The Bayeux Tapestry, Feminism and Me

"Why that's a lovely cloak, young page. Did you knit it yourself?" "Yes, sire, I did. Thanks for noticing."

 
This article (cough) in the Huffington Post gave me pause for thought. In a bad way. Actually, in an acid reflux kind of way. For those of you not keen on reading the article, allow me to give you a biassed synopsis (let's call it artistic licence. More about that to come.) Essentially, the (female) writer bemoans the state of the blogosphere as a reflection of the death of feminism. We women shouldn't be wasting our words on stuff like knitting (guilty) or cupcakes (guilty), but learning how to do "useful" (cough) stuff like shooting people and creating shelters for the zombie apocalypse. Basically: aspire to being a deranged male character from a Bruce Willis B-movie. Because this, it would seem, is equality. Not being women, but being women-trying-to-be-men in a way that most men would probably find alienating (i.e. if the  zombie apocalypse should come, do not rely on Mr Gingerbread for protection.)

In a strop of twisted-knickersery, the writer chirps: "we've lost that righteous indignation born of centuries of oppression. And take it from me, ladies, we're not fully equal yet." Gawsh. Such wise words from a woman whose previous journalistic contributions seem to primarily be in the sugary-pink world of female erotica (turgid nipples and tumescent members anyone?) and books about teenage witches. What saddens me about articles like this is the link they make to the Bayeux Tapestry in my head. Yes, my head looks like the inside of a bag of wool: there are lots of knots and tenuous links and a whole heap of yarn barf. Let me tell you about the Bayeux Tapestry and me...

The Bayeux Tapestry is a 68-metre-long (that's 224 feet, for those of you who like it Imperial) embroidered cloth that depicts events surrounding the Norman invasion of England. It's a very interesting piece on many levels and, in so far as one could feel pity for an inanimate object, I always felt sorry for it. See, it always seemed to be more famous for what it depicted than for its own artistic value. (It shows ... an army! Big horses! Lances, swords, shields! Knights! Kings! Men getting ready to beat the living daylights out of each other!) And this disrespect, I felt, was due to its medium. Had some old geezer painted it on a wall somewhere in the 11th century, it would be Art. But as it was made by a bunch of women, like, sitting around yacking and, like, sewing, it fell into the dirty ditch between Art and (snooty sniff) crafts. And thus, for a long time its value seemed to lie in what it portrayed (= Men Doing Stuff), not in its composition or rendering (= women doing stuff).

That's why articles like this by so-called feminists make me (and a lot of genuine feminists) feel very sad. It devalues someone's artistic output, based on their gender. If we're "closest to heaven in a garden," why shouldn't one blog about it? If the writer of that article had ever made a cupcake like this:

My sister Bláithín's true medium: baked goods

she'd be moved to bloggery. And, frankly, this is not "just crochet", this is My Art - and no less so because it's in a medium not typically espoused by men. And she can stuff it if she doesn't like it. Darned if I'm going to define myself by a handgun licence.

Essentially, I'm tough. I'm the main breadwinner in my home. I can tile a wall. I can lay a laminate floor. And I have five brothers, so I could probably take that missy down in one-to-one combat, if need be (though, of course, my scrapper days are over and I would rather not.) And I knit and crochet and make cupcakes - and I would garden if I had one and plants didn't wither under my fingers. That doesn't make me any less of a feminist, it makes me more of a capable and well-rounded person. Frankly, that's what I'm aiming to be.

I wonder if that's enough righteous indignation?


And now, spleen vented, back to the crochet:
this is a Babette-inspired blanket. I just had a heap of scraps left over from my last Réalta, so I just crocheted squares of different sizes and sewed them on as I went along. The result was a monster blanket that showed no sign of ever being completed till, with an enormous effort of will and a lot of maths, I formed it into a rectangle and finished it off. Never, ever again.
P.S.: just started the next one

A Day At The Beach

All the people on the beach stayed in one place. To the right of this photograph there are about 100 people on blankets. And the rest of the beach was deserted. Very strange. They obviously knew something we didn't.

