and a puddle of sweat. Perhaps vainly, I'm hoping I'll acclimatise a bit.

A bit chaotic

2011-06-16T23:46:00.000+10:00

Things are a bit chaotic here. As usual, I've left most of my travel preparations till the last minute and even now I'm avoiding them by writing this.

But I did get to see nine films at the Sydney Film Festival, and write reviews of them. I have finished off most of the tasks that needed to be done at work before I leave and I've blocked a small shawl and a scarf that have been finished for ages but needed blocking. The second of these was Stephen West's Clockwork - a shaped unisex kind of scarf in Stephen West's trademark stripes and combinations of texture.

Sorry about the colour variations in the photographs. The gloomy weather we've been having lately has made project photography extremely difficult.

I've used a combination of Jawoll Magic which has subtle, long colour changes in the yarn and Biggan 4 ply for the scarf. The colour combination has worked very well - though I am hoping it isn't too reminiscent of the dreaded green and gold combination that most Australian sporting teams wear! This is a gift for a friend. I posted it today and have my fingers crossed he likes it.

But... I didn't manage to finish the grey cardigan I'm knitting for my daughter and had a total disaster with the baby jacket I seem to have been working on for ages. I actually knitted all the way around the jacket (it's knitted around in one piece) to the final front band, only to discover one side of the jacket was at least 2 centimeters shorter than the other - a significant difference in a small jacket. So, I've had to pull undone at least a third of the jacket. I'm still deciding whether to take this with me as my travel knitting. At the moment I feel rather dispirited about it.

So, unless I have a very unexpected burst of knitting productivity, Shades of Grey will become become a travel blog for the next few weeks - internet connections permitting.

And finally...

2011-06-15T22:52:00.000+10:00

I attended my final film for the festival last night. Of course, the festival goes on for another five days or so, but I've just run out of film-viewing time. I've work to do and a suitcase to pack to leave for my holiday on Friday.

The final film, 'Even the Rain' was engrossing. It uses the conceit of a film within a film - an idea that is sometimes just too clever by half, but that worked very well in this case. A film director (acted by the charismatic Gael Garcia Bernal) and his miracle-working producer are in Bolivia to make a long-planned film of the 1512 rebellion, led by a local chieftain and supported by two priests, against their oppressive colonisation by Christopher Columbus. Unwittingly, and against his initially hard-headed producer's advice, the director casts as the chieftain a local man who is leading an uprising against the privatisation of the town's water supply. The film creates many opportunities to contrast the oppression of the original colonisation with the film-makers' practices of paying low wages and exploiting the labour of the local people. One of the film's strengths is its demonstration that people's moral stances are not always consistent and all-of-a-piece; that even the most apparently righteous person can abandon a moral stance to preserve something precious to them. This is a very generous-spirited and politically aware film that absolutely draws you into its drama. I'd not be surprised if this film is awarded the audience choice award for the festival. A 4 out of 5.

Miss Fee sent me today a link to a most entertaining article by eccentric, rude and irrascible Sydney journalist Bob Ellis, arguing that all politicians should be compelled to go to the film festival to learn about other realities and appreciate different viewpoints. How one wishes this were possible.

A very satisfying day

2011-06-14T23:08:00.001+10:00

I had such a good day yesterday at the Film Festival. Most satisfying.

I saw a Spanish film called 'Amador', whose director, Fernando Leon de Aranoa, made 'Mondays in the Sun' that screened at the Film Festival in 2002 and confirmed Javier Bardem as one of my favourite actors of all time. Amador is set in a large city among marginalised migrant workers who gather discarded flowers from the markets and spruce them up for reselling. But Marcela and Nelson need money for a new fridge to store the flowers. Marcela, who is pregnant but reluctant to tell her philandering husband, takes a job caring for an old man whose relatives are building a house outside the city. He dies within a week of her employment, but she's already committed the money she will earn caring for him. What to do? This is a very gentle social critique that is none the less effective for its gentleness and moments of quiet black humour. It's much more in the tradition of a British film-maker such as Ken Loach than it is like the exuberant and elaborate work of a film-maker such as Almodovar. Fernando Leon spoke intelligently about his film in the brief Q&A that followed the screening (film-makers aren't always intelligent about their own work). He said he'd been striving for an elegance in his cinematography - but I think that's the kind of elegance that comes from being 'plain' - simple, unadorned, spare. It's easy to tell I loved this film with its completely unanticipated resolution. A 4.5 out of 5.

If ever anybody wondered why researchers need transparent, publicly justifiable codes of ethics they should watch the brilliant documentary 'Project Nim'. Nim was a chimpanzee who, in the free-wheeling innovative spirit of the 1970s, became the subject of an experiment to socialise him as a human and teach him to communicate with sign language as part of the then current preoccupation with the nature / nurture debate. The film explores Nim's development and the inevitable (with hindsight) problems of neglecting to recognise the chimpanzee part of Nim. The documentary uses archival footage, current interviews with some of the carers Nim had at various stages (who developed complex relationships with Nim and with one another) and re-enactments in a seamless narrative. Throughout you are left exclaiming 'Oh no!' and 'They just can't do that!' as one disastrous decision after another is taken. Excellent. Definitely 4 out of 5.

And finally, an Iranian film, 'A Separation'. This film deservedly won the best film award at the most recent Berlin Film Festival. It's deeply interesting because of its depiction of everyday life in Iran, but more particularly by showing Iran's dispute settling and justice system. A couple acrimoniously decide to separate because she wants to leave Iran and he wishes to stay to care for his father who has Alzheimer's disease. Their daughter is torn between the two. The separation leads to stresses in their daily life and unfortunate and damaging choices are made. The film probes with great subtlety issues of truth, ethical choice, and responsibility, while revealing differences of viewpoint and experience - by class, by gender and by religion. This film investigates universal moral dilemmas while providing insights into a very different world. Again, a 4 out of 5.

A most satisfying day.

I haven't only been viewing films. I did manage, finally, to block my Different Lines shawl and wore it to the Knitting Guild meeting last Saturday and afterwards to a Knitting in Public gathering at A Coffee and a Yarn in Newtown.

I think this is a brilliant pattern; very simple but most graphic in its asymmetric design. I also like the yarn I used - a cloud-soft alpaca and silk mix from the Scottish yarn company Old Maiden Aunt. And the colour combination worked very well. I just wish the shawl were larger, but I had a limited amount of the yarn and just knitted till I had used it all up. It's really more of a scarf than a shawl. I'd like to try this pattern again with more yardage, but given the plethora of unfinished projects I have, and all the other mentally queued patterns I plan to knit I don't think this will happen for some time.

Rainy Day Sydney

2011-06-12T23:24:00.000+10:00

Sydney is meant to be a sunshiny city. Rainy, windy days somehow don't suit it. In an abstract kind of way I feel sorry for people who planned to spend this long weekend doing outdoor things, but much more selfishly I just feel this is perfect weather for film-going.

Even Sydney Harbour and the Bridge seemed less attractive today as I queued at the nearby cinema to see 'The Good Life'. This is a Danish documentary that has the characteristics I like in a documentary; the film-maker has chosen an engaging subject and interesting characters and has then let them tell the story in a straight-forward way (with the possible exception of a few too many scenes of portentous waves crashing on rocks). The central characters are an aging mother and her fifties-ish daughter who, though Danish, live in a cramped flat in Portugal. They used to be rich, but now live on the mother's small pension. The daughter blames her mother for her current predicament - accusing her of bringing her up to be rich and then not providing the income to live the life she desires. The mother is torn between guilt at her daughter's upbringing, a sad but realistic acceptance of her daughter's narcissism, and distress at her daughter's future without her small pension. The depiction was both moving and funny - and definitely worth a 4 out of 5.

I also saw 'Target', a very long Russian film that screened, rather appropriately, in the grandeur of the State Theatre, freed from the noise of building for the weekend. I dithered about going to see this film, but remembered that last year one of the films I'd like best was a long Russian film, 'How I Ended This Summer', and so decided I would try this one. However, this turned out to be a very different kind of movie - momentous in its scale and themes, with lavish cinematography and a wardrobe to die for. What would you do if you had the opportunity to grow no older than you currently are? How would you live the rest of your life? This is the situation the five central characters of this film enter into rather cavalierly - and then discover its impact. There are also themes of the power of money and possession, petty corruption, lust, and the mindlessness of 'reality' television. But the film is just too much; altogether too excessive for my liking. A 3 out of 5.

At the Festival

2011-06-11T23:40:00.003+10:00

This year I'll miss the second part of the Film Festival because I'll be away from Sydney, so I've decided to cram as many films as I can manage into a few days - a kind of compressed mini film festival. I started yesterday with three films. It was quite disorienting viewing the films in a large, soulless cinema complex that is usually dominated by blockbusters and action films. The site that contains the grand faux-baroque 1930s State Theatre, that's usually the main venue for the Festival, is under renovation and so can only be used for a few sessions over the weekends when the workmen aren't working. So in this unfamiliar venue I didn't know where to look to find friends and acquaintances or where to find the toilets, though I was grateful for the good sight-lines - the old State Theatre is notoriously bad in this respect.

I had a good day. I saw the kind of movies you go to a film festival to see. Not perfect, but stimulating and engaging. First up was 'Cirkus Columbia', set in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1991 at that moment in time between former Yugoslavia's emergence from Soviet domination and the outbreak of war among the the components of that complex national construction. Divko, who has lived for twenty years in Germany to escape the constraints of Communism, returns to his hometown, accompanied by his beautiful young girlfriend, and cat, to enjoy his economic status in his sleepy hometown that is gradually awakening to the attractions of a globalised economy. He evicts his wife and son from the family home and sets up tensions within the family and between former friends. Because we view the film with knowledge of the looming war between former compatriots, every individual's action and choice is weighted with the potential for disaster. It's a very good film, where the idyllic summer landscape and the quiet lives of the locals are contrasted with the horror that is to come (but is not depicted within the film). Clearly, this film of small interpersonal dramas - of dispossession, ruptured friendships, unexpected alliances, great humanity under extreme circumstances - is also an allegory for the break-up of former Yugoslavia. But it works equally well as a drama of the tensions of family and friendship. I think probably a score of 4 out of 5.

