One Year Older, One Year Wiser

 

How much progress have I made in crafting terms this year? Goodness, I'm a veritable crafting diva now. Haha. Or not.

I discovered that I don't knit funny, I knit combined continental. Yes, it is a thing. And it looks like perfectly normal knitting, thank you very much. I knit two hats and a cabled scarf, plus I did half a sock (but, sadly, no photo to prove it.)

I crocheted tons of stuff. Really, I did. I can't begin to show you all the things I crocheted last year or I'd be commited to an asylum. However, more importantly than the actual crocheting was learning how to write a pattern. Write a pattern that other people could follow. Uh-huh! It's not as easy as you might think and it requires all kinds of mathematical skills that I thought I'd left behind when I skipped down the avenue of St Mary's secondary school on my last day of school, waving my school tie in the air in glee. If my long-suffering maths teacher, Sr Helen (now working out the Pythagorean equation beyond the Pearly Gates) had realised that little Miss Gingerbread would be employing the basic principles of geometry, trigonometry and algebra of her own free will and in her leisure time, she would've exploded with joy.

In any case, despite great leaps and bounds in my mathematical education, I continue to be plagued by lapses of discalulia, guaranteeing that I shall never be placed between Newton and Archimedes at a celestial dinner party. But I keep on writing patterns, using my trusty 99c calculator to help me work out stitch repeats and hexagon angles.

A Tale of Two Yarns

*** Parental Warning: This will not interest you, parents. We're talking about wool in this one. I'll put something up for you tomorrow. xxx ***
(Sorry about that. Otherwise I'll get a reproachful phonecall to the tune of, "Why can't you write about something apart from yarn and crocheting?") 

A bunch of ladies (maybe a couple of gents, too, but I suspect we're mostly women) on the Ravelry group The Blog Hub are taking part in a Knitting and Crochet Blog Week. I really wasn't going to take part because I can barely tie my own shoelaces at the moment, let alone get myself to blog daily for a week, but our Fearless Leader, Eskimimi, has organised it so well and so professionally that I thought I ought to get my bottom in gear and contribute. She has set us a writing task and we have to complete it daily. It reminds me a bit of the homework we got at school, but Eskimimi is nowhere near as frightening as Sr. Alphonsus and her flapping veil, though she does keep us in line: all of our contributions are neatly tagged and lined up in Google to read. Impressive, ne c'est pas?

So today our task is this:
Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

This is going to be a highly controversial post and I may be about to rock your world - brace yourself, crafters.

My first yarn is Red Heart Super Saver. Mostly I've chosen it out of contrariness. Everyone else is choosing Bamboo-Silk Unicorn's Hair or Handspun Mermaid Bumfluff - I felt sorry for this much-maligned American yarn. Entire pages of scathing comments are devoted to it on Ravelry, yet there's more of it in the stash database than practically every other yarn. While other devotees seem keen to hide their plebian tastes, I stand by my love of cheap acrylic yarn. I'm not going to knit jumpers from it or crochet bridal shawls, but I am going to make afghans and woolly hats ... objects that will probably be the only thing left standing after the apocalypse, along with cockroaches and Tupperware.

This, by the way, is my Shelley Stash. I haven't used it yet. I mostly just look at it and arrange the colours in a more pleasing fashion. Yum, yum.

What do I like about RHSS? It's robust and tough and a lot of people hate it (= support the underdog.) What I dislike about it is that you can only buy it in the US. Globalisation - where are you when we need you?


The second yarn I choose is sock yarn. No particular brand, I love it all. In fact, I haven't met a sock yarn yet that I didn't like, and I find more to like on a daily basis. I like the colours. I even find the outrageously disgusting colour combinations fascinating. The sad thing is that I have, up to now, knit the sum total of half a sock, accompanied by Mammy Gingerbread, aka Lightning Needles. In recent weeks, I've had the yearning to try it again - especially after reading about this charity, Socks for Japan. In my own head, I am a Crafting Philantrophist, churning out socks for the needy, lickety-split. In reality, I have to donate to the Red Cross because I don't want to add to the Japanese people's trauma by making them wear my hand-knitted socks.

But I digress.  
What do I like about sock yarn? It's colourful, often in delightfully unexpected ways. What I dislike about it is that it is often sinfully expensive. One little skein costs half an afghan. Well, not quite, but it's expensive enough to only be bought on special occasions, high holidays and as presents for other people. Fortunately, I have an opportunity to buy someone a gift, so I went shopping and bought a couple of skeins of a new yarn. Isn't this luvverly?

I'm Back!

I'm sorry for my absence, readers, but the Forces of Evil (my bank manager, my mortgage, my day job) engaged my time and attention elsewhere. Perhaps I should add that my bank manager is a sweetheart, my mortgage is reasonable and I love my job. But having to leave the house to do the last, in order to pay the second and, thus, keep the first happy is rather tiresome. Frankly, I have better things to do.

My colleagues and I were discussing this today: if you won the lottery, would you give up your job?
Well, would you, readers?
I would, more or less. I'd continue to teach four classes a week and they would be so well prepared that students would weep and applaud me at the end of the lesson. Trainee teachers would be sent into my classroom to watch me sweep across the expanse of the classroom and engage students on a level that could best - perhaps only - be described as inspirational. My grammatical explanations using blackboard drawings of stickmen would reach dizzy heights of perfection.
Then I'd have my chauffeur drive me home, so I could have a nap after my exertions.

I'd write to my heart's content. Your blog rolls would be on fire, readers!

