On Poetry

It perhaps says quite a lot about me that I only get around to talking about National Poetry Month on the last day of the month.  However, it does seem to have taken everyone else to the middle of the month to realise it too.  So maybe I’m only two weeks behind after all.

I don’t know about how it is for everyone else, I can only speak for myself, but poetry seems to have disappeared off the world radar these days.  Yeah, I know that there are national poets but it’s seems to be a title only, there’s few who can name the poet much less any of his works.  Gone are the days when farmsteaders were versed in the Bible, Shakespeare and Milton.

Poetry isn’t cool.  Is poetry not relevant anymore?  I don’t think we can argue that, modern poets seem to be tackling a diverse range of contemporary issues.  (I can only say that because I’ve bumped into a rainbow of words these last few weeks, mainly on blogs not through any erudite or cultural experience of my own).  Maybe it is because we now live in a modern world of soundbites, pithy at best but if not, then amusing on a basic level and preferably crude, garnered from films and celebrities.  Maybe we don’t have the same attention spans anymore.  A haiku might be more appropriate.  But too highbrow, too artful.

It comes down to attitude.  Poetry is for other people.  Who are those people?  Will we ever know?  Probably not, the mythical demographics of popular consciousness are vague, distant.  Poetry is not just seen as some elitist taste like opera and ballet.  (Apart from ballet classes for the female under eight, people from all classes and neighbourhoods with aspirations and a sense of de rigueur and duty send their precocious darlings off in worn shoes and badly stretched leotards.  Real ballet is as far apart from junior ballet classes as Pluto is from the Sun, still remaining an alien art form).  Poetry is fluffy and wet, poetry belongs to those of queer minds and dispositions, the uncool.

We did poetry at junior school before we learnt self-consciousness.  Acrostics mainly.  Hammered out sentences across the initials of a word, much like the début of a banana-fingered piano player.  I didn’t even realise until last week that you don’t have to keep the initials in order.  Maybe the Laws of Poetry can be broken.

In middle school, we progressed into laboured ABAB rhyming.  If you wanted to live dangerously you could always mix up the form but again poetry was all about Law.  It was ordered, twee and contrite.  We learnt poems.  The kind of poems that were guaranteed to put pre-adolescents off poetry for life.  For example, how can a cloud be lonely and how can it wander?  Do I really care about a field of daffodils?  I remember something about Adlestrop.  Which in my pun-creating mind sounds like a tantrum gone awry.  The only good thing that came from that experience and reading some book about a chalice being found was a lifelong passion for the rural abandoned that continues with me still and surfaces in my photography.  Early on in middle school we did our own versions of the Jolly Postman, much more my cup of tea.

And in senior school?  Poetry went the way of Creative Writing.  Nonexistent.  For GCSE, we did one creative piece.  I think it had to be a side of A4, a very short short story.  We did War Poetry, rushed through in perhaps less than half a term.  It wasn’t about the poetry either, it was all about themes and issues and culture and history.  But I met the famous War Poets of World War I, a love that I still carry with me.  I liked the work of Sassoon but preferred Owen.  The next closest we came to poetry was Shakespeare, enshrined as Law that all GCSE students must study at least one piece in their two years.  He wasn’t popular, he used weird words, a language more alien to teenagers than Arabic even thought it was purportedly their own.  I love Shakespeare but haven’t really returned to it since school apart from harvesting the occasional monologue or duologue for other studies.

That was my education in poetry.  Or at least my formal education.  There was poetry at home.  As a young child, I had volumes of nursery rhymes and spent hours poring over them before moving onto the Nonsense Rhymes and an Old Possum’s Book of Cats.  Oh and there was AA Milne.  My father loved Winnie the Pooh as much as Paddington.  In the old days before I was born and he was still commuting, he would read Winnie the Pooh on the London train between the bowler hats and the copies of the Times.

My mother on the other hand had once entertained dreams of a university scholarship and furnished me with a proper anthology, probably one of her own school prizes like my World Atlas and French dictionary too.  Her maiden name printed neatly on the inside.  This was poetry that meant that you were someone, this was poetry that was meant to be learnt.  I never got on with it.  The only poem that I truly loved was the Night Mail, it stays in my head still.  (Trying to find a link for the poem, I have discovered that it was originally written to accompany a film documentary and one commenter is right, it does sound a lot like modern rap in this version at least!)  It was the magical rhythm and the pictures it conjured.  That’s my kind of poetry.