I then saw 'Attenburg', a film made by a young Greek film-maker that is all about the Big Things - death, sex, love, friendship. It's not a perfect film, but for me it's the kind of film that becomes even richer in retrospect. At its centre is a rather naive and inexperienced young woman, Marina, who is caring for her dying father at the same time as she has her first sexual encounter with a seemingly caring and gentle older man. The film intersperses realism with sequences of Marina and her more worldly friend in highly synchronised movements along a pathway. Marina watches David Attenborough's nature documentaries (hence the title) and she and her father and friend imitate animal movements and cries (not sure if this is part of the realism or the fantasy). The film has a very deadpan tone - almost as if it is a descriptive documentary that observes but doesn't interpret. I think I've made this film sound even odder than it is. I did like it - though I would hesitate before recommending it to others. I'd give it a 4.

And then 'Position Among the Stars', a cinema verite depiction of family life in a poor suburb of Jakarta in Indonesia; the third in a trilogy of films made about the same family by a Dutch film-maker. This is a most accomplished film with rich cinematography, but I think its very glossiness undercuts its impact. Years ago we had a friend who made very innovative documentaries that relied for their success on his closeness to his subjects. His ambition was to make the camerawork as 'plain' as possible so that it didn't interpret the characters more than was necessary. When watching this film you are very conscious of the cleverness of the camerawork and the way it is framing the story and characters. I would have preferred a more straight-forward telling of the story. My score? 2.5.

This time of year

2011-06-09T20:58:00.000+10:00

This is always such an interesting and engaging time of the year. The centrepiece of the excitement is the anticipation of and then attendance at the annual Sydney Film Festival which needs to be fitted around what's usually a busy time at work, often with last-minute and unexpected challenges. This time last year I was also selling our family apartment and organising the renovations for my new home. This year I've been planning a holiday in Malaysia, which starts next Friday.

But we all know that busyness seems to encourage even greater busyness. Somehow, illogically, in addition to everything else, I've set myself knitting goals to accomplish before I go on holidays. So I've started with the easiest. I finished the Different Lines small shawl more than two weeks ago and it's been languishing, waiting to be blocked. So today I've done just that - pinned it out - and now I'm waiting for it to dry.

(And a secret - there's another scarf that's been waiting even longer to be blocked. Maybe now I have my blocking board organised for the shawl I can also do this one?)

My other knitting projects are more challenging to finish in a busy week. I've been knitting the Audrey in Unst cardigan for my daughter. This is such enjoyable knitting, but for me it's a lot of knitting. I'm on the second sleeve, but even once I finish that there's still the rather fiddly front bands and neckband to complete. Not at all sure I'll manage this.

And finally, the tiny jacket I've been knitting for a work colleague's no longer so-new baby. A simple and very effective DROPS pattern - in garter stitch no less - but it's taking me ages to finish. I'd really like to get this done so that I can give it my colleague before I go away; otherwise most of our brief winter will have passed without an opportunity for the baby to wear the jacket.

I think that should be more than enough for the next week or so - but maybe, along with Jody, I should blog my Film Festival reviews? Maybe...maybe...

A major distraction

2011-06-05T11:08:00.001+10:00

Lately, my weekends have been very busy, with lots of trips away from home. I had almost nothing planned for this weekend, and anticipated spending my time on all those routine household tasks that seem to get out of control when neglected for a few weeks. I had a minor distraction when I went hunting on my computer for an old photo I needed and realised while searching that not only did I have a mess of unsorted and unlabelled photos from a trip to South India that I made more than three years ago, but that some of the photos were missing.

You can anticipate the rest of this story. The hunt became a major distraction. I didn't ever find the missing photos (maybe something went wrong in downloading them from my camera?) but I ended up spending ages sorting the remainder, trying to label at least some of them - those I specifically remembered - and loading a selection of them to Flickr. But I guess for once the photos served the purpose that such mementos are meant for - refreshing visual memories, prompting recollection of events and sights that were half-forgotten and making me yearn to travel again.

So indulge me by sharing some of these photos with you.

We saw busy and chaotic cities

and traveled the timeless Kerala backwaters in a houseboat.

We visited innumerable temples

exquisite decorated palaces

and grand public buildings.

I was particularly fascinated by Cochin with its layers of local tradition, colonial history and modern development. For example, there is a centuries-old tradition of fishing using 'Chinese' nets whose pulleys are weighted by huge stones, and a sixteenth century synagogue that has been continuously used.

And of course, there were the people...

You can see why I want to travel again.

And I don't have long to wait. My travelling friend and I are in the last stages of planning a trip to Malaysia, leaving in a couple of weeks. I'm already making all sorts of resolutions to sort and label my photos as I go!

12 in 11: May

2011-05-31T17:18:00.000+10:00

Well. My prediction that I would not survive May without some clothes buying was accurate. I just wasn't able to resist. I am so tired of my winter clothes that it was inevitable. I've bought a sleeveless black just below the knee length dress that I can wear over long-sleeved t-shirts or warmer jumpers as the weather dictates, and over straight-legged pants or even tights if I'm feeling very brave. It's from some schmick modern fabric that holds its shape and doesn't crumple and has a rather dramatic collar. I was initially a bit put off by the collar but have decided I like it more as time goes by. I seem to be wearing it every second day or so. I also bought two long-sleeved t-shirts to wear under the dress. I feel rather embarrassed to admit that last winter I was wearing t-shirts that were so old and worn that their cuffs were frayed.

And I also bought some earrings at the Old Bus Depot Markets in Canberra. They're like tiny round silver showcases with a textured paper design inside. Quite Japanese in their design.

So, that's four items for May - a total of 6 clothing items purchased in 2011 with 6 more to go. I'm more than half-way through my quota but not half-way through the year. After such a good start this is a bit worrying.

Another weekend away

2011-05-30T23:04:00.003+10:00

I've been away from Sydney again this past weekend. I flew about 800km north to Lennox Head for a special birthday of a very good friend of very long standing. It was a wonderful party - open house for the afternoon with lots of good food and many friends, neighbours and family. Not everything about getting older is wonderful, but such birthday celebrations are. This one reflected the richness of many of the experiences and contacts and interests and passions of my friend's past and present life. A life she's living well.

My daughter and grand-daughter came from Brisbane for the party so I had the added pleasure of catching up with them.

The Christmas before last I made a blanket for my grand-daughter using Frankie's ten stitch pattern. But she's grown since then and I thought I should enlarge the blanket to match her growth. I found an extra two skeins of the Noro Taiyo yarn, unpicked the 10 cast off stitches and started knitting around and around again.

This is such a fun blanket, but I don't think I'll enlarge it again. It's already at a stage where two skeins of yarn added only a round of knitting and a bit. Even I tire of garter stitch eventually.

Time away

2011-05-20T10:44:00.001+10:00

I think we all now realise that there were problems with 'Blogger' last week. Fortunately, I didn't lose any posts as some people did, but I did lose several comments on the previous post. Apologies to all those commenters whose words have become lost in the mists of the cloud.

Last weekend I spent a very, very enjoyable extended weekend in Canberra with a good friend, (who's already blogged, with great photos, about our excursion). Both of us live in apartments near the city centre - just around the corner from each other, though on opposite sides of a major railway line. We're both very much inner-city dwellers, but despite (or maybe because of) that, the conversation on our drive to and from Canberra was mostly of the 'look at the patterns the trees are making!', 'isn't the grass a wonderful silvery-yellow colour?' and 'the contrasts of the autumn leaves are so rich' variety. In other words, we enjoyed escaping the city.

Normally it takes somewhere between three and four hours to drive from Sydney to Canberra but we stopped about halfway at 'historic' Berrima (est 1831) for coffee with a fellow knitter and a browse in Berrima's interesting shops. Berrima's shops cater mainly to the whims and desires, rather than needs, of city people visiting at the weekends. I don't know where in Berrima you could buy your daily groceries, but I do know that you could buy a painting, or hand-bound books, or fine pottery, or country-style antiques very easily. Even though I've been to Berrima many times, I'd never visited Peppergreen Antiques - what a loss! You could spend a whole day in this rambling storehouse of wonders, stacked floor to ceiling with beautiful or charming or just interesting things.

There are old kitchen and cooking utensils, china and cutlery, patchwork quilts, damask tablecloths, linen sheets, embroidered teatray covers and pillowcases, and shelf upon shelf of the old-fashioned eiderdowns of my childhood. The shop not only has wonderful objects, but it seems to have accumulated every interesting shop fitting that became available as other stores closed, and so everything is beautifully and enticingly displayed.

I was most engaged by the buttons and ribbons and textiles and what used to be called sewing 'notions'. I rummaged through the many button collections and found my great prize - some slightly mismatched glass buttons that I will use for the 'Audrey' cardigan I'm knitting from madelinetosh yarn in a colour called 'silver fox'.

We did eventually tear ourselves away from all these wonders to finish the trip to Canberra for the main purpose of our trip - the Celebration of Wool at the Old Bus Depot Markets. But as always happened with such trips, the things that happened alongside the main purpose of the visit gave even more pleasure than the main objective of the trip. We met up with other knitting friends, met people who I hope will become new knitting friends, drank coffee and had interesting and good communal meals. And, of course, just admired the Canberra gardens and street plantings which, even towards the end of Autumn, are so variously colourful.

And so to the markets:

Just in case this photo should lead you think the markets were absolutely deserted, we did arrive extremely early, while stalls were still being set up and before most of the shoppers gathered. This also meant we had first choice at some of the yarn stalls, which was a particular advantage at Wooldancer's stall where she had a small but beautifully dyed selection of yarns. I bought the richly old rose coloured fingering weight yarn in the pic below:

My purchasing was very restrained (well, at least in the yarn department - I did buy some lovely silver earrings). Apart from the old rose sock wool, my only other yarn purchase was the skein of deep brown sock yarn pictured above that I bought from Fibrewebs. I never find myself attracted to brown yarns, but I often wish I had some handknitted brown socks, so I was finally able to be rational and buy some brown yarn to achieve the brown socks.

But I think the most wonderful yarn acquisition of the weekend was not purchased - it was a gift from 1funkyknitwit of a skein of her superb corespun yarn. I can't stop thinking about how to knit it up and how wonderful it will be to wear.

We pottered back to Sydney with a detour via the southern highlands town of Bowral with yet another wonderful lunch and a rummage through the town's shops where, among other pleasures, I spent significant time marvelling at some Sophie Digard crochet and textile creations that were for sale, but beyond my means to purchase.

The trip was time out from the everyday. Lots of wonderful images, textures, and companionable friendship.