 

And read a lot of Fat, Interesting Books, so I could discuss them with my father, my partner in The Perusal of Fat, Interesting Books. We're in the process of solving a number of burning social issues, but I feel I need more study. As you can see below, I am very interested in history. Nothing like a 2000-year catalogue of human bumbling to put things in perspective.

And I'd crochet. Well, I'd crochet more, obviously.

You might have noticed on the top right-hand side of the page that there's a little button under 'Patterns For Sale' - I have actually got my act together and prepared my Réalta pattern for sale. And, eeek, people (real people, people not related to me) have actually bought it (the people related to me would have to buy it as well, except they spent a week falling over the darned afghan in Ireland and have had their fill of it).

But that's old news - no sooner is it off the hook than I'm on to my next project. What about something like this?

The idea is that you could make a nice little blanket with rows of little hearts. Wouldn't that be cute? I'm still at the stage where I'm trying to extract a rather vague and inexact idea in my head and create a physical prototype. This is as far as I've got but, all things considered, it's not a bad start.

Outdone! (or Outcrocheted!)

You might remember this post from October, in which I wrote up the pattern for my Ribbon Afghan.

It was a pattern I kind of ... well, slid into. I had yarn, I had a hook, I did a long chain, I added a few DCs and SCs ... and it more or less just created itself. I was the one wielding the hook, it's true, but it seemed to be a self-crocheting afghan (ooooh, wouldn't that make a nice fairytale? Along the lines of the story of the magic porridge pot, but for crafters!)

In any case, the knitting/crocheting forum Ravelry has a wonderful gallery feature, which displays photos of all the projects made from a particular pattern. And, to be honest, I got a very funny feeling the first time I discovered (by accident, mind you) that other people - real people! - had made things - real things! - from my patterns. And it's even weirder when you look at photos of finished objects and realise that their version of your pattern is even nicer than your own, haha! Look at just two, for example (there are others in various stages of completion, here are two finished afghans):

Cheryl's blanket - look at that gorgeous cat!

Melissa's blanket

So even though the original is on my sofa, I can't help but feel blanket-envy - I want one of them instead :-)

Adventures in Ireland - Part II

I Bought New Underwear for My Boobess

I wish I were one of those women who can stroll into a lingerie shop and whip a few bits of lace off a hanger. My chesticles are more of the bombastic variety and finding a receptacle for them is akin to trying to bag two piglets. After a year of denial, I finally accepted that I had put on weight and needed new underwear, so Joyce, my kindly sister-in-law, offered to head to the nearest large town with me on a girlie underwear-buying session.

The shopping centre was nearly empty. Ireland is in the depths of a dark recession and shopping as a recreational sport - previously an Olympic discipline in boomtime Ireland - has taken a nosedive. That's the reason why the young Polish shop assistant in the fancy lingerie shop was thrilled to see me when I walked through the door.
"It's very quiet out there," I said, indicating the silent concourse, where tumbleweeds blew past the empty shops, the clerks leaning on the countertops, bored, or engaged in chat with their fellow workers.
"Is awful," she said earnestly. "Today most exciting thing is visit from cleaning lady."
Poor girl.

I explained my predicament and her practised eye swept over my bosom.
"We not have your size," she said, "but I am measure you anyway. Okay? Then you go department store and buy there."
"Do you mind?" I asked.
"Nothing to do," she said and shrugged.
In we went to the cubicle and she whipped out a measuring tape.
"This bra all wrong," she said, "You are have four boobess because too small. You want two boobess."
She held up two fingers. I nodded. Yes, indeedy. Two boobess would be preferable.
"Important with bra is," she said, "must separate boobess - " she made an elegant sweeping motion, like Moses parting the Red Sea, " - and also to keep down."
With that, she patted the air energetically. I understood immediately. Those of you who are generously endowed know how spooky it is to have your boobess try to sneak up and smother you.

She worked out my size and sent me on my way, after giving me a little lesson on style ("Lace look very nice, but here this grandma style ugly but much better under t-shirt") and form ("This pretty but make uni-boobess, remember we want to separate.") Armed with this knowledge, I went next door and bought half-a-dozen miracles of engineering and then popped in to show her my purchases.
"Very good!" she said, beaming. And, distressingly, added: "Good luck!"
With my chest, I probably need it. But for now, I think I have the girls under control.

Adventures in Ireland - Part I

Well, after twelve hours of travelling, I'm back in the Gingerbread House with my husband. He'd even vacuumed. The man is truly a gem.

Those of you who read this post will probably begin to suspect that whenever I travel, disaster follows. If I were very narcissitic - or slightly paranoid - I would start to become concerned that my desire to fly unleashes some natural catastrophe, this time the earthquake in Japan, subsequent tsunami and the reactor meltdown. I not only feel very sad and quite shell-shocked about the whole situation (I can't watch any more news reports - too distressing), I also have lingering feelings of responsibility. I think I'll stay put for a while.

To take our minds off terrible things, let me tell you what I got up to in Ireland:

I've Got a New Baby Niece
Baby Erica arrived on Pancake Tuesday, my brother and sister-in-law's first child. Naturally, much rejoicing was had, and Mammy and Daddy Gingerbread even decided to brave a trip to Dublin to see the new baby - and I got to go along. This might not seem much to you, but it involved major trauma for the Gingerbreads. My parents do not like to travel. Anywhere. And although Dublin is only an hour away, getting from the depths of the countryside (where they live) to Holles Street Hospital in Dublin city centre is no less stressful than a shuttle launch.