Therefore I am not a cultured being.  I sometimes feel that I should make more of an effort, that for some reason I should be a cultured person.  The kind who remembers the big words and proper terms for everything, the kind who can string fancy words into any sentence, the kind who can quote poetry and literature more easily than I remember the day of the week.  But truthfully, I feel that it’s a little too much beyond me.  Maybe it’s an attitude thing.  To be all of those things would mean being posh, being highbrow, being a hundred and one things that I am most definitely not.  Besides which, my head would hurt.

I wrote poetry as a child but like my creative writing, I eventually realised that my talent did not amount to much, that I would go no further.  Maybe it was living with that aforementioned attitude.  Writing was always something I did in secret, some shameful weakness on my part.  Less socially acceptable then stuffing chocolate bars and biscuits behind closed doors.  And I had no framework and few points of comparison.  In the old-fashioned novels of my childhood, writers burnt with genius and dashed off great oeuvres in a few strokes of the pen.  However I have recently realised that apparently it’s not meant to be like that, writing is meant to be hard work, it is something that has to be crafted.  But I didn’t know at the time.  I got discouraged.  My pastimes not belonging in the modern world.

Modern poetry was, and in fact still is, something inaccessible, something entirely alien to the Laws of Poetry with which I grew up, I mean some of it doesn’t even rhyme!  My poems belonged to the sentimental tripe of antiquity, a genre which I didn’t even enjoy reading.  But there was nowhere else to go, nothing beyond.  I only know acrostics and ABAB.  I have a funny feeling that poetry is more than that but it would be like trying to force an introduction with some learnéd, highbrow culturalist at a gallery opening.  Little me doing that!  No chance.

So poetry remains for other people.

Freaky Beasts

~ Trigger Alert ~

I know that I’ve talked about phobias before, we all have them, but I’m sure that we’ll agree that when it comes to the bugs and beasties of this world then it is not truly phobia, especially when it comes to the most terrifying and dangerous planet companion, the arachnid.  I just don’t like them.  Nuhuh.  And they are dangerous.  Very.

See?  Perfectly rational.

And I’m not scared of them, I just don’t like them.  And have a healthy respect for their dangerous-ness.

Maybe it’s the way I was raised.  All bugs, beasties and whatevers were dangerous, probably fatally so, a hazard to health and sanity.  Avoid them.  Scream like a hyperactive car alarm on encounter.  Consider your life over when they take up dwelling with you.  If all else fails, jump on a chair, flap your arms and refuse to ever, ever, ever come down again.

It works.  No?

We don’t have too many freaky beasties in residence.  Fortunately.  Maybe it’s because we’re on the first floor, maybe it’s because of the age or style of the building.  I don’t know.  But I don’t question it.  I am rather grateful.

I do get rather bemused when I look out of my (first floor) kitchen window to find a snail gambolling across its panes.  Why snails suddenly take it upon themselves to scale buildings, I can’t fathom.  And despite having never seen a woodlouse in the flat before, bemused doesn’t quite cover how I felt when I found a dead one in my kitchen cupboard the other week.  There are spiders too.  Usually of the freakingly huge variety.  My husband laughs when I scream for rescue.  I laugh at the pathetic big-girl’s-blouse whimper-cum-wail-cum-scream that he’s developed for such encounters.  The worst was the night we discovered that there was one on the back of the closed bedroom door.  We were coming to the conclusion that we’d have to climb out of the bedroom window.

And mosquitos, don’t get me started on mosquitos.  We’re not too plagued here, except in the communal hallway where we have a year-long population of the beasts along with most other varieties of bug life.  Including some very unusual species of moth.  One lone mosquito in the night, circling the room, that high-pitched whine.  They pitch to the most primal part of our psyche, to the terrified, insecure and immature ego of Freudian gobbledygook.  On holiday as a child, despite the nets in the windows and the machine in the plug, there was always a mosquito.  One lone mosquito circling overhead like the early aerial bombarders, a one-note drone descending from out of the clouds.  I’d end up with the sheet wrapped up over my head, shroud-like, in some desperate bid for safety.  I also took to hitting the bites with the back of a hairbrush, I’m not quite sure of the science behind this but I firmly believed in it.

But we do have other residents.  Some authorities on the matter state that they are the sign of a clean house.  Others insist that they are the sign of a dirty house.  One day my husband will reassuringly tell me that they are sign of a clean house.  Other days he feels that it’s proof of my absent housekeeping skills.  As he usually only believes that these beasties are the sign of a clean house when things are in a complete shambles and vice versa, I believe him less than I do the voices of authority.