Companionable

2011-05-11T23:06:00.002+10:00

I imagine that when non-knitters think about knitting they see it as a solitary occupation. And to some extent, they're right: one of the advantages of knitting is that it can be used to occupy oneself when alone. But one of the unexpected pleasures of knitting is that it's also very companionable, as many women's crafts have been across time.

The knitting group I think of as my local group meets on Thursday evenings at the Morris and Sons yarn store in the city. It's convenient for people to straggle to as they finish work and easy to reach by public transport. When the shop closes around 7.00pm we adjourn to a nearby hotel for drinks and sometimes meals. There's a core of people who usually or frequently attend, but others who come and go. We often have visitors from overseas or other Australian towns and cities attending, and we have people who crochet or embroider as well as knitters. There's a range of skill and experience levels, preferences and interests, and the main delight is its easiness; its companionability.

Recently, one of our members became pregnant and then, unsurprisingly, told us she was returning to the USA for work and to be with her family. So the knitting group decided to make a blanket for her baby. We bought Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in watery shades of blue and green as the mother and father to be are both marine biologists, and shared the yarn among us. We were really pushed for time and so some of us gathered very companionably at A Coffee and a Yarn over the Easter holidays to sew up the patches.

There were plain patches, those with repetitive patterns, some stripey patches to use up ends of the yarn, and some wonderful patches with watery motifs - an octopus, sea horses, starfish, and even the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. We were so pleased with the finished blanket...

and so was Rachel when we gave it to her.

Thanks to MissFee for this final photo

Miscellany

2011-05-10T17:31:00.007+10:00

* Since posting several weeks ago about my ambitions for travel I've been to Orange, to Mount Keira and then, this last weekend, to Brisbane. Next weekend I'm off to Canberra for, among other diversions, the Celebration of Wool at the Old Bus Depot Markets, and then a couple of weeks later I'll be visiting Lennox Head for a good friend's significant zero birthday celebrations. You'd think that would be enough travelling to satisfy even me, but my travelling friend Jan and I are also plotting a more serious bout of travel - ie outside Australia - in mid-June. More of that nearer the departure date

* I've been to Brisbane to celebrate my grand-daughter's fourth birthday. I think four must be the perfect age for a birthday party. The guests were Ana Maria's classmates from kindie (and assorted accompanying parents) and they were both old enough and young enough to find it fun to play happily on the playground equipment of the excellent park in which the party was held. They all came proudly in their dress-up clothes - Snow White, Cinderella(s), Batman, variations on fairies, cloaks, tutus.

They're not yet old enough to be competitive and critical and sufficiently old enough to enjoy, unselfconsciously, masks and spangles and tiaras. My daughter had done just enough organisation - choosing a great location, food in individual party boxes for the children, cheese and fruit for the grown-ups - and we had perfect weather and absolutely no accidents, mishaps, arguments or tears. A great success.

And I've decided to include a completely gratuitous picture of Ana Maria in her Playful Stripes cardigan, finished earlier this year.

* It's a long time since I've enjoyed a knitting project as much as my current Different Lines shawl. Everything about it is perfect. Yet another garter stitch project, but with interest added through the short-row shaping to produce stripes of graded width. The yarn is particularly luxurious - an alpaca / silk blend from Old Maiden Aunt Yarns that I bought from Loop in London on my visit early last year. The yardage on each skein of yarn is less than ideal for this project but, with stern blocking, I think the finished size will be adequate.

* One of the benefits (sometimes disadvantages) of my blog is that it enables me to keep track of my reading. I'm somewhat ashamed of my recent reading. Of the last ten books I've noted, nine are crime fiction. Good crime fiction but, nevertheless, definitely escapist reading. I'm a seasoned practitioner of escapist reading so I can't imagine I will ever really change this reading pattern, but I am going to make a serious attempt to broaden my reading. So I'm making a public resolution - no more crime fiction till I've read at least ten books of other genres.

* I've done a bit of clothes-buying - but more about that on my next 12 in 11 update.

A rosy (knitting) future

2011-05-06T09:51:00.001+10:00

This is a quick post just to satisfy RoseRed's curiousity about the yarn I bought at Knit Camp last weekend.

As I was photographing it, I was surprised to see just how rosy it looks, all together. Some beautiful Rowan Summer Tweed in a squashed raspberry colour (Rowan has named it 'smoulder', but I prefer 'squashed raspberry), 2 balls of the now discontinued Regia sock yarn in one of the Kaffe Fassett colour-ways (as if I didn't have enough sock yarn) and two skeins of Lang Jawoll Magic in a mixture of pink and burgundy and brown and black and yellow and... I used the Lang Jawoll in a scarf I finished recently but haven't yet blogged about - it's waiting to be blocked - and loved its softness and long colour runs.

I'm a relatively slow if constant knitter and probably have enough yarn for at least a significant part of the rest of my knitting life. But there's always something that's new or beautiful or a good buy or about to be discontinued. There's always an excuse for yarn buying.

Grace and hilarity

2011-05-03T17:57:00.001+10:00

Sometimes events go well because they've been planned and executed meticulously. And sometimes events go well because even though they've been planned and executed very well, circumstances beyond anyone's control intervene and everybody responds spontaneously and with good grace. Knitting Camp last weekend at Mt Keira definitely fell into the second category.

Over the last few months we've had lots and lots of rain. Last weekend was no exception. On Friday, a number of us drove to Wollongong and Mt Keira through constant gusts of rain - with the excitement along the way of needing to squeeze by a large tree that had fallen across the road in the National Park we passed through. One of the usual highlights of knitting camp is sitting outside in the autumn sunshine, knitting while surrounded by the amazing, densely green vegetation of the camp. On Friday and Saturday we resigned ourselves to knitting inside, just glimpsing the surrounds as we dashed with umbrellas between meals and knitting and bed.

On Saturday afternoon - crisis! The camp lost its electricity and because of some rather eccentric arrangements for the supply, it was unable to be restored. But knitters are resourceful people. While the camp organisers scrambled to acquire a portable generator, and gas cylinders for cooking our meals, the knit campers knitted - moving to the verandah to chase the fading daylight and eventually knitting by torchlight and headlamps and camping lamps supplied by nearby friends and family. Webgoddess had brought her ukelele and we even had knitting singalong. Some great moments.

There was a best ever knitting trivia quiz. I never think of myself as competitive until I become involved in such activities and realise that I want to win. My group didn't win - even though we cheated we were overtaken at the last minute by a group who were unfairly advantaged by having two knitting store workers as members.

Sunday, finally, was sunny, with the view from the mountain revealed.

But knit camp is ultimately about knitting and the companionship of knitters who, on this occasion, dealt with the less than perfect circumstances with a combination of grace and hilarity. I suspect there was much unravelling of knitting when the results of knitting in the dark were revealed.

Huge thanks to Christine, Kerry and Rae from CR&K Daisy Designs who organised the camp and remained calm and cheerful under the most trying circumstances - and put together a great trivia quiz.

Visit here for another account of camp.

Acknowledgment to Probably Jane whose idea I stole for the pictures of the hands.

And yes, I did buy yarn.

12 in 11: April

2011-05-02T10:41:00.001+10:00

I've bought no items of clothing in April. The only addition to my wardrobe was the pair of socks in my previous post. But this month it wasn't virtue and restraint that limited my purchasing, it's just that I couldn't find anything to buy that seemed worth using up one of my precious clothing items for the year. I guess this is a victory of a kind.

I must confess I would like to have some new clothes. With cooler weather I've been revisiting my cooler weather clothes and realising just how old and worn some of them are. I have a couple of much loved jumpers that I need to re-darn - that is, repair previous repairs. Yesterday I was wearing a top that I must have bought around 1996. If ever anyone comments on my clothing I seem to respond - 'it's so old...I've had it for ages.' Even though this is true, I must stop saying this as it's rather dismissive of the comment or compliment. But I do think I'd like to have something new.

So, still 10 items of clothing for 2011. I doubt I'll get to the end of May without some purchases.

Next socks

2011-04-29T08:58:00.000+10:00

I finished my bright sunshiny yellow socks - two days ahead of the schedule for the S62011 sock club.

According to the rules I've set for myself, I knitted them exactly according to the Nutkin pattern - well, except for some minor adjustments to the number of stitches to make sure they'd fit. As always, there were pluses and minuses to the pattern, though I think for these socks the negatives outweighed the positives.

So what do I like?
* The colour. I just love this colour which is called Chamomile. It's made me want to knit lots more yellow things. The colour just glows.
* The yarn. I've made a number of pairs of socks from Madelinetosh Tosh Sock and it's a delight to use. It's very nicely spun and produces excellent stitch definition.
* The stitch pattern. It's very pretty with its neatly folding imitation cables.
* They fit perfectly. I've learned that 68 stitch socks knitted with fingering weight yarn on 2.5mm needles are perfect for me.
* The fact that the heel and the toes are knitted using exactly the same short-row technique. I don't particularly like how the resulting socks look, but I do admire the ingenuity and the symmetry of the construction. It's a process knitting thing.

And what do I not like?
* The way the socks skew! They skew badly. (I've tried to tug them straight for the photos). It offends me that the cables do not sit neat and straight.
* The appearance of the short row heel and toe construction. While it's worked quite well and is functional, I just prefer the appearance of flap heels and round toes. I suspect I've fallen too much under the Nancy Bush sock spell.
* I wish the socks were longer - I knitted the length recommended by the pattern, but I like my socks long. So this is not a fault of the pattern, but of my failure to remember that Tosh Sock has generous length. Recently I've twice run out of yarn just short of finishing my socks, and I think this has made me a bit fearful.

I'm off to Knitting Camp today and so I've anticipated the unwrapping of my next S62011 sock yarn by a day. Hurrah - grey yarn! It's Fibranatura 'Yummy' in 100% merino which I'll obediently use to knit the next scheduled sock pattern - Leyburn.

Autumn?

2011-04-20T12:52:00.000+10:00

There's a huge gum tree outside my living room windows. It must be at least twelve metres tall. My apartment is on the third storey of the building and the full leafiness of the tree is at my level.

Just now it's covered in blossom and the nectar is attracting the colourful and raucous lorikeets who have loud arguments - sometimes even in the middle of the night, with those fiercely territorial intruders, the common mynahs. The blossoms have also attracted butterflies and bees, so that I feel surrounded by new life and busyness.

