Let me bounce back with...

Please note that this yacht photo was taken by Tambako the Jaguar and appears here under Creative Commons licence. Please respect this image. I have not used a Creative Commons image before, so I hope that I have done this correctly!

...an open post to the Chandlery worker who seemed to believe that people who do not own boats should not be in their shop.

Hello, my name is Gabrielle. Sadly, as much as I love being by water, enjoy sitting by, paddling or swimming in rivers and the sea, I am not lucky enough to own any kind of boat, yacht, water or marine going vessel - not even an inflatable or model one.

I know that you spotted this the moment that I entered your establishment. I guess that you could see from the uncertainty in my body language that 'I did not belong'. I am just sorry that you decided that the prospect of selling something specialist to a member of the General Public for a non boating purpose (shock horror) was irritating.

After all, you work for a retail outlet. Surely my money is just as good as the next person who walked in, reeking suitably of outboard motor fuel? I know that your Chandlery is not a general DIY store - it exists to cater for a specialist market. Actually, this was why I was standing in your shop, waiting for product assistance on the specialist paint that you stock. I am intelligent woman. I did not wander in by mistake. I made specific enquiries at a boatyard and drove out to the marina where you are based, in order to purchase it.

So why did you ignore me for almost 30 minutes? It was pointless for you to keep walking off in the opposite direction when I followed you around trying to catch your attention, in the hope that I would go away. I refer you to my point above, you had the paint that I needed to buy, so I was unlikely to leave until you served me.

I was polite. I even tried to work through the paint range on my own. I watched while you served the boat owner in front of me. I noted that you gave him real advice on the same range of products I was looking at - unfortunately, he needed something different to me, otherwise, I would have wimped, simply collected up what I needed, paid and run.

Eventually, I queued at the boat maintenance counter and spoke to another employee, who was perfectly polite but had to refer me to you, as you are the Chandlery's boat paint specialist.

You see, it is clear that buying boat paint is not like buying paint from a general DIY store - it is a whole specialist system with Thinners 1 - 9, a whole range of under and top coats. The range and combination needed depends on the surface that one applies it to and whether it is over or under water.

Well, it was interesting to catch you out when I followed him over to where you were lurking. You thought that I would remain standing at the paint stand. Yes, I did see you gesture in irritation, mutter that this is not a DIY shop and tell him to, 'Just get rid of her'.

I remained polite because I am stubborn, I wanted the paint and by that point, I was going to make you serve me even if the very idea of it made you choke. I simply and quietly suggested that the more quickly you served me, the sooner I would be gone. I also pointed out that if you gave me the correct advice, it would significantly reduce the chance that I would need to come back...

...despite this, I feel a little embarassed for you that you did not have the manners to deal with me gracefully.

Having observed your earlier paint advice to a boat owner, it was interesting to watch you take the tin of paint that I handed over to you, asking whether this was what I needed and then read me verbatum, all of the text on the back of the tin. Slowly and without intonation too - pretty much in the way a small child does when learning to read.

At that point, I gave up on you. I feel that the shame is on you for your lack of manners. So, I returned to the paint stand, I took out my mobile phone and phoned the fella who was eight timezones and 4500 miles away at that point and checked with him instead.

5 minutes later, I was at the till (with the polite employee) to pay for the products that I needed.

I suspect that I should counsel people to avoid your Chandlery at all costs. However, why should I give you the satisfaction of reducing your contact with non-boating members of the General Public?

Nope, instead - I intend to recommend the product that you sold me to absolutely everyone. If they ask, I will not blog it but I will tell them privately where I purchased it and send them all your way. Please think of it as personal development and I hope that, over time, you will learn to deal with non boating members of the public more gracefully.

I might warn them that they will not get a warm welcome and that they will need to be persistent, if not firm with you.

You see, time will tell but I suspect that specialist, very high UV resistent boat paint is much better for south facing external woodwork than the stuff that one can purchase at a general DIY place.

Yup, I went through that priceless snippet of poor customer service to obain high UV paint to protect my new front door. My home vessel might be very landlocked but I do care for it, so it deserves the best paint that I can purchase for it.