I am not talking about cockroaches.  I can deal with cockroaches.  Well, in other places.  There may be an entire freak-down if they decide they want to be my flatmates.  May or will?  Hm.  Anyway, I have encountered them before.  When my father was in one of the big London hospitals, he told us that you didn’t dare go to the bathroom in the night without slippers on because you’d crunch across all the cockroaches.  Ni-ice.  We’ve met a few on holiday.  My father and I perfected the ‘don’t-tell-your-mother’ strategy and teenage-me would be sent to reception to negotiate.  A large wadge of loo paper was once offered as a generous cure-all.  We weren’t overly impressed.  We didn’t think the mother would have been either, especially not as the loo paper plan would involve hunting, chasing and contact.

These beasties live on my bathroom floor.  One is sometimes found in the bedroom.  They slink and scurry.  They’re creepy.  And they freak me out.  I stand there two-year-old like, scrunching my skirts to knee level in clammy hands, toes curled up, all at once revolted, disgusted and terrified but yet still fascinated, riveted.  I wail out for my husband to come and rescue me.  He yells back some platitude which I, of course, in my superior wisdom, do not believe.  I tell him that they’re going to bite me.  They bite, I know.  I can tell by the way that they’re looking at me.  There was  a whole three of them at once the other night, slinking in the grooves of the bathroom floor tiles.  Some of them have revoltingly big, black heads.  I saw one once which was completely dark.  An entire freak-down is called for.

Silverfish.

~

DISCLAIMER

My husband would like to me to explain that as a mature, male specimen of the human race that he is in no way afraid of small beasties like spiders despite what I may have indicated in this post.  He thinks that all bugs and beasties including spiders are fascinating things.  However he apparently just does not like it when the aforementioned eight-legged freak chooses to sprint in an uncontrolled manner directly at him.  Which is what they do.  Particularly the freakingly huge varieties.

WOE: Core

The last time he visited it had been early fall, the first of the cooler days, and as usual, Ma Alwright had been sitting in her rocker, feet on the railing, watching the world go by.  As he climbed the increasingly rickety steps to the porch, he passed the steady line of apple cores balanced on the rail by her feet.  Always apples.  She’d been surprised to see him yet graceful and he had felt no embarrassment.  When she decided to make them coffee and started easing herself out of the chair, it was his turn to feel surprised.  Somewhere along the way, Ma Alwright had aged and despite her remonstrances, he took her arm, further surprised, and shaken too, by the thin, papery skin and weak limb, and helped her up.  He didn’t say anything.

Now it was spring, still cool, and he hadn’t made it back.  As he left the last time, he’d told himself that he would visit more often but that’s what he always did as he got into his car and drove away.  But he’d quickly forget his self-promises and time would continue on by.

As he climbed the porch steps this morning, it was the absent apple cores he noticed first, and felt deeply, the news becoming a sudden, fierce reality.  The rocker was abandoned too now, forlorn.  He hurried inside and was going to the stairs when he noticed the open door to the back room.  He paused on the threshold, briefly wondering when she had stopped using the bedroom above, respectfully holding back as he would have done when he was a boy.

The young doctor, a newcomer in the town, was with her still.  A good-hearted fellow who had taken to calling on Mrs Alwright on his rounds, just neighbourly like.  It was the doctor who had been the one to find her.  Fortunately.  Goodness knows how long it would have been before one of the children had visited.

The doctor looked up:

“I’m glad you could come,” then added “she passed peacefully.”

He nodded, still shuffling awkwardly in the doorway, guilt overwhelming him.  As he had grown older, he realised more deeply how much maybe that she had given up, how life maybe hadn’t gone to her plan when first she had to raise her siblings who had later flown the nest without a second glance then she’d taken in the unruly brood that his own siblings were.  Life hadn’t exactly been kind to Ma Alwright but she’d been the centre of their world, a comforting stability, and her passing was incomprehensible, he was totally shaken to the core.

~

This piece is for Red Writing Hood who asked us for 450 words (441!) exploring ‘core’.  Core has many meanings and as an amateur logophile, I worked in apple cores, the idea of something or someone being indispensable and/or central and the idiom ‘shaken to the core’.  Friendly concrit always welcomed!

Trifecta: Confidence

She carefully spooned the sauce over the pasta before carefully balancing an artful sprig of basil on top then studied the result, her perfectionist streak and pride gratified yet still wondering whether she was going to ridiculous lengths to please.  She carried the dish over to the table and placed it meticulously centre on the placemat, she stepped back, waiting, anxious.