Needless to say, we got lost. Dublin is devoid of road signage, which had a significant role in this development, but let's just say that it came as no surprise to any of the car's occupants that we ended up driving in circles. My parents' forty-year relationship teetered on the brink of destruction as snippy comments flew back and forth across the gearstick divide about someone's driving skills and someone else's navigational talent. Finally, I was sent to ask a taxi driver for directions.

When I returned, my brother was on the phone, frantic. The visiting hour was ticking by and no relatives had yet turned up to admire the fruit of his loins. I tried to give my father the taxi driver's directions, but these were intercepted by my mother, who was trying to simultaneously calm the new father and calm my father - and trying to amplify the instructions for my father, who suffers bouts of selective deafness when concentrating on the road:

Me: "The taxi driver said you drive straight on till the traffic lights, turn left, cross the bridge over the canal and turn right after the third set of traffic lights."
Mammy: "TURN RIGHT AT THE CANAL AND TAKE THE THIRD SET OF TRAFFIC LIGHTS ON THE LEFT. Yes, Michael, I'm still on the phone. Just giving your father directions."
Me: "No! Drive straight on till the traffic lights, turn left, cross the bridge over the canal and turn right after the third set of traffic lights."
Mammy: "Okay. Did you get that? DRIVE THROUGH THE TRAFFIC LIGHTS AND TURN LEFT AT THE BRIDGE WHEN YOU'VE PASSED THREE SETS OF TRAFFIC LIGHTS. Yes, Michael, we're on our way."
Me: "NO! Drive straight on till the traffic lights, turn left..." etc.

But we finally found the hospital, which was tucked away in a busy side street, and gathered around the cot to admire the little sprog. She was passed around like a swaddled parcel and declared to be perfect.

Finito!

I spent this morning edging the blanket, weaving in and snipping ends. Ugh.
But now it's finished and all that remained to be done was to take a few photos. Sadly today is so windy that the daffodils in my father's garden are bent double to the ground. So taking a decent photo was a challenge. Zuppy turned up to help and then scuttled off when it got too cold. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that he was watching me out of the corner of his beady eyes: as Iset up the photo I had to push him away with my leg while struggling to pin the darned blanket down in gale-force wind. He was determined to get up on the bench (and note that he's a vertically-challenged terrier so he tried to use his sharp little dog-claws to get a leg up) while I tried to shove him aside and keep the blanket from flying across Farmer JohnJoe's field next door (and they spread slurry yesterday so I was rather stressed.)

The pattern has just been tested and - all going well - it will be published at the end of March!

Glendalough

On Sunday, the pater familias and I decided to Get Culture. And, after a huge family reunion that involved obscene quantities of food, we thought it mightn't be a bad idea to Get Exercise and Get Fresh Air as well. So we headed off to Glendalough.

Glendalough - which means the valley of the two lakes - is an ancient monastic settlement in east of Ireland, not far from where we live. This 6th century monastic settlement is nestled in the valley that is now the Wicklow National Park. And although it was a foggy, cold Sunday morning in March, there were hundreds of walkers and tourists out and about. Not only Irish people, but also several dozen blue-lipped southern Europeans and brightly-clad Germans and Dutch, revelling in The Nature. For my father, the most fascinating of all was the young Asian man who was wearing an interesting pair of pants with the crotch situated at knee-level.
"Do you think he knows that his trousers are falling down?" asked my father, concerned.
"I think they're supposed to be like that," said I - fashion expert that I am.
My father was astounded. Gobsmacked, in fact.
"He wants to look like that on purpose?" he said. "Those trousers are deliberate?"
I had to break it to him gently that they were indeed a fashion statement and not just a very unfortunate sartorial oopsie.

With the patience of a preying mantis, I waited till they'd wandered off to the side to get you, dear readers, a selection of tourist-free photos:

St. Kevin's Church

St. Kevin's Church and the Round Tower in the distance

Round Tower and graveyard

The Wicklow Mountains and the remains of an early Christian settlement

One of the loughs (lakes). Guaranteed Nessie-free!

Home, Home on the Range

Hello Readers!
After a surprisingly disaster-free journey, I find myself back in the bosom of my family. Yesterday I returned home from a trip to the nearest town to the sight of my second-youngest brother's bottom bared as target practice for a toy gun that fires soft darts. Youngest brother and three teenagers of the gangly&pimply variety (standard issue, in other words) were taking turns to aim at the lillywhite bum-cheeks of William Gingerbread with a child's gun. There was much guffawing as the darts flew in every direction but his posterior, and a squabble ensued about whose turn it was, who'd had it the longest, who saw it first etc. If you have five brothers, as I do, you tend to pretty blase about such shenanigans (though I must admit that I'm fighting a desire to wash my eyeballs with industrial-strength cleaner, but this will pass.)

The Gingerbread Homestead is an old stone house in the middle of nowhere. It looks quite idyllic, even on a dull and foggy day like today.

The grid at the front is a cattle grid. It's a pit with bars across it to stop cows from running down my parents' lane. Cows and bullocks are not particularly smart but they shy away from cattle grids. (Although the occasional bullock actually leapt over the cattle grid and took a trot down around the garden, trampling my father's daffodils.) However, frogs and hedgehogs do not have very good depth perception and often ended up trapped down the cattle grid. Naturally, we children felt compelled to "rescue" them. Many's an afternoon I spent on my stomach by the cattle grid with a pair of super-strength gardening gloves, trying to coax a sulky hedgehog through the bars. It's not easy: hedgehogs, as one may have heard, don't take kindly to human help.