Here is my front door before I replaced it earlier this month:

I last rubbed it down, undercoated and glossed it about 2-3 years ago. As you can see - the hot, south facing sun, wind and rain had not been kind to it at all. In fact, some of my neighbours had started to ask when I was going to deal with it.

Mind you, not that I am alone in front door shabbiness on my side of the street. Here is a snippet of another front door in my road! It was painted about the same time that I did mine:

The reason that I had not dealt with mine, was that I intended to replace the whole door with a brand new one. I finally managed to organise it to happen this month.

Here is my new front door. It is not anything special but it has been beautifully painted in high UV resistent boat paint for me by my wonderful fella.

(Yep Mel, my front door is still red without a house number).

I cannot help it, what can I tell you? I like red front doors.

Before the fella suggested boat paint, I thought that I would have to paint it white to help the finish last longer.

Yes, if the blue door people ask - I will tell them where I got my paint and tell them that it comes in several, lovely shades of blue too!

So...if you have a south facing home with peeling front door paint. You could do worse than investigate boat paint - just be prepared to put on a rhino skin coat before you cross the threshold of your local chandlery.

I am back and...

...it does seem that I never learn!

First and firemost though - happy August and Summer to you all!

Okay, if you managed to catch my last post, you will note that I asserted that I would only take one project away with me to work on at the GB Open. Instead of making a third year pattern repeat of taking away lots of projects (that I do not touch), I would pack one project and finish it.

I wanted to return triumphant and stun you all with Brooklyn Tweed style quality photographs (cough) of my summer holiday knitting. Yep, yep, yep, I was so there (mentally) and ready to impress, I even took my tripod so that the Fella could take the photos...

...ho hum, best laid plans and all that. When I unpacked this evening, I found these in my knitting project bag:

Yup, not one project but five. Five. Each and every one is incomplete too. My unfinished phyllo plus two lots of Dashing, one shrug-wrap and a baby garment (none of which which are started)!

I did manage to work a couple of rounds on my phyllo during a team match, fairly on on the competition but that - folks - is it.

Why? Well the answer is quite simple. I was not knitting, I was doing my level best, alongside 999 or so other competitors, to win some of these trophies:

And do you know what? I did not blooming win any of them. Not one!

I came randomly vaguely close on occasion - I was 2nd in one minor competition, then 6th and 32nd in the two key finals (each after two knockout rounds), I competed in all of the major matches for my home nation and I quietly crept onto the Grand Aggregate board, just sneaked into 50th place on the last day of competitions:

I realise that it is only 50th place but I have never managed to finish on the board before. Apparently my father sat my sister down and explained to her (in detail), just how well I'd done. I did laugh - trust me, having my GB Open results explained to you in detail if you are not involved in my sport, is akin to being a non knitter and listening to someone describing in detail the WPI of their handspun or charity shop treasures. Zzzzzzzz.....

...so, it seems that my phyllo yoke goes on, and on, and on. Picked up again in June and now to be finished in August?!

So someday soon, maybe, I'll have something to show for all my efforts? I blooming hope so!

Mind you, it occurs to me that after all this UFO busting that I have been doing lately, that I deserve the reward of knitting something new? The fact that I packed new projects and not other unfinished objects suggests that that is the way my brain is headed. However, what should it be?

A) That wrap-shrug thing (for me?)

B) Dashing - i) for the fella ii) for the fella's son (neither pairs needed til cold weather)

C) Baby garment (1st birthday target present - needs to reach Marseille by early September)

I know which of the above is tugging insistently at my brain - but can you guess too?!

26 Rounds Left...!

I think that I should publish this post, even though it dates back to just before the GB Open started...

...because it demonstrates that in 3 years, I still have not learnt a bloomin' thing!

* * *

I still have no pictures of my phyllo because I have been competing almost non stop since last Thursday. I have nothing very special to report in terms of my individual results but I am delighted to say that my Club team beat Canada and Kenya in a warm up match last Friday!


It's odd, I always think that I will have plenty of time between competitions to knit, yet somehow it does not ever work out that way. For the past two years I have taken all sorts of projects with me to do between events and not worked a single stitch.


So I am not setting myself up to fail this year by taking 3-4 projects with me. Instead, I think that I would like to quietly work my way through the remaining rounds of this pullover and sew in its ends.


It's a holiday objective of sorts?!

Argh...still knitting!