Her guest was seated on several cushions  and had earlier been enveloped in a pristine white tea towel in preparation for the tomato sauce.  The glass of chocolate milk had brought some praise but the absence of a straw had been critically noted.

He lifted his fork, heavy fine cutlery sitting awkwardly in his small hand, and speared the first pieces, hungry enthusiasm tempered by caution.  Unconsciously, she held her breath.

“Mum always mixes the sauce in.”

A criticism, she felt it keenly.  She would remember his preferences for next time.  He’d been amazed to see her make the sauce from scratch; although she had told him that overworked mums didn’t have the time, she had been surprised by the low standards to which her sister had sunk.

He ate.

Mouth barely empty, he looked up at her:

“Mmm, it’s good.”

She relaxed, letting her breath go softly.  A vote of confidence.  It was just what she needed right now after all these tough weeks and in that moment she realised how all the stresses of work with three projects in a row being turned down as well as a soured relationship had been slowly eating away from her, votes of no confidence.  Now she turned lightly back to the pans to dish up her own meal, those stresses smoothed away by that one compliment, one voice finally who had confidence in her.

~

This is for Trifecta‘s prompt for the third definition given of confidence.  I’ve used the stated word in my post as required and it comes in just under 300 words.  I enjoy the challenge of these prompts as it hones my skills, especially when it comes to discipline.  Please feel free to give friendly critique in your comments.

I am a Pickle Jar

“I don’t believe any of you suffer as I do,” cried Amy, “for you don’t have to go to school with impertinent girls who plague you if you don’t know your lessons … and label your father if he isn’t rich …”

“If you mean libel I’d say so, and not talk about labels, as if pa was a pickle-bottle,” advised Jo, laughing.

- Little Women, L.M. Alcott

You know, I think little Amy was onto something though.  Libel may not be a good thing but labels are so much worse.  Whether it’s at home, at school or at work people see you a certain way and then label you up like that pickle jar.  And labels are sticky things, especially when you’re trying to get rid of them.  Sometimes the labels are annoying, irritating because we can see that they aren’t true, like when all our friends and relations label us as hot-tempered.  Sometimes the labels are unfair because they limit us, like when we are dropped for not being ‘cool’ enough or for family circumstances such as in Amy’s case.  Sometimes the labels become true simply because we’re so used to having them stuck on our foreheads.

As a child, I don’t remember being anything but me.  There were no labels, no specific roles or groups that I fit into.  There were broader ones for family demographics and circumstances but as a child they were my normal and, with a limited world view, I didn’t really know that there were others.  I was never really comfortable being me, sometimes I felt totally adrift and lost, a round peg in a square hole but I didn’t know yet about labels.  I was never encouraged to plan for a future, there were no labels to earn or yearn for, not even mother, university student, worker.  There was nothing only me.

But there was a problem with me, me was still a label and it was something that I grew increasingly aware of and uncomfortable about.  Me wasn’t good enough.  Me was never good enough in fact.  Partly self-conscious, partly learnt.  And then I learnt another word.  The f-word.  It was a word that followed me all through my teenage years and made me never reach out for those other labels, those of certain roles or groups, the ‘hats’ that we wear in life.  There was no point, me wasn’t good enough.

I do wear several different metaphorical hats in life.  I am a wife, I am ill, I am unemployed.  These are categories that please census, that define my demographic.  But again, I still am not conscious of wearing them, I shrink back from describing myself in such black and white terms.  I can’t be a wife because me is not good enough to be.  I can’t be ill because me is only making a fuss about nothing.  I am unemployed not because of long term health issues or a stinking recession but because me is not good enough.

I have learnt to describe myself by what I do, hesitatingly however:  I do bake, I do knit, I do photography.  But there is always a qualifier, oh but I’m not very good at it, oh but everyone else is so much better, oh but I make so many mistakes.  Why?  Because me is not good enough.

However much I loathe the word ‘pride’, I do having something of the sort in being me.  As I’ve grown older, more stable, more mature, more realistic I see that there are good qualities in my personality and that there are things that I can do, however much I feel the need to qualify or downplay them.

