Tag Archives: knitting

The Longest Yarn

I should have added some links to the last post, but forgot. Here is a link to The Longest Yarn project, including UK dates. Here is an interview with one of the knitters. And here is a wayward link about a knitted WW1 soldier. It’s knitting, but it’s a different war.

These are also the remains of the photographs. There is a guidebook but Julia decided not to buy it’s just more clutter for us to move. It’s a strong-willed gesture but one that is rather undone by me buying a new book on the 3rd Afghan War – the one we fought in 1919.

Today consisted of a blood test, a visit to sort out the pharmacy, buying fuel and visiting some friends in a shop. We all agreed that business is flat, old age is no fun and we are all coming down with a variety of cold symptoms.

Nobody, we concluded, is going to spend any money until after the budget. I can’t say I blame them, as I’m a touch worried about my own situation. However, as a politician you have a limited time to do unpopular things on the last lot. I can understand their enthusiasm to push things through, but can’t help feeling there are overtones of smugness.

We have had 64 Prime Ministers since Walpole, many have been very forgettable. The first one to have aphotograph on the list is Lord John Russell. He’s often a pointless answer on Pointless.

A project to knit 64 panels, one for each prime minister, would be near impossible. as most of them have no real character. Peel and the police. Gladstone with an axe. Palmerston with a gunboat. Wellington with a big nose. Perceval with a blood stained shirt. Churchill with a cigar. Now I’m starting to run out of inspiration.

At least the stuffing would be a simple decision, no need for kapok or polyester, just fill them up with well-rotted farmyard manure of bovine origin.

The Longest Day

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It was an active start to the day, with both of us needing to do things today, in contrast to our normal relaxed Wednesday starts. Let’s face it, all my starts are relaxed these days, even the ones where I take Julia to work – even on those I amble down, eat the breakfast she has prepared and do a bit of cardio by shouting at other drivers on the road. This experience has recently been enhanced by a number of road closures, which gives me a lot more scope for vocal exercises.

Julia had to go to Southwell Minster with one of the neighbours. I had to go to the garage.

Julia’s day involved a queue to get into the Minster, followed by a slow semi-queue as she went round an exhibition, and another queue on the way back when they were stuck in a jam waiting for the emergency services to clear cars from a collision. They were stuck for an hour, but the driver made up time and they were only have an hour late getting back to town, though slightly scared by the driving.

On arriving home late, and finding me still out, she texted twice and rang once to see where i was. When she texted the first time I was just pulling out of the garage in my newly fixed car. When she rang, I was in a queue at roadworks with a police car behind me. Neither are good places to answer phone messages.

The story with the car (I think I told you about the neighbour knocking the housing off my wing mirror) is that they were able to use the original parts (last time someone hit it a following car ran the bits over before I could get back to them), reconnect the electrics, stick on a new mirror glass (£30 for a small bit of mirror glass!) and get me through the MOT. You can pass the MOT without a nearside mirror, but if the mirror is designed to hold your repeater indicator, you can’t. Madness in both logic and design, as I had a perfectly good indicator in each corner. I don’t know why you need side repeaters.

Julia, meanwhile, had enjoyed most of her day. It is the 140th Anniversary of Southwell Minster being declared a cathedral. They also have a visiting exhibition – 80 scenes from D-Day to celebrate the 80th Anniversary. So far, I hear you say, so good. But what made it worth queuing for. Well, it’s an international cooperation between knitters. Yes, all 80 scenes are constructed by knitting. However, I suppose you can tell that from the pictures.

The pictures are, of course, a knitted homage to D-Day 6th June 1944. The lighting wasn’t great, the cases were reflective, and the processional nature of the exhibit prevented too much stopping or any going back, so she is apologetic about the images. They are better than I could have managed in the circumstances, so I am happy with them. There will be more tomorrow.

Bear’s Guest Blog

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It’s a bit nippy out, and there’s a North wind blowing across Nottingham as I type. You notice things like this when you have no trousers.

This cold wind may be a metaphor for the current state of world politics, if you think that a bear with a head full of viscose kapok is capable of metaphor. Or it may just be a weather report. Looking at our current crop of politicians, it’s clear that brains aren’t required, and in at least one case the stuffing appears to be leaking out.

The lack of trousers may also be a metaphor, depending on your view of the Prime Minister’s well-publicised private life.