I have just noticed that on the 20th June, I mentioned on a Ravelry forum that I was about to pick up all 352 stitches for the yoke on my Phyllo Yoked Pullover, so I could set off on the lace chart home stretch.

Okay...now I promise that I have knitted each and every 70 minute round train commute since that date plus a couple of hours in front of the tv last night and...

...I am still only past the intro rounds and 25.5 rows into a 57 row chart.

Basically, it's taking me about 35mins to do 1.5 rounds. Good grief.

That said, I am really enjoying working it - I love how the overall piece is revealing itself and the stitches work together to create the pattern. What I am loving a little less is that it has become very clear to me that my tension is a lot tighter on circular needles than it is on straight needles.

Visibly so, in fact. I have not ripped back because by the time I had worked enough to spot it, I could not face it. So I will just have to see how it all looks when I have finished. Ho hum. Learning note to self: go up at least .5mm on circular needle size when tackling a project that combines straights and circulars.

I haven't posted any pictures of progress because I was convinced that I would whip quickly enough through this last bit to be able to show the whole thing finished.

Hmm, not so - I should have known better! So I promise that I will try to find time* to take some photos in the next few days for you to see what I am up to!

~*~*~*~

Notes: it is the GB Open for my sport this month. Time is very scarce for anything other than breathing, working and competing - as a result, things on my blog are likely to be a bit slow until the end of July!

Dear Neglected Baby Jumper...

...as a UFO, you are finished - done - sorted!

I can barely articulate the very heartfelt relief I feel at your completion.


This said, I am very sorry but I am afraid that I shall wave you off without a tear because you became a very guilty millstone around my neck - one that winked at me, reminding me of my slow knitting speed, short attention span and my failure to meet a deadline, each and every time I opened a cupboard or a drawer (depending on the year). Hurray, no more!

It's astonishing but do you realise that I was knitting you the very first time that I met Mel at the gym and she invited me to join a new knitting group that she was setting up - Amida Knitters?


Now...I know that you were intended for an older brother* but this does not in any way negate the sentiment with which I gift you to the youngest child of a friend.

Actually, I thank the very big hole in the ozone layer that I was given another opportunity - another pregnancy, another boy, another chance. (It would have felt wrong to gift this jumper to any other family.)


So please - do your best and serve your wearer well. It's summer, you are cotton - easy to wear and easy to wash. Please do not come undone at the seams and please do not cast off your buttons.


Most of all, please enjoy the next phase of your existence - after all, whatever gets smeared into you or whatever you roll in, it all has to be a much better than you living a life unfulfilled, half finished in a project bag, tucked away and taking up the time of two stitch holders?

So this is your time - revel in it and make me proud!

Lots of love,

Gabrielle
Your Rather Slow Maker

* * *

Notes:

1) Finished Object Stats:
Pattern: Striped Top - Quick Baby Knits - Debbie Bliss
Yarn: Rowan Glace Cotton - DK
Project Duration: March 2005 - June 2008
Worked: at the gym, during work commutes and at knit nights!

2) Just over a year ago, the older brother received a different handknit jumper for his second birthday. I learned my lesson - it was Dumpling from Rowan Babies, worked in Rowan Big Wool - he loved it and wore it half to pieces!

3) I did not use the teddy bear buttons because they were freaking me out. I looked at them and to be honest, they gave me an insight into teddy bear and clown phobia. How could I inflict these buttons, with this strange look in their eyes, on a one year old little boy?


I doubt that he would have been able to sleep at night!

Shhh...

...knitting.

The UFO busting continues. I don't want to say much, just in case I jinx progress. It's not red, it's purple but y'know, clearing the decks, getting there.

No I have not knitted a pocket onto the front of the baby jumper. I think that everyone who has commented is right yet I cannot bring myself to knit another stitch on it. I have lost my poppers and I cannot find my mini-aeroplane buttons. So its finishing has to wait until this weekend when I want it done (and gone)!

In other news, I had an email from one of my sisters the other day who asked me for my blog address...

...um, I felt a bit nervous about it because my sister knits and she teaches fashion-textiles.

GULP, no pressure here to be stylish then! As it happens, my sister is one of the most effortlessly fashionable people that I know. I am not sure that I know anyone else who could succesfully twin a shop bought gillet and handknit scarf (I think) to such good effect?!