All this shows the incongruity of Autumn in Sydney - isn't all this activity more typical of Spring? Or maybe what the activity outside my windows really shows is the incongruity of seasonal stereotypes that we in the southern hemisphere have unconsciously incorporated into our thinking.

Anyway, I'm enjoying this seasonal activity while it lasts. The greedy lorikeets will only visit for the blossoms and will then disappear till next year. So just to heighten this (un)seasonal activity, I've bought some locally grown tulips - harbingers of Spring in the northern hemisphere, but perfectly at home in a Sydney Autumn.

Travel ambitions

2011-04-15T09:57:00.003+10:00

To quote myself, 'I always have travel ambitions'*. But my ambitions have been rather thwarted lately by the rest of my life - work, moving house, finances. It's now more than a year since my latest trip outside Australia, and I have nothing definite planned for the near future, though a friend and I are exploring possibilities...

So, in the meantime, I've planned some weekends away from Sydney to at least have the illusion of being elsewhere. Over an extended last weekend some friends and I spent time in Mount Victoria - the western-most town in the Blue Mountains - and in Orange for its F.O.O.D. Week.

We had a day in Mount Victoria at both the beginning and end of our time in Orange, which was probably wise to prepare for and then walk off the effects of some of the wonderful food we ate. At this time of the year, when the seasons are changing, autumn is always so much more advanced in the Blue Mountains than it is on the coast in Sydney. We stayed at a friend's house and had log fires, snuggly doonas, and an opportunity to wear not only knitted scarves and shawls but also knitted hats! (Gloves were still a step too far).

Even for someone as reluctant to exercise as I am, the walks around Mount Victoria are so beautiful they're restorative, with vast views from rocky outcrops across valleys

ancient, worn rockfaces and cliffs

and the ragged, spikey beauty of the trees and bushes.

Orange is an inland city of about 30,000 people. It was one of the many inland towns where what was and is Aboriginal land was initially settled by pastoralists, and later expanded rapidly with the discovery of gold in the 1850s and 60s. Throughout my lifetime it's been known mainly for its orchards, particularly its cherries and apples, but over the last twenty years or so the town's been cultivating its reputation more generally as a region for fine food and local produce. Vineyards have been planted and cold weather wines from the area have become known and valued. Such variety is now produced that a shop in town is able to stock only local produce - organic fruit and vegetables, lamb, olive oil, vinegars, jams, chutneys, spreads, tapenades, nuts, biscuits, cheeses.

Last Saturday was a perfect, sunny, autumnal day and we did all the things that tourists to Orange should do. We began it with a visit to the growers' market where I bought olive oil, fig and olive tapenade, some hazelnut muesli and a whole kilo of fresh figs. From there we drove to a local vineyard - Patina - with a traditional cool-weather 'English' garden where we had a just-right picnic lunch of local food packed in a wicker basket and a glass of the resident winemaker's rose.

Late in the afternoon we strolled in the Botanic Gardens - populated with birds of all kinds and full of their calls back and forth,

and made an end-of-the-daylight trip up a rather scary road to watch the sun set over the vast western landscape from Mount Canobolas.

And finally, one of the main reasons for the trip, we ate a perfectly judged dinner at the stylish 'hatted' local restaurant, Lolli Redini.

Sunday was wet, wet, wet. We were pleased we'd managed to fit so much into our Saturday, and after a leisurely brunch and potter around A Slice of Orange buying yet more local produce (blackberry jam, roasted pumpkin and rosemary dip, quince paste) we drove to nearby Milthorpe, a village of charming streetscapes, yet more hatted restaurants, small shops and galleries and, much to our delight, an old, unused, but well-maintained railway station. (In case you'd not noticed from my previous travel posts, my travelling friend Jan and I love railway stations).

I wonder at the changes in these inland towns and villages across my lifetime. Many of them began with the discovery of gold. Some survived to serve the needs of the surrounding farms, and others prospered as regional centres for health or educational centres or even developed small industries. But these towns now simultaneously revel in what they do best - their emphasis on 'localism' - while marketing their local identity to the world outside.

It was a great extended weekend away but, in the bittersweet way of such things, it has further increased my travel ambitions, rather than satisfying them.

* One Saturday morning towards the end of 2010 I was waiting with friends for the Library where we hold our local Knitters' Guild meetings to open. A young women approached our group and asked if we would be interested in being interviewed about our life preferences, interests, passions etc. Two of us agreed and discovered that the interviews were to be filmed and edited to become an advertisement for a well-known brand of health and vitamin supplements. I can't act. I become overwhelmed with self-consciousness. But ask me a question, or solicit my opinion on almost anything and I'll talk for ever. The interview finished and I was late for my meeting. I forgot all about it until a couple of months later when I was informed I was in the final cut of the advertisement and offered payment.

I appear in the ad for about 8 seconds and my contribution is 'I always have travel ambitions - always'. I guess if I and my passions are going to be represented by any six words, these are a very apt choice.

70 is the new....?

2011-04-13T12:35:00.000+10:00

Last night I went to the preview of the Arts and Crafts exhibits at the annual Sydney Royal Easter Show. The Easter Show is ten days or so in which primarily agricultural and pastoral events and exhibits come to the city. There are sheep and cattle and horse events and wool and cats and dogs and fruit and vegetables and flowers and (everybody's favourite) woodchopping. And there are also several categories for knitting, among other craft competitions.

Some of my friends deservedly won prizes at the Show, and some of the knitting - an ever-so-fine shawl in particular - was inspirational. And of course there were the perennial occurrences of beautiful garments overlooked for prizes; garments or shawls poorly displayed or even displayed inside-out; and the valuing of technique over design or any notion of fit-for-purpose. Lots of judgements up for debate. But we all had a great evening poring over the knitting, chatting, drinking wine and eating the snacks provided.

I was, however, astonished to discover cases of both knitting and crocheting reserved for competitors over 70. I imagine they've been there in past years, but maybe as I age I'm becoming more sensitive about such matters. To state my response bluntly, as a person approaching this age, I feel insulted and patronised by such categories.

I live in a state where discrimination on the grounds of age is illegal in such areas as employment and the provision of services. There is no longer a compulsory retirement age from work. The community is meant to provide employment or services on the grounds of the individual's characteristics, abilities and needs; not their age. Some people at 70 will be unable to do some jobs because of the requirements of those jobs, but that is also true of some people of 30. We should not make assessments of individuals and their capabilities simply because we have stereotypes about age (or gender, or race).

One of the areas exempted from age discrimination provisions under NSW law is sporting competitions. All the wonderful sporting events conducted for 'seniors' and 'veterans'(sometimes as young as 35) within age groups are permissible. Perhaps the Easter Show knitting people have used this kind of 'veteran' competition as a justification for their 'over 70' knitting classification. If so, I think they have overlooked a major difference. There is clear evidence that physical ability and strength for such things as athletics, swimming and some team games declines with age. But it seems counter-intuitive to me to think that knitting ability declines with age - indeed, one might make an argument that knitting is a craft where experience can only build greater expertise.

I can't imagine why people over 70 cannot succeed in open competition with younger knitters. Some people over 70 may not succeed, but this is not because of their age - it's an indication of their ability.

Or perhaps I've got the whole thing back to front - maybe the over 70s competition is to give younger knitters a chance of succeeding when compared with the older knitters' additional expertise. Hmmm. I don't think so.

I still find these age-based categories patronising and condescending.

Very yellow socks

2011-04-07T17:40:00.000+10:00

I've finally started on the Nutkin socks that are the current pattern for the Super Special Six Pattern Sock Club (or some similar combination of words) for 2011.

The idea is that lots of people knit the same sock pattern at the same time with a new pattern every two months...or, if they don't want to do this, they knit a variation on the pattern...or, if they're feeling even more anarchic, they knit any old sock pattern. I decided at the beginning of this undertaking that I'd just knit the pattern prescribed, mostly as prescribed, in the order prescribed. These socks are due on 30 April, so I need to spend some time on them.

Part of the deal is that you choose yarns from the stock you've already accumulated. I chose mine quite randomly and have ended up with a yarn I love (madelinetosh tosh sock) in a most wonderful colour. It's a very bright yellow called 'Chamomile' and has subtle colour variations from pale gold to bright egg-yolk yellow. It glows.

As I knit, the pattern on the socks is skewing quite badly. A number of other knitters have also reported this and I did none of the things recommended to prevent skewing, so I guess this outcome is predictable. I think I'll just keep tugging them into alignment if the skewing bothers me as I wear them. More to the point is how and where I can wear them. Glowing yellow socks? I wonder what social occasion would provide an appropriate venue?

12 in 11: March

2011-04-01T20:29:00.001+11:00

So March has been and gone and I've finally bought an item of clothing. Just one. I bought some very basic, very plain, very versatile, very dark grey warm pants for winter. They're made from some viscose and nylon mix that's comfortable to wear, drapes quite well, and I hope will prove to be indestructible.

Many years ago I had some black, extremely fine wool pants that were my ideal pants. The fabric fell perfectly and they were warm (enough) without being bulky. Ever since, whenever I go shopping for winter pants I have the vain hope that I will find something so perfect again. These pants are far from reaching such perfection, but they're good enough.

Still 10 items of clothing I can purchase for the year.

Garter stitch binge

2011-03-30T18:47:00.000+11:00

I seem to have been on something of a garter stitch knitting binge lately.
Those of you who know me and my knitting will be thinking 'Yes. So? What's new?' Well, what's new is that I think I've arrived at a point where I've so internalised the aesthetics of garter stitch knitting that I choose these patterns for their general appearance and only later realise that they're constructed using garter stitch. For me garter stitch knitting has a neat geometry - a plainness - that I find irresistible.

First there was my Terra shawl with its broken garter stitch base; then there was Aestlight with its garter stitch triangle and borders; and now I'm dividing my knitting time between a garter stitch scarf for a friend

[Stephen West's Clockwork in Lang Jawoll Magic and Biggan 4 ply Merino]

and a garter stitch jacket for the very new baby of a work colleague

[DROPS Design b14-27 in Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 4 ply - and it's really mauve, rather than the blue of this pic]

These last two projects are not only in garter stitch, they're garter stitch stripes - another of my passions. They're also a wonderful practical example of gauge variation to achieve different textures in the final fabric. I'm knitting the Clockwork scarf in fingering weight yarn on 3.75 needles, and the resulting fabric is nicely drapey, while being structured enough to retain the geometry of the stripes. The baby jacket is also from fingering weight yarn, but on 2.5 needles. The outcome will be quite a structured jacket (rather than a soft cardigan) where the shaping created through the stripes is a very neat feature.