The lack of trousers is even more apparent when you spend a lot of time sitting in a tree. It wasn’t particularly cold during the photoshoot, but there was an element of chafing I didn’t particularly care for.

This isn’t the only deficiency in the knitting. You’d think if they expected you to type a blog they’d have managed a few fingers, wouldn’t you?

Me amongst the cranesbill

However, I digress.

Today the two large moving objects that share the house went to visit something they call “the gardens”. This is different to “the garden” which is an area of untamed growth to the rear of what they call “the house”.

To get to the gardens we drove, which seems to be a process where the one with the furry face twiddles a few bits and pieces and offers a stream of helpful advice to other drivers.

The quiet one, who knitted me, mutters things like: “You really shouldn’t say things like that to people.”

I keep pointing out I’m not a panda but it doesn’t seem to sink in

I remember her voice from the knitting, because she did my ears early on, though it was nearly a day before I could see her. It’s a pity she didn’t take a bit longer and add a few extras. I’ve already mentioned trousers and fingers, but when posing for photographs it might have helped to have had a few joints. There is a limited number of poses when you can’t bend anything, and I’m not going to be Playbear of the Week if I can’t strike a pose.

Fortunately I do have a winning smile and a twinkle in my eye.

From this angle the lack of knees and elbows isn’t apparent, but this doesn’t mean I’m going to stop mentioning it

The Bear Pictures, and Some Diversions

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A Bear in a Tree

Julia’s Knitted Teddy Bear – a lockdown special

I can’t post a bear picture as a header because I’m incompetent. Julia sent me these two pictures but I can’t get them to load into the media file so I just dropped them into the text. It’s a fascinating study in how a bit of knitting, a few stitches and a bit of imagination ends up as a teddy bear with a distinct personality of its own.

She has posted these pictures on the Mencap Facebook page, so there’s a chance we might be seeing a few more of them about as lockdown progresses.

Sooty is one of the best known bears, and he has been helping charliecountryboy retain his sanity during the lockdown. I use the term ‘sanity’ in a fairly loose sense, as you will have realised if you’ve read his blog before.

One of my favourites is Pooh, the bear of very little brain, and an unfortunate name. We have a copy of The Pooh Cook Book upstairs. Julia bought it. I’ve never actually read it, as I suspect it isn’t really a cookery book, just going through the motions.

I’m fairly sure that the humour I see in the title was unintentional, unlike the next book, which has a confusingly similar title.

It is, however, quite different, being a book of Thai cooking compiled by a woman nick-named Poo. It apparently means ‘crab’ in Thai. She’s really called Saiyuud Diwong, but that wouldn’t sell as many books. Let’s face it, Cooking with Saiyud Diwong wouldn’t actually rate a mention here.

“For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.” A. A. Milne

Bear in a tree – again!

Nottingham Badges of the Great War

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I’ve been taking pictures of Nottingham-related badges recently. You probably guessed that from the photographs of Nottingham-related badges in this post.

The “Comforts for Troops” badge in the header picture opens up some interesting sites on the net, including this one, with the story of Beatrice Whitby, who seems to have been an exceptional woman, even from the age of eleven. Interestingly, given the times in which she grew up, she did all that work without even having the right to vote.

There is an archive preserved in the Imperial War Museum, which includes many personal papers, and 209 postcards from soldiers who received parcels from the fund whilst prisoners of war. I will let you read the link if you want more detail, for now I will just say that they sent 40,000 parcels to prisoners of war, which was a huge effort.

My Dad and his two brothers raised money for comforts, with a penny a week fund and various other events during the Second World War, so this is an area that I’m quite interested in. Dad never mentioned it, I found out by accident when researching family history in newspapers a few months ago.

Nottinghamshire Voluntary Knitter Badge – WW1

Entertainers Badge – Nottingham – Great War

POW Relatives Association

This is an Australian article on knitted comforts as I can’t find anything on knitted comforts from Nottinghamshire. It’s interesting, though it does seem a bit ungrateful in places when discussing the quality of socks.

I can’t find anything on the Relatives Association badge so far, or the Hospital badge, though I can tell you that I bought the badge in a mixed lot at the J. Tanenbaum Collection at Neales Auction (Nottingham) on 28 February 1991. It was incidental to the things I actually wanted and it was the badge that set me off collecting badges, so it has a lot to answer for.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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Yes, we’ve cleared the board of the autumn display and put up some more Christmas decorations. We’ve signed a few Christmas cards the group are sending to other groups they belong to, hat making is under way and we all sniffed the Christmas cake this afternoon – it’s smelling good.