Aside from that, we don't have an awful lot to offer in the way of entertainment. In fact, the highlight of the neighbourhood is The Big Tree. It is - brace yourselves - a big tree. This is it, in all its glory (plus a passing tractor pulling a foul-smelling slurry spreader. A romantic pastoral scene, indeed.)

The Big Tree

Such is our lack of local landmarks that a visit to the Gingerbreads inevitably includes a walk to The Big Tree. We walk down the road, look at the tree, turn around and come back. Exciting stuff. Well, actually, it is if you're small, because a walk to The Big Tree also involves checking out the progress of the crops in the fields, any passing farm machinery, status check of the grazing herds of cows and bullocks, looking for blackberries, dandelions and any other seasonal fruit or flora, culminating in a 365 degree inspection of The Big Tree itself. When my husband first visited my family, my little brothers were much littler. Naturally, they were dying to bring him out on the roller-coaster ride that is a trip to The Big Tree. Off we went, Robbie, Wilmie and Jimmy Gingerbread in tow. With much fanfare we presented to him The Big Tree in all its glory. 

He looked it up and down and said, "Oh, I see. It really is just a tree. From all the fuss, I thought that was just, like, a code name for something else. Something more ... spectacular. But it's actually just ... a Big Tree."

Duh, my little brothers' faces clearly said. He's not the brightest, is he?

Unmitigated Disasters - or How I Nearly Won An Oscar

I just to start by saying that when I was at university, I took a course in film studies. I watched films with A Message, with Symbolism. With subtitles. And sometimes all three at once! And not only did I do well in the course, I was actually top of the class. So be gentle when you judge me.

My little cinematic treat is a nice disaster film. The more preposterous the better. And I've amassed a rather impressive collection of disaster movies - and what is more impressive is the fact that I have not paid more than €4 for a single one! (Although, on second thoughts, that mightn't be very impressive at all.) If you ever wanted to pop over to the Gingerbread House for an evening of movies-slash-crafting, you could practically choose your catastrophe and I'd not only have a film about it, but could offer you a couple of disasters you've never even considered. Yes, sirree: forget your standard run-of-the-mill disasters like tornadoes, floods and volcanic explosions, I can also offer you films about global warming-induced climate change, unwieldy asteroids entering the earth's atmosphere, alien invasions, zombie viruses, abandoned ships inhabited by bloodthirsty demons and - my favourite - genetically-altered mutant super sharks that not only possess razor-sharp analytical skills but also the ability to open doors!

As you know, I've already had a go at writing romance novels, but for a long time I also toyed with the idea of becoming a screenwriter. Using my excellent diagnostic skills - not unlike those of a mutant super-shark - I had compiled a list of surprising similarities that these movies share. Voilà! (or as I'm seeing on a frighteningly regular basis in cyberspace: Waalaah!)

• The Male Lead
  ... is an Expert in Something. Something that regular punters like you and me vaguely know exists, but we're not exactly sure what it is and are too embarrassed to admit it. So when Male Lead marches into his lab/lecture hall (because he's inevitably a scientist or a professor) and says that his area of specialisation is Geothermal Genetic Astronomy, or some such random collection of sciencey words, you nod and say, "Oho! Geothermal Genetic Astronomy! I've always wanted to study that myself!"
  Or maybe not. (Suspend disbelief, readers.)
  Anyway, more unbelievable than his makey-uppy sciencey title is his physique: the filmmakers would have you believe that this man is a veritable lab-rat, yet when the time comes for him to strip off his shirt - and trust me, this time will come - observant viewers will note fantastic muscle tone, an even tan and a waxed chest. Astonishing.

• The Female Lead
  ... is either (a) his ex-wife, who divorced him because he was married to his job but she secretly still loves him or (b) an uptight executive in a too-tight business suit, who will come to love him, despite their witty sparring for the first half of the film. She's in a position of power - an astronaut, aide to the president, the USA's first army generalette - but she's actually looking for a man to save her. (Because, like, we all are.) When she removes her ugly glasses and shakes her hair loose, you'll discover that she's a stunner. With fantastic muscle tone, an even tan and, probably, a waxed chest. (But we don't get to see that.)

But that's not all - you need a bevvy of sidekicks! A good Hollywood film has at least half-a-dozen of these and they get picked off, one by one, during the course of the film. I'll just give you the four most important. You can add more yourself as you please.

• An Expendable Fat Person.
  As someone who veers more towards the Squishy side of the scale myself, I take umbrage at the fact that the chubby co-star always gets killed first. (And have you ever noticed that when the asteroid/alien ship/burning lava suddenly plops down in the middle of downtown Spokane, there's always a close-up of a rotund person tucking into a mountain of fast food, just seconds before they're hit by volcanic rock or the tailgate of a UFO? True fact.)

• A Silly Woman, Usually Blond.
  She might be the female lead's assistant. She gets killed next. She's attractive, but not terribly attractive. Likable enough to make the ridiculous circumstances of her death somewhat saddening. (She's on the phone to her kindergarten-age child when the giant squid pops up out of a drain and eats her. "Eeeeeek!" "Mommy? I yuv you, where are you? Mommeeeeee!" etc.)

• Person From A Minority.
  In recent years Hollywood has had to cover a lot of bases in order not to offend anyone (except, it would seem, The Squishy.) As a result, they try fall over themselves in a fit of abject tokenism. Ideally you might have a person of some colour other than white (Black. Latino/Hispanic. Asian. Indian. Irish - I think this is because we're not strictly white, but more pink with freckles. I haven't figured the demographics out on this one, but apparently we fall in this category, too.) This person should also be a minority religion (Jewish. Buddhist. Rastafarian) and/or have a disability (Blind. Deaf. In a wheelchair) and/or some sort of special ability (The Best Software Programmer on Earth. Ace Navigator. Advanced Memory.) Play around with this one. Some combinations work (Blind Hispanic Buddhist who can hack the FBI's super computer) and some don't (Deaf Vietnamese Scientologist who can bend spoons with the power of his mind.) This person will get killed next (but not too early in the film, or you'll offend someone.)