She just sorta does?

Note: I have only chopped off my sister's head because I didn't have her permission to blog this photo. She is, in fact, is extremely lovely and goodlooking. She is also a lot of fun!

Bare, Bears, Planes or What...?!

(Photos taken on my mobile phone as I was leaving the house this morning).

I don't know, what do you think?

What am I talking about?! Okay, here are some bears and planes for your consideration:

What are they for? Well, I have sewn up the neglected baby jumper UFO at long last and I am even almost happy with my seaming. Hurray! Sadly, it seems that I am the creator of the most boring (duck egg?) blue cotton baby jumper on earth. Sigh:

Not only is it exceptionally plain, it's surprisingly heavy. There is another problem too. The buttonholes in the pattern were simple YOs, created on 2.75mm needles.

As a result of this, my tension or both, they are too small for any buttons that I can think of. So I plan to use poppers and sew decorative buttons over the top. Maybe. So okay then, how do I save this top from its plainness?

1) Get over myself and leave it bare?

2) Sew these oversized novelty baby buttons to its front? Or is this a 'pull off and chew' risk for a one year old? If it is okay to sew a choking hazard to the front of a dull jumper, which ones do I use - teddy bears or aeroplanes?!

3) Do something else? A duplicate stitch something? What? I haven't found any decent duplicate stitch motifs on the web yet. Any suggestions?

She quietly winces, thinking that this is all just more time that needs to be spent trying to doll up something that she started about three years ago, which missed its deadline and if she doesn't pull her finger out, will also miss her second chance deadline (the original gift recepient's parents had another baby boy who has just had his first birthday).

The moral of the story is that if you are newly returned to knitting, standing in the queue to pay for a book that suggests that it is full of quick, achievable baby knits and you are holding sufficient 4-ply yarn for one of its patterns?

The book is fibbing - there'll be nothing quick about the knit at all.

Ribbed Shrug (of Doom)

I have removed a project from my guilt pile and added it to my summer wardrobe.

It was easy to achieve in the end. I simply decided that life is too short to stuff mushrooms (as delicious as they are) or rip back, then reknit 8 inches of ribbing on 7mm circular needles to correct a too tight cast off and bagging across the back of a shrug.

Actually, in truth, I needed to go to a BBQ (friend's husband's birthday), it was after a long day of competitions and I was late. I knew that the evening would be breezy and I knew that I needed a shrug that I didn't have...

..or didn't I?

I caught sight of the green, shrug project bag in the corner, thought about my previous blog post, then decided not to fuss over perfecting something that only another knitter would spot or care about. It was quite the revelation - there are less of you than there are of everyone else!



Once I had made that mental leap, that was it - 15 mins later, the ball was cut, the ends were woven in and I was out the door...

...to drink diet coke, eat a burger and spend an hour chatting to people that I did not know very well.

In the final analysis, I am not sure that I quite cut the dash of the model in the Glamour Knits pattern styling photo (huddled next to the BBQ and trying not to catch fire while I retrieved a cooked, nutella'd banana).

But then hey - isn't that the difference between photo shoots and real life?!

The two photos to the left are pictures that I took of the shrug when I got home after the BBQ and was saying goodnight to the Fella. I miss him quite a bit you know.

In terms of feedback - on Saturday night two women asked me where I'd bought it (there were no knitters there to my knowledge), a teenager commented on what a good idea it was to wear something like it to a BBQ, how snuggly I looked and said how they wished that they had something like that to wear in their wardrobe.

A few others asked if they could touch it as it looked so soft (it is). Noone told me that it looked too baggy across the top, noone pointed out my cast off and they were all gratifyingly astonished when I told them that I had made it, not bought it! Hurrah!

At knit night last night, I went through it with my friends and we discussed how its fit could be improved if I were to knit it again. They were kind so I am reassured!

The two photos below are the ones that I took when I got home from the second day of competitions today - which I hope will help explain why I look a bit pink, yet a bit washed out!

Project Statistics

Pattern: Erika Knight - Ribbed Shrug - Glamour Knits
Yarn: 7 skeins of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky
Needles: 7mm & 8mm Needles (it's a quick knit)
Worked: in Jersey during a sporting event and finished on South West Trains

In this week a year ago...