When we were in Ireland, the Gingerbreads took a couple of outings to the beach. The first one was to a beautiful sandy beach in the south-east of Ireland, in County Wexford My husband was bemused by this: it wasn't particularly warm by Central European standards, but the Irish were out in force because - well, because by Irish standards it was a lovely summer's day. Mothers and fathers were trying to make wriggling kids stand still long enough to slather sun cream on them, while other holiday-goers set up windbreakers and laid out blankets to lie on. Mr Gingerbread and my brother William sat down in the sand dunes but the other Gingerbreads - Mammy and Daddy G. included - made a beeline for the water. We stood in the water, trousers rolled up, with an army of small children and surveyed the skyline. Very nice.

Following that, and in need of some excitement, we decided to compare feet. The Gingerbread Family is split down the middle on the subject of feet: roughly half of us have inherited the yeoman's feet of my father's family (me included. Thanks, Da), while the other half have feet that look like transplanted hands, with long, wavy toes. This phenomenon was captured on film to horrify the world via the Interwebz. Voilà:

Recovered? Sorry about that, but it had to be done.

Then on to Co. Cork, where I managed to get the worst sunburn I've had for years on this day, at this beach, in this weather. Yup. For realz. No one knows how a redhead suffers.

My father took dozens of photos as reference for his paintings. I know you all reel in wonder when you behold my fantastic cartoons, so it will not come as a surprise when I tell you that my father is an artist. I express myself through stickpeople, he chooses oils. Whatever. When I was small, I sometimes used to get out of bed to watch him paint. I found out that if I stood very still and very quietly, I would be forgotten (or discreetly ignored). Nowadays, I don't have to - my father has set up his own YouTube channel. Really! He has his own little cyber-world going on in the background, which occupies him while my mother is watching Downton Abbey and other period drawmas. I think it's safe to say that the separation of the parentals during my mother's evening television binge has done wonders for their marriage, as my father is now no longer compelled to give a running commentary on the preposterousness of her viewing choice. Instead, he is at one with the Muses and the Internet. Peace reigns once more.

This is his photo of the steps leading down to the beach above:

And this is how it was transformed into a painting. Obviously, it could have done with a few stickpeople and at least one vampire, but all in all, I think he did a good job:

One of my favourites, though, is this still life. I love the way the glasses seem to appear out of the darkness.

And now I can watch him paint as much as I like, without being told to go to bed.

The Yarnpire Chronicles

Being a blogger with her finger on the cultural pulse, I thought it time that I jump on the Bandwagon of the Undead. It seems like every other book on Amazon is about vampires and werewolves and all manner of surprisingly salacious entities. Who would have thought that so many female readers would become all a-quiver at the thought of a snog with some sneery-lipped badly-coiffed young fella? There you go. I mean, today's popular culture gets it all wrong - no comfy naps in coffins. No bats. No swishy cloaks. And none of the vampires delight in counting, which - as every child who watched Sesame Street knows - is the first thing you learn in Vampires 101.

Thus I seek to redress the balance with this, my opus:

Skylight: The Yarnpire Chronicles

A story about a clumsy, awkward teenager called Nellie, a student at a typical American highschool, where the Cool Kids wear uniforms of various sporting ranks and the Uncool (as well as the Undead) skulk along the corridors and hide in their lockers. All cheerleaders are wicked, anyone who plays American football is thick and all they ever talk about is the prom.*

* NB: I didn't actually go to an American highschool, so I'm basing this on films like Grease and Mean Girls - so it has to be right. Right?

 

But one day, a new student arrives at the school. Oh, the mystery! 

 

 

to be continued ... 

Phew.

Exciting stuff, eh? 


PART TWO HERE!