All great garter stitch fun.

East light

2011-03-23T15:35:00.001+11:00

I'm about eighteen months behind the initial wave of enthusiasm for the Shetland Trader's Aestlight shawl pattern - but I'm nevertheless very much an enthusiast. Gudrun Johnson herself writes that it's a shawl whose construction falls within the Shetland tradition - a garter stitch triangle; a border, including bird's-eye lace, most elegantly attached via yarn-over loops along the edges of the triangle; and then an edging that's knitted sideways and attached to the live stitches of the border. So ingenious.

One of the reasons it's taken so long to get around to knitting this pattern is that I already have a much worn and loved Aestlight shawl that was a gift from drk. But my daughter is going to the UK and Spain for work for a couple of weeks and wanted a light shawl / scarf such as this for changeable European early Spring weather. This pattern is also perfect for travelling because it's what I think of as geometrically lacy (rather than florally lacy) and can either be casual or a bit dressy. I've knitted it from the same yarn as drk's gift shawl - Knitabulous's now extinct and lamented 50/50 wool and silk fingering weight. I think the colour of the shawl I've just knitted is my favourite Knitabulous colour ever - it's called 'glint' and is grey with highlights of a rosy dawn pink.

My living room is usually flooded in the mornings with the east light for which this shawl is named. But we've had lots of dull, rainy mornings lately that resulted in the rather variable quality of the colour in my photos. But I needed to pack and send the shawl for my daughter's trip, and so couldn't wait for the perfect east light.

Polyphonies

2011-03-18T10:10:00.001+11:00

I count myself very fortunate in having a number of artists and craftspeople among my friends and neighbours. It's not only that they produce beautiful things, but I enjoy being able to see how the beautiful things that they produce derive from their rich experiences and express all sorts of layers within their lives.

Last night I went to the opening of an exhibition of prints by my very old friend Christina. She's called the exhibition 'Polyphonies' - many voices.

Christina settled in Australia after having grown up in Chile. She and her husband were caught here by the political events of the early 70s in Chile. Her work reminds me of the magical realism of South American literature of that time - lots of recognisable and apparently realistic images used in a symbolic 'magical' way. Some of the same images appear in different combinations across Christina's work - women in boats, women in boats in the sky, birds, music, indecipherable writing, kites, trees. I see in these images stories of journeying, of escape, of freedom, displacement, a search for harmony and order, of growth.

I also love the technique of Christina's work. Even though she's a printmaker, she doesn't use this process so much to make multiples of her work as she does to layer the same images in different ways and make uniquely different versions of the same images. Each of her prints has a carefully constructed multi-layered background for subtle colour changes and variations of the combinations of images. I also love the fact that Christina came to art quite late in her life after another career. All those images of change and growth and freedom echo her own experience.

Of course, I found it impossible to leave without buying a work I loved.

Christina's lately taken to making artist's books - carefully constructed and bound 'books' with intricately folded pages made from her etchings. I'm always captivated by such mixtures of traditional crafts and art.

This was the perfect way to spend an unexpected payment for an inadvertent public appearance. [Perhaps I should tell more of this, later].

Yarning

2011-03-16T20:24:00.002+11:00

I haven't been blogging much lately. I just don't seem to have much to write about. I'm not sure why this is, as I'm doing all the things I usually do. Work has been busy, but not impossibly so, and I'm knitting and reading and seeing friends. But somehow nothing seems worth blogging about. I'm sure this is a state of mind rather than a sudden dip into boredom in my life, so I plan to deal with it just by writing - even if my posts lack interest.

A couple of months ago some knitting friends declared a 'knit from stash' year. A ban on buying yarn. Like most knitters I have a yarn collection, even though by many people's (knitters, that is) standards it's not extensive. I was tempted to join the yarn buying boycott, but decided not to. I knew it would become just one more thing to feel guilty about when I fell short. And I know that yarn just accumulates. Somehow, you acquire more.

Proof of this is this very soft fingering weight yarn I acquired from MissFee as a prize to celebrate her blog birthday.

It's a yarn I didn't know - from Angel Yarns - but Ravelry tells me it's from the UK. It's such a great denim blue colour for socks - or I can imagine it merging with related colours in a shawl. Thank you, MissFee.

And while I'm writing about yarns, a number of people have asked me my reactions to the BrooklynTweed Shelter yarn I used for my Terra shawl. I hadn't realised I'd neglected to comment on the yarn in my blog post. I like the yarn - a lot. It's roughly worsted weight but because it's what I have learned is called 'lofty' - quite light for its gauge - it can be compressed and knitted with smaller needles if you wish. The loftiness also makes it ideal for shawls on larger needles; warm and casual without too much weight. The range of heathered colours are predictably classic, tasteful and wonderful. When you look closely at the yarn you can see the many colours that go to make up, in various combinations, the final colour.

That's the good bits. And the bad bits aren't really bad. One is that the yarn has lots of organic matter. You can pick a lot of it out as you are knitting, but even after soaking and blocking, my shawl has small bits of grass and straw. I think this enhances the 'naturalness' of the yarn and like it. But it wouldn't suit a formal garment or dress-up shawl. Secondly, Jared Flood (BrooklynTweed) has clearly gone to great lengths to use authentic raw materials, yarn processors and spinners - to continue the historic thread of yarn production in the USA. But if you're importing the yarn to Australia, interesting as it is to know it's authentic within the US yarn tradition, you rather wish you were searching out or encouraging the development of a local equivalent.

Despite this caveat, as well as using Shelter yarn for my shawl, I have enough in a couple of different colours for gift scarves for wonderful friends (and yes, I did buy this yarn).

If you are interested in spinning and yarn production, over the last week BrooklynTweed has had an excellent series of posts on the production of his Shelter yarn. You can find it here.

A plain shawl

2011-03-02T23:08:00.003+11:00

I've finished knitting Brooklyn Tweed's shawl pattern, Terra, using the Shelter yarn for which it was designed.

I'm very happy with this shawl. Because it's knitted with quite thick yarn - worsted gauge - it seems quite casual. It's the kind of shawl you could use when watching television on cool evenings, or to drape over your shoulders when you go for a coffee. I have a tendency to buy the same clothes, with slight variations, over and over again, and I'm now finding I knit the same kinds of things, with slight variations, over and over again. The Shelter yarn has the slight catchiness I love in yarns and that I've used before for shawls. It's quite a simple pattern, very well-written as all Brooklyn Tweed patterns are. It combines a triangular base of garter stitch broken up with regularly spaced rows of stocking stitch with a simple lace edging.

Over the last year or so I seem to have had a number of conversations with knitting friends about the amount of attention male knitters and knitting designers attract, and whether the same designs would have the same success if designed by women. I don't think there is a simple answer to this question. It's certainly easier for male knitters to be initially noticed in the mainly feminine world of knitting. But I don't think that this attention would translate into the kind of success Jared Flood (Brooklyn Tweed) has achieved without a significant injection of talent. I happen to like Brooklyn Tweed's aesthetic sensibility. It has an elegant plainness - a kind of Shaker design quality - that appeals to me. I also admire the professionalism with which he's imbued all his activities, whether it's yarn production, knitting patterns, photography, garment blocking, or the design of his blog, with this sensibility.

I think this is the third Brooklyn Tweed pattern I've knitted. I may have initially noticed his designs because he stood out from the crowd as a male knitter, but I keep coming back to them because his knitting aesthetic appeals to me and because his patterns work.

I'll be glad when the weather cools down sufficiently to use this shawl.

12 in 11: February

2011-02-28T20:00:00.001+11:00

You might remember that the 12 in 11 challenge requires me to buy no more than 12 items of clothing in 2011. This is the February update. I bought nothing this month. Nothing. The only clothes I acquired were the socks I've just finished knitting, and they're disqualified from inclusion for two reasons - firstly just because they're socks which don't count, and secondly because they're hand-made.

Yippee! I still have eleven items I can buy over the next ten months.

Squeaking in

2011-02-28T11:06:00.002+11:00

I've said before that I'm good with deadlines - by which I mean I'm good at delivering whatever it is that has the deadline at the last moment. In this case it's not quite the last moment, but it is the last day.

So here they are - my Shur'tugal socks, the first socks for the Super Special Six Pattern Sock Club 2011 (s62011). They were due on the last day of February, and here they are. I've knitted them from Knitabulous's supertwist merino yarn, using 2.5mm needles (dpns).

There have been pluses and minuses with this project:

Pluses
* I love the yarn. In particular, I love the slightly brownish pink colour of the yarn, so perfectly named 'Pink Salt".
* I like being challenged to knit outside my usual choices, which for socks is usually something quite classic.
* This is a clear, well-written pattern.
* I think the heels of these socks, with their gothic window patterning, formed by varying the texture of knit stitches, are most ingenious.

Minuses
* I don't like richly patterned socks. The twist stitches result in quite a dense fabric which, while interesting to look at, is less comfortable to wear. However, the fabric has relaxed somewhat with soaking and blocking.
* I needed a size halfway between the large and small versions of this sock. I knitted the large size, which is slightly too large for my foot. But I'm pleased I made this choice, as I think the smaller size would have been too snug. I probably should have knitted the larger size on smaller needles, but I was worried that would produce too dense a fabric.
* I ran out of yarn with six rows to finish on one toe. I'm pretending this didn't happen. I found some generic pale pink yarn I've had forever and finished the toe in that. That's the last you'll ever hear about this problem. It didn't happen.
* I had to concentrate quite a lot to knit these socks. Though the pattern is logical, without concentration I was quite likely to take off on the wrong row from time to time. I reckon I must have knitted at least an extra sock with all the picking back and reknitting I had to do.

So, that's my first sock for s62011. Because I'm playing absolutely by the rules I'll not unpack the yarn for my next s62011 socks (Nutkin) till tomorrow.

And a footnote (no pun intended). The shoes I had to buy to accommodate the heel cups I'm wearing to deal with my heel spurs also accommodate thick knitted socks. So, once I'm recovered from the heel spurs (which I have to believe will happen one day) I can use these shoes with knitted socks.

Fortunes of War

2011-02-26T12:21:00.000+11:00

So I did order the DVD of Fortunes of War. And the BBC sent it to me super-quickly. And it was just as good as I remembered.