• And Morgan Freeman. I'm not sure why, but Mr Freeman (or lesser thespian copies of Mr Freeman) pops up a lot in disaster films. I think he and his ilk lend a certain gravitas to the genre. If someone told you that we had but hours to live because an asteroid the size of Texas was rocketing its way towards earth or a pack of mutant sharks were swimming up the Hudson River to eat the population of NewYork, you would guffaw in mirth. But if Morgan Freeman announces our imminent destruction in his gravelly tones, you tend to believe him. He is an asset to any disaster film.

Then you just need a disaster. That's where I'm stumped. I'm normally a creative person, but this one has really slowed me down. I can't think of a disaster that hasn't already been covered. I thought I was on to something good last year when I remembered that what scares people most is not aliens, zombie viruses, asteroids or super volcanoes. It's not tornadoes, biblical floods or - strangely enough - attacks by door-opening mutant sharks. It's actually...

... public speaking! Yes, apparently the thoughts of standing behind a microphone in front of a room full of strangers frightens the living daylights of the average Joe Soap. So I sharpened my HB pencils and grabbed a brand-new notebook and set about writing the film that would change disaster films as we know them. But I struggled, readers, I struggled. I admit, I was already desperately trying to come up with a scenario that would involve scaring the bejabbers out of the human race with the power of rhetoric, when I sadly discovered that there was a disaster film in the making that exploits that very fear - my very idea! The cheek! And to add insult to injury, last weekend I watched the Oscars and was very displeased to see that the idea they pinched from me had not only done well, but had been a cinematic triumph. Snort!

Therefore I would like to call upon all of my loyal readers to boycott the film The King's Speech because a film about the horrors of public speaking was my idea and - footstomp - I had it first. Take note, Colin Firth, you are struck off my Christmas card list!

Harsh words, but I think it's justified, don't you?

_________________________________________

One of the reasons why I've dipped into my litany of disasters is because I'm going home to Mammy and Daddy Gingerbread for a week tomorrow. As you know, we missed brother Johnny Gingerbread's wedding last year because of the darned Icelandic volcano and spent Christmas in Germany thanks to a blizzard. I'm trying to prepare myself for the next disaster - forewarned is forearmed and all that. So fingers crossed that the next post you read from me will be from the Gingerbread Homestead, on Daddy Gingerbread's new laptop in his chair by the fire:

Miles of Tiles

Gingerbread Mammy phoned me on Sunday to give me a run-down on all the action in our town. This is often like the Births, Deaths and Marriages section of a major newspaper, except that there is often an indepth genealogical footnote to each entry ("Lisa Kenny had a baby by C-Section. That's Lisa Kenny from the Dry Cleaners, her mammy worked in the Winkle's newsagency at the weekend - remember the blondie-haired woman with the funny eye who used to sell the Cadbury's Creme Eggs after Easter Sunday mass? Her grandda had the greyhounds and we used to see him walking them down by the railway every morning on the way to school?" etc.
I have no idea who any of these people are.)
She also keeps me up to date on my father's antics - he has a new laptop. He had another laptop that was (helpless pause), well, it was pretty good and then there was a new laptop on the market that could (helpless pause) - do other things that the first one couldn't so they exchanged it for this new one which can do (helpless pause) other things. She thinks.
"But it's an Apple," she adds. "By the way, you haven't posted on your blog recently, missy."
"I know," I say. "But I've loads of photos of the blankets I've been working on, so I'm going to put them up later on."
Miffed pause.
"Ah, we're not very interested in crochet," she says. "We prefer the other kind of posts."
I suspect my parents are primarily interested in posts in which they play the starring role. And with this introduction, I hope I have kept them happy for tonight.

Now, on to the crochet.
This is what I'm up to now:

 
The pattern for this afghan - provisionally entitled the Tiles Afghan (because they look like ... well, tiles) - is being tested by half-a-dozen dynamic crocheters that I have locked up in a top-secret facility, guarded by FBI agents and a pack of vicious dogs. While they are checking the pattern for incidences of my (in)famous numerical fuzziness, I've been trying the pattern out in different ways. This is a baby blanket in cream and denim blue, which I call the Dutch Tiles Afghan - because the pattern looks like Delft tiles.

Mrs Gingerbread vs The Customs Office (1:0)

RAoK stands for Random Act of Kindness - and it is, as the name suggests, simply a nice deed that you do for a random stranger, with no other intention or purpose other than to squirt some goodness into the universe. This week I was the recipient of a RAoK from Shelley in California. She sent me Big American Yarn in gorgeous colours, as well as crochet hooks and Kool Aid, jelly beans ... and, best of all, a lovely letter. That's right - a real letter, a handwritten letter, a funny and interesting letter that we read in the car and then re-read at home. It was like Christmas Day again  (but better because my Christmas Day this year mainly revolved around disinfecting the toilet after my stomach-flued husband had had his evil way with it.) It was such a lovely and kind gesture, I was really touched - I just can't tell you how it brightened my day ... my whole week, in fact.