Réalta: Pinks and Purples

I'm not very good at Ebaying. I'm too timid for auctions (unlike my mother, whose arrival at charity auctions is met with a collective rubbing of hands. We have a shed full of motley furniture and a jumble of housewares brought back from her auctioneering. Sometimes she takes my sister Emily with her. Representatives of the local Lions Club and the St. Vincent de Paul throw their hats in the air when the pair of them saunter in, purse strings flapping and nostrils flaring at the scent of a bargain. Did I mention that Emily also has a shed crammed to bursting with a hodge podge of orphan items? Apparently the women in my family don't come with baggage, they have sheds.)

In any case, when I do win something, I usually surprise myself. I made a token bid on a kilo of grey wool and then, to my shock, won it (I must add that no one bid against me, just in case you had visions of me pounding the keyboard shouting, "It's mine! Mine!") In any case, I had to promptly get rid of it because it simply wouldn't do, having batch of idle skeins hanging around, bullying all the oddbods and scrappy balls of yarn that normally fill my basket. Goodness knows, a gang like that might even organise an uprising: we might wake up one morning and find ourselves knitted into our bed. Uh-huh. It could happen.

So I made another Réalta. Every time I make this afghan, I get annoyed with myself before I even start sewing it together: the colours look horrible together. Why on earth - no, how on earth did I make 42 octagons without noticing the fundamental ugliness of the colour combination? Then I sew it all up ... and realise that it's actually okay. Sometimes even quite nice. Magic, I tell you, it's magic!

Crafting, Karma and Charidee

 Every time I take a walk in town, I am beset by handsome youths in matching t-shirts, brandishing clipboards and glossy flyers with pictures of starving kiddies on them. With winsome smiles they try to appeal to my better side ("Aren't you touched by the plight of children infected with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa?" "Aren't you appalled by experiments on innocent kittens?" "Don't you feel devastated by the destruction of the Amazonian Rainforests?") before trying to verbally strong-arm (practically an oxymoron, but roll with it) me into signing a direct debit for a monthly payment to the charity in question till I die.

Which is all very fine and well. Most of these charities do sterling work. They have the (wo)manpower and the resources and the political clout to Get Stuff Done - and obviously all of this has to be paid for somehow. However, I sometimes wonder how much of my hard-earned cash actually trickles down to little Nabirye's rice bowl after all of the t-shirts and glossy brochures and matching clipboards and spanky t-shirts and winsome youths have been paid for. Before anyone feels their underwear twitch in the first sparks of righteous rage ("The Gingerbread Lady is calling Doctors Without Borders a bunch of thieving rapscallions! She has besmirched the good name of the Red Cross! etc."), please note that I am not advocating a collective snapping of purse-clasps in the face of charity collectors, but simply saying that sometimes it's also nice to do something that makes you feel you have a more direct effect.

So that's the long-winded introduction to today's topic:
Crafting + Charidee = Good Karma and General Bonhomery!

After my failed attempt to donate blankets to local charities (thank you very much), I have decided to stick to the two charities that I've worked for in the past. The first is a Christmas bazaar, organised by a colleague. She has a standing arrangement with the local hospital: we pay for the flights and transport of critically-ill children (and their families) from war-torn regions, the local Ronald MacDonald House puts them up and a team of nice medical staff operate on them and care for them during their stay here. All of the proceeds from our sale of work are turned into plane tickets and living costs for families from Afghanistan.

The second charity is far from home but close to my heart: it's called Compassionate Creations. It's a small charity run by a lady called Ann (an All-Round Good Egg), who makes and donates scarves to a local shelter for victims of sexual assault or abuse. I'm not a victim of any kind of abuse (and, no, we won't count chocolate deprivation), but I like the simplicity of the idea: it's just a token of solidarity, a gesture of compassion, a virtual hug from one anonymous person to another. I've never been in that position - but ... there for the grace of God go I: in another life, at another time, in another place I mightn't have been that lucky. So if even one of the scarves I've made over the years landed in the hands of a person who understood and appreciated that there was someone on the other side of an ocean who had  made it and thought, "I am so sorry for your pain," then it would be ... just fine.