...I was devastated by the death of my friend Alan who committed suicide.

On one hand it was just a dreadful, dreadful shock. Yet on the other, I now realise that the signs that he had been depressed had been there for a while. I just did not know how to recognise the severity of how he was feeling and what that might really mean - it simply did not occur to me that he would deliberately harm himself.

I miss him terribly. I recently bought home a letter that he wrote to me last Spring. It has been sitting in my Captain’s letter tray in the Clubhouse for all this time as I have not been able to bear to throw it away. My heart catches each time I see the wide, flamboyant arc of his signature.

As you will guess from this, I knew Alan through my sport. Since before I took it up, in fact. My father and I are involved in the same sport, Alan was about the same age as my father and they were so strikingly similar in looks that they could have been brothers. They were constantly being mistaken for each other, which amused them both endlessly - particularly if they managed to wriggle out of something as a result of it! As a result, they knew each other fairly well.

Now I took up my sport up in my early twenties. If my father was not around, I used to give Alan a hug and joke that he would have to stand in as his surrogate – i.e. put up with hearing about my awful scores over lunch or a cup of tea. I do not remember ever discussing my scores, instead Alan would distract me with fascinating anecdotes from his professional life.

This tradition continued right up until almost the last time that I saw him. I miss his stories, his occasional company over lunch, his most infectious, distinctive giggle and also, I miss his delighted to be of service, stand-in father hugs. It upsets me endlessly that someone I cared about ended up somewhere unfathomable in their head - a place where such a lonely, awful exit appeared to be the only way forwards.

Over the course of the past year, I have noted a number of people who have been open about their depression and blogged about it. I am so very glad that this is the case. It's important that people feel able to be honest, know that it is okay, receive the support they need and have the best possible chance to own what is happening, rather than feel to feel isolated, alone, frightened and overwhelmed.

You see, before Alan’s death, my father and I both noted that he was feeling down. We even discussed it. I kept checking on Alan, gently probing and trying to give him every opportunity to talk. However he always managed to put me off or explain it away. Alan was both kind and jovial. He was also a very private, proper and polite man. While I wish very much now that he had managed to reach out to someone (anyone), I do realise that this is easier said than done; he may have found that a very difficult thing to do. Many people had no idea that there was a problem at all, they were truly stunned by his exit.

His death does make me realise that social convention (not to mention fear of stigma or being seen as weak?) can be a real barrier. My father and I knew that something was wrong, yet neither of us felt able to push our probing beyond what we felt was acceptably polite. We may not have been his first choice anyway but Alan did not feel able to tell us what was wrong.

It has also made me realise that people can bottle problems up inside until they have grown into items of overpowering, towering magnitude that appear impossible to solve. Sometimes, I do this to myself, so I know that it is an easy hole to fall into - I value my friends greatly, as they have the ability to hoik me out of my hole and show me the thing for what it really is, at it's actual size.

It also makes me realise that I could be faced with the same situation again in the future and I just would not know what to do differently, that might make a difference - I wonder what advice people can give?

You see, I would love to be able to end this post by saying something like, 'If you read this and you have someone in your life who appears to be down, then please - take some extra time out for them. Just to let them know that you are there for them if they need you - so that they know that you care and that you are there if there if they need to talk. Most problems have a solution.'

Yet that is glib. I would not know whether this is the right thing to do. Perhaps it would just make things worse? Would your well meaning attention simply be another pressure that they cannot cope with?

Actually...

...I know. Be quiet. Why on earth am I reading when I-should-be-attending-to-the-old-WIP?

Truth be told, I did not enjoy The Tenderness of Wolves at all - it is just testament to how much I have old WIP aversion that I plugged my way through it.

I think that I am / have been trying to put myself in the position where the drive to start a new project new plus the awfulness of the books I happen to have picked up in a 3 for 2 deal will push aside my old WIP aversion - you know, creating a situation where the pain of staying put is worse than the pain of moving forwards and dealing with the old WIP?

Well, I broke on the train on the way in today.

Suddenly pulling out a needle, spare yarn and the old project was a more enjoyable prospect than reading Bill Bryson's caricatures of Contential Europe.

Mind you, note that it has taken since Monday morning for me to crack.