Toe-Up Socks, witches and gardening
Wednesday 20th April 2011
Great excitement grips Crowther-Smith Towers because I am anticipating a visit tomorrow from a friend of mine one of whose many talents is the ability to knit socks from the toe-up – and she is going to teach me. I literally cannot wait! I love knitting socks, despite suffering badly from Second Sock Syndrome. Ditto Mitten Syndrome, but less badly affected. I have always wanted to knit them from the toe up, so I can try them on as I go and wiggle my feet about in alluring poses. I know, it’s hard to ‘allure’ if the sock is still pierced by four double pointed needles, but I will still try.
Once, some years ago, I went on a course to learn how to knit socks from the toe up. I know I could have looked on You Tube but sometimes you need a real person to show you. Well, the lady who taught us was a scream. She unpacked a book, opening it at the toe-up page, and said: I have no idea how to knit toe-up socks, I have no idea
why anyone would want to, and I have never done it, so we will learn together. And we solemnly proceeded to try to follow the book together. At roughly ten minute intervals she left us to go and smoke a cigarette in the garden outside, whereupon we would all giggle like naughty children and pull faces at each other until she came back in. One by one, we stopped the fruitless sock-knitting and just got our own knitting out, until in the end, it was just a happy knitting club type affair. On that day, I was taught (by another participant) how to knit Continental style; I didn’t practice enough but I can still do it for knit rows, so knitting in the round Continental style is an obvious tactic…
I’ve also been gardening in a lazy sort of way. It’s very hot. Well, it is for April, which I love but it does slow one down. Do you know, every house ought to have a Rowan tree, as they are said to protect the residents from evil witches (we need not worry about the non-evil sort, they are fine). I always planted one in the garden of every house I lived in when we used to move often. When we moved here, eight years ago, I was happy that there was a Rowan already in situ. So, all I had to do, was decorate it:
This tree is at the back of the cottage in a part of the garden that is not very sunny, but by hanging beads and mirrors from it, when the sunlight does hit this lawn, little spots of glitter leap about on the grass and the walls of the cottage. In fact, I got this idea from my cousin who had an elaborately but randomly decorated tree in her back garden in Bristol. I came home and decorated a tree myself and when we moved, I took most of the ornaments with me.
The beads were once red, silver and pink, now all faded by many winters and summers. It’s not tasteful, but I love it and feel it adds to the mystical charm of the old tree. It’s also my habit to hang stones that I find with a hole running right through them from strings in the garden, plus one on the front door and one in the kitchen. I do not know why, except that I must once have heard that such stones were lucky. I wonder (Wikki? No I shan’t bother) what the fable behind this is? I’m not going to look it up, and indeed, I’m not really superstitious. In fact, I laugh in the face of a lone magpie, ha!
Finally, the Book Club read: Juliet Naked, by Nick Hornby. I simply cannot tell you how much I hate it. It opens with a scene in a disused public lavatory (except that the author repeatedly refers to ‘toilets’). I feel – call me old-fashioned – that to open in this way is not really a promising start. I wish to be entertained, enlightened, transported, even shocked. But not just repelled. After much moaning from me about how poor Miss Pettigrew was dismissed by my club, and vowing to give Juliet, Naked a fair trial, I feel compelled to go on. But I really do not want to.
This tree is at the back of the cottage in a part of the garden that is not very sunny, but by hanging beads and mirrors from it, when the sunlight does hit this lawn, little spots of glitter leap about on the grass and the walls of the cottage. In fact, I got this idea from my cousin who had an elaborately but randomly decorated tree in her back garden in Bristol. I came home and decorated a tree myself and when we moved, I took most of the ornaments with me.
The beads were once red, silver and pink, now all faded by many winters and summers. It’s not tasteful, but I love it and feel it adds to the mystical charm of the old tree. It’s also my habit to hang stones that I find with a hole running right through them from strings in the garden, plus one on the front door and one in the kitchen. I do not know why, except that I must once have heard that such stones were lucky. I wonder (Wikki? No I shan’t bother) what the fable behind this is? I’m not going to look it up, and indeed, I’m not really superstitious. In fact, I laugh in the face of a lone magpie, ha!
Finally, the Book Club read: Juliet Naked, by Nick Hornby. I simply cannot tell you how much I hate it. It opens with a scene in a disused public lavatory (except that the author repeatedly refers to ‘toilets’). I feel – call me old-fashioned – that to open in this way is not really a promising start. I wish to be entertained, enlightened, transported, even shocked. But not just repelled. After much moaning from me about how poor Miss Pettigrew was dismissed by my club, and vowing to give Juliet, Naked a fair trial, I feel compelled to go on. But I really do not want to.
You know, this is precisely why I don’t join Book Clubs. I like books that entertain, and it seems that this is not ‘the done thing’ at the moment. Well, I don’t care – I like Miss Pettigrew! Have you read ‘I Capture The Castle’ by Dodie Smith? I think you’d like that one too.
And I just love your tree!
Fiona, hello!
I’m in complete agreement, my club seems to be too disparate; I think I might like to be coaxed to stray a little bit away from my comfort zone – but I’d like to be within hailing distance! I adore I Capture the Castle – that’s exactly what I mean (must read it again). No-one likes the current book from what I can gather, and next we are promised Sex. Oh dear…