Thus my Plan of Action for August's Good Deeds: Krochet Krystal's daisy square pattern was given away for free - on the condition that its sale be for charity, so the proceeds from these blankets go towards yarn for Compassionate Creations. It's a win-win situation, I think. And just in case my do-goodery has sent you in a paroxysm of saccharine shock, do please note that the above plan also involves me buying *a lot of yarn* and crocheting *half-a-dozen scarves*, so it's more like a win-win-win situation. Smiles all round!

Blanketmania

A long time ago - before I started this blog - I went on a baby blanket spree. This was not inspired by an abiding love of the little tykes, nor by spiking hormonal surges, but rather by the delight of finishing a blanket FAST. They're small. You can use fun colours. They're quick to finish. The problem is, I have loads of them. At the time of writing, I have nine baby blankets beside me. I believe my sister Eithne Gingerbread has another couple squirrelled away somewhere in Ireland. This, my dears, borders on unhealthy. At one point I thought I could donate them and rang the local domestic abuse shelter and children's clinic - but my luvverly blankets were rejected (pause for a second to sob) because of potential allergies. Despite the fact that we do not smoke, have no pets and the blankets in question are 100% cotton, I would have to crochet them in a plastic bubble in order to avoid passing on my germs to some poor kiddie.

Oh well. For a couple of seconds I was very nearly Miss Altruism 2011.

So I decided to sell a few and have put them up for sale on Ebay with a realistic starting price that covers the cost of my yarn and the copious amount of cake eaten during their making. If they don't sell, I don't mind because, quite frankly, I like having them around me - just in case a flock of germ-resilient orphans turn up on my doorstep.  If you've logged on today to see some crochet pieces, these pictures are for you:

Using Krochet Krystal's Daisy Square design - see link below.

My inspiration? I had a lot of colours. And I like squares. Umm. That's it.

Yes, I know. A lot of daisies. But once I figured the pattern out, I had to keep doing it till my fingers fell off.

Irish roses. Just because.

The daisy square is a wonderful pattern by Krochet Krystal. Sadly, she currently isn't offering it for download, but keep checking her site in case this changes in the future. The blankets made from this pattern can only be sold for charitable purposes ... and that's the plan. More about this tomorrow!

The Green, Green Grass of Home

Towards the end of the school year, I showed my students some photos of Ireland. They asked if I'd photoshopped them because the colours were "unnatural". I looked at the photos again - "No," I said, "That's just the way it is in Ireland." This luscious, vivid, unnatural green is ... well, it's just Ireland.

In German they say that green is the colour of hope. Because we're having an optimistic August, here are some pictures of eye-popping green:

Recession Depression

 

Now, as you all know, maths are not my strong point. Nor, for that matter, are the general sciences or things of an economic nature - you know, gold prices and stock markets and all of those percentages and little arrows going up and down. Yet during my visits home to Ireland in the years of the economic boom (the so-called Celtic Tiger), I found it odd - to say the least - that banks should be able to give young people in precarious employment 120% mortgages for overpriced houses. I found it odder still that people were actively encouraged by financial institutions and government agencies to spend rather than save, to accumulate debt and take on loans. I obviously don't have a fancy-schmanzy economics degree, but to me the outcome of such financial shenanigans was crystal clear: This Can Only End Badly. I had the same feeling many years ago when I watched one of my toddler siblings gaily wave a lollipop about his curly head - yes, m'dear, it's all fun and games till the lollipop gets stuck in your hair.

In Ireland, the proverbial lollipop has become firmly ensnarled in a fistful of hair. Like a lot of countries, Ireland is in dire financial straits, all the more critical because it has just come out of a decade and a half of vulgar economic excess. While all of the Gingerbreads are variously feeling the pinch and squeeze of the recession, none of them are - thank all things good and holy - as badly off as many. But the country is sagging under more than a recession, it's crippled by an economic depression. People stare, transfixed, - transfixed, I tell you - at a non-stop stream of news reports that show despairing financiers and scary graphics of plunging figures and lightning-strike arrows pointing down, down, down. Most of us don't even know what half the econo-jargon means. The entire country is hypnotised by despair and is paralysed by terror.