But at the same time I see that being me has held me back, is holding me back.  It’s principally a question of how people see me.  For example, I may be passionate to the point of fiery, my trigger is always injustice, but I am not the hot-tempered, angry person that so many people feel the need to tell me that I am.  For example, because I am ill sometimes I am physically limited in what I can do however that doesn’t mean I don’t know what or how to do something, I am not stupid or incapable however much people feel the need to think that I am.  For example, my house may need decorating and sometimes I get behind on the housework but that does not make me a bad housewife however much people spread this ‘fact’.

I need to look closely at the ingredients of this label, to find out who me truly is and then to believe that rather than anything else anyone cares to say or believe about me.  I don’t think me has to be a failure, I don’t think me has to be not good enough.

I have lived with that f-word hanging over my head for a very long time.  It’s seriously disheartening.  It means you don’t even bother trying because you already know the outcome.  It means you don’t take yourself seriously because no-one else ever has.  It means you don’t get on with living life because it’s already messed up before you begin.  But if you don’t try, if you don’t take yourself seriously, if you don’t live your life, then you will fail.  Self-fulfilling prophecy.   The dangers of labeling.

So, yes, I will still be me but I will boast (OK, maybe hint at) of my new improved recipe, I will be the person who I dream of being and I will risk to strive for and achieve the things that I dream of.

I am a pickle jar but the contents are up to me.

~

Linking up with this week’s Just Be Enough prompt

Some culinary side notes: I think that Jo was referencing the American English ‘pickles’ or gherkins whereas in English English (confusing, I’m sure) pickle is a chutney (the brown stuff in the jar).  And what label someone who has five types of chilli sauce on the go deserves, I’m not sure either.

These Boots were Made for Walking

I look down at my boots, just a pair of boots, and wonder.  I look at that photo on my blog of my boots, just a pair of boots, and wonder.  Today when I look at them I see more cracks, more scrapes than when that photo was taken and when I’m as tired as this, a lot less shine.  But still I wonder.

Those boots are eight years old.  Bought with carefully saved money, a sign of rebellion and a claiming of independence.  Teenage-style but at twenty instead.  I sneaked into the shop, a little shop which still exists, like I was going to buy contraband, furtive, embarrassed, determined.  Too shy to point out that for some reason the tongue hasn’t been sewn in properly into one of my boots.  My boots.  I still don’t remember which one though, even after all these years.  Might be the right one.  If not, it’ll be the left.

I hugged them tenderly in my arms, perfectly new and glistening, partly astonished at my bravery, won over by the firm leather and the comfortable fit.  No more fashion shoes for me, well for a little while longer maybe.  But a few years ago skin allergies finally put paid to those flimsy, poorly made types which only lasted a season at best.  My allergies have class, I can only wear DMs.  I wasn’t trying to buy into some stereotype, some role, some identity, some niche but the boots were me.  My boots.

My mother, naturally, was horrified when I got back to the car with my trophies.  It was probably the worse crime I had ever committed.  Even at twenty I didn’t go about without my parents.  I think that I’d shocked myself at spending so much on ‘just a pair of shoes’.  My mother thought it was daylight robbery.  But it was love, pure love and no passing faddish infatuation and I wore them proudly.

I wore them to my driving lessons.  Told the instructor that as these would be the shoes that I’d be driving in for the rest of my life that I might as well start wearing them now.  And no, I didn’t own a pair of trainers.  I passed my driving test in those boots.

Just a few months later.

Independence.  Wings to fly with, boots to walk away in.

Now I look down at my boots and wonder.

I wonder curious things like how many pairs of laces have I gone through on this single pair of boots?  The current laces are brittle and almost glazed-like.  One pair of black laces after another, I can’t even remember when I bought these ones.  It’s hard to find bootlaces these days and everyone says you have to buy 120s for this number of eyes but I’ve worn these boots too long now, I know best.  140s every time.  Bootlaces that are harder to find and get thinner each year.  Bootlaces don’t last forever.  Boots seem to.

I remember the time when I couldn’t lace my boots, when I got tendonitis so badly walking a billion miles across Paris.  A billion miles in freezing fog and on beautiful baguettes washed down with cup-a-soup (for which my husband is still holding me personally responsible for and unforgiven!).  The student is in me still.  I was a ‘student’, albeit briefly, the summer after I bought my boots.  For months after our trip to Paris, I had to leave the laces undone, splayed open, like the tramp of garden ornaments.

I look down at my boots and I wonder.  I wonder many things.

I wonder how many times they’ve been splashed through puddles, marched through streams and accidentally ended up in the sea.  They’ve been full of sand before now, from beaches and deserts and building works.  They’ve seen an awful lot of mud.  I know, I’m the one cleaning it away.  I proudly keep them polished to a service grade shine.  OK, when I’ve got a little more oomph in my polishing at least.  Other times I just try to keep them clean.  Ish.  Babywipe anyone?