Yesterday afternoon, Mr Gingerbread and I set off to Battle With The German Customs Office because my parcel had been - shock, horror! - impounded. The cheek! This meant we had to drive out to an industrial estate where the customs office (an eerily quiet building full of people sitting at desks behind glass windows, staring at their hands or computer screens) is located. Many German bureaucrats have the amazing ability to make you feel guilty without you having done anything wrong. It's a marvellous piece of psychological manipulation, especially for obsessively law-abiding citizens like myself. I'm slowly beginning to suspect that this skill is part of their training course - they might even have final exams in Glaring 101, How to Narrow Your Eyes Evilly and Snorting in Disbelief: Masterclass. ("Once again, Heinz, but with feeling! I want to to inject even more incredulity into that snort! Sneer, if you can! That's right! Excellent!") Whereas in other countries you are assumed innocent till proven guilty, some German bureaucrats like to simply presume you're guilty and they have you do the work of proving your innocence.

When I went entered the parcel office, the three officials were slouched at their desk, glued to their computer screens. I handed over the notification and one of them s-l-o-w-l-y went off to get the box. He dumped it on the counter and handed me a scissors.
"Please open it!" he barked.
So I did. I unpacked the Kool Aid ("Look, Kool Aid!" I said to him. Not impressed) and the crochet hooks ("Wow, crochet hooks!" Still no flicker.) And the jelly beans. ("Oooh, jelly beans! Would you like one?" Narrowed eyes.) And the yarn - then his beady little bureaucratic eyes lit up. He picked one up and gave it a squeeze to make sure there was nothing inside.
"Is there any medication in the box?" he said hopefully. "Foodstuffs? Meat? Dairy products?"
I tipped it over so he could look inside. Nothing.
But he wasn't finished yet: we had a little argy-bargy about the price of the yarn, but he finally accepted that the German government was not going to turn a profit in 2011 on the basis of the customs fees on my meagre and inadvertent yarn-smuggling activity. Clearly disappointed that his day had not been livened up by the discovery of a kilo of cocaine hidden in Red Heart Super Saver, I was allowed to take my present home.

Where I unpacked it on the coffee table, took a quick photo in the last ten minutes of bright light, then left my goodies there so I could admire my present all evening. Look at my pyramid of yarn: isn't it just lovely? I can't wait to rip the labels off (carefully) and get started on something really cool.

I Am Colour Starved

I like this pattern, I really do. It lets me do all kinds of weird and wonderful things with colours. This is the tester-blanket for a pattern I'll write up as soon as possible. I started off in another colour subset, but I need a model blanket for the pattern picture. So I decided to use ALL my colours (and we all know that I don't shy away from colour. Nom, nom.) I have enough blankets to cover almost every shabby chair and sofa in the Gingerbread House (= no mean feat, let me tell you) so this one is going to be a present ... maybe for my youngest niece, a toddler who seems to enjoy dancing around in little more than her mother's half-finished crochet blankets.

Gnomic Advice

 

Okay, it has nothing to do with real gnomes but I do love a pun.

Good morning, folks! It's time for a dose of Stuff-You-Already-Know-But-Here-It-Is-Again. Today's topic is relationship advice. I like to think that in a parallel universe I am writing self-help books based on my paltry 2-year marital success or, indeed, hosting an afternoon talkshow in which I state the obvious but disguise it as a profound psychological insight, but in this world I get to torture you instead.
Cackle, cackle. (See my previous post. I'm practising for my twilight years.)
__________________________________________________

THE GINGERBREAD LADY'S GNOMIC ADVICE

Category: Relationships

Subcategory: Housework

Gem of Wisdom: If it bothers you, it's your problem

1st Amendment:  If it bothers you, it's your chore

__________________________________________________
Fini.

Wow. Knocked your socks off, didn't I? Well, like many people in the throes of a relationship - to man, woman or beast: this advice applies to all - you might have a somewhat different approach to cleaning than your other half or halves (thirds? quarters?). Cleanliness might be next to godliness for you, but it might be next to, say, the cornflakes for your partner. In our case, neither of us is enamoured of housework and very often cleaning the Gingerbread House becomes a very dusty game of collision-course 'chicken': who can hold out the longest? I don't think I need to tell you that my husband has beaten me at Let's Ignore The Dreck about 5980 times since we moved into our home. Up until now I've been annoyed by it: why doesn't he vacuum the floor when the dust has taken on tumbleweed proportions? Why doesn't he scrub the bathtub when the white enamel turns grey ? Why am I the only person who knows where the rubbish sacks are kept or why we have a bottle of Cif under the sink? I mean, he'll good-naturedly (and thoroughly) clean anything I ask him to. But I have to ask him to and I kept expecting that to change.

But today I gave up. That's it: I gave up.

Let's go back in time a bit:
When we moved into our house, we had no cooker. So we bought one and then went looking for a nice gas hob for our new/second-hand kitchen. We stood in the display kitchen at IKEA and admired various cookers on display. I wanted a simple, 4-plate hob with an easy-clean surface. Mr G. wanted a five-plate megacool gas hob with a wok plate in the middle. ("Wok! Phwoarh!") He stood at the display unit and played with the pieces, his hairy face alight with joy. Disturbingly, he was making a lot of whooshing noises, like something going up in flames ("Brrrrooooooosssshhhhh!") as he twiddled the knobs.
"Let's get this one," he said decisively.
"No," I said, "Let's not. Look at all of those bits - they all have to be taken apart and cleaned. It's massive, it'll be a pain in the bum to scrub that every week."
"Pssshaw!" he said, "Tusssshhh!" and all kinds of other don't-be-silly noises. "I'll clean it! I don't mind!"
And he did.
Once. A few days after we bought it.
Since then, I've been the only person who minds that the shiny stainless-steel surface is covered in a sticky goo of over-boiled pasta paste or dried-in coconut milk. I mind so I clean it. It bothers me so it becomes my chore.

