New for old

My knitting output has suffered because I've been busy and very, very tired. But I have managed to finish another pair of my 2010 Personal Sock Club socks - only a week later than my self-imposed due date.



I'd scheduled their completion for 27 August and managed to finish them - with a flurry of activity towards the end - on 3 September. They're the Tsunami socks from Judy Sumner's Knitted Socks East and West in Madelinetosh Tosh Sock Scarlet. I was concerned that the cabling on the leg of the socks would reduce their elasticity (which it did) and so knitted them on 2.75m needles. But the foot part of the socks, without the cables, is a bit loose, so it would have been ideal to reduce the needle size once the the cables were finished.



This is a great sock yarn and I love the bright scarlet colour.

So....I opened a new manilla folder to disclose the latest PSC instalment. The Socks That Rock yarn was a birthday gift from Jody almost exactly a year ago and is a riot of colours - brown, russet, blue, chartreuse - with the great name, Tide Pooling.



With such wonderful colours I opted for a very straight-forward pattern - Nancy Bush's Gentleman's Plain Winter Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks. (Of course, we all know you can never go wrong with Nancy Bush).

I'm off to such a flying start with these socks that I'm planning to keep to my originally scheduled date for finishing them - 8 October. Having a publicly declared schedule for my Personal Sock Club is working so well that I'm flirting with the idea of trying it for all my knitting. But I think I know deep down that what works so well for a part of my knitting wouldn't work so well applied to the whole endeavour.

Comfort reading

I've just finished rereading Anthony Trollope's novel, Dr Thorne. I think it's the fourth time I've read it. I used to half-joke that you could tell if I was feeling stressed or depressed because you'd find me reading one of Trollope's novels. For me they're the ultimate comfort reading.

This latest rereading has nothing to do with stress or depression - it's simply that in packing and unpacking my books for moving I realised just how many copies of Trollope's novels I have. I couldn't bring myself to discard any of them, so I think I felt obliged to reread to justify their space on my bookshelves. I've just counted, and I have 31 of the 47 novels he wrote during his very productive life - with duplicate bound copies of eight of them. I also have his autobiography, a most comprehensive biography by Victoria Glendinning, two critical studies, and a novel by his amazingly prolific novelist mother, Fanny Trollope. You can undoubtedly describe me as a Trollope fan.

Dr Thorne is one of my favourites. It's part of the Barchester Chronicles series, but unlike the better-known The Warden and Barchester Towers, it focuses on the landed gentry of Barsetshire rather than clerical society. At its centre are issues of class and birth and money and honour and the changing balance amongst these forces as society modernises and changes. Trollope somehow manages to be deeply conservative but also humane. His insight into the complex motivations of human behaviour enables him to show empathy even for unpleasant characters - and even for characters he satirises.

Trollope visited Australia twice in the 1870s. His much-loved son, Fred, came to Australia as a young man and settled as a squatter on land just west of the town in which I grew up, Grenfell. Despite frequent subsidies from his novelist father and a great deal of hard work, Fred's unsuccessful farming experience in Australia foretold that of so many others - too little land, low prices and drought led him to sell his farm, Mortray. [There is still a farm of this name in the area]. Trollope wrote a not-so-successful novel based on his son's experiences in Australia - Harry Heathcote of Gangoil. Rather unreasonably, I feel a very distant personal connection to Anthony Trollope.

I think Lady Anna might be next on my Trollope rereading list. I love the story of how this excellent novel was written. Trollope was an astonishingly industrious writer. No sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike for him. This is what he writes in his Autobiography:

When making long journeys, I have always succeeded in getting a desk put up in my cabin, and this was done ready for me in Great Britain, so that I could go to work the day after we left Liverpool. This I did; and before I had reached Melbourne I had finished a story called Lady Anna. Every word of this was written at sea during the two months required for our voyage, and was done day by day - with the intermission of one day's illness - for eight weeks, at the rate of 66 pages of manuscript in each week, every page of manuscript containing 250 words.

That's a publishable manuscript of 132,000 words in eight weeks. Rather impressive. My hero.

What everybody needs

When we were planning the renovation of my new apartment we set a timeline of 8 to 10 weeks from demolition to sufficient completion to move in comfortably. Demolition started on 10 June and I moved in on 10 August - nine weeks. How's that? A renovation completed on schedule. Admittedly, all the work was internal, so there were no delays or hold-ups for weather. But the work was quite extensive, with a new kitchen, bathroom, flooring, painting, and lots of work for the cabinet-makers.

So, it was on time. Was it on budget? Hmmm...except for two additions to the original brief that I requested, it's cost exactly what I was quoted. Admittedly, the original quote was significantly more than I had hoped to pay, but the final figure has not increased.