I wonder how many countries they have visited.  If boots had their own passport, stamped at every port of entry, what tales it would tell!  My boots have gone everywhere, faithful companions on my travels.  In the snapshots of my mind, I see them tossed down in hotel rooms and standing to attention by tent doorways and drying in front of boilers and radiators.  (Actually even on a hospital ward floor too).  Phobic dread means that they’re always safely on my feet during flights, all those castaway and crashes on desert islands films and series prove the value of having boots on your feet during a crash.  But that isn’t the only reason that those boots are always on my feet.  My boots make me feel taller.  My boots make me feel more confident.

I wonder how many miles my boots have tread.  Do I count the miles that they have been on my feet in a car or in an aeroplane?  What about boats or trains?  Yep, my boots are well-travelled.  Since not having our van anymore, how many miles have they loyally accompanied me on?  How many hills have they tramped me up?  On how many sheets of ice have they held me a little steadier than I would have been otherwise?  How many times have they been caught in the rain with me?

My boots have been to weddings, to funerals.  They have been with me during some of the best times and some of the worst times.  My only regret is that I never wore them to our wedding.  My mother won over, insisted on some satiny ballet pump, shiny soled as a roller skate.  I didn’t have enough confidence back then.  I do today.  Today I ignore the horrified and mortified exclamations that accompany my decision to wear those boots to yet another event.  Some things never change.  I roll my eyes as she’s rolling hers.

When I turn them over today and look then I see that the soles are wearing thin.  There’s been a lot of mileage done in these boots, hundreds of thousands of miles.  These boots are my boots.  They are part of the story, even the very fabric, of my life.  My boots are like that loyal friend who can you pick up at a moment’s notice, we fit together so comfortably and we know that we’re ready for whatever path life throws at us next.  We just keep on walking.  Sometimes it’ll be baby steps, other times we’ll strike out confidently.  But my boots are made for life’s adventures.  Yes indeed, these boots were made for walking.

FO: The Saga of a Poncho

Many, many moons again I did mention something about a poncho.  Despite being banned from knitting garments, I convinced myself and the censorship board that this pattern was do-able.  It’s all in garter stitch, small for a toddler and no awkward shaping.  If only it had been that simple!

The first problem was the stripes, if you look at the pattern closely there isn’t a regular stripe pattern which my small head could not cope with at all.  That and I was using different colours from my stash rather than the colours indicated in the pattern so I kept forgetting which colour related to which.  So I had to ‘regularise’ (it is a word, I promise!) the stripes which took several goes and I had to frog the whole thing several times.  I also work my garter stitch in a 3.75 mm rather than the usual 4 mm recommended for the yarn weight as it gives a neater finish.

Therefore it took a couple of months to get the two small sections (front and back) knitted up and when I did, I hit another crisis.  I haven’t exactly been taught much when it comes to knitting, there are things that I have somehow absorbed along the way and one of those things is what to do with your not-in-use yarn when changing colours on stripes.  In fact, I had two techniques.  One of which is to carry the yarn up the side of the knitting.  Now I quickly fathomed that the spare five colours of yarn being carried up the side of the poncho not only looked unsightly but were too heavy, twisting the piece out of shape.  So I went for technique number two.  Technique number is unfortunately irreversible.  I cut the yarn off each time and bound it off very firmly (I’m good at knots).  This wasn’t a problem until I was finished and had sewn the two halves together then I found out that it was A VERY BIG PROBLEM.  I had only previously worked stripes in places where the edges where going to be sewn together and this wasn’t the case with the poncho.  The knots now showed, A LOT.

I had wanted to make it as a gift plus I’d had to prove that it was dead simple and manageable so there was an awful lot riding on it.  Now, finished, it just looked hideous.  I got very discouraged.  I experimented with various solutions like blanket stitch and rolling a hem but that didn’t work, just made more problems.  So I gave up and threw it in a bag and declared it a UFO.

Many months later, however, my confidence had picked up a little, thanks to blogging, bloggers and Ravelry, so I fished out the offending article and had a little think.  I thought maybe it would be possible to cast on a ruffle along the outer edge which would hide the hideous knots and bumps behind.  I still didn’t know why it hadn’t work, I had done my stripes correctly hadn’t I?