And I say this in my best Teacher Voice: quite frankly, it is just not on.

I met an old school friend last week, a friend who's still living in Ireland and recently lost her job as a support teacher for under-privileged children under the ironically-named National Recovery Plan. She said that she's just stopped looking at the news. "It's too much," she said. "This doom and gloom was making me sick with fear ... till I realised that my fretting over Wall Street is not going to make the situation any better. So I've decided to concentrate on changing what I can in my own little world, and take everything else as it comes."

She's right. This August I'm going to work hard, make nice things, write interesting(-ish) blog posts and do good deeds. From tomorrow on, I'm going to show you some luvverly photos of wonderful things in Ireland, share my latest projects, draw bizarre cartoons and, at the very least, make myself laugh.

And we'll take everything else as it comes.

Sew annoying!

Time flies when you're having fun.
Little known fact: it also flies when you're not having a lot of fun as well.

This has been another busy week - we're going home to Ireland at the end of the week to visit the Irish Gingerbreads. My mother has a vigorous schedule of activities planned, including a trip to the west of Ireland. My poor husband has been in the clutches bosom of the Gingerbread family for nearly a decade and hasn't left the eastern province of Leinster yet. There's always too much happening at my parents' house to go a-touristing. This time, however, we are going to hop into a car with my parents and whizz off to the Atlantic coast to show him the Ireland he has thus far only seen on postcards. He's very excited.

In the meantime, I thought I'd post a picture of my latest finished object, blowing merrily in the breeze on the roof patio. There are 81 squares in this blanket. Eighty-one. Eight-oh. And this follows hot on the heels of the 99-square Equalizer I finished a week ago, swearing loudly that I was never going to make a flipping motif afghan ever again. Clearly, Pavlov's dog had the ability to learn more quickly than I did - perhaps the next time I decide to make a sew-together-extravaganza, someone should ring a bell and the rivers of slobber on my fingers might remind me of those ends, that sewing.

Oops, too late. Have already started the next one.

General Hookery

Why, hello there. Nice of you to stop by! Life in the Gingerbread Household is ticking over: we've evicted the pigeons, Mr Gingerbread emptied the dregs of the compost bin into our flowerbed and now the house stinks of manure (strange that, because the bin was full of vegetable waste and coffee grinds, yet the entire house now smells like a slurry pit), and I've been crocheting away between exams and conferences.

This is what I'm up to: nine-patch granny squares, to use up tiny balls of wool that I had left over from various projects. At the moment it looks like something a clown crocheted - I think the multicolour edging is a bit too much. Or de trop, as I would say in the alterate universe where I drop French words into everyday conversation and people think that it's quite cool (pretentious, moi? Pas de tout!)

And I'd like to start another Réalta because the other two were fun to do. These are my chosen colours:

... but sadly the first few octagons look absolutely horrible and mismatched  - so much so that I won't post a photo yet or it might taint your weekend. Suffice to say that I shall perservere because the interesting thing about this blanket is that you really don't know how it will finally look till you've sewn the last motifs together. And I like an element of danger (thankfully this is the maximum amount of danger in my life at present. And that's plenty, thanks a million.)

I'm With Stupid

My husband studied science: biology and chemistry, to be more precise. I studied languages - German and Italian, if you really must know. If you're curious about which sin will land you on the fourth terrace of Dante's Purgatory, I'm your woman (and it's sloth, by the way - one of my favourites.) If you're looking for information about the general workings of the world, you'd be well-advised to choose my husband as your Phone A Friend if you ever end up on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

See, I have a marvellous ability to simply accept the world as it is. I'm not propelled by the kind of curiosity that discovers radium or the South Pole. I don't look at stuff and wonder why it is the way it is - I just accept that it's that way. My husband is different: he wants to know Why. Why? WHY? And he rounds on me, his face perplexed, and demands an answer:
"Why is the cheese mouldy already? Why?"
or
"How do pigeons recognise faces? How?" (he's temporarily obsessed by pigeons. One hopes it will pass.)