Now, I knew this going into this relationship almost a decade ago. I did, I swear. But I didn't want to accept it. Today, as I stood at the cooker with my sexy yellow rubber gloves on and the citrus smell of oven cleaner wafting about my person, Mr G. strode by, on his way to plaster a wall on the ground floor of the house.
"Cleaning the cooker, eh?" he said jovially.
"Indeed I am," I answered, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing rock-hard spinach off the steel. The hob had acquired a patina of dried-in food that you couldn't help but see.
"I didn't even realise it was dirty," he said airily and picked up his plaster bucket.
So I give up. I accept it, I finally accept it: when it comes to housework, I'll just do it myself it if it bothers me. Or ask him to do it if having to do it myself bothers me. But there is NO POINT getting annoyed because he hasn't done it without me pointing it out.
The End

P.S. Mr Gingerbread voluntarily plastered walls today. This piece of advice does not seem to apply to DIY. But that's the subject of another post.

Tupperscare

You might have gathered that I'm slightly ... odd. No, that's not true: I'm probably very normal but I like odd. And odd likes me. I am what my mother terms a "nut magnet" (not least because it takes a nutty person to know a nutty person. And she would know. If I am nuts, it's not off the ground that I licked it.) The following will illustrate this. I am not exaggerating, just recording for posterity the type of person that like to shoot the breeze with your very own Gingerbread Lady.

I was in my favourite shop today, the 99c Store. It's a wonderland of oddness, so I normally feel very at home there, browsing through the piles of all-in-one onion choppers, wooden hearts left over from Valentine's Day and battery-operated staplers. Today I espied a stack of nifty clear plastic boxes, not unlike the one in the photo above, but this box was see-through. As I was examining them and wondering what you could store in them (yarn? Yarn! No, too small. Oh, well.) I heard a voice at my shoulder: "Excuse me, what are they?"
I turned to see an elderly man - no, I turned to see an old man beside me. He was almost doubled over with a hunchback, and he had a shopping basket full of knickknacks in his gnarled hand. He must have been in his mid-eighties. At least. Being a Friend of the Elderly, I showed him the box and demonstrated how you could open and close the lid.
"Handy, isn't it?" I said.
"It is," he replied. "Could you give me three of them, young lady?"
So I took three down off the shelf and placed them carefully in his basket. And went on with my shopping.

Ten minutes later we both ended up at the cash desk. I studied the trinkets on display while he placed the items in his basket on the desk.
"These boxes are wonderful," said the lady at the cash desk in a conversational tone. "They're very practical."
The old man peeped up at her. "They are," he said, "They're perfect for my collection of chopped-off fingers!"
Yes. Read that again.
The lady's jaw dropped open. The old man cackled - yes, cackled - and she looked at me desperately. I bit my lip and shrugged.
"They're the perfect size to store fingers in," he continued, "And you can see them because the boxes are transparent. Cackle, cackle."
The lady at the cash desk looked at me, bewildered. And visibly gulped.
"I'm only joking," said the old man.
And then he turned to peep up at me mischievously.
"Or am I? Cackle, cackle."
At this point the lady was clearly unnerved. She packed his stuff into a plastic bag and pushed it across the desk to him, making sure their fingers did not touch. He slowly wrapped his hands around the handles and shuffled off. Grinning.

"I hope he was joking," she whispered to me (it was taking him ages to make his way to the door of the shop: shuffle, shuffle, stop. Shuffle, shuffle, stop.) "Should I call the police?"
Given that our would-be digit-collector could barely get his own fingers around the door handle much less around a knife or similar chopping implement, and given the decidedly naughty twinkle in his eyes, I reassured her that he probably was joking.
"Nuts," she said, tapping the side of her head. "Every now and again we get a complete nutcase in here!"
Readers, I couldn't help but feel that it was somehow my fault. They flock to me. But at the same time part of me was hoping that I'm feisty enough to scare the bejabbers out of salesladies for the laugh when I'm an octogenarian crippled with arthritis.
Cackle, cackle.

Phew! OWOH - done!

 And the winner is ...
Cobblestone Creations! Hurray!

The One World, One Heart giveaway has just come to an end and I've finished my door-prize just in time. In order to give the winner a choice, I decided to make two blankets in two different colourways -

The lollipop blanket on the right quickly got out of hand. Before I knew it, the colours were running riot. It's bright - yes, it is - and a little bit rambunctious. I really don't know what happened there. Have you ever had the feeling that your project has had the upper hand on you?

Conversational Gambits

"... and we have to teach them conversational gambits!" my boss said enthusiastically.
And I tuned in again.
I was in the middle of a long conference about changes to the oral exams at our school. Students learning English have to hold a twenty-minute conversation about various topics, and we were discussing the various skills that they had to learn and practise - among others, conversational gambits.

Gambits. Gambits. While the rest of my colleagues nodded enthusiastically and made notes, I rolled the word around in my mouth: conversational gambits. I love words. I especially love words that are used so infrequently that hearing them again is like discovering a forgotten €10 in your jeans pocket. Gambit: delicious!