No, apparently there is third technique, in fact the ‘normal’ technique,  to working stripes which I had never met, don’t ask me why.  This is where you cut the yarn as I had done but instead of making each knot into an entire library of a boy scout’s progress you should leave the end loose and darn it in along the new row when you finish the piece.  Oh.  That would have worked.

So I went on Ravelry to ask about how many stitches I should pick up along the edge to cast on my ruffle as I had very little experience of picking up stitches like that before.  It was there that I found out about the proper way to do my stripes (ah if only I had known that earlier!) and that there were other things than ruffles.

Oh, yes, I met applied i-cord.  I-cord fascinates me.  I did French knitting as a child, still have a block of wood drilled and pinned so I can do it, the old wooden cotton reels are ridiculously hard to find now.  Again, it’s one of those magical knitting processes which never ceases to entertain me, one moment a straight row of stitches and then suddenly a cylindrical tube.  Clever stuff.  So applied i-cord was always going to be a winner in my world.

So how to work it?

I actually used a video, I normally prefer written instructions, and although it is long, it was very useful.  I have inwardly digested and learnt.

There was finally hope for my poncho, it might be redeemable!  So I knitted up the i-cord edging and was quite pleased with the results.

After that it was a simple matter to make up the flower attachment and thread the ribbon (carefully chosen when I first started the project) through the eyelets.  My flower buttons went AWOL (that’s my life for you) so I went for a cute teddy bear button which I think is kind of fun.

I had chosen the colours originally for a tropical-y theme so I named my project Leilani, heavenly blossoms.  (I name my clothing projects, is that weird?)  However, I would also like to know why the primrose coloured yarn in certain lights looks like that flourescent tone you get with children’s glow in the dark stickers.

One more project thankfully completed and it will shortly be on its way to its recipient.  The only problem is I think that she’s grown  … ah well, c’est la vie.  And are ponchos in fashion anymore?  Don’t ask me!

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What do you think?

The Evil Audiologist Strikes Again

Yes, I was hoping to strike a small note of melodrama with that title.  I probably should have tried to work ‘curse’ into to it as well for best effect, in tribute to the melodramatic and wordy titles of 1930s graphic novels and detective stories, but I’m not quite sure how it sits with the grammar.  Can a curse strike again?  And if the curse is of someone then does it mean that they are cursed or that the curse belongs to them, that they activate it?  Too much for wee head right now.

Anyway, maybe I should try going back to my original subject or else this is going to turn into some verbose Victorian novel with asides bigger than the plot.

As you know, I have ears.  Yes, not those normal ears like everyone else, the other artificial kind.  The kind that actually hear things, to be truthful.  (I think I’m the only person who has ever called me four-eyes, as another aside, and technically for many years I was six-eyes.  I’m meant to wear a prescribed tint in my lenses to help balance the effects of my perception disorder but I can’t find anywhere anymore which does the testing.  I do notice it when I spent too much time on the computer especially but anyhow, to resume!)  And my new shiny ears have the new cord system.  There are pros and cons to this, I rather like how the old mould kept my ear free from draughts and besides which, the cords have to be replaced every couple of months.  For someone who worries about waste, this is definitely not a benefit nor indicative of a new and improved system or technology.  When I had my ears fitted, I sensibly remembered to ask the whens and hows of this and the audiologist, that audiologist, explained that I just had to waltz into the main reception at the hospital and ask them to hand the tubes and domes over like they do batteries.  (Getting batteries from Main Desk requires an extensive session of begging, production of an up-to-date audiology logbook (yeah, like I can find it) and various identity and background checks).

So after the number of required months and slightly clogged pipes (tubes, officially), I trotted into the hospital.  And there the fun started.  Main Desk looked at me very blankly.  And eventually determined that I should be sent to Outpatients.  Outpatients looked at me very blankly.  And eventually determined that I should hang around the bottom of the corridor where audiologists live and see if they had any better ideas.  Hard work.

So with this five minute errand rapidly turning into something like a tooth-pulling operation (metaphorically) I set myself to lurking.  It’s hard enough to get an audiologist’s attention when you have an appointment so I wasn’t entirely optimistic about my chances.  I may have mentioned before but audiologists have the ridiculous habit of popping their heads out of doors and calling for their patients softly.  Now why are most of us in audiology for?

I did find an audiologist, the lovely one, the one who had gotten me retested originally, and despite being on her lunch break was more than happy to help restock me with cords and domes, giving me extras so I don’t have to go back in again too soon.  I really appreciate an audiologist like that, well anyone in any line of work really, who goes out of their way to help.  And does actually help.