I should know by now that these are purely rhetorical questions: my husband tends to verbalise many of the thoughts I would keep quiet. He prefers to put them in the form of accusing questions. This is something he's inherited from his mother - dinner at their house can be very stressful for someone like me, who feels compelled to answer any question put to her, regardless of whether they are real questions or just general wonderings.

Sadly, as I say, my scientific knowledge is nowhere near good enough to satisfy my husband's craving for answers. Last week we made a curry (actually, I made a curry - I was just being diplomatic) and split it between two pots for convenience (because we were dining on the upstairs patio and I didn't want to schlep our cast-iron wok up the stairs. There's name-dropping and then there's outdoor-dining-dropping. This was the latter.) The following day, the curry in the saucepan had gone off, but the curry in the wok was still edible. After a brief struggle in which I wrestled the saucepan out of my husband's hands while he whined that it was still okay to eat (he views rancidity as a personal challenge: "I bet you I could still eat that!"), he turned his big blue peepers on me and demanded to know why it had gone off.

"Why has it gone off?" he said. "Why?"
"Maybe because the metal in the wok is thicker and it kept the curry cooler," I suggested.
He sighed.
"My darling," he said, "Bear in mind that I love you. But sometimes your scientific theories sound like they've come from a children's book."

Readers, I was stunned. Then I laughed till I almost threw up. Sadly, he's right - my scientific theories sound like they've come from a children's book: The Lunatic's Guide to the Universe or The Crazed Child's Compendium of Science. His observation is a long time coming - I almost pushed him over the edge when, in answer to his demanding question about how they'd filmed the zero gravity scene in the film Inception ("How did they do that? How?"), I naively suggested that they might just have pumped the gravity out. A look of horror crossed his visage, swiftly followed by pity, then he turned away to laugh into his coffee cup. I thought it was a jolly good theory myself.

Anyway, as I always tell him, it's a good job I'm pretty. And then I whip out a copy of Goethe's Collected Works and seek revenge by trying to lure him into a conversation about Sturm und Drang to defend my honour. 
To no avail.
He's usually long gone.

PATTERN: Equalizer Blanket

This pattern can be downloaded as a PDF here.

First of all, you need to know how to crochet a solid square:

Abbreviations:
American English: DC = double crochet
[British English: TR = treble crochet]
This pattern is in American English terms, the British terms are in [brackets].

An important note about corners:
I've used a DK weight yarn. This is lighter than a worsted weight yarn, so I created my corners by crocheting two DC [TR] + two chains + two DC [TR] into the corner space. If you find that your work is bunching or curling, it is possibly because your yarn is heavier or your tension is tighter. One way you can correct this is by only crocheting one DC [TR] into your corner spaces, i.e. one DC [TR] + two chains + one DC [TR] into the corner space.


Coloured blocks:
Start by chaining 4, then join with a slip stitch.
Round 1: 
Chain 3 (counts as the first DC [TR]), do 2 DC [TR] into the ring. Chain 2, 3 DC [TR], chain 2, 3 DC [TR], chain 2, 3 DC [TR], chain 2 and join to the third chain of your first 'fake' DC [TR] - like this:

Round 2:
Chain 1, do 1 DC [TR] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 DC [TR] in next two stitches, *in corner space crochet 2 DC [TR] + 2 ch + 2 DC [TR], then crochet 1 DC [TR] in the next three stitches.** Repeat from * to ** twice more. Join with slip stitch to the top of the first DC [TR].

Round 3:
Chain 1, do 1 DC [TR] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 DC [TR] in next four stitches, *in corner space crochet 2 DC [TR] + 2 ch + 2 DC [TR], then crochet 1 DC [TR] in the next seven stitches.** Repeat from * to ** twice more. Join with slip stitch to the top of the first DC [TR].

Round 4:
Chain 1, do 1 DC [TR] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 DC [TR] in next six stitches, *in corner space crochet 2 DC [TR] + 2 ch + 2 DC [TR], then crochet 1 DC [TR] in the next eleven stitches.** Repeat from * to ** twice more. Join with slip stitch to the top of the first DC [TR].