If that weren't weird enough, sometimes I re-assign words to people I think they describe. Thus, one of my husband's friends is called Gambit in my head. Gambit is one of his best friends: a tall, loud, blond guy who is both incredibly endearing and dreadfully irritating at the same time. One of his most annoying habits is ... well, his conversational gambits. À propos nothing, he throws a mystifying and cryptic segue into a running conversation, effectively killing communication, as we all momentarily stop to gape at him - and that's his cue to hijack the discussion with a long monologue about a subject of his choice. For example:

Me:  ... and that's why it'll be interesting to see how things pan out in Egypt, don't you think?
Friend #1:  Yes. Although I must admit that I didn't realise that things were so politically instabile in the country. That did surprise me.
Friend #2:   You're right. I mean, Kate and Tim were in Egypt on holiday in December and they said -
Gambit: I bet Steve Jobs didn't think realise that turning up the brightness on the iPad would reconnect to the network!
(Astonished silence.)
Friend #1:  Sorry, Gambit? Steve Jobs? iPads?
Gambit: Interesting that you should mention iPads, Friend # 1, - I just happened to buy one yesterday! Look, look at this - see, you can open this file ...
Friend #2 (weakly): ... and Tim said that the Egyptian government ...
Gambit (louder): AND THEN, YOU TOUCH THE SCREEN LIKE THIS AND IT ...
(Friend #2 shuts up.)

Mr Gingerbread has the patience of a saint, I swear, and good-naturedly plays along when Gambit throws one of his conversation killers into the mix. I, on the other hand, drive poor Gambit nuts. My tactic is to note his contribution and swiftly steer the conversation back to the topic we're all discussing. After nearly a decade, I'm very, very good at it:

Friend #2:   You're right. I mean, Kate and Tim were in Egypt on holiday in December and they said ...
Gambit: I bet Steve Jobs didn't think realise that turning up the brightness on the iPad would reconnect to the network!
Me: That must have surprised Steve, I'm sure. Anyway, I'm sure it'll have a devastating effect on the tourist industry. No doubt a lot of sectors are already feeling the effects of the unrest.

Gambit: See, some people say that there's a glitch in the iPad and adjusting the brightness reconnects the internet.

Me: Apparently all of Eygpt was without internet access for a couple of days. I wonder why? 

Gambit: I wonder if you can buy iPads in Cairo?

Me: As far as I can tell, many of the city's shops have been forced to close till things settle down. What did Tim and Kate say about their holiday in Egypt, Friend #2?

And so on.

It's cruel, yes it is, but the alternative is to be locked into a one-man conversation about a toy of his choice or a topic only he knows anything about. The rest of the conversationalists hang around hopefully, waiting for him to take a breath, so we can jump back in and get the discussion back on track. Our little Battle of the Segues adds an extra frisson of excitement to conversations: who's going to win, me or Gambit? What are we going to talk about, the latest Christopher Nolan film or Gambit's new hard-disk drive? Will we all discuss our weekend plans or listen to a lecture about Windows 7? And I do it sweetly and gently, kind of a cross between a conversational ninja and a chitchat geisha: Release date for the iPhone 5? Pow! The future of USB cables? Bang! How to progress to level 93 in an obscure mass multi-player online game that involves wizards, potions and magic boots? Ka-pow!

I am the queen of conversational gambits!

The Heart of the Matter

Ugh, Valentine's Day. Apparently he's the patron saint of lovers, but I'm beginning to suspect that he's the patron saint of florists, chocolatiers and card companies. When I first moved to Germany in the middle of the 1990s, both St. Valentine's Day and Hallowe'en were practically unknown and viewed with suspicion as nasty, Anglo-Saxon, madey-uppy kinds of holidays that had no place in the German tradition. And to a certain extent they were right. Germans got along perfectly well without either of them - German children managed to survive childhood without the opportunity to trick or treat, and I'm more than certain that the vast majority of people who are made to feel inadequate about their singledom in the midst of this heart-and-candy cornucopia would manage quite nicely without it, too. But in the past decade, both holidays have become increasingly common and particularly the latter has been snapped up with gusto by chocolate / card / flower / trashy knick-knack companies that see an opportunity to make a few bucks.

Nonetheless - and this is the inherent evil of Valentine's Day - one wakes up hopefully on the morning of this Unholyday and checks for chocolates ... just in case. And, inevitably, my snooping for pralines (which, I must confess, would put a truffle pig to shame) ends in vain. Why does this surprise me? I don't know - but it does. Every year. Valentine's Day has that effect on people: there's a chance that chocolate might be involved and it's impossible not to get your hopes up. But, really, I should know better: Mr Gingerbread used to get very het-up about St. Valentine's Day: he used it as an excuse to launch into a rant with all kinds of -isms. Its basis is in commercialism! cultural imperialism! globalisation! (not strictly an -ism, but it's a main thread of his rant.) And, essentially, he is protesting against all of these evils by ... wait for it! You're going to be surprised by the extent of his political activism! ... by ... yes, wait for it ... doing nothing! There - that surprised you, didn't it?

Nowadays, he's mellowed. I still didn't get chocolates today but, thankfully, I was also spared the rant. When I pointed out that today was Valentine's Day, he puckered his lips, plunger-style, and leaned in for a smacker. The extent of our romantic interplay was me beating him off as he dived on me with big, moist, fishy lips for a "Valentine's Day kiss" (never have three words sounded so ominous. Shudder.) But true love is not dead in the Gingerbread Household: I made him a cup of tea and gave him three of the remaining five chocolate chip cookies (and if you knew us, you would understand why this is a big deal) and he let me sleep for ten minutes longer this morning (again, see comment in parenthesis above). In Gingerbread terms, these are tokens of unbridled passion, so I really shouldn't fuss.

Now I'm off to check the cupboard with cereals and dry goods. Maybe he hid my chocolates in there.
Maybe.