I take no credit for any of this. It's all due to Heather. Everybody undertaking a renovation really needs a Heather - a designer and project manager who, as well as assisting with design advice, provides expertise and contacts so that tradespeople are competent and their work is well-planned and scheduled and, most importantly, thoroughly quality checked.

One of my additional requests was to have my old lounge suite (to use a rather old-fashioned term) reupholstered. I dithered for ages about whether to do this. I could have bought a new, reasonable quality sofa and some chairs for what the reupholstery cost. But my old sofa and chairs were so comfortable in a way no modern sofas are. Heather says this is partly because they are structured with springs, which gives them resistance when you sit in them. I like sitting on chairs, rather than sinking into them, so this old-fashioned structure suits me well.

Besides, I've become emotionally attached to these chairs. I've posted about them before. They were bought, already second-hand, by my parents in about 1947 when they first set up house. They're quite bulky, and I had to decide not to bring one of the single chairs with me. But look at them now:



I've had them covered in grey flannel. I couldn't be happier with the outcome. They're very tailored and sleek. A little bit 'Mad Men' - though my cushions rather undermine that slick effect.



Rather schmick!

The only good thing...

From my point of view the only good thing about Saturday evening and the interminable and distressing election coverage was that I made significant progress on my current Personal Sock Club socks.



It's the Tsunami pattern from Judy Sumner's Knitting Socks East and West. I like the way the reverse stocking stitch diamonds create shadows, and, when combined with the distantly spaced largish cables, give an impression of folds and creases. Like origami creases. I'm knitting these on 2.75m bamboo dpns and hoping the slightly larger needles are sufficient to compensate for the way the cables will pull in the socks. The yarn is lovely madelinetosh in Scarlet.

I am so behind with this pair of socks. My self-imposed deadline for these is 27 August - only four days away. I've no hope of finishing them in time, but watching the election did at least enable me to make a start.

The election? I'm too disappointed to write much about it. Having survived with such pain all those years under Howard it was such a relief when he was gone. The Liberal Party under Tony Abbott will be even worse. Unthinkable. My best hope is that Labor will be able to cobble together a minority government which will have to make significant compromises with the Greens (a good thing) to get any legislation through the Senate. But if the conservative forces form a minority government - chaos! disappointment! anger...

Back in touch

After a week and a bit, I finally have both the telephone and internet connected to my new apartment. Even though I've had access to the internet at work, I've been surprised by how much I've missed pottering around on the net at home.

I'm settling in, but have still not finished unpacking. I'm on the verge of being depressed by the chaos, so I've set myself a deadline of the end of the weekend to finish. I think I hadn't anticipated that moving is hard physical work and that I'd find it as tiring as I have.

Anyway, in a few days I'll have it all done...then some pictures.

In the meantime, among many other things to enjoy, I love the morning light that streams through the large east-facing windows. Now, to create enough order to sit and enjoy it.

Still distracted

The removalists came on Tuesday and moved everything I'd packed - mostly to my new apartment, and some of it to storage till I summon the energy to send it to my daughter in Brisbane. I hadn't quite finished packing everything before the removalists arrived and so I've had quite a few trips between my old and new apartment with a shopping trolley crammed with stuff.

But I've really and truly moved! So many loads to the garbage skips in my building's basement; so many trips to leave things at the local charity stores; but there's still a mountain of boxes to be unpacked.

The painters are in my new apartment this morning painting the old bookcases I've brought with me, so after they're dry I can begin unpacking all my books. Boxes of them. Many heavy boxes of them. Despite culling quite a few as I packed I think I'll still have too many for the space I have, so I suspect more culling will be needed. I'm torn between putting things away anywhere just to make some space, and knowing that this is a really stupid move. Anyway, I'm so physically tired that just co-existing with chaos for a few days seems by far the most attractive option.

Predictably, I have no telephone or internet connection at home until sometime next week, so I'm having a bit of a holiday from blogging and blog-reading. Maybe next post I'll be more settled.

Almost done

I have three sleeps and two days until I move house. I've given things away, thrown out things that aren't worth recycling, and still seem to have so much to pack. At this stage I can't imagine getting everything done by the time the removalists arrive on Tuesday; but I know it just has to be done.

Except for some finishing touches - the coloured glass splash-backs above the kitchen and laundry benchtops; some drawer pulls that need replacing; a towel rail that needs attaching - the renovation is done. The bathroom and kitchen are functional, and my washing machine and dryer have already migrated to the new apartment.

I'm very happy with the colours and finishes and am desperately hoping that all the new cupboards will prove sufficient for the stuff that's currently overwhelming me as I pack it all up.






From the top:
The old hardwood columns that support the building
The stairs to the small landing and bathroom / laundry
The bedroom shutters (and super adjustable lamp for reading in bed)
The kitchen sink and tap