Change to BLACK
Round 5:
Chain 1, do 1 DC [TR] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 DC [TR] in next eight stitches, *in corner space crochet 2 DC [TR] + 2 ch + 2 DC [TR], then crochet 1 DC [TR] in the next fifteen stitches.** Repeat from * to ** twice more. Join with slip stitch to the top of the first DC [TR].

Round 6:
Chain 1, do 1 DC [TR] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 DC [TR] in next ten stitches, *in corner space crochet 2 DC [TR] + 2 ch + 2 DC [TR], then crochet 1 DC [TR] in the next nineteen stitches.** Repeat from * to ** twice more. Join with slip stitch to the top of the first DC [TR].

Chain two, yank tightly. Leave a long tail for joining, and cut yarn.

Black blocks
Do the pattern as above except, of course, that you do the entire block in black :-D

Now, the bad news...
This diagram represents how many squares you'll need to do. Brace yourselves, hookers!

(Yarn needed is given as an approximate amount. I was virtuously using scraps, so these amounts are approximate and represent the maximum amount I used.)

You need to crochet:

• 9 turquoise squares* (75g yarn)
• 17 green squares (150g yarn)
• 14 yellow squares (120g yarn)
• 11 orange squares (100g yarn)
• 6 red squares (50g yarn)
• 51 black squares + edging on other squares (1100g yarn)

* If you want to make a slightly longer blanket, crochet 18 turquoise squares (two rows of nine blocks), not 9!

Lay your squares out as per the diagram above and sew them together. I edged the blanket with a round of DC [TR] in black, then a round of SC [DC] in a contrasting colour (I used turquoise) and finished it off with another round of DC [TR] in black.

Music Equalizer

In an attempt to use up scraps, I once again found myself in the Catch-22 situation of starting a project to use up yarn and then needing to buy more to finish it. That was the first of several reasons why this project began as a good idea and then drove me nuts.

You see, I thought a fine use of blocks of colour would be to recreate a volume equalizer. Lots of strong, bright colours combined with black - why, I had a basket full of this kind of yarn, left over from my Réalta. It was given the go-ahead ("Yeah, it's ... cool." Thanks, dudes) by the Gingerbread Bros, who were visiting at the time, and off I went, merrily crocheting squares of colour. In fact, I had sewn them all together and was feeling very proud of myself, when my husband pointed out that I had made a huge, obvious boo-boo: my colour bars went from red to blue, instead of the other way around. (Click the link above and you will see that practically every picture shows the squares in the opposite colour direction to mine - and yet I managed to blithely ignore the fact that I was doing it wrong. Yay, me.)  There was some fist-biting, I admit, and even a measure of teeth-gnashing - but I unpicked the whole thing and re-sewed it, adding more squares till it was the right way around. I know, I know, but I have this slightly obsessive tick from my father's side of the family and that's just they way it is.

Finally finished, Mr Gingerbread strolled past the blanket laid out on the floor and calmly observed that there are no turquoise blocks in an equalizer, whereupon he received some choice suggestions to remove himself forthwith as his wife was surely at her wits' end, thank you very much. So here you go: the blanket that broke my heart -

Ornithological Drama - Again

Oh, the drama!

You might remember that just a week ago, our baby pigeons looked like this:

There's no such thing as an ugly baby, people say. I disagree. Voilà.

But those little ones - they grow up so fast! And yesterday evening, we went upstairs to eat out on the roof patio and discovered this:

I suspect they have some vulture blood. These look like very mean little pigeons.

So we unpacked our evening picnic and opened a bottle of wine, trying to be all posh and Continental (Mr Gingerbread doesn't even have to try - he is Continental! I, on the other hand, showed my less posh Islander roots by producing a screw-top bottle of our local plonk. I do try, though.) The pigeons were not impressed. In fact, there was a lot of feather-ruffling and shifting from one claw to the other as they tried to make their feelings clear about our invasion of their personal space.