It was when lovely audiologist was helping that we found out that my audiology log book (I had even gone to the effort of locating it just to placate Main Desk) was not correct.  No, the evil audiologist with whom I have been at loggerheads for over twenty years had written down the wrong size domes.  (Domes are the little nozzle-y bit at the end of the tube which plug into your ear).  Nice, helpful.  Lovely audiologist took black pen to my book and corrected the entry.

As I was now talking to lovely audiologist (who actually wears the same model hearing aid as me, audiologists tend not to have any personal or family experience with Hearing Loss), I asked a wee question that had been bothering me.  When I go to use the T-loop setting on my ears it’s really hard work to find it, sometimes I end up convinced that I have five different settings not three.  And of course the time I spend faffing trying to find the setting means time that I’m not hearing what’s going on and I had got thoroughly cheesed off by the new improved ears.

She asked me what I was doing.  I explained that evil audiologist had told me to press the middle of the rocker switch hard to move between settings.  She looked surprised.  I said that evil audiologist had sworn that this was the best way of doing things.  She told me that was not the case.  Just as I use the rocker switch to raise or lower the volume (I struggle with hyperacusis with my ME so I tend to use a lower volume than I technically should) so I should be using it to move between the settings but just pressing and holding instead.  This is a much more efficient and accurate system to switching between settings (when you hit the middle, you have a 50/50 chance of either going up or down which is why I was getting so many different options, not just moving up as indicated by evil audiologist) and even more impressive, is that I can go back down.  My old ear couldn’t go down, it just cycled from 1-2-3-1 but now I can go from 3 (T-loop) to either 2 (forward mic only, it’s great for places with lots of background noise) or to 1 (normal).  Just like that.  I like that.

I then asked how I was meant to obtain the relevant parts as evil audiologist had sworn that Main Desk was the way.  She looked surprised again.  Then checked with various other department members to make sure that she wasn’t cracking up.  Collection from Main Desk was never an option.  But in the future if I email audiology to let them know what I need they can leave a marked envelope at Main Desk if that’s easier.

Evil audiologist strikes again.  Do not trust her.

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UPDATE (17/04/12):  I have added a couple of diagrams of hearing aids to clarify the vocabulary used throughout, I couldn’t do it before as I didn’t have a right click working on my mouse!

Trifexta: Letter of Apology

Brevity is not my strong point so this weekend’s Trifextra is definitely going to be a challenge: a letter of apology in a mere 33 words.  I think most of my sentences come in around that word count.  Here goes:

~

Dear Grandma

I’m sorry about hitting your guests with a bat; I just wanted to know who had the wooden leg.  I’m sorry that was mean and I won’t do it again.

Jo(e)

My Heart in Spring

~ Trigger Alert ~

I’ve written about Spring before, mentioned it in other posts but I can’t help returning to the subject again.  Well it does come around at least once a year, after all, and this year we’re having several attempts at it, or so it seems.  Maybe it is my favourite season but I haven’t really thought of it like that, I don’t play favourites, however my moods do rise and fall with the weather, well to some extent as well as to their own particular vagaries too.  A little more sunshine, a little more warmth and the world feels like a better place.  Or at least a place that I can deal with or face up to better.

This is what Spring does to me and my heart.

Spring encourages a curious, and, in my case, an unusual, strain of optimism.  Spring can feel like new beginnings however much you’re dreading the rest of the year.  Spring brings hope whatever the circumstances.  Spring sends my spirits soaring.  Spring makes my heart beat a little faster.

That is what Spring does to me and my heart.

But there is another side to Spring.

Spring, like all the seasons, is a milestone, a marker in the year for various anniversaries.  There are things that I try to keep hidden from my conscious self, things that aren’t filed neatly in the filing cabinet of the mind ready for recall  (my mind’s not like that anyway, as you might have suspected) but tossed hurriedly from sight, pushed away on dusty shelves in an attempt to forget.  Thoughts and memories that I would rather remain unbidden.  As the temperatures rise and the sun shines strong again, these are the things that start to gnaw away at my mind and heart.  My heart beats a little quicker in Spring, not because of anticipation, but because of anxiety.  I am lost and hurt and afraid and broken all over again.  My heart  aches without really knowing why until unwillingly I do some mental arithmetic.  I make the effort to forget but it still surfaces, my hearts know the dates better than any diary.

This is what Spring does to me and my heart.