J’s birthday: misery   :(

July 27th is the day on which my eldest sister was born. So, as I love my eldest sister (and also my youngest sister), why the misery …?

Because what I made for her is gone. Disappeared. Vanished into the cavernous depths of the French postage system.

Remember this ?

That’s it. After all the time I spent on careful creation, realizing that it IS possible to crochet from side to side without its growing larger, or smaller, or one after the other, or both at once, or slanted … in other words, that I am actually able to create a crocheted lap blanket that’s simply straight up and down – and even without blocking ! – after all this time, as I say, it’s just – gone.

J will never set eyes on the lap blanket I made for her winters up there in Paris, in her little flat that she loves almost as much as she loves the city itself. She will never be found sitting at her desk in, say, January, writing a paper for some conference or other and keeping her lap warm with my lapghan.

So. She’s coming back to Oz in September for a brief sojourn. I must make something to replace the birthday present she never received. The Vintage Walrus must be put on hold while I do this, and that’s that.

This is where I get to make a lapghan with that amazing combo of yarns I posted about yesterday. Unhappily, it won’t be that really nice combination of greens, because I don’t have time to wait for a parcel delivery from the US – nor do I have the money (US postage to Oz is unbelievably expensive) – and instead I’ve chosen something she will like from the very limited range of colours available here.

Not a happy story, not at all. And especially because that lapghan was the first time in my life that I’ve made something plain but good, and finished it. Sighh …

It’s not really plagiarism …

Chi Wei’s site, One Dog Woof, today offers for sale a delightful pattern for a baby blanket. Being a female Methusaleh with mostly contemporaries for friends, babies are not anywhere on my horizon (I am happy to say, having never in my life felt even momentarily maternal). But her pattern provides a discovery about yarn blending !

This is a grab from her finished article:

Ain’t it AMAZING ?

She achieved that look by combining two Lion Brand yarns, Thick & Quick and Baby Soft Boucle – it’s the latter that has those teeny little beads, of course. So I shall be doing the same, ere long (NOT a baby blanket !), but with a different combo:

and I believe the result will be an absolute knockout !

I don’t mean to plagiarise, as I said: it’s just a matter of someone’s basic idea’s providing a kind of eureka moment; and all such someones should be happy !

I hate Lisette !

Knitting Patterns Galore included, this-morning, a really super pattern for a jumper – sorry, sweater (I always type that word as ‘sewater’ initially).

“Indeed,” thinks I: “that does look nice !” I click on the little image:

and am confirmed in my thinking. Going further in, I see

that this sort-of-yoke pattern is quite delightful, and decide to download the free pattern for when (NOT if !) I finish the Vintage Walrus. Going to the free download page, I find, however, this:

and realize, to my horror, that the sleeves only go as far as the bottom of the pattern ! Imagine what would happen were the wearer to throw her arms in the air !!!

Bloody Lisette ! – damn her, damn her ! She is a kind of siren – luring us in with her looks only to reveal herself as REALLY SILLY. Doubt that she ever sang a note.    :(

 

 

Close glittering

That quartet has glitter yarn in different places.

Keep in mind, always, how bad a photographer I am when you’re doing your best to perceive it.

And last but by no means least … when the motifs are joined together there will  be no more wonky edges.

I have spoken.

[grin]

Widen your horizons

Glorious shot, isn’t it ?

Follow the link under the article lead-in to see a far glorious-er one !

And while you’re there, find and follow this link (I do not provide it)

to see if E lucevan le stelle doesn’t combine a mind-boggling frame with one of Puccini’s greatest works, Tosca …

Et ça marche …

Don’t sigh and roll your eyes: you knew all along you were going to have to put up with this.   ;)

Hope you’re impressed with the consistency of my dreadul photographic skills ! Not many could produce frame after frame, as do I, of appallingly bad images, you know.

Anyway.

Another few motifs done, and the introduction of a wee bit of glitter. Decided that it cain’t hoit … Whaddya reckon ?

Bummer. Just seen that the glitter is too subtle to be seen. Mebbe a close shot or two, next time ’round.

Definitely winter Downunder

An excuse to put up a couple of shots of Lui – an amazingly cheap new cat basket that my friend J found at Kmart for her inherited mog Sooty and was persuaded to buy another for Lui:

As for why it’s where it is, on a chair that it really don’t fit in … that black chair I bought second-hand for a good price, without thinking. His Maj instantly took to it, so that I have to shroud it in a large green sheet until someone visits. I then whip the sheet off, trying to ensure getting the fur-bespeckled side on the outside when I fold it and almost invariably not succeeding … Hey ho, into the washing-machine again. Does Lui’s fur come off things easily ? Only when someone sits where he’s been … Otherwise the answer is NONONONONO.

Sighh …

Yeah … that could be me

This-morning I read an article in the Australian version of The Guardian that gave me pause – a bloody long pause.

ADHD, eh ? I’ve thought about that before now. It’s been the ‘H’ part that made me dismiss it.

But the writer says the same:

“{…} I might have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, I laughed the idea off, pointing out that the “H” part of ADHD was most definitely not me. I’ve never been anything resembling hyperactive {…} – just being active is an achievement most days, let alone hyper-active.”

Tell me about it.

Five years  back when I was one of a small group of bloggers who kept up with each other’s posts and formed a kind of cell, I posted about that business of having spent too much time on the Web so that I could no longer read my books – or, basically, anything: that I must now listen to audiobooks in order to ‘read’ at all. There were articles published about it, so I attached my problem to them.

But now … I dunno. It’s not age – not senility creeping up on me. I worry that I’m irritating to my friends because I give every sign of not having listened to things they tell me … and as I cast my mind back to someone’s recounting a story, I can clearly recall my attention being not held. And it wasn’t the story …

So after reading Tom Hawking’s article, I searched out a test for ADD – happily it didn’t include the ‘hyperactivity’ part – and filled it out. Moderate is the result. And the site exhorts one not to take whatever the result is as a diagnosis.

I refuse not to !    [grin]

Observe the new little thingy in my sidebar widgets. I am (totally unofficially !) a sufferer from a Moderate degree of ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER.

I have been told. And now you have, too.   :)

Such beauty …!

There is a blogger from the Netherlands of whom I have written – I think it was in my first post upon returning to the blogging fold. She and her husband (and their cat, who is not to be overlooked !) are in the process of selling their canal house so that they can move out into the country – I suppose that makes it a tree-change …

If you feel like looking at  the agency’s photos of a totally gorgeous little house in a mind-blowing environment, visit SpinningAnna’s latest post.

You, like me, will ponder upon the tree-change urge that has led to this sale.