Went for a walk here yesterday. It was a beautiful day, and the walk is nice and gentle (and long, 7.5km). The sun was shining, it was cold but not windy, and the bag of crisps and an apple I ate after the walk made for the perfect snack.
Curly Scarf, made from Debbie Bliss Maya, 100% wool, on 6mm needles.
I like it, but it could be better, it’s a learning experience one.
I think this scarf style would be good on a fine mohair using yarn over increases rather than knitting into the back and front of one stitch.
I’ve read this many times before, it’s interesting and I like re-reading it. It’s the true story of the person that Arthur Golden based Memoirs of a Geisha on - so this has less of the exaggerated nonsensica stuff in it, but is admittedly biased from the other side, making everything out to be about beauty and art and focusing less on the high class escort side of things.
Anyway, it’s pretty interesting, and after going to see the movie of Memoirs of a Geisha last night (boring), I would recommend giving the film a miss, and sitting down with a nice cup of tea to read this instead.
A classic thriller.
The first few chapters seemed strangely familiar. Could I have read this before? It was possible, but I didn’t think so. I continued to read. More memories presented themselves, but not quite true to the book. Discussion with D helped me figure out what was going on. I’d fallen asleep watching the film version, at a friends house. (I do that a lot, fall asleep mid-film, and if I happen to be at a mates house at the time, so be it). Anyway, the good thing was I must have been dead to the world snoring my little heart out dreaming of assam tea and carrot cake served on fine white china, because I had no recollection of the ending. So, I enjoyed the book.
(I can’t remember the name ok, and the book’s in the other room, and I can’t be bothered to move, and I can’t find it on amazon)
Anyway, it was a nice little collection of short stories. I especially liked the Nick Hornby one and the Neil Gaiman one, but I’m not going to write about them, because that might spoil it for anyone who manages to decipher this and figure out what the hell I’m gibbering on about anyway.
*Update, book found thanks to Arsela Undress. You can find it here.
I finished this a week or so ago now, but have’t got around to writing it up. This was great. She wrote it between 1950 and 1965, so whenever she talks about “how things are now”, it’s really how things were 50 years ago, and she’s geerally comparing things in that present to when she grew up round the turn of the last century. So yes, it’s about growing up fairly well off in Victorian England - and how when money was short they just rented their house out and spent the summer on the continent, which was cheaper. I was really born 78 years too late.
Anyway, as well as talking about that, she also goes into detail about how she became a writer, and how she writes, where she gets her stories from, and how to go about getting stuff published. She also worked in a hospital pharmacy during the war. Oh, and was into archaeology, helping her husband dig important sites in Iraq, unearthing treasures that have no doubt been destroyed over the last couple of years.
So, quite an interesting life, and an interesting book. Oh, I loved that she knew that what she wrote was popular fiction - she didn’t try to dress it up as anything more worthy - it was what it was. So unpretentious.
My addi turbo circular needles arrived today, along with some debbie bliss maya in lovely warm colours. They arrived really quickly, and they sent me a lollipop and a pen too, making getknitted.com my official favourite online retailer.
Above is a picture of my bag. Inside my bag are needles and yarn, waiting to become wristwarmers. I’m in a cafe. By myself. And I’m embarrassed to get them out and start knitting. It’s what I’d like to be doing. I have other things to occupy my time, that’s never a problem, but I’d rather be knitting. Why is it that I’m totally comfortable taking photos of my cups of tea, but not knitting in public. I’m strange, that’s the only explanation.
This is my tea and panini at IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art. It was disappointing, and my expectations were low to begin with.
Tea
The teapot held barely 1 cup. The mug didn’t belong on a saucer. If you’re going to give me a saucer, I want a cup. The milk was in a tiny little plastic glass. Why? Why not a little jug?
The Panini
Wow, this was a let down. I wanted soup, but they’d run out, so I settled for the mozzarella, tomato and basil panini, except they’d evidently run out of basil too. I declined the salads as they all looked tired and nasty.
A trend has developed in Dublin for microwaving tomato mozzarella paninis before toasting them. This is not a good trend. The bread goes doughy, the mozzarella goes stringy, and the tomatoes go mushy. A panini should be crispy. I’ve ordered toasted, flattened bread, and what I get is a microwaved roll that’s been squished by a ridged iron for a second.
IMMA would appear to be following this trend, and it’s nasty.
I find IMMA a shame. It’s a beautiful building in lovely grounds, and it should be busier. Part of this I put down to their choice of exhibitions, and general lack of things to look at. (I can appreciate space, but sometimes there can be too much space, and I’m not a fan of dvd installations and modern art that sets out to be shocking with no artisitic merit). They do seem to have a good educational programme, so that’s a start.
I do think the café needs to bear the brunt of the shame though. It’s kinda grubby, for a start. Someone also decided to put it in the basement, which is simply criminal when there’s a large, under-used courtyard just crying out for some tables and chairs. Most of the people there on Sunday were middle class parents with young children. These are people with money to spend on posh tea and cakes. There’s just no excuse.
Every time I go I think that I should really go back in the summer, with a picnic. Then I forget.
This is what I thought was green tea, in the Library Bar at the central hotel. When I drank it, it turned out to be peppermint tea. It was nice though, and I was feeling a touch queasy, so it was quite a fortuntate error (peppermint tea helps with nausea).
I was there meeting other people who knit, which was really lovely, and not nearly as scary as I was expecting. I’ll be going again. It’s a shame they only meet monthly, and on a weekend. There are two other groups in Dublin, but I can’t make it to either of them unfortunately, which is a little frustrating.