We put the Christmas tree up again. It looks like they had a private party at the weekend and knocked it over. No harm done but annoying all the same, particularly as they left a messy table and a strange smell in the air.

You may note that the tree is decorated with the remains of the saltdough animals we have been using for school visits – waste not, want not.

Apart from that I attended to the bird feeders, as noted in the previous post, wrote a post on kalettes for the other blog, put a goat back in the barn and lurked outside getting cold as I waited to photograph more birds. I came close to photographing a male bullfinch, but it was too quick for me. Apart from that there was little excitement until the table collapsed, flinging tea and telephones to the floor.

Hat making the Quercus way

Paper flowers

Our tree, with saltdough decorations

As we tried to clear the mess from the floor we were accompanied by wailing about phones. My reply (“That’s why we tell you not to bring phones and electrical equipment to the farm.”) didn’t go down too well. On the other hand, when you’re up to your ankles in tea and glitter you don’t want to know about phones, or hear the eternal “It wasn’t my fault.”.

Initially we were left with a mass of glitter in the joints between the floorboards but we managed to clear it out eventually. Well, Julia did. I lost interest and carried on writing about kalettes.

Great things kalettes, a proper old-fashioned cross between Brussels sprouts and kale (that is important as these days people tend to think any cross is a Frankenstein genetic modification job). It doesn’t need peeling,cooks quickly, tastes mild, is crammed full of goodness and looks decorative on the plate.

Kalettes – new superfood or Emperor’s new greens?

Sheep, doves and teddy bears

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

A couple of hours before I took the teddy bear picture that bear was just an idea and a ball of cotton yarn. Compared to my day (writing minutes, avoiding goosegrass, answering emails, wrestling with camera manuals and stalking birds on feeders) it seems a good use of time. When you think that the collared dove and robin pictured above were the best shots of the day you can see I’m not going to set the world of nature photography on fire.

I should have known the moth photo in the previous post was too good to be true.

After much heart-searching we’ve finally cleared out the old bus shelter in preparation for demolition. It’s just too rotten to merit the work we would have to do to restore it, particularly as someone has donated a very serviceable second hand shed.

As you may have guessed from my comment, I didn’t get round to cooking goosegrass. In truth, I’m not that inspired and, having been a bit rushed this week, I have procrastinated. I am leaving it till Friday, and hope to have found some decent recipes by then. So far the ones I have found suggest tossing it in butter, putting it in a stew or using it to stuff a mattress. I know someone who juices it, but instead of inspiring me it just fills me with dread.

Frankly, I don’t trust green juice. It may be full of goodness, and it must be character-forming, but I’ve never felt the need to drink anything that wasn’t red, orange or yellow.

Ramblings, art week and the first post of the day

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It’s Sunday and this is just a few random thoughts to get me warmed up so don’t worry if you have a feeling that you’re trapped in an overgrown garden of rampant verbiage.

Belly pork tonight, a NIgella recipe. I made it last week and it turned out well so tonight is to test bif it was a fluke or a repeatable result. If it works again I may add it to my regular recipe selection. There is a recipe on the internet where she marinades the pork and stuff – but as this is great in its plain form why mess with tahini and lime juice? Air miles, Nigella, air miles. We’re going to be eating ours with the first broad beans of the season. I am looking froward to it.

We’ll be having radishes for lunch tomorrow – there are four of us here tomorrow so we can have a couple each. I’m not a great radish fan, but I do love stuff straight from the garden.

Sunday started, as always, at an unreasonably early hour. I then did laundry; wondered if this was what my life will be like for ever (there’s nothing like using a launderette at 7am on a Sunday to make you examine your companions, ambitions and lack of success in life); went home to tidy and make sandwiches, and then went shopping before coming to work.

I’ve used semi-colons there because it’s the right thing to do, as I recall. I’ve also had a go at sticking in an Oxford comma. It’s probably a little late in my life to start worrying about such things – particularly when my normal habit is to use commas, dashes and brackets in a manner that looks like a chimp has thrown a bucket of punctuation marks at the screen. On the other hand, what is life if it isn’t a series of attempts at self-improvement?

Well, having just had a quick look round the last day of Sherwood Art week in the Nottingham suburb of Sherwood, life might be a journey to self-improvement through the medium of novelty knitting – check out the pictures.