Knitting & laughing

I am often, apparently, to be found laughing out loud at recipe and gardening books. Today it's a knitting pattern book I found in the thrift shop yesterday. Elizabeth Zimmermann is (or maybe was) an English lady, brought up by a governess, who took up residence in America with her German husband in 1937. In 1974 she published a book of her knitting patterns in the form of an almanac. It is littered with conversational interludes and 'governessy' guidance in a very no-nonsense English fashion.

This passage really struck a chord -

" ... this is one of the few, but intense, drawbacks to old age; one forgets. In many cases forgetting seems to be a protective mechanism. The brain has slowed down and no longer has the capacity to retain irrelevant detail. Was it Thursday or Friday of the week before last that the Old Man saw those three otters in the river? Who cares what day of the week it was.

Where did I put the little blue egg-boiling pot? The brain refuses to co-operate. Never mind; use something else; the pot will turn up. Sure enough, it did. Adhering to the belief that boiled-egg water is good for houseplants, I had taken the pot to the bedroom windowsill where I am encouraging last winter's cyclamen. I found it next time I watered. Smart brain; it knew I'd find the pot eventually, and saved its waning but still valuable powers for composing a letter to a desperate knitter who had miscalculated his neck-stitches."

I have tried to use a variation of this theory for explaining why I never retain details given to me by Dear Husband. If he has the information already, and I can access it any time by asking him, why waste my own brain's diminishing capacity by remembering it all myself? Needless to say, I never get away with it.

Knitting Knightmare!

Having taught me to knit, my mother could never actually bear to watch me doing it, I was so awkward. She, of course, tucked the pins under her arms, wound the yarn around her little finger and whizz she was off at twenty to the dozen. Meanwhile, I had needles dangling, each row had a different number of stitches and keeping a constant tension was definitely a bridge too far. My dollies' scarves all had 'buttonholes' in them.

Half a century on, I thought I would tackle four pins. Does that sound over-confident? Well, it should! I did have the great good sense to seek advice from a seasoned pro at our local Women's Institute and concentrated really hard when the needles were flashing before my eyes. I nodded sagely throughout and scuttled home to try it out in the privacy of home. There were one or two false starts. I was using four needles allright, but the knitting was still in a straight line! Once I'd sorted out how to go in a circle, I decided my best bet was to use some nobbly yarn to hide the imperfections. Wise move, as it turned out. There was, thankfully, no pattern to follow, so I could increase and decrease with gay abandon, creating my own unique shape.

So why this sudden impulse to revisit my inadequacies in the knitting arena? Well, I was inspired by some knitted vessels in Janet Edmonds' book 'three-dimensional EMBROIDERY'. Janet's are knitted with silk and paper string, and keep their shape and form beautifully. One particularly gorgeous creation looks just like a pomegranate. Unfortunately I was so impatient to admire my own efforts that I cast-off my 'pomegranate' rather too soon and the end result was more like a lumpy satsuma. But, hey, who says that's not what I set out to make! Nothing daunted, I'm at it again, bigger needles, not quite so much manic increasing and decreasing. But I can already see some little 'buttonholes' appearing .... thank goodness my mum can't see me!