"They're very nervous," observed my husband - who is quite entranced by our little trespassers, I might add. The big eejit.

"But it's our balcony!" I shrieked, with wine-induced feistiness.

Perhaps sensing the hysteria, the pigeon on the right suddenly took to flight - and slammed into the wall.

Mr Gingerbread hopped up and tried to (cough) help the pigeon by cornering it.

("It doesn't want to be touched!"
"I'm just going to put it back in the nest!"

"It'll have a heart attack and die of fright. Leave it alone."

Ignores wife and continues to approach pigeon with the stealth of a very big cat. Which made the pigeon feel so much better, I'm sure.)

Mr. Gingerbread: "Trust me! I'm your friend! Just hop on!" Pigeon: "Fup off."

Instead of behaving like Long John Silver's parrot, the pigeon took off and flew into the gutter on the other side of the building. And stayed there.

While its sibling fixed us with its gimlet eyes, staring at us evilly for half an hour before simply ... flying away.

"Be afraid, humans. Be very afraid. I'm going to poo you at every possible turn."

 So we've been pigeon-watching all day long. The parents returned and hoo-hooed at us for hours on end in a very accusing tone. We tried explaining that we didn't actually do anything, but to no avail. Baby Pigeon flew from the gutter to the bedroom window sill late last night and, as a result, we had to sleep on the bed sofa in the living room in case we scared it.  This morning it flew back up on to the patio and later perched on the railings before disappearing - leaving copious amounts of stress-induced pigeon poo in its wake.

Mr Gingerbread and I went upstairs this evening to check if it was okay (Mr G.) and make sure the little blighters were finally gone (me), but aside from a splattering of excrement and a flutter of downy feathers, the wingèd vermin had gone. Sadface.

Instead, after a day of non-stop rain, we had a spectacular sunset and a rainbow:

 

Today's News (Pigeons and Yarn)

Well, well, well. What an exciting day.
First of all:
Mother (or Father) Pigeon returned (reluctantly, I suspect) to the nest late last night. As the chicks get bigger, s/he is finding it hard to sit on the nest and has now been relegated to the sidelines, where s/he sits with a claw and a wing awkwardly draped over the pigeonettes in a vain attempt to reassure them that, yes, they have not been abandoned (for now). Those birds will end up in therapy, I guarantee it.

This is where it becomes a bit weird: apparently, pigeons recognise faces. Uh-huh. And I can clearly confirm that the pigeons are far more nervous of me than they are of Mr Gingerbread. This is because I tend to whoosh them away when I see them sitting on the fence (when they're on the nest, I just go out and stare them down.)

In other breaking news:
the dramatic storm that caused Mr G worry about our little adoptees had another, more serious outcome. When I went into our local yarn store this morning to purchase some sock yarn (not for me, I might add. I was exercising my iron self-control), I discovered the owner in a state of distress: the gutter between the old part of the building and the newer extension over-ran and collapsed in the torrential rain and the yarn store suffered water damage.
What?
I clutched my (imaginary) pearls and swooned a little.
"Was ... was anything hurt? Did all the yarn survive?" I whispered hoarsely.
She looked grim. "I cannot tell a lie," she said, "Some damage was sustained. A few skeins did not make it."
We bowed our heads and thought of our fallen comrades.
"Where's the sock yarn?" I asked, looking at the empty shelves.
"I packed them away," she said. "Not many people knit socks in the summer, it seems."
Really? I thought. Is that really so, sock knitters? I would have thought socks were ideal projects for hot summer days, but apparently I was wrong.

In any case, a wool shortage crisis was averted when I checked my own stash and discovered that I had two untouched skeins of sock yarn that were more or less what I had gone to the yarn store to buy. Phew (and a small squirm of shame). However, I left the shop owner amongst boxes of wool, with two heaters going at full blast in 30°C (90°F) heat. Fingers crossed her insurance company recognises the gravity of the situation and pays out soon.