Wall of wisteria

I enjoyed this today. The heat of last week building up in the narrow lane between the old city walls and the house-bricks has brought this wisteria into bloom really early. The scent hit me when I was still a good 30 yards away.

One for smelly-vision.

Im-reuse-provised Shetland yoke sweater.

Three or four years ago I knit my son a yoke sweater following Elisabeth Zimmerman’s simple pattern (bottom-up and all knit in-the-round). Naturally, when I ran out of wool just above the armpits I started playing around with all the moorits and muskets odds and ends in my stash, Shetland and Icelandic got flung together, and it must’ve been very cold at the time, because , instead of stopping at the neck I kept going into a kind of roll-top, not-quite-turtle-neck. The wool of the main body was a Rowan bouclé which knitted up like matted papier-maché made out of the insides of old toilet rolls. Last year I almost threw it away when he grew out of it, but I had always loved the neck, so I ripped out all the bouclé, picked up the free stitches, and started knitting down-the-way from the yoke in this sumptuous Shetland Aran 3-ply from Uist Wool.

I love the way all the natural browns come together and the fact that it’s going to be a forever sweater. I just blocked the heck out of it, adding 20cm of girth to the chest, and the stocking stitch doesn’t mind at all. When it gets too short I can just knit a bit more on the bottom edge.

Eden

I chanced upon the most beautiful, bucolic spot today while out walking. A shallow valley with more of those marvelous pear trees and gorgeous, bounteous pollard willows beside a quiet stream.

 

Making your own clothes

Three things I made this winter. I am thinking that photographing clothes well takes a bit more skill than I have today. Just take my word for it that wearing these things that I made myself makes me feel proud and powerful.

Also, they fit me and are made of beautiful, high-quality, long-lasting materials.

L: fabric, from the Friday market, wool on nylon weave from MaxMara. pattern: Japanese Coat #1 raglan. Ok, so I had to learn Japanese to make this, but, it was worth it.

C: fabric: Essex linen from Robert Kaufmann. pattern: unfortunately bust-free and too-small-pockets smock from Merchant and Mills (c’mon pockets you can put stuff in, please). knitted Coppersmith scarf with Blacker yarns’ Samite yarn.

R: fabric: vintage Liberty tana lawn. pattern: Walden shirt.

 

 

Pear trees blossom

Traditional landscape. Grazing with huge standard apple and pear trees.

Dignity and generosity. The trees carry themselves so well in all seasons, give the cattle shade, and play host to loads of wildlife – unlike the stunted, sprayed, clipped and tortured lines of commercial fruit farming.

The orchards’ most obvious guests are the noisy woodpeckers and the bunches of mistletoe who, in turn, lend the trees their midwinter green.

Head hunted already

Title page of my new distance-learning course. Something to keep me going until full-time study begins in September.

I am quite excited about getting my teeth into a new course. This March, when I went for interview for my Master’s programme, I had to psyche myself out of a terrible case of impostor syndrome. It’s a little voice inside your head that goes “You’re not a mathematician, you’re not a scientist, you don’t know anything about programming…The people who do that kind of thing don’t look like you, or dress like you…You’re going to get found out. You won’t fit in…”

I’m sitting here looking at even just the word Bioinformatics and thinking “uh oh”. That means its obviously time to stop worrying and just get stuck in. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In other news: my better half, who has been his usual enthusiastic, encouraging self on the subject of me taking up full-time study (not!), has perked up considerably about the idea since he accidentally did some networking and already got me headhunted for a job even before I’ve started the course.

Just ghosting in and ghosting out again

I’m just dropping in quickly. It’s been a while since I wrote anything. On any subject. Looking back on previous posts, I see politics, science, politics, sewing, knitting, politics, music, frogs and birds are on the menu. Imagine being the kind of person self-disciplined enough to stick to one subject in a blog! Since I last wrote I have, at least, achieved a few of the things I’d promised myself I would. This year I refused to make any New Year’s Resolutions on the grounds that I never keep them.

I have been wasting time reading the comments under 6music questions on Twitter and thus accidentally (re)discovering Billy Bragg.

I have been house-hunting and learning about microbiology.

I have made a coat and been accepted onto a Master’s programme.

I have been splitting logs and training to become a Data Scientist.

I have been thrilled to see the Cambridge Analytica scandal go big and saddened to see the poverty of the journalism at my beloved BBC in following the story.

You see why I haven’t been blogging.