I'm hopeless at practicing delayed gratification, and so I watched my way through the whole series as soon as I possibly could. The performances are excellent - you can already see in Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh the skilled performers they would become. The series has been filmed on location and while all the settings are riveting, the winter scenes in Romania are exquisite. The beginning of the series, when newly wed Guy and Harriet Pringle are getting to know one another, and coming to terms with the strangeness of finding themselves elsewhere, are the best. Though the Egyptian settings of the latter part of the series are extraordinary, the divided focus of the story between the Pringles and young soldier Simon Boulderstone (a very beautiful and very young Rupert Graves) rather fragmented the narrative.

The series if full of knitting. Harriet is a knitter and she and Guy often wear knits - cardigans, vests, scarves. The knitwear is not particularly beautiful - it's just there because that's what people wore in 1940.

There's so much for me to like in this series. Most immediately, it's made me want to visit Romania. In winter. But I guess that's not going to happen for a while.

Re-reading

2011-02-16T15:04:00.002+11:00

I read relatively quickly, and I read every day. I can't get to sleep unless I spend some time in bed, reading. So, I often run out of things to read. Even with the temptations of the Bookshop of Doom, and the pleasure of regular book-swapping with friends, from time to time I find myself re-reading books I've enjoyed. Perhaps fortunately, I have quite a bad memory for the detail of books I've read. I'm much more likely to remember the emotional tone of the book than I am to remember the details of the plot. Maybe this is the downside of reading in bed late at night? Anyway, I'm one of those readers who often reads the end of a book when I'm only half-way through, so clearly I'm not deterred from reading by knowing how things end.

And because I only re-read books I've enjoyed, I can take delight from re-reading. Just now, I'm feeling comforted by re-reading (for the third time? the fourth time?) The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning. And when I've raced through the three volumes of this trilogy I have 'The Levant Trilogy' to look forward to. These six novels, that were written between 1960 and 1980, follow the lives of a young English couple, Harriet and Guy Pringle, who become trapped in Romania by the German eastward advance at the outbreak of the second world war. Under increasingly harsh conditions they are evacuated to Greece and then to Egypt. There's much to be critical about with these novels. They have a very uneven attitude to racism and colonialism - though there is always the concern about importing one's own 21st century attitudes to a different time and place - and the writing is often cliched. But I'm captivated by the two central characters and by the depiction of the change in their relationship over time, and I find the investigation of how people adapt when they are strangers in other lands totally engrossing.

In 1987 the BBC made a wonderful television series of the two trilogies under the title Fortunes of War. It starred two young and at that time relatively unknown actors, Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh, and has remained in my memory as one of the high spots of television viewing, ever. I have such good recollections that I've ordered the DVD of the series. I'm hoping my re-viewing is just as pleasurable as my re-reading.

The other book I've recently re-read is Christina Stead's 1940s novel, 'The Man Who Loved Children'. A few months ago my book group read Jonathan Franzen's recent novel, 'Freedom' - about which we were all a bit ho-hum, but that's another story. In reading some on-line reviews of the Franzen book, I discovered his praise for 'The Man Who Loved Children'. I think all my book group had read the Stead novel at some time in their lives - usually the very distant past - but we decided to read it again. I have great fondness for my book group, but I must admit that we are a bit lazy. We're all avid readers but feel we've got to a stage of our lives when reading should simply be pleasurable. We don't often challenge ourselves with our book choices. But after reading and discussing 'The Man Who Loved Children' we all agreed that in this case we were delighted that the book group had pushed us to such a dense and rewarding read.

Tolstoy's well-known dictum that 'All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' is given a thorough workout in Stead's novel. It's well-known that 'The Man Who Loved Children' is a reworking of aspects of Stead's own childhood - particularly through the central character of the father, Sam Pollitt. Sam is charismatic, energetic, idealistic and ultimately narcissistic, controlling and selfish. He enthralls his children, but forces them to comply with his image of them. Henny, the mother within the family, is discontented, unhappy and sharply bitter. They struggle with poverty, but are improvident with the money they do have. There's a bleakly hopeful ending for Louie, the oldest daughter of the family (the Christina Stead character?), but the reader despairs for the fate of some of the other children.

'The Man Who Loved Children' is not an altogether easy read. I'd forgotten how florid and elaborate the style of writing is - even though it's also often beautiful and moving. And the novel is long and repetitive, though you can argue that the repetitiveness is exactly what reveals the full horror of Sam's interactions with his children. But the need to know what happens and what new awfulness will be revealed carries you along. I agree with Jonathan Franzen that it is a mystery why the novel is not better known and more highly regarded. I think it's a wonderful read (and re-read).

Glorious Colour

2011-02-13T22:51:00.001+11:00

Today, with a couple of knitting friends, I went to hear a presentation by designer Kaffe Fassett. It was a simple format - a lecture illustrated by still photos. But it had the kind of excellence you get when someone is absolutely knowledgeable about the content of their talk, and so aware of their audience and what they want to hear that the talk flows naturally and entertainingly. Real mastery.

I've written before about the unexpected pleasure of discovering Kaffe Fassett's work (along with thousands of others) in the 1980s. This talk and the slides had everything I expected from Kaffe Fasset. Lots of fearless colour; injunctions to see the world around you and the richness of its patterns; a delight in the excess of pattern and colour; and the pleasure of imperfections. But it was also clear that Kaffe works hard and relatively systematically, and that he is undaunted by the techniques behind his work. I think this is what I most envy him; the capacity to embark on such a range of textile and other crafts - knitting, needlepoint, quilts, mosaics - with confidence that his technique will be good enough to have the impact he wishes.

The occasion had been organised by quilters, and so there was an emphasis on quilting, and some wonderful examples of quilts. But many of the photos were of knitting and there was great inspiration to be gained from the colours and the combinations of patterns.

The talk and the relaxed Q&A session afterwards passed in a flash. It was a wonderful way to spend Sunday. My head is full of ideas.

12 in 11: January

2011-01-31T22:08:00.001+11:00

Earlier this month, inspired by Taphophile and Louisa, I decided to set myself the 12 in 11 challenge. You might remember that the goal is to buy no more than 12 items of clothing across the year.

So, how am I going so far?

I guess you might say I'm going very well. I bought no new items of clothing, as specified by this challenge, in January. But you can probably detect a tone of doubt about how I'm really doing. As I'd predicted in my initial post, I did go shopping for shoes to accommodate the heel cups that are meant to ease the pain from my heel spurs. It wasn't that the shoes I already had were an unsuitable style for the heel cups, but rather that by the time the heel cups were inserted, my shoes became too tight and my toes were mashed in the now-too-small space. So I didn't want to have to count this practical purchase in my precious yearly total of 12. You can probably guess what happened. I couldn't bring myself to buy any old pair of right-sized shoes on sale, but ended up with some rather expensive shoes I like. I've rationalised them by thinking that if I like them I'll wear them, and the dreaded heel cups, more frequently, and that if I recover from the heel spurs the larger-sized shoes will be perfect for wearing with hand knitted socks. But because I like them so much, I think I should include these shoes in my clothing count for the year. So, that's left 11 items for the next 11 months. Still not too bad.

And there were other 'clothing' additions that unintentionally fell into the exclusions category. I had the lenses updated in some old, much-loved spectacle frames. This seems to fall into the 'make do and mend' category, except that it really was an extravagance. I already have other pairs of perfectly acceptable spectacle frames - it's just I have a bit of a passion for them. But despite feeling a twinge of guilt, I'm not going to count these amongst my items.

And then there was the knitting I finished - a shawl/scarf I know I'll wear in winter, and a hat I probably won't. According to my rules, these are hand-made and clearly exclusions from the count.

So, there it goes. I've bought one item so far in 2011, but I feel as if my wardrobe has expanded. I haven't cheated, but I feel as if I have. I wonder what February will bring.

Some knitting and...

2011-01-31T10:07:00.004+11:00

Like many others, I've fallen victim to the latest viral pattern on Ravelry, a Kirsten Kapur designed hat called Ida's Kitchen.

I'm not at all sure how this happened. I have a list of things I want and need to knit that didn't include this hat, so this was just a frolic; a moment's distraction. Additionally, given that I lived through the extremes of 70s fashions, I'm not usually attracted to clothes that reference or recreate this period. It seems too recent to be fashionably 'retro'. But I'm always attracted to stripes, and seem to be going through a particularly stripey period with my knitting. And this pattern uses chevrons, which I love. So, I have knitted this vaguely 70s, hippyish hat. I don't know what I'll do with it.

At least I didn't buy yarn especially for it. The pattern calls for 7 different colours of sport weight (5 ply) yarn. I had relatively small amounts of four colours in very basic Heirloom woollen yarn and decided to add some left-over grey Araucania Ranco. Even though it's sock yarn it's quite thick and I thought it would be good enough (which it is). So, my stripey hat has only five colours, but I think that's sufficiently riotous.

Even though I resisted buying yarn for my stripey hat, I have bought some yarn recently. I visited the newish Balmain location of the Calico and Ivy yarn and fabric store and chatted with its super-knowledgeable salesperson. The store is light-filled and charming and amongst many desirable fabric and yarn choices has what is probably my favourite yarn - Rowan Felted Tweed.

I bought some skeins in a muted crushed raspberry colour and couldn't resist a skein of the blue-grey to match the tweedy flecks in the raspberry yarn. I have no project in mind, but made sure I have enough for a small shawl or a cardigan for my grand-daughter. My copy of the latest Rowan pattern book arrived on the day I bought the yarn. Even when there is nothing I might conceivably want to knit from them - which is the case with this issue - I love the Rowan pattern books. I'm always seduced by their very English boho-chic styling. I'm more likely to covet the loose linen pants, flowing skirts and chunky bangles than I am to desire to knit any of the garments.

And I have been knitting on a project I want - even if I don't need it.

Shortly after Jared Flood's yarn Shelter was released, I bought some skeins in the colour called 'Wool Socks' to make the Terra scarf / shawl. I was attracted by the lace in bulky yarn concept, and didn't even notice that the shawl had a significant base of broken garter stitch, as well as the lace. It now seems rather astonishing that I could have been so unobservant but, as you can imagine, I'm enjoying the regularity and geometry of the knitting.

I just wish it wasn't so hot!

January in Sydney

2011-01-25T23:58:00.002+11:00

This year, the Sydney Festival has passed me by. I was preoccupied when I needed to focus on the program and book tickets in advance; then I was busy or out of town over Christmas and New Year; and finally when I focussed on shows or events I might like to see they were already finished or booked out. Oh well, I guess there's always next year.

But thanks to one of my friends I did get to see one thing. Sydney has a traditionally planned and planted Chinese Garden on the edge of Chinatown. It was a gift from Chinese sister city, Guandong, for Sydney's Bicentennial celebrations in 1988. [1788 was the year when British settlement of Australia occurred. Celebrating this settlement - which happens tomorrow on Australia Day, January 26, is always slightly uneasy as it can also been seen as marking the dispossession of Aboriginal Australians]. Anyway, the Chinese Garden is beautiful. In the twenty years or so since it was planted the trees have grown to maturity and it's become a sanctuary in the middle of a very busy part of Sydney. This January the Gardens are the site for an event called Power Plant at Darling Harbour. There are lighting installations throughout the Gardens, often coordinated with sounds. Some are absolutely magical; others less so. The organisers had done their best to regulate entry so the Garden wasn't too crowded, but nevertheless there were lots of people and consequently neither the quiet not leisure to linger that would really have done justice to some of works.

While it's not technically part of the Sydney Festival, I've also been to the opera to see Bizet's Carmen. This is not really one of my favourite operas. It's full of cliches and stereotypes, at least for a modern audience, and I guess it suffers from being just too familiar. The music has been used for advertisements, muzac, circuses, anything - you name it. I've seen the opera a number of times over the years, and after this recent viewing, while the music was going round and round in my head, I reflected on other experiences of seeing Carmen. I didn't grow up with opera - not even Carmen - but I did go to the movies (the pictures) a lot as a child. I first encountered Bizet's music in Carmen Jones, a film made in the mid-fifties. My hazy recollection is that the film was quite faithful to Bizet's score, but that the story was set during the second world war and the whole cast were African Americans. The role of Escamillio, the matador of the opera, was rewritten as a boxer. Even now, every time I hear the the 'Toreador' music from Carmen, I have the lyrics from Carmen Jones running through my head - 'Stand up and fight until you hear the bell...'. I really must watch the movie again.

I also remember seeing the exquisite Australian ballerina, Lucette Aldous, sometime in the early 1970s, dancing with Garry Norman in the ballet that is set to Bizet's score. I remember it because it was probably the most emotionally moving dance I've ever seen.

But to return to the current Opera Australian performance. It was very good, without being wonderful. There was lots of colour and movement, splendid sets and costumes, Australia's towering opera heart-throb Teddy Tahu Rhodes as the bull-fighter Escamillo, and an extremely good performance from visiting artist Rinat Shaham as Carmen. She not only sang passionately, but looked the part, acted convincingly, and danced well. All very enjoyable.

As always, the pleasure of going to the opera was heightened just by visiting the Opera House. I feel so fortunate to arrive for a performance on a hot summer's late afternoon

and to leave after several hours of delightful music to discover a cooling southerly breeze and the city lights.

Waning enthusiasm

2011-01-19T20:57:00.051+11:00

My enthusiasm for this shawl has waned a bit as I've been knitting it.

I think the colours are not working as well as I was confident they would when I chose them. Maybe it's because I'm finishing the shawl in summer, but somehow the colours seem a bit heavy and muddy. Anyway, it's way too hot to wear it for a few months, so I'll withhold my final judgment till winter comes and I see how it looks with winter clothes and in winter light. It's also a bit smaller than I'd anticipated - 168cm x 50cm - so it will probably function better as a generous scarf than a smallish stole.

But I love the laceweight yarn - Isager 100% wool - with its rather catchy texture. And the pattern, which is constructed on the bias, is simple and ingenious. It's 'Dawn' by Grace Anna Farrow, from her collection of similarly constructed patterns, The Fine Line.

The knitting is very straight-forward stocking stitch, but the attached i-cord edging took me ages to do. I also had to do a bit of experimenting to get the i-cord to the right tension to suit the bias edge of the stole.

Anyway, another finished project I can count for 2011.

Struck down by envy

2011-01-14T08:34:00.005+11:00

I've been struck down by envy while reading this blogpost. The jewellery. The spectacles. The hats. Swoon.

Child's Play

2011-01-11T18:03:00.001+11:00

Maybe I'd be a more productive knitter if my grand-daughter came to visit more frequently. While she was staying with me over New Year I faced up to the fact that I needed to finish the cardigan for her that I'd begun more than six months ago if she was to benefit from it before growing too much more.

[Forgive the quality of these photos - a combination of a moving target, a dull morning, a point-and-click camera and lack of time. However, my grand-daughter's now gone home so I had no second chances]

It's the Playful Stripes Cardigan by Alana Dakos (Never Not Knitting), who produces perfect patterns for little girls - modern, useful, and not too 'pretty'. This one's knitted from Debbie Bliss Cashmerino in an aqua-blue shade that suits my grand-daughter. I love stripes, and am particularly taken by the reverse garter-stitch yoke of this cardigan. The one disadvantage of the pattern is that even though it's knitted in the round in one piece, there's a great deal of finishing - all the edges from the stripes need to be sewn in, the button bands picked up and knitted on, and the picot hems sewn up (I'd knit them in if I were to make this again). In fact, the reason this cardi took so long to finish was that it languished in my knitting bag for ages, waiting for me to sew in the ends.

Here's a clearer photo of the cardi - though without my cute grand-daughter:

One day Ana Maria asked if I could knit her a beebie. After initial puzzlement I worked out she wanted a hat - a beanie. A couple of days later when the hat was on the needles I asked her how she liked her beebie. She looked at me witheringly and said 'It's not a beebie - it's a beanie'. They move on very quickly at three-and-a-half. Like most knitters I love receiving knitting requests - at least from people I love - and so we jointly chose the yarn from my stash and I cast on for my tried and true favourite beanie - Mustaa Villaa's Garter Stitch Beanie.

This hat is knitted in 8ply yarn (dk) to quite a dense gauge - I know from experience that it makes a warm and very sturdy beanie. You can see my liking for reverse garter-stitch stripes again - and the stripes give you the opportunity to use up scraps of yarn, including sock yarn used double. I've discovered that almost any combination of colours in the stripes looks good, as long as you include a couple of stripes of the main hat colour.

So, in a few days I had a satisfactorily finished cardigan that had been waiting far too long, and a smart new hat.

Surprise Visit

2011-01-09T21:17:00.103+11:00

I've had a quick visit to Canberra this weekend for my sister-in-law's surprise birthday party. Her children had organised it and she truly was surprised and, fortunately, delighted.

I long ago learned that you can always find ways to cram in additional pleasures and distractions when you go visiting. My first self-indulgence was to stay overnight at University House at the Australian National University. This used to be a residence for post-graduate students and a club for university staff, but for the last ten years or so it's been used as a place where anyone can stay. It's not very grand or luxurious, but it's probably the most wonderfully preserved example of mid-twentieth century architecture you could find in Australia. It was designed in the late 1940s and opened by the Duke of Edinburgh (no less) in 1954.

It's a simple building with low, horizontal lines, built around a central courtyard with a pool edging one curved side of the courtyard. The gardens and trees also date from the 1950s and the rooms are still furnished with the original simple, specially constructed, blocky wooden furniture. The building was planned to be 'unpretentious without extravagance' - and it certainly is. But now it also seems elegant, simple and restrained.

My other indulgence was an early morning visit to the Australian National Botanical Gardens this morning. It was drizzling rain and a bit misty - a perfect time to visit and see the plants at their best. Last summer there was concern that the Gardens would not survive the lengthy drought and water restrictions, but with the current rainy summer they're lush and luxuriant. The damp morning was ideal for visiting the gully planted with rainforest specimens:

and for tracing the stream edged by rock and rockery planting:

But as always, as an absolute amateur of gardens and gardening, I was most attracted by the flowers. The Gardens recreate landscapes from different areas of Australia, so for non-purists like me who don't insist that plantings are local, it was wonderful to see such diverse plants - and particularly the variety of flowers in bloom.

Now if I'd been a really diligent tourist I could have noted the botanical names of the flowers from the meticulous labels so I could impress you all with my botanical knowledge, but what with juggling an umbrella and camera and generally enjoying the morning, I just couldn't be bothered.

12 in 11

2011-01-06T13:07:00.002+11:00

Yesterday, on Taphophile's blog, I read of a challenge she's set herself for 2011 - to buy only 12 items of clothing in 2011. She borrowed the idea from The Really Good Life. I've often been tempted by challenges of the 'make do and mend' variety, but have found them a bit too austere and daunting. Twelve items of clothing in 2011 seems manageable. I've slept on the idea since reading Taphi's blog yesterday and have decided I'm in.

You might ask why I would want to do something like this, given the extent to which clothes are one of the great pleasures of my life. I think the primary reason is to save money - or at least prove to myself that I can be more frugal and restrained as I rapidly approach a time of significantly diminished income. Though who knows? If I limit myself to only twelve items I might feel each has to be a significant investment. I've always felt slightly guilty about the extent to which I love clothes (though it doesn't take much to make me feel guilty about anything). At various times I've felt I spent too much money on them, and at other times, particularly more recently, I've spent more modestly. But I know I get just as much pleasure - and often better results - from recombining or rethinking how to wear the clothes I already own than I do from buying new ones, so I can learn to indulge my clothes passion in a different way.

And there's also still the nagging realisation that there's just too much stuff in my life, and this is one strategy to limit new acquisitions. Moving house was great for acknowledging just how much stuff I have. I did throw out some clothes, but there are still more than enough to keep me going for some time. Fortunately, it's a long time since I dressed 'fashionably', so it's unlikely my clothes will go further out of fashion.

Of course no such challenge comes without exceptions. These are the exceptions proposed by Louisa and Taphi and they seem sensible:

* Essential footwear. Initially I was going to delete this exception as the examples given were new sports shoes when the old ones die, or gumboots or essential footwear for safety - none of which I own. But for the last several months I've been enduring some very painful heel spurs and I think I might have to buy some shoes specifically to help deal with this. Given what they'll probably look like, I'd hate to think I'd have to count them as one of my precious 12 purchases.
* Essential underwear – bras and undies are exempt but on a replacement basis only. Hosiery is exempt but purchases are to be minimal. I'll add pyjamas to this list as my current nightwear is appallingly ragged and in need of replacement.
* Gifts - gifts of clothing are exempt, but clothing gifts must not be solicited.
* Stuff made for oneself. I don't sew, but this does allow me to knit for myself (preferably from stash). I'll also mend and repair - though I do that anyway.

So, let's see how I go. I'll report my purchases here on my blog to keep me honest. Any other takers?

Five Best Films 2010

2011-01-05T16:27:00.004+11:00

In December 2009 I did a round-up of my film viewing for that year and listed the five best films I'd seen. I'm running a bit late with my summary for 2010, but trying to decide what was worth-while, with a little bit of distance and a number of films for comparison, still seems a good idea. I felt I'd seen significantly fewer films in 2010 than I had in previous years so was surprised to discover that while my film-viewing was down - I'd seen 52 films for the year, an average of one a week - it compared better than I had expected with the 60 I'd seen in 2009. Still, it feels as if most of my 2010 list is made up either of movies I went to see for my monthly film discussion group or films I saw at the Sydney Film Festival. I saw embarrassingly few Australian films last year - only four of them - along with ten from the UK, 23 from the USA and nineteen from other, mostly LOTE (language other than English) countries. And yes, that adds up to more than 52 because a surprisingly large number of the movies I saw last year were co-productions across countries. As for 2009, there's a preponderance of films from the USA because that's just the way the film industry is, rather than because I have a preference for films from the USA.

Essentially, my film viewing habits haven't changed. I don't watch DVDs as I find I'm too easily distracted to concentrate on the movie as completely as I would like. (As an aside, I have an hypothesis that people in cinemas are getting noisier because they're transferring their at-home DVD watching behavior to the cinema...or maybe I'm just getting older and grumpier). So, all the movies listed (apart from a few I saw on a plane) were viewed in the cinema.

Overall, I think there were fewer wonderful films in 2010 than in the previous year. My 'five best' list is just as grim as it was in 2009 which says more about my preferences than it does about the range of movies being made. A number of movies not among my top five distracted or entertained or pleased me for a variety of reasons - I loved the design and costume elegance of Jane Campion's Bright Star and I Am Love with the incomparable Tilda Swinton; I was delighted by the unpretentious exuberance of Bran Nue Dae; I sat on the edge of my seat anticipating disaster which never eventuated throughout the Russian film How I Ended This Summer; I learned so much that is deeply relevant for our times from The Most Dangerous Man in America (the story of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers); and I uncritically relished seeing two of the Millenium series of novels, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire, transferred to film.

So, on to my top 5:

After much debate and indecision my top film is German director Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. The austere, black-and-white film is set in a German village immediately prior to the outbreak of WWI and I think it is a meditation on the nature of evil. It has also been described as an allegory of the lead-up to Fascism in 1920s and 30s Germany but, as long as you aren't seeking easy answers to the meaning of the film, I think it works well without having to be viewed as an allegory of anything. The village of the film has all the claustrophobia of small, enclosed communities where neighbours can half-know but ignore horrendous practices behind closed doors. The most scarifying thing about the film is that it depicts even children as having the capacity for evil-doing. Thought-provoking and gripping.

A close runner-up is the Australian film Animal Kingdom, directed by David Michod. A lot of other people must also think this film is wonderful as it was voted best picture at the Australian Film Industry (AFI) awards as well as receiving the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. There's recently been a whole lot of often indifferent or even distasteful television series and films focusing on the criminal underworld in Australia, and I was initially fearful this would be yet another of them. It is a film about a family of criminals, but it's also about how the individuals in that family are shaped by their environment and about how horrific deeds can become 'normalised' through repetition and the expectations of others. Veteran Australian actor Jackie Weaver has been justly lauded for her portrayal of the family matriarch (and has been nominated for a Golden Globe award for her role) but I think the stand-out performance is Ben Mendelshon as the menacing older brother and armed robber. For once, a great Australian script.

My number three is the American anti-war (in my view) film, The Hurt Locker. For once, I think the Oscar voters got it right, as this was voted best motion picture for 2010. It's the story of an elite bomb-disposal squad in Iraq, where it it is never clear who is the enemy or where is safe. After the very early death of the Guy Pearce character, the squad acquires a new leader who seems to take risk-taking to unsafe and dangerous levels. The film revels something of its central characters and their motivations, but I think its great achievement is in making you confront the difficulty of returning from such experiences to the everyday world. As I became older and realised what 'ordinary ' men of my father's generation had been required to do during the second world war I was amazed at how they were expected to master the sudden transformation from war to home. Among other things, this film explores that transformation. A superb performance from Jeremy Renner who was also wonderful in the recent Ben Affleck movie The Town.

Number 4 is Winter's Bone. This has to be one of the most perfectly-made movies ever. It's a 'small' movie set within an isolated community in the Ozark mountains in Missouri. It's a community beyond the fringe of legality, comfort and safety where moonshine liquor would have been made during prohibition, marihuana grown in the 70s and 80s, and amphetamines cooked in current times. The centre of the story is a seventeen year old girl, Ree, who cares for her demented mother and young brother and sister. Their ramshackle house and the land around it is all that lies between the family and destitution, but her father has used the property as his bond to be released on bail from a drugs charge. Ree needs to ensure her father honours his bond to maintain their house. What's so wonderful about the film is its evocation of the community where 'family' can be just as dangerous as being an outsider. One of the unexpected wonders of the film was the music with the simple melodies and aching harmonies that make up some of the best traditional music from such mountain regions of the USA.

And a documentary to round things out - the China/Canada co-production Last Train Home. This feature-length documentary was made over several years and traces the annual, grueling journey that is made for Chinese New Year by more than 200 million (!!!) workers from the manufacturing areas of eastern China to their home provinces often thousands of kilometers distant. The parents at the centre of the film have left their now teen-aged children with their grand-parents so that they can work for minimal wages in appalling conditions in factories to ensure a better life for the children. In the way of such sacrifices, the children resent their parents' absence and the stress that is placed on school performance and dutifulness. The tragic but inevitable cost of rapid change and industrialisation is devastatingly clear. I thought I saw somewhere that this documentary was to be shown on TV on SBS (or maybe has been shown?) but can no longer find any trace of it. But do see it if you have the opportunity.

So, they're my picks for 2010. Pretty grim, but I think uncontroversial in terms of quality. Any comments? Anyone else have any favourites or suggestions?

Knitting 2010

2011-01-03T22:45:00.001+11:00

In counting up my knitting for last year (isn't it wonderful to have a record in Ravelry?) I was pleasantly surprised to find I'd completed fifteen projects. This was a significant decrease from the 24 and 23 I'd knitted in 2009 and 2008 and none of them was particularly large or complex, but even so I was pleased with what I managed to achieve in a very busy year that included moving house and renovating.

By category I knitted (ravlink)

7 pairs of socks
3 shawls
1 pair of mitts
2 hats
1 sleeveless jumper
1 baby blanket

And some winners:

The project of which I'm most proud is my version of the Sage Remedy sleeveless jumper (sweater for those from North America). This was neither particularly difficult nor time consuming, but completing a garment as distinct from an accessory is an achievement for me.

The most favourited project on Ravelry was the Silvery Baby Blanket, using Jared Flood's Tweed Baby Blanket design. I think this appealed particularly because of the colour combination of silvery-grey and lavender.

The piece of knitting that's been most worn (though it's probably the project with the most errors) is my version of the Citron shawl. It's just so wearable. Because it's knitted from laceweight yarn it's very soft, light and snuggly, and because it's bright red it's cheering to wear it with my grey and black winter clothes.

The most fun to knit? Probably the shawl I knitted using Mustaa Villaa's variation on the Wool Peddler's Shawl. This is a very simple knit that combines two of my favourite knitty things - garter stitch and tweedy yarn. I'm nothing if not predictable.

I've a couple of other projects I'd hoped to finish by the end of the year, but they were overtaken by the knitting flurry needed to meet Personal Sock Club completion deadlines. But the good side of my failure to finish is that they'll make my 2011 total look more respectable.

Still on about socks

2011-01-02T18:35:00.002+11:00

I completed the sixth pair of socks planned for my 2010 Personal Sock Club on December 27. Perfect timing, made even more perfect by being able to give them immediately to the friend for whom they were made, as we were visiting her just as they were completed.

The socks are yet another design from Nancy Bush's wonderful Knitting Vintage Socks - Child's Sock in Miranda Pattern. It's unexpectedly lacy with yarn overs and knit 2 togethers forming small, regular geometric patterns. It's otherwise just a classic sock. Very satisfying. I knitted on 2.25 dpns and used Malabrigo Sock yarn in Botticelli Red - a yarn and colour I'd also used for my Central Desert Shawl. Clearly, I like it.

All in all, I've knitted seven pairs of socks in 2010. Several years ago when I took up knitting again I was initially puzzled by the popularity of sock knitting. I couldn't imagine wearing hand-knitted socks with most of my shoes (indeed, I still can't) and was of the view that they were rather useless. But that was before I discovered the delight of wearing knitted socks with the shoes they do complement and the creativity involved in choosing how and when and with what to wear them. It was also before I discovered just how delighted many of my friends are to receive socks as a gift - some are on to their second pair.

So, my 2010 socks:

Together with the red socks at the beginning of my post, these made up the six pairs of my 2010 Personal Sock Club. Details of patterns and yarns are on my Ravelry projects page. Predictably, four of the six patterns I chose were by Nancy Bush. All the socks worked well, though my favourites by far are the extra-long Latvian Socks in vibrant deep-blue Wollmeise yarn. I'm still plotting ways to wear them.

I was a bit distracted from my PSC early in the year when I found myself coveting a pair of short socks with frilled tops from Judy Sumner's Knitting Socks East and West.

These are great fun and have had a lot of wear.

So, on to 2011. Given my Personal Sock Club success in 2009 and 2010, I'm knitting socks again in 2011 - but with a twist. The S61011 group on Ravelry is a group knit-a-long Personal Sock Club - if that's not a contradiction in terms. We've voted on six sock patterns for the year, each with a two-monthly time frame. Socks are to be knitted from yarns already owned, which I've stowed away to have them revealed every two months - hopefully as a pleasant surprise. The first pattern for us all is Socktopus Design's Shur'tugal, and the randomly chosen yarn I'll be using is Knitabulous's Supertwist Merino in perfectly named Pink Salt.

However, I'm not rushing to cast on just yet. I know I have plenty of time for these before the deadline and I have a number of other almost finished projects I really want to complete before I begin yet another round of sock knitting - however enjoyable I